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      Gomastahs, Peons, Police and Chowdranies: The Role of Indian Subordinate in the Functioning of the Lock Hospitals and the Indian Contagious Diseases Act, 1805 to 1889 Translated title: Gomastahs, Peons, Polizei und Chowdranies: Die Rolle der indischen Untergebenen in den Krankenhäusern für Geschlechtskrankheiten und des Contagious Diseases Act, 1805–1889

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      Springer International Publishing
      Gender, colonial medicine, venereal diseases, Madras, gomastah, lock hospital, caste

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          Abstract

          Recent scholarship on the social history of health and medicine in colonial India has moved beyond enclavist or hegemonic aspects of imperial medicine and has rather focused on the role of Indian intermediaries and the fractured nature of colonial hegemony. Drawing inspiration from this scholarship, the article highlights the significance of the Indian subordinates in the lock hospital system in the nineteenth century Madras Presidency. This study focuses on a class of Indian subordinates called the “ gomastah”, who were employed to detect clandestine prostitution in Madras to control the spread of venereal disease. It also underlines the role of other native and non-native subordinates such as Dhais, Chowdranies and Matrons, the ways in which they became indispensable for the smoother operation of the Contagious Diseases Act and the lock hospitals on a day-to-day basis. By emphasising how Indian subordinates were able to bring in caste biases within colonial governmentality, adding another layer to the colonial prejudices and xenophobia against the native population, it underlines the fact that there was not a one-way appropriation or facilitation of the coloniser’s knowledge or biases by the colonised intermediaries. Rather, it argues for an interaction between them, and highlights the complexities of caste hierarchies and prejudice within the everyday colonial governmentality. Moreover, the article focuses on the consequent chaos and inherent power struggle between different factions of colonial staff.

          Translated abstract

          Die jüngere Forschung zur Sozialgeschichte der Gesundheit und Medizin im kolonialen Indien hat sich jenseits spezifischer hegemonialer Aspekte der imperialen Medizin mittlerweile verstärkt der Bedeutung ihrer indischen Vermittler und der gebrochenen Natur kolonialer Herrschaft zugewandt. Davon inspiriert beleuchtet der Beitrag die Rolle indischer Subalterner im System der Krankenhäuser für Geschlechtskrankheiten der Provinz Madras im 19. Jahrhundert. Er fokussiert auf die so genannten „ Gomastah“, eine Klasse von indischen Untergebenen, die zur Aufdeckung der illegalen Prostitution in Madras eingesetzt wurden, um so die Ausbreitung von Geschlechtskrankheiten zu verhindern. Untersucht wird auch die Rolle anderer einheimischer und nicht einheimischer Untergebener wie der Dhais, Chowdranies und Matrons, die für die reibungslose Umsetzung des Contagious Diseases Act und das alltägliche Funktionieren dieser Krankenhäuser unverzichtbar waren. Indem herausgearbeitet wird, wie indisches Kastendenken in die koloniale Gouvernementalität einfließen konnte und so koloniale Vorurteile und Xenophobie stärkte, unterstreicht der Artikel die Tatsache, dass es keine einseitige Aneignung oder Vermittlung kolonialen Wissens und kolonialer Vorannahmen durch die kolonisierten Vermittler gab. Argumentiert wird vielmehr für deren Interaktion, betont wird die komplexe Bedeutung des Kastensystems und seiner Vorurteile für das alltägliche koloniale Regierungshandeln. Zudem befasst sich der Beitrag mit dem daraus resultierenden Chaos und den inhärenten Machtkämpfen zwischen verschiedenen Gruppierungen des kolonialen Personals.

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          Most cited references57

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          Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India

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            Governmentality

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              Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                dramagopalak@student.unimelb.edu.au , rg.divya10@gmail.com
                Journal
                NTM
                NTM
                Ntm
                Springer International Publishing (Cham )
                0036-6978
                1420-9144
                10 February 2022
                10 February 2022
                2022
                : 30
                : 1
                : 29-61
                Affiliations
                GRID grid.1008.9, ISNI 0000 0001 2179 088X, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts, , University of Melbourne, ; Melbourne, Victoria Australia
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8452-1791
                Article
                324
                10.1007/s00048-022-00324-z
                8885511
                35142894
                9bdb20f5-0bea-4f3a-9069-bd9833e3ad8f
                © The Author(s) 2022

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 13 January 2022
                Funding
                Funded by: University of Melbourne
                Categories
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                © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

                History
                gender,colonial medicine,venereal diseases,madras,gomastah,lock hospital,caste
                History
                gender, colonial medicine, venereal diseases, madras, gomastah, lock hospital, caste

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