As a Yang Visiting Scholar, ‘Accidental Sociologist’ Ashok Kumar Mocherla Examines Medical Missions and Christianity in India
Professor Ashok Kumar Mocherla is one of two Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School during the 2022-23 academic year. His scholarly interests include the sociology of religion, caste, and Indian Christianity, as well as the sociology of faith healing and public health.
On April 18, at 5 pm, HDS warmly invites you to the special event, “World Christianity, Christianity in the West: Continuities and Differences,” an online panel discussion with the HDS Yang Scholars in Christianity. More details may be found on the HDS public calendar.
Ahead of April’s event, Mocherla explains below how his research engages with early medical missions in India and local systems of power, gender stereotypes, and religious perceptions over body and illness.
Developing Research Interests
I consider myself an accidental sociologist. Until my undergraduate studies, I was trained in mathematics and commerce. It all started off with my part-time interest in reading Telugu literature, which was nothing more than a hobby at that time.
I had gradually developed an interest in social sciences and the humanities, and I decided to make a radical shift in my academic career path. For my master’s program, I joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Hyderabad, India.
At the end of my MA program, I wanted to be an academic with a specialization in religion. However, the University of Hyderabad does not have an academic who works on religion. Hence, I had to make a move to the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay to pursue my doctoral thesis in the sociology of religion.
It was during my post-graduation experience that I observed student groups on campus and noticed their active involvement in matters of mainstream politics across India—not only fiercely contesting issues of religion and caste, but also organizing themselves on lines of religious, caste, and political ideologies.
Examining Missions and Medicine in India
Researching minority religious communities against the backdrop of the thoroughly diverse social context of India was what interested me most. A cursory look at the social science scholarship in India informs us that Indian Christianity and Indian Christian communities are largely under-represented. Unlike the West, Indian secular universities do not have religious studies departments—or schools of divinity—with a few exceptions.
At the same time, religion and caste have been at the core of mainstream politics and public debates in India for the past three decades or so. In that sense, research on Indian Christians (particularly Dalit Christians) gives me perspectives and ideas to analyze Indian society, both historically and, today, from the margins.
My research engages with the interaction between medical missions on the one hand and local systems of social stratification, power relations, gender stereotypes, and religious perceptions over body and illness on the other. It is this interaction between these two paradigms that has directly affected the debates on public health in India. The contemporary medical field that we see in India is nothing but a historical result of the interaction between these two paradigms. British colonial medicine played a crucial role in reforming public perceptions of heath, illness, healing, and its biological sources, and in a way moving away from deep-rooted religious perceptions of health and illness.
Lasting Impact of Scholarship
My book manuscript is in preparatory stages. Through HDS I have been able to find some significant historical missionary sources on medical missions, which are of great value for my book project. The overall framework of the book is almost ready. Soon I will be approaching a reputed university press with a book proposal. I have been drafting a couple of chapters during my term here at HDS.
One of the primary aims of my project is to examine neglected dimensions of Christian modernity and debates on public health in India—both historically and anthropologically—by engaging with medical missions.
In a way, this project tries to examine how medical missions fundamentally transformed the gender roles in the field of medicine in India. My book will also contribute to the field of medical anthropology by engaging with questions, such as: How did medical missions, through their work and presence, not only democratized medical knowledge to the marginalized communities of India, but also changed public perceptions of body, health, healing, and sources of illness? How does one differentiate colonial medicine from missionary medicine? And how did medical missions determine the direction of debates on public health in India?
Harvard Community and Resources
This is my first ever visit to Harvard University. I am pleasantly surprised by the sheer degree of ethnic diversity in student and faculty composition—both at HDS and in other departments. I believe this is one of the strengths of Harvard.
People at HDS are so friendly and supportive. I am thoroughly enjoying my time here at the School attending—both online and in-person—workshops, conferences, and weekly talks. HDS has extraordinary academic resources for those who wish to study Christian traditions across the globe. The insightful and productive interaction with faculty and students would be something that all the future Yang Visiting Scholars would look forward to.
I have heard about the Boston cold climate earlier, and I am now experiencing the same firsthand. One needs a thorough preparation to face the Boston cold, especially if you are born and raised in tropical weather!