On the March 24, the Indian Prime Minister, in what seemed like a knee-jerk reaction, announced a 21-day national curfew in response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic. To legally sanction its decision, the Government adopted a 123-year old colonial legislation, namely the ‘Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897’ that our former colonial masters’ had hastily drafted to tackle the bubonic ‘Plague’ that engulfed the Bombay Presidency in the late 1890’s. This unusual administrative adoption of a 19th century legislation has drawn criticism from all spectrums of the society. One perhaps cannot question the veracity of such concerns – raised at this experimental feat of using a piece of cobweb jurisprudence which hasn’t seen the light of the day for more than a century.

It might be interesting to note that, back in the day, the strict measures imposed through such colonial laws were largely unsuccessful in controlling the Plague in 1896. The iron hand of the British officers only added fuel to the growing public unrest. As the plague drew to an end, the colonial administration realised, after several failed attempts at imposing draconian measures on the general public, that, in times of severe crisis government policies and legislations cannot afford to exclude, ignore and be insensitive to the emotions and social realities of the ordinary masses.

1896 plague epidemic

It was approaching winter, the final months of 1896. Bombay’s ferry lines and railway stations were swamped with people, many of them workers at mill lands and dockyards, dhobis and cooks, barbers, butchers and bakers, their meagre belongings tied up in bundles. All desperately seeking a way back home.

The scene is from more than a century ago, as various accounts of the time reported. (It was inevitable, said the Bombay Samachar in December 1896, that if the rich were fleeing the city, the poorer would follow suit.) But it could well be from the current lockdown crisis in India, where millions have been forced into similar harrowing circumstances.

This particular exodus took place after physician Dr AG Viegas confirmed the first case of the bubonic plague in Bombay on September 23, 1896. By the end of January 1897, around four lakh people had fled the city. By February, Bombay’s population was halved and drained of those most essential to its economy. “Business was paralysed, offices closed, and thoroughfares . . . were characterised by a desolate emptiness,” wrote Capt. JK Condon in his book The Bombay Plague (1900).

The Bombay Plague came in five epidemic waves, turning endemic by the early 1900s. Lasting for more than 20 years, by 1918 it had claimed over 10 million lives in India, with over 1.6 lakh in Bombay alone (source: The Indian Medical Gazette). It set off a chain of events — increased surveillance, attacks on health workers by a panicked public, rumours and racist theories — all of which find a resonance in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The British government underplayed the outbreak in its initial days to keep its most important port on India’s west coast open. The outbreak itself was the consequence of British mercantilism — the disease was likely carried through ships from plague-stricken Hong Kong. The weekly Jam-e-Jamshed newspaper accused the government of delaying preventive measures, even though they knew of the plague sweeping through Hong Kong.

Till the outbreak threatened to derail the city, the colonial government was uninterested in investing in civic infrastructure beyond the needs of the Europeans, who resided in the fetching parts of the city such as Malabar Hill and Breach Candy. The working-class neighbourhoods, many of them by the docklands, markets and mill lands, such as Dhobi Talao, Girgaum and Mazgaon, were a warren of small, low rooms, without chimneys or windows, with no light or air supply except from the doorway, perpetually dripping pipes, and with several people huddled under one roof. While the Englishman wanted a bedroom all to himself, the Indian native would gladly pocket his pride and agree to be confined in a room that fitted his length and breadth, wrote George W Clutterbuck, a Wesleyan chaplain from Britain, in a book, Bombay the Beautiful (1897).

Officials knew that rats were often the bubonic plague’s first victims and that the disease was deadly, as proven by the Black Death that had swept Europe in the 14th century.

They knew of the plague bacterium, discovered by Alexandre Yersin in Hong Kong two years before the Bombay Plague. But that it spread from the bite of the Oriental rat flea was still unknown. The disease was, therefore, attributed to filth, dampness, unsanitary living conditions and miasma — the theory that epidemics spread through contaminated air. Predictably, slums were suspect.

The first case was detected at a grain merchant’s quarters in the dockland area of Mandvi. Subsequent anti-plague measures targeted poorer neighbourhoods, such as Nagpada and Kamathipura. “Plague was seen as a disease of filth and overcrowding and there was a deep-seated perception that the poor were the carriers. They thus bore the brunt of the anti-plague offensive in colonial Bombay,” says Prashant Kidambi, associate professor in colonial urban history at the University of Leicester, the UK. He observes that class was as important as race in the way the government dealt with the plague — much in the way the slums of Dharavi have been labelled as “COVID-19 hotbeds”, even if the disease entered through airports and via passengers with frequent flyer points.

Plague authorities were armed with the Epidemic Diseases Act, passed in February 1897, which has been invoked and amended for the present pandemic as well. The Act gave an inordinate amount of power to local bodies. Houses could be marked as “unfit for human habitation”, following which landlords could be asked to evict tenants, water supply cut off to reduce dampness, or the building simply burned down or demolished. Authorities could also stop sanitary workers from leaving Bombay, knowing that their mission would fail without them.

2020 Coronavirus epidemic

Over a century later, India is faced with another world health crisis. To the disappointment of many, it seems that, while the nature of the Indian Government has changed, the myopic approach of our law and policy makers has remained largely intact. In a country ailed by severe economic inequalities, we are reminded time and again that state policy and legislations are always made in hasty ignorance of the harsh effects that would befall the country’s poor and downtrodden. Therefore, one is perhaps compelled to assert that the Indian state has not learned from the mistakes of its colonial predecessors.

A lesson not learned:

The public message during the Bombay plague was clear and unambiguous. If the colonial government tried enforcing measures without the co-operation and consent of the people, it would trigger public unrest. It was of paramount importance that the government acted with sympathy and understanding of public needs.

In the present day, it is crucial that the Indian government learns from the historical mistakes that its colonial predecessors had committed. The present authorities must act with patience and sagacity. The ongoing crisis can only be won with the active co-operation of the masses and by taking community leaders into confidence.