SOUTH ASIA

RESEARCH
Vol. 41(1): 35–52, 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0262728020966096
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BOMBAY FEVER/SPANISH FLU: PUBLIC

HEALTH AND NATIVE PRESS IN
COLONIAL BOMBAY, 1918–19
Madhu Singh
Department of English and Modern European Languages,
University of Lucknow, Lucknow, India

abstract In view of the topicality of pandemics, this brief article

discusses the responses of the vernacular press in Bombay during
1918 following the influenza pandemic of that year. With occasional
inputs from English language dailies, such as The Times of India
and The Hindu of the period, the aim is to understand how, as the
epidemic receded, the government’s response to the epidemic was
questioned and the influenza epidemic was constructed as a part
of anticolonial rhetoric by the ‘native press’, closely monitored by
the British.
keywords : Bombay fever, colonial governmentality, epidemics,
influenza of 1918, native press

Introduction
In early summer 1918, Bombay newspapers announced the appearance in several
countries of a new disease, popularly known as ‘Spanish Influenza’. Initially, this news
did not attract much attention, until it transpired that this disease, spreading from
country to country, had reached India. First observed in Bombay, it was called
‘Bombay Fever’. By June 1918, Bombay had become like ‘a huge incubator of the
germs of disease’, as The Times of India of 23 October 1918 observed, due to the high
temperature and humidity. The failure of the Southwest monsoon that year, the dust-
laden atmosphere and absence of rain so necessary for the dispersal and removal of
infected material accentuated these conditions in Bombay’s crowded environment.
The influenza pandemic of 1918, claiming many millions of lives around the
world, including some 12–14 million in India (Mills, 1986), posed an unprecedented
public health crisis for India’s colonial government, which was overwhelmed and
‘threw up their hands in despair’ (Ramanna, 2004: 4565). Britain was fighting World
War I, which meant that most British doctors were away in the war. There was a
36 South Asia Research Vol. 41(1): 35–52

massive famine in India, and this sudden pandemic caused high mortality rates. With
no effective cure in sight and an understaffed bureaucracy, not to speak of the state of
the public health system, the colonial government was largely ineffective in this crisis,
which affected the Bombay Presidency and many other parts of India. Rural areas
suffered the worst effects of government neglect, inadequate food supply, prohibitive
prices of essential medicines and lack of sanitation.
This article shows how critical press reports of the ‘native press’, monitored and
collected by the colonial powers as part of colonial supervisory mechanisms, picked
up the critique of government inefficiencies in handling the pandemic and led,
largely in the rural areas of Bombay Presidency, to a rethinking of the modalities of
imperial governance and the role of medical technologies in addressing such chal-
lenges. The historical evidence collected comes largely from weekly reports compiled
in English, based on Indian newspapers published in the Bombay Presidency between
July and November 1918. These sources were accessed online through South Asia
Open Archives, which partners with JSTOR. These holdings of Indian newspaper
reports, of c.1868–1942, are held at the India Office Library and the British Library
in London.
The article first outlines the gruesome evidence of the deadly effects of the influ-
enza pandemics of 1918 and then presents and discusses responses of the ‘native’
press to the inadequate medical infrastructure that failed to respond effectively to this
medical emergency. The article concludes with a brief discussion on concurrent
struggles between officially backed western biomedicine and indigenous medicinal
culture in India, a battle which diverted valuable energies from the more urgent task
of facing the dangerous pandemic.

Bombay Fever: The Evidence of Chaos

Massive labour migration to Bombay due to the rapid expansion of cotton-textile
industry in the nineteenth century had led to overcrowding, especially among the
labouring poor (Harris, 1978). There were one-room tenements (chawls), crowded
insanitary, ill-ventilated slums, filthy lanes, stables and godowns, in a city whose vast
proletariat was penned together and savaged by disease (Klein, 1986: 728–9). On the
other hand, in stark contrast, were ‘fashionable western enclaves’ inhabited by British
officials and the cosmopolitan elite (Klein, 1986: 728–9). Regarding overcrowding,
Kidambi (2007: 36) quotes from a Health Officer’s report of 1864, visualising a nar-
row lane, 9 feet wide:

The houses on each side were of two or three floors, and the various rooms were densely
peopled, and the floors of the verandah were fully occupied, while to eke out the accom-
modation in some of the verandahs there were charpaees or cots slung up with old matting
to form a second tier of sleeping places for labourers that were employed in the railway
terminus or elsewhere.
Singh: Bombay Fever/Spanish Flu 37

During the early twentieth century, such crowded conditions had hardly improved.
Workers and labourers continued to live in ‘great rabbit warrens of houses’, as The
Times of India of 9 October 1918 wrote, ‘prolific breeding holes’ for the rapid spread
of the disease, which was either insect-borne or transmitted through human
contact.
On 24 June 1918, The Hindu, the major English daily in Bombay, reported that
600 men had been taken away from the government dockyard on account of a curi-
ous fever. About 300–400 workers were absent from their work at the mint. Large
numbers of workers in other sectors of trade and commerce fell prey to the epidemic,
causing public concern. A detailed report in the Indian Medical Gazette (Phipson,
1918: 442–3), by the special assistant to the Health Officer of Bombay Municipality,
noted:

The first cases among the civil population of Bombay appear to have occurred in the Indian
ranks of City Police on 10th June when 7A Ward police sepoys one of which was employed
at the docks were admitted to hospital suffering from a non-malarial fever; on the follow-
ing day more were admitted from wards B, C and D. By the 19th, 14 cases were admitted
from all over Bombay. After the Police the next group to be attacked, on the 15th of June,
were the employees of Messrs. W A Graham, the well-known shipping firm. Next day, the
men of Government dockyard suffered, followed on the 17th of June, by the first cases of
a very large number among the employees of Bombay Port Trust, and the Hongkong and
Shanghai Bank. On the 18th, the Government Telegraph Office was affected and on the
19th the Mint…By the 20th of June, the disease had spread to Rachel Sassoon Mill…

In a later report, Phipson (1923: 512) observed:

The highest recorded incidence was at Green’s Restaurant (Bombay) where nearly 60% of
its staff which consists almost entirely of Goanese cooks and waiters, were affected. The
probable reasons for this very high incidence are the constant association by day and night
of the staff with its clientele, and the inadequate and overcrowded living accommodation
provided to them on the premises.

