During my years as a researcher working on the history of precolonial Tamil Nadu, I used to visit Chennai regularly. My preferred accommodation there was the YWCA guest house, located conveniently near the Egmore railway station. While the YWCA guest house was quite well maintained and popular among travellers, the nearby building in which the sister-organization, YMCA, was located, was in a dilapidated state. Moreover, it did not even have a proper guest house. Looking at that building I used to often wonder about the origins of the two organizations, and the socio-political conditions which led to their popularity and spread in India, particularly in Tier-1 cities. Given that studies on the history of these organizations with respect to India are few and far between, Harald Fischer-Tiné’s work—The YMCA in Late Colonial India is an important academic intervention. While the only other book of some consequence on this theme which comes to one’s mind is the two-volume work by MD David, YMCA and the Making of Modern India, published in 1991 and 2017, Tiné’s monograph is important in that it not only incorporates the latest debates on the theme, but also attempts to locate the history of YMCA in a global context. That developments like the Great Depression, the World Wars, the anti-colonial struggle in India as well as socio-economic developments had far-reaching ramifications for the organization and its programmes and working style has been stressed upon by the author.
The five chapters in the book, apart from the introductory and concluding sections, provide us with a vivid picture of the emergence and spread of YMCA in colonial and postcolonial India. In a short but crisp Introduction, the author provides a comprehensive historiographical overview of YMCA. While there is a fairly large number of works on the organization itself and its activities around the world, particularly the United States of America, Europe and Britain, those concerning its India chapter are few. Setting the stage for the case studies explored in the book, Tiné discusses at length the complex conditions in which the YMCA operated in late colonial India. Even though a religious organization, the YMCA in India restricted itself to ‘secular’ activities. It was, perhaps, this approach that made the institution popular among individuals as well as organizations involved in the modernizing missions in late colonial India. Again, as the section suggests, the first half of the twentieth century was an important period as far as the activities of YMCA in India were concerned. The philanthropic and humanitarian activities of the institution increased substantially in the 1900s. Moreover, the diverse reactions, ranging from support, collaboration, and hostile appropriation which the members received from the British colonial officials and Indian subjects, contributed immensely to the visibility of YMCA in the country.