The Asylum as ‘Middle Ground’: Contestations and Negotiations

Pinto, Sarah Ann

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94244-5_3

Sarah Ann Pinto⁴

Part of the book series: Mental Health in Historical Perspective ((MHHP))

287 Accesses

Abstract

By the early twentieth century, Bombay’s colonial asylum system had become a failed colonial enterprise. This chapter examines the power relations between the asylum bureaucracy and the role of a highly fragmented colonial official hierarchy as a cause of the failure of the asylum system between 1793 and 1921. It argues that internal power contestations paved the way for negotiations with local people transforming Bombay’s colonial asylum into a ‘middle ground’. Using the agency of superintendents as the lynchpin, the chapter examines the complex relationships and encounters between colonialism and Indians as they contested, resisted, and co-existed with each other. The creation of the asylum as a ‘middle ground’ in the colony meant that while some form of control was executed over patients, colonial hegemony was never achieved.

Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 39.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 54.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 84.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
From the Government of Bengal to the Home Department, Government of India, Administration of Lunatic Asylums in India, 25 August 1896, Medical Proceedings, Simla Records 4, Home Department Notes, 1897, Nos. 188–232, NAI, New Delhi.
2.
From Lt. Col. J.P. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA, Mumbai.
3.
From Lt. Col. J.P. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
4.
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980), p. 122.
5.
White, The Middle Ground.
6.
Ibid., pp. 51–51.
7.
David Arnold, ‘Public Health and Public Power: Medicine and Hegemony in Colonial India’, in Daglar Engles and Shula Marks (eds.), Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India (London, New York: British Academic Press, 1994), p. 140.
8.
Arnold, ‘Public Health and Public Power’, p. 140.
9.
Ibid., p. 139.
10.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), pp. 170, 263 in Arnold, ‘Public Health and Public Power’, p. 132.
11.
Muhammad Umair Mushtaq, ‘Public Health in British India: A Brief Account of the History of Medical Services and Disease Prevention in Colonial India’, Indian Journal Community Medicine, Vol. 34, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 6–14.
12.
D.G. Crawford, A History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600–1913 (London: W Thacker and Co., 1914), p. 25.
13.
Ibid., p. 33.
14.
Crawford, A History of the Indian Medical Service, p. 293.
15.
W.S. Jagoe Shaw, ‘The Alienist Department of India’, British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 78, April 1932, p. 336.
16.
S.M. Edwardes, ‘District Administration in Bombay, 1858–1919’, in H.D. Dodwell (ed.), The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 1497–1858, Vol. V1, 2nd Edition (London: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p. 263.
17.
Sir Wilson William Hunter, Bombay 1885–1890: A Study in Indian Administration: (London: H. Frowde; Bombay, B.M. Malabari, 1892), p. 316.
18.
Ibid., p. 275.
19.
Lunacy Act XXXVI of 1858, GoB, GD, 1862–64/15, MSA.
20.
From the Acting Clerk, Petty Sessions, to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 14 June 1812, GoB, PDD, 1812/336, MSA.
21.
Amna Khalid, ‘Subordinate Negotiations; Indigenous Staff, the Colonial State and Public Health’, in Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison (eds.), The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 45.
22.
Shilpi Rajpal, ‘Colonial Psychiatry in Mid-Nineteenth Century India: The James Clark Enquiry’, South Asia Research, 2015, Vol. 35, No. 1, p. 75.
23.
Verney Lovett, ‘The Development of the Services, 1858–1918’, in H.D. Dodwell (ed.), The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 1497–1858, Vol. VI, 2nd Edition (London: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p. 362.
24.
Crawford stated that the earliest mention of lunatic asylums in the Presidency was in the consultations of 14 March 1745/46 ordering a place to be built for lunatics. See D.G. Crawford, A History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600–1913, Vol. 2, pp. 395, 400. In 1793, the Civil Architect petitioned the building of the asylum on Butcher’s Island, noting that ‘there was no such convenience [facility to maintain lunatics] earlier’. From the Civil Architect (to Bombay Castle), 7 November 1793, GoB, PDD, 1793/107, Part 1, MSA.
