Ritika Ganguly
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Staging ‘Open-minded Science’: Culture and Evidence in Contemporary Ayurvedic Laboratory Research in India A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Ritika Ganguly IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Jean M Langford Karen-Sue Taussig November 2012 © Ritika Ganguly 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been possible because of my friend and partner, Vinod Srinivasan, his love, constant cheering, and unmatchable warmth. I am immensely grateful for my family: Kaveri Ganguly and Shamu Ganguly - my first handholds - always inspiring through their art and ability to love, reassure, and question; for Samrat Bose - my very best friend; and for Nilanjana Bose and Shantanu Bose for caring and loving me in a way that only family can. My advisors Jean M Langford and Karen-Sue Taussig have backed this dissertation with their support, guidance and advice. I cannot thank Jean Langford enough for her expertise, suggestions, recommendations and close reading of my chapters that have enhanced this dissertation, draft to draft. Thanks to David Valentine’s vital inputs throughout my graduate career, David Lipset’s support, and Simona Sawhney’s invaluable insights, reassuring presence, and awe-inspiring teaching. I am deeply indebted to Padma Venkatasubramanian. Without her, my fieldwork would have remained a well laid out plan on paper. Amina Ather, Alex Hankey, Darshan Shankar, Ashwini Konnur, DK Ved, Subramanya Kumar, GG Gangadharan, Balasubramaniam, Bapuji sir, Iyengar sir, GS Lavekar and Thatha sir have been extremely patient and generous with their contemplations, thoughts and their time. Geetha Ugru, Srivathsa and Dr. Shankar’s brilliance and meticulous engagement with my questions and field of study made for an intellectually enriching time in the field. I am profoundly grateful for Dilshaad Begum and Reshma Sulthana’s hospitality, neighborliness and friendship, and Subbalaxmi’s skills, patience and knowledge of Ayurvedic massage that mended my injured back. Thanks also go to my co-travelers from JNU, New Delhi, Sonali Ghosh and Bijita Majumdar-Mishra for being my allies throughout our graduate study years here in the US. My colleagues at the University of Minnesota Naheed Aaftaab, Ju-Young Lee, Saurav Mitra, Avigdor Edminster, Jianfeng Zhu, Ursula Dalinghaus, Murat Altun and Greta Bliss have been a fabulous set of friends, co-conspirators and provocateurs. Many, many thanks especially to Naheed Aaftaab and Ju-Young Lee for reading and commenting on my dissertation drafts. Pramila Vasudevan and Ishani Baruah are incredible friends, who gave me their homes and hot meals when I needed them the most. Namrata Gaikwad’s friendship, softness and genius make this world a gentler place for me. I couldn’t do this (or that) without her. This dissertation was written with the help of the Doctoral Dissertation fellowship from the University of Minnesota and summer stipends from the Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota. I conducted pre-dissertation fieldwork with support from a Graduate Research Partnership Program at the College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota. I am enormously grateful to the National Science Foundation for the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant; the Office of International Programs, University of Minnesota for the OIP Doctoral Fellowship for International Research; and the Societies and Medicines of South Asia Program, French Institute of Pondicherry for crucial dissertation fieldwork support. i DEDICATION For ma and baba ii ABSTRACT In their analyses of traditional medical systems such as Ayurveda, postcolonial critics of science and technology have often pointed to the hierarchies, inequalities and asymmetries between western and non-western, biomedical and traditional, knowledge claims and practices. This dissertation explores Ayurvedic knowledge-making itself as a site that consolidates hierarchies, produces power, and confers privilege. Ethnographically situated at an Ayurvedic laboratory, this study argues that ‘open- minded science’ – a recent articulation by a Hindu science elite to name the collaborative production of contemporary Ayurvedic knowledge – produces new forms of exclusions that express their cultural authority through a scientific discourse on the revitalization of the Indian medical heritage. Central to this project are the ways in which contemporary Ayurvedic practice brings into view a wider set of relationships – those between knowledges that come to be characterized as codified and folk, between experts and community, and ultimately, between science and politics. