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Biography and Homoeopathy in Bengal: Colonial lives of a European heterodoxy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2015

SHINJINI DAS
SHINJINI DAS*
Affiliation:
Centre for Research in Arts, Social Science, and Humanities, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Despite being recognized as a significant literary mode in understanding the advent of the modern self, biographies as a genre have received relatively little attention from South Asian historians. Likewise, histories of science and healing in British India have largely ignored the colonial trajectories of those sectarian, dissenting, supposedly pseudo-sciences and medical heterodoxies that have flourished in Europe since the late eighteenth century. This article addresses these gaps in the historiography to identify biographies as a principal mode through which an incipient, ‘heterodox’ Western science like homoeopathy could consolidate and sustain itself in Bengal. In recovering the cultural history of a category that the state archives render largely invisible, this article argues that biographies are more than a mere repository of individual lives, and in fact are a veritable site of power. In bringing histories of print and publishing, histories of medicine, and histories of life writing practices together, it pursues two broad themes: first, it analyses the sociocultural strategies and networks by which scientific doctrines and concepts are translated across cultural borders. It explores the relation between medical commerce, print capital, and therapeutic knowledge to illustrate that acculturation of medical science necessarily drew upon and reinforced local constellations of class, kinship, and religion. Second, it simultaneously reflects upon the expanding genre of homoeopathic biographies published since the mid-nineteenth century: on their features, relevance, and functions, examining in particular the contemporary status of biography vis-à-vis ‘history’ in writing objective pasts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 1732 - 1771
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I thank the anonymous referees and the editorial team of Modern Asian Studies, along with Partha Chatterjee, David Arnold, Christopher Pinney, Jim Secord, Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Guy Attewell, Bodhisattva Kar, Shrimoy Roychaudhuri, Sukanya Sarbadhikary, Kate Nichols, and Rohan Deb Roy for their comments on various drafts of this article.

References

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15 Of course, individual-centric, microhistorical studies need to be distinguished from the specialization of ‘intellectual history’, which, while engaging in individual-centric analysis, essentially deals with the ideas and intellectual trajectories of major thinkers.

16 See Stewart, Tony K., ‘One Text from Many: Caitanya Caritamrita as ‘Classic and Commentary’, in Callewaert, Wianad and Snell, Rupert (eds), According to Tradition: Hagiographical Writing in India, Harrasowitz Verlag Wiesbaden, 1994, pp. 231–48Google Scholar, and Kumar, Uday, ‘Writing the Life of the Guru, Chattampi Swamikal, Sree Narayan Guru and Modes of Biographical Construction’, in Ramaswamy, Vijaya and Sharma, Yogesh (eds), Biography as History: Indian Perspectives, Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2009, pp. 53–87Google Scholar; Quintman, Andrew, Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet's Great Saint Milarepa, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013Google Scholar.

17 The article refers interchangeably to homoeopathy as both ‘science’ and ‘medicine’ as it was often perceived and championed in Bengal as a new scientific therapy from the West. For a historiographic overview of the complex relation between history of medicine and history of science that throws light on the evolving understanding and connotations of ‘science’ with regard to ‘medicine’, see Warner, John Harley, ‘History of Science and Sciences of Medicine’, Osiris, vol. 10, 1995, pp. 164–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19 For a classic study of questions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Victorian medicine, see Bynum, W. F. and Porter, Roy (eds), Medical Fringe and Medical Orthodoxy 1750–1850, London and Wolfeboro, New Hampshire: Croom Helm, 1987Google Scholar. Also see Cooter, Roger (ed.), Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine, New York: St Martin's Press, 1988, pp. x–xviiCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a survey of the ways in which orthodoxy and heterodoxy were key operative terms in not only the Victorian medical world, but equally in Victorian sciences, see Winter, Alison, ‘The Construction of Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Early Victorian Life Sciences’, in Lightman, Bernard (ed.), Victorian Science in Context, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 24–50Google Scholar.

