Hajj and Epidemic: British Policies in Colonial Punjab, 1857-1920

• Syed Fayyaz Hussain Shah

  Author

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British colonial state in India identified the annual Hajj pilgrimage as a significant administrative and political challenge. The advent of steamship travel dramatically increased the number of pilgrims, creating genuine concerns about the rapid transmission of epidemic diseases, most notably cholera. However, the British response, particularly as it was implemented in the Punjab, was not a purely medical or benevolent intervention. This essay demonstrates that British authorities systematically utilized the discourse of public health and sanitation as a sophisticated pretext for a policy of political surveillance and control. The primary objective of this "sanitary" regime was to monitor and disrupt the flow of Pan-Islamic and anti-colonial ideologies, which were gaining potent traction in the Punjab, a region of critical strategic importance to the British Raj. The fear of political contagion, emanating from the Ottoman Caliphate and spreading through the physical conduit of the Hajj, superseded purely epidemiological concerns. By instituting a complex apparatus of regulation—including Muslim consulates, centralized travel agencies like Thomas Cook & Son, and carceral quarantine camps—the British state successfully institutionalized the surveillance of its Muslim subjects. This policy allowed the Raj to manage a perceived political threat under the legitimizing guise of modern medicine and public health, effectively turning a sacred ritual into a site of imperial control.

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