This is the seventh and final episode of the podcast "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India". We talk about one of the most enduring aspects of modernization in Indian healthcare: the emergence of the biomedical profession. Who were the earliest “doctors” in the subcontinent? Why did British colonizers establish medical colleges and schools in India? What were the experiences of early women doctors? How has caste-based privilege played a central role in the development of India’s biomedical profession?

This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features historians Projit Bihari Mukharji, David Arnold, Ranjana Saha, and Nandini Bhattacharya. Mukharji is a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, Arnold is Emeritus Professor at Warwick University, Saha is a postdoctoral fellow at Manipal Centre for Humanities, Bhattacharya is Associate Professor at University of Houston, and Kumbhar is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

The audio excerpts used in this episode are from the following movies (in order): Nirala (1950), Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Dr. Vidya (1962), Andaz Apna Apna (1994), Anand (1971), and Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946).

Additional references:

Book “Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine” by Projit Bihari Mukharji
Book “Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India” by David Arnold
Article “The Meeting of the Twain: The Cultural Confrontation of Three Women in Nineteenth Century Maharashtra” by Meera Kosambi
Article “The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India” by Maneesha Lal
Book “Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine, and Historiography” by Geraldine Forbes
Book “Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India's First Women in Medicine” by Kavitha Rao
Book “The Memoirs Of Dr. Haimabati Sen: From Child Widow To Lady Doctor”
Blog post by Kiran Kumbhar on the early history of biomedical colleges and schools in India
Two articles by Roger Jeffery on the twentieth-century history of India’s biomedical profession
Article “The home and the nation: an oral history of Indian women doctors, national development and domestic worlds” by Archana Venkatesh
Book “Contemporary India: A Sociological View” by Satish Deshpande (one  of the chapters in it has an exclusive focus on the “middle class” of India)
Upcoming book “Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India” by Nandini Bhattacharya
Book “History of Indigenous Pharmaceutical Companies in Colonial Calcutta (1855–1947)” by Malika Basu
Book “Refiguring Unani Tibb: Plural Healing in Late Colonial India” by Guy Attewell
Book “The Usman Report (1923). Translations of Regional Submissions” edited by Dagmar Wujastyk and Christèle Barois
Book “Reproductive Restraints: Birth Control in India, 1877-1947” by Sanjam Ahluwalia

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This is the sixth episode of the podcast "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India". We focus on a highly familiar but misunderstood topic - the history of Ayurveda - and explore why despite the wonderful diversity of the subcontinent’s medical history, we have come to honor just Ayurveda and a few other traditions while ignoring the rest. We discuss this history by focusing on a problematic cognitive framework which has been internalized by most elite Indians including those who write popular forms of history: “Orientalism”. How did Orientalism during the British colonial period radically change the ways in which people in the subcontinent looked at their past and present? How does Orientalism continue to shape how we frame our history and culture, including the history of medicine and healthcare? Learn more by tuning in!

This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features the historians Pratik Chakrabarti, Sabrina Datoo, and Projit Bihari Mukharji. Chakrabarti is a Professor at University of Houston, Datoo is a Visiting Professor at Hamilton College, Mukharji is a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, and Kumbhar is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

The audio excerpts used in this episode are from the following movies (in order): Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015, writers: Kabir Khan, Parveez Sheikh); Anand (1971, writers: Gulzar, DN Mukherjee, Bimal Dutta); Swades (2004, writers: Ashutosh Gowariker, MG Sathya, et al). 

Additional references:

Book “Medical Marginality in South Asia: Situating Subaltern Therapeutics”, edited by David Hardiman and Projit Bihari Mukharji
Article “Modern Ayurveda in Transnational Context” by Maya Warrier
Article “Bengali Ayurbed: Frames, Texts and Practices” by Projit Bihari Mukharji
Article “Imagining Indian Medicine: Epistemic Virtues and Dissonant Temporalities in the Usman Report, 1923” by Sabrina Datoo
Book “Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India: Medicine in the Buddhist Monastery” by Kenneth Zysk
Book “Old Potions, New Bottles: Recasting Indigenous Medicine in Colonial Punjab” by Kavita Sivaramakrishnan
Twitter thread on the history and origins of Ayurveda, by Kiran Kumbhar
Article “Brahmanizing Ayurveda: Caste and Class Dimensions of Late Colonial Ayurvedic Movement in Upper India” by Saurav Kumar Rai
Chapter titled “Perceptions of the Past” in the book “Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300” by Romila Thapar
Book “Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India” by Gyan Prakash
Article “The British Colonial Origins of Gravity-Defying Ancient Indian Achievements” by Kiran Kumbhar
Article “Orientalism and the Modern Myth of ‘Hinduism’” by Richard King
Book “Western Science in Modern India: Metropolitan Methods, Colonial Practices” by Pratik Chakrabarti
Book “Post-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan, Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution” by Kancha Ilaiah

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This is the fifth episode of the podcast "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India". We discuss a basic question here: how do people become historians? History is certainly not among the subjects that children and teenagers in India are universally encouraged to pursue, so we asked historians how it is that they chose this option during high school or college. Not surprisingly, there isn't a single, uniform track to enter the academic world of history, and in this episode we delve into some of those multiple pathways. We also learn about how our historians then became interested in the history of medicine and healthcare.