Phipson (1923: 512) also observed that, initially, the lowest incidence was among the
Health Department male and female sweepers (halalkhores), who suffered only to the
extent of about 4 per cent, although they are people of poor physique, perpetually on
the verge of starvation, beset by usurers, addicted to gambling and the immoderate
consumption of ‘country spirit’. The explanation, as Phipson (1918: 443) had noted,
might lie in their ‘untouchability’, which would greatly diminish their liability to fall
victim to ‘a disease requiring personal intercourse and contact for its propagation’.
However, such deemed immunity of low-caste Hindus during the first wave failed to
protect them during the second wave, one of whose striking features was the ‘exces-
sive mortality among those very classes which escaped so lightly during the first’
(Phipson, 1923: 512).

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38 South Asia Research Vol. 41(1): 35–52

Infected persons were crippled with fever, pain in their limbs and bones, bronchial
inflammation with congestion and soreness and pain in the eyes. Nevertheless, as
noted by The Hindu of 26 June 1918, ‘[t]he Municipal Health Department of
Bombay say the epidemics is only an unusually general epidemic of the influenza that
generally comes here about August’. Mistakenly presumed to be one of the general
episodes of influenza, it was not taken seriously. However, on 28 September, the same
newspaper described burning ghats for cremation perpetually surrounded by pitiable
crowds, with cemeteries witnessing similar, large funeral parties. The ‘second wave’
resulted in high mortality in Bombay, with much greater impact in rural areas. In
Bombay, according to Phipson (1923: 517), the mortality figures per thousand were
8.3 for Europeans, 9.0 for Parsees, 11.9 for Eurasians, 14.8 for Jews, 18.4 for Indian
Christians, 18.9 for caste Hindus, 19.2 for Mohammedans, but 61.6 for low-caste
Hindus. Evidently, the main sufferers among the heterogenous population of Bombay
were poor low-caste Hindus and other unnamed impoverished groups, whose
crowded conditions and poverty made them ready victims. Notably, a glaring omis-
sion in reporting by the ‘native press’ is silence regarding the fact that women appeared
to die in greater numbers than men. The only snippet of information about this was
located in a brief report on influenza in The Times of India, dated 11 December 1918:

Women died in greater numbers than men, an unusual phenomenon, and the reason the
Sanitary Commissioner regards is their exposure to infection through nursing and their
habitual confinement to their houses and consequent smaller access to the open air than
in the case of men.

On 28 September, the Gujarati weekly Praja Mitra and Parsi called this epidemic ‘a
dismal calamity’, remarking that ‘the heavy toll of daily mortality was nothing if not
staggering’ (Report, 1918c: 16–7). It maintained that the public naturally turn their
eyes towards the Government, which should convene a meeting to express sympathy
with the suffering public, take them into confidence regarding the steps taken to cope
with the evil and to consult public leaders about further measures.
Recorded history confirms that British India was possibly the hardest hit country
in this extremely virulent outbreak of influenza. Bombay as a port city, with a large
number of arrivals and despatch of troops and the constant influx of workers and
migrants, bore the brunt. Two successive episodes of unusual magnitude of influenza
struck the Bombay Presidency, marked by an interval of about 4 weeks. The first
outbreak occurred in June 1918 and then appeared in the United Provinces and
Punjab by July and August 1918. The second outbreak followed from about 10
September, with particular virulence in the Western, Central and Northern provinces
of India and lasted till mid-November.
The Times of India of 29 July 1919 observed that in the Bombay Presidency, the
worst sufferers were the five Deccan districts of Sholapur, Nasik, East Khandesh,
Ahmednagar and Satara. Each of these districts lost as many people in 1 month from
Singh: Bombay Fever/Spanish Flu 39