20 For a historical study of varieties of non-canonized practices, see Hardiman, David and Mukharji, Projit (eds), Medical Marginality in South Asia: Situating Subaltern Therapeutics, New York: Routledge, 2012Google Scholar. Medical anthropologists have predictably done more work in this direction; for instance, see Sax, William, God of Justice: Ritual Healing in the Central Himalaya, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009Google Scholar.

21 See, for instance, the taxonomy of medical practices delineated in ‘Agenda’, in David Hardiman and Projit Mukharji (eds), Medical Marginality in South Asia, pp. 2–3, 7.

22 For efforts at supposed harmony and syncretism, see Khaleeli, Zhaleh, ‘Harmony or Hegemony? The Rise and Fall of the Native Medical Institution, Calcutta; 1822–35’, South Asia Research, vol. 21, 2001, pp. 77–104CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

23 See, for instance, Harrison, Mark, Public Health in British India: Anglo India Preventive Medicine 1859–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 166–200Google Scholar.

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26 For a detailed discussion of the expulsion, see Biswas, Arun Kumar, Collected Works of Mahendralal Sircar, Eugene Lafont and the Science Movement, 1860–1910, Kolkata: Asiatic Society, 2003, pp. 231–47Google Scholar.

27 Anonymous, ‘Homoeopathy and the University of Calcutta’, Indian Medical Gazette, vol. 13, June 1878, p. 159.

28 See the discussion of the Medical Bills in Berger, Rachel, ‘Ayurveda and the Making of the Urban Middle Class in North India 1900–1945’, in Wujastyk, Dagmar and Smith, Frederick (eds), Modern and Global Ayurveda: Pluralism and Paradigms, Albany: SUNY Press, 2008, pp. 103–4Google Scholar.

29 A recent spate of research on the institution of the South Asian family and law unravels the ways in which the family as an institution was deeply controlled by the colonial state. Of particular relevance is Ritu Birla's work on colonial legislations and the Marwari family-firm, since homoeopathic commerce was significantly reliant on the family firm model. See Birla, Ritu, Stages of Capital: Law, Culture and Market Governance in Late Colonial India, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2009Google Scholar. Likewise, mechanisms of surveillance of the print market by the state have been pointed out by a number of south Asian scholars, including Tapti Roy, ‘Disciplining the Printed Text’, pp. 30–61, and Farina Mir, Social Space of Language.

30 A range of work has initiated interesting conversations about unorthodox, marginal, often state-censored medico-scientific practices with regard to various forms of print networks. See Adams, Vincenne, ‘The Sacred in the Scientific: Ambiguous Practices of Science in Tibetan Medicine’, Cultural Anthropology, vol. 16:1, 2001, pp. 542–75CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Ito, Akiko, ‘How Electricity Energizes the Body: Electrotherapeutics and Its Analogy of Life in Japanese Medical Context’, in Raina, Dhruv and Gunergun, Feza (eds), Science Between Europe and Asia, Historical Studies on the Transmission, Adoption and Adaptation of Knowledge, Springer, 2011, pp. 245–58Google Scholar; Joel Cabrita, ‘People of Adam: Divine Healing and Racial Cosmopolitanism in the Early Twentieth-Century Transvaal, South Africa’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 57:2, pp. 1–36; Elshakry, Marwa, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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50 See, for instance, Arun Kumar Biswas (ed.), Gleanings of the Past, p. 16.

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55 Ghose, Sarat Chandra, Life of Dr. Mahendralal Sircar, Calcutta: Oriental Publishing Home, 1909, 1st edition, p. 55Google Scholar.

56 Mahesh Chandra Bhattacharya, ‘Preface’, Atmakatha (My Life), Calcutta: Economic Press, 1957, 4th edition, page number not cited. Likewise, the monograph Life of Dr. Mahendralal Sircar, first published in 1909, was republished in 1935 by Hahnemann Publishing Company on grounds of ‘increasing popular demand’.

57 Julie Codell, The Victorian Artist, pp. 6–7.

58 The Latin phrase ‘similia similibus curatur’, meaning ‘like cures like’, popularly referred to as the ‘law of similars’, was widely written about as the core principle of homoeopathy as enunciated by Hahnemann.

