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A Study of Psychiatry and Mental Asylums in Colonial Kerala*

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A Study of Psychiatry and Mental Asylums in Colonial Kerala* Indian Journal of History of Science, 53.1 (2018) 125-131 DOI: 10.16943/ijhs/2018/v53i1/49371 Project Report Medicine and British Empire in South India: A Study of Psychiatry and Mental Asylums in Colonial Kerala* Santhosh Abraham** 1. INTRODUCTION 1910 presented the asylums as a more permeable A lunatic asylum was established in and hybridized spaces with more of indianization Travancore in Kerala in 1871 to take care of and specialized therapies. It further aims to explore patients with epilepsy, mental retardation and the discourses on medicine in the British Empire psychiatric conditions of the region. One year in India with a special reference to the following in 1872, another asylum was opened in institutionalization of psychiatry to understand the Calicut to receive civil mental patients from intricacies involved and changes incurred in the Malabar, South Canara, Coimbatore and Nilgiris. functioning of colonial asylums in Kerala during These two mental asylums were under the direct the colonial period. patronage and control, either by the royal power The study is based on Colonial Archival or by the British colonial state to take care of the records on medicine and psychiatry. The colonial conditions in these asylums with regard to official correspondences on lunatic asylums, the admissions, treatments, etc. were similar to that annual and triennial superintendents’ reports and of other asylums in India. The asylum, as per monthly statements on the working of Lunatic Annual Report of the Lunatic Asylums of Madras Asylums in Calicut and Trivandrum have been Presidency for the Year 1879, remains too small searched and taken into account. for the number of cases seeking admission; there is not sufficient separation of classes of insane; Apart from these, the census reports, chronic cases and incurables are obliged to live in medical journals, colonial official and textbooks close daily companionship and in proximity with were also identified and collected. This project is convalescents and even with sane patients who divided into the following chapters: are awaiting discharge. This was the state of affairs 1. Introduction of the Govt. mental health care in the year 1879. 2. Psychiatry, Mental Illness and Institutions in The present research study examines the India : Ancient to Colonial colonial character of Calicut Lunatic Asylum in 3. Calicut Lunatic Asylum: An Institutional Kerala to understand the ways in which History institutional psychiatric care was understood, debated and carried out in British India between 4. Treatments in the Calicut Lunatic Asylum: A 1871 and 1947. The later reports however, after Permeable Space of Care? * The project was accomplished under the sponsorship of Indian National Commission for History of Science between the period August 2014 and March 2017. **Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, Chennai. Email: [email protected] 126 INDIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE 5. Asylums as a Hybridised Space: Case of judgment’ (Foucault, 2001, p. 248) . Foucauldian Travancore, Calicut and Cochin notions of asylum in Europe were further 6. Conclusions scrutinized by several scholars and applied in the case of colonial Indian psychiatry recent years. In continuation of Foucauldian lines these studies 2. PSYCHIATRY, MENTAL ILLNESS AND have reinforced the notion of asylum as an INSTITUTIONS IN INDIA: ANCIENT TO COLONIAL impenetrable and imposing prison in the colonial Mental illness and treatments have been system (Scull, 1979). Waltraud Ernst has argued mentioned and documented in India since the that the discourses on insanity in nineteenth ancient times. The Vedic texts and various century should be understood in the context of commentaries in ancient India made several society, and the colonial psychiatry utilized social references to disordered states of mind and means discriminations based on race and class to uphold of coping with them. The ancient Indian texts white supremacy (Ernst, 1991). Ernst has further describe mental illness, ascribed to disregard of argued that that the early lunatic asylums in British God, or inadequate diet, and other psychiatric Indian initially were more like private symptoms to imbalance of bodily fluids. establishments to treat insane soldiers of EIC and Descriptions of conditions similar to schizophrenia catered mainly for the colonial European and bipolar disorder also appear in the Vedic texts community. The mentally ill from the general (Haque and Goyal, 2010). Apart from this, the population was continued to be neglected or traditional Indian medical systems such as attended by the local communities led by Ayurveda, Unani