influenza as were killed in the city of Bombay, with undoubtedly a larger population
than any of the aforesaid districts, during the whole year from other diseases. The
personal physician of Mahatma Gandhi, Dinshaw Mehta, summed up the impact of
influenza in a letter to The Times of India of 1 August 1919, writing that its onslaught
was swift and severe. It simply stunned people: ‘It was among us and before we could
gather our wits, it had done its deadly work and had disappeared’. Mehta also
lamented the government’s ‘criminal neglect towards mute and meek masses which
could be pleaded before the Bar of Humanity’.
Besides influenza, as the experienced executive Health Officer of Bombay
Municipal Corporation, Dr John Andrew Turner, who had been in post since 1901
(Ramanna, 2004: 4560), noted in The Times of India of 23 October 1918, Bombay’s
health was affected by epidemic incidences of smallpox, cholera and plague (Condon,
1900: 130; Harris, 1978: 10). These were reported to result in 20,868 deaths during
the quarter ending 31 December 1918, out of which 3,963 deaths were due to influ-
enza. The mortality from all causes was 58,388 and much higher in comparison to
deaths in the previous year: ‘Never within the memory of the oldest man living in
Bombay has this city witnessed so many people stricken down with fever and so
many of them dying in a helpless condition’, reported the newspaper Gujarati on 6
October 1918 in anguish and alarm. It also noted that ‘reports from the mofussil
show that some places like Ahmedabad, Poona and Sholapur are in a much worse
condition’ (Report, 1918d: 26–7). As the disease spread rapidly all over India, the
official death toll, as reported by F. Norman White was 7,089,694, although this
report stated that these numbers are given ‘without any claim to accuracy’ (Sanitary
Commissioner, 1920: 56–7). According to Mills (1986: 2), 12–13 million people
died within 3–4 months in India as a whole. However, the British Government of
India ‘did little to respond to the pandemic, even as famine-driven rise in price caused
widespread malnutrition and sharp demographic differences in death rates’ (Mills,
1986: 2).
This shows that then, as now with COVID-19, socio–economic differences had
major impacts, but were not addressed. The causation of this ‘mysterious fever’ in
Bombay became a major issue of contestation. On 13 July 1918, Sanj Vartman
observed that according to reports of the Health Officer of the Municipality of
Bombay, ‘it is proved beyond doubt that this dangerous disease of influenza has been
imported into Bombay from Mesopotamia (Iraq)’. The newspaper gave a detailed
account of the outbreak in Bombay (Report, 1918b: 25):

Till 19 June, the health of the city was quite as usual. One army transport steamer came
into our harbour at the end of May from Mesopotamia and entered the city on 4th of June.
The Medical Officer of this steamer reported and drew the attention of the Medical Officer
of Bombay harbour to the fact that some new disease has attacked the crew. It was the first
duty of the Health Officer of the harbour, according to the Act on Infectious Diseases,
to inform at once the Health Officer of the Bombay Municipality of this disease. This he
failed to do and did not even inform the authorities till the 26th June.

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40 South Asia Research Vol. 41(1): 35–52

The newspaper thus rightly argued (Report, 1918b: 25):

We do not understand why action should not be taken against this officer who showed so
much of indifference to the health and happiness of a city inhabited by not less that 12
lakhs of beings. The military officers who were aware of it and who did not give timely
action, should also be proceeded against. We request the Corporation to pass a resolution
asking the Commissioner to bring an action against the Health Officer of the Bombay
Harbour. If the Municipal authorities will sit silent this time, in future some new disease
will enter the city via the sea causing serious injury to the health and happiness of the city.

Three months later, health authorities still debated the origin and symptoms of the
disease among themselves, while the masses suffered, waiting for essential medicines.
On 2 October 1918, Young India revisited the issue of the source of the infection
(Report, 1918g: 26):

There is a widespread rumour that it has been caused by the influx of a large number
of troops suffering from it. It is said—we cannot say how far it is true, that the military
authorities told the Municipal health authorities that they were disembarking only three
persons affected by it, but actually brought in three ship loads or nine hundred men in
all. Dr Turner seems to believe that the epidemic now raging there has been caused by the
actions of the military authorities. In view of the seriousness of the situation, the matter
calls for urgent investigation.

Finally, on 22 October 1918, in a meeting of medical practitioners in Bombay to

assess the situation, Dr Turner offered facts which conclusively proved that the dis-
ease had arrived by ships towards the end of May, and by June it had spread to Delhi,
Meerut and even Shimla. In The Times of India of 23 October 1918, he observed that
‘Bombay was comparatively free from infectious disease on the 16th of June... there
was no hint or suggestion that the general public were suffering from any infectious
disease in any way until 22nd of June but by 24th June Bombay was in the throes of
an epidemic’. Vernacular newspapers such as Bombay Samachar of 24 and 25 October
and Jam-e-Jamshed, dated 26 October, supported the resolution made by the
Municipal Corporation requesting the government to appoint a committee com-
posed of scientists and medical men to enquire into the causes of the influenza epi-
demic and to suggest preventive measures concerning conditions prevailing in
Bombay (Report, 1918g: 19–20).

Inadequate Medical Relief, Civil Society and Private Philanthropy

Questions about what the Government has done, or rather not done, were a common
refrain of the Indian press, critical of inadequate responses by the state towards this
unfolding crisis. Besides lack of preparedness, there was an apparent Government
apathy in providing medical aid to the masses, as the second wave of the influenza,
Singh: Bombay Fever/Spanish Flu 41

more virulent than the first, set in. The Gujarati criticised the Government’s attitude
on 6 October (Report, 1918d: 26–7):

We do not know what the highly paid government experts have done to help these people
in the districts. Even in a city like Bombay fever mixtures had to be made known to the
public and Dr Turner has had to issue medical instructions though somewhat late. We
should like to know what steps government has taken to help the suffering population in
the mofussil which stands in need of readymade mixtures and medical instructions. The
people at large would have been glad to be enlightened by the high medical experts in the
service of Government at such a juncture.... At least the public do not know what kind of
service they have rendered so far. The people in the mofussil are comparatively voiceless. But
we trust government will be more prompt and generous in responding to the supreme call
of the hour than they have been so far.