59 Ray, Mahendranath, Homoeopathy Abishkorta Samuel Hahnemann er Jiboni (Biography of Samuel Hahnemann, the discoverer of Homoeopathy), Taligunj: Kasi Kharda Press, 1881, pp. 3–17Google Scholar.

60 Ghosh, Surendra Mohan, Susrut o Hyaniman (Susrut and Hahnemann), Calcutta: Bengal Medical Library, 1906, pp. 2, 6–11Google Scholar.

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62 See Callewaert, Wianad and Snell, Rupert (eds), According to Tradition: Hagiographical Writing in India, Harrasowitz Verlag Wiesbaden, 1994, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

63 S. C. Ghose, ‘Homoeopathy and Its First Missionary in India’, p. 451.

64 D. N. Ray, Daktar D. N. Ray er Atmakatha (Autobiography of Dr D. N. Ray), Publisher not cited, 1929, p. 273.

65 Ghosh, Sarat Chandra, ‘Dr. L. Salzer M.D’, Hahnemann, vol. 22:6, 1939, pp. 326–27Google Scholar.

66 Ghosh, Saratchandra, ‘Bharatbarshe Homoeopathy Chikitshar Sorbo pratham Pathopradarshak o Pracharak Dr. Rajendralal Datta’ (‘The Pioneer Physician and Perpetrator of Homoeopathy in India’), Hahnemann, vol. 22:1, 1939, p. 19Google Scholar.

67 Biographies and autobiographies of most physicians including Batakrishna Pal, Pratap Chandra Majumdar, Lokenath Maitra, D. N. Ray have elaborate details of their property acquired through homoeopathic enterprise. For instance, see Majumdar, Jitendranath, ‘Dr. Pratap Chandra Majumdar M.D’, Hahnemann, vol. 23:8, 1940, pp. 452–53Google Scholar.

68 For instance, see Ghosh, Sarat Chandra, ‘Dr. Brajendranath Bandopadhyay M.D’, Hahnemann, vol. 23:3, 1940, p. 133Google Scholar. Also see Mukhopadhyay, Gopal Chandra, Sadhu Batakrishna Pal (Batakrishna Pal, the Great), Vol. II, Calcutta: Batakrishna Pal, 1919, pp. 168–69Google Scholar.

69 See, for instance, Mukhopadhyay, Rashbehari, ‘Shworgiyo Raysaheb Dinabandhu Mukhopadhyay er Jiboni’ (‘Life of Late Honourable Rashbehari Mukhopadhyay’), Hahnemann, vol. 4:8, 1921, p. 293Google Scholar.

70 Ghose, S. C., ‘Homoeopathy and Its First Missionary in India’, The Hahnemannian Gleanings, vol. 3:8, September 1932, pp. 338–39Google Scholar.

71 For instance, see Mukhopadhyay, Rashbehari, ‘Shworgiyo Raysaheb Dinabandhu Mukhopadhyay er Jiboni’ (‘Life of Late Honourable Rashbehari Mukhopadhyay’), Hahnemann, vol. 4:7, 1921, p. 147Google Scholar.

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73 Talapatra, Srish Chandra, Maheshchandra Charitkatha (Life of Mahesh Chandra), Calcutta: Economic Press, 1946, pp. 31–32Google Scholar.

74 Ibid., also see Rashbehari Mukhopadhyay, ‘Shworgiyo Raysaheb Dinabandhu Mukhopadhyay er Jiboni’ (‘Life of Late Honourable Dinabandhu Mukhopadhyay’), p. 147.

75 Shastri, Shivnath, ‘Men I Have Seen’, Atmacharit (My Life), Calcutta: Prabasi Karjalay, 1918, reprint Dey's, 2003, pp. 503–4Google Scholar.

76 Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay, Sadhu Batakrishna Pal (Batakrishna Pal, the Great), Vol. II, pp. 205–7.

77 Srish Chandra Talapatra, Mahesh Chandra Charitkatha, pp. 77–78.

78 Holmes, Richard, ‘A Proper Study?’, in Claire, William St (ed.), Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 12Google Scholar.

