Indigenous and Western Medicines in Colonial South India: Nature of Discourses and Impact

The paper attempts to study nature of the contest between indigenous and western medicines in the public sphere during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Western medicine was introduced initially for benefit of Europeans in India and later extended to Indian population as a tool of empire. Gradually it marginalised indigenous medicine with help of state power and colonised indigenous bodies to get cultural domination. Revitalisation of Indian medicines started with through professionalisation, systematisation, standardisation and their important aspects were exposed in print media as a tool to contest against the hegemony of western medicine in the public sphere. Numerable tracts, pamphlets, journals and books of indigenous medicine were published to counter the hegemony of western medicine. Here the focus is on discourses of physicians of indigenous and western medicines, published in the print media in colonial south India, and how the former made efforts to counter the hegemony of western medicine.