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THE PANDEMIC THAT KILLED 14 MILLION INDIANS A CENTURY AGO
The Spanish Flu first landed in India on the docks of Bombay in June 1918. An overcrowded and poorly maintained city, Bombay was ripe for an outbreak. On June 10, seven police sepoys were hospitalised with “non-malarial” fever.
Over the next few weeks, the disease spread rapidly — employees of shipping firms, the Bombay Port Trust, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the telegraph office, the mint and the Rachel Sassoon Mills were taken ill. By June 24, the city was crippled by an epidemic. Patients complained of fever, pain in limbs and bones, bronchial inflation with congestion, pain in eyes and a sense of “feeling flat”.
Within days of its arrival, the Spanish Flu had already killed several people and by the time it receded in July, it had claimed 1,600 lives.
But Bombay wasn’t the only affected city. Railway lines carried the virus far and wide. Cities suffered more than rural areas.
“All interest in living has ceased,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi, struck by the fever that left him unable to speak or read while he was rising as a leader.
Spreading across Bombay Presidency, this virulent strain of the virus radiated north and east, claiming anywhere between 10 and 25 million lives in the country, roughly one-fifth to half of the global death toll.
Later, an injection prepared in Assam reportedly immunised thousands. While the second wave retreated by December 1918, some reports hint at a third wave in India in early 1919. A 2012 study suggests that almost 14 million Indians in British-controlled parts of India had died in the pandemic.
The Spanish Flu first landed in India on the docks of Bombay in June 1918. An overcrowded and poorly maintained city, Bombay was ripe for an outbreak. On June 10, seven police sepoys were hospitalised with “non-malarial” fever.
Over the next few weeks, the disease spread rapidly — employees of shipping firms, the Bombay Port Trust, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the telegraph office, the mint and the Rachel Sassoon Mills were taken ill. By June 24, the city was crippled by an epidemic. Patients complained of fever, pain in limbs and bones, bronchial inflation with congestion, pain in eyes and a sense of “feeling flat”.
Within days of its arrival, the Spanish Flu had already killed several people and by the time it receded in July, it had claimed 1,600 lives.
But Bombay wasn’t the only affected city. Railway lines carried the virus far and wide. Cities suffered more than rural areas.
“All interest in living has ceased,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi, struck by the fever that left him unable to speak or read while he was rising as a leader.
Spreading across Bombay Presidency, this virulent strain of the virus radiated north and east, claiming anywhere between 10 and 25 million lives in the country, roughly one-fifth to half of the global death toll.
Later, an injection prepared in Assam reportedly immunised thousands. While the second wave retreated by December 1918, some reports hint at a third wave in India in early 1919. A 2012 study suggests that almost 14 million Indians in British-controlled parts of India had died in the pandemic.