79 Julie Codell, The Victorian Artist, pp. 8–9.

80 For a more detailed discussion on the homoeopathic practice of family businesses through intergenerational family firms, see Das, Shinjini, ‘Homoeopathic Families, Hindu Nation and the Legislating State: Making of a Vernacular Science, Bengal 1866–1941’, PhD thesis, University College London, 2012, pp. 37–80Google Scholar.

81 ‘Editorial: New Year's Retrospection and Introspection’, The Hahnemannian Gleanings, vol. 4:1, February 1933, pp. 10–11.

82 For instance, see Ghosh, Sarat Chandra (1939), ‘Bharatbarshe Homoeopathic Chikitshar Sorboprothom Pothoprodorshok o Pracharak Dr. Rajendralal Dutta’ (‘The Pioneer Perpetrator of Homoeopathic Treatment in India Dr Rajendralal Dutta’), Hahnemann, vol. 22:1, 1939, pp. 14–16Google Scholar.

83 Sarat Chandra Ghose, ‘Homoeopathy and Its First Missionary in India’, pp. 449–50.

84 For a discussion of Muslim elite families like the Azizi family in the modernization of traditional unani, see Alavi, Seema, Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Healing Tradition 1600–1900, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 14–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the similar powerful presence of ‘hereditary’ practising families like that of Bhai Mohan Singh Vaid or Hakim Ajmal Khan and their ties with commercial print and pharmaceuticals, see Sivaramakrishnan, Kavita, Old Potions, New Bottles: Recasting Indigenous Medicine in Colonial Punjab (1950–1945), Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2005, pp. 106–8Google Scholar.

85 Ghose, S. C., ‘Homoeopathy and Its First Missionary in India’, The Hahnemannian Gleanings, vol. 3:8, September 1932, p. 339Google Scholar.

86 Ghose, S. C., ‘Homoeopathy and Its First Missionary in India’, The Hahnemannian Gleanings, vol. 3:7, August 1932, p. 294Google Scholar.

87 Ghose, Sarat Chandra, Life of Dr. Mahendralal Sircar, 2nd edition, Calcutta: Hahnemann Publishing Company, 1935, p. 27Google Scholar.

88 ‘Editorial Notes and News: Reminiscences of Old Torch-bearers of Homoeopathy in India’, The Hahnemannian Gleanings, vol. 9, June 1939, pp. 266–67.

89 Chatterjee, Partha, ‘Nation and Its Pasts’, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 88–94Google Scholar. Also see Ali, Daud (ed.), Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002Google Scholar.

90 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, pp. 88–92.

91 Ibid., pp. 109–15.

92 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, ‘Public Life of History: An Argument out of India’, Public Culture, vol. 20:1, 2008, p. 145CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Chatterjee, Kumkum, ‘The King of Controversy: History and Nation Making in Late Colonial India’, American Historical Review, vol. 110:5, 2005, pp. 1454–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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94 See Chatterjee, Partha and Aquil, Raziuddin (eds), History in the Vernacular, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008, pp. 1–22Google Scholar.

95 See Kumkum Chatterjee, ‘The King of Controversy’, pp. 1464–75.

96 Sircar, Mahendralal, ‘Hahnemann and His Work’, Calcutta Journal of Medicine, vol. 12:10, May 1887, pp. 391–416Google Scholar.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid.

99 S.C. Ghose, Preface, Life of Dr. Mahendralal Sircar, p. i.

100 Srish Chandra Talapatra, Maheshchandra Charitkatha (Life of Maheshchandra), p. 3. Also see Majumdar, J. N., ‘Dr. Pratap Chandra Majumdar MD’, Hahnemann, vol. 23:5, 1940, pp. 261–67Google Scholar.

101 Mukhopadhyay, Gopal Chandra, Sadhu Batakrishna Pal (Batakrishna Pal, the Great), Vol. II, Calcutta: Batakrishna Pal, 1919, pp. 191, 292Google Scholar.

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103 Ibid., pp. 67–71.

