page_title: Joseph Alter
section_title: Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Alter / Reception / Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism
caption_attribution_description: English: Gandhi in South Africa in 1909.
context_page_description: Joseph S. Alter is an American medical anthropologist known for his research into the modern practice of yoga as exercise, his 2004 book Yoga in Modern India, and the physical and medical culture of South Asia.
context_section_description: Alter's Gandhi's Body connected Gandhi's practices of fasting, diet, and exercises with biopolitics and biopower. Alter explains Gandhi's lifelong obsession with food and sex as a way to reach his religious idea of Truth. The American Historical Review said that Alter's book helps researchers study Gandhi's biopolitics without falling into the trap of seeing "faddish" tendencies in him. It said that Alter offers original interpretations of Gandhi's practices, including his sexual experiments.
caption: Gandhi photographed in South Africa (1909)
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