Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal

This book focuses on the entwinement of politics and medicine and power and knowledge in colonial India. Tracing the cultural determinants of biological race theory and contextualizing the understanding of race as pathology, the book demonstrates how racialism was compatible with the ideologies and policies of imperial liberalism.

Ishita Pande is Assistant Professor of History at Queen's University, Ontario. Her research interests include the history of science and medicine, cities, gender, race and childhood.

1. Introduction Part 1: Race and Place 2. Diagnosing Character: Liberal Racialism and the Black Aryan 3. Standard Deviation: 'National Character' and a Science of Government Part 2: Blood and Morals 4. Seeing Reason: Dissection, History and English Education Part 3: City and Citizenship 5. Sanitary Subjects: Fevers, Filth and Freedom in a 'Dual City'' 6. Sensing Modernity: Civility, Class and Citizenship in a 'Sanitary City' Part 4: Sex and Public 7. Degenerate Nation: Sex, Public and a Government of Self Epilogue: Bengali Modern