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³ Tellingly, the authors of Buffalo Bill in Bologna, one of the most sophisticated and influential recent studies on the origins of Americanization processes, make it a point that sports do not fit in their overall narrative because only British and not American sports made an impact in India. Rydell, Robert W. and Kroes, Rob, Buffalo Bill in Bologna: The Americanization of the World, 1869–1922, University of Chicago Press, London, 2005, pp. 168ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ See, for example, the recent special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 28, 2011, devoted to American imperialism in the realm of sports.

⁵ Dyreson, Mark, ‘Prologue: The Paradoxes of Imitation and Resistance: The Origins of an American Empire of Sports’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 28, 2011, pp. 2415–2420CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁸ The work of Joseph Alter was path-breaking in this respect, as it pointed at the complex transnational configurations at work in the reconfiguration of yoga and various other physical activities. See Alter, Joseph S., ‘Yoga at the Fin de Siècle: Muscular Christianity with a Hindu Twist’, in Muscular Christianity in Colonial and Post-Colonial Worlds, Aloon, John Mac (ed.), Routledge, London and New York, 2008, pp. 59–76Google Scholar; Alter, Joseph S., ‘Physical Education, Sport and the Intersection and Articulation of “Modernities”: The Hanuman Vyayam Prasarak Mandal’, Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 24, 2007, pp. 1156–1171CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alter, Joseph S., ‘Indian Clubs and Colonialism: Hindu Masculinity and Muscular Christianity’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 46, 2004, pp. 497–534CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Alter, Joseph S., ‘Kabaddi, a National Sport of India: The Internationalism of Nationalism and the Foreignness of Indianness’, in Games, Sports and Cultures, Dyck, N. (ed.), Berg, Oxford and New York, 2000, pp. 81–106Google Scholar.

⁹ The most influential work in this respect has been Mangan, James A., The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal, Florence Taylor and Francis, London, 1985, pp. 121–141Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Arnold, David, ‘Globalization and Contingent Colonialism: Towards a Transnational History of “British” India’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 16, 2015, DOI: 0.1353/cch.2015.0019CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manjapra, Kris K., Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals across Empires, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fischer-Tiné, Harald, Shyamji Krishnavarma: Sanskrit, Sociology and Anti-Imperialism, Routledge India, New Delhi, 2014Google Scholar; Sinha, Babli, South Asian Transnationalism: Cultural Exchange in the Twentieth Century, Routledge, London and New York, 2012Google Scholar; and Sinha, Mrinalini, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire, Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an extension of this argument to an earlier phase of South Asian history, cf. also Wilson, Jon E., ‘Early Colonial India Beyond Empire’, The Historical Journal, vol. 50, 2007, pp. 951–970CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ For a definition of ‘mass culture’, see Rydell and Kroes, Buffalo Bill in Bologna, pp. 3–6.

¹² Cf. Sinha, Babli, ‘Empire Films and the Dissemination of Americanism in Colonial India’, South Asian History and Culture, vol. 2, 2011, pp. 140–156CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shope, Bradley, ‘The Public Consumption of Western Music in Colonial India: From Imperialist Exclusivity to Global Receptivity’, South Asia. Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 31, 2008, pp. 271–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Arnold, David, Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India's Modernity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013, pp. 152ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a systematic articulation of this argument, see also Arnold, ‘Globalization and Contingent Colonialism’.

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¹⁴ Mangan, James A., ‘Britain's Chief Spiritual Export: Imperial Sport as Political Symbol, Moral Metaphor and Cultural Bond’ in ‘Manufactured’ Masculinity: Making Imperial Manliness, Morality and Militarism, Mangan, James A. (ed.), Routledge, London, 2011, pp. 228–236Google Scholar; Stoddart, Brian, ‘Sport, Cultural Imperialism and Colonial Response in the British Empire’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 30, 1988, pp. 649–673CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ van Bottenburg, Maarten, ‘Beyond Diffusion: Sport and Its Remaking in Cross-Cultural Contexts’, Journal of Sport History, vol. 37, 2010, pp. 401–412, here p. 403Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Majumdar, Boria, ‘Tom Brown Goes Global: The “Brown” Ethic in Colonial and Post-Colonial India’, in Aloon, Mac (ed.), Muscular Christianity in Colonial and Post-Colonial Worlds, pp. 105–120Google Scholar; and Majumdar, Boria, ‘Imperial Tool “for” Nationalist Resistance: The “Games Ethic” in Indian History’, in Sport in South Asian Society, Majumdar, Boria and Mangan, James A. (eds), Taylor and Francis, Abingdon, 2013, pp. 48–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 50. It has to be mentioned, however, that Majumdar has briefly acknowledged the role of the YMCA for the popularization of sports in South Asia in his co-authored book on the history of Olympism in India: Majumdar, Boria and Mehta, Nalin, India and the Olympics, Routledge, London, 2009, pp. 17–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁰ Clark, Christopher and Ledger-Lomas, Michael, ‘The Protestant International’, in Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, Greene, Abigail and Viaene, Vincent (eds), Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2012, pp. 23–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁵ Shedd, History of the World Alliance, p. 363.