25.
Lunacy Certificate issued by Surgeon Scott for Benjamin Robertson, 11 July 1797, Bombay Castle, GoB, PDD, 1797/126, MSA.
26.
Waltraud Ernst, ‘Racial, Social and Cultural Factors in the Development of a Colonial Institution: The Bombay Lunatic Asylum (1670–1858)’, Internationales Asienforum, Vol. 22, No. 3–4, 1991, p. 64.
27.
A government letter notes that there were asylums in Sholapur and Karachi. The ‘asylum’ at Sholapur consisted of a few cells attached to the civil hospital. From the Director General of the Medical Department with remarks form the Inspector General of Prisons, 9 December 1858, GoB, GD, 1859/24, MSA.
28.
APR, 1874–1875, p. 15, NLS, Scotland.
29.
APR, 1874–1875, p. 15, NLS.
30.
From the Bombay Medical Board Office to the Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 8 February 1850, GoB, GD, 1849/38, MSA.
31.
From the Principal Inspector General, Medical Department, to the Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 18 June 1863, GoB, GD, 1862–64/15, MSA.
32.
From the Superintending Surgeon to the Secretary of the Medical Board, Belgaum, 15 March 1845, Medical Department, GoB, GD, 1845/43/949, MSA.
33.
From the Chief Engineer, PWD, to the Governor and President in Council, 1 September 1851, GoB, GD, 1851/15, MSA. Up till 1850, patients from Dharwar were sent to the Colaba Lunatic Asylum. Medical Board Report, Bombay Castle, 15 May 1850, GoB, GD, 1850/51, MSA.
34.
A.W. Hughes, A Gazetteer of the Province of Sindh (London: George Bell and Sons, 1874), pp. 490–491.
35.
James Campbell (ed.), Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Kolhapur District, Vol. 24 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1886), p. 288.
36.
From the Cooks(Raghoo and Pandoo), Ratnagiri Lunatic Asylum, to the Superintendent of the Ratnagiri Lunatic Asylum, 3 March 1917, GD, 1917/82, MSA.
37.
From the Surgeon General to the Secretary of Government, 31 January 1902, GoB, GD, 1902/61, MSA.
38.
Triennial Report on the Lunatic Asylums in the Bombay Presidency, 1912–1914, p. 1, NLS.
39.
Waltraud Ernst, ‘Out of Sight and Out of Mind: Insanity in Early 19th Century British India’, in Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe (eds.), Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800–1914: Studies in the Social History of Medicine (London, New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 246.
40.
Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, p. 44.
41.
Waltraud Ernst, Mad Tales from the Raj: Colonial Psychiatry in South Asia, 1800–58 (New York: Anthem Press, 2010), p. 53.
42.
Andrew Scull, ‘Discovery of the Asylum Revisited: Lunacy Reform in the New American Republic’, in Andrew Scull (ed.), Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen (London: Athlone Press, 1981), p. 153.
43.
W.S. Jagoe Shaw, ‘The Alienist Department of India’, British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 78, April 1932, p. 334.
44.
James Mills, Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism: The ‘Native Only’ Lunatic Asylums of British India, 1857–1900 (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 2000), pp. 14, 65; Sanjeev Jain, ‘Psychiatry and Confinement in India’, in Roy Porter and David Wright (eds.), The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 283.
45.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish; the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1977), pp. 171, 173, 294.
46.
Sanjay Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing the “Criminals by Birth”, Part 1: The Making of a Colonial Stereotype—The Criminal Tribes and Castes of North India’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 27, No. 2, 1990, p. 133.
47.
Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 10.
48.
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 171.
49.
Foucault argued that ‘there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, power relations’. See Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 27.
50.
From Asst. Surgeon J.A. Maxwell to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 4 June 1814, GoB, PDD, 1814/368, MSA.
