Hakims to the Rescue: Greco-Islamic Physicians Augmenting Colonial Sexual Surveillance in North India, 1864–74

This paper looks at the deployment of North India’s hakims or Greco-Islamic medical practitioners by the English colonial government to combat threats of venereal disease. These hakims experienced a contradictory relationship with their English colonizers. While at one end, Western medicine denigrated native therapeutics as irrational and superstitious. On the other hand, the native therapeutics fostered rare opportunities reflecting “micro-physics of power” that assist colonial medical efforts in an odd alliance for governing bodies. This paper positions itself in these contradictions to explore the unique possibilities of collaboration developed by the impact of two colonial laws on the sexual surveillance of prostitutes, namely the Administration of Military Cantonments (Act XXII of 1864) and the Indian Contagious Diseases Act (Act XIV of 1868). However, between 1864 and 1870, colonial authorities failed to make any substantial progress in controlling the spread of venereal diseases in Delhi. At this junction, the Local Sanitary Commissioner promoted the deployment of hakims to counteract the threats of contagious diseases. Various forces were behind this renegotiation of relations between western and native medicine. Through an analysis of these multiple trajectories, this paper highlights the rise of a reputable family of hakims as a “Janus-faced” compradorial elite assisting English endeavors of sexual surveillance. As a result, the paper elucidates a unique relationship between western and native medical traditions that challenge their positioning as contradictory medical sciences.