²⁶ Dunderdale, The Y.M.C.A. in India, p. 13.

²⁷ This was the term usually used to denote persons of mixed descent until about 1910. Later on, they were mostly referred to as ‘Anglo-Indians’.

²⁸ Young Men of India, vol. 34, no. 1, 1923, p. 18.

²⁹ Rosenberg, Emily S., Transnational Currents in a Shrinking World, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014, p. 68Google Scholar; for a more detailed treatment of the SVM, cf. Tyrrell, Reforming the World, pp. 49–73.

³⁰ Hopkins, C. Howard, History of the Y.M.C.A. in North America, Association Press, New York, 1951, pp. 331–333Google Scholar.

³¹ Although American capital and staff were dominant, technically the Canadian and American National YMCAs were united until 1912 when a separate Canadian national association was established. Their entanglement remained effective for years after this breakaway as far as the international work and particularly programmes in South Asia were concerned.

³² Eddy, George Sherwood, Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade, Abingdon-Cokebury Press, New York and Nashville, 1945, p. 44Google Scholar.

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³⁵ On the politics of whiteness in British India, see Fischer-Tiné, Harald, ‘The Making of a “Ruling Race”: Defining and Defending Whiteness in Colonial India’, in Racism in the Modern World: Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, Berg, Manfred and Wendt, Simon (eds), Berghahn, New York and Oxford, 2011, pp. 213–235Google Scholar.

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³⁸ Eddy, George Sherwood, ‘Seeking to Reach the Educated Hindus’, The Missionary Review of the World, new series, vol. 16, no. 12, 1903, pp. 922–927Google Scholar.

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⁴⁴ Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2004, p. 330Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ David, The YMCA and the Making of Modern India, pp. 249–256.

⁴⁶ Sinha, Specters of Mother India, p. 33; and Gould, Harold A., Sikhs, Swamis, and Spies: The India Lobby in the United States 1900–1946, SAGE, New Delhi, 2006Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ The Times of India, 1 February 1928, p. 9; and Harry Hobbs, Indian Y.M.C.A. and Politics, H. Hobbs, Calcutta, 1927, p. 14.

⁴⁸ The Times, 21 January 1927.

⁴⁹ Archives of the World Alliance of YMCAs, Geneva (hereafter AWYG), Box ‘India National Work/Minutes of Board Meetings & National Conferences’, E. C. Dewick, Some Notes on the Present Situation in India, 30 January 1932.

⁵⁰ Charles Merz, ‘Blue Sky in India’, Association Men, September 1923, p. 6.

⁵¹ KFYA, IWI, Box 47, Folder ‘India 1929–1934’, O. O. Stanchfield, Observations Growing Out of India, Burma and Ceylon Visit 4 November 1930–25 February 1931.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ KFYA, IWI, Box 51, Folder ‘India World Service 1943’, Post-War Policy Study: India Burma and Ceylon.

⁵⁴ Baker, William J., ‘Religion’, in The Routledge Companion to Sports History, Pope, S. W. and Nauright, J. (eds), Routledge, London and New York, 2010, pp. 216–228, here p. 217Google Scholar.

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⁵⁶ Baker, Playing with God, pp. 50–55; and Hopkins, History of the Y.M.C.A, pp. 246–251.

⁵⁷ See also Baker, William J., ‘To Pray or to Play? The YMCA Question in the United Kingdom and the United States, 1850–1900’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 11, 1994, pp. 42–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Erdozain, Dominic, The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation and the Crisis of Victorian Religion, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2010, pp. 119–125Google Scholar and 211–221.

⁵⁸ Johnson, History of the YMCA Physical Education, pp. 52–55.

⁵⁹ Overmann, Steven J., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Sport, Mercer University Press, Macon, GE, 2011, pp. 155ffGoogle Scholar. On Gulick's work at Springfield, see Putney, Clifford, ‘Luther Gulick: His Contributions to Springfield College, the YMCA, and “Muscular Christianity”’, Historical Journal of Massachusetts, vol. 39, 2011, pp. 144–169Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ McComb, David G., Sports in World History, Routledge, New York and Abingdon, 2004, pp. 51ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; Putney, Clifford, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 2001, pp. 69–72Google Scholar; and Myerscough, Keith, ‘The Game with No Name: The Invention of Basketball’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 12, 1995, pp. 137–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁶² Putney, Muscular Christianity, p. 71.