In his health report of Bombay for the fourth quarter ending 31 December 1918, Dr
Turner was quoted in The Times of India of 13 February 1919, citing the reasons of
the ‘abnormal increase’ of the influenza pneumonia which returned, leading to ‘a
large influx especially of poor people in the city during the latter months of the year
from districts suffering from scarcity and dearness of food’. This influx, he said, ‘must
seriously press on the housing accommodation available and intensify overcrowding
and the evils resulting therefrom’. A report in The Times of India of 13 February
1919, estimated a recent increase in Bombay’s population of 2–3 lakhs, with prejudi-
cial impact on its health conditions. To counter this influx, a clearing house was
opened at Chinchpoogli, South Mumbai, which had once served as a medical transit
place during the Bombay Plague epidemic, ‘to detain such indigent persons and send
them back to a Government workhouse or to their homes’.
Evidently, the authorities had failed to take substantial measures to cope with the
situation arising from the present pestilence and famine. On 4 October 1918, Praja
Mitra and Parsi raised the necessity of adequate supply of foodstuff and well-ventilated
living accommodation for people. Referring to the Governor’s visits to dispensaries
and cremation grounds in Bombay, the article questioned if the Governor had taken
‘the trouble of inquiring if sufficient steps were actually taken to meet the most
unavoidable needs of the people, namely, the shortage of food supply and the
improvement of insanitary areas’ (Report, 1918d: 27–8). The article also urged that
the Government should ‘lose no time in opening grain shops for selling grain to the
poorer classes at rates below the cost price, raising a loan, if need be, to meet the
expense and in providing these classes with facilities for shifting to open areas from
their insanitary slums’. On 5 October 1918, this article also interrogated Ibrahim
Rahimtoola, an eminent politician and legislator, for the ‘apparent inaction’ and
‘delay’ in matters of sanitation and public health and shifting people to open spaces
in the city (Report, 1918d: 27–8). Among various means to fight the disease, the
Gujarati daily Akhbar-e-Islam suggested that the government should construct huts

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42 South Asia Research Vol. 41(1): 35–52

in open spaces, ensure better water supply for the city and make provisions for
adequate food supply to the poor (Report, 1918d: 27–8).
The bilingual Gujarati and English daily Jam-e-Jamshed of 4 October 1918 also
adversely commented on the apathy of members of the Bombay Municipal
Corporation. This paper, begun as a weekly in 1832, became a daily newspaper in
1853 but, due to financial constraints, became a weekly again in the 1960s. It pointed
out that to protect the vast population of Bombay, the arrangements made for dis-
ease-stricken patients at the Arthur Road Hospital and in the Military camp at Dadar
were insufficient (Report, 1918d: 27–8). On 5 October, the paper observed that ‘it
behoves the Government of Bombay to pacify the minds of the public by publishing
the official statement explaining what steps the Government has already taken or
contemplate to take to combat the disease which was wreaking havoc in Bombay’
(Report, 1918d: 27–8).
The Times of India of 14 October reported that by 4 October, six ‘Street or Table
Dispensaries’ had been opened in Bombay city at Chakla, Memonvada, Nishanpada,
Mandvi, Memonvada South and Mahim locations, supplying free milk, blankets,
‘pneumonia jackets’ and other help. These ‘pneumonia jackets’, supplied to the city’s
poor suffering from fever as warm clothing, were made of thick cloth stuffed with
cotton, with tags at the end instead of buttons. The Sheriff of Bombay, Devjee
Canjee, inspected these street dispensaries daily. The Times of India of 5 October
reported that these roadside dispensaries were provided with three stock mixtures in
quart bottles labelled Mixture 1, 2 and 3, which a volunteer would dole out in small
bottles on prescription by a medical practitioner. In a letter to The Times of India, 28
September 1918, Dr Turner had appealed to the public suggesting several remedies
for the disease: Ammoniated quinine, eucalyptus oil, permanganate of potash or
saturated aqueous solution of thymol for gargles, hydrargyria perchloride with equal
parts of glycerine applied to the throat with a swab of cotton wool.
How effective these remedies were may be assessed from an earlier report of 58
typed pages on the influenza in Punjab, written by Thomas P. Herriot, M.B, Ch B
(Edin), who was also a temporary Captain of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Herriot
(1912: 30) noted:

For the ordinary mild type, the usual line of treatment was to administer Calomel grs. III
and the salts the following morning. Diaphoretic mixtures aspirin and sodium salicylate
were administered... but they cannot be ascribed any power of either cutting short of the
disease or in the preventing of appearance of the symptoms of the virulent type of the
disease.

Besides this, Herriot (1912: 31) observed that ‘no effect as regards shortening the
disease or making it take a milder form can be ascribed to the administration of qui-
nine. It only prevented a relapse of malaria complicating the influenza. Cinnamon
was also administered but no great relief was observed’.
Singh: Bombay Fever/Spanish Flu 43

Influenza had by then spread to the villages, but there were no dispensaries for the
rural poor. On 22 October 1918, Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s Marathi newspaper, Kesari,
questioned the measures undertaken by the government to combat the epidemic. He
wrote (Report, 1918g: 20):

In big cities, doctors, volunteers and hospital arrangements can be had. But how can this
assistance be obtained in the villages? Is it not the duty of the government to maintain trav-
elling dispensaries in villages at such a time?....it is necessary for Government to appoint
itinerant doctors immediately in places where the disease is raging violently. It is not pos-
sible to maintain doctors and supply allopathic medicines to the villages. Indigenous medi-
cines should be used and ‘vaidyas’ should be appointed.

