Harald Fischer-Tiné

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Muscling in on Asia: the Y.M.C.A. in India and Ceylon, c. 1890-1950

The Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.), first founded in London in 1844, became a global organisation within a couple of decades after its inception. Although the first branches appeared in the Indian sub-continent as early as 1857, the organisation only became a significant player in India and Ceylon after 1890, when the presence of American "secretaries" (missionaries) and the flow of US capital thoroughly transformed its modus operandi. By the 1910s the success of ‘the Y’ in South Asia was so spectacular, that the British colonial government sought to cooperate with it in a variety of fields. At the same time, local religious groups, driven by the fear of an impending wave of conversions to Christianity, created their own clones of "the Y". Outfits such as the Young Man’s Hindu Association, the Young Man’s Buddhist Association, The Young Man’s Indian Association etc. copied the programme and most organisational features of the Y.M.C.A. but integrated them in an entirely different religious framework. Within the Christian Y.M.C.A., too, there was a growing ambition to rid the body from its foreign image and create stronger moorings with local society. The project attempts to elucidate these processes of "Americanisation" and "indigenisation" by concentrating on the Y.M.C.A.’s three most successful fields of activity: education and spread of technical skills, physical culture and philanthropic or "rural development" work. It is argued that it was primarily its organisational abilities as well as its efficiency in these three areas, which made the Y.M.C.A. so attractive to various constituencies. As a result, the South Asian branch of the Christian youth association gradually lost its evangelical drive and almost became sort of an "empty form", ready to be used for various, often conflicting political and social agendas.