Yoga at theFin de Siècle: Muscular Christianity with a ‘Hindu’ Twist

This paper examines what came to be known as muscular Hinduism and its expression through yoga practices in India. It argues that identifying Anglo-American muscular Christianity as the locus point for the configuration of ideas that link the body to morality is a colonial distortion. Christianity is the primary referent for muscularity at the fin de siècle, but to properly understand muscular Christianity one must think much more broadly about emerging concerns about the relationship between the body, morality and society in different parts of the world during this period. Apart from the distorting prismatic of colonialism and nationalism, Christianity itself does not provide a comprehensive perspective on religion and moral values. The development of yoga as a system of metaphysical fitness at the fin de siècle can only be understood if the frame of reference is global, rather than colonial and nationalistic, and if one looks at Christianity, Hinduism and other ideological articulations of belief in terms of a world history of religious ideas at this period of time.