How pandemics shaped world history

Sandeep Dikshit

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Nine months into the worst pandemic to have hit the world in a hundred years, few could have imagined that farmers would march 300 km to block Delhi’s arteries with Punjab and Haryana? Or that, after the pandemic had stilled the protests in Hong Kong, Chile and Lebanon due to lockdowns and fear of contagion, popular anger would, nevertheless, emerge in India, the US, Nigeria and Belarus.

The upsurge of confrontational politics may surprise many because past pandemics were not included in the global historiography of the period. But, as Chinmay Tumbe establishes, they did contribute to shaping world history.

Pandemics were the springboard for resistance to colonial rule in India. The plague outbreak in Poona coincided with the heightened tensions between the Congress and the British. Societal distress due to plague-induced lockdowns and colonial political injustice led to the rise of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. In Punjab, the volatile political situation and the high plague toll coincided with the temporary deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai and a rise in his stature. In UP, the plague swept through Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Ghazipur and Ballia (migrants had then too walked home) that has emerged as the social justice belt.

The loss of memory about pandemics is also because historical accounts talk more about dramatic events. Twentieth century history records the two World Wars in great detail but not the plague pandemic, which silently claimed more lives.

The ‘age of pandemics’ may not have got much attention because it was also the age of more seminal events such as the age of revolution, capital and empire, besides the birth of the modern world. There were many pandemics all through human civilisation but even the Arthashastra pays less attention to it than the other three mass killers — war, famine and natural disasters — because of the lack of dramatic impact.

Major pandemics had hit the world in the 6th and 14th centuries as well. And there were many epidemics (mini-pandemics) in between. But the ‘age of pandemics’ that marked greater international commerce began in 1817 with a new strain of cholera. It killed 80 lakh in India and another 1.9 crore elsewhere. Plague was the second major shock. It started in 1894 and lasted till 1920, killing 2.5 crore worldwide, half of them in India. Overlapping with plague, from 1918 to 1920 was the influenza pandemic that killed six crore, including two crore in India.

Whether it was the cholera, plague or influenza, India was at the epicentre. The colonial masters remained divided over keeping the wheels of commerce open or saving lives by lockdowns.

Historical amnesia has already cost Europe and the US heavily. There was a false call when the 2009 H1N1 was hurriedly declared a pandemic. But East Asian nations that bore its brunt were the ones that were well prepared when Covid hit. Kerala, too, withstood the first wave better as it had dealt with Nipah in 2018. Several assumptions at the beginning of the Covid pandemic have collapsed. In India, many had boasted in March about the special nature of our immunity. The toll is about to touch 1.5 lakh.

Tumbe closed his book before vaccines were on the horizon and we may not have to live with Covid-19. His work is all about carefully documenting the lessons so that in future, a total lockdown or the migrants’ crises can be avoided. Future rulers may also avoid the lure of pushing through policies during a pandemic in the belief that restricting citizen freedoms would keep them off the streets.