Table Of ContentSociety, 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