This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features the historians Nandini Bhattacharya, Shilpi Rajpal, Projit Bihari Mukharji, and Sanjoy Bhattacharya. Nandini Bhattacharya is a Professor at the University of Houston, Rajpal is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Mukharji is a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, Sanjoy Bhattacharya is a Professor at the University of Leeds, and Kumbhar is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.
The audio excerpts used in this episode were accessed on YouTube: from the film "3 Idiots" written by Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi (here); from the film "Swades" written by Ashutosh Gowariker, MG Sathya, et al (here); from an interview of Romila Thapar by Eshan Sharma for the Karwaan channel (here); from the film "Shree 420" written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and VP Sathe (here). The song featured at the end is "Sikandar ne Poras" from the 1962 film Anpadh (lyrics Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, composer Madan Mohan).

Additional references:
Article "Making the Case for History in Medical Education" by David S. Jones, Jeremy A. Greene, Jacalyn Duffin, John Harley Warner
Episode "History and Historians" of our podcast
Speech from 1918 by Sanskrit scholar and historian Ramkrishna G. Bhandarkar on the importance of a critical and academic analysis of the Indian past
Book "Contagion and Enclaves: Tropical Medicine in Colonial India" by Nandini Bhattacharya (open access)
Book "The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History" by Romila Thapar
Website of "Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative"
Article "Post-Colonial Histories of South Asia: Some Reflections" by Sugata Bose
Podcast "New Books in South Asian Studies" by the New Books Network

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This is the fourth episode of the podcast "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India". We talk about the idea that governments can and should work towards improving public health and providing healthcare-related services for the public. While such a concept of state responsibility towards public health is very common and naturalized today (and absolutely important), it is a relatively modern concept in a historical sense, and it began to be applied on a large scale starting in the nineteenth century. In this episode, we look at how this concept played out in British colonial India. We discuss smallpox immunisation campaigns of the early 1800s, the Age of Consent Act of the late 1800s, and the establishment of psychiatric hospitals in the mid-1800s. We also discuss the ideas of racial hierarchy and of the "civilizing mission" which prominently featured in the rhetoric around the public health interventions of the colonial state.

This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features the historians Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Ranjana Saha, and Shilpi Rajpal. Bhattacharya is a Professor at the University of Leeds, Saha is a postdoctoral fellow at the Manipal Centre for Humanities, Rajpal is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen, and Kumbhar is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

The audio excerpts used in this episode were accessed from YouTube: Donate Eyes - "Hindi Aishwarya Rai Bachchan Old Indian Doordarshan Ad" (here), "Jasoos Vijay - 3rd Season" (here), "THE CHILD Stop Smoking Commercials" (here), and "Dara Singh- Sunday ho ya monday eggs" (here). The featured song "Karun Kya Aas Nirash Bhai" was sung by KL Saigal, composed by Pankaj Mullick, and is from the 1939 film "Dushman".

Additional references:

Book "Fractured States: Smallpox, Public Health and Vaccination Policy in British India 1800-1947" by Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Mark Harrison, and Michael Worboys
Book "Health, Civilization and the State: A History of Public Health from Ancient to Modern Times" by Dorothy Porter
Article "Political Culture of Health in India: A Historical Perspective" by Sunil Amrith
Book "Society, Medicine and Politics in Colonial India" edited by Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison
Book "Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, 1850-1950" by Rajnarayan Chandavarkar
Article "Śītalā: The Cool One" by Susan Wadley
Book "Colonizing the Body State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India" by David Arnold
Video explainer on the Age of Consent Act 1891 on The Swaddle channel, featuring Tanika Sarkar
Book "Vice in the Barracks: Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India, 1780-1868" by Erica Wald
Article on the Epidemic Diseases Act by Kiran Kumbhar
Article "Infant Feeding: Child Marriage And 'immature Maternity' In Colonial Bengal, 1890s-1920s" by Ranjana Saha
Article "Phulmoni's body: the autopsy, the inquest and the humanitarian narrative on child rape in India" by Ishita Pande
Article on the 1835-established Medical College of Calcutta by Kiran Kumbhar
Book "Curing Madness?: A Social and Cultural History of Insanity in Colonial North India, 1800-1950s" by Shilpi Rajpal
Book "Mad Tales from the Raj: Colonial Psychiatry in South Asia, 1800-58" by Waltraud Ernst
Video which briefly discusses major aspects of the nineteenth century history of psychiatry in Europe and North America
Video presentation "Sati and Britain's "Civilizing Mission" in India" by Vinay Lal
Article "The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India: The Countess of Dufferin's Fund, 1885-1888" by Maneesha Lal
Article “Feminising Empire: The Association of Medical Women in India and the Campaign to Found a Women's Medical Service” by Samiksha Sehrawat
Video copy of the 1939 film Dushman

 

Article "Universal Health Care: The Affordable Dream" by Amartya Sen

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This is the third episode of the podcast "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India". The primary theme pertains to the challenges, in historical research, of finding and incorporating the voices of the oppressed and the under-privileged (the "voiceless"). In the history of healthcare, which has traditionally been dominated by the perspectives and voices of male physicians, the absent or under-represented voices have mostly been of patients, communities, and community-based practitioners. In this episode, we will listen to historians speak about how they have worked to uncover such voices, and what that tells us about the history of medicine and healthcare in India. We will learn, for example, how the spread of railways in the 1800s led to an uptick in people traveling to distant places for pilgrimages -- a side-effect of which was a rise in epidemic disease; and how some personal letters of Rabindranath Tagore written to family members throw more light on one of the most significant changes in medical thinking in the nineteenth century.