The next day, on 23 October 1918, The Bombay Chronicle, an English-language news-
paper, published from Bombay since 1910 by Sir Pheroze Shah Mehta (1845–1915),
a prominent lawyer, who later became the president of the Indian National Congress
in 1890, and a member of the Bombay Legislative Council in 1893, published a state-
ment by Sir Dinshaw Maneckji Petit (1873–1933), a prominent Parsi entrepreneur
and a British baron. Sir Dinshaw commented on the insanitary condition of Bombay,
which was so primitive and unsatisfactory as to make a fruitful soil for all sorts of
diseases (Report, 1918g: 21): ‘The city, like all things superficially beautiful, hides
within itself dreadful depths of disease, dirt and degradation. The condition of the city
was such as it would not be tolerated even in a third rate city in Europe’. Sir Dinshaw
suggested that the constitution of the Municipal Corporation must be radically over-
hauled, making it ‘a thoroughly democratic body amenable to and malleable to the
general will of the population’, and ‘not dependent on the whims of the executive and
the amiable platitudes of a self-satisfied plutocracy’ (Report, 1918g: 21).
It was unfortunate, as stated by Chandavarkar (1998: 211), that despite British
perception of India as ‘a repository of diseases’, sanitation and sewers, town planning
and public health occupied a low place in the imperial order of priorities. The colo-
nial state was simply unwilling to incur the cost and was averse to bearing the politi-
cal risks of sanitising India. The task of cleaning the sub-continent was ‘too gigantic
to contemplate’ and would require ‘the British to meddle deeply and dangerously in
the habits and customs of the natives’. Exposing the British policy of neglect of sani-
tation in India, Chandavarkar (1998: 212) further states:

Yet as they knew only too well the key to the enjoyment of their political kingdom lay not
in social engineering but in salutary neglect. If the problem of public health was thus con-
ceived in terms which could not possibly allow its resolution, the insanitary and unhygienic
conditions of India’s towns and villages, however dangerous, were increasingly portrayed as
innate and natural to the sub-continent.

While Ramanna (2004: 4560–6) notes reluctant government support, Polu (2012:
14) argues that ‘the colonialist view that Indians were resistant to change provided a

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44 South Asia Research Vol. 41(1): 35–52

convenient excuse for lack of political will to implement sanitary improvements’.

In addition, ‘the negative attitude of the health officials toward Indian customs
and lifestyle also often limited the scope of disease prevention and control’ (Polu,
2012: 14).
Evidence of British neglect even during the epidemic was affirmed by Jam-e-
Jamshed of 4 July 1918 (Report, 1918a: 29–30), announcing the publication of the
report of the Sanitary Commissioner’s Conference at Delhi in January 1918. This
newspaper highlighted that questions regarding sanitation of Indian villages had been
before the Government since 1879, but nothing had been done for the last 39 years.
The newspaper refused to accept suggestions made in the Conference report that the
village sanitation scheme should be applied gradually in the course of many years.
The question of sanitation in villages was so important that not much delay should
be made in taking effective steps (Report, 1918a: 29–30).
The Marathi bi-weekly Dnyan Prakash, dated 10 July 1918, also held the govern-
ment responsible for the city’s contamination and commented on the Conference
recommendations. This newspaper reported that the alternative scheme prepared by
Major Norman White, Sanitary Commissioner to the Government of India, clearly
proved the Government’s indifference towards the question of sanitation (Report,
1918b: 25):

It is much to be regretted that although Government themselves are responsible for the
present unsatisfactory state of affairs they attribute it to the poverty and ignorance of the
masses and thus seek to free themselves from any blame. But Government could have
removed these causes by spreading education more widely and by curtailing expenditure on
some other departments. They should spend on sanitation at least now the large amounts
they have hitherto saved by neglecting it. We do not urge this expenditure during the con-
tinuance of the war but Government should no longer practise economy in this direction
when normal conditions are restored.

At such a critical juncture, the Government of Bombay remained absent from its
headquarters, having retreated to the hills. On 16 October 1918, Young India noted
with shock that the Government simply chose to throw ‘the afflicted population in the
hands of providence’ (Report, 1918f: 11). The Bombay Chronicle of 16 October 1918
sarcastically noted that ‘Brother Lazarus is not dead but only sleepeth’. It also pointed
out that ‘whenever the undesirability of Government’s exodus to the hills is discussed,
non-official members of the Council are overwhelmed with irrelevant counter argu-
ments’. They remind us of the existence of the Post and Telegraph and advise that
‘though absent in body, the Government is with us always present in spirit’ (Report,
1918f: 11). Mocking the Government’s lethargy and indifference, Sunday Chronicle
on 20 October pointed out that everything so far has been left to the Municipality and
local philanthropic institutions. The ‘paralysing atmosphere’ in Bombay Secretariat
has kept ‘the ma-baap (guardians) of the people in a state of coma’ (Report, 1918f: 11).
The Sunday Chronicle also fumed at Government apathy during 1913–19, when Lord
Singh: Bombay Fever/Spanish Flu 45

Willingdon (1866–1941) served as the Governor of Bombay. It was rumoured that

Lord Willingdon or his wife had succumbed to the epidemic, which explained their
absence from public engagements (Report, 1918f: 11):

The personal interest of Lord Willingdon in the distress of the sufferers is laudable enough,
no doubt, but what are his worthy fat salaried lieutenants doing to alleviate the suffering of
the afflicted?...This was nothing short of gross dereliction of duty. Greater facilities in the
treatment of the poor patients should have been afforded, for example, by building tempo-
rary hospitals in open air such as Kennedy Sea Face and devising means and methods of up
to date treatment of this fell disease especially for those in congested areas in dire need of
charitable treatment. Our Muckle-Heads and Little-Wits are still waiting to see how things
take their turn and then issue a precious Press Note explaining away amidst the ‘tres bien’
and their hobnobbing jackals.

