3/22/2020 Plague, flu, pox: how diseases meet politics | The Indian Express

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Home /  Opinion /  Columns /  Plague, u, pox: how diseases meet politics

Plague, flu, pox: how diseases

meet politics
In India, 18 million people died in the Spanish Flu pandemic, the greatest
loss in absolute numbers of any country in the world. The uncaring British
response fuelled resentment.

Updated: March 22, 2020 10:11:16 am

At Times Square, New York. Could rst effect of coronavirus be seen in US polls? (AP)

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3/22/2020 Plague, flu, pox: how diseases meet politics | The Indian Express

(Written by Rajesh M Parikh)

Viruses are the most political of creatures. Machiavellian in their machinations and
Maoist in their ability to retreat only to advance again, they can bring down
empires faster than human revolutions. They are the true WMDs capable of regime
change.

Europe

The bubonic plague of the 14th century caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis
changed the political order in Europe in a manner that no organised human effort
could have accomplished. The tremors of that upheaval continue to be felt over 500
years later.

Prior to the pandemic, Britain was overpopulated with a high rate of

unemployment. This created enormous wealth for the landowning class as labour
was easily available and hence cheap. The plague killed over a third of the peasant
population, increasing labour costs. The feudal classes drafted laws such as the
Ordinance of Labourers in 1349. The ordinance ensured that the peasant class
worked for the same wages that prevailed five or six years ago. Those demanding
just wages were imprisoned, causing a major conflict between the political and
social classes.

Prior to the plague, the Roman Church dominated governments. The Pope was
more powerful than royalty. The plague led many Catholics to question their faith.
Their priests had told them that the plague was a result of divine retribution.
However, priests themselves were succumbing to the plague. This caused
unprecedented loss of faith and rage against the Church. Thus, among the most
important political effects of the plague were the weakening of the Church and of
the State and a gradual severance of the mutually self-serving bond between them.
This paved the way for the Protestant Reformation and the rise of nation-states
independent of the Church’s influence. This situation would have been unthinkable
prior to the bubonic plague.

North and South America

The Americas remained free of measles and smallpox until the arrival of European
colonists between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Smallpox was prevalent in
Spain and the conquistadors carried the virus to the Americas. In 1519, an epidemic

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3/22/2020 Plague, flu, pox: how diseases meet politics | The Indian Express

of smallpox broke out in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in Mexico, in the wake of its
conquest by the Spanish army led by Hernan Cortés, which had with them an
African slave suffering from smallpox. The epidemic, and those that followed,
eventually killed more than half of the native population. With an army of fewer
than 900, Cortés would never have conquered Mexico without the powerful
smallpox virus.

In the 150 years that followed Columbus’s arrival in 1492, the Native American
population of North America was reduced by 80 per cent by measles, smallpox and
influenza. The intentional distribution of blankets infected by European patients to
Native Americans further contributed to their rapid decline. The West was won
using viruses for bioterrorism rather than the whitewashed Hollywood accounts of
the bravery of cowboys.

The Spanish Flu changed the role of women forever as they entered the industrial
workforce in large numbers to compensate for the loss of men in the pandemic.
Women also began to assume leadership roles and became an economic force that
demanded participation in decision making, leading to the right to vote in 1920.

With COVID-19 causing higher mortality rates in the elderly, will there be a
progressive shift in US politics? Younger voters tend to be Left leaning. The elderly
may not risk coming out to vote this November. How will that affect the US
presidential election? President Trump has already been accused by several
political commentators of being more worried about the effect of the pandemic on
his electoral prospects than on the well-being of the nation.

India

In India, 18 million people died in the Spanish Flu pandemic, the greatest loss in
absolute numbers of any country in the world. The uncaring British response
fuelled resentment. Mohandas Gandhi himself contracted the flu in 1919. He wrote,
“I could not at that time sufficiently raise my voice at meetings. The incapacity to
address meetings standing still abides. My entire frame would shake, and heavy
throbbing would start on an attempt to speak standing for any length of time.”

In the Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it changed the World, British
science writer Laura Spinney postulates that Gandhi’s succumbing to the flu
contributed to his inability to control the mobs protesting the Rowlatt Act of 1919
which extended censorship and other repressive measures beyond the war. The

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massive protests against the Act included the peaceful gathering at Jallianwala
Bagh, where Brigadier Reginald Dyer ordered bullets into an unarmed crowd of
protesters, killing over 500 and injuring twice that number. That massacre began
the end of British rule in India. With India’s Independence, other British colonies
intensified their struggles for independence, dramatically altering global politics.

Dr Parikh is Director of Medical Research and neuropsychiatrist at Jaslok Hospital

& Research Centre in Mumbai, and
co-author of The Coronavirus: What You Need To Know About The Global Pandemic
(Penguin 2020)

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