History of Mental Hospitals in Indian Sub-continent

The history of modern psychiatry in the Indian subcontinent is the story of the establishment of mental hospitals in India. Before the arrival of the British East India Company in 1600 there were no institutions to keep the insane. As such the early establishment of mental hospitals in the Indian sub-continent reflected the needs and demands of European patients in India during; the period. Later, the development and growth of mental institutions reflected both the interest and neglect by the colonialists who ruled India over 200 years. In India the mental asylums were entirely of British conception, "except for some ancient collections of curious humanity such as that of Shahdaula's Chauhas at Gujarat and in the Punjab (bhaw, 1932). However, earlier than this there is a reference of some asylums in the period of Mohammad Khilji (1436-1469) during the fifteenth century. There is evidence of the presence of a mental hospital at Dhar near Mandu, Madhya Pradesh where the physician was Maulana Fazulur Hakim (Sugandhi, 1956). There is also evidence that modern medicine and hospitals were first brought to India by Portuguese during the 17th century in Goa. However, the segregation of lunatics in mental asylum and their supervision were entirely of British origin. The early mental institutions in the Indian sub-continent were greatly influenced by the ideas and concepts as prevalent in England and Europe during those days. Primarily the mental asylums were built to protect the community and not the insane. As such, such asylums were constructed away from cities with high enclosures in either dilapidated buildings like barracks left by the military. It appears that lunatic asylums in India were first started to treat European soldiers employed with the East India Company. To understand the development of mental hospitals, it is relevant to know the political developments in India during that time. Probably the latter part of the 18th century was the most unstable period in Indian history with the decline and fall of powerful Moghul power in Delhi, with the consequent rise of the Marathas in most of the central part and South India, the Sikhs in the North and fights for supremacy between French and English in South India. All these gave not only political instability but also contributed to a psychological and social turmoil in the Indian sub-continent (Sarkar, 1932). We find that the development of lunatic asylums in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay were almost parallel to these events. I t is interesting to record that these three cities grew up in the beginning largely with British enterprise. The need to establish hospitals became more acute first for Englishmen and the Indian 'sepoyees' employed by the British East India Company. The East India Company won the first decisive war in India at Plassey in 1757 and a few years later the battle of Buxar in Bihar in 1764 against Nawab Sirajjudaula under the leadership