Meanwhile, the epidemic had raged fiercely during the second influenza wave, which
started in September 1918. ‘The wheels of Government move very slowly in India’,
wrote the Gujarati on 20 October 1918. The paper felt that the government was slow
in recognising the gravity of the epidemic (Report, 1918f: 11–2):

...we discover no sign of consciousness on the part of the provincial administration or

the Government of India of the supreme necessity of devising and carrying out organised
measures for coping with the problem when hundreds of people are dying and when many
more lives are in peril. Organised measures can be adopted only by Government with the
cooperation of the local bodies and the people at large but as yet we see no indication of
activity on the part of the higher authorities... the question of the food control in India has
not been handled so long in a spirit of promptitude and sympathy. What the Government
should have done months ago is now being attempted in the usual style of the circumlocu-
tion department.

The Government’s gross neglect of a grave situation over months led to a huge price
hike for foodstuff and cloth. The newspaper disapproved the government’s policy of
exporting wheat to other countries in a human crisis like this (Report, 1918f: 11–2):

They have now resolved to stop the export of wheat and other than what is absolutely
necessary on military and Government account in Mesopotamia and elsewhere. The Home
Government could have brought supplies from their wheat producing colonies and thus
reduced their commitments in the east. It is now proposed to exercise greater control over
the export of all other kinds of food grains also. We are glad the Indian Government at last
awakened to the necessity of adopting measures which should have been taken long before
the situation became acute.

The extent of Government’s apathy towards rural areas is evident in a letter by an

anonymous correspondent from Hubli to The Bombay Chronicle, dated 30 October
(Report, 1918h: 22):

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46 South Asia Research Vol. 41(1): 35–52

The cold attitude shown by the Government and the Local Board to the conditions obtain-
ing in the rural areas is scandalous, while in the villages, the epidemic has been playing
havoc, as absolutely no medicine is given by these bodies...The Relief Committee is an
institution brought into being since the advent of the epidemic. It has recently found a
new channel for the exercise of its activities. It is the villages...The population of Hubli
Taluka including Hubli city is 120,000. If you omit 60,000 belonging to Hubli city, you
will see that the Government is doing nothing for the remaining 60,000 to save them from
the epidemic. Is it too much to expect that you would raise your powerful voice on behalf
of these helpless rural classes?

‘Something is radically wrong’, Young India of 16 October fumed, ‘with regard to the
Municipal administration in this city and drastic changes must be undertaken because
the health of the communities can no longer be allowed to be threatened in this man-
ner by a recurrence of such calamities’ (Report, 1918f: 18). It further noted ‘the seri-
ous neglect of the health conditions of the city’, since relief work organised in the
poorer localities and the sanitary conditions disclosed have been ‘absolutely shocking’
(Report, 1918f: 18). It regretted to state (Report, 1918f: 18):

It is impossible to trust in future the health of the community to the vagaries of Government
officials or to the stupidity of the owners of property who send their representatives to the
Corporations. These representatives have disclosed a lack of public spirit and of their own
responsibility in the past. In the matter of the adulteration of food, milk and in the matter
of market inspection, in regard for the supply of filtered drinking water and cleaning of
open drains between various properties, a shocking state of affairs exists as everybody in the
community knows except those who live on Malabar Hill and at the Colaba.

It was true that influenza could be controlled not merely by dosing the masses with
medicine, but also through the intervention of voluntary workers or self-organised
helpers such as the Social Service League (SSL) and others. Founded in Bombay in
1911 (Ramanna, 2004: 4565), the SSL set up its own ‘Influenza Relief Committee’,
managed by prominent industrialists, judges and doctors. On the appeal of Dr Turner
to the public for urgent assistance, published in The Times of India dated 27 September
1918, the SSL became ‘the chief organiser of the epidemic relief committee, coordi-
nating the efforts of 25 caste and community organisations’ (Ramanna, 2004: 4565).
It collected funds, established 20 relief centres, ‘provided volunteer doctors including
women, distributed stock mixtures provided by the municipality, milk and blankets,
disseminated information from door to door and even cremated the dead’ (Ramanna,
2004: 4565). Community organisations volunteered to help influenza victims of
other cities also. In Ahmedabad, the Gujarat Sabha, another non-official reformist
body, took the lead in providing relief during the epidemic, rather than the munici-
pality (Ramanna, 2004: 4565). In Bombay, the Hindu Medical Association was
given a ward in Maratha Hospital. The Jain Hospital, St. John’s Ambulance
Association and the Prabhu community offered hospitals and medical support. The
Parsi community asked for a hospital and Wilson College offered their buildings for
Singh: Bombay Fever/Spanish Flu 47

hospital use. Lady Willingdon Scheme Hospital at Arthur Road was utilised for seri-
ous influenza cases. These voluntary efforts of India’s civil society during the influ-
enza of 1918 in cooperation with the Health Department were recognised in a brief
report of 1919 on influenza in Bombay by the British Medical Journal, 2 (No. 3059),
at p. 219. The willingness of Dr Turner, ‘who does not seem to fit any stereotype of a
colonial administrator’ (Ramanna, 2004: 4565) to harness public support is high-
lighted, but despite all these efforts, more hospitals and ambulances were needed and
more doctors and staff were required to run these facilities.

