Indigenous medical knowledge and its encounter with Western medicine in colonial India.

Abstract

This article investigates the complicated and at times antagonistic meeting of indigenous medical traditions, namely Ayurveda, Unani Tibb and Siddha, with Western biomedicine in British colonial India (c. 1757-1947). Using historiographical arguments, written in conjunction with primary colonial records and postcolonial studies, the article outlines how colonialism undermined indigenous healing traditions through policies that, across the board, excluded them, while taking up those aspects considered useful, economically or scientifically. It analyses the responses of Indian medical practitioners and reformers who engaged with colonial institutions, drew upon classical texts, and created hybrid medical identities. It contends that the colonial medical encounter was not simply a matter of translating information but of negotiating, resisting, and perpetrating forms of knowledge-based violence, the effects of which continue to inform health policy and medical pluralism in present-day South Asia.