This article traces the making of anti-cancer campaigns in South India. Set at the cusp of decolonization, it explores how provincial physicians and women activists framed cancer care in the 1940s and 1950s. It offers insights into the argumentative, contingent ways in which public health concerns were framed and mobilized in Indian cities between a middle class public, medical experts and state agency. These cancer campaigns and local health debates have been neglected because historians have tended to focus on national level, political visions of health, on debates regarding international aid, transfer of medical technology, and targeted disease control programs. This has also shaped and limited how we have understood the complex, changing meanings and expectations of health and development in newly decolonized societies such as India. Analyzing the activist campaigns and writings of Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi an influential physician, renowned Women’s Indian Association leader, and legislator, and tracing the making of urban, anti-cancer networks, I argue that cancer care campaigns both invoked and challenged nationalist and developmental priorities, and questioned assumptions about what were termed as ‘normative’ diseases and health risks in India. Even though they spoke of the curative, technoscientific and specialized aspects of cancer treatment and urged its provision in local hospitals, they also encouraged the state and philanthropists to assume moral responsibilities for care and chronic suffering. They built on contemporary social and political metaphors, especially Tamil cultural representations of women. These ideas created emerging spaces for debates through multiple discursive ambits that emerged while trying to articulate and balance ‘needs’ that were seen as dichotomous and competing between managing population wide, curable diseases and the needs of a vocal, minority of advocates supporting cancer care. These debate were no doubt also limited by the visions of middle-class women, urban philanthropy, and engagements with male political leaders, and health officials.

中文翻译：

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易怒状态：南印度抗癌运动中的科学和苦难的偶然政治（1940-1960）

本文追溯了印度南部抗癌运动的开展。它处于非殖民化的风口浪尖，探讨了 1940 年代和 1950 年代省级医生和女性活动家如何构建癌症护理。它提供了对在印度城市中中产阶级公众、医学专家和国家机构之间构建和动员公共卫生问题的争论性、偶然性方式的见解。这些癌症运动和地方健康辩论一直被忽视，因为历史学家倾向于关注国家层面、政治健康愿景、关于国际援助、医疗技术转让和有针对性的疾病控制计划的辩论。这也影响和限制了我们对印度等新非殖民化社会中复杂、不断变化的健康和发展的意义和期望的理解。分析具有影响力的医生、著名的印度妇女协会领导人和立法者 Muthulakshmi Reddi 博士的激进运动和著作，并追踪城市抗癌网络的形成，我认为癌症护理运动既调用又挑战了民族主义和发展优先事项，并质疑在印度被称为“规范”疾病和健康风险的假设。尽管他们谈到癌症治疗的治疗、技术科学和专业方面，并敦促当地医院提供这种治疗，但他们也鼓励国家和慈善家为护理和慢性病承担道德责任。他们建立在当代社会和政治隐喻之上，尤其是泰米尔文化对妇女的表现。这些想法通过多个话语领域创造了新的辩论空间，这些领域在试图阐明和平衡被视为二分法的“需求”时出现，并在管理广泛的可治愈疾病与支持癌症护理的少数倡导者的需求之间进行竞争。这些辩论无疑也受到中产阶级女性的愿景、城市慈善事业以及与男性政治领导人和卫生官员的接触的限制。