Studies in History, Ahead of Print.
Samir Kumar Das and Bishnupriya Basak (Eds.), The Making of Goddess Durga in Bengal: Art, Heritage and the Public Springer, Singapore, 2021, pp. 240. ISBN 978-981-16-0262-7.

Studies in History, Ahead of Print.
K. M. Shrimali, The Religious Enterprise: Studies in Early Indian Religions (2 Vols.; Delhi: Aakar, 2022), pp. XVI +684, ₹3,500, (Hard binding). ISBN-978-93-5002-769.

Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 1, Page 85-108, February 2023.
Health defines the nation—since the nineteenth century, the liberal democratic states in the West had been compulsive about the nation’s health, albeit, at the same time, they were much repulsive towards the health of the colonies, except the white enclaves where sanitary improvement was prioritized more than that of native towns. It was only after the germination of germ theory that colonial states took the health of the ‘colonized’ into account on a serious note. Nevertheless, these whirling ideas, debates, approaches and colonial encounters regarding health and hygiene shaped Gandhi’s perception on body, sanitation and nationalism. The Gandhian way of equating Swaraj with the cleanliness of mind, body and soul, i.e., ‘Constructive Programme’, was in contrast to the ‘Obstructive Programme’ like civil disobedience. To Gandhi, a nation could truly attain Swaraj by cleansing the self and the ‘others’. The bodies, previously ‘colonized’, were now ‘nationalized’ through the Constructive Programme and health directives. This article seeks to explore those Gandhian narratives on sanitation and health and the way in which the notion of Swaraj was enmeshed with the emerging health education.

Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 1, Page 71-84, February 2023.
The advent of Western modernity in India, as a by-product of British colonialism, brought about considerable strain within Indian medical traditions. Indigenous medical traditions which were operating within the broad humoral theory of disease causation came to be subjected to the logic of biomedicine. By the late nineteenth century, as the British in India consolidated their state systems and the princely states modelled their administrative structures in accordance with the British state, there was an increased acceptance of biomedical standards against indigenous medical norms. This was further accentuated by the fear of epidemics, which suggested that diseases spread from person to person and could affect large geographic areas bringing death and suffering in its wake. Disease control and management had, therefore, become a major concern for both the state systems in the British presidencies and in the princely states. The prevalence of contagious diseases offered a challenge to reorganize the public health systems of the states, yet they also provided an opportunity to legitimize state sovereignty over the bodies of its subjects. Diseases that were previously seen as localized and situated within culturally specific locales were now increasingly subjected to the governing mechanisms of the state. This paper examines how the medical bureaucratization of Travancore, in the south-western part of the Indian subcontinent, affected local healthcare traditions in the face of expanding fear of epidemics, ultimately led to the reshaping of indigenous medical systems.

Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 1, Page 12-28, February 2023.
The article tries to interrogate the gendered world of disease through an exploration of the deities associated with contagious diseases. The complex world of disease, cure and patient care was one infused with ideas of sacrality and notions of pollution and purity in the premodern period. The article will explore the anthropomorphizing of diseases into female deities at the local level and the Brahmanical attempt to transform these local goddesses. Ayurvedic works in Sanskrit, Tamil and Malayalam, talapurāṇa and folklore have been consulted to analyse the role and relevance of goddesses of disease, in addition to fieldwork in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 1, Page 51-70, February 2023.
This paper explores British efforts to combat smallpox in Malabar from 1800 to 1900 ce. Despite intense efforts, smallpox persisted due to fractured state policies, native resistance and public apathy. Epidemics such as smallpox, cholera, malaria and fevers posed serious threats to British colonial efforts in the Indian subcontinent, hindering colonial expansion. Smallpox, in particular, was prevalent throughout much of the region, including South India, for centuries. In Malabar, which was part of the Madras Presidency, the prevalence of smallpox presented significant challenges to the British during their colonial expedition, lasting well into the twentieth century. To sustain their rule, the British were compelled to implement several policies to combat the epidemic. British Malabar, one of the districts of Madras Presidency located on India’s western coast, had been rocked by the persistence of contagious diseases in the region. Smallpox caused millions of deaths and was considered one of the most severe and virulent of the diseases, responsible for more victims than all other diseases combined. Survivors often experienced disfigurement, therefore, it held a unique place in Indian and British attitudes towards disease, treatment and prevention. It was intertwined with religious beliefs and rituals. However, scholarly works on smallpox are limited in Malabar during the British colonial period. Vaccination was considered the most benevolent part of the European medicine under the civilizing mission in India.

Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 1, Page 29-50, February 2023.
Memory studies have long demonstrated the need to critically assess the way societies remember significant, and particularly traumatic, events. The overwhelming focus of these studies has been on conquests, political riots, wars and holocausts. Very little account has been taken of the way epidemics are remembered. Yet, epidemics produce similar social disruptions and anxieties about the future as the varied episodes of political violence. Societies need to grapple with loss of life, grief, insecurity and their own reproduction through the stabilization of mnemonic frames. One of the most potent forms of social memory is engendered in ghost lore. In this article, I track one set of such ghost stories circulating in Bengal in the wake of the ravages of cholera and malaria in the late nineteenth century. By tracking the reframing of these stories, I show how the meanings and values conveyed through them changed over nearly a century. I argue that since the very basis and structure of the social collective invoked and reflected in these stories changed in the period, it is better to think of the collectives as multiple spectral communities sharing the same historical trauma rather than a single, unchanging society. Finally, I urge historians to rethink when epidemics end by paying greater attention to their long mnemonic and social afterlives that continue to unfold long after the cessation of the biological events.

Studies in History, Volume 39, Issue 1, Page 7-11, February 2023.