Abstract
The third plague pandemic led to approximately twelve million deaths in India (Catanach 1991; Echenberg 2007). To western observers it became associated with the “oriental poor” such that India became a “perennial reservoir” of the disease (Arnold 2022). Pandemic narratives become the anchor of meaning creation when a novel pathogenic microbe wreaks havoc. This meaning is erected upon the foundation of previous knowledge as encapsulated in the pandemic narratives (Lupton 2024). The premise that the study of pandemic diseases and human culture is inseparable has been successfully argued by critics like Susan Sontag (1990), Paula Treichler (1999) and Priscilla Wald (2008). Wald argues that narratives of pandemics create a vocabulary through which the affected population configures ways to respond as well as “experience the social connections that make them a community” (Wald 12). This paper engages with the recent English translations of short stories like Master Bhagwan Das’s Plague Ki Chudail (The Plague Witch, 1902) and Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Quarantine (1940) to establish how the thematic motif of plague informs about the nuances of hierarchy prevalent within colonial Indian society and highlights the structurally ingrained inequities and injustices. The plague evoked critical deliberations upon the relationship between disease and the human body; the agency of the colonised and interdynamics of race, class and gender that shaped health practices in colonial India. These narratives enrich the historical understanding of the plague and lay foundation for enquiries surrounding the contemporaneity of pandemics in the face of increased microbe virulent threats.
Presenters
Ananya ChatterjeeStudent, PhD, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Pandemic Literature, Indian Narratives, Theme, Plague