⁶³ Gulick, Luther Halsey, A Philosophy of Play, C. Scribner's Sons, New York, 1920, p. xivGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁴ Riess, Steven A., City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1989Google Scholar; and Thomas Winter, ‘Luther Halsey Gulick’, in The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gulick.htm [accessed, 16 February 2017]. See also Gulick, Luther Halsey, ‘Women's Program: Camp Fire Girls’, The Journal of Education, vol. 78, 1913, pp. 6–7Google Scholar. Interestingly, the Indian YMCA was also engaged in the foundation of various Scout and Guide groups. Due to constraints of space, however, this important facet of its work cannot be discussed here.

⁶⁵ Putney, Muscular Christianity, p. 71; and Ladd, Tony and Mathisen, James A., Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants and the Development of American Sport, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 1999, pp. 61ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Cf., for example, Joseph Callan, ‘Physical Illiteracy’, Young Men of India, vol. 49, 1937, pp. 176–179, here p. 179. On the philosophy of ‘developing the whole man’ through physical education as developed by Gulick and others in the 1880s and 1890s, see Gustav-Wrathall, John Donald, Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same Sex-Relations and the YMCA, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1999, pp. 22–30Google Scholar; the quote is on p. 24.

⁶⁷ Setran, David P., ‘“From Moral Aristocracy to Christian Social Democracy”: The Transformation of Character Education in the Hi-Y, 1910–1940’, History of Education Quarterly, vol. 45, 2005, pp. 207–246CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 217.

⁶⁸ Gray, J. H., ‘India's Physical Renaissance’, The Young Men of India, vol. 25, 1914, pp. 341–47, here p. 345Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ That the emphasis on playfulness and scientificity of fitness programmes was, in fact, not as uniquely American as some YMCA agents later claimed, however, is evident from Watt, ‘No Showy Muscles’.

⁷⁰ Gulick, Luther H., ‘Physical Education: A New Profession’, in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education at Its Fifth Annual Meeting Held in Cambridge and Boston, Mass. 4 and 5 April 1890, Andrus and Church, Ithaca, NY, 1890, pp. 59–66Google Scholar, here p. 65. See also Park, Roberta J., ‘Science, Service and the Professionalization of Physical Education, 1885–1905’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 24, 2007, pp. 1674–1700CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here pp. 1676–1678.

⁷¹ Gulick, ‘Physical Education’, pp. 65ff.

⁷² Doggett, Laurence L., Man and a School: Pioneering in Higher Education, Association Press, New York, 1943, p. 285Google Scholar.

⁷³ This phrase, of course, alludes to Wilson Jacob's magisterial study on nationalism and physical culture in Egypt: Jacob, Wilson Chacko, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London, 2011Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ N.N., ‘An Athletic Club’, The Young Men of India, vol. 1, 1890, p. 65Google Scholar.

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⁷⁷ Gems, The Athletic Crusade, p. 20.

⁷⁸ KFYA, IWI, Box 14, Folder ‘Madras, MISC Reports 1893–1931’, The Madras Young Men's Christian Association Quarterly Meeting [reprint of an article in the Christian Patriot, 2 October 1897].

⁷⁹ KFYA, IWI, Box 1, Folder ‘Miscellaneous Prints and drafts 1888–1900’, a letter from David McConaughy, A Building Promised for Madras by John Wannamaker, 26 September 1896. On Wannamaker's role as a potent donor for the YMCA expansion in Asia, see also de Ceuster, ‘Wholesome Education and Sound Leisure’.

⁸⁰ Lupkin, Paula Rachel, Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2010Google Scholar.

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⁸² Baker, Playing with God, pp. 50–55; Morris, Andrew D., Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2004Google Scholar; and Guedes, Claudia, ‘Changing the Cultural Landscape: English Engineers, American Missionaries, and the YMCA Bring Sports to Brazil, the 1870s to the 1930s’, International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 28, 2011, pp. 2594–2608CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁸⁴ N.N., Report of the National Council of Young Men's Christian Associations of India and Ceylon to the Tenth National Convention at Calcutta, November 23–27, 1920, Orissa Mission Press, Cuttack, 1920, p. 142Google Scholar. To put this development into perspective, however, it needs to be emphasized that the same trend was observable in the North American Y too. See, for example, MacLeod, David, Building Character in the American Boy, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1983Google Scholar, pp. 81ff.

⁸⁵ Gray, J. H., ‘Physical Department: Its Place and Opportunities in India [Pt. I]’, The Young Men of India, vol. 21, 1910, pp. 56–58Google Scholar, here p. 56.