104 Srish Chandra Talapatra, Maheshchandra Charitkatha, pp. 3–4.

105 Ibid.

106 Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Bourgeois Categories Made Global’, pp. 67–68.

107 Ibid., pp. 71–74.

108 Lubenow, William, ‘Intimacy, Imagination, and the Inner Dialectics of Knowledge Communities: The Synthetic Society, 1896–1908’, in Daunton, Martin (ed.), The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 357–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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110 Kapila, Shruti, ‘The Enchantment of Science in India’, Isis, vol. 101:1, 2010, pp. 120–32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

111 See Dodson, Michael, ‘Translating Science, Translating Empire: The Power of Language in Colonial North India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 47:4, 2005, pp. 809–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Elshakry, Marwa, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 See Chatterjee, K., ‘Bharate Krama Samasya’ (‘Problem of Dosage in India’), Hahnemann, vol. 8:8, 1925, pp. 405–7Google Scholar.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid.

115 Ibid.

116 Sircar, Mahendralal, ‘Hahnemann and His Work’, Calcutta Journal of Medicine, vol. 12:10, May 1887, pp. 391–416Google Scholar.

117 Skipwith, F. C., ‘Homoeopathy and Its Introduction into India’, Calcutta Review, vol. 17, 1852, p. 19Google Scholar.

118 For a standard study of Brahmoism as a Western-inspired reform agenda in search of a modern, rational religion, see Kopf, David, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979Google Scholar.

119 Quoted in Sivanath Shastri, ‘Men I Have Seen’, in Atmacharit (My Life), pp. 506–7.

120 Sircar, Amritalal, Obituary Notice of Mahendralal Sircar CIE, MD, DL, Calcutta: Anglo Sanskrit Press, 1905, pp. 30–33Google Scholar. See especially ‘Dr Sircar and Hindu Orthodoxy’, p. 49.

121 Majumdar, J. N., ‘Dr. Pratap Chandra Majumdar M.D’, Hahnemann, vol. 23:6, 1940, pp. 322–24Google Scholar.

122 Ibid, pp. 323–24.

123 Ibid, p. 323.

124 Majumdar, Jitendranath, ‘Dr. Pratap Chandra Majumdar M.D’, Hahnemann, vol. 23:5, 1940, pp. 261–62Google Scholar.

125 F. C. Skipwith, ‘Homoeopathy and Its Introduction into India’, p. 43.

126 Although there is an apparent contradiction in the concurrent homoeopathic self-articulations through Brahmo and Hindu rhetoric, it is more a reflection of that among many Brahmo leaders themselves, especially after the schism of 1866. One needs to remember the varying degrees of Hindu empathies of many Brahmo leaders of the later nineteenth century, including Keshab Chandra Sen, Rajnarain Basu or even Rabindranath Tagore among others.

127 For instance, see Talapatra, Srish Chandra, Mahesh Chandra Charitkatha (Life of Mahesh Chandra), Calcutta: Economic Press, 1946Google Scholar.

128 Anindita Ghosh, Power in Print, pp. 24–25.

129 See, for instance, Srivastan, R., ‘Concept of “Seva” and the “Sevak”, in the Freedom Movement’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 41:5, 2006, pp. 427–38Google Scholar, and Kaur, Raminder, Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism: Public Uses of Religion in Western India, London: Anthem Press, 2003, p. 157Google Scholar.

130 Bhattachrya, Kalikumar, ‘Ashar Alok’ (‘Light of Hope’), Hahnemann, vol. 7:2, 1924, p. 80Google Scholar.

131 Wood, James C., ‘Value and Limitations of Homoeopathy’, The Hahnemannian Gleanings, vol. 3, December 1932, p. 501Google Scholar.

132 Mahendranath Ray, Homoeopathy Abishkorta Samuel Hahnemann er Jiboni, pp. 23–24.

133 F. C. Skipwith, ‘Homoeopathy and Its Introduction into India’, pp. 22–23.

134 Ghosh, Himangshushekhar, ‘Hahnemann O Adhunik Bigyan’ (‘Hahnemann and Modern Science’), Hahnemann, vol. 23:1, 1940, pp. 22–23Google Scholar.

