Un/common schooling: educational experiments in twentieth-century India

Abstract

changes associated with the Kali Yuga. It is not just limited to economic and environmental conditions, but the fear of contagion and other gendered stigmas profoundly affect their social standing, which is only worsened by notions of morality reinforced by public health camps. As opposed to the disclosure of diagnosis to patients, withholding the truth from them was considered an act of care by many patients. The loss of body parts such as breasts, uterus and hair as a result of radiation comes not just with immense physical and mental pain but also various exclusions (especially in the economic and sexual realm) with the stigma attached to it. Van Hollen’s ethnographic inquiry exposes the deeply intertwined nature of biomedical interventions and spiritual healing as several of these women simultaneously reached out to Samiyars – intermediaries between Gods and humankind – and the Pentecostal church in addition to the biomedical treatment they received. Emphasizing the structural violence faced by these women, Van Hollen concludes that healthcare initiatives do not account for their concerns for care and causality. Van Hollen’s work is extremely significant in the realm of medical anthropology as it vividly delineates the experience of these specific cancer patients whilst also offering a multidimensional understanding. It is empirically grounded and brings out the nuances of everyday lived experiences. While Van Hollen clearly deconstructs notions of morality embedded in public health campaigns, it would have been useful to dig deeper, in order to acknowledge the colonial residues inherent in the discourse, as evident in anti-abortion arguments and the emphasis on hygiene, sterilization and monogamous sex. In other words, it is crucial to observe the historical continuities through which Victorian morality is still reflected in our healthcare attitudes and conceptions, especially in stateled healthcare. In addition, although Van Hollen captures an extensive field view of cancer and suffering, her subaltern critique does not rise to posit a critique of the biomedical model in itself, as Arthur Kleinman has demonstrated in The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition (Basic Books, 1988). As she rightly points out, the public health discourse neither accommodates people’s beliefs in spiritual modalities of healing nor considers their socio-economic conditions. However, it is also vital to take a step further to argue that the rational, scientific and medico-legal vocabulary of biomedicine is intrinsic to public health discourse. More importantly, the critique of biomedicine as a system needs to be foregrounded, as it establishes itself as a distinct paradigm on a higher pedestal, through which the healing process becomes increasingly depersonalized and unidimensional. Nevertheless, her work offers a remarkable reading experience and hence, is highly recommended for medical anthropologists.