Pandemic India

Covid-19 has given renewed, urgent attention to the pandemic as a devastating, recurrent global phenomenon. Today the term is freely and widely usedbut in reality, it has a long and contested history, centred on South Asia.Pandemic Indiais an innovative enquiry into the emergence of the idea and changing meaning of pandemics, exploring the pivotal role played byor assigned toIndia over the past 200 years. Using the perspectives of the social historian and the historian of medicine, and a wide range of sources, it explains how and why past pandemics were so closely identified with South Asia; the factors behind outbreaks exceptional destructiveness in India; responses from society and the state, both during and since the colonial era; and how such collective catastrophes have changed lives and been remembered. Giving a long history to Indias current pandemic, the book offers comparisons with earlier epidemics of cholera, plague and influenza.David Arnold assesses the distinctive characteristics and legacies of each episode, tracking the evolution of public health strategies and containment measures. This is a historians reflection on time as seen through the pandemic prism, and on the ways the past is usedor misusedto serve the present.