Epidemics in Colonial Punjab: Governance, Medicine, and Resistance

• Abdul Rauf

  Author

This research investigates the outbreaks of major epidemics—malaria, plague, influenza, cholera, and smallpox—in Colonial Punjab from 1849 to 1947. It analyses the patterns of mortality, transmission, and eruption, arguing that these epidemics were not merely biological events but were intrinsically linked to the administrative, political, and developmental agendas of the British Raj. The core argument is that the colonial state utilised these health crises to establish and reinforce its authority through a discourse of Western medical superiority, implementing policies of segregation, sanitation, and inoculation that were applied differentially to European and native populations. Drawing on the Foucauldian concept of knowledge/power, this study posits that colonial medical interventions were a form of governance that, while for public health, served to demarcate the rulers from the ruled. This dissertation examines the implementation of colonial disease Acts and health policies, such as evacuation, quarantine, and medical examinations. It concludes that these measures, often enforced with coercion and cultural insensitivity, provoked a wide spectrum of responses from the native population, ranging from collaboration and negotiation by local elites to widespread evasion, rumour, and violent, active resistance from the general populace. This study fills a research gap by focusing on the socio-political dimensions of public health and native resistance in Punjab, exploring how state-imposed medical 'order' inevitably clashed with the socio-cultural, economic, and religious fabric of Indigenous society.

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