Vernacularizing the Body Informational Egalitarianism, Hindu Divine Design, and Race in Physiology Schoolbooks, Bengal 1859–1877

• Published in: Bulletin of the history of medicine Vol. 91; no. 3; pp. 554 - 585
• Main Author: MUKHARJI, PROJIT BIHARI
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Johns Hopkins University Press 2017
• Subjects: Anatomical systems; Anatomy & physiology; Bangladesh; Bengali; British history; Colloquial language; Colonialism; Curricula; Encyclopedias; History of medicine; History, 19th Century; Humans; India; Knowledge; Medicine; Physiology; Physiology - education; Physiology - history; Politics; Postcolonialism; Schools; Schools - history; Textbooks as Topic - history; United Kingdom; England; Edinburgh Scotland; Bengal India; India; South Asia; Kolkata India
• ISSN: 0007-5140; 1086-3176; 1086-3176; 1896-3176
• DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2017.0060

Government-aided vernacular schools introduced "human physiology" as a subject in 1859. I use the first couple of schoolbooks and the debate running up to the introduction of the subject to open up the particular and specific histories through which modern anatomo-physiological knowledge was vernacularized in colonial Bengal. In so doing I have two interconnected goals in this article. My first goal is to analyze the precocious decision to teach human physiology to colonial schoolboys, at a time when this was the norm neither in Great Britain nor indeed in traditional Bengali schools. My second goal is to use this case to further develop "vernacularization" as a conceptual tool. In pursuing these twin objectives, I simultaneously hope to move the debate on modern anatomo-physiological knowledge in South Asia away from the level of epistemic superiority and onto-politics to the level of concrete historical particularities.