In the aftermath of World War II, the lead-up to Independence, and the violent repercussions of Partition, British missionaries in and around the Punjab proved to be a critical element in a change of historical narrative in the history of medicine in twentieth century South Asia. Medical missionary work during this tumultuous time represents important beginnings in the post-war rise of development projects in South Asia, particularly health related objectives. Times of crisis before, such as famines and earthquakes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had created an infrastructure and precedent of missionary aid in western India. Against the background of decolonisation, missionary activities took on a new trajectory in South Asia.
These historical circumstances crucially situated missionaries at a point, by the late 1940s, that would afford them a privileged position and intimate involvement in caring for displaced populations in impromptu refugee camps in the wake of Partition. Missionaries functioned as neutral third parties, able to participate in and coordinate relief and recovery efforts with minimal involvement in intercommunal violence. The knowledge gained during this time gave missionaries a prominent voice of experience in the creation of global health development strategies in the following decades and influenced the position allotted to biomedicine in postcolonial India and Pakistan.
This paper looks particularly at the activities of Church Missionary Society (CMS; an organisation within the Church of England) medical workers in and around the Punjab. The CMS funded, for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, what was the largest medical mission agency in the world, with India serving as one of its largest mission fields (only China ever surpassed it). The Punjab, in turn, suffered the brunt of the worst violence surrounding Partition. Charting the secularisation and Indianisation of its medical missions before and after Independence and Partition reflects the changing discourses of biomedical knowledge in South Asia and reveals an understudied aspect of the effects of decolonisation. Thus, an understanding of medical missionary history in India and Pakistan in the late 1940s sheds light on an important crossroads at which the narrative shifts from colonial to postcolonial—the Church providing continuity between these two chapters in the history of medicine.