ABSTRACT
In Fanishwarnath Renu’s Maila Anchal (1954), a novel about political, social, and sexual turmoil in a rural community in Bihar in the years immediately following independence from British rule, there is the memorable anti-hero figure of Dr Prashant Bannerjee whose politics extend far beyond his rumoured Communist affiliations. Prashant-star pupil of his medical class, and fêted torch-bearer of the light of modern science in the fight against malaria and other diseases-comes to draw the battle lines against the dicta of scientific discourse itself. In post-Independence India-with its iconic citizen the romantic film hero who is also a scientist, or a civil engineer with expertise in dambuilding 1 —Dr Bannerjee’s recalcitrant turn of inquiry is perceived as a fundamental act of treason against the nascent-but rapidly consolidating-emotions of Indian nationhood. For the doctor now comes to interpret the techno-scientific complex itself as one of the several centres of power whose logic cannot be understood outside a social context whose matrices are class, the functioning of capital, and the consequent control of commodified bodies.
