Skip to main content Skip to search
Tibetan treatment choices in the context of medical pluralism in the Darjeeling Hills
Format: Book Chapter
Publication Date: 2010/01/01/
Pages: 337 - 376
Sources ID: 99091
Visibility: Public (group default)
Abstract: (Show)
Tibetan medicine 1 is part of the medical syncretism found among communities living in the Darjeeling Hills, an area nestling the foothills of the Indian Himalayas of West Bengal. The multi-ethnic societies, comprised of people who have mostly migrated to this region since British colonial times, present an eclectic mix of the neighbouring societies of Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, and lowland Bengal. This paper presents ethnographic examples from my doctoral fieldwork (2004–2006), carried out in the two major urban centres of the Hills, Kalimpong (altitude 4,200 ft.) and Darjeeling (altitude 7,000 ft.). In the course of this paper I analyse how Tibetans make their treatment choices between varieties of available healing modalities. How do they go about finding the suitable medical and/or ritual practitioner to treat their illness within the array of pluralistic medical practices available in the Hills? The ethnographic examples show that Tibetans freely choose between biomedicine, 3 Tibetan 1 By 'Tibetan medicine' here I mean the institutionalised versions of the otherwise largely heterogeneous body of Tibetan medical knowledge practised at the Men-Tsee-Khang and Chakpori medical clinics in India.