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HISTORY OF PSYCHIATRY

Lunatic asylums: A business of profit during the colonial empire in India

R. C. Jiloha
Department of Psychiatry, Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India

ABSTRACT

The knowledge about “maladies of the mind” was in the early stages of development and far from being considered as
medical conditions till the mid-19th century. Around this period, the British began to establish “Native-Only” lunatic
asylums in India, particularly in the Bengal Presidency of their colonial empire. These institutions were primarily meant
to provide custodial care and to rehabilitate those creating nuisance, particularly the wanderers and vagrants. However,
these facilities turned into forced labor houses producing goods for the British Empire in the name of treatment. As
traders, the British amassed India’s wealth in several ways, and the establishment of lunatic asylums for the natives was
one of the profit-making businesses. Undercover of Victorian morality, the reports of medical treatment had evolved into
profit margin data. This article explores some of the obscure facts of British colonial rule in regards to mental health.

Key words: East India Company, lunacy, vagrancy, Victorian morality, wanderers

INTRODUCTION be categorized as either “European” or “Native-Only”

The year 1857 witnessed the first collective revolt by
Indians against the British in addition to forging a link in
the chain of events, which began with the establishment of
lunatic asylums during the rule of East India Company in the
initial years and the British Raj later on. Before the British
encroached on Indian territory, there was no practice of
confinement of the mentally ill in India,[1] and the tradition
of wandering, including vagrancy, was a recognized aspect
of an ascetic lifestyle elaborately described in the Rig
Veda.[2] This lifestyle was not considered deviant behavior.[3]
After the British established their rule in India, they began
to build asylums for the mentally ill; these facilities would
Address for correspondence: Prof. R. C. Jiloha,
Department of Psychiatry, Hamdard Institute of Medical
Sciences and Research, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India.
E-mail: rcjiloha@hotmail.com
Submitted: 03-Oct-2019, Revised: 19-Feb-2020,
Accepted: 10-Apr-2020, Published: 15-Feb-2021
Access this article online
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establishments. Maintaining their own racial, social, and
cultural identity, they lived in separate localities called civil
lines, had their own shopping arcades and clubs where the
entry of Indians was often prohibited. T*hey built separate
asylums for the lunatics of their own race. The “Native-Only”
facilities expected to help the mentally ill of India were
used as places to confine Indian wanderers and vagrants
during the 1850s and 1860s in the Bengal Presidency.[1] To
reform them, Victorian morality and a strong work ethic
were imposed on these so-called “patients” to “rehabilitate
and cure” them. They were used for forced labor under the
garb of their treatment, and the goods produced by these
“patients” in the asylums created a new significant avenue
of profit for the British.
The occurrence of mental illnesses in India has been
identified and recorded since ancient times. In the traditional
Hindu socio-religious system, insanity was treated through
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DOI:
How to cite this article: Jiloha RC. Lunatic asylums: A
business of profit during the colonial empire in India. Indian
10.4103/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_589_19
J Psychiatry 2021;63:84-7.

84 © 2021 Indian Journal of Psychiatry | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow

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Jiloha: Lunatic asylums
Vedic prayer and Ayurvedic practices. The sacred Hindu
text Atharva-Veda-Samhita mentions a specific prayer to
relieve the mind from insanity.[4] Ayurveda sees insanity as
a poisoning of the mind by the wrong path of life. Today,
Ayurvedic practice remains popular, and the insanity
treatment has remained the same. Treating insanity consists
of activities that promote peaceful thinking, such as yoga
and a healthy diet.[5] Apart from prayer and positive thoughts,
little was done by the practitioners of Ayurveda to control
insanity. On the other hand, Muslims in the Arabic world had
established several hospitals for the mentally ill; the first was
in Al-Qatai, Egypt, around 872 BCE.[6] The Muslim religious
establishments were the places of refuge for the mentally ill,
and patients were treated by a variety of procedures. In the
medieval Islamic world, these hospitals came up in several
places such as Baghdad, Fes, and Cairo.[7,8] No doubt, Muslims
established several mental hospitals in the Arabic world,
there were very few in India before the British arrived to
rule here. Islamic mental hospitals were accepted outside of
India, and they were not successful here because of obstacles
in treating members of different varnas or castes, in the same
institution because of the caste differences of the patients.[9]
In England, the lunatics had been receiving custodial care
through their detention in asylums for centuries. Laws were
enacted to define and treat them. Lunacy was legitimized
through legislation than through medical evidence.
The British concept of lunacy was thus completely different
from the Indian concept of mental malady. In the 18th-century
treatise, Commentaries on the Laws of England defined a
lunatic or non compos mentis as a person, “who had hath his
understanding, but by disease, grief, or other accident, hath lost
the use of his reason.”[1] However, under the general name
non compos mentis are comprised not only lunatics but
also persons under frenzies, or who lose their intellects by
disease as are judged by the court of chancery incapable of
conducting their own affairs.[10] The persons with defective
reasoning or those who have lost their reasoning power
were labeled as lunatics.
A wide range of behaviors, including socially troublesome
behavior, were covered under the nomenclature of lunacy.
Supported by the Victorian norms, class distinction, and work
ethic, the prevailing British concept of lunacy was exported
to their colonies along with their own interpretations.
As the British East India Company began to exercise its
political power in the Indian subcontinent, they started
transplanting the British model of lunatic asylums in Indian
soil,[11] and the first asylum was established in the Bengal
presidency in 1795 for “mad sepoys.”[10] Subsequently, a
chain of lunatic asylums came up along the coastline of the
Indian peninsula and other places in the country.[12]
In the following times, with new medical and scientific
discoveries, there was much speculation over the causes
Indian Journal of Psychiatry Volume 63, Issue 1, January-February 2021
of mental disorders though training in the diagnoses, and
the treatment of mental diseases was still not part of the
medical education.[13] Although the chaining and shackling
of the lunatics, which was the common practice of care in
Europe, began to disappear in the mid-18th century,[14] the
lack of understanding regarding mental illness continued.
An article published in the Journal of Medical Science
of 1852 theorizing the moon and Indian climate caused
seasons of insanity in India,[15] was criticized and refuted
by the British Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental
Pathology as superstitious in the subsequent year.[16]
The British promoted their superiority over the native
population, as they always felt that they belonged to an
altogether superior breed of humankind, and Indians
were much inferior to them in every respect. A report of
1856 suggested that the prevalence of insanity was lower
in Indians in comparison to the British. They justified the
higher prevalence among civilized populations as a greater
notice is taken of those afflicted with lunacy, and thus, an
apparently higher proportion of insane to the population is
made to appear,[14] ignoring the Indian conditions of better
family, social cohesiveness, and tolerance of mentally ill in
the society as the possible reasons for low prevalence in
Indians. Assumed British superiority is apparent in their
justification to link Victorian morality to the care of the
insane; the British considered themselves to have high
moral standards, and hence felt compeled to “notice” the
insane in the people of their own race.
They also felt morally responsible to “help” the Indian
insane, but with certain reservations and stipulations,
primarily segregating the asylums into European and
Native-Only facilities. The main treatment regimens would
consist of cleanliness, Victorian morality, and a work ethic;[17]
morality was instead used as a mask to cover British fears
of nonsedentary Indians and to justify their removal to the
asylums. The detention of Indians would help correct the
wanderers and vagrants that the British felt was creating
trouble, thereby violating the British sense of order and
civility.[1]
LUNATIC ASYLUMS: INDUSTRIES FOR PROFIT
The revolt of 1857 marked cataclysm against colonialism,
which compelled the British to change their perspective of
Indians. They now viewed Indians as a dangerous population
that needed to be subjugated with a firmer hand. This sense
of insecurity particularly aimed at wanderers and vagrants
led the British to do anything from taking weapons away
from them to actually removing potentially dangerous
and unpredictable individuals from the community to the
asylums.[18] The year 1858 witnessed the introduction of the
Indian Lunatic Asylums Act which allowed the control and
management of asylums by the British Government. Clauses
4 and 5 of the act empowered the British Government to
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Jiloha: Lunatic asylums
herd the wanderers and vagrants presumed to be insane
into the asylums with the approval of a magistrate to
incarcerate there for life. These unfortunate people were
not necessarily medically insane. Forced detention without
a valid medical reason was legalized; wandering and
vagrancy were criminalized.
Vagrancy had been a perpetual problem in England, and the
first British Vagrancy Act was enacted in 1714[19] to control
it. However, in India, where wandering and vagrancy were
considered to be a part of the normal lifestyle, it was in
no way a threat. Their detention, in most of the case,
was the misuse of the law. Protection of those unable to
protect themselves was a cherished concern of the medical
community under the Victorian morality, particularly of the
wanderers or vagrants who were the easy targets of the
