Violence, non‐violence, and blood donation in India

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between medical blood donation and concepts and enactments of violence and non‐violence in India. The focus is on those north Indian devotional orders in the sant tradition whose devotees donate their blood in large quantities for transfusion. These orders profess a commitment to the Hindu Brahmanic and reformist tenet of non‐violence (ahimsa). At the same time, their attempts to donate blood for Indian army personnel shows how blood donation can be a means to engage in military affairs ‘from a distance’. This article also demonstrates the ways in which different modes of sacrifice surface in blood donation ideology and practice. Arguing that blood donation mediates between violence and non‐violence in the subcontinent, the article concludes with a related set of points concerning the ambiguous relationship between caste concepts and blood donation. Résumé Le présent article explore la relation entre le don du sang à usage médical et les concepts et réalisations de la violence et de la non‐violence en Inde. L'accent est mis sur les ordres dévots du nord de l'Inde qui suivent la tradition du sant, et dont les membres donnent beaucoup de sang pour les transfusions. Ces ordres professent leur attachement au principe de non‐violence (ahimsa) de l'hindouisme brahmanique et réformiste. Dans le même temps, leur volonté de donner du sang pour les personnels de l'armée indienne montre à quel point le don de sang peut être un moyen de s'engager « à distance » dans les affaires militaires. Cet article démontre également les manières dont plusieurs modes de sacrifice apparaissent dans l'idéologie et la pratique du don de sang. Avançant que le don de sang est une médiation entre violence et non‐violence dans le sous‐continent, l'article se conclut par un ensemble de considérations liées, concernant la relation ambiguë entre les concepts de caste et le don de sang.

Introduction: blood will out

“…Not surprisingly, anthropologists have recently turned to blood donation to explore its meanings and cultural significance (see Copeman 2009 b ). An emerging body of scholarship on blood donation in New Guinea (Street ), India (Copeman 2004; 2005; 2008; 2009 a ; 2009 c ), Brazil (Sanabria ), Sri Lanka (Simpson ), the United Kingdom (H. Busby ), and the Indian community in Houston, USA (Reddy ), amongst other locations, demonstrates the complex ways in which blood donation both draws on and expands local practices and idioms of gift‐giving, the body, political, religious, or personal sacrifice, kinship connection, and ethics. One obvious point underlined by this work is the importance of considering blood donation not as an isolated phenomenon, but as a ‘total social fact’ – to co‐opt an apt Maussian phrase.…”

Gathering Points: Blood Donation and the Scenography of `National Integration' in India

“…Those conducted in corporate offices can be dull and routine, with quiet, orderly employees queuing to donate. On the other hand, those staged by north Indian devotional orders in the sant tradition are frequently conducted on a gargantuan scale amidst great devotional fervor (see Copeman, 2008Copeman, , 2009). This article focuses on a further, very particular variety of Indian blood donation camp: the kind that results from political acts of composition in order that they become situational enactments of the Nehruvian post-Independence ideology of national integration.…”

Vital Publics of Pure Blood

“…Moreover, these vital publics are one among many 'vital systems' that receive the increasingly intense scrutiny of the security apparatuses of states (Collier et al, 2004;Lakoff, 2007). Indeed, the tight historical and contemporary linkages between transfusion medicine and varieties of violence (Copeman, 2008;Starr, 1999) reveal just how important transfusion medicine has been to the constitution of the major political units (i.e. nation-states) of the contemporary era (see e.g.…”