Inundated by smarmy yoga masters, the West is rediscovering a 1930s teacher from Kolkata who combined bodybuilding with yoga asanas to achieve what is now being done with the help of chemicals
Nearly a century ago, in an era before steroids, there was an Indian who was both a yoga master and an accomplished bodybuilder. Named Bishnu Charan Ghosh, he was the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda (originally Mukunda lal Ghosh), famously the author of perennial spiritual best-seller, Autobiography of a Yogi.
Ghosh has seen a revival, most recently during the summer of 2024, when fitness coach and influencer Jeff Cavaliere shared several black and white images on Instagram demonstrating the spectacular bodies of Ghosh and his students, citing them as examples of what pre-steroid bodybuilders achieved.
The images were from the 1930s, but what Cavaliere did not mention and was perhaps unaware of was that some were from an era when Indians in a…