Re-forming the Indian: Treatment regimes in the lunatic asylums of British India, 1857-1880

Indian Economic and Social History Review

Volumn 36, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 407-428

  Mills, James H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 25844500324     PISSN: 00194646     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/001946469903600401     Document Type: Review

References (110)

1. Georges Canguilhem, David Macey, tr., in idem, The Lives of Michel Foucault, New York, 1993, p. 104.
2. Influential work in this area includes M. Foucault, Richard Howard, tr., Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, London, 1989;
3. T. Szasz, Insanity: The Idea and its Consequences, New York, 1987;
4. N. Rose, The Psychological Complex: Psychology, Politics and Society in England, 1869-1939, London, 1985;
5. A. Scull, Museums of Madness: The Social Organisation of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England, London, 1979.
6. Studies of psychiatry in colonial contexts include R. Paular, 'Mental Illness as a Social Problem in the Phillipines during the Spanish Colonial Period', Philippine Journal of Psychology, Vol. 25(1), June 1992;
7. S. Swartz, 'The Black Insane in the Cape, 1891-1920', in Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 21(3), September 1995;
8. W. Ernst, Mad Tales from the Raj: The European Insane in British India 1800-1858, London, 1991.
9. M. Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness, Cambridge, 1991, p. 10.
10. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, pp. 61-62, 259-76 etc;
11. see also Y. Ripa, Women and Madness: The Incarceration of Women in Nineteenth Century France, Cambridge, 1990, p. 3;
12. A. Scull, 'Humanitarianism or Control? Some observations on the Historiography of Anglo-American Psychiatry', in S. Cohen and A. Scull, eds, Social Control and the State, Oxford, 1985, pp. 134-35;
13. N. Rose, The Psychological Complex, p. 227.
14. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth, 1979, p. 191.
15. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 293-308;
16. Foucault, ibid., The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, London, 1979, pp. 133-59;
17. H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Brighton, 1982, pp. 126-42.
18. Vaughan, Curing Their Ills, p. 10.
19. This essay will consider the visions and designs of British policy. To fully consider the effectiveness of these designs, in other words to consider the operation of power in the asylums, it would be necessary to look at instances where Indians in the asylums collaborated, resisted or frustrated those designs at the asylums. For this, see J. Mills, 'The Lunatic Asylum in British India, 1857 to 1880: Colonialism, Medicine and Power', Ph.D thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1997, pp. 168-219.
20. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p. 269.
21. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, Ibid., p. 266.
22. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, Ibid., p. 250.
23. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, Ibid., p. 248.
24. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, Ibid., p. 123.
25. M. Finnane, Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland, London, 1981, p. 207.
26. M. Finnane, Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland, Ibid., p. 205.
27. A. Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat. 1796-1914, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 128-29.
28. A. Scull, Social Order/Mental Disorder: Anglo-American Psychiatry in Historical Perspective, London, 1989, p. 89.
29. Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine, pp. 72-74.
30. D. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, Boston, 1971, p. 145.
31. D. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, Ibid., pp. 145-46.
32. E. Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980, London, 1987, p. 37.
33. E. Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980, Ibid., p. 82.
34. Ripa, Women and Madness, p. 125.
35. 'Annual Reports of the Lunatic Asylums at Bareilly and Benares for the Year 1866', in Selections from the Records of the Government of the North-Westem Provinces, Allahabad, 1867, p. 61.
36. 'Asylums at Bareilly and Benares for the Year 1867', in Selections from the Records of the Government of the North-Western Provinces, Allahabad, 1868, p. 58.
37. For a discussion of the meaning of these terms for the British in this period in India please see Mills, 'The Lunatic Asylum', pp. 43-49.
38. D. Chakrabarty, 'The Differences-Deferral of a Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Domesticity in British Bengal', in D. Arnold and D. Hardiman, eds, Subaltern Studies VIII, Delhi, 1994, p. 55.
39. D. Chakrabarty, Subaltern Studies VIII, Ibid., p. 55.
40. Annual Report of the Lunatic Asylums in the Punjab for the Year 1879, Lahore, 1880, p. 3.
41. Minute by President, 29 October 1865, Madras, GOI (Public) Procs, 27 February 1869, 105-7A.
42. Asylums in the Punjab for the Year 1871-72, p. 5.
43. Annual Report of the Insane Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1863, Calcutta, 1864, p. 3.
44. Annual Administration and Progress Report on the Insane Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, Bombay, 1874, p. 4.
45. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1867, p. 93.
46. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1862, p. 29.
47. Asylums in the Punjab for the Year 1874, p. 1.
48. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1874-75, p. 13.
49. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, p. 3. The 'tea' in question here is later detailed as 'beef-tea'. The decision to administer 'beef-tea' may have been taken as the patient in question was a Parsee rather than a Hindu. However it does seem to be an odd choice given the attitude of certain sections of the Indian community to vegetarian diets and cow products, so the decision to use the preparation may have reflected the ignorance of British medical officers about Indian diets or indeed may suggest something altogether more disciplinary. The superintendent may have had Eurocentric convictions about the benefits of meat in a diet and Orientalist conceptions of the Indian body as undernourished and weak owing to vegetarian diets. In this light he could have been attempting to force 'beef-tea' into the body against the will of the Indian patient in the belief that the Indian body must be built and formed as the British wished it to be, even if the Indian individual wanted to resist that form.
50. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, Ibid., p. 32.
51. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1862, p. 66.
52. Annual Report of the Three Lunatic Asylums in the Madras Presidency during the Year 1873-74, Madras, 1874, p. 19.
53. D. Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India, Delhi, 1993, p. 108.
54. Asylums in the Madras Presidency during the Year 1873-74, p. 22.
55. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1868, p. 3.
56. Asylums in Bombay for the Year 1876, p. 9.
57. Asylums in the Punjab for the Year 1871-72, p. 3.
58. Asylums in the Madras Presidency during the Year 1875-76, p. 11.
59. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1862, p. 66.
60. Civil Surgeon Rangoon to IMD Burma, 15 January 1877, GOI (Medical) Procs, October 1877, 18-20B.
61. Case Book IA, patient no. 114, admitted 8 June 1861. These references are to the case note volumes of the Lucknow Mental Hospital held in the archives of the Agra Mental Hospital.
62. Asylums in the Madras Presidency during the Year 1877-78, p. 12.
63. Asylums at Bareilly and Benares for the Year 1867, p. 58.
64. Asylums in the Punjab for the Year 1871-72, p. 1.
65. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1868, p. 3.
66. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1868, Ibid., p. 3.
67. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, p. 4.
68. Asylums in the Madras Presidency during the Year 1877-78, p. 6.
69. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1867, p. 15.
70. Case Book IA, patient no. 175, admitted 6 March 1862.
71. Case Book IA, patient no. 56, admitted 24 September 1860.
72. Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine, p. 128.
73. Comm. Rawul Pindee to Government of Punjab, 2 January 1869, GOI (Judicial), 22 May 1869, 86A.
74. President, Committee of Jail Enquiry to Government of Punjab, 7 August 1869, GOI (Judicial), 9 October 1869, 27A.
75. Government of Punjab to GOI, 17 August 1869, GOI (Judicial), 9 October 1869, 26A.
76. Civil Surgeon, Rawul Pindee, to Assistant Commissioner, Rawul Pindee, 21 July 1868, GOI (Judicial), 22 May 1869, 86A.
77. Civil Surgeon, Rangoon to IMD, Burma, 15 January 1877, GOI (Medical), October 1877, 18-20B.
78. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, p. 3.
79. Asylums in the Madras Presidency during the Year 1877-78, p. 11.
80. Asylums in the Madras Presidency during the Year 1877-78, Ibid., p. 22.
81. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p. 266.
82. Case Book IA, patient no. 103, admitted 9 May 1861.
83. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1874-75, p. 28.
84. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1874-75, Ibid., p. 16.
85. Asylums in the Punjab for the Year 1876, pp. 18-19.
86. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1862, p. 66.
87. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, p. 44.
88. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1863, p. 3.
89. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1863, Ibid., p. 72.
90. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, p. 29.
91. Annual Inspection Report of the Dispensaries in Oudh for the Year 1872, Lucknow, 1873, p. 299.
92. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1862, p. 30.
93. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1874-75, p. 28.
94. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1874-75, Ibid., p. 45.
95. Asylums in the Punjab for the Year 1875, p. 3.
96. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, p. 30.
97. Asylums in the Punjab for the Year 1874, p. 2.
98. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1862, p. 28.
99. Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1873-74, p. 8.
100. M. Dols, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, D. Immisch, ed., Oxford, 1992, pp. 112-32.
101. Scull, Social Order/Menial Disorder, p. 51.
102. Case Book II, patient no. 203, admitted 22 July 1865.
103. Asylums in Bengal for the Year 1862, p. 13.
104. A. Appadurai, 'Number in the Colonial Imagination', in C.A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, Philadelphia, 1993, p. 335.
105. G. Chatterjee, Child Criminals and the Raj, New Delhi, 1995, p. 188;
106. see also, L. Mathur, Kala Pani: History of Andaman and Nicobar Islands with a Study of India's Freedom Struggle, Delhi, 1985, who finds that in the British penal colonies, 'one of the main objectives of sending a convict to the penal settlement of Andamans was to provide opportunities to a convict to reform himself', p. 64.
107. See, for example, S. Nigam, 'Disciplining and Policing the "Criminals by Birth", Part 2: The Development of a Disciplinary System, 1871-1900', in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 27(3), 1990.
108. See, for example, R. Guha, 'Forestry and Social Protest in British Kumaun, c. 1893-91', in R. Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies IV, Delhi, 1985.
109. Vaughan, Curing their Ills, p. 10.
110. Report of the Lunatic Asylums at Bareilly and Benares for the Year 1876, p. 59.