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Society, Medicine and Politics in Colonial India PDF

338 Pages·2018·1.377 MB·English
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Society, Medicine and Politics in Colonial India The history of medicine and disease in colonial India remains a dynamic and innovative field of research, covering many facets of health, from government policy to local therapeutics. This volume presents a selection of essays examining varied aspects of health and medicine as they relate to the political upheavals of the colonial era. These range from the micro-politics of medicine in princely states and institutions such as asylums through to the wider canvas of sanitary diplomacy as well as the meaning of modernity and modernization in the context of British rule. The volume reflects the diversity of the field and showcases exciting new scholarship from early-career researchers as well as more established scholars by bringing to light many locations and dimensions of medicine and modernity. The essays have several common themes and together offer important insights into South Asia’s experience of modernity in the years before independence. Cutting across modernity and colonialism, some of the key themes explored here include issues of race, gender, sexuality, law, mental health, famine, disease, religion, missionary medicine, medical research, tensions between and within different medical traditions and practices and India’s place in an international context. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern South Asian history, sociology, politics and anthropology as well as specialists in the history of medicine. Biswamoy Pati was Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and taught Modern Indian History at the Department of History, University of Delhi, India. His research is on the diversities of colonial South Asia and some of his books include Resisting Domination: Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement on Orissa, 1920–1950 (1993) and South Asia from the Margins: Echoes of Orissa, 1800–2000 (2012). He edited The 1857 Rebellion (2007); and co-edited (with Mark Harrison) Health, Medicine and Empire (2001) and The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India (2009); and (with Waltraud Ernst) India’s Princely States: People, Princes and Colonialism (2007). Mark Harrison is Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford, UK. He has written widely on the history of medicine in relation to war, medicine and imperialism. His publications include Public Health in British India (1994); Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India 1600–1850 (1999); Medicine in an Age of Commerce and Empire: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies 1660–1830 (2010); Contagion (2011); several edited volumes; and Health, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India (2001) and The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India (2009) both co-edited with Biswamoy Pati. The Social History of Health and Medicine in South Asia Series editors: Biswamoy Pati Department of History, University of Delhi, India Mark Harrison Director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine and Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Oxford, UK Since the late 1990s, health and medicine have emerged as major con- cerns in South Asian history. The Social History of Health and Medi- cine in South Asia series aims to foster a new wave of inter-disciplinary research and scholarship that transcends conventional boundaries. It welcomes proposals for monographs, edited collections and antholo- gies which offer fresh perspectives, innovative analytical frameworks and comparative assessments. The series embraces diverse aspects of health and healing in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Books in this series Colonial Modernities: Midwifery in Bengal, c. 1860–1947 Ambalika Guha Society, Medicine and Politics in Colonial India Edited by Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/The- Social-History-of-Health-and-Medicine-in-South-Asia/book-series/ SHHM Society, Medicine and Politics in Colonial India Edited by Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-28633-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-26220-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC This volume is dedicated to the memory of our esteemed and much-loved colleague Biswamoy Pati (1955–2017) who passed away unexpectedly during the final stages of editing. He will be remembered not only for his many fine contributions to scholarship but for his vibrant personality and his passion for truth and justice. Biswamoy was consistently a champion of people and of subjects which had been overlooked and we hope that his work will continue to inspire younger scholars, for whom he had an enormous affection. This book, and the series of which it is a part, would not have been possible without him. He will be sorely missed. Contents ContentsContents List of figure and tables ix Notes on contributors x Acknowledgements xii Introduction 1 MARK HARRISON AND BISWAMOY PATI 1 The sentencing of assisted suicide in the Nizamut Adawlut, 1810–1829: religion, health and gender in the formation of British Indian criminal law 16 JANE BUCKINGHAM 2 The great shift: cholera theory and sanitary policy in British India, 1867–1879 37 MARK HARRISON 3 Hakims and Haiza: unani medicine and cholera in late Colonial India 61 SAURABH MISHRA 4 Of cholera, colonialism and pilgrimage sites: rethinking popular responses to state sanitation, c.1867–1900 74 AMNA KHALID viii Contents 5 Western science, indigenous medicine and the princely states: the case of Ayurvedic reorganization in Travancore, 1870–1940 98 BURTON CLEETUS 6 Christian missionary women’s hospitals in Mysore state, c.1880–1930 122 BARBARA N. RAMUSACK 7 The epidemiological, health and medical aspects of famine: views from the Madras Presidency (1876–78) 148 LEELA SAMI 8 Gender and insanity: situating asylums in nineteenth- century Bengal 172 DEBJANI DAS 9 Confining ‘lunatics’: the Cuttack Asylum, c.1864–1906 196 BISWAMOY PATI 10 What did the ‘wise men’ say? Gender, sexuality and women’s health in nineteenth-century Bengal 232 SUJATA MUKHERJEE 11 Feminizing empire: the Association of Medical Women in India and the campaign for a Women’s Medical Service 252 SAMIKSHA SEHRAWAT 12 Indian physicians and public health challenges: Bombay Presidency, 1896–1920 271 MRIDULA RAMANNA 13 Tracking kala-azar: the East Indian experience and experiments 290 ACHINTYA KUMAR DUTTA Index 313 Figure and tables Figure and tablesFigure and tables Figure 7.1 Monthly movement of death 1876–78 153 Tables 7.1 Deaths by cause 1871–78 149 7.2 Monthly distribution of deaths by cause 1876–78 151 7.3 Length of imprisonment and mortality in 1877 in the jails of Madras 163 7.4 Death rates amongst different sections of the population 165

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