⁸⁶ KFYA, Biographical Files [hereafter BF], Box 73, File ‘Biographical Data. Gray, John Henry’, letter by J. H. Gray to Wuh Chi Tang, 22 August 1952. If not indicated otherwise, the following is based on information gathered from KFYA, BR, Box 73, File ‘Biographical Data. Gray, John Henry’.

⁸⁷ Xu, Guoqi, Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895–2008, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 2008, p. 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Morris, Marrow of the Nation, pp. 59 and 77–79.

⁸⁸ Gray, J. H., ‘Physical Department: Its Place and Opportunities in India [Pt. II]’, The Young Men of India, vol. 21, 1910, p. 75–79Google Scholar, here pp. 76ff. This iconoclastic strategy is remindful of the methods developed by British ‘imperial’ missionaries such as C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe, whose activities have been famously described by Mangan and others. Cf. Tyndale-Biscoe, C. E., Character Building in Kashmir, CMS, London, 1920Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Ibid.

⁹⁰ Ibid., p. 78; and Gray, J. H., ‘More than Record Making: What Physical Education Means in India’, Association Men, August 1916, p. 610Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Gray, ‘India's Physical Renaissance’, p. 341.

⁹² Gray, ‘More than Record Making’, p. 611. The linkage between sport and democracy that was articulated here for the first time by the National Physical Director would become a running trope in the Y's fitness discourse in South Asia over the next decades. In all likelihood, it was also influenced by the teachings of his Springfield professor Luther Gulick. Already in the late 1880s, Gulick had made it a point that team games in particular by offering ‘freedom conditioned by rules and by the desires of other’ would be a perfect tool to prepare young men ‘for wider loyalty and a more discerning self-devotion on which democracy rests’. Gulick, Philosophy of Play, pp. 262ff.

⁹³ KFYA, BF, Box 73, Folder ‘Biographical Data—Gray, John Henry’, Dr John Henry Gray, typewritten manuscript, n.d. [1919].

⁹⁴ Johnson, History of the YMCA Physical Education, p. 54.

⁹⁵ Gray, ‘More than Record Making’, p. 611.

⁹⁶ Segard, C. P., Annual Report of the Director of Physical Education to the Department of Public Instruction, Bengal for the Year 1918–1919, Calcutta, 1919, p. 1Google Scholar; Segard, C. P., Quinquennial Report on Physical Education in the Province of Bengal for the Years 1911–12 to 1916–17, Calcutta, 1917, p. 1Google Scholar; Government of Bengal, Report of the Committee of Enquiry into School and College Hygiene, Calcutta, 1915Google Scholar; Gray, J. H., Major Games: Games Handbook, Association Press, Calcutta, 1918Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Nish, I. H., Calcutta Y.M.C.A.: A History 1857–1957, YMCA Publishing House, Calcutta, 1957, pp. 37–40Google Scholar; and Dunderdale, The Y.M.C.A. in India, p. 103.

⁹⁸ KFYA, IWI, Box 62, Folder ‘Madras, Physical Training Scool, 1924–27’, National Physical Training School Madras [undated typescript, circa 1927].

⁹⁹ For an insight into the YMCA's cooperation with princely states, see, for example, Wilbert B. Smith, ‘Fusing Races and Interests in India’, Foreign Mail, vol. 25, 1918, pp. 7–9; and KFYA, IWI, Box 10, H. Beall, Chief Inspector Physical Education to the Office of the Chief Inspector of Secondary Schools, H.E.H. the Nizam's Government, 15 January 1921.

¹⁰⁰ KFYA, IWI, Box 1, John Henry Gray, The Pros and Cons of the Development of Modern Physical Education in India through the Indian National Council and Local Y.M.C.A.s, n.d. [circa 1955], p. 4.

¹⁰¹ Times of India, 5 August 1913, p. 4.

¹⁰² UP State Archives Lucknow, Education Proceedings 58 of 1916, Files 1–3, April 1916, Appendix B, ‘Tentative Plan of Physical Education for Nagpur University, submitted by the National Council of Young Men's Christian Associations’, p. 12.

¹⁰³ McClelland, D. F., ‘H. C. Buck’, in Three Y.M.C.A. Pioneers, Appasamy, S. P. (ed.), YMCA Publishing House, Calcutta, 1958, pp. 12–18Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Times of India, 10 July 1923, p. 9; and 7 October 1925, p. 12. See also Noehren, A. G., ‘Indian Athletes at the Olympic Games’, Young Men of India, vol. 25, 1924, pp. 598–609Google Scholar; and Majumdar and Mehta, India and the Olympics, pp. 17–24.

¹⁰⁵ Gray, ‘More than Record Making’, p. 611.

