New Models: Translating and Mutating Prosthetic Technology in Late Colonial India

• In Event: Technology, Inequality, and Social Justice - II

Abstract

How did ethnicity, culture, and environment shape disability and its biomechanical therapies? How did Western bodily technologies translate and operate in colonial and postcolonial spheres? This paper draws on disability studies and postcolonial theory to examine a technology of care in an inherently unequal society: the prosthetic device in colonial and post-colonial South Asia.
After mobilizing over 1.4 million servicemen from the British Raj in WWI, colonial authorities faced a veritable crisis of debility. This paper follows the distribution of artificial limbs for disabled servicemen, the development of orthopaedic workshops in India, and the debates around the provision of prosthetics for white and non-white veterans through Indian independence. These disputes occurred alongside contentious conversations in the metropole over white British veterans’ care and changes in their orthopedic provisioning, most notably in the shift from wooden prosthetics to duralumin metal limbs. Yet while a large number of colonial ex-servicemen attempted to access and petition for better prostheses and care, many rejected the Western-prescribed devices altogether. The 1930s and 40s saw greater attempts to build up local prosthetic manufacture in a politically fractured Raj; even as British manufacturers grew increasingly protectionist towards their health technologies. As the prosthetic moved from a device of imperialist good will to a post-colonial marketable development technology, its ability to translate and aid disabled communities shifted. Using fieldwork and archival records from NSF-funded research in the UK and India, this paper argues that these new technologies of care were simultaneously mechanisms of inequality, hybridity, and innovation.

Author

• Hilary Buxton, Institute of Historical Research, University of London