Mental Health in the War on Terror

In the age of ‘post-truth’ politics, ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’, the ‘War on Terror’ is still intrinsic to our world-order and Pax Americana that sustains it. Hence, it is hardly surprising that this empirical study, manifestly scientific, factual and non-polemical in its approach, gets implicated in all the contentious issues of truth’s complicity with power. For, even if the truth be medical and natural, and not metaphysical or theological, and even if it pertains to the mundane praxis of a corps of highly competent professionals whom the world reverentially addresses as the ‘learned’, i.e. the doctors, the overbearing presence of power in scientific discourse cannot simply be ignored. With little intent to delve into deeper moral questions, or parochial political ones, the author, a professor in clinical psychiatry and a practising physician, still delivers a text that not only reveals the ethical quandaries of practising professionals but also studiously charts the cultural landscape of psychiatric sciences. Aggarwal provides meticulously documented evidence to suggest that the plague of ‘medical Orientalism’ is now rampant in the academy and constitutes the master discourse of health sciences!