¹⁰⁶ Segard, Annual Report of the Director of Physical Education 1918–1919, p. 1. It has to be mentioned that a similar approach to physical education and fitness, emphasizing the importance of play, was propagated by Robert Baden-Powell and the Boy Scout movement. See Watt, Carey A., ‘The Promise of “Character” and the Spectre of Sedition: The Boy Scout Movement and Colonial Consternation in India, 1908–1921’, South Asia, vol. 22, 1999, pp. 37–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ KFYA, IWI, Box 1, John Henry Gray, The Pros and Cons of the Development of Modern Physical Education in India through the Indian National Council and Local Y.M.C.A.s, n.d. [circa 1955].

¹⁰⁸ Ibid.

¹⁰⁹ North Adams Evening Transcript, 22 April 1938, pp. 8ff.

¹¹⁰ Yale University, Divinity School, New Haven, CT, Special Collections, Rec. Gr. 115, Series I, Waldo Huntley Heinrichs Papers, Box 7, Folder 61, Diaries 1916, entry for 14 January 1916.

¹¹¹ Mark Dyreson, ‘Imperial “Deep Play”: Reading Sport and Visions of the Five Empires of the “New World”, 1919–1941’, The International History of Sport, vol. 28, 2011, pp. 2421–2447, here p. 2431. Cf. also Keys, Globalizing Sport, pp. 64–69.

¹¹² KFYA, BF, Box 73, Folder ‘Biographical Data. Gray, John Henry’, letter by J. H. Gray to Wuh Chi Tang, 22 August 1952.

¹¹³ SCA, A Study of the Y.M.C.A. in India, pp. 210ff.

¹¹⁴ N.N., ‘Pioneer of Physical Education’, The Hindu, 23 April 2003, online edition, http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mp/2003/04/17/stories/2003041700230400.htm [accessed, 16 February 2017]. See also Harsha, Development of Physical Education.

¹¹⁵ I borrow the term ‘somatic engineering’ from Gimpel, Denise, ‘Civilizing Bodies: Somatic Engineering in China’, in Sport across Asia: Politics, Cultures, and Identities, Bromber, Katrin, Krawietz, Birgit, and Maguire, Joseph (eds), Routledge, New York, 2011, pp. 32–58Google Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Buck, H. C., ‘The Physical Department of the Y.M.C.A.’, The Young Men of India, vol. 32, 1921, pp. 340–346Google Scholar, here p. 340.

¹¹⁷ Buck, H. C., ‘Ourselves’, in The Annual of the Y.M.C.A. School of Physical Education, 1927–1928, Madras, 1928, p. 3Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ KFYA, IWI, Box 62, Folder ‘Madras School of Physical Education, 1919–1923’, letter by G. S. Eddy to M. G. Goldsmith, 22 July 1919 and letter by D. F. McClelland to G. S. Eddy, 7 January 1920.

¹¹⁹ N.N., ‘Notes and Comments’, The Young Men of India, vol. 65 (9), 1943, p. 125Google Scholar.

¹²⁰ KFYA, IWI, Box 62, Folder ‘Madras Physical Training School, 1932’, letter by H. C. Buck to F. V. Slack, 14 October 1932, containing 10 pp. typescript introduction to the ‘Y.M.C.A. College of Physical Education Project’.

¹²¹ YMCA College of Physical Education Saidapet, Madras, Prospectus 1940–41, Methodist Publishing House, Madras, 1941, p. 3Google Scholar; and KFYA, IWI, Box 80, Folder ‘Blue Prints of the Physical Education College Madras’.

¹²² KFYA, IWI, Box 1, Buck Report 1930.

¹²³ David, The YMCA and the Making of Modern India, p. 176.

¹²⁴ KFYA, BF, Box 25, Folder ‘Biographical Data Harry Crowe Buck’, typescript, Physical and Health Education as Means toward Abundant Living, n.d. [1939].

¹²⁵ Ibid., typescript, Mr H. C. Buck (Excerpts from a Tribute by C. A. Abraham), n.d. [1943].

¹²⁶ KFYA, IWI, Box 62, Folder ‘Madras Physical Training School, 1932’, typescript, YMCA College of Physical Project, p. 1; and KFYA, IWI, Box 1, Folder ‘Physical Education College 1922–1939’, Inauguration of the Y.M.C.A. Physical Education College at Saidapet, Madras.

¹²⁷ Ibid.

¹²⁸ Cf., for example, AWYI, Box ‘India Boys’ Work Lahore Young Men's Christian Association, ‘School for Democracy’, in Sixty-Fifth Annual Report (Report and Audited Statement of Accounts for the Year 1940), Lahore, 1941.

¹²⁹ MCPE, Prospectus 1940–41, p. 21.

¹³⁰ Ramaswamy, Sumathi, The Goddess and the Nation, Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London, 2010Google Scholar.

