'God knows why these Sanghaalis are so rabidly against C-section!': spectre of medical coloniality haunts doctor-patient relationship in Guruprasad Kaginele's Hijab (2020).

Abstract

Through the lens of Guruprasad Kaginele's novel Hijab, the issues of intolerance and distrust that exist in American rural hospitals-where the Indian immigrant doctors fail to understand the inhibitions and apprehensions of the African immigrant birthing mothers, turning them into objects of mockery and disgust, despite sharing colonial histories of racialised discrimination, biases and prejudices-are examined. The ruptured relationship between Indian immigrant doctors and Sanghaali Muslim immigrant birthing mothers dramatised in the novel provides an insight into how Indian immigrant doctors' psyche is unconsciously imbued with medical coloniality, which has not received much scholarly attention. Drawing on critical approaches such as various orders of gaze-male, medical, colonial and imperial-and the concept of intersectionality, the hybrid subjectivities of the Indian immigrant doctors, ruptured doctor-patient relationship, and non-agentic status of the immigrant birthing mothers as represented in the novel are analysed. In light of the issues highlighted in this study, it is recommended that the novel Hijab could be a potential addition to the critical medical humanities curriculum to help medical students understand the cultural roots of racialised prejudices and discriminations, the spectre of which has continued to haunt caregiving in rural American healthcare settings.