Colonial Medicine and Indigenous Health Practices in Southern and Eastern Princely States of India, c. 1880-1960. (360G-Wellcome-081500_Z_06_Z)

The project maps developments in public health (drinking water supply, cholera prevention), the emergence of specialised medical institutions (leper/lunatic asylums), and the influence of western medicine on indigenous medical communities (and their patients) and the interaction between them, in particular during the influenza epidemic of 1918. A comparatively large state (Mysore), considered 'progressive' and 'enlightened', and some of the 24 Orissa Princely States, seen as 'backward' and 'despotic', will be at the centre of investigation. Contentious issues currently debated in the existing scholarship on medicine in British India and other colonies will be explored (such as the 'indigenisation' of health services; the inter-relationship of colonial and indigenous paradigms of medical practice; the impact of specific political and administrative events and changes on health polices). Developments in public health and the emergence of medical institutions in Princely India will be traced from both Indian and European perspectives and British medical policies and the Indian reactions and initiatives they evoked in different Princely States with highly varied socio-economic, cultural and administrative set-ups examined.