Gomastahs, Peons, Police and Chowdranies
The Role of Indian Subordinate in the Functioning of the Lock Hospitals and the Indian Contagious Diseases Act, 1805 to 1889
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9285669 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Divya Rama Gopalakrishnan (0000-0001-8452-1791, The University of Melbourne, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 29-61 |
| Publication date | 2022-02-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften Technik und Medizin (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0036-6978 • E-ISSN: 1420-9144 |
| Publisher | IrKhäuSeR (PUBLISHER • CH) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s00048-022-00324-z |
| PMID | 35142894 |
| OpenAlex | W4210986342 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 31 |
Recent scholarship on the social history of health and medicine in colonial India has moved beyond enclavist or hegemonic aspects of imperial medicine and has rather focused on the role of Indian intermediaries and the fractured nature of colonial hegemony. Drawing inspiration from this scholarship, the article highlights the significance of the Indian subordinates in the lock hospital system in the nineteenth century Madras Presidency. This study focuses on a class of Indian subordinates called the "gomastah", who were employed to detect clandestine prostitution in Madras to control the spread of venereal disease. It also underlines the role of other native and non-native subordinates such as Dhais, Chowdranies and Matrons, the ways in which they became indispensable for the smoother operation of the Contagious Diseases Act and the lock hospitals on a day-to-day basis. By emphasising how Indian subordinates were able to bring in caste biases within colonial governmentality, adding another layer to the colonial prejudices and xenophobia against the native population, it underlines the fact that there was not a one-way appropriation or facilitation of the coloniser's knowledge or biases by the colonised intermediaries. Rather, it argues for an interaction between them, and highlights the complexities of caste hierarchies and prejudice within the everyday colonial governmentality. Moreover, the article focuses on the consequent chaos and inherent power struggle between different factions of colonial staff
Archaeology · Criminology · Lock (firearm · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Psychology
A historical analysis of health services in Medan and the tobacco plantation areas of East Sumatra during the Dutch colonial period
Surveilling bodies, governing morality
Venereal diseases, public health and sanitary measures in the mid-nineteenth-century Madras Presidency
Anthropometry and Lock Hospitals in Nineteenth-Century Madras
The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India
The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India
Dwelling in the Archive
Race, sex, and class under the Raj
Castes of Mind
Codes of Misconduct
Colonizing the Body
Public Faces, Private Lives
Vice in the Barracks
Ideologies of the Raj
Uncivilized Practitioners’
Looting’ the Lock Hospital in Colonial Madras during the Famine Years of the 1870s
Medical Priorities and Practice in Nineteenth-Century British India
Feminine, criminal or manly
From begums and bibis to abandoned females and idle women
Colonial Anthropology and the Decline of the Raj
A Tool of Empire
Lifestyle as Resistance
Race, science and medicine, 1700-1960
The Marginalization of aDalitMartial Race in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Western India
Race Matters
Contesting Colonial Hegemony
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |