(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2023) Chakravarti, Sunrita
This paper tries to engage with the discursive construction
of the diseased/healthy native body in the essays on health and
medicine published in Bangla periodicals in the second half of the
nineteenth century like Bibidhartho Sangraha, Chikitsa Sammelani,
Rahasya Sandarbhya, Shwasthya, Chikitsak o Somalochak and so on. I
have attempted to show how the discourses on indigeneous medicine
and the diseased/ healthy body of the native in these essays is a product
of contradictory forces – the desire to posit the “difference” vis-a-vis
the Western medical discourses and the anxiety of establishing the
“scientificity” of indigeneous medicine, particularly Ayurveda. With
a focus on textual instances drawn from these essays I have argued
how these writings can be seen as an attempt to create a counter
discourse against the pathologisation of space and the native body in
early to mid-nineteenth century colonial medical discourses.
