আধুনিকতা ও ঐতিহ্যের টানাপোড়েন : ঔপনিবেশিক বাংলার অন্তিমপর্বে ধাত্রীবিদ্যার বিকাশ/ Negotiating Modernity and Tradition: Making of Maternal Care in Late Colonial Bengal

Abstract

In nineteenth-century Bengal, many pardanashin women were restricted from receiving treatment from male physicians and consequently depended on dais (traditional midwives) for obstetric and gynecological care. Their knowledge was largely transmitted through familial and experiential traditions rather than formal textual or institutional education. European medical observers consequently represented indigenous midwifery as unscientific and unhygienic and sought to reform childbirth through Western medical knowledge. However, the identification of the problem and its proposed solutions varied among different groups according to their interests and perspectives.

         The colonial government largely interpreted maternal and infant mortality as evidence of the perceived backwardness of Indian society. By comparing Indian mortality with European standards, colonial officials incorporated the reform of midwifery into the broader civilizing mission and the consolidation of colonial authority. Western methods of midwifery were introduced as scientific and hygienic alternatives, while maternity wards with arrangements for female seclusion were established in hospitals from the 1870s. Nevertheless, these initiatives did not adequately address the wider social and economic conditions associated with maternal and infant mortality.

         British women doctors viewed the issue primarily through the perceived vulnerability of Indian women and the limited availability of female medical practitioners. The restricted access of pardanashin women to male physicians created a significant professional space for British women doctors in India. The establishment of the Dufferin Fund, supported by Queen Victoria, the Viceroy’s wife, and Indian donors, further institutionalized medical services for women.

         Indian nationalists increasingly associated traditional midwifery with obstacles to national health and development, while scientific and hygienic Western midwifery became part of broader projects of social reform. Bengali periodicals from the 1880s published discussions on scientific childbirth practices. Responses also varied according to social position: Western-educated middle-class families associated modern midwifery with modernity and social respectability, whereas many rural communities remained attached to caste, religious, and family rituals associated with the anturghar.

         The reform movement therefore raises an important question concerning women’s agency. Although these reforms were undertaken ostensibly for women’s health and well-being, women themselves rarely occupied a central position in shaping the discourse. Their experiences, preferences, and opinions were often mediated through colonial officials, doctors, nationalists, and family structures. Thus, midwifery reform reveals the complex intersections of gender, medicine, colonialism, nationalism, social status, and women’s agency.