¹³¹ Hübner, ‘Muscular Christianity and the “Western Civilizing Mission”’; and Hübner, Stefan, Pan Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia, 1913–1974, NUS Press, Singapore, 2016, pp. 30–35Google Scholar.

¹³² Gray, J. Henry, ‘The Development of Physical Education in India’, Young Men of India, vol. 45, 1933, pp. 385ffGoogle Scholar.; KFYA, IWI, Box 1, Folder ‘Physical Education College 1922–1939’, H. C. Buck, Report on the National Y.M.C.A. School of Physical Education, April 1922; and Buck, ‘The Physical Department of the Y.M.C.A.’, p. 340.

¹³³ N.N., ‘Directory of Students’, Vyayam, April 1930, pp. 38–43.

¹³⁴ The information on Singh is gathered from the Khalsa College's monthly journal Durbar. I am grateful to my doctoral student Michael Brunner for sharing this source with me. Cf. Durbar, April/May 1932, p. 44; Durbar, November 1932, p. 45; Durbar, October 1934, p. 27; Durbar, April 1936, p. 72; and Durbar, March 1939, p. 67.

¹³⁵ Durbar, December 1946, p. 3.

¹³⁶ Buck, ‘The Physical Department of the Y.M.C.A.’, p. 341.

¹³⁷ Weber, F., ‘Physical Education in the Association Programme’, The Young Men of India, vol. 45, 1933, pp. 389–391Google Scholar, here p. 390.

¹³⁸ N.N., ‘Play that Opens Doors’, The Young Men of India, vol. 50, 1938, pp. 251–253Google Scholar.

¹³⁹ Alter, Joseph, ‘Gandhi's Body, Gandhi's Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 55, 1996, pp. 301–322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁰ Bandopadhyaya, Sekhar, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India, Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad, 2009, pp. 282–284Google Scholar.

¹⁴¹ KFYA, BF, Box 73, File ‘Biographical Data. Gray, John Henry’, letter by J. H. Gray to Wuh Chi Tang, 22 August 1952.

¹⁴² There is a growing body of literature on the growth of the Eugenic movement in late-colonial India. Cf., for example, Hodges, Sarah, ‘South Asia's Eugenic Pasts’, in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, Levine, Philippa and Bashford, Alison (eds), Oxford University Press, New York, 2010, pp. 228–242Google Scholar; Ahluwalia, Sanjam, Reproductive Restraints: Birth Control in India, 1877–1947, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL, 2008Google Scholar; Hodges, Sarah, ‘Indian Eugenics in an Age of Reform’, in Reproductive Health in India: History, Politics, Controversies, Hodges, Sarah (ed.), Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 115–138Google Scholar; and Fischer-Tiné, Harald, ‘From Brahmacharya to “Conscious Race Culture”: Indian Nationalism, Hindu Tradition and Victorian Discourses of Science’, in Beyond Representation: The Construction of Identity in Colonial India, Bates, Crispin (ed.), Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 230–259Google Scholar.

¹⁴³ KFYA, IWI, Box 62, Folder ‘Madras (Physical Training School), 1938–1954’, clipping of articles from the Madras Mail and The Hindu, 1 July 1939.

¹⁴⁴ David, The YMCA and the Making of Modern India, p. 255.

¹⁴⁵ Noehren, Official Report of the Director of Physical Education 1927–28, p. 1.

¹⁴⁶ Eddy, Sherwood, The Challenge of the East, Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1931, p. 56Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁷ This concept is inspired by Joseph Alter's term ‘somatic nationalism’. Cf. Alter, Joseph S., ‘Somatic Nationalism: Indian Wrestling and Militant Hinduism’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 28, 1994, pp. 557–588CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁸ Eddy, Sherwood, The New Era in Asia, Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, New York, 1913, p. 56Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁹ N.N., Youth in Harness: The All-India Service of the Y.M.C.A., Calcutta, n.d. [1930]Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁰ Buck, ‘The Physical Department of the Y.M.C.A.’, p. 345.

¹⁵¹ The concept of Eigensinn (literally: obstinacy) has been famously introduced by German historian Alf Lüdtke in the 1980s to render acts of subversion and resistance of subaltern groups in asymmetrical power relations visible. He was thereby restoring their agency and subjectivity that had almost completely gone, lost under the combined influence of Marxist-inspired social history and the linguistic turn. See Lüdtke, Alf, ‘Cash, Coffee-Breaks, Horseplay. Eigensinn and Politics among Factory Workers in Germany circa 1900’, in Confrontation: Class Consciousness, and the Labor Process: Studies in Proletarian Class Formation, Hanagan, Michael and Stephenson, Charles (eds), Greenwood, New York, 1986, pp. 65–95Google Scholar.

