Gomastahs, Peons, Police and Chowdranies: The Role of Indian Subordinate in the Functioning of the Lock Hospitals and the Indian Contagious Diseases Act, 1805 to 1889.

Recent scholarship on the social history of health and medicine in colonial India has moved beyond enclavist or hegemonic aspects of imperial medicine and has rather focused on the role of Indian intermediaries and the fractured nature of colonial hegemony. Drawing inspiration from this scholarship, the article highlights the significance of the Indian subordinates in the lock hospital system in the nineteenth century Madras Presidency. This study focuses on a class of Indian subordinates called the "gomastah", who were employed to detect clandestine prostitution in Madras to control the spread of venereal disease.