Dissipating the Darkness: how yoga, Hare Krishna and Ayurveda took root in Brazil

Brazil is home to roughly 2,000 Indian immigrants, according to the estimate that opens Dissipating the Darkness (Dissipando as Trevas). Even so, São Paulo has yoga classes on nearly every corner, along with Hare Krishna temples, Ayurveda therapists and festivals of color. The documentary, released in 2014 by an independent producer, sets out to answer a simple question: if these practices did not come with immigrants, how did they get here, and who keeps them alive?

The film took two years to make and features 50 interviewees. Across 108 minutes it is divided into clear chapters, with timestamps in the video description, so viewers can jump straight to the subject they care about. The channel offers English subtitles (turn on CC in the player).

Devotion, yoga and Ayurveda

The first part follows the Hare Krishna movement, of Vaishnava origin, meaning devoted to Vishnu, which spread in the West after A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada arrived in the United States in the 1960s. The film tracks a devotee who, between one interview and the next, leaves monastic life in the temple to marry and work outside it, and visits a school run by devotees in Franco da Rocha, in greater São Paulo, that takes in children of other faiths. In the yoga chapter, teachers lay out the practice's main branches and explain how it reached the country in the 1950s, mixed in with esoteric societies, before the surge in popularity of the following decades. Then comes Ayurveda, India's traditional system of health care, presented by those who practice it.

Gurus, dance and music

The chapter on gurus takes the crew to an ashram in Quatro Barras, in the state of Paraná, and shows families who organize their lives around a master. In the arts, dancers explain the difference between Indian classical dance, slow to learn, and the Bollywood film style, which won an audience after the soap opera Caminho das Índias aired on TV Globo in 2009. Musician Sandro Shankara, who wrote the soundtrack, talks about devotional chant. The ending is diplomatic: the Indian Cultural Centre, opened in São Paulo in 2011, and the place of culture in relations between the two countries.

What to keep in mind

The interviewees speak as practitioners and devotees, and the film rarely challenges them. Ayurveda is one example: a therapist argues it should not be judged as Western medicine, but the film does not mention that the system rests on knowledge without scientific backing and that, in India itself, its practitioners are not legally recognized as physicians. Some statements of faith, such as a devotee's comparison of Prabhupada to Jesus, are left without context.

Why watch

Because it is a rare portrait of a Brazil that adopted India without asking permission, with ordinary people instead of celebrities. It is also a record of its moment: the Indian Cultural Centre had just opened, and the Holi festival was holding its first editions in the country in 2013.