Indian versus Western Medicine and Bacteriological Research

Despite the appalling impact of the influenza, the Government did not know how to
tackle the scourge and faced an acute shortage of doctors, as many were away on War
duty (Ramanna, 2004: 4560). The Indian ‘native’ press, while emphasising the neces-
sity of cooperation between the government, the corporation and other voluntary
and public agencies in fighting the disease until the danger of recurrence was over,
also suggested Indian medicines as remedies. Deccan Ryot on 31 October 1918
wanted Indian medicines to be encouraged in the absence of any medical aid in dis-
tant areas, where the nearest doctor might be 30 miles away. The Indian system of
medicine alone, if encouraged, could hope to cope with a situation like this. Further,
it argued (Report, 1918h: 23):

The doctor is both costly and rare. Besides, his dependence on the supply of medicine from
far off Europe or America makes him not only in times of the epidemics like the present
not only too costly but unreliable also. The Indian medicines yielding to no other medicine
in efficacy, are comparatively cheaper and within the reach of the remotest corner of the
country. The school masters, the post masters, and even the village officers may be given
a little training to fit them to become useful apothecaries of our villages. But the essential
thing is to bring into being large and scientific pharmacological institutions which could
supply reliable Indian drugs in large quantities.

Other vernacular newspapers, including Praja Mitra and Parsi of 1 and 2 October
1918 also expressed regret at the government’s lack of adequate medical relief during
the outbreak, and criticised its attempts to put down indigenous systems of medicinal
treatment by implementing the Bombay Medical Act (Report, 1918d: 27). The arti-
cle speculated as to ‘what must be the condition of the large number of people when
even the small section of the public which depended upon the practitioners of the
Western system of medicine felt the dearth of adequate medical relief ’ (Report,
1918d: 27). On 6 October 1918, Gujarati condemned the high prices of essential
drugs, which poor people could hardly afford (Report, 1918d: 27):

High prices have only undermined the health of the people who can buy neither sufficient
food nor clothing. Costly medical drugs are beyond their reach and more than a fortnight

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48 South Asia Research Vol. 41(1): 35–52

ago we had earnestly appealed to Government and Municipalities to make them more
accessible to the public. They are now being sold at prohibitive prices and here Government
must step in and help the people out of their own stocks. The experience gained in the city
must be utilised in the districts. The stock mixtures found effective in the treatment of the
fever-stricken in Bombay ought to be distributed without stint or restriction in all parts of
the Presidency. Medical lessons need not be learnt by bitter experience or experiments on
the life of the poor in each district.

Since Western drugs were in short supply and local Ayurvedic and Unani medicines
had been officially banned, common people were in acute distress. As a means to
‘relieve’ this shortage, the newspaper suggested that ‘the government should tempo-
rarily suspend the Bombay Medical Act and permit University medical practitioners
to cooperate with those who follow the indigenous systems of medical treatment’
(Report, 1918e: 27). They also referred to the ‘indifferent attitude’ of the Government
towards public demands for opening additional medical colleges and schools (Report,
1918e: 27).
Instances of hoarding of quinine came to light when the Gujarati on 13 October
1918 reported: ‘We do not know what truth is there in the report that someone had
managed to buy a large quantity of quinine and thus forced up its price’ (Report,
1918e: 20). The paper demanded that this should be stopped. The Ahmedabad cor-
respondent of The Times of India, on 13 October, confirmed that stocks of quinine
had been exhausted in almost all dispensaries. This very ‘lamentable’ state of affairs
ought to be strictly set right. The wide social gulf between people and high govern-
ment officials prevented the latter from realising common people’s suffering.
Otherwise, the local governments and their official experts would have responded to
‘the exceptional requirements of the harrowing situation with greater promptitude
and sympathy than they have hitherto shown in the matter’ (Report, 1918e: 20). The
paper was aghast at the Government’s apathy (Report, 1918e: 20):

It is not enough to call the epidemic a world scourge and then sit with folded hands.
The poor people’s sufferings must be alleviated by organised measures throughout the
Presidency with the cooperation of the public and charitable and the philanthropic agen-
cies that may be available. A terrible war is being fought on the western front. But we too
in India have to wage a formidable war against the enemies of human race such as plague,
malaria and influenza, and face the misfortunes brought on by scarcity or famine. Plague
has done for years its destructive work in India. Nearly 41 lakhs of people succumbed to the
fever alone in India in 1916 exclusive of the two lakhs that fell victim to the plague. As if
that was not enough, the country has now to endure the ravages of the influenza epidemic
and the hardships produced by abnormally high prices.

Thus, the Indian press interrogated and critiqued the Government and large munici-
palities like Bombay and Calcutta regarding the delay in investigating the disease.
Praja Mitra and Parsi of 27 September 1918 stated that ‘a superior bacteriologist with
Singh: Bombay Fever/Spanish Flu 49

a first class laboratory may not be found in India but it was absurd to defer all inves-
tigations till an expert is brought in from Europe’ (Report, 1918c: 17). It pointed out
that there were several well-known bacteriologists in India (Report, 1918c: 17):

The laboratory was up to date and well-equipped and Major Glen Liston, the bacteri-
ologist-in-charge, was a capable investigator. Dr Fowler, the bacteriologist of Bangalore
Research Institute, has a high reputation and either he or Dr Glen Liston or both may be
entrusted with the investigation at once...The Bombay Municipality should take action
without delay and publish the result of bacteriologist tests.