and Sidha have also prescribed traditional Indian medical experts. Soon, the social various forms of care solutions and treatments for reform tendencies and humanitarian concerns of mental illness (Sharma, 2006). There are also early nineteenth century British India resulted in evidences about the institutional establishments setting up ‘government asylums’ to provide for treating mental illness since the time of King approved systems of treatment to Indian lunatics. Asoka and also during the period of Mughal rule.1 As a result by 1820, colonial state established However, the general outlook towards mental government asylums in Madras, Bombay and illness and its treatments in ancient and medieval Calcutta for the exclusive reception of Indian India was connected with religious spheres and patients. However, the character of these lunatic the patients were often kept in a locked sphere asylums were largely on English model that restricting their movements as a way of treatment. asylums could only be measures of social control. In a similar tone, James Mills has pointed out that It is since enlightenment era in Europe that colonial asylums in India were meant to psychiatry and mental illness and its treatment manipulate and regulate vagabonds and dangerous received much attention in the modern period. Indians and that in reality; asylums became areas However, the early conceptions on madness in of controversy and resistance to colonial rule European societies were centered on the belief that (Mills, 2000). ‘madman as a wild beast required taming or a savage whose excesses had to be forcefully Since 1858, with the change of colonial controlled’. According to Michael Foucault, control from East India Company to British crown, ‘psychiatry was purely a western construct and the colonial outlook towards medicine and medical lunatic asylums became sites of disciplining an institutions had changed. The character of British punishing of the self and for surveillance and rule in India changed from a commercial to more 1 Lyons AS, Petrucelli RJ. Ancient India. In: Medicine: An illustrated History, New York, 1997. PROJECT REPORT: MEDICINE AND BRITISH EMPIRE IN SOUTH INDIA 127 ‘responsible’ one.2 In the realm of psychiatric characteristics of both the police state and a liberal governance, new asylums were built at Patna, state in the colony. As part of the making of Dacca, Calcutta, Berhampur, Waltair, psychiatry in colonial India, the British Trichinapally, Colaba, Poona, Dharwar, enumerative practices in the lunatic asylum led to Ahmedabad, Ratnagiri, Hyderabad (Sind), Calicut, the classification, categorization, and construction Travancore, Jabalpur, Banaras, Agra, Bareilly, of a different and peculiar image of the colonial Tezpur and Lahore. While examining the post subject in the colony. This form of colonial state 1858 development of psychiatry in colonial India, in India could be studied deploying Michael many scholars have taken the case beyond the Foucault’s conception of ‘governmentality’ and racism formula and saw this period as a phase of the notion of power and knowledge’.3 In the more of professionalization not only in the context of the emergence of the modern state, psychiatric services but also in the general medical Foucauldian analysis identified that the regime in British India. According to David ‘population often emerged as a field of Arnold, medical and sanitary systems, during the intervention and as an objective of governmental post 1858 act moved beyond colonial enclaves, apparatuses’.4 Similarly, this chapter argues that which had profound impact on Indian society ever since the establishment of the lunatic asylums (Arnold, 1993). This period also marked the in British India, there started several process of increasing Indian acceptance of colonial public classification of inmates very early from the health measures and more Indian participation in admission itself. Various institutional reports and the field of medical profession (Harrison, 1994). correspondences of the colonial lunatic asylums However, in the case of colonial psychiatry, in India provided statistical and qualitative insanity became a site through which colonial state information on insane. continued to express its ideology of discipline and While classifications of patients’ gender, asylums continued as enclaves despite more age, sex, etc., were in tone with the institutional professionalization and indianisation. However, base of asylums, the categories of caste, it appears from the official sources that regime of occupation, religion and most importantly the psychiatry in the early years of twentieth century ‘criminal lunatics’ were more problematic. In has become more accommodative to Indian accordance with the Foucauldian thinking, these conditions as scholars identified more of official categories were new
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