CADS Research Seminar
Medical bhoots (ghosts) and gendered medicine in post-colonial Bangladesh
- Date
- Monday 17 November 2025
- Time
- Location
-
FSW building
Wassenaarseweg 52
2333 AK Leiden
Medical bhoots (ghosts) and gendered medicine in post-colonial Bangladesh
Based on a hospital ethnography, this paper brings together the analysis of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) as a masculine, power-ridden space with an interrogation of specific medical practices that are conducted in the hospitals forensic department. Forensic medicine textbooks based on colonial medical men’s fantasies and myths of the ‘Indian woman’ continue as authoritative knowledge of which kind of women can or cannot be raped, and therefore, who is ‘worthy’ of care and sympathy. Victorian era based penal justice system dictate medico-legal jurisprudence which continue with the controversial colonial practice of the two-finger test, or virginity test, as one of the primary evidence collection processes in an alleged rape case. The ghosts of the colonial past haunt the corners of the hospital, they are alive in forensic medicine texts, and they whisper into the medical consciousness of doctors as they examine cases of alleged sexual assault. This paper therefore brings forth the ‘herstory’ of DMCH through the hospital ethnography, shedding a light on the colonial male ghosts that continue to haunt women in post-colonial Bangladesh, dictating the organization of gendered medicine and female sexuality.
About Shahana Siddiqui
Dr. Siddiqui is a medical anthropologist specializing in sexual reproductive health rights, gender-based violence, and colonial medicine. She received her doctorate degree from Universiteit van Amsterdam where she is currently a lecturer. Her doctoral research focused on public health responsiveness to sexual violence in Bangladesh, having conducted a hospital ethnography at the largest public hospital in the country. Her greatest passion is teaching, believing in the power of the classroom as the site for feminist decolonial transformation.
Many thanks to the Globalizing Palliative Care project for co-sponsoring this seminar.