The aim of the book is to trace the development of female medical education in nineteenth century India in the context of a cross-cultural relationship that took place between European medical women and Indian women, and contribute to the debate relating to the impact of colonial medicine on Indian women. I focus not only on the formal institutionalisation of female medical education as it took place in various parts of India, but also on the specific role played by British and American medical women, both missionary and secular, in promoting it. This aspect of the medical history of colonial India has not so far been fully examined. A critical assessment of this cross-cultural relationship between two groups of women who were otherwise poles apart, is called for and attempted in this book.
The book initially started as a short essay titled "Medical Women and Female Medical Education in Nineteenth Century India" published in Education and Empowerment: Women in South Asia (2001, Calcutta: Bethune School Association). As always happens, research carried out at the time revealed that there was more information and documents available on the subject than could be used in a short essay.
The colonial impact on Indian women was multifarious, and the laws passed by the colonial masters had touched their lives in many ways. Apart from some main social reforms such as the abolition of Sati, girl child infanticide, widow marriage, and raising the age of consent in marriage where colonial agency had a significant role to play, the two other important areas of colonial influence on Indian women's life were education and medical care. In both these areas the missionaries and the European medical women had left their mark.
Existing scholarship on gender, medicine and empire generally views the medical women, or any other philanthropic European women in India, as part of the colonial infrastructure imposing alien ideas and values on Indian women. The scholarly explanation so far was that the medical women were looking to the colonies for employment and the missionaries among them wanted to evangelize the indigenous women. They used the idea of providing medical care for Indian women for their own professional interest. I question such an explanation and view it as a cross-cultural relationship between two groups of women where both parties played significant roles in empowering each other.
So far very little research has been done on the contribution made by the medical women and its impact on Indian women's life. The scholars on colonial medicine somehow by passed them. Similarly the role played by Indian women in this cross cultural encounter has rarely been looked at. The presence of medical women on Indian soil and their attempt to offer medical care to Indian women initiated a situation of reciprocity, and the full implications of this cross-cultural relationship cannot be understood without taking into account both sides. Just as much we have to ask what motivated these European women doctors to go to India, what was the common factor between the two divergent groups of medical women, missionary and secular, whether they managed to accomplish their mission, and what was their lasting legacy, we also have to ask what was the response of Indian women, what part did they play. We have to explore how did they react to the so called "colonial gaze". Did they object to the medical missionaries' so-called 'penetration' in their secluded zenana? What compromises did they make to receive medical care and training delivered through colonial agency? Only then we will be able to get the full picture.
No book is written alone without a considerable help from the others.
I would like to thank the librarians and their assistants of the following Libraries and Archives for their kindness, help and prompt action: The British Library, The Welcome Library and Archives, The Royal Free Hospital Archives, the Women's Library Archives, the Archives of School of Oriental and African Studies, the National Archives (New Delhi), Maharashtra State Archives (Mumbai), the West Bengal State Archives (Kolkata), the National Library (Kolkata), and the West Bengal Newspaper Archives.
I would like to thank The British Library and the Wellcome Library for giving me permission to use the illustrations from their archives.
I would also like to thank all my friends and family members for their constant encouragement and support at the trying time when the book was researched and written. I particularly like to thank Linda Crook, Kusam Bedi, Susan Burd, Marcia Crow, Alison Loxley, Arlette Childs, Dr. Bandana Barua, Uttara Chakraborty, Avijit Sen Gupta, Dr. Alokananda Sen Gupta, Dolon Niyogi, Nina Vachaspati, Jyotirmoy Datta and Jack Rickards.
I would like to thank Dr. Deirdre N. McCloskey for reading the first draft of chapter IV and giving me good advice on economical writing, and Drs. lan and Kaye Kerr, Dr. David Page and Dr. Binay Chaudhuri for their continuous interest in my book. One regret is that my life long friend and mentor Tarun Mitra passed away in 2012 and I was unable to show him the book in its final form.
Lastly, my thanks to Dr. Stephen Nicholas Gourlay without whose moral support and patient advice this book would not have been written. I was particularly benefited by the long.
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