51.
Dr. Maxwell records that blistering was extremely effective in treating patients whose symptoms included swelling. From Asst. Surgeon J.A. Maxwell to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 4 June 1814, GoB, PDD, 1814/368, MSA.
52.
From the Surgeon General to the Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 26 February 1886, GoB, GD, 1886/58, MSA.
53.
Memorandum by the Commissioner of Sindh, No. 1819, 21 August 1895, Medical Proceedings, Government of India, Home Department, Simla Records, September 1897, Nos. 188–232, NAI.
54.
Report on the Lunatic Asylum at Colaba for the Year Ending 1852, GoB, GD, 1853/48, MSA.
55.
S.M. Edwardes describes the cooly: ‘The Naoghani is a skilful workman, trained to deal with heavy loads and experienced in the manipulation of pulleys or blocks and always to be trusted for work that requires nerve. He is also known sometimes as a “bamboo-cooly”’. See S.M. Edwardes, Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, Vol. 1 (Bombay: Times Press, 1909), p. 213; L. Dzuvichu described them as ‘primitive tribes’ who were employed in manual labour for various public works in British India. See L. Dzuvichu, ‘Empire on their Backs: Coolies in the Eastern Borderland of the British Raj’, IRSH, Special Issue, Vol. 59, 2014, p. 91.
56.
Pawrah, also referred to as pawada, is an agricultural hoe used in farming and construction.
57.
From the Superintendent of the Ratnagiri Asylum to the Personal Asst. with the Government of Bombay, 15 August 1912, GoB, GD, 1912/95, MSA.
58.
Statement of Ganapaya Shankar, Patient, Ratnagiri Lunatic Asylum, 14 January 1912, GoB, GD, 1912/95, MSA; Statement of Shabas Shiwa Bhajwe, Patient, Ratnagiri Lunatic Asylum, 14 January 1912, GoB, GD, 1912/95, MSA.
59.
From the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay to the Secretary to Government of Bombay, 22 October 1912, GoB, GD, 1912/95, MSA.
60.
Lovett, ‘The Development of the Services, 1858–1918’, p. 362.
61.
Report on the Lunatic Asylum at Colaba for the Year Ending 1852, Government of Bombay, General Department, 1853/48, MSA, Mumbai. The Surgeon General records the practice of giving pocket money to patients for indulgences like tobacco. Patients were permitted to buy indulgences from the local bazar. Since the practice was ‘highly prized by lunatics’, the expenses were added to asylum’s bills after the donation was withdrawn. From the Surgeon General, Indian Medical Department (IMD), to the Secretary to Government of Bombay, 23 February 1876, GoB, GD, 1876/55, MSA.
62.
Lyon Isidore Bernadotte, Medical Jurisprudence for India, with Illustrative Cases, Vol. 7 (Calcutta: Thacker and Spink, 1921), p. 363.
63.
Extract from the Daily Register of Solitary [Confinement], Ratnagiri Lunatic Asylum, 1912, GoB, GD, 1912/95, MSA.
64.
APR, 1899, p. 12, NLS.
65.
Native Diet Scale of the Bombay Lunatic Asylums, attached to the Rules of the Bombay Lunatic Asylum, 1864, GoB, GD,1862–1864/15, MSA.
66.
Rules of the Bombay Lunatic Asylum, 1864, GoB, GD, 1862–1864/15, MSA.
67.
From Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Secretary, Medical Board, 26 October 1853, GoB, GD, 1853/48, MSA.
68.
Note by the Director General, IMS, on the reports of Lunatic Asylums, under Local Governments and Administrations for the Year 1895, Medical Proceedings, Government of India, Home Department, Simla Records, September 1896, Nos. 65–90, NAI.
69.
Bentham’s panopticon style envisioned buildings designed specially to execute constant surveillance over those detained. See John Bowring (ed.), The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 4. (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1843), pp. 65, 69; Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, p. 200.