135 Ibid. p. 20.

136 Bandopadhyay, Bhupendranath, ‘Smriti Sabha’ (‘Memorial Meeting’), Hahnemann, vol. 9:1, 1926, p. 34Google Scholar.

137 Himangshushekhar Ghosh, ‘Hahnemann O Adhunik Bigyan’, p. 20.

138 The journal Hahnemann, for instance, published a series of poems on Hahnemann in its different issues in 1925, which were titled variously as ‘Prabhu Hahnemann er Proti’, ‘Guru Hahnemann er Proti’, ‘Maharshi Hahnemann er Proti’, and so on. For instance, see Bhattacharya, Kalikumar, ‘Prabhu Hahnemann er Proti’ (‘To Hahnemann the Divine’), Hahnemann, vol. 8:5, 1925, p. 1Google Scholar.

139 Biswas, Radharaman, ‘Deboddeshe’ (‘To the Almighty’), Hahnemann, vol. 23:1, 1940, p. 19Google Scholar.

140 Anonymous, ‘Presidential Address at the Annual Meeting of the Midnapore Hahnemann Association’, Hahnemann, vol. 10:2, 1927, pp. 65–66Google Scholar.

141 Ghosh, Saratchandra, ‘Hahnemann’, Hahnemann, vol. 22:1, 1939, p. 1Google Scholar.

142 Shankar De, Ajit, ‘Shantir Shandhan’ (‘In Search of Peace’), Homoeopathy Pracharak, vol. 2:1, April 1928, pp. 42–45Google Scholar.

143 Michael Dodson, ‘Translating Science, Translating Empire’, pp. 809–35.

144 Basanta Datta (ed.), ‘Review by Samaj Darpan’, Datta's Homoeopathy Series in Bengalee, 3, March 1876, promotional advertisement at the end.

145 For discussions on colonial administrative efforts at translation of Western knowledge for pedagogic purposes, see Pande, Ishita, Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire, London and New York: Routledge, 2010, pp. 77–82Google Scholar, and Michael Dodson, ‘Translating Science, Translating Empire’, pp. 809–35.

146 It should be noted that Hahnemann was the name of a number of journals circulating in Bengal since the late nineteenth century. Hahnemann edited by Basanta Kumar Datta was different from Hahnemann published by the Hahnemann Publishing Company of the Bhars.

147 Kumar Datta, Basanta, ‘Homoeopathic Bangla Sahitya’ (‘Homoeopathic Bengali Literature’), Hahnemann, vol. 2:12, 1884, p. 222Google Scholar.

148 Ibid., p. 183.

149 Ibid.

150 Although there have been some critical explorations in science biographies in Anglo-American scholarship, yet, in a recent anthology on new sites to study science, Bernard Lightman urges a more serious engagement with science biographies. See Lightman, Bernard and Fyfe, Aileen (eds), Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 14Google Scholar.

151 Appadurai, Arjun, ‘Archive and Aspiration’, in Brouwer, Joke and Mulder, Arjen (eds), Information Is Alive, Rotterdam: V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers, 2003, p. 16Google Scholar.

152 Ibid., p. 16.

153 Ibid., p. 17.

154 Kumar Datta, Basanta, ‘Homoeopathic Bangla Sahitya’, Homoeopathic Bengali Literature, 1884, Hahnemann, vol. 2:10, 1884, p. 182Google Scholar.

155 For a substantive discussion of these questions in relation to the entire corpus of life histories in South Asia, see David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn (eds), Telling Lives in India, pp. 2–3, 19–22.

156 Kaviraj, Sudipta, ‘The Invention of Private Life: A Reading of Shibnath Shastri's Autobiography’, in Arnold, David and Blackburn, Stuart (eds), Telling Lives in India, pp. 83–115Google Scholar. Also see Mines, Mattison, Public Faces, Private Voices: Community and Individuality in South India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

157 S. C. Ghose, ‘Homoeopathy and Its First Missionary in India’, p. 341.