Ayurveda Made Modern
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9780230284555
Description: This book explores the ways in which Ayurveda, the oldest medical tradition of the Indian subcontinent, was transformed from a composite of 'ancient' medical knowledge into a 'modern' medical system, suited to the demands posed by apparatuses of health developed in colonial India. It examines the shift between an entrenched colonial reticence to consider the Indigenous Medical Systems as legitimate scientific medicine, to a growing acceptance of Ayurvedic medicine following the First World War. Locating the moment of transition within the implementation of a dyarchic system of governance in 1919, the book argues that the revamping of the 'Medical Services' into an important new category of regional governance ushered in an era of health planning that considered curative and preventative medicine as key components of the 'health' of the population. As such, it illuminates the way in which conceptions of power, authority and agency were newly configured and consolidated as politics were revamped in the late colonial India.