CASTE, DISEASE AND HEALING: MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES' ENCOUNTER WITH MEDICINE IN THE OUDH REGION (1900–1947)

Abstract

This research explores the intersections of caste, illness and health practices among marginalized populations within the Oudh area of Colonial India between 1900 and 1947. Using colonial administrative documents, sanitary commission reports, vernacular print materials, and secondary historical literature the research will investigate how the colonial public health apparatus interacted with and frequently reinforced existing caste-based hierarchical structures. The research is arguing that Western biomedicine, as it was introduced and implemented by the British Colonial State in Oudh, was neither a value-neutral scientific endeavor nor a universally available public resource; instead, it was heavily influenced by caste, class and the political objectives of Empire. In addition to being disproportionately affected by epidemic diseases such as plague, cholera and malaria, due to both their occupation and residential segregation, marginalized communities, including Dalits (previously known as 'untouchables'), low-caste artisans and Muslim service castes also experienced compounding vulnerabilities of access to colonial medical services and interventions. These included social stigmatization, institutional neglect, and differential application of public health policies and practices. The research also investigates how marginalized communities have negotiated their exclusion from colonial medical services and interventions, using indigenous healing systems including local Ayurvedic practitioners (vaid) and Unani healers (hakim), and folk medicine traditions, which provided culturally relevant alternatives to a colonial medical system that too often viewed the lower-caste body as an object of surveillance, and not as a subject deserving of care. Finally, the research finds that the colonial medical experience in Oudh resulted in greater health inequities based on caste, which continue today in India.