70.
Report on the Lunatic Asylum at Colaba for the Year Ending 1852, GoB, GD, 1853/48, MSA.
71.
From Lt. Col. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
72.
From Lt. Col. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
73.
Shaw, ‘The Alienist Department’, p. 336.
74.
Ibid., p. 335.
75.
From Lt. Col. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
76.
W.J. Buchanan (ed.), The Indian Medical Gazette. A Monthly Journal of Medicine, Surgery, Public Health, and General Medical Intelligence, Indian and European, Vol. XXXIX (Calcutta: Spink and Co., 1904), p. 113.
77.
James Mills, Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism: The ‘Native Only’ Lunatic Asylums of British India, 1857–1900 (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 2000), pp. 14, 65.
78.
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 224.
79.
Ibid.
80.
The Hemp Commission Report elaborated that superintendents ‘[had] been so pressed to give statistical information that they have done so without considering whether it could[was] be scientific’. See Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894–1895, Vol. 1, p. 236, NLS.
81.
A.W. Overbeck Wright, Mental Derangements in India: Its Symptoms and Treatment (Calcutta and Simla: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1912), pp. 98–103.
82.
Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, p. 11.
83.
From Asst. Surgeon J.A. Maxwell to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 4 June 1814, GoB, PDD, 1814/368, MSA.
84.
Report on the Lunatic Asylum at Colaba for the Year Ending 1852, GoB, GD, 1853/48, MSA.
85.
See APR 1873–1900, NLS.
86.
From Clive Bradley, Medical Officer, Colney Hatch, London County Lunatic Asylum, to the Governor of Bombay, 17 October 1902, GD, 1902/54, MSA. Text highlighted for emphasis.
87.
From the Secretary to the Government of Bombay to Clive Bradley, Medical Officer, Colney Hatch, London County Lunatic Asylum, 7 November 1902, GoB, GD, 1902/54, MSA.
88.
From Curzon of Kedleston, E.H. Collen, A.C. Trevor, C.M. Rivaz, E.F. Law to the Secretary of State for India, Simla, 19 July 1900, Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department, GoB, GD, 1901/66, MSA.
89.
Bernadotte, Medical Jurisprudence for India, pp. 353–354.
90.
Report on the Lunatic Asylum at Colaba for the Year Ending 1852, GoB, GD, 1853/48, MSA.
91.
From Lt. Col. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
92.
From the Secretary of Medical Board to the Commissioner of Scind, 3 June 1851, GoB, GD, 1852/10, MSA.
93.
Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay to Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 26 February 1886, GoB, GD, 1886/58, MSA.
94.
Triennial Report on the Lunatic Asylums in the Bombay Presidency, 1912–1914, p. 1, NLS.
95.
From the Magistrate of Ahmedabad to the Superintending Surgeon, Ahmedabad, 15 August 1849, JD, GoB, GD, 1849/38, MSA.
96.
From Asst. Surgeon Gillanders to the Superintending Surgeon, Ahmedabad, 22 January 1850, GoB, GD, 1849/38, MSA.
97.
From the Bombay Medical Board Office to the Secretary to the Government of Bombay, GoB, GD, 1849/38, MSA.
98.
Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, p. 4.
99.
Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894–1895, Vol. 1, p. 23, NLS.
100.
Circular to All Magistrates, 22 November 1851, GoB, GD, 1851/15, MSA.
101.
Senior Magistrate of Police, Bombay, to the Secretary to the Government, 3 July 1849, Government of Bombay, Board’s Collection, 1851–1852, F4/2450, IOR, BL, London.
102.
Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894–1895, Vol. 1, p. 7, NLS.
103.
Government Resolution, Bombay Castle, 6 June 1917, GoB, GD, 1917/773, MSA.
104.