This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features the historians David Arnold, Nandini Bhattacharya, and Projit Bihari Mukharji. The excerpt at the beginning of the episode was read by Macwin Fernandes, and is from an 1883 article by physician Sakharam Arjun. The two audio excerpts in the episode are from the films "Achhut Kanya" (1936, written by Niranjan Pal), and "Sholay" (1975, written by Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar).

Additional references:
Chapter describing the colonial-era quinine distribution system, from the book "Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India" by Rohan Deb Roy
Article on nineteenth century "magic lantern" shows by Katy Scott (magic lanterns were mentioned by David Arnold in this episode)
Book by Samiksha Sehrawat on the many facets of the public response to hospitals and modern biomedicine, titled 'Colonial Medical Care in North India: Gender, State, and Society, c. 1830-1920'
Book by Projit Mukharji on the multi-layered refashioning and modernization of Ayurveda in colonial India, titled 'Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Sciences'
Article by Pallavi Das analyzing the complex dynamics involved in pilgrimage centers and the spread and control of epidemics, titled 'Rethinking Cholera in Jagannath Puri in the Nineteenth Century'
Article by Kiran Kumbhar on B&W Indian movies like Achhut Kanya which illuminate important aspects of healthcare during their time, titled 'How B&W Bollywood Has Preserved a Snapshot of India's Public Health Story'

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This is the second episode of 'Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India'. We talk about one of the central challenges of writing any kind of history: how to find and incorporate the voices of the oppressed and the under-privileged (the "voiceless")? In the history of healthcare, this challenge manifests in the form of the disproportionate focus on physicians and surgeons, and a concomitant neglect of the stories of patients and other healthcare providers, especially women (e.g., midwives and nurses). While physicians and surgeons form an extremely important group of healthcare providers -- and we will indeed be talking about them in other episodes of the show -- there also exist many other members and groups in the broader healthcare community, as well as, of course, patients themselves. This episode is the first of two which will specifically discuss how historians of medicine have tried to "go beyond doctors" to construct more complete and more comprehensive histories of healthcare. We will step outside the conventional framework of medical history and learn about healthcare and medicine in nineteenth-century India from the perspective of the ordinary patient and community member.

This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features the scholars Sabrina Datoo, Pratik Chakrabarti, and Sanjoy Bhattacharya. It also features an excerpt from historian Roy Porter's work, read out by Suno India's Macwin Fernandes. The scholars referred to by Dr Sabrina Datoo in this episode are Mridula Ramanna and Projit Bihari Mukharji. The featured song, 'Ek shahenshah ne banava ke haseen Taj Mahal', is from the soundtrack of the 1964 film Leader; music was by Naushad, lyrics by Shakeel Badayuni, and the vocals by Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar.

The title of this episode, "Beyond the Great Doctors", is based on a 1979 essay by Susan Reverby and David Rosner, who were themselves inspired by the doctor-historian Henry Sigerist who wrote in the 1950s that the history of medicine is "infinitely more than the history of the great doctors and their books."

Additional references:
Article by Erwin Ackerknecht titled 'A Plea for a "Behaviorist" Approach in Writing the History of Medicine'
Article by Roy Porter titled 'The Patient's View: Doing Medical History from Below'
Book by Mridula Ramanna titled 'Western Medicine and Public Health in Colonial Bombay, 1845-1895'
Article by Kiran Kumbhar titled 'The Cure'
Book edited by David Hardiman and Projit Bihari Mukharji titled 'Medical Marginality in South Asia: Situating Subaltern Therapeutics'
Book series titled "A People's History of India"
Recent book on discriminatory and unequal experiences of healthcare in India, titled 'Caste, COVID-19, and Inequalities of Care: Lessons from South Asia'
Essay on the history of smallpox vaccination from the website of the World Health Organization

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In this introductory episode of 'Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India', host Kiran Kumbhar talks with Suno India co-founder Padma Priya about how the podcast was created and the ideas that went into it. They talk about the importance of knowing the history of medicine and healthcare, and the crucial role of critical thinking skills in writing history and understanding the past.

The episode features excerpts from interviews with historians Pratik Chakrabarti, Projit Bihari Mukharji, and Ranjana Saha. It also features an audio excerpt from the 1941 Indian film “Doctor”.

Additional references:

“What does it mean to think historically?” by Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke
“Learning From the Past , Lessons for the Future,” Githa Hariharan in conversation with Romila Thapar
“History matters: A presentation by Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya on eradication of smallpox,” by Sanjoy Bhattacharya

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