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India's Tumultuous History of Epidemics, Religion and Public Health Policy -Kiran Kumbhar

-TheWire.in

In the 19th century, fierce opposition from Indians to epidemic control measures forced British officials to reach out to community leaders for help. This could help India tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are many terrains where public health and religion cross paths, but epidemics are certainly the most bumpy. Contemporary examples include the large gatherings of people at several religious sites in India, including the Nizamuddin markaz and an Akkalkot temple, despite public health appeals to the contrary. In the past too, religion featured prominently in official and unofficial conversations on epidemic control, and influenced government policies against the two great epidemic diseases of the 19th century: cholera and plague.

In a racialised phrasing similar to the ‘Chinese virus’, cholera in the 1800s was called, in Europe and America, either ‘Asiatic cholera’ or ‘Indian cholera’. The early officially noticed epidemics started in eastern India, and along with that also began the convenient scapegoating of Indians for any cholera trouble in the West. While the Gangetic towns in Bengal were blamed for the origins of the disease, religious gatherings in other parts (Haridwar, Puri, Pandharpur) and in western Asia (Mecca) were blamed for its eventual spread into the West.

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