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ICAS:MP Lecture “Touching Care: Gandhi and the Art of Healing the Leprous Body” with Sumathi Ramaswamy | 19 March

Date: 19th March 2026

Time: 6 PM

Venue: Conference Room 2, IIC main building, Delhi

Title: “Touching Care: Gandhi and the Art of Healing the Leprous Body”

Speaker: Prof. Sumathi Ramaswamy  (Duke University, Durham)

Discussant: Prof. Projit Mukharji (Ashoka University)

Abstract:

What does a haptic history of the most famous Indian of the twentieth century reveal—and occlude?  I explore this question by turning to a set of under-analyzed photographs which show M. K. Gandhi, late in his own life, offering “touching” care to an elderly Brahmin follower afflicted by leprosy. Although I engage with the empire of biomedicine (including resistance to it through nativist strategies), my primary interest lies in opening for scrutiny the politics, ethics, and the aesthetics of touch in Gandhi’s act(s) of caregiving.  This is especially critical because Gandhi’s care for the leprous body coincided with the larger struggles he was carrying out in those very years against “the sin” of “untouchability.”  This was not lost on the Mahatma who drew a parallel between the stigma associated with the leprosy-afflicted body and the stigma that burdened the body of the untouchable—and by extension, all Indians. The photographs – and artworks inspired by them – help me to argue that Gandhi delivers an object lesson on how and why to offer (touching) care for the stigmatized Other in the time of untouchability.

Bio of Sumathi Ramaswamy

Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History, Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, and Chair of the Department of History, Duke University.  She has published on language politics, gender studies, spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern history of art, and more recently, digital humanities and the history of philanthropy in modern India.  She is a co-founder of Tasveerghar: A Digital Network of South Asian Popular Visual Culture (www.tasveerghar.net).  Her most recent works are the monograph Gandhi in the Gallery: The Art of Disobedience (2020), the digital project B is for Bapu: Gandhi in the Art of the Child in Modern India (https://sites.duke.edu/bisforbapu/) (2020), and a co-edited volume Photographing Disobedience: Bombay 1930-1931 (2025). She is currently completing a new monograph titled Dying to Give: The Accidental Birth of Educational Philanthropy in Tamil India.

Bio of Projit Mukharji

Prof. Projit Bihari Mukharji is a distinguished historian and Professor of History at Ashoka University, where he also serves as Head of the History Department. His research focuses on the histories of science and medicine in modern South Asia, exploring how scientific practices intersect with colonialism, race, and nationalism. He is the author of several acclaimed books including Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920–66(2022), Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies and Braided Sciences(2016), and Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine(2009). Mukharji’s scholarship has earned international recognition, including the prestigious 2024 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society for Brown Skins, White Coats, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship. He holds a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and his work has appeared in leading academic journals.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
sukritimanocha (February 26, 2026). ICAS:MP Lecture “Touching Care: Gandhi and the Art of Healing the Leprous Body” with Sumathi Ramaswamy | 19 March. ICAS:MP. Retrieved March 9, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15rn1


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