The complexities of postcolonial international health: Karl Evang in India 1953

In February and March 1953, a WHO Visiting Team of Medical Scientists worked in India, collaborating with local medical students and professionals. This article studies the complexities of early postcolonial international health work and the relations between the young WHO and the newly independent countries, from the position of the team’s vice chairman, Norwegian doctor Karl Evang. While the WHO aimed to create dialogue and interaction, also learning from the host country, the article finds that an equal exchange of views between visitors and hosts was not achieved. The topic pertains to discussions on power and influence in international organisations and governance, development and health work, within a South Asian setting. Studying intellectual exchanges between Evang and his Indian interlocutors sheds light on India’s role as both receptive and generative site of ideas and political practice, contributing to broader debates on the appropriation, refashioning and application of political ideas in independent India. Also, at a time of new directions in international health, and considering Evang’s social medicine conviction, an additional question concerns the role of social medicine. The article underlines the existence of multiple, parallel tracks in international health work, and argues the need to portray international health as a complex mosaic, rather than a step-by-step development. The case has relevance as historians endeavour to make international and global history more diverse, as through Evang we capture parts of a broader international involvement of people and nation states in the WHO and its work in the early post-war period.