Making up leprosy in India

Abstract

Copyright © 2023 The Author. Leprosy, globally recognised as a neglected tropical disease (NTD), is always experienced by those who are diagnosed with it in particular contexts. Although knowledge of cultural specificities – the anthropologist's stock-in-trade – is important in understanding how people in India manage the disease, it is vital, I argue in this chapter, that we also take into account the impact of ideas and actions beyond the local on quotidian experience. At least since the colonial era, the day-to-day lives of people affected by leprosy in India have been shaped by dominant, albeit changing, narratives scripted at different times and places and at multiple scales. This chapter, while working against a binary opposition drawn between the global and the local, explores some of those different narratives and the impact that state, national, and international decisions have had on local knowledge and experience of leprosy.