ISBN : 9782296069916
LNDIGENISATION OF PSYCHIATRY IN INDIA'
Renu Addlakha 2
Within the well established discipline of the history of medicine in India, the history of psychiatry has emerged as an important new arec of academic research (Basu, 1999; Ernst 1991; Mills 2000). These accounts describe how psychiatry came to the country as part of the larger project of colonialism. Following the method of discourse analysis pioneered by Michel Foucault (1988), these scholars have dwelt upon the multiple linkages between colonial state and psychiatry, indigenous medical systems, socio-economic change and cultural practices. This paper in a way begins where these accounts end. Due to the overarching preoccupation with political and economic hegemony of the colonial state, psychiatry remained more or less an alien discourse during the colonial era distinct from the local...