¹⁵² Cf. van Bottenburg, ‘Beyond Diffusion’; Dunch, ‘Beyond Cultural Imperialism’; and Katrin Bromber, Birgit Krawietz, and Joseph Maguire, ‘Introduction: From Asian Sports to Sport in Asia’, in Bromber et al. (eds), Sport across Asia, pp. 1–10.

¹⁵³ KFYA, IWI, Box 20, Biennial Report of George Sherwood Eddy, November 1898.

¹⁵⁴ KFYA, IWI, Box 11, Folder ‘India Annual and quarterly reports 1926’, Annual Report 1926 by Harvey E. Becknell. For the classic treatment of British stereotype of the educated Bengali, see Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1995Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁵ KFYA, IWI, Box 8, Folder ‘India Annual and Quarterly Reports 1917 [Mc-Mil]’, Annual Report by W.E. Elliott for the Year ending 30 September 1917.

¹⁵⁶ Paul R. Danner, ‘India and Ceylon’, The Foreign Mail Annual, 1917, pp. 16–21, here p. 19.

¹⁵⁷ Gray, ‘The Development of Physical Education’, p. 385.

¹⁵⁸ Arthur G. Noehren, ‘Meeting a Tremendous Need for Physical Reform’, Foreign Mail, vol. 23, 1916, pp. 18–21, here p. 19.

¹⁵⁹ For a succinct discussion of colonial clichés on the Indian body, see Dimeo, Paul, ‘A Parcel of Dummies? Sport and the Body in Indian History’, in Confronting the Body: The Politics of Physicality in Colonial and Post-Colonial India, Mills, James H. and Sen, Satadru (eds), Anthem Press, London, 2004, pp. 39–57Google Scholar, here pp. 42–45.

¹⁶⁰ Buck, ‘The Physical Department of the Y.M.C.A.’, p. 345.

¹⁶¹ KFYA, IWI, Box 19, Folder ‘Eddy, G. Sherwood, Report Letters 1896–1898’, Report Letter No. 5, May 1897, The Scourges of India.

¹⁶² KFYA, IWI, Box 74, Folder ‘National Council India, Burma, Ceylon 1931’, letter from W. Healy to Frank [V. Slack], Rangoon, 7 July 1931.

¹⁶³ Jagannath, ‘The Aims of Physical Education’, in The Annual of the Y.M.C.A. School of Physical Education, 1928–1929, Madras, 1929, pp. 21–23Google Scholar, here p. 23.

¹⁶⁴ Mosse, George, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996Google Scholar, pp. 5ff. Cf. also Zweininger-Bargielowska, Ina, Managing the Body: Beauty, Health and Fitness in Britain, 1880–1939, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010, pp. 17–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶⁵ Such an interpretation could also help provide historical depth to recent arguments to the effect that twenty-first-century Bollywood stars’ fancy for bleaching creams could be read as complicity with Euro-American capitalist ideals of modernity and whiteness. See, for example, Osuri, Goldie, ‘Ash-Coloured Whiteness: The Transfiguration of Aishwarya Rai’, South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, pp. 109–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶⁶ Kumar Sarkar, Benoy, The Futurism of Young Asia, and Other Essays on the Relations between the East and the West, Markert & Petters, Leipzig, 1922, p. IIIGoogle Scholar. That the production of fair-skinned offspring was one of the main goals in a particular current of Indian ‘vernacular’ medical advisory literature has recently been discussed in Savary, Luzia, ‘Vernacular Eugenics? Santati-Śāstra in Popular Hindi Advisory Literature (1900–1940)’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, 2014, pp. 381–397CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶⁷ Hübner, Stefan, ‘“Uplifting the Weak and Degenerated Races of East Asia”: American and Indigenous Views of Sport and Body in Early Twentieth Century East Asia’, in Race and Racism in Modern East Asia. Vol. II: Interactions, Nationalism, Gender and Lineage, Kowner, Rotem and Demel, Walter (eds), Brill, Leiden, 2015, pp. 198–216Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁸ Schneider, Mark Robert, African Americans in the Jazz Age: A Decade of Struggle and Promise, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2006, pp. 40ffGoogle Scholar. For a comprehensive account, see Mjagkij, Nina, Light in the Darkness: African Americans and the YMCA, 1852–1946, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1994Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁹ Gray, ‘The Development of Physical Education’, p. 385.

¹⁷⁰ Foreign Division of the Young Men's Christian Association of the United States and Canada, The Y.M.C.A. in India, New York, s.l., sa., not paginated.

¹⁷¹ Second Qinquennial Report of the Welfare Work of Messrs. Begg, Sutherland & Co., Ltd, Cawnpore, n.d. [1939].