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures v List of Annexures vi Chapter 1 Introduction 1-32 1.1 Background 15 1.2 Trans-disciplinary Science and the Open-minded Scientist 21 1.3 A note on the practice of ethnographic production 27 1.4 Figures 32 Chapter 2 Ritual Immersion(s) 33- 66 2.1 Of pharmacies and offices of deities 37 2.2 “Contemporary relevance” and the politics of Ritual 45 2.3 “Now they call me the breaker of the TSM” 58 Chapter 3 Keywor(l)ds: Expertise, Community, Science, Society; Folk, Laboratory, Plants, Quality. 67-97 3.1 Laboratory and the creation of value 70 3.1.1 Expertise. 71 3.1.2 Quality. 74 3.1.3 “How to do.” 83 3.2 The “English problem” 92 Chapter 4 Making ‘sense’ inside the lab: Ayurvedic experiments with acintya (the unthinkable) and acintita (the unthought) 98-141 4.1 “I know it, but I cannot describe it, cannot explain it….cannot 101 say to you exactly that it is because of this, this, this, this.” 4.2 The sensorium. 106 4.3 “Unintentional adulterations” 109 4.4 Developing further. Or, training to hear, touch, smell, see, taste. 117 4.5 The world of Ayurvedic medicines and a qualitative analysis 124 of rasa within it. 4.6 Whys and hows. 137 Annexures 142-152 Conclusion 153-158 Works Cited 159-169 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1(a) 32 Figure 1(b) 32 v LIST OF ANNEXURES 142 Annexure 1a Annexure 1b 143 Annexure 2a 145 Annexure 2b 146 Annexure 3a 147 Annexure 3b 148 Annexure 3c 149 Annexure 4a 150 Annexure 4b 151 Annexure 5 152 vi Introduction In a very packed conference hall filled with Ayurvedic vaidyas, botanists, chemists, biochemists, and Sanskrit scholars young and old, Dr. K.N. Ganeshaiah – agricultural scientist and professor at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore – posed a direct question in his presentation titled “What is Sañjīvanī? He was inviting us to ask with him – “how did Sañjīvanī become a fact?” Sañjīvanī (hereafter Sanjeevani) is a plant that finds its first dated mention in Valmiki’s Rāmāyaŋa (hereafter Ramayana) - one of the two preeminent epic poems of the Hindu tradition. The plant is invoked in a chapter in the yuddha kānda (the book/section on war) that sets the stage for the later chapters narrating the epic battle between Rāma and Rāvana. When Lakshmana (Rāma’s brother and close ally) was wounded by Rāvana (the legendary demon king) by his poisonous arrow, the monkey physician Sushena examines the inflicted and struck-down Lakshmana and assures a crushed and aggrieved Rāma that his brother is not dead. Lakshmana is described in this scene as being “bathed in blood” and wiggling like a serpent.1” Sushena, while assessing Lakshmana’s state and comforting Rāma, orders Hanumāna (Rāma’s monkey devotee and close aid) to immediately soar and speed to a specific mountain range (which the verse describes as auśadhī parvatam / mountain of medicine) to bring back four herbs that would restore Lakshmana’s health/life/consciousness. Confronted with the mountain containing the four great medicinal herbs (mahaușadhīm) recommended by Sushena, namely, Vishalyakarani (which was to be identified as the herb that grew on the mountain’s southern peak), Sāvarnakarani, Samjīvakarani (Sanjeevani) and Samdhānakarani that grew alongside several other plants, Hanumān is confused and unable to identify the recommended four. Strength and speed being his qualities, he 1 ‘eśa rāvaŋāvegena lakśmaņāh patitah kshitau | sarpavadveştate vīro mama shokamudīrayan,’ “This heroic Lakshmana, falling down on earth yielding to Ravana’s prowess, is wiggling like a serpent, causing an increase in grief to me.” (Rāma’s defeated reaction to Rāvana’s attack on his brother. In these lines, he is confiding in Sushena about being overcome with agony at his brother’s death, resulting in an apathy and impassivity to engage in battle, or in life). 6-101-3. 1 uproots the entire mountain and hurries back to the battlefield just beyond the current borders of Southern India, where Lakshmana lay unconscious. No sooner than Sushena - the monkey physician - identifies, pounds and crushes the four specific herbs and administers them to Lakshmana through the nose, Lakshmana is rid of the spear lodged in his body, regaining consciousness and resuming dialogue with Rāma. “Can we do a scientific study of this?” Dr. Ganeshaiah’s PowerPoint slide asked. “Hanumāna was a poor taxonomist, and his GIS (Geographic Information System) equipment was not that strong, so he took the whole mountain, he took a lot of biodiversity, to Sri Lanka. Piracy of knowledge,” he added, with the additional effect of carefully situating his question about the possibility of a “scientific study” of a “mythological plant” within a particular kind of discourse. The audience did not relate to this discourse as just any scientific discourse, but a specifically “modern” one, within which botanical taxonomy, GIS, resources of biodiversity, and