Cholera epidemic of 1817, East India Company, Third Anglo-Maratha War and Mount Tambora

मी एप्रिल ४ २०२३ रोजी लिहले:

"एप्रिल महिना मला आठवण करून देतो इंडोनेशिया मधील माऊंट टॅमबोरा (mount tambora) चे ५ एप्रिल १८१५ च्या संध्याकाळी फुटणे, ज्या घटनेला उद्या २०८ वर्षे पूर्ण होतील ... 

 

त्या फुटण्याचे पडसाद तेंव्हापासून आजवर उमटत आहेत... 

 

In the year 1816 (popularly known as Year Without a Summer), in India, the monsoons did not arrive as expected, causing drought and water shortages at first, and then flooding during the dry season.

Peter Frankopan, "The Earth Transformed: An Untold History", 2023

 

"... The eruption devasted other regions, such as the Indian subcontinent, where a shift in monsoon rains, a failure of trade winds and a three-year depression of the thermal cycle of South Asia not only led to major reductions in crop yields and of maritime trade, but also served to change the microbial ecology of the Bay of Bengal. In 1817, unusually early and heavy rains brought about a surge in cases of cholera that caused death on an almost unimaginable scale. The bodies of the dead and dying were gathered together, wrote one eyewitness, with funeral pyres burning non-stop to incinerate the rich and the poor, and other corpses picked over by vultures or jackals. It was ‘a scene of woe which completely baffles the power of description to portray’...."

 

तत्कालीन मराठी लेखनात माऊंट टॅमबोरा चे उल्लेख मी कधी ऐकले किंवा पाहिलेले नाहीत (तुम्हाला माहित असल्यास कृपया येथे कळवा) पण त्याने झालेला नाश तर आपल्या पूर्वजांनी भोगला आहे ... 

 

१८१७-२४ सालात आलेल्या कॉलराने १०-२० लाख भारतीय लोक मारले. भारत (आणि महाराष्ट्र) पारतंत्र्यात पण १६७४ नंतर १८१८ साली पुन्हा गेला ही गोष्ट लक्षात घेण्यासारखी आहे...."

 

पण ते पुस्तक ईस्ट इंडिया कंपनीच्या सैन्याचा कॉलरा पसरवण्यातील  हाताबद्दल काहीच लिहित नाही. 

मी एप्रिल २०२३ मध्ये वाचले. 

 

Jonathan Kennedy त्यांच्या "Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues", २०२३ या पुस्तकात लिहतात : 

"... Cholera had been endemic in the Ganges Delta for many centuries. It first broke out of its original home in 1817, carried by East India Company troops as they tramped across the subcontinent; the Marquis of Hastings lost a third of his 10,000 men to cholera while fighting the Marathas...."

 

प्रा चिन्मय तुंबे त्यांच्या "The Age Of Pandemics: 1817-1920: How they shaped India and the World", २०२० पुस्तकात लिहतात:

"... By September, reports of a major cholera outbreak were pouring in from various parts of the Bengal province, a region comprising much of modern-day Bangladesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and coastal Odisha. The epidemic struck during the prelude to the Third Anglo-Maratha War and caught the English forces unawares. The governor general, Francis Rawdon-Hastings (1754–1826), was camping in Bundelkhand in November 1817 in a bid to oust the Pindaris, powerful mercenaries operating in central India under Maratha patronage. Cholera ripped through his camp, killing hundreds by the week...."

Frederick F. Cartwright and  Michael Biddiss, 'Disease & History: From ancient times to Covid-19':

 

"... In 1817 cholera broke out with great violence over the whole Ganges delta, which became notorious as a focus. Medical men in the area stated that it had not been seen in the delta before 1817 and considered it a new disease. Their opinion is now regarded with some doubt. A possible explanation is that cholera was endemic in Central India, then largely unexplored by Europeans, and made its way down river to the coast, carried by troop movements and river shipping...."

 

 

 

 

 

Anti-cholera inoculation, Calcutta, 1894 , courtesy : Wikimedia