in partnership with the South Asia Center, South Asia Studies Dept, Dept of History and Sociology of Science & Center for Global Health
About the Lecture:
The AIIMS medical college/hospital in New Delhi is commonly considered by doctors and academic scholars as one of independent India's major triumphs in the domains of medicine and public health. Though contemporary public discourse in India considers the significance of AIIMS for national health and national pride to be self-evident, in the early post-independence years, the idea of AIIMS was a highly contested one. Much of the debate and conflict on this issue took place on the floor of the Parliament of India and pertained to the decades-old ideological battles between the advocates of so-called allopathic medicine and the so-called Indian systems of medicine. This presentation will examine the fierce Parliamentary debates in the run-up to the establishment of AIIMS, and analyze the wide spectrum of views and suggestions that India's public representatives offered on the proposed idea of AIIMS. We will then consider what it means that AIIMS, despite allegations of being part of an "anti-national" health policy (a term employed by one MP), quickly became a symbol of India's medical and scientific prowess, and remains so even today.
About the Speaker:
Kiran Kumbhar is a historian, writer, and public health expert, working primarily on the history of medicine and public health in modern India, and on the history of global public health. His Ph.D. dissertation explored the problem of "declining" trust in biomedical doctors and highlighted the major role that caste-based privilege has played in the history of the Indian medical profession. He is currently working on research projects that look at the history of healthcare policy in India, the role of caste in colonial and post-independence healthcare, and the discourse and debates on traditional medicine. He has taught courses at Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins in the history of science and the history of medicine and public health across multiple geographies, and in South Asian history. Kiran also works to bring academic scholarship into the larger public discourse through writing and podcasting. In 2022-23 he worked with the Suno India platform on a podcast series: "Becoming Modern: Healthcare and History in India." His writings have been published in The India Forum, The Wire, Scroll, The Hindu, The Times of India, fiftytwo, The Swaddle, and Quartz.