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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This is the sixth episode of the podcast "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India". We focus on a highly familiar but misunderstood topic - the history of Ayurveda - and explore why despite the wonderful diversity of the subcontinent’s medical history, we have come to honor just Ayurveda and a few other traditions while ignoring the rest. We discuss this history by focusing on a problematic cognitive framework which has been internalized by most elite Indians including those who write popular forms of history: “Orientalism”. How did Orientalism during the British colonial period radically change the ways in which people in the subcontinent looked at their past and present? How does Orientalism continue to shape how we frame our history and culture, including the history of medicine and healthcare? Learn more by tuning in!

This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features the historians Pratik Chakrabarti, Sabrina Datoo, and Projit Bihari Mukharji. Chakrabarti is a Professor at University of Houston, Datoo is a Visiting Professor at Hamilton College, Mukharji is a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, and Kumbhar is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

The audio excerpts used in this episode are from the following movies (in order): Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015, writers: Kabir Khan, Parveez Sheikh); Anand (1971, writers: Gulzar, DN Mukherjee, Bimal Dutta); Swades (2004, writers: Ashutosh Gowariker, MG Sathya, et al).

Additional references:

Book “Medical Marginality in South Asia: Situating Subaltern Therapeutics”, edited by David Hardiman and Projit Bihari Mukharji
Article “Modern Ayurveda in Transnational Context” by Maya Warrier
Article “Bengali Ayurbed: Frames, Texts and Practices” by Projit Bihari Mukharji
Article “Imagining Indian Medicine: Epistemic Virtues and Dissonant Temporalities in the Usman Report, 1923” by Sabrina Datoo
Book “Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India: Medicine in the Buddhist Monastery” by Kenneth Zysk
Book “Old Potions, New Bottles: Recasting Indigenous Medicine in Colonial Punjab” by Kavita Sivaramakrishnan
Twitter thread on the history and origins of Ayurveda, by Kiran Kumbhar
Article “Brahmanizing Ayurveda: Caste and Class Dimensions of Late Colonial Ayurvedic Movement in Upper India” by Saurav Kumar Rai
Chapter titled “Perceptions of the Past” in the book “Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300” by Romila Thapar
Book “Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India” by Gyan Prakash
Article “The British Colonial Origins of Gravity-Defying Ancient Indian Achievements” by Kiran Kumbhar
Article “Orientalism and the Modern Myth of ‘Hinduism’” by Richard King
Book “Western Science in Modern India: Metropolitan Methods, Colonial Practices” by Pratik Chakrabarti
Book “Post-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan, Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution” by Kancha Ilaiah

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This is the fifth episode of the podcast "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India". We discuss a basic question here: how do people become historians? History is certainly not among the subjects that children and teenagers in India are universally encouraged to pursue, so we asked historians how it is that they chose this option during high school or college. Not surprisingly, there isn't a single, uniform track to enter the academic world of history, and in this episode we delve into some of those multiple pathways. We also learn about how our historians then became interested in the history of medicine and healthcare.

This episode is hosted by Kiran Kumbhar and features the historians Nandini Bhattacharya, Shilpi Rajpal, Projit Bihari Mukharji, and Sanjoy Bhattacharya. Nandini Bhattacharya is a Professor at the University of Houston, Rajpal is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Mukharji is a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, Sanjoy Bhattacharya is a Professor at the University of Leeds, and Kumbhar is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.
The audio excerpts used in this episode were accessed on YouTube: from the film "3 Idiots" written by Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi (here); from the film "Swades" written by Ashutosh Gowariker, MG Sathya, et al (here); from an interview of Romila Thapar by Eshan Sharma for the Karwaan channel (here); from the film "Shree 420" written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and VP Sathe (here). The song featured at the end is "Sikandar ne Poras" from the 1962 film Anpadh (lyrics Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, composer Madan Mohan).

Additional references:
Article "Making the Case for History in Medical Education" by David S. Jones, Jeremy A. Greene, Jacalyn Duffin, John Harley Warner
Episode "History and Historians" of our podcast
Speech from 1918 by Sanskrit scholar and historian Ramkrishna G. Bhandarkar on the importance of a critical and academic analysis of the Indian past
Book "Contagion and Enclaves: Tropical Medicine in Colonial India" by Nandini Bhattacharya (open access)
Book "The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History" by Romila Thapar
Website of "Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative"
Article "Post-Colonial Histories of South Asia: Some Reflections" by Sugata Bose
Podcast "New Books in South Asian Studies" by the New Books Network

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