ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Afterlives of Partition: Decolonisation, Refugee Care, and the Reshaping of Public Health in Eastern India, 1947-1975

• In Event: Health During and After the British Empire

English Abstract

This paper examines how decolonisation reshaped scientific and medical thought in eastern India by treating the Partition of 1947 as a moment of profound epistemic disruption. A decolonial lens enables a reassessment of the histories of science and medicine that moves beyond inherited colonial frameworks and foregrounds violence, displacement, and the precarious lives of refugees. By centering the humanitarian crisis experienced by eastern refugees, the paper argues that Partition exposed the structural limits of colonial medical infrastructures and catalyzed a reorientation of public health thinking within the emerging postcolonial state.

This period witnessed a critical transition from colonial medicine, defined by imperial authority, technocratic rationality, and hierarchical knowledge to a more socially embedded form of 'socialist medicine.' Partition acted not merely as a backdrop but as an active mediator in this shift: it generated new health emergencies, forced the creation of improvised medical responses, and compelled administrators, medical workers, and refugee communities to negotiate alternative ways of understanding disease, care, and responsibility. Through archival records, official correspondence, and documentation from refugee settlements, the paper traces how these practices were improvised, contested, and slowly institutionalized.

By situating these developments within broader debates on decolonisation, the paper argues that India’s partition offers a distinctive vantage point for examining plurality in scientific worlds. It demonstrates how localized crises challenged dominant scientific authority, produced competing medical rationalities, and contributed to shifting perspectives in the histories of science and medicine. In doing so, the paper highlights the need to rethink social histories of medicine through the lived experiences of marginalized communities.

Author

• Panchali Nath, Assam University, Silchar, India