Weaver, Lesley JoNarayan, K M Venkat2012-06-152012-06-152008-11Weaver Lesley Jo, Narayan K M Venkat. Reconsidering the history of type 2 diabetes in India: Emerging or re-emerging disease. National Medical Journal of India. 2008 Nov-Dec; 21(6): 288-291.http://imsear.searo.who.int/handle/123456789/139021The emergence of type 2 diabetes in India, coinciding with the country’s rapid economic development in the past several decades, is often characterized as a modern epidemic resulting directly from westernization. We draw on India’s agricultural, linguistic, medical, economic, religious and gastronomic history to examine the possibility that type 2 diabetes mellitus may have existed in ancient India, having subsequently declined in the two centuries leading up to the present. The implications of such a possibility vis-à-vis the role of westernization in the global diabetes aetiology are discussed. Additionally, an argument is made for careful application of the terms ‘westernization’ and ‘globalization’ in discussions of chronic disease aetiology, where their often totalizing discourses may obscure the sociocultural particularities of manifestations of these conditions in various global arenas.enBody CompositionDiabetes Mellitus, Type 2 --epidemiologyDiabetes Mellitus, Type 2 --historyHistory, 20th CenturyHistory, 21st CenturyHistory, AncientHistory, MedievalHumansIndiaNutritional StatusRisk FactorsArticle