ABSTRACT
In India and elsewhere, physical culture enthusiasts experimented with the potential of yoga. D.C. Mujumdar, in his English-language edition of the Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture, echoing the values and the grammar of modern, European physical culture, writes: ‘God cannot be pleased with the ugly, unhealthy, weak and flabby bodies. Although Vivekananda himself was an energetic proponent of nationalistic Indian physical culture, it was not until later that asana began to be incorporated as a component part of the yoga renaissance that he himself had helped to initiate. Rajaratna Manick Rao is worthy of note, insofar as he was in some ways the epitome of the new, political and revolutionary renaissance of physical culture in India, and because he trained more than one key figure in the modern postural yoga renaissance. The 1920s and 1930s were a time of intense experimentation within Indian physical culture, and also a key moment in the refashioning of yoga as physical culture.
