Volume VI Special Issue V June 2026

Name of Author : Priyal Srivastava, Dr. Monisha Raj Soyal

Title of the paper : Gendered Bodies and Medical Modernity in Colonial Jaipur

Abstract: This paper argues that Jaipurs princely state context produced a distinct configuration of medical authority shaped by colonial modernity, indigenous healing traditions, and womens agency. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the establishment of zenana hospitals, female medical missions, and maternal healthcare initiatives, through which the colonial government and the Rajput durbar jointly deployed medicine as an instrument of social reform and bodily governance. Examining the Zenana Hospital 1931, the Countess of Dufferin Funds operations in Rajputana, and the Lady Chelmsford Leagues maternal welfare network, the paper argues that these institutions represented a hybrid rather than straightforwardly colonial medical modernity. Yet women continued relying on dais, vaids, folk religious networks, and the everyday healthcare practices that lay beyond institutional reach. Drawing on colonial administrative records, Rajputana Agency files, Dastoor Komvar, Dastoor Bakaya, and contemporary medical reports, this paper examines how women navigated and at times subverted these competing medical regimes, placing their agency at the centre of analysis.

Keywords : Colonial Medicine, Gender, Zenana Hospitals, Medical Modernity, Princely State

DOI :

Page Number : 14-20