Sanj Vartman of 5 October strongly appealed to the Bombay Municipal Corporation

to secure, in cooperation with the government, the services of an expert bacteriologist
from England for investigating the disease and to take necessary measures to stamp it
out (Report, 1918e: 20). Public health, however, during this unprecedented crisis,
did not seem to be a major priority in the eyes of the colonial authorities.
Arnold (1986: 119) has argued that Western medicine, which could function as a
means of social control and serve to legitimate colonial rule, frequently ran against
the Indian system of healing. In the hands of British colonisers, Western medicine
thus became a potent tool for their grand imperial design (Arnold, 1993: 290–2).
Exploring the vital role of the state in medical and public health activities, Arnold
(1993) argued that Western medicine became a site of contestation between the colo-
nised and the colonisers. This was particularly evident in Indian responses to epidem-
ics of smallpox, cholera and plague, and British attempts to contain and control
them.
By the first decade of the twentieth century, Western medicine in India still had
limited acceptance (Ramanna, 2003), while most medical graduates from the Grant
Medical College in Bombay, which introduced Western medicine in India, ‘were
convinced of the efficacy of the Western medicine, but they also tried a combination
of Western and Indian medicines in their practice’ (Ramanna, 2006: 3221). The
dominance of Western medicine, as Ramanna (2006: 3221) further states, was pro-
moted through passing the Registration of Medical Practitioners Act (RMPA) in the
Bombay Presidency in 1912. Traditional vaids and hakims were now effectively kept
out and classified as ‘irregularly qualified’, raising fears among Ayurvedic physicians
that their practice would be made illegal (Hardiman, 2009: 264). In light of the pass-
ing of the RMPA, the Bombay government ordered the closure of the Poona
Ayurvedic Dispensary in 1915, claiming that the medical officer-in-charge was ‘irreg-
ularly qualified’. This led to protests from Ayurvedic organisations all over the coun-
try and debates in the contemporary press, public meetings and petitions in Poona,
in which Tilak was also involved (Ramanna, 2006: 3221). Evidently, such battles
distracted from the urgent challenges to avoid mass mortality due to epidemics like
the Bombay Fever.

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50 South Asia Research Vol. 41(1): 35–52

Conclusions: Lessons Learnt from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic

By mid-November, the influenza was in decline all over India, but the ‘native’ press
continued to raise strong arguments against colonial governmentality and public
health. On 12 November, the Kesari proposed that the work of the Government
Sanitary Department in the epidemic should be inquired into. The Government’s
role in controlling the disease and providing support to those affected was highly
questionable. The article raised some pertinent issues (Report, 1918i: 28):

The routine work is done by the Municipality and Local Boards but when a worldwide
epidemic suddenly swoops down what can they do? Is it not the duty of the Government
to help them with finances and medical advice? … Who are the real well wishers of the
masses? Is there love or hatred between the different communities in India? Who looked
after the backward classes? Have Indians a sense of responsibility and energy to take upon
themselves some work and see it done and how much of it? All these questions can be
answered from the experience we had during the last epidemic.

Thus, the emerging public sphere of native newspapers and periodicals of the early
decades of the twentieth century was instrumental in shaping public opinion, criticis-
ing the techniques of ‘colonial governmentality’ (Kalpagam, 2002; Scott, 1995),
which materialised the colonised body ‘in a grid of knowledge and tactics’ (Prakash,
2000: 193), based on stereotypes designed to justify colonial power.
Demanding better government support and administration during the influenza
outbreaks of 1918, the native press of Bombay, as this article showed, fixed their criti-
cal gaze on the deficient relief measures undertaken by the colonial state. They
indicted the government for apathy and indifference towards the rural masses, despite
incurring the displeasure of the executive authority and curtailment of their freedom
under the Indian Press Act of 1910. As Kalpagam (2002: 44) observes: ‘The newspa-
pers served not merely as sites of consensus generation but also as channels of infor-
mation from unknown people and places on the need and efficacy of governmental
actions’. In contrast, voluntary agencies such as the SSL and other bodies did ‘splen-
did work in assisting the poorer classes during the Bombay epidemic’, as The Times of
India of 19 October 1918 observed. Arnold (2015: 120) looks back at India’s epide-
miological history with insightful observations on the virulent outbreaks of plague
and influenza, separated by a 25-year period, focuses on urban–rural distinctions and
then observes that influenza did not create anything like the kind of panic that had
characterised plague outbreaks from 1896–7 onwards and intermittently for many
years thereafter.
To conclude, whenever a new pandemic strikes the world, scientists, epidemiolo-
gists and government officials worldwide may look back to earlier instances of epi-
demics like plague, cholera and influenza as worst case scenarios, while developing
effective epidemic controls and interventions. It is not certain, however, that this
actually happens. If, in addition, there is insufficient leadership and lack of strategic
Singh: Bombay Fever/Spanish Flu 51

planning, and other agenda of governance are deemed more important, as was the
case in colonial India, there are likely to be serious deficiencies in responses. The
influenza of 1918 largely disappeared from memory, and only few references to this
epidemic exist in the literature, in popular culture and even in history books.
However, the current COVID pandemic makes it absolutely necessary to draw les-
sons from such earlier pandemics and not to dismiss them as some kind of minor flu
that will simply go away.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publica-
tion of this article.

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Manju Singh is a Professor of English at the Department of English and Modern

European Languages, University of Lucknow, Lucknow, India. Her main areas of
interest are South Asian literature and culture, colonial archives on India and
Translation Studies. After her PhD on modern British poetry from the University of
Lucknow, she turned to South Asian literary culture, specifically the works of
Mahasweta Devi, Hindi/Urdu Progressive writers, Modernism in Hindi literature and
Kabir. She has documented the living and endangered languages and the de-notified
tribes of India in association with G.N. Devy’s People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI)
and BHASHA. Her latest work is Miss Samuel: A Jewish Saga (New Delhi: Speaking
Tiger, 2020), the English translation of an Indian Hindi–Jewish novel. [e-mail:
msingh.ul@gmail.com]