List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction Rationale of the book Modernization or Modernity? Note on Sources and Literature Spatio-chronological frameworks and chapter previews 1. A mission to modernize: colonial administrators, nationalists, and religious bodies in South Asia (1870s-1930s) Modernizing missions in late colonial India: actors and agendas The Y’s Passage to India: A brief institutional history of the Indian YMCA 2. ‘Make them pure, fit and brotherly!’: The Indian YMCA’s welfare work for railwaymen and soldiers (c. 1904-1945) Towards war work: early philanthropic efforts (1890-1914) Entertainment, caregiving, and ‘intercultural training’: the association’s service on the home front Targeting the sepoy: the YMCA triangle on the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East The contradictions of Y-philanthropy: issues of sexual purity and racial hierarchies Summing up 3. ‘Physical ministry’: The Indian YMCA’s sport and physical education programmes (c. 1900-1950) In quest of strength and manhood: The place of sports and physical culture in British India Preparing for the ‘modern strain’: science and physical education in the American YMCA Working out India: American physical educators and their programmes Somatic orientalism and Indian Eigensinn: limitations and modifications of the YMCA’s ‘democratising fitness’ project Summing up4. ‘One fifth of the world’s boyhood’ American ‘boyology’ and the Indian YMCA’s work with early adolescents (c. 1900-1950) Contours of the “Boy Problem” in the United States and India The development of boys’ work in the Indian YMCA ‘The field of action’: motives and methods of YMCA boys’ work in South Asia Summing up 5. The ‘gospel of rural reconstruction’: the YMCA’s rural development programmes in South Asia (c. 1916-1955) Historicizing rural development schemes in India A Man with a mission: Duane Spencer Hatch and the Martandam Rural Demonstration Centre (MRDC) From southern Travancore to southern Arizona: the regional and global circulation of ‘low modernist’ rural development knowledge Summing up 6. Concluding observations: modernization without modernity? Bibliography

Meticulous scholarship and innovative research make this a highly original contribution to understanding the historical significance of American “soft power” in South Asia. By foregrounding the seminal role of transnational agency and Americanization on India and Indians, the book radically reconfigures the story of colonial India and nationalist opposition.

Critical Perspectives in South Asian History publishes innovative scholarship on South Asian pasts that will be widely accessible to a broad scholarly audience. Titles in the series interrogate existing themes and periodisations as well as open up new areas of inquiry by welcoming a range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives within a historical argument. The series will focus on three broad scholarly developments: a growing engagement with the public life of South Asian History, a conceptual shift from South Asia being the ‘object’ of study to becoming the generator or driving force behind new and distinctive research, and a concerted effort to study hitherto obscured regions, peoples, methods and sources that point to a reframing of the current boundaries in South Asian history.This series will invite new works that creatively engage with public debates about the past, draw attention to the distinctiveness of different South Asian contexts, integrate South Asia within global histories and draw upon South Asian material. Welcoming South Asian Histories from the ancient world to the modern day, this series looks to bring scholarship on South Asia from different parts of the world in closer conversation and showcase the range and variety of new research in the field.