Curing Madness?: A Social and Cultural History of Insanity in Colonial North India, 1800-1950s
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Author Description
Curing Madness? focusses on the institutional and non-institutional histories of madness in colonial north India. It proves that 'madness' and its 'cure' are shifting categories which assumed new meanings and significance as knowledge travelled across cultural, medical, national, and regional boundaries.The book examines governmental policies, legal processes, diagnosis and treatment, and individual case histories by looking closely at asylums in Agra, Benaras, Bareilly, Lucknow, Delhi, and Lahore. Rajpal highlights that only a few mentally ill ended up in asylums; most people suffering from insanity were cared for by their families and local vaidyas, ojhas, and pundits. These practitioners of traditional medicine had to reinvent themselves to retain their relevance as Western medical knowledge was widely disseminated in colonial India. Evidence of this is found in the Hindi medical advice literature of the era. Taking these into account Shilpi Rajpal moves beyond asylum-centric histories to examine extensive archival materials gathered from various repositories.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This book investigates how the definitions of madness and the methods of its treatment evolved within the social and cultural landscape of colonial North India between 1800 and the 1950s. Dr. Shilpi Rajpal, an expert in colonial medical history, utilizes extensive archival research to challenge the traditional asylum-centric narrative of mental health. She argues that psychiatric care was a fluid, contested space where Western medical frameworks intersected with, and were forced to adapt to, indigenous practices and local social structures.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Analysis of colonial asylum records from Agra, Benaras, Bareilly, Lucknow, Delhi, and Lahore.
- Examination of Hindi medical advice literature and the role of traditional practitioners like vaidyas, ojhas, and pundits.
- Investigation into the intersection of legal processes, governmental policy, and individual patient case histories.
Scope Limits
- The study is geographically restricted to North India and does not provide a comprehensive national history of psychiatry across the entire subcontinent.
- The analysis focuses primarily on the colonial period and does not extend into post-colonial psychiatric developments beyond the 1950s.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars in the field of South Asian history recognize this work as a significant contribution to moving beyond institutional-only perspectives in medical history. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the thoroughness of the archival research presented by the author.
Page Count:
316
Publication Date:
2021-02-03
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190128011
ISBN-13:
9780190128012
History
Sociology
Asian Studies
Psychiatry
MEDICAL History