Waltraud Ernst made this argument for the first half of the nineteenth century. See Waltraud Ernst, Mad Tales from the Raj, p. 86. However, even at the close of the century the Hemp Commission noted that asylum superintendents had made little progress compared to their counterparts in England. The superintendents failed to make a ‘special study of insanity’. From the Government of Bengal to the Home Department, Government of India, Administration of Lunatic Asylums in India, 25 August 1896, Medical Proceedings–August, Simla Records 4, Home Department, 1897, Nos. 188–232, NAI.
105.
Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894–1895, Vol. 1, p. 227, NLS.
106.
A.H.L. Fraser and C.J.H. Warden, Notes on Asylum Administration, 7 August 1894, GoB, GD, 1895/77, MSA.
107.
Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894–1895, Vol. 1, p. 230, NLS.
108.
A.H.L. Fraser and C.J.H. Warden, Notes on Asylum Administration, 7 August 1894, GoB, GD, 1895/77, MSA.
109.
A.H.L. Fraser and C.J.H. Warden, Notes on Asylum Administration, 7 August 1894, GoB, GD, 1895/77, MSA.
110.
Note by the Director General, IMS, on the Reports of Lunatic Asylums under Local Governments and Administrations for the year 1895, Medical Proceedings, Government of India, Home Department, Simla Records, September 1896, Nos. 65–90, NAI.
111.
C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 56.
112.
Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894–1895, Vol. 1, p. 238, NLS.
113.
John Warnock, ‘Insanity from Hasheesh’, British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 49, January 1903, p. 96.
114.
From the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 18 July 1895, Simla, Records 4, Home Department, Medical Proceedings, August 1897, Nos. 188–232, NAI.
115.
‘Power is seen as a more volatile, unstable element, which can be always contested, so power relations must be permanently renewed and reaffirmed.’ See Sergiu Balan, ‘Foucault’s View on Power Relations’, Cogito: Multidisciplinary Research Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2010, p. 42.
116.
Report on the Lunatic Asylum at Colaba for the Year Ending 1852, GoB, GD, 1853/48, MSA; APR, 1873–1874, p. 17, NLS.
117.
APR, 1878, p. 7, NLS.
118.
From the Asst. Surgeon, Lunatic Asylum Colaba, to the Medical Board, 21 February 1847, GoB, GD, 1847/41, MSA.
119.
APR, 1873–1874, p. 6, NLS.
120.
RNP, Akbari Sowdagar, 13 April 1871, K 406, J–D, PG 1–543, GoB, MSA.
121.
Note by the Director General, IMS, on the Reports of Lunatic Asylums under Local Governments and Administrations for the Year 1895, Medical Proceedings, Government of India, Home Department, Simla Records, September 1896, Nos. 65–90, NAI.
122.
White, The Middle Ground.
123.
Balan, ‘Foucault’s View on Power Relations’, p. 61.
124.
See White, The Middle Ground, p. 51.
125.
While the French and Algonquians never achieved hegemony over each other, the British achieved politically hegemony over India. See White, The Middle Ground, pp. 51–53.
126.
Wilson, Bombay 1885 to 1890, p. 14.
127.
White, The Middle Ground, p. 55.
128.
Wilson, Bombay 1885 to 1890, p. 15.
129.
James Mills, ‘“More Important to Civilise than Subdue”? Lunatic Asylums, Psychiatric Practice and Fantasies of the “Civilising Mission” in British India 1858—1900’, in Harald Fischer-Tiné and Michael Mann (eds.), Colonialism as Civilising Mission (London: Anthem Press, 2003), p. 190.
130.
Waltraud Ernst, ‘Medical/Colonial Power-Lunatic Asylum in Bengal, c.1800–1900’, Journal of Asian History, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2006, p. 79.
131.
White, The Middle Ground, p. 50.
132.
Anouska Bhattacharyya, ‘Indian Insanes, Lunacy in the “Native” Asylums of Colonial India, 1858–1912’, PhD Thesis, Harvard University, 2013, p. 211.
133.
White, The Middle Ground, p. 51.
134.
