The “Y” Goes to India: Springfield College, Muscular Missionaries, and the Transnational Circulation of Physical Culture Practices

Abstract

Abstract Springfield College was at the forefront of the American YMCA’s early drive to train and send physical educators overseas as international secretaries to impart the YMCA’s brand of Muscular Christianity through healthy sport and exercise. When American evangelist Harry Crowe Buck arrived to direct the YMCA School of Physical Education in Madras in 1920, however, he felt compelled to address competing “systems” of physical education being exploited and urged in India. Promising to offer the best physical exercises of West and East, Buck adopted indigenous practices, including yoga-ãsanas, as integral parts of the YMCA’s program, even while acknowledging they fit somewhat ambiguously into the discourse of Muscular Christianity. This paper follows the efforts of Buck to sustain the focus of his training while accommodating colonial struggles and nationalism in India and facilitating transnational exchanges of physical cultures between colonial India and America through the circuitry of the “Y.”