Modernisation Of Traditional Medical Culture: An Implication Of Culture Change In Rajbanshis Of Koch Bihar, West Bengal

Abstract

Most indigenous groups have gradually replaced their traditional medical practices with western medicine over the last 200 years or so due to the development and acceptance of western medicine. The primary driver of this change has been the implementation of health care reform policies, which have facilitated the influx of allopathic medicine into non-codified traditional folk medicine. Nonetheless, the Rajbanshi population in Koch Bihar, demonstrates the coexistence of both with a proclivity for western biomedicine. Western medicine has suppressed the once-dominant medical system. There has been less research done because the historical development of this gradual change system is poorly known. This article aims to investigate how the modernization of Rajbanshi traditional medical culture has affected its ethnicity. Specifically, it seeks to explain how western culture of biomedicine has been sustained in traditional Rajbanshi community through colonial and post-colonial health care repressive policies.