The concept of medical marginality operates as a framework to differentiate between medical practice that is sanctioned and regulated by the state (Allopathic medicine or the Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy—(AYUSH) and that which is not regulated by the state. In Indian context, medical systems under the acronym of AYUSH have been given legitimate position and included in the health service sector. By using Hardiman and Mukharji’s concept of ‘medical marginality’ in a different way, the article attempts to study how one system of medicine is marginalised even within the institutionalised framework. It aims to understand the situation of Unani system of medicine with respect to other alternative medicines as enshrined in the concept of AYUSH along with the Allopathic system. In the process of doing so, the present research, through an ethnographic study, takes Unani hospital as a case in point to analyse the position of Unani system of medicine within the larger realm of healthcare.
AminS. (2012). Eurocentrism (2nd ed.). New Delhi, India: Aakar Books for South Asia.
2.
ArnoldD. (2000). Science, technology and medicine in colonial India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
3.
AttewellG. (2007). Refiguring Unani Tibb: Plural healing in late colonial India. New Delhi, India: Orient Longman.
4.
AttewellG., HardimanD., LambartH., & MukherjeeP. B. (2012). Agendas. In HardimanD. and MukherjiP. B. (Eds.), Medical marginality in south Asia—Situating subaltern therapeutics (pp. 1–5). London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge.
5.
BaerH. A., SingerM., & SusserI. (Eds.). (2003). Medical anthropology and the world system. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
6.
BalaA. (2006). The dialogue of civilizations in the birth of modern science. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan
7.
BanerjeeM. (2002). Public policy and Ayurveda—Modernising a great tradition. Economic and Political Weekly, 37(12), 1136–1146.
8.
BanerjeeM. (2004). Local knowledge for world market—Globalizing ayurveda. Economic and Political Weekly, 39(1), 89–93.
9.
BanerjeeM. (2009). Power, knowledge, medicine: Ayurvedic pharmaceuticals at home and in the world. Hyderabad, India: Orient Black Swan.
10.
CantS., & SharmaU. (1999). A new medical pluralism? Alternative medicine, doctors, patients and the state. Routledge.
11.
DunnF. L. (1998). Traditional Asian medicine and cosmopolitan medicine as adaptive systems. In LeslieCharles (Ed.), Asian medical systems—A comparitive study (pp. 133–158). Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited.
12.
EisenstadtS. N. (2000). Multiple modernities. Daedalus, 129(1), 1–29. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20027613.pdf
13.
ErnstW. (2002). Plural medicine, tradition and modernity, 1800–2000. London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge.
14.
EscobarA. (1995). Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
15.
FulderS. (1996). The handbook of alternative and complementary medicine. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
16.
GusfieldJ. R. (1967). Tradition and modernity: misplaced polarities in the study of social change. American Journal of Sociology, 72(4), 351–362.
17.
HardimanD., & MukherjiP. B. (2012). Medical marginality in south Asia—Situating subaltern therapeutics. London, UK: Routledge.
18.
JefferyR. (1988). The politics of health in India. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
19.
KhanS. (2006). Systems of medicine and nationalist discourse in India: Towards “new horizons” in medical anthropology and history. Social Science and Medicine, 62(11), 2786–2797.
20.
KhanS. (2012). Colonial medicine and elite nationalist responses in India: Conformity and contradictions. In BalaP. (Ed.), Contesting colonial authority: Medicine and indigenous responses in nineteenth and twentieth-century India (pp 69–80). UK: Lexington Books.
21.
LambartH. (2012). Medical pluralism and medical marginality: Bone doctors and the selective legitimation of therapeutic expertise in India. Social Science and Medicine, 74, 1029–1036.
22.
LazarI., & JohannessenH. (2006). Epilogue: Multiple medical realities: Reflections from medical anthropology. In JohannessenH. & LazarI. (Eds.), Multiple medical realities: Patients and healers in biomedical, alternative and traditional medicine (pp. 183–198). New York, NY: Berghahn Books.
23.
LeslieC., & YoungA. (1992). Paths to Asian medical knowledge. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
24.
LeslieC. (1998). Asian medical systems—A comparitive study. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited.
25.
MetcalfB. D. (1985). Nationalist muslims in British India: The case of Hakim Ajmal Khan. Modern Asian Studies, 19(1), 1–28.
26.
MinochaA. (1980). Medical pluralism and health services in India. Social Sciences and Medicine, 14(B), 217–224.
27.
MishraA., & ChatterjeeS. C. (2013). Introduction. In MishraA. & ChatterjeeS. C. (Eds.), Multiple voices and stories: Narratives of health and illness (pp. 1–26). New Delhi, India: Orient Blackswan.
28.
National Health Portal (2020). https://www.nhp.gov.in/ayush_ms (accessed on 28thApril2020).
29.
Newsletter (2012). Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine. 32(1).
30.
PandyaV. (2012). Pain in all the wrong places: the experience of biomedicine among the Ongee of little Andaman island. In HardimanD. & MukherjiP. B. (Eds.), Medical marginality in south Asia—Situating subaltern therapeutics (pp. 59–84). London, UK: Routledge
31.
PatiB., & HarrisonM. (2001). Health, medicine and empire: Perspectives on colonial India. New Delhi, India: Orient Longman.
32.
PrasadN. P. (2007). Medicine, power and social legitimacy: A socio-historical appraisal of health systems in contemporary India. Economic and Political Weekly, 42(34), 3491–3498.
33.
QuaiserN. (2013). Essentialising the body. The Newsletter, 65, 30–31.
34.
SarukkaiS. (2012). What is science?New Delhi, NY: National Book Trust.
35.
SharmaP. (2015). Mapping diverse medical trajectory in Hyderabad during Nizam period: A critical appraisal. Deccan Studies, 13(1 and 2), 133–147.
36.
SujathaV., & AbrahamL. (2009). Medicine, state and society. Economic and Political Weekly, 44(16), 35–43.
37.
SujathaV., & AbrahamL. (2012). Medical pluralism in contemporary India. New Delhi, India: Orient Blackswan.
38.
VanceE. (2016). Mind over matter. National Geographic Magazine, 4(5),42–67.
39.
VermaD. R. (2013). Reason and medicine: Art and science of healing from antiquity to modern times. New Delhi, India: Three Essays Collective.
