SNAKES, SNAKEBITES AND BRITISH MEDICAL-ZOOLOGICAL ENGAGEMENT IN EARLY COLONIAL INDIA: HEALTH, MEDICINE AND IDEOLOGY
SNAKES, SNAKEBITES AND BRITISH MEDICAL-ZOOLOGICAL ENGAGEMENT IN EARLY COLONIAL INDIA: HEALTH, MEDICINE AND IDEOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: This paper tries to trace the interesting history of Western medical-zoological engagement with venomous Indian snakes within the context of making and consolidation of British health policy in colonial India during the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries. It shows that while the British colonisers began to exploit flora and fauna of the newly subjugated land for their material benefit, they confronted wild Indian creatures like venomous snakes and anxiously noticed the huge mortality from snake poisoning in India. This threw a direct challenge to the healthy livelihood of the colonisers because of their insufficient knowledge about such a variety of snakes and their envenoming powers. The paper shows how Indian snakes formed a significant part of the British medical-zoological imagination of Oriental/tropical wilderness; a cruel, chaotic and disease-laden condition posing a threat to the life and health of the Europeans and also how the difficulties faced in snake-ridden India were engaged with the idea that India was essentially different from Europe: environmentally and medically. This paper concludes that Western medical engagement with venomous snakes and the consequential health measures which flourished under the British agency provided the tools to order and control the snake-ridden landscape of India and paved the way for the assertion of an intellectual superiority over the colonised people. In this regard, Western medicine and health policy, not only as practice but also as ideology, served to justify the colonial rule and became a true instrument of the British Indian Empire.

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