Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism

Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism

Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism The Native-Only Lunatic Asylums of British India, 1857 1900 James H. Mills Department of History University College Northampton

First published in Great Britain 2000 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-41971-5 ISBN 978-0-230-28604-7 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230286047 First published in the United States of America 2000 by ST. MARTIN S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-23359-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mills, James H., 1970 Madness, cannabis and colonialism : the native-only lunatic asylums of British India, 1857 1900 / James H. Mills. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-23359-4 1. Mental illness India Treatment History 19th century. 2. Asylums India History 19th century. 3. Insane Commitment and detention India History 19th century. 4. Psychiatric hospitals India History 19th century. I. Title. RC451.I4 M556 2000 362.2'1'095409034 dc21 00 024948 James H. Mills 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-333-79334-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00

Contents List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Note on Sources vi vii ix x Introduction 1 1 The Asylum Archive: the Production of Knowledge at the Colonial Asylum 14 2 The Lunatic Asylums of India are Filled with Ganja Smokers : Asylum Knowledge as Colonial Knowledge 43 3 Disciplining Populations: British Admissions to Native-Only Lunatic Asylums 66 4 Disciplining Individuals: Treatment Regimes Inside Native-Only Lunatic Asylums 103 5 Indians into Asylums: Local Communities and the Medical Institution 129 6 Indians inside Asylums: Staff, Patients and Power 145 Conclusion: Knowledge, Power and Agency 177 Appendix: Asylums Operating in the Period 1857 1880 186 Notes 188 Bibliography 214 Index 224 v

List of Figures and Tables Figures 2.1 The Ganja-corn 55 4.2 The Dullunda Asylum 1858 123 Tables 1.1 Types of madness at the Dacca Lunatic Asylum in the year 1867 18 vi

Acknowledgements I owe thanks to a range of people and institutions for their help in completing this book. Special thanks are due to Dr Crispin Bates of the Department of History, Edinburgh University. He was a patient and energetic supervisor while I was completing the research that is the basis for this work and has since been a thoughtful and perceptive reader of the various drafts of this book. Drs Paul Bailey and Ian Duffield at Edinburgh also deserve thanks for their help and support, as does Professor Roger Jeffery of the Department of Sociology there, who was the source of useful insights from a different perspective. Similarly, I am grateful to Dr Clare Anderson of Leicester University and Dr Cathy Coleborne of the University of Waikato, New Zealand, who have both offered encouragement while throwing in disruptive but irresistible ideas. Dr David Washbrook of St Antony s College, Oxford, Dr Steve Sturdy at the Science Studies Unit at Edinburgh and Professor David Arnold at SOAS have also been good enough to advise on various parts of this book. The most important period of research for the whole project was that which I spent in India. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the British Academy, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the George Scott Travelling Scholarship which made the trip possible, and the efforts of Dr Neeladri Bhattacharya of the Centre for Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, who secured my affiliation there. Many people helped me in India and the staff at the National Archives of India and at the State Archives of Uttar Pradesh deserve praise, as do those at the hospitals that I visited at Delhi, Agra and Bareilly. Special thanks are due to Professor Shridhar Sharma of the Hospital for Mental Diseases at Delhi for his information on mental health services in contemporary India and also to Dr Aditya Kumar of the Mental Hospital at Agra, who had personally preserved the unique set of case notes which is such an important and original source for this work and who made possible my stay in one of the very institutions that I was studying. I should also like to say thanks to the Ahuja family who were my hosts in New Delhi in 1995 and who vii

viii Acknowledgement did so much to make me feel like a welcome addition to their household. In the UK the staff at the National Library of Scotland, the Edinburgh University Library and the Lothian Health Board Collection were always helpful, as were those at the India Office Library, the Wellcome Institute and the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I should also like to thank the Department of History at University College Northampton which organised a sabbatical for me so as to give me time to complete the manuscript. Above all though I want to thank Mum, Dad, Barney and Cary, my brother. Their total support and encouragement at all times have made the book possible. This is for the Mills family, with love. JAMES H. MILLS The illustrations on pages 55 and 123 are reproduced with the permission of the British Library.

List of Abbreviations Ben. Bom. Civ.Asst.Surg. Civ.Surg. Comm. C.Provs. GOI IGH IGP IG Police IHDC IMD LA Mad. Mag. NWP Pres. Sec. Super. Bengal Bombay Civil Assistant Surgeon Civil Surgeon Commissioner Central Provinces Government of India Inspector-General of Hospitals Inspector-General of Prisons Inspector-General of Police Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Indian Medical Department Lunatic Asylum Madras Magistrate North-Western Provinces President Secretary Superintendent ix

Note on Sources Volume number Patient number in volume Date of admission Case Book IA, patient no.1, admitted 1 January 1861. The above is an example of the references in the footnotes made to the case notes of the Lucknow Lunatic Asylum (see Acknowledgements and Bibliography for details). The reference is to which of the volumes contains the case note (the original numbering on the three surviving volumes is IA, II and IV and this has been retained), to the patient number within that volume and the date on which that patient was admitted according to the information available on the case note. x