Lt. Col. W.G.H. Henderson petitioning for an increase in pay for his staff explained: ‘To induce them to remain, emoluments must be raised’. From Lt. Col. W.G.H. Henderson, IMS, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Poona, to the Personal Asst. of the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 18 July, 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
135.
Subordinate staff recruited from outside Sindh were granted free railway passes. From the Secretary to Government of Bombay, General Department to the Secretary to the Government of India, 23 November 1920, Home Department, Government of India, Medical Proceedings, December 1920, Nos. 55–56, NAI; From Lt. Col. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
136.
From Lt. Col. J.P. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
137.
Indian patients and staff were moved to the new ‘native’ asylum at Thana.
138.
From the Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Ahmedabad, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General Government of Bombay, 11 August 1912, GoB, GD, 1913/99, MSA.
139.
From Lt. Col. J. P. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, for the information of the Official Visitors, 20 May 1904, GoB, GD, 1904/57, MSA.
140.
From Lt. Col. J.P. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
141.
The Mahars were a community from Maharashtra, they were traditionally considered as untouchable and any local from Madras is referred to as a Madrasi.
142.
From Lt. Col. Barry, Superintendent, Colaba Lunatic Asylum, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 25 June 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
143.
M.T. Joseph, SVD, ‘Migration and Identity formation: A Case study of Dalit Assertion in Aurangabad, Maharashtra’, in Jose Joseph and L. Stanislaus (eds.), Migration and Mission in India (New Delhi: ISPCK, 2007), p. 101.
144.
Joseph, ‘Migration and Identity formation’, p. 103.
145.
Ibid., p. 102.
146.
Ibid., p. 104.
147.
William Johnson, The Oriental Races and Tribes, Residents and Visitors of Bombay: A Series of Photographs with Letter-press Descriptions, Vol. 2 (London: W.J. Johnson, 1866), p. 67.
148.
Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 100.
149.
Report on the Lunatic Asylum at Colaba for the Year Ending 1852, GoB, GD, 1853/48, MSA, Mumbai; From the Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Colaba, to the Secretary to the Principal Inspector General, Medical Department, 31 July 1863, GoB, GD, 1862–1864/15, MSA.
150.
This practice was also included in the Lunacy Act of 1858. Lunacy Act XXXVI of 1858, GoB, GD, 1862–1864/15, MSA.
151.
The system of rewarding patients was practised in Cowasji Jehangir Lunatic Asylum, Hyderabad, for some years. From the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay to the Secretary of the Government of Bombay, 12 July 1901, GoB, GD, 1901/66, MSA.
152.
White, The Middle Ground, p. 51.
153.
Ibid., p. 52.
154.
Report on the Lunatic Asylum at Colaba for the Year Ending 1852, GoB, GD, 1853/48, MSA.
155.
Rules of the Bombay Lunatic Asylum, 1864, GoB, GD, 1862–1864/15, MSA.
156.
From the Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Colaba, to the Secretary to the Principal Inspector General, Medical Department, 31 July 1863, GoB, GD, 1862–1864/15, MSA.
157.
Letter to the Editor by a late patient, Bombay Gazetteer, 29 October 1863.
158.
From the Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Colaba, to the Secretary to the Principal Inspector General, Medical Department, 31 July 1863, GoB, GD, 1862–1864/15, MSA.
159.
From the Inspector General of Hospitals to the Secretary to the Principal Inspector General, Medical Department, Poona, 27 September 1864, GoB, GD, 1862–1864/15, MSA.
160.
Bhattacharyya argued that superintendents increasingly dictated the community’s interaction with internal asylum practices. See Bhattacharyya, ‘Indian Insanes, Lunacy in the “Native” Asylums of Colonial India’, p. 211.
161.
RNP, Rast Goftar, 9 May 1880, K 4091-D, PG 1–444, GoB, MSA. The Rast Goftar was an Anglo-Gujarati weekly started in 1851 by Dadabhai Naoroji.
162.
