From Jhawain-tola to Takmil-ut-Tibb, Lucknow

Abstract

In the Last Chapter we Saw that the Oudh Akhbar created a public sphere wherein the new Unani was critiqued by hakims who supported the older seien tistic Unani of the canonical texts. These hakims writing on the corruptions in Unani emerged as the new Muslim public intellectuals. They strengthened the case of the canonical Unani, demanded its professionalization, and gave it a distinct cultural and historical profile in Hindustan. And they constituted its new profile within the colonial medical framework rather than in opposition to it, even as they never stopped at contrasting its antiquity to that of colonial medicine. They highlighted Unani’s cultural roots in Hindustan. They argued that the modernity of colonial medicine could not make any claims to a history or intellectual legacy in their country.