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Using muscularity as an analytical object, the paper argues that contemporary preoccupations in India with fitness and health are rooted in the nation's colonial past and the nationalist project which informs the present desires of the neoliberal subjects. In doing so, the paper moves closer to Lacanian psychoanalysis for understanding the body politic in South Asia. The prevalent discourse of health and fitness carries within it the hauntings of the colonial archetype of the feeble, diseased Indian and the consequent work of the ego is channelised in overcoming this image of the vulnerable nation-self by working out an aesthetic model to be followed by those who truly belong to the nation.