What makes us different is what makes us human..
Health and the Body
There is probably no tradition that has been construed as more timeless, more intrinsically authentic, more inherently Indian than Yoga. It has become a kind of pristine cultural icon... My purpose in this book is to question some of the most fundamental assumptions about Yoga and, by extension, to question assumptions about civilization, modernity, and nationalism.
Alter, Joseph
2006 Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy. Princeton University Press, p.14. (2006 Coomaraswamy Book Prize).
One wrestler laughed at the picture of a bodybuilder, saying that he looked like separate pieces of meat slapped together in a random manner...While the bodybuilder is seen as bits and pieces of random flesh, the wrestler's body is a smooth, integrated whole; as they say, ek rang ka sharir, a body of one color and uniform texture.
Alter, Joseph1992 The Wrestler's Body.University of California Press, p.57.
Many wrestlers with whom I spoke emphasized the role they must play in drawing young boys into akharas (gymnasiums). The future of the nation is thought to be dependent on the degree to which they are able to pass the heritage of wrestling ideals from one generation to the next.
Two wrestlers in a village gymnasium engaged in jor (wrestling practice). Jor is part of the morning training in regimen and is thought of as a kind of exercise that produces a "body of one color."
Two young wrestlers from akhara Karan Ghanta in Banaras striking a pose. Boys often join gymnasiums at the age of 10 and, with the aid of a guru, transform themselves into young men with "bodies of one color."
A Banaras wrestler after having won a regional championship bout. The numerous garlands of flowers around his neck and the safa cloth draped around his shoulders symbolize his status and his success in having "earned a name for himself."
A Garhwali village in the Tehri valley. (See Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter).
The high Himalayas viewed from the settlement of Landour on the eastern edge of Mussoorie, established as a colonial hill station in the 19th century and now a tourist resort town in north India.
Tulsi Das weaving scrub bamboo ito a lamp shade. Once a craft used to produce winnowing baskets and storage bins, weaving has been adapted to the tourist economy of modern Mussoorie.
Joseph S. Alter
Professor Alter's most recent book - Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy - has received the 2006 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize for best English language book on a South Asian subject by the South Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies.
He is a member of Pitt's Indo-Pacific Studies program, and the Asian Studies Center.
Selected Publications
2006 Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy. Princeton University Press.
2000 Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
2000 Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism. University of Pennsylvania Press.
1999 Heaps of Health, metaphysical fitness: Ayurveda and the ontology of good health in medical anthropology. Current Anthropology 40(S)43-66.
1992 The Wrestlers Body: Identity and Ideology in North India. University of California Press.