The Report of the Committee on Indigenous Systems of Medicine, Madras (1923), commissioned by the Madras government in 1921, was the first major health report to be published in India. It is commonly referred to as the Usman Report, after the committee's chairman Muhammad Usman. Its main purpose was to provide indigenous practitioners with an opportunity to put forward a strong case for state encouragement and financial support. The second volume of the Usman Report, titled "Written and Oral Evidence," mainly consists in written responses to a questionnaire relating to theoretical, practical, economic and institutional dimensions of medical practice. Practitioners' testimonies came from all over India and were submitted in English, Sanskrit, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannaḍa, and Oriya, providing a snapshot of the practices and sociopolitical positionings significant for those practicing traditional medicines in India at the beginning of the twentieth century. This volume provides the first English translation of the vernacular testimonies of this important document.

A comprehensive overview of Ayurveda.

Walk into the local health food shop or pick up today's paper and the chances are that you'll see adverts for acupuncture and herbal medicine, hypnotists and homeopaths. Some doctors and scientists mourn the lost lustre of mainstream medicine and complain about a new breed of 'irrational' consumer. But what exactly is 'alternative' medicine? Is the astonishing popularity of alternative and multicultural medicine really such a recent development? And, given the success story of modern biomedical science, why are alternative and traditional treatments now so fashionable? Has the impersonal chill of high-tech medicine driven consumers into the arms of charismatic quacks? Or is it the cost of western medicine that makes its competitors look so attractive? Do patients seek hope, holism, or just the thrill of rebellion? This book seeks answers to all these questions and more. Comparing the medical systems of China, India, and the west - both mainstream and alternative - Roberta Bivins shows how medical expertise has migrated from one culture to another. From acupuncture in Regency England to homeopathy in the 'Wild West', Bivins unearths the roots of today's distinctions between alternative, complementary, and orthodox medicine, and shows how popular interest in medical alternatives - often of exotic origin - is a phenomenon with a long and fascinating pedigree.

This book looks at the institutionalisation and refashioning of Ayurveda as a robust, literate classical tradition, separated from the assorted, vernacular traditions of healing practices. It focuses on the dominant perspectives and theories of indigenous medicine and various compulsions which led to the codification and standardisation of Ayurveda in modern India. Critically engaging with authoritative scholarship, the book extrapolates from some of these theories, raising significant questions on the study of alternative knowledge practices. By using case studies of the southern Indian state of Kerala – which is known globally for its Ayurveda – it provides an in-depth analysis of local practices and histories. Drawing from interviews of practitioners, archival documents, vernacular texts and rare magazines on Ayurveda and indigenous medicine, it presents a nuanced understanding of the relationships between diverse practices. It highlights the interactions as well as the tensions within them, and the methods adopted to preserve the uniqueness of practices even while sharing elements of healing, herbs and medicine. It also discusses how regulations and standards set by the state have estranged assorted healing practices, created uncertainties and led to the formation of categories like Ayurveda and nattuvaidyam (indigenous medicine/ayurvedas). Lucid and topical, the book will be useful for researchers and people interested in social medicine, history of medicine, Ayurveda, cultural studies, history, indigenous studies, and social anthropology.

The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary resource, which frames and contextualises the rapidly expanding fields that explore yoga and meditative techniques. The book analyses yoga and meditation studies in a variety of religious, historical and geographical settings. The chapters, authored by an international set of experts, are laid out across five sections: Introduction to yoga and meditation studies History of yoga and meditation in South Asia Doctrinal perspectives: technique and praxis Global and regional transmissions Disciplinary framings In addition to up-to-date explorations of the history of yoga and meditation in the Indian subcontinent, new contexts include a case study of yoga and meditation in the contemporary Tibetan diaspora, and unique summaries of historical developments in Japan and Latin America as well as an introduction to the growing academic study of yoga in Korea. Underpinned by critical and theoretical engagement, the volume provides an in-depth guide to the history of yoga and meditation studies and combines the best of established research with attention to emerging directions for future investigation. This handbook will be of interest to multidisciplinary academic audiences from across the humanities, social sciences and sciences. Chapters 1, 4, 9, 12, and 27 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism and staged mass yoga sessions, and Indian officials have proposed yoga as a national solution to a range of social problems, from reducing rape to curing cancer. But as yoga has gone global, its cultural meanings have spiraled far and wide. In Flexible India, Shameem Black travels into unexpected realms of popular culture in English from India, its diaspora, and the West to explore and critique yoga as an exercise in cultural power. Drawing on her own experience and her readings of political spectacles, yoga murder mysteries, court cases, art installations, and digital media, Black shows how yoga’s imaginative power supports diverse political and cultural ends. Although many cultural practices in today’s India exemplify “culture wars” between liberal and conservative agendas, Flexible India argues that visions of yoga offer a “culture peace” that conceals, without resolving, such tensions. This flexibility allows states, corporations, and individuals to think of themselves as welcoming and tolerant while still, in many cases, supporting practices that make minority populations increasingly vulnerable. However, as Black shows, yoga can also be imagined in ways that offer new tools for critiquing hierarchical structures of power and race, Hindu nationalism, cultural appropriation, and self-help capitalism.

This book brings concepts, practices of Ayurveda and its interface with modern health care set-up in Delhi, India. It presents a new conceptual framework in studying public health in India, offers policy recommendations and outlines the challenges of mainstreaming of alternative medical systems in India. Drawing on a wealth of primary data that looks at the social profile of patients, gender, disease profile of patients, prescriptions, average cost per prescription and kinds of medicines prescribed, the monograph explores patterns of health behaviour through the perceptions of doctors and patients, administrators and their negotiations with the bureaucratic health structure. It analyses the power and structures between practitioners of modern medicine and Ayurvedic doctors and the issues of cross referral and formal and informal levels of interaction/network between the two medical systems. Engaging with current debates around public health in India, the volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of public health and sociology of health and medicine, public policy and public administration and South Asian studies.

This book provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion in the context of South Asia, giving voice to Indian scientists and shedding valuable light on their engagement with religion. Drawing on biographical, autobiographical, historical, and ethnographic material, the volume focuses on scientists’ religious life and practices, and the variety of ways in which they express them. Renny Thomas challenges the idea that science and religion in India are naturally connected and argues that the discussion has to go beyond binary models of ‘conflict’ and ‘complementarity’. By complicating the understanding of science and religion in India, the book engages with new ways of looking at these categories.