Book Excerpt: How the plague affected colonial Bombay in 1896

Bubonic plague is caused by Yersinia pestis, a bacteria that lives in mainly rodents and their fleas. Photo: iStock

The plague had started in Bombay in September 1896. Some said that a group of pilgrims from the Himalayas had brought it to the city. Others argued that Bombay could have received the first plague germs from a ship coming from East Asia. The subcontinent’s ecosystems had been weakened through decades of colonial exploitation. Cyclones, droughts, famines and epidemics had taken their turns for decades.

The plague was not just a medical problem but also an economic and political one. The textile mill run by Mehtab’s father, a rich Parsi industrialist, had produced less and less during the past three years, with many workers either escaping from the city or succumbing to the disease. Discontent with British rule rose as the plague spread all over the subcontinent, to stay until the early 1920s.

Plague first broke out in the chawls of Mandvi, the port area of Bombay. In these buildings, up to thirty people shared a room and ground floors were used for storing grain, thus attracting rats. The Bania and Jain merchants owning the stores were often opposed to killing animals. As elsewhere, the plague wreaked the greatest havoc among working-class people. Often undernourished and chronically exhausted, they could not afford to stop working when ill.

From the perspective of colonial authorities as well as upper-class local families—families like Mehtab’s—the poor were susceptible to the disease because of their alleged lack of hygiene and crowded living conditions. First, scientists conjectured that the plague germs would enter human bodies through the alimentary tract. Later, it was assumed that germs spread through human contact. Others pointed to the alleged habit of working-class people of walking barefoot. Inevitably, their sore feet would come in contact with rat excrement, thus attracting plague. Because of the stigma associated with the disease, many families were ashamed of giving the actual cause of death at the burning ghats

In the Christian cemeteries of Bombay, a large number of graves carried the inscription ‘Cause of death unknown’. By the end of February 1897, almost 20,000 people were thought to have died from the plague, with the actual number of victims being much higher. The Bombay plague of 1896–97, however, was just the tip of the iceberg. In Bombay itself, the plague would come back at regular intervals. Throughout India, more than 10 million people would die of it by 1921.

Although colonial authorities interpreted the plague as a ‘native’ disease, there was always the risk that it would also attack Europeans. Not even the rich parts of town, Colaba and Malabar Hill, were completely secure from it. Mainly, however, it seemed to be tied to certain places—the working-class areas. It was here that its spread had to be stopped by all means.

Before the outbreak of the plague, colonial authorities had hardly spent anything on public health. Now, they were in a frenzy to clean every corner of the city. Like in Hong Kong, search parties patrolled the streets, entering private homes, sending the sick to plague camps and hospitals and sanitizing buildings. Enormous amounts of money were spent on disinfectants. Whole villages and towns in Bombay Presidency were evacuated. In 1898, these measures were carried to a new level with the foundation of the Bombay Improvement Trust. In the eyes of more sober contemporaries, it missed its name altogether, bringing neither improvement nor trust. Slums were bulldozed indiscriminately, the majority of their inhabitants left without homes.

Most of Bombay’s inhabitants opposed the measures against the plague. The privileged expressed their criticism in newspapers. Merchants were discontent with restrictions on mobility and the routine inspection and destruction of goods. Workers feared hospitalization due to the loss of income it entailed, instead preferring to leave the city—until millworkers and sweepers, the most essential yet least respected part of the workforce, were banned from doing so. Other parts of the population resented the fact that people of different castes and religion might mingle in hospitals. Women might have to be treated by male doctors, upper-caste Hindus might be served food prepared by impure hands—they might even be served beef. When violent protests against the plague measures unfolded, it was the hospitals that were hit first and quite literally so. People did not just throw stones at hospitals. They also attacked officials, some of whom died of their injuries. However, there were still worse places than hospitals.

Those who did not want to part from their infected relatives, servants or friends had to accompany them to plague camps. Each group arriving was given a tin hut with an open roof for better ventilation— and less privacy. At night, they would hear the sick in the hut next to theirs scream and kick against the walls in agony. Only 10 per cent of those stationed in the camps recovered from the plague. In the words of Lakshmibai Tilak, a contemporary writer, these camps were the kingdoms of the god of death.

Yet, this god was about to be fought by another one—a god in a white coat. As the plague raged on, Waldemar Haffkine, who had previously developed a cholera vaccine, developed an inoculation against the plague.

Haffkine bred bacteria with the help of what, to orthodox upper-caste Hindus and Parsis, was the purest of all substances—ghee. He took plague bacilli from the bumps of deceased plague victims, people of low repute and caste (the only ones available to scientists), and infused them in hot broth that contained small amounts of sterilized ghee. After maturing for some weeks, the solution was sterilized, decanted and stored in laboratory phials. This serum could be then injected in the bodies of just anyone—regardless of caste, social status and character. To be sure, inoculation was not mandatory, but the way the serum was produced and the risks it carried deeply appalled orthodox high-caste Hindus and Parsis. Not even the use of ghee, considered a purifying agent by many, could arrest their fears. It was not just that the serum seemingly polluted those inoculated with it. One could not even be sure that it really protected them from the disease or from death—or so the opponents of Haffkine’s serum claimed. Inoculation divided families and friends as some opted for it while others rejected it.

Excerpted with permission from The Moral Contagion by Julia Hauser and Sarnath Banerjee. HarperCollins India

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