BANKIM’S RAJANI: A STUDY INTO HEALTH AND HUMANITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v8.i6.2020.621Keywords:
Blindness, Disability, Infirmity, Impairment, Human health, Medical humanitiesAbstract [English]
Though there has been a plethora of books and articles written on Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s eponymous fiction Rajani, what is conspicuous after all these is the necessity of a medical humanities’ perspective into this masterpiece of Chattopadhyay. To fulfill such lacuna in the previous studies, the present article makes a hermeneutical attempt to contextualize Rajani at the backdrop of medical knowledge and medical culture during Colonial India. With this hypothesis, the paper proves how Bankim stirs the public imaginations about human health, hygiene and disability along with their cultural and clinical manifestations and ramifications, especially in colonial Bengal.
Downloads
References
Bose, Pradip Kumar. (Ed.). Ed. Health and Society in Bengal: A Selection from Late 19th Century Bengali Periodicals. New Delhi: Sage; 2006.
Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra. (Bengali year 1287, English 1881). Rajani. Katalpara: Radhanath Bandopadhyay Press. 1881.
Chatterjee, Partha. (1998). The Nation and its Women. In Ranajit Guha (Ed.), A Subaltern Studies Reader. New Delhi: OUP.
David, Arnold. (1985). Medical Priorities and Practice in Nineteenth-Century British India. South Asia Research. Vol. 5, No.2. pp. 167-183.
Esmail, Jennifer and Christopher Keep. (2009). Victorian Disability: Introduction. Victorian Review. Vol. 35, No. 2. pp. 45-51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/vcr.2009.0032
Haldar, M. K. (1977). Renaissance and Reaction in Nineteenth Century Bengal. Calcutta: Minerva Associates (Publications) Pvt. Ltd.
Kronenfeld, J. J. (2002). Health Care Policy: Issues and Trends. London: Praeger.
Lacom, Cindy. (2005). “The Time is Sick and out of Joint”: Physical Disability in Victorian England. PMLA. Vol. 120, No.2. pp. 547-552.
Majumdar, R.C. (1960). Glimpses of Bengal in the Nineteenth century. Calcutta: Firma K L Mukhopadhyay Agents.
Nair, Aparna. (2017). ‘They Shall See His Face’: Blindness in British India, 1850-1950. Med. Hist. Vol. 61 (2). pp. 181-199.
Ray, Mohit Kumar. (2002). Studies in Literary Criticism. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers.
Wendell, Susan. (1997). Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability. Hypatia. Vol. 4, No. 2. pp. 104-124.
Summing up. (n. d.). In The Book Review Trust. Retrieved June 11, from https://www.thebookreviewindia.org/summing-up-bankim/
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute, and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author.
It is not necessary to ask for further permission from the author or journal board.
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.