Procreation and Pleasure

Abstract

This article questions neat dichotomies between subaltern/hegemonic and feminine/masculine, which are often made while examining the impact of modern, Western, biomedical systems on traditional, indigenous medical practices in colonial societies. It does so by studying the extensive writings of Yashoda Devi, a famous woman ayurvedic practitioner in north India at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is unfortunate that this remarkable ayurvedic doctor has not found a place in the history of health and medicine in colonial India. Yashoda Devi negotiated the terrain of tradition and modernity in her discourse on women's health, often with contradictory and ambivalent implications. As a moral sexologist, she had a complex relationship to both the indigenous and Western knowledge systems: she praised the indigenous medical system as well as distanced herself from it, she partially affirmed the new systems of public health and hygiene, while simultaneously critiquing Western medicine. She offered indigenous methods for regulating the bodies of Hindu women, as well as men, within the home and the nation, at times reordering gender hierarchies. Indigenous healing, within the project of Yashoda Devi, became a site on which cultural identities were constructed, a project that simultaneously endorsed procreation and pleasure with regard to the woman's body. In exploring these issues, this article also reveals what happens when a woman enters the domain of male practitioners, covertly contesting male control over the discipline.