ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the history of male physical culture – the cultivation of fitness, strength, and health – in colonial India. It also documents changing notions of the ideal male body while showing how bodily presentation highlighted the issue of masculinity, which was connected to colonial and nationalist politics. Strongmen, wrestlers, bodybuilders, circus performers, yoga and martial arts practitioners, the YMCA, and Gandhi are all discussed. The chapter reveals a remarkable Indian openness to British and global influences – including debates about ‘scientific’ physical culture – while arguing that these forces were blended creatively with Indian practices and redirected to new ends.
