DR. EVAMONI DEKA
Dr. Evamoni Deka is currently working as a Guest Faculty at Maharaja Agrasen College, University of Delhi. She is a trained social historian with a specialisation in the history of colonial Assam, focusing on the intersections of medicine, health, society, and colonial governance.
Dr. Deka completed her M.Phil. on “Emergence of Social Elites in Colonial Assam 1826-1900”, where she examined the formation of indigenous elite groups and their engagement with colonial institutions and socio-political change. She was awarded her Ph.D. from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, for her doctoral thesis titled “Medicine and Health in Colonial Assam, 1826–1947”. Her doctoral research offers a nuanced analysis of colonial medical practices, indigenous healing traditions, public health policies, gendered dimensions of healthcare, and the political economy of health under colonial rule.
Her academic work contributes to broader debates in social history, medical humanities, and South Asian history, particularly in understanding how colonial power, local society, and medical knowledge interacted in a frontier province like Assam. Dr. Deka’s research also foregrounds marginalised voices, including women and labouring communities, within the historical narrative of medicine and health.
Through her teaching and research, she continues to engage with themes of colonial modernity, social transformation, and historical methodologies, making her work relevant to scholars across history, gender studies, and interdisciplinary social sciences.
Independent Scholar
Session
This paper explores the history of women’s health and reproductive practices in colonial Assam, highlighting how the intersections of colonial governance, indigenous traditions, and social reform agendas shaped gendered medical knowledge. It argues that women’s health in the colonial period was overwhelmingly conceptualised through the lens of reproduction, resulting in the marginalisation of non-reproductive aspects of women’s well-being. Before colonial intervention, childbirth remained largely outside the domain of formal medical systems and was managed by indigenous midwives (dhais) through a combination of experiential knowledge, herbal remedies, ritual practices, and domestic care. These practices, while culturally embedded, operated within a framework of social stigma, caste prejudice, and lack of institutional recognition. With the introduction of Western medicine, childbirth gradually became medicalised, yet women continued to remain peripheral to colonial healthcare due to entrenched purdah norms, reluctance to consult male physicians, and the acute shortage of trained female medical professionals. Although hospitals and dispensaries expanded numerically, female attendance remained consistently low, reflecting structural and cultural barriers to access. Missionary women, the Countess of Dufferin Fund, the Victoria Memorial Scholarship Fund, the Indian Red Cross Society played a critical role in introducing female medical aid, training midwives, and establishing maternity and child welfare institutions. However, these initiatives were constrained by limited state commitment, inadequate funding, and persistent societal resistance to women’s education and professional training. High maternal and infant mortality rates, widespread anaemia, puerperal sepsis, and unsafe delivery practices underscore the limited reach of these reforms. By situating women’s reproductive health within the broader social and political context of colonial Assam, the paper demonstrates that colonial medical intervention neither displaced indigenous systems entirely nor ensured comprehensive care, but instead produced a fragmented and gendered healthcare landscape marked by inequality, neglect, and contested authority.