Author: Sarah Ann Pinto

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13:

Lunatic asylums in the Bombay Presidency were characteristically custodial. In 1793, the government sanctioned the building of the first asylum in the Presidency. During the nineteenth century, they built more asylums, adding to their number. However, by the early twentieth century, these asylums remained mere 'lock-ups' for those deemed dangerous to society. Lunacy administration, as one superintendent noted, was the veritable Cinderella in the family of colonial institutions. In terms of the public use of asylums by Indians, in 1905 the total patient population of the asylums in the Bombay Presidency stood only at 1203 patients. This was a meagre number compared to the asylum patient population in Britain. The poor admission numbers baffled both the government and the Indian press. This thesis argues that the colonial lunatic asylum did not assimilate into Indian society and therefore remained a failed colonial-medical enterprise. Colonial agencies attributed the poor quality of asylum treatment practices to 'native apathy' in matters of mental health, and the low admission numbers to 'less-brain energy' of Indians. Eduardo Duran has argued that colonial institutions, because of their lack of cultural competence, inflicted historical traumas on indigenous people; historical traumas affect people on three levels: physical, psychological, and spiritual. The thesis contends that Indian 'apathy' was a mere reaction to the historical traumas caused by the asylum system. The thesis accounts for these historical traumas. The first chapter argues that the lunatic asylum contended with two intrinsic characteristics of Indian society - its integrated spiritual-somatic understanding of insanity and its close family ties. The 'apathy' of the Indian population towards the asylum system, then, was a reaction to the wounds caused by the colonial undermining of Indian worldviews, medical knowledge, and socio-cultural practices. In the second chapter, the thesis proceeds to examin