All Indians except the Parsis were moved in 1902 to the lunatic asylum at Thana. Triennial Report on the Lunatic Asylums in the Bombay Presidency, 1912–1914, p. 1, NLS.
163.
Sir Cowasji Jehangir funded (Rs. 50,000) the building of the Hyderabad asylum completed in 1871; see A.W. Hughes, A Gazetteer of the Province of Sindh (London: George Bell and Sons, 1874), p. 206. Mr. Bhagwandas Narotamdas donated funds for the asylum in Thana; Vesting Order, The Charitable Endowment Act 1890, 18 August 1911, by L. Robertson, Secretary to the Government, GoB, GD, 1913/99, MSA. The Petit family, an elite Parsi family (N.M. Petit Trust) donated Rs. 20,000 for Parsi patients at the new central asylum in Yerawada; From C.F. Petit to the Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 24 January 1902, GoB, GD, 1902/61, MSA.
164.
From B.B. Grayfoot, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Dharwar, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 10 August 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA; From Lt. Col. J W T Anderson, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Ahmedabad, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 10 July 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
165.
From Lt. Col. J W T Anderson, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Ahmedabad, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 10 July 1904, GoB, GD 1907/81, MSA.
166.
RNP, Bombay Samachar, 17 and 18 November 1911, in Mridula Ramanna, ‘Perception of Sanitation and Medicine in Bombay, 1900–1914’, in Tine and Mann, Colonialism as Civilising Mission, p. 222.
167.
From B.B. Grayfoot, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Dharwar, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 10 August 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
168.
From B.B. Grayfoot, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Dharwar, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 10 August 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
169.
White, The Middle Ground, p. 50.
170.
From B.B. Grayfoot, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Dharwar, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 10 August 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA; From Lt. Col. J.W.T. Anderson, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Ahmedabad, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 10 July 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
171.
From B.B. Grayfoot, Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Dharwar, to the Personal Asst. to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, 10 August 1904, GoB, GD, 1907/81, MSA.
172.
From the Superintendent, Central Lunatic Asylum, Yerawada, to the Surgeon General with the Government of Bombay, GoB, GD, 1922/ 2257-B, MSA.
173.
Shaw, ‘The Alienist Department’, p. 339.
174.
Ibid., pp. 338–339.
175.
Ibid., p. 334.
176.
Ibid., p. 211.
177.
Annual Reports on Mental Hospitals in the Bombay Presidency (AR) for the Year 1933, p. 7, NLS.
178.
AR, 1933, p. 7.
179.
Bhattacharyya, ‘Indian Insanes, Lunacy in the “Native” Asylums of Colonial India’, p. iii.
180.
Dr. Dhunjibhoy stated: ‘With the progress of civilization, India, like Europe began to erect grim, sombre buildings … the old asylums were manned by brutal types of attendants, who were ready to impose manacles and chains and stripes at their own free will’. Dr. Dhunjibhoy displays a colonial self-understanding in criticizing the asylum system and subordinate attendants. A strong advocate for western psychiatry, he produced knowledge about Indian insanity fulfilling the expectation of the colonial state. See Jal Eduji Dhunjibhoy, ‘A Brief Resume of the Types of Insanity Commonly Met with in India, with a Full Description of the “Indian Hemp Insanity” Peculiar to the Country’, British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 76, April 1930, pp. 254–264.
181.
Waltraud Ernst, ‘The Indianization of Colonial Medicine: The Case of Psychiatry in the Early-Twentieth-Century British India’, NTM International Journal of History & Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology and Medicine, Vol. 20, May 2012, p. 63.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Independent Scholar, Wellington, New Zealand
Sarah Ann Pinto

Authors

Sarah Ann Pinto
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Pinto, S.A. (2018). The Asylum as ‘Middle Ground’: Contestations and Negotiations. In: Lunatic Asylums in Colonial Bombay. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94244-5_3

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94244-5_3
Published: 29 August 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94243-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94244-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics