The Spanish flu: Its devastation led to the birth of a nation

Edward Kosner’s book review of Pale Rider by British author Laura Spinney appears in the December 11^th edition of the Wall Street Journal. The book talks about the origins and effects of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which infected 500 million people, approximately 1/3 of the global population at the time and killed anywhere from 50 to 100 million. Without exception, it was the single most devastating cause of human mortality in history. It was not until the 1930s that Spanish influenza, as it was called, was discovered to be the result of a virus that affects the respiratory system. It  was spread through the air and by contact with anything it touched. The virus entered the lungs, causing pneumonia and eventually a slow and agonizing death. Tracing the evolution of the pandemic and its political and historical consequences for the global population of the time, the story, according to Kosner, “is a cautionary tale about human vulnerability and ingenuity in the face of peril.”

The influenza virus was found to be linked to the soldiers who had fought in World War I, or “the Great War.” In her book, Spinney makes the claim that “the outbreak, by indirectly triggering the British massacre at Amritsar in 1919, may have speeded India’s drive for independence.”  As an Indian myself, I found Spinney’s analysis to be particularly intriguing.  

1.3 million Indian troops served in the British army during the war.  In Mesopotamia, Indian Muslims under the British fought against the Muslim soldiers of the Ottoman Empire. They battled in foreign lands and struggled to adapt to adverse conditions. Indian troops were responsible for stopping the German at Ypres in 1914. With large numbers of men living in close quarters with poor sanitation, it was easy for the infection to spread.  According to Spinney, it is possible that the Indians’ success was partly due to the fact that the German soldiers had also been infected by the virus which caused the flu, so they were too weak to put up a strong offense. There were 74,187 casualties and almost as many injuries among the Indian troops. Photographs and other historical evidence document the compassion and dedication of the Indian soldiers, who fought bravely and honorably for a cause not their own.

Despite their heroic efforts on behalf of the Empire, the soldiers were unrecognized and unrewarded and felt betrayed by  the British government’s false promises.  The British had promised India independence after the war.  Instead the government enacted the Rowlatt Act, which punished any seditious or treasonous activity against the British Empire by arrest without cause.  The Indian people reacted with extreme dissatisfaction to an act they saw as unfair and punitive. An extended drought caused crop failure leading to famine, which was made even worse by the spread of influenza.  According to the website https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/ , “In India the mortality rate was extremely high at around 50 deaths from influenza per 1,000 people (Brown).” Mahatma Gandhi had himself been weakened by the same flu, leaving him unable to stem the rising tide of anti-British sentiment.

 On April 13, 1919, British troops commanded by brigadier general Reginald Dyer fired into a crowd of unarmed civilians who had peacefully assembled at Jallianwallah Bagh, a park in, Amritsar, India to protest several restrictive laws implemented by the British.  Of the 15,000 participants, nearly 1500 were killed and another 1137 injured. One of the things which agitated the protesters was the recruitment policy of the British army towards the Indians. The money for the war effort had been raised by taxing the population heavily.  

The senseless massacre of the protesters fueled nationalist sentiment in India, giving rise to revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, and was one of the factors which motivated Gandhi, who had previously supported the British war effort, to seek India’s independence.  As a student of both history and science, I found it fascinating to study how their intersection had dramatic effects for humanity. A September 15th article, Pandemics, Politics and the Spanish Flu, by Crawford Kilian on TheTyee.ca, references Santayana, who observed that “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” a lesson that we repeatedly fail to learn.