This project involves the ethnohistorical and archival research of a cultural anthropologist from the University of Pittsburgh, studying the social history of yoga as a health science favored and supported by the Indian post-colonial nationalist government. The project will analyze the process of yoga's transformation from a philosophy of embodied Hindu consciousness to an expressly anticolonial, modern, `secular` science of health in contemporary India. Archival documents on yoga experimentation situated in India will be used to study the way in which yoga has been made the object of Western-style biomedical research. An interpretation of the views of contemporary researchers and physicians will be undertaken in light of the historical material. The research will challenge the view that yoga is a timeless, mystical tradition by providing information on its construction as politically situated scientific knowledge. It will make an important contribution to our understanding of the relation between nationalism, health, and the cultural construction of scientific knowledge.
