The Calculus of Contagion: Imperial Anxiety, Policy, and Resistance in Colonial Punjab’s Public Health Landscape (1850–1918)

• Fariha Waris

  Author

This research paper critically examines the evolution of public health policies implemented by the British colonial state in the Punjab region between 1850 and 1918. These policies were a calculated response to protect and further the core political, economic, and military interests of the Empire, particularly after the devastating casualty rates among British troops following the 1857 Uprising. The repeated outbreaks of malaria, cholera, smallpox, and plague created significant imperial anxiety, forcing a policy shift from a limited 'enclavist' medical approach, focused only on Europeans, to a broader, interventionist 'public health' strategy aimed at controlling indigenous bodies and environments. Since the true etiology of these diseases remained ambiguous until the late nineteenth century, early measures were often experimental, discriminatory, and coercive, underpinned by a colonial discourse that essentialized Indians as inherently unhygienic and a perpetual source of contagion. This paper analyze how indigenous communities responded to these often-brutal state measures, documenting a spectrum of reactions ranging from pragmatic collaboration among the urban middle classes to open, localized resistance and the creation of popular counter-discourses through potent miraculous rumours. This work reveals that colonial public health was fundamentally an exercise in maintaining imperial authority, using medicine as a key instrument for technological and political supremacy.

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