It can only be by way of a strange coincidence or a providential stroke that the number 1666 has again come to be associated with Maharashtra. The reference herein is more specifically to Bombay (now called Mumbai). This interplay of 1666 and Bombay during the current pandemic takes one back in time to the middle of the seventeenth century.
London was badly afflicted by a deadly wave of the second pandemic of bubonic plague during the seventeenth century. According to the Bills of Mortality, there were in total 68,594 deaths in London from the plague in 1665 (often called the Plague Year). The rate of death had begun to peak in 1666. It was a natural decline aided by measures such as quarantine etc. without any targeted medical solution to the plague. As if to add to the misery, in September, 1666, a fire started at a baker’s house in London and spread rapidly through the city. The Great Fire of London, as it is now called, continued for four days. The fire gutted the old city of London, leaving behind only destruction, deaths and victims.
But it is human nature to look for positives even in the worst of the situations. Accordingly, it was widely believed at that point in time that the Great Fire of 1666 saved lives in the long run by burning down houses and un-sanitised areas. These areas were considered to be breeding grounds of fleas and rats – the notorious carriers of the Yersinia Pestis bacteria responsible for Plague. Hence, an unintended consequence of the fire was a decline in plague cases.
But it did have another impact on the public health measures – burning down houses & possessions soon became anti plague measures. It came to be believed that the purifying flames disinfected the cities and razed out the Yersinia Pestis bacteria from the soil. Methods employed to counter the infective propensities of the soil, included pulling entire houses down, so as to expose the soil to the air, but also burning houses down, as well as first burning infected houses, then upturning the soil, and finally putting thorns on top of the site to prevent people from walking on it.
After nearly two centuries, the third wave of plague surfaced in Hong Kong. The Board of Sanitation in Hong Kong followed burning down measures as it was the prevailing notion that houses were nests of accumulated filth and burning down houses would prevent contagion from the deposit of foul exhalations on their surface
The plague soon found its way to India through port cities. First fell Bombay, then Calcutta. With the history of London & experiment of Hong Kong, the British Authorities wanted to apply burning down as an anti plague measure in Bombay as well. But perhaps the British Authorities thought that they needed a legislative backing for the same. This period saw enactment of Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897. The law was meant for containment of epidemics by providing special powers that are required for the implementation of containment measures to control the spread of the disease.
Interestingly, one of the most drastic measures of this kind on record was not taken by the British, but by the Nizam of Hyderabad. Basing his decision on British advice that plague was a soil disease best exterminated by fire, the Nizam ordered the floors of infected houses and patient sheds, in both urban and rural settings, to be covered in burning cow-dung and kerosene oil.
In Bombay, the Plague Commissioners took refuge under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 to assume unbridled authority. Houses of afflicted people were marked, garments & possessions taken away – all to be burnt down. These gruesome acts of denuding people of their dwellings and hard earned assets were committed in hopes that the fire from London of 1666 would bless the Bombay of 1897. Similar model was then followed in Calcutta. The chawls of Bombay & bastis of Calcutta met the same fate as the congested dwellings of London. Frank M. Snowden described this as public health safety ‘by eviction & destruction’. Interestingly, there has never been any causal link established between the decline in the plague and burning down as an anti plague measure. Clearly, it was a high handed approach without taking into considerations the views of the stakeholders and experts.
This anti plague measure of burning down, in part, did come as a blessing for the unity of the Indian people of varied backgrounds and religions. Indeed, as Advocate Chitranshul Sinha points out in his book The Great Repression: The Story of Sedition in India, people made a common cause against the British because of excesses noticed above. The book further records that the Plague Commissioner W.C. Rand was shot dead and a direct consequence of the same was a trial for sedition against Tilak.
The journey from the Great Fire of 1666 via Bombay of 1897 coming to today’s headline number of 1666 tells a sombre and unfortunate tale in itself. In all fairness, if the Fires of London were foisted upon Bombay, then equally, the great Sanitary Movement pioneered by a lawyer Edwin Chadwick in Britain should have also been introduced in India. Unfortunately, that was not to be so. The Sanitary Movement is considered by many as a stepping stone in an attempt to curtail Cholera deaths which finally laid to enactment of the Public Health Act by the British Parliament in 1848.
Looking back, the lessons to be learnt from this tale are manifold –
1. Pandemics are usually seen by the authoritarian regimes as an opportunity to further tighten their grip over their subjects and strengthen their rule. It becomes all the more important for the civil society to raise voices against any such accelerating efforts.
2. History never repeats but it often rhymes. The best administrators would always choose to be on the right side of the replicated history. Any citizen or authority based movement that has a social change to counter the pandemic is more than welcome. Remember, burning bridges (as we’ve seen) is far less effective than building bridges.
3. On the contrary, knee jerk reactions without taking into consideration the stakeholders and experts may not be the best way forward. Gradual improvements in the public health infrastructure is the need of the hour. Every pandemic provides a golden opportunity for a Nation to assess its health infrastructure and undertake further reforms. This opportunity shouldn’t be squandered.
Most importantly, looking back – 1666 should not just be another number, Bombay should not just be another place & above all, we must remember that pandemics are not just history, yet. Stay safe everyone.
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