Chandshi-r Chikitsha : A Nomadology of Subaltern Science

Abstract

Chandshi-r Chikitsha was a small medical tradition that developed around the closing decades of the 18th century among the low caste Namasudras in the south-central Bengal [present-day Bangladesh]. Hundred years later, by the end of the 19th century, it had migrated out of its natal home and Chandshi physicians were becoming prominent in cityscapes of urban Calcutta and Dhaka. The partition of Bengal in 1947 led to massive dislocation for Namasudras. Their migration into in India led to the further dissemination of the tradition and Chandshi physicians set up thriving practices in Patna, Raipur, Allahabad, outskirts of Delhi and even in far away Mumbai.

Being a non-textual tradition practiced by a marginal group, it was always much more vulnerable to the pressures of state-regulation, the medical-market and changing patterns of consumption. In successfully negotiating these pressures Chandshi had to maintain an extremely fluid identity. Its ideas about pathology, its practical methods, its repertoire of cures everything became fluid and changeable. At different times or in different places Chandshi was completely different things. How does one write a history of something which itself continuously defies a definition ? The challenge for the historian of Chandshi then is to find a model capable of accommodating this rampant multiplicity within a single narrative.

Speaker

Projit B Mukharji, Oxford Brookes University

Organisers

Department of Social Sciences, French Institute of Pondicherry

Venue

Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall, French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, Saint Louis Street, Pondicherry - 605 001

Time

3.30 pm