¹⁷² The literature on the nationalist revival of Indian wrestling and related forms of physical culture is vast. For a good overview and copious references, see Ganneri, Namrata R., ‘The Debate on “Revival” and the Physical Culture Movement in Western India (1900–1950)’, in Bromber et al. (eds), Sport across Asia, pp. 121–143Google Scholar. The seminal study still is Alter, Joseph S., The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷³ See, for example, Farquhar, J. N., Modern Religious Movements in India, Macmillan, New York, 1915, pp. 125 and 444Google Scholar; Fischer-Tiné, Harald, Der Gurukul Kangri oder die Erziehung der Arya Nation: Kolonialismus, Hindureform und ‘nationale Bildung’ in Britisch-Indien (1897–1922), Ergon, Würzburg, 2003Google Scholar, pp. 88ff.; and Oberoi, Harjot, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 412ffGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷⁴ The term ‘pirate copy’ ought not to be misunderstood as implying a one-to-one recreation of the Y-original. As I have explained above, the process was rather one of ‘pidginization’, namely a pragmatic and very selective appropriation of certain elements of the original.

¹⁷⁵ Cf., for example, Report of the Bombay Gymnastic Institute for the Years 1927–28, 1928–29, 1929–30, Bombay, n.d. [1930]. See also Fischer-Tiné, ‘Character Building and Manly Games’, p. 454; Alter, ‘Physical Education’; and Alter, ‘Kabaddi, a National Sport of India’.

¹⁷⁶ Vertinsky, Patricia, ‘Yoga Comes to American Physical Education: Josephine Rathbone and Corrective Physical Education’, Journal of Sports History, vol. 41, no. 2, 2014, pp. 287–311Google Scholar.

¹⁷⁷ A list of the more important representatives of this Indian competition would include, amongst others, the Deshpande brothers, who founded Hanuman Vyayam Prasarak Mandal in Amravati; the Ghose brothers and Yogoda in Ranchi, under the inspired leadership of Yogananda and his younger brother, Bishnu Charan Ghose; Shri Yogendra in Bombay; and Raj Ratan Manikrao in Baroda. For more details, cf. Ganneri, ‘The Debate on “Revival”’.

¹⁷⁸ Noehren, Official Report of the Director of Physical Education 1927–28, pp. 13ff.

¹⁷⁹ N.N., Report of the Conference on Physical Education held at Madras on the 14^th and 15^th October 1927 under the Presidency of the Hon, Dr. p. Subbaroyan, M.A., C.C.L., LL.D., Chief Minister to the Government of Madras, Madras, 1928, pp. 3–7.

¹⁸⁰ Buck, H. C., ‘The Place of Indigenous Activities in the Physical Education Programme’, in Buck Commemoration Volume: Being A Memorial Dedicated to Harry Crowe Buck, Govindarajulu, L. K. (ed.), Buck Commemoration Volume Committee, Saidapet, 1949, pp. 247–251Google Scholar, here p. 251.

¹⁸¹ Buck's Book of Rules of Games and Sports (revised by the Staff of the YMCA College, Saidapet Madras), 12th edn, YMCA Publishing House, Calcutta, 1949, pp. 192–227.

¹⁸² Noehren, Official Report of the Director of Physical Education 1927–28, pp. 14ff.

¹⁸³ Ibid., pp. 14ff.; and Weber, ‘Physical Education in the Association Programme’, p. 390.

¹⁸⁴ Singleton, Yoga Body, p. 91.

¹⁸⁵ Ibid., p. 93.

¹⁸⁶ Cf. also Vertinsky, ‘Yoga Comes to American Physical Education’; and Vertinsky, Patricia, ‘“Building the Body Beautiful”: The Women's League of Health and Beauty: Yoga and Female Agency in 1930s Britain’, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, vol. 16, 2012, pp. 517–542CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Newcombe, Suzanne, ‘Stretching for Health and Well-Being: Yoga and Women in Britain, 1960– 1980’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, vol. 3, no. 1, 2007, pp. 37–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸⁷ van der Veer, Peter (ed.), Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, Routledge, New York, 1996Google Scholar.

¹⁸⁸ See note 70 above.

¹⁸⁹ Mookerjee, Swapan and Pinheiro, Victo, ‘Physical Education and After-School Programs in Modern India—Policies, Polity and Contemporary Developments’, in Global Perspectives on Physical Education and After-School Sports Programs, Chepyator-Thomson, Jepkorir R. and Hsu, Shan-Hui (eds), University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 2013, pp. 91–111Google Scholar, here pp. 99ff.; and Alter, Joseph, ‘Yoga and Physical Education: Swami Kuvalayananda's Nationalist Project’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, vol. 3, no. 1, 2007, pp. 20–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹⁰ Kramer, ‘Power and Connection’, p. 1387.