In this erudite examination of the origins of postural yoga, University of Chicago Indologist and Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger asks, what are the real roots of yoga? By examining five contradictory claims made by "activists of Hindu American identity politics" and contemporary scholars, Dr. Doniger exposes the complex and interconnected history of how yoga developed, both as an extension of Indian culture and, importantly, as a reaction to the British colonization of the subcontinent. In fact, Dr. Doniger makes the case that, far from being an ancient tradition of purely Indian origin, yoga, as we know it today, can reasonably be seen as a multicultural invention of the 19th and 20th centuries.