Helene Basu

Helene Basu Contasted Practices of Control

Care for the mentally ill is of growing concern to the contemporary Indian public. In the early y... more Care for the mentally ill is of growing concern to the contemporary Indian public. In the early years of the 21 st century, psychiatric and religious institutions became the focus of a public media scandal. In the course of an accident that happened at a Muslim shrine, 26 mentally ill people died. They had been chained. The ensuing media campaign not only scandalised a cruel and backward tradition, symbolised by the chains, but also the conditions prevailing in mental hospitals, the successors of the colonial export of lunatic asylums. The controversy debated the legitimacy or illegitimacy of different treatment methods for the mentally ill, and heavily drew on the opposition of a progressive modernity against backward traditions. Body controls provided the implicit focus of this debate. This paper draws attention to the simultaneous existence of psychiatric and religious institutions in the context of the pluralistic medial sphere in contemporary India. The comparative analysis of body control practiced in a mental hospital and in Muslim shrines builds upon ethnographic research conducted in sites that constitute the poles of a continuum of diverse and changing discourses and practices related to the treatment of mental illness in India.

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History on the line: Music and the formation of the Sidi Identity in Western India

History workshop journal : HWJ, 2008

Long before the current age of postcolonial globalization, the Western Indian Ocean served as a m... more Long before the current age of postcolonial globalization, the Western Indian Ocean served as a maritime highway linking littoral settings in Western India with Arabia, Persia and East Africa. Among the many travellers who crossed the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people from Africa faced a particularly gruelling fate. In contrast to those who willingly journeyed by

Göttin in Indien – Indien als Göttin?

Historische Anthropologie, 2004

Autorinnen und Autoren

Praxis der Interkulturellen Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, 2011

Theatre of Memory: Ritual Kinship Performances of the African Diaspora in Pakistan

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The Sidi and the Cult of Bava Gor

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Music and the Formation of Sidi Identity in India

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Darstellungen der Psychiatrie in indischen Filmen

Abstract. In contemporary India, psychiatry and mental health have emerged as issues of growing p... more Abstract. In contemporary India, psychiatry and mental health have emerged as issues of growing public
attention. This new interest is also played out in the production of Indian films dealing with psychiatric
themes. Beginning with the observation that the emergence of the medical category of “schizophrenia“
coincides in the history of Western modernity with the early production of psychiatric movies,
this article examines portrayals of psychiatric institutions, psychiatrists and mental illness in recent Bollywood-,
Regional- and Art-Films. The latter show psychiatric motives related to or contrasting with
diverse Indian understandings of madness embedded in religious or cosmological schemes such as possession.
Films are analyzed in terms of the popular images of psychiatry they convey which are seen as
reflections of different social contexts and diverse understandings of Indian modernity. As the films
differ in regard to the evaluations accorded to non-psychiatric explanations of mental illness they provide
audiences with different imaginations of Indian modernity and the place of psychiatry and religion
therein.

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Morality as a Cultural System?

by Thomas Csordas, Pablo Wright, Amelie Rorty, and Helene Basu

Addresses debates in anthropology about morality, and argues that such studies must take the prob... more

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Contested Practices of Conrol: Psychiatric and Religious Mental health Care in India

Care for the mentally ill is of growing concern to the contemporary Indian public. In the early y... more Care for the mentally ill is of growing concern to the contemporary Indian public. In the early years of the 21 st century, psychiatric and religious institutions became the focus of a public media scandal. In the course of an accident that happened at a Muslim shrine, 26 mentally ill people died. They had been chained. The ensuing media campaign not only scandalised a cruel and backward tradition, symbolised by the chains, but also the conditions prevailing in mental hospitals, the successors of the colonial export of lunatic asylums. The controversy debated the legitimacy or illegitimacy of different treatment methods for the mentally ill, and heavily drew on the opposition of a progressive modernity against backward traditions. Body controls provided the implicit focus of this debate. This paper draws attention to the simultaneous existence of psychiatric and religious institutions in the context of the pluralistic medial sphere in contemporary India. The comparative analysis of body control practiced in a mental hospital and in Muslim shrines builds upon ethnographic research conducted in sites that constitute the poles of a continuum of diverse and changing discourses and practices related to the treatment of mental illness in India.

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Listening to Disembodied Voices: anthropological and psychiatric challenges

Possession

Besessenheitskrankheit und Psychiatriereform in der indischen Moderne.

Ethnologische Aspekte der Migration

Healing Madness through Ritual Trials.

format_quoteMadness is linked to social relationships and sorcery, indicating societal dynamics rather than individual failures.format_quote

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Gujarat

Contested Practices of Control: Psychiatric and Religious Mental Health Care in India.

Care for the mentally ill is of growing concern to the contemporary Indian public. In the early y... more Care for the mentally ill is of growing concern to the contemporary Indian public. In the early years of the 21 st century, psychiatric and religious institutions became the focus of a public media scandal. In the course of an accident that happened at a Muslim shrine, 26 mentally ill people died. They had been chained. The ensuing media campaign not only scandalised a cruel and backward tradition, symbolised by the chains, but also the conditions prevailing in mental hospitals, the successors of the colonial export of lunatic asylums. The controversy debated the legitimacy or illegitimacy of different treatment methods for the mentally ill, and heavily drew on the opposition of a progressive modernity against backward traditions. Body controls provided the implicit focus of this debate. This paper draws attention to the simultaneous existence of psychiatric and religious institutions in the context of the pluralistic medial sphere in contemporary India. The comparative analysis of body control practiced in a mental hospital and in Muslim shrines builds upon ethnographic research conducted in sites that constitute the poles of a continuum of diverse and changing discourses and practices related to the treatment of mental illness in India.

format_quoteMedia coverage of chained patients at a shrine spurred outrage over inhumane treatment, reshaping public discourse on mental health care.format_quote

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Soziale und religiöse Dimensionen von Askese in der Gegenwart. I

'Schmutzige Methoden': Geisteskrank durch Besessenheit und schwarze Magie in Gujarat/Indien.

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