This is the seventh and final episode of the podcast "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India". We talk about one of the most enduring aspects of modernization in Indian healthcare: the emergence of the biomedical profession. Who were the earliest “doctors” in the subcontinent? Why did British colonizers establish medical colleges and schools in India? What were the experiences of early women doctors? How has caste-based privilege played a central role in the development of India’s biomedical profession?
This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features historians Projit Bihari Mukharji, David Arnold, Ranjana Saha, and Nandini Bhattacharya. Mukharji is a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, Arnold is Emeritus Professor at Warwick University, Saha is a postdoctoral fellow at Manipal Centre for Humanities, Bhattacharya is Associate Professor at University of Houston, and Kumbhar is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.
The audio excerpts used in this episode are from the following movies (in order): Nirala (1950), Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Dr. Vidya (1962), Andaz Apna Apna (1994), Anand (1971), and Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946).
Additional references:
Book “Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine” by Projit Bihari Mukharji
Book “Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India” by David Arnold
Article “The Meeting of the Twain: The Cultural Confrontation of Three Women in Nineteenth Century Maharashtra” by Meera Kosambi
Article “The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India” by Maneesha Lal
Book “Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine, and Historiography” by Geraldine Forbes
Book “Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India's First Women in Medicine” by Kavitha Rao
Book “The Memoirs Of Dr. Haimabati Sen: From Child Widow To Lady Doctor”
Blog post by Kiran Kumbhar on the early history of biomedical colleges and schools in India
Two articles by Roger Jeffery on the twentieth-century history of India’s biomedical profession
Article “The home and the nation: an oral history of Indian women doctors, national development and domestic worlds” by Archana Venkatesh
Book “Contemporary India: A Sociological View” by Satish Deshpande (one of the chapters in it has an exclusive focus on the “middle class” of India)
Upcoming book “Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India” by Nandini Bhattacharya
Book “History of Indigenous Pharmaceutical Companies in Colonial Calcutta (1855–1947)” by Malika Basu
Book “Refiguring Unani Tibb: Plural Healing in Late Colonial India” by Guy Attewell
Book “The Usman Report (1923). Translations of Regional Submissions” edited by Dagmar Wujastyk and Christèle Barois
Book “Reproductive Restraints: Birth Control in India, 1877-1947” by Sanjam Ahluwalia
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