Dr. Koman's Report and Responses of Native Physicians: A Discourse on Indigenous Systems of Medicine

y The colonial government constituted a committee under Dr. Koman to direct the research and investigation of the pharmacological action of Indian drugs in 1918. The committee had dual purpose that, on the one hand, to find valuable and efficacious indigenous drugs to be incorporated into western medicine and on the other, to act as an agency to marginalise the indigenous systems. While the report was used as a 'tool' by colonial government to establish hegemonic supremacy of western medicine, it was considered as a spoiler of indigenous systems of medicine by the native physicians. It created a stir in the medical sphere. Understanding its threat as a hegemonic tool, native physicians prepared a repartee in the form of counter reports and published rebuttals in print media. The present work attempts to find that though the members of Legislative Councils of Madras Presidency and the indigenous physicians were praying for investigation for more than a decade, why such a committee was formed at that particular time. Further, it situates Dr. Koman's report and responses to it, in the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic paradigm and critically portrays the discourses of both the sides. The study projects that colonial hegemony failed to establish its authority over the mass completely because of counter-hegemonic struggle of indigenous physicians.