By looking at the itineraries of specific individual Indian and Swiss actors going back and forth between India and Switzerland during the first half of twentieth century, the book explores the history of cultural relations between both countries. The itineraries studied here are those of Frieda Hauswirth, who searched for ways to contribute to the Indian freedom struggle; of Eva Lombard and Elisabeth Petitpierre, who went to India in order to practice medicine and save souls; of Jakob Urner, a missionary who developed an elective affinity for the Lingayat religious literature; of Selvarajan Yesudian, who teamed up with the esotericist Elisabeth Haich, and taught in Switzerland an idiosyncratic conception of yoga; and of Lizelle Reymond who published a widely read book recounting her encounter with the samkhya master Sri Anirvan.

Claire Blaser is a doctoral student at the Chair for History of the Modern World at ETH Zurich, where she writes a PhD supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, exploring the life of Frieda Hauswirth from the perspectives of global, colonial, and gender history, mapping broader connected histories between colonial Switzerland and the imperial world in the twentieth century. She recently published on the history of Indian Studies in Germanophone Switzerland. Philippe Bornet is senior lecturer at the University of Lausanne, in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. After stays in Tübingen and at the University of Chicago, his current research focuses on interactions between India and Europe and the history of Orientalism in late modernity. His most recent publication is the volume Translocal Lives and Religion (ed., 2021). Maya Burger is honorary professor at the University of Lausanne, in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilisations. Her field of specialization is premodern Hindi literature, history of yoga, history of the relations between Europe and India as well as Indic religions. Among her recent publications is the volume Early Modern India. Literatures and Images, Texts and Languages (2019) (edited with N. Cattoni). Peter Schreiner studied Indology, History of Religions and Philosophy at the German universities of Mainz, Munich, Münster and Tübingen. He wrote his PhD-dissertation on Premcand (Münster 1972) and his habilitation (DLitt) on the stotras in the Vishnupurana (Tübingen 1981). Until 2008, he was professor of Indology at the University of Zurich.