Government.
Wanderers at a particular stage of life, the Vanaprastha, the
renouncing and living an ascetic life, was very much the part
of the Hindu lifestyle. However, the Indian philosophy was
not analogous with British thinking; they considered it to
be deviant behavior. After the revolt of 1857, because of
security reasons, the British never permitted the wanderers
to choose their living arrangements as ascetics.
Forced labor and inhuman conditions of the asylums came
under global admonition during the latter part of the 19th
century. Asylum doctors were rarely taken seriously as their
legitimacy was a topic of debate; their opinion on lunacy
was never taken seriously and they lacked support from the
Government.[20] The scientific study of lunacy had not been
proven reliable yet, and Psychiatry was an illegitimate field
of medicine.[14]
A new discovery connected mental illness with the brain
replacing the accepted superstition that mental illness was
caused by “phantoms.” It was also discovered that the early
detection of mental illness might lead to a possible cure.
The British justified their medical decisions in India on the
basis of new discoveries that early detention would possibly
help them to get rid of the insanity. The British was able
to rationalize the removal of vagrant Indians to cure their
supposed mental illnesses.
Asylums for Europeans were significantly better equipped
than their Indian counterparts; the medical professionals
posted that there had received better training, ensuring
British superiority in every aspect of care.
The term “lunatic” in India was an ambiguous term that
covered a wide range of behaviors and social improprieties.
The Annual Reports from the Dullunda Asylum for 1862
shows that of 111 patients, 91 were confined for drug or
alcohol intoxication who were detained for the reasons of
addiction or public intoxication. Once the intoxicants were
86
out of the patients’ systems, these patients would have
been coherent individuals, though the records indicate that
they remained confined for an undefined period.[17]
Public nuisance rather than lunatic would better characterize
most of the patients confined in Bengal asylums. The 1857
uprisings made the British fearful of the Indian population
as a whole, which led to swift social regulations. While
admitting them in asylums, no objective evidence of
insanity was recorded, the case notes of these inmates were
more preoccupied with the vagrancy than with their state
of mind,[18] with the sole aim of clearing Bengal streets of
wanderers and vagrants.
The actual mental disorders, which the reports reveal,
included chronic mania and dementia, with the most
common causes being “ganja smoking” and intemperance
from alcoholic consumption.[17] Detention for alcohol or
marijuana use was quite prolonged. Temperance and
restraint were forced on the Indian population under the
guise of an insanity cure.
In spite of the overcrowding in the asylums, the British
considered it their moral and medical obligation to confine
lunatics. The prevailing philosophy that morality would
cure all things, including insanity; the steady work would
result in a long-lasting cure for the patients in the asylums.
The physical labor of patients documented throughout the
asylum records included rope making, loom work, tinwork,
gardening, cooking, fetching water, masonry, and any other
task needed to maintain asylum grounds. Different jobs
were categorized as “asylum industries,” necessary in the
treatment of the insane. By 1870, the asylum industries had
expanded to include new jobs such as carpentry as a viable
source of income, and it was, therefore, incorporated into a
financial plan rather than a treatment plan. These industries
led to significant avenues of profit for the asylums and the
British, an objective in full agreement with the goals of East
India Company and the British Raj in India.
Some of these industries, such as the asylums’ gardening,
did benefit the patients. In 1862, when gardening was just
1 year old in its production, it was already feeding the
Native-Only asylums, European asylums, as well as some
local jails. Not only did the British see the asylum gardens as
a way to give the patients an outdoor job considered as part
of their treatment regimen but talso they hoped to sell the
excess produce for profit. The quest for profit irrespective
of medical treatment had been an ethic inherited from the
East India Company, and in general, a goal agreeing with
colonial profit motives.
By 1870, the gardens in Bengal’s asylums were flourishing,
which furnished vegetables in abundance, and produced the
best kinds of fruit, both for use and sale.[21] Reports describe
the gardens in details, but there is no description as to why
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Jiloha: Lunatic asylums
or how laboring in the gardens helped the patients; this
seemed of very little concern in the reports. Nowhere in the
reports, it is mentioned that garden work was useful as a
treatment, and the level of details about the patient history
and diagnosis is nowhere comparable to the description of
profit margins.
The Victorian British categorized human actions as either
moral or immoral, and they rationalized profiting from the
asylum industries as moral because it was considered to be
a form of medical treatment for the inmates.
Patna Asylum Report of 1862 justifies employing lunatics
as an efficient means of tranquilizing the nervous system,
improving the general health, and facilitating a cure, all but
the very imbecile, work, and this is effected, without any
coercion, by persuasion.[17] The very next section contains
the profit margins for Patna Asylum, including how to raise
the profit index.
For the British, profit by any means was the motivation for
housing the “insane” without a valid reason. The vagrants
and wanderers could be accounted for lowering the security
threats that haunted the minds of the British,[1] and ethos
would justify their position that work would cure all the ills
of the world. In return, they would profit off of the “remedy.”
Their system of confinement, they claimed, was their moral
obligation. Their method of treatment, however, resulted in
profits rather than psychiatry’s advancement, and India had
to reap the harvest of their business tactics.
CONCLUSION
Bengal Presidency administration of East India Company
began a profit-motivated move that filtered down to the
management of public health facilities of lunatic asylums.
In the name of the welfare of indigenous populations, the
Victorian ethos was used to manipulate the diagnoses
of those who were not truly mentally ill. The vagrants
and wanderers of India bore the brunt of “work therapy”
resulting in financial remuneration for the British Empire.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Indian Journal of Psychiatry Volume 63, Issue 1, January-February 2021
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
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