Reframing Indigeneity: Ayurveda, Independence and the Health of the Future

Abstract

In this chapter, we will examine the evolving politicization of Ayurveda as the era of colonial rule came to an end and Indian bureaucrats and citizens shifted from imagining postcoloniality to defining independence. The Second World War wrought the mass disavowal of the possibilities for empire in South Asia, where cooperative and capitulative politics had shifted against a future in Empire, and in which nationalist politics had ceased to make possible the functional carrying out of large-scale imperial policy. The most prominent political movement throughout the war had been, of course, the Gandhian Quit India movement, which began in August 1942 as a response to Britain’s unilateral decision to bring India into the war, and became the nationalist articulation of anti-colonial sentiment and action. Over the course of its three years, over one hundred thousand people were imprisoned, at times shutting down realms of governance crucial to the manoeuvrings of Empire. Most importantly, the positions that Gandhi and the Congress were able to take against Empire led to swifter and more absolute forms of decolonization.