The Birth of the “Indian” Clinic
Daktari Medicine in A Ballad of Remittent Fever
Datos Bibliográficos
| ID | 20249270 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Thiyagaraj Gurunathan (0000-0002-4396-6062, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, autor de correspondencia), Binod Mishra (0000-0003-2364-6405, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee) |
| Año | 2024 |
| Volumen | 13 |
| Número | 6 |
| Páginas | 169 |
| Fecha de publicación | 2024-12-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sí |
| Open Access | Sí |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Revista | Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores de la revista | ISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787 |
| Editorial | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/h13060169 |
| OpenAlex | W4405377961 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referencias citadas | 18 |
This article locates the clinic as a historically contingent space which faced cultural resistance and remained alien to the colonized population in India. It corroborates the socio-political tension in setting up a clinic within the colony and investigates how the Western clinic as a colonial apparatus was resituated as the “Indian clinic” per se. With the historical emergence of a new class of medical practitioners called “daktars” (a Bengali vernacularization of the term “doctor”), the health-seeking behaviour and public health model of colonial India witnessed a decolonial shift. Unlike their English counterparts, daktars did not enjoy a privileged position within the medical archives of colonial India. This archival gap within Indian medical history presents itself as a viable topic for discussion through the means of the literature of the colonized. Bengali writer Ashoke Mukhopadhyay’s novel Abiram Jwarer Roopkotha (2018), translated into English as A Ballad of Remittent Fever in 2020, remedies the colonial politics of the archive by reconstructing the lives of various daktars and their pursuit of self-reliance. The article takes a neo-historical approach towards understanding and assessing the past of daktari medicine and thereby offers comments on its traces in the contemporary public health of India
Art · Ballad · Family medicine · Literature · Traditional medicine · African cultural and philosophical studies · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Medicine · South Asian Studies and Conflicts
| Velocidad de citación | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | No |