Beastly Encounters of the Raj provides fresh insights into the history of livestock in India and is written as a foray into the medical, social and colonial history of the subcontinent. Indeed, a remarkable strength of this book lies in the author’s capacity to illustrate the way in which issues pertaining to the history of cattle are deeply entangled with larger questions relating to the nature of the colonial state, the evolution of public health and the making of class and caste identities. Taking these three aspects as overarching points of reference, the book explores a tremendous variety of subjects.
It begins with the illustration of the failed colonial experiment with horse breeding in India which was driven by the military necessity of supplying the cavalry with horses of good quality, as well as by the urge to create a distance from the ‘native’ horse market and its traders, which the colonialist mind, imbued with racist views, looked upon with fear and distrust (ch. 1). The prevalence of this distrust shows in the repudiation of co-operation and reliance on ‘natives’ which, as it would have limited expense, would have been congruent with the financial prudence of early colonial bureaucrats. Instead, the principle of keeping investments low paired with the decision to circumvent the existing market sealed the fate of this early colonial attempt in the sphere of horse breeding, which was consequently doomed to fail. Nevertheless, the strong interest in mastering horse breeding in India, alongside a growing concern for the preservation of military horses, promoted the attention of British colonialists in the field of veterinary medicine (ch. 2). As the only area of attention, this horse-centrism also remained a severe impediment to veterinary medicine in the decades to come: unlike the situation in Britain, where public concern in times of prevalent epizootics successfully stirred the government into action, in India, cattle mortality brought on by disease remained a blind spot in the gaze of the colonial bureaucrat. Civil veterinary medicine, therefore, evolved late in India (the Civil Veterinary Department was founded only in 1892) and was hampered by a lack of engagement with the plight of the cattle owner. A brief excursion into the methods practised by Indian peasants to combat epizootics (p. 48) which, as is shown, were in some regards well ahead of colonial scientists, provides a needed but briefly presented nuance to the otherwise strong focus on the veterinary system of the Raj.
As the book moves on, the reader is acquainted with the advent of bacteriological research in India, which is told through the foundation and practice of the Imperial Bacteriological Laboratory at Muktesar (ch. 3). This important piece of medical history provides a beautiful illustration of the many ways in which colonial conceptions of the ‘native mind’ and the tropics revealed themselves in choices about the location of the laboratory, its staff and inventory. A lucid example of the nature of colonial prejudice and misconception can also be gleaned from British colonialists’ fear that resistance to bacteriological research would be strong in India, where society was suspected to be sentimentally inclined with respect to the treatment of animals. Mobilised through the Society for Prevention of Cruelty against Animals (SPCA), resistance instead emanated from the metropole.
It is in ch. 4 that the author returns to a main premise of his research and hence a much anticipated elaboration: the importance of cattle to their owners, which exceeds their mere economic value and shows vividly in times of scarcity and famine. With the intention of balancing the book’s predominant concern with colonial structures, peasant actions to preserve livestock and mitigate the effects of famine are explored, and the inaccuracy of colonial ideas about the behaviour and mind of the peasant depicted. Knitting the discussion of peasant reaction together nicely with the policies adopted by the Raj, the book offers a new and overdue perspective on colonial (in-) action with regard to famine relief. Mishra argues that Malthusianism, free-trade and financial concerns were able to exert unhindered pressure on colonial attitudes towards cattle relief while in contrast, when it came to relief to humans, these economic theories had to withstand the force of the duties of civilisation and government towards the Raj’s subjects.
Although the author rightfully emphasises and demonstrates the heavy entanglement of medical and social history as two fields of historical enquiry, the final two chapters of Beastly Encounters of the Raj mark a clear shift in focus and thus a step away from key concerns of medical history towards a greater engagement with social history: the making of class and caste identity (chs 4 & 5). This shift is also accompanied by a turn towards urban life and to the level of consumption of agrarian products – constituting a marvellous addition and complementary perspective to the viewpoint presented so far.
The diversity of themes and perspectives presented in this monograph, however, comes somewhat at the cost of overall coherence, as the book rapidly moves from one chapter to the next, covering 130 years of colonial rule in North India and leaving rather limited space to remind the reader of the overarching picture. This criticism of the structure aside, the book offers a valuable and arguably overdue historical exploration that convincingly contends that the understanding of the historical genesis of public health in India remains distorted as long as veterinary health continues to be sidelined.
