Colonialism and the politics of epidemiology: The rise of radical nationalism in India
colonialism;plague;Bal Gangadhar Tilak;Kesari;Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897;Section 124A;sedition;disaffection;radical nationalism
Subhendu Mund
When the whole world is reeling under the threat of Covid-19, we Indians relive the memory of the recurring experiences of pandemics like cholera, small pox, leprosy, and plague of our colonial past. Beginning with an outbreak in 1812 at Kutch, bubonic plague travelled all over the country with a death toll of more than 2 million by 1903. Despite the alarming casualties in the army and widespread epidemics over the years, the colonial government kept blaming the climate of their colony and the lack of cleanliness of its inhabitants. When the first cases of bubonic plague were detected by Dr Acacio Gabriel Viegas, an Indian physician at Bombay [now Mumbai] in 1896, the colonial administration was reluctant to acknowledge it. However, the Epidemic Diseases Act (1897) was soon promulgated, ostensibly to contain the wave of epidemics but it soon became a tool to suppress individual freedom and the right to their bodies. The murder of two British officers a week after the publication of two articles of Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak in his Marathi periodical Kesari on 15 June 1897 led to his prosecution and conviction under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code on the charges of "feelings of disaffection" in his writing and its allegedly provocative content amounting to sedition. My paper looks at the politics of colonial epidemiology and its far-reaching impact on Indian life as it affected the political rhetoric, radical nationalism and emergence of a public sphere.
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