Taste of Life: When Hindu, Muslim pilgrims were blamed for global spread of cholera
Attendees of The Third International Commission on Cholera, held in Istanbul on February 13, 1866, unanimously agreed that Indians greatly contributed to the spread of the disease
Pune: On July 4, 1918, VS Risbud, head of the sanitation department of the Poona Municipality, visited the New English School in Sadashiv Peth. There, with the help of other teachers, he demonstrated in front of students how to boil water and milk for drinking. He explained chlorination and how alum could be used to purify water. He told them that if students could advise their parents and families to follow those safe practices, they could stay away from the deadly cholera. Booklets written in Marathi asserting the importance of hygiene were distributed to students.
Cholera is an acute diarrhoeal disease transmitted primarily by ingestion of faecally contaminated water. Besides water, foods have also been recognised as an important vehicle for transmission of the disease. With undisputed origins in South Asia, it became a pandemic from 1817 onwards. Colonial rule in the nineteenth century blamed Indians’ lack of a sense of sanitation and hygiene for periodic outbreaks of not only cholera, but also plague, smallpox, and malaria.
Cholera epidemics in the last two centuries have generated varying responses by different groups in society. The distinction between social classes, religions, and nations could be understood through a prism of the disease and its relationship with food and hygiene.
Initial widespread incidences of cholera were recorded in Poona in 1817 and 1823. Civil surgeon Dr Walter assiduously aided his limited establishment even as the mortality averaged daily from twenty to thirty. He arranged to provide the victims with the “cholera mixture” and rice water at every chowk in the city.
The fourth cholera pandemic that began in India in 1863 attacked Europe, and later the Americas, via the Mediterranean. The sea traffic between the Port of Aden and the Red Sea sent the disease into Jeddah. In 1865, fifteen thousand pilgrims died during the Hajj.
This put a spotlight on Hindu and Muslim pilgrims who were blamed for the global spread of the disease. It also popularised the (now outdated) theory of “miasma” that inferred that “dirty” and heavily populated cities of the East that were heavily trafficked by pilgrims were a health threat to Western Europeans who had abandoned pilgrimage several centuries earlier.
Those supporting the “miasma” theory called for better sanitation in India and other European colonies. Attendees of The Third International Commission on Cholera, held in Istanbul on February 13, 1866, unanimously agreed that Indians greatly contributed to the spread of the disease and that the government had to act immediately to arrest it by maintaining hygiene. The “Indianisation” of the disease was complete.
Opponents of the “miasma” theory advocated quarantine as a measure to restrain cholera. Pilgrims and traders were prohibited from travelling during cholera outbreaks. Indians, on the other hand, believed that cholera became a widespread problem due to British military campaigns. It often happened that detachments marching in India, on arriving at certain encampments, became attacked with the disease. The outbreak of 1817, concurrent with the war against the Maratha Empire, and that of 1857, concurrent with the mutiny were cited as examples. However, the causes of the disease were largely unknown and speculative.
Surgeon-General William James Moore of the Bombay Presidency wrote in “A Manual of Family Medicine for India” in 1874 – “(Cholera) is generally admitted to be an invisible poison, which may be transmitted from adjacent places through the air; which may be conveyed from place to place by human beings, or by other agencies; and which may contaminate drinking water or food, and may thus be taken into the system”. It was he who pitched for better sanitation measures, including water purification at cantonments, not out of love for Indians, but because the disease was killing the British troops.
By the late nineteenth century, the new understanding held that a living germ caused cholera that was carried in the gut, and in the faecal matter and vomit of a cholera patient. The dejecta infected water supplies and new victims. Thus, it was now understood that the movement of infected people from one place to another spread the disease. No wonder pilgrimages were considered breeding grounds for epidemics.
Cholera made an appearance in July and August every year in and around Poona in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Lectures promoting good sanitation practices were organised in Poona, Alandi, Solapur, and Pandharpur before and during the “Ashadhi” and “Kartiki” fairs in the early 1900s.
The Poona Municipality Health Department placed an advertisement every year a little before “Devashayani Ashadhi Ekadashi” cautioning citizens about the importance of drinking clean water to avoid cholera. By then, it was recognised that as the disease spread within the community, secondary transmission via food and food handlers and person-to-person increased.
Pilgrims returning from Pandharpur were asked to report to the authorities if they showed any symptoms of the disease. Do not drink water from wells, boil water and milk, do not eat sweets with house flies hovering over them, wash hands before eating, do not eat streetside food, get vaccinated, they were told by the Poona Municipality. Women were asked to not use water from wells for cooking and drinking. Hands were to be washed with mild carbolic acid before cooking meals. Potassium permanganate and alum were distributed in Poona during the monsoons. The chemical was looked at with suspicion by many natives who thought that the pink-purple powder would cause impotence.
Pilgrims flocked to Alandi on “Ashadh Vadya Ekadashi”. They believed that their pilgrimage to Pandharpur was incomplete without visiting the shrine of Saint Dnyaneshwar. While most pilgrims walked to Alandi, few chose to travel by a special shuttle bus service from Shaniwarwada. They carried drinking water with them in brass pots. In 1933, PD Kulkarni, President of Alandi Municipality, and sanitary inspector Tambolkar assured pilgrims that they had taken adequate measures to provide clean water and in a bid to assure them, drank the same water in front of them.
Though sanitary “raids” had largely ceased after the plague outbreak of 1897 in the Bombay Presidency, officials from the Poona Municipality and the sanitary department made surprise visits to houses and “wadas” they suspected of storing polluted water. From the early twentieth century, Poona Municipality officials began to examine the condition of public water supplies and private wells to examine contamination. In the 1930s, owners of filthy wells and houses with leaky drainages were shamed publicly by printing their names in newspapers.
Reports from Marathi newspapers indicate that it was widely believed that cholera was caused by eating rotten fruits, especially mango. Raids were conducted at Ray Market (Mahatma Phule Mandai) to confiscate rotten fruits and vegetables.
Some Europeans living in nineteenth-century India believed that cholera was caused by the consumption of veal, raw milk taken with fish, or shellfish, and all dishes cooked with milk; such as rice pudding, cream puffs, and ice cream. Unripe and overripe fruit, especially if taken with large draughts of ice water, would also cause it, according to them. Hence, these foods were avoided during the cholera outbreak in cantonments and European settlements in India.
Some medical practitioners in Europe advised adding a tablespoonful of dilute sulphuric acid to every gallon of drinking water as it was thought to possess the “power” of destroying the “infectious material of cholera”. A little sugar was to be added, if the water was distasteful. However, in 1921, doctors at the Sassoon Hospital cautioned people against adding acid to drinking water.
European doctors in Poona instructed children suffering from cholera to be put on a diet of raw white of egg, gelatin, barley water, and chicken or meat broth. Milk was not to be given until diarrhoea had stopped. For adults, tincture of opium was thought to be a somewhat effective treatment. It was combined with large doses of calomel. After the vomiting had ceased, cold water or iced lemonade was given from time to time. Linseed tea with a little gum acacia was also suggested. Sago gruel and arrowroot porridge were prescribed during the recovery.
Till the 1940s, cholera killed around half the people who became sick, and no one knew how to cure it. It symbolised native vulnerability in the face of poverty and underdevelopment. It became a vehicle for Western colonists to assert their dominance and imperialism. It also brought forth the role of food as medicine.
Chinmay Damle is a research scientist and food enthusiast. He writes here on Pune’s food culture. He can be contacted at chinmay.damle@gmail.com