Abstract

Colonial policies on leprosy were predicated on the enactment of laws and the administration of systems that targeted ‘vagrancy' as disease control, subsuming classist, casteist, gendered and racial narratives within state response to the disease. Colonial state power, juxtaposed with the social capital of the Indian elite and ‘employed' middle classes, created exclusive spaces for containment of (hyper visible, and therefore most vulnerable) leprosy sufferers belonging to ‘lower-caste,' poor communities. Colonial regimes of disease control built on underlying notions of ‘morality' and ‘hygiene’ subsist, in one form or another, in the post-colonial state, furthered by neoliberal institutions that repurpose these notions through their development policies. Leprosy regulation narratives are still predicated on rationales relating to hygiene and economic development, which focus on caste, gender and hygiene markers for regulation.

Resistance, in the background of colonial conceptions, policies and legislations relating to leprosy, has manifested within the very structures that have been set up to forcibly confine and isolate poor and marginalised persons with leprosy. In this article, we examine spaces of power created by the colonial state, giving rise to community spaces, unique power negotiations and narratives of resistance of the most marginalised. We critically trace the resistance of the ‘leper’ against draconian legislations, as well as ostracisation in the colonial and postcolonial period. Leprosy colonies have become sites of resistance where persons affected with leprosy did not passively suffer, but could reclaim their agency and re-imagine identities more positive than those ascribed to the infection. The alternative kinship structures that develop in these colonies facilitate unique care models that challenge dominant notions of families, hitherto predicated on marriage, adoption, or relatedness. Thus, we argue that leprosy colonies can be thought of not only as places of healing but as healing in and of themselves.

摘要

关于麻风病的殖民政策的基础是制定法律和管理以“流浪”为疾病控制的系统，在国家对疾病的反应中包含阶级主义、种姓主义、性别和种族叙述。殖民国家权力与印度精英和“受雇”中产阶级的社会资本并列，为收容属于“低种姓”贫困社区的（高度可见的，因此最脆弱的）麻风病患者创造了专属空间。建立在“道德”和“卫生”基本概念之上的殖民疾病控制制度以一种或另一种形式存在于后殖民国家，并得到新自由主义机构的推动，这些机构通过其发展政策重新利用这些概念。

在与麻风病有关的殖民观念、政策和立法的背景下，抵抗已经在为强行限制和隔离贫困和边缘化麻风病患者而建立的结构中表现出来。在这篇文章中，我们考察了殖民国家创造的权力空间，产生了社区空间、独特的权力谈判和最边缘化的抵抗叙事。我们批判性地追踪“麻风病人”对严厉立法的抵抗，以及殖民和后殖民时期的排斥。麻风病菌落已成为抵抗的场所，麻风病患者不会被动地遭受痛苦，而是可以重新获得他们的代理权并重新想象比那些归因于感染的人更积极的身份。在这些殖民地发展起来的另类亲属结构促进了独特的照顾模式，挑战了迄今为止以婚姻、收养或亲属关系为基础的家庭观念。因此，我们认为麻风病菌落不仅可以被认为是治愈的地方，而且可以被认为是自我治愈的地方。