In Sickness And In Death: How Faith, Medicine and Race Shaped British India

by Ipshita Nath

English 1 edition

When the British first arrived in India in 1608, they knew that deadly diseases lurked in the tropical subcontinent. But what they did not foresee was how swiftly these pathogenic forces would puncture European medical hubris. Sahibs and soldiers, armed with muskets, ledgers and scientific arrogance, soon found themselves struggling to stay alive as illness ravaged urban hubs and remote mofussils alike. Simple fevers proved fatal, and survival seemed more a matter of chance than cure. With recurrent public health crises disrupting imperial business, straining infrastructure and draining resources, disease became a central problem of British governance. Over two centuries, the relentless toll of disease gradually exposed the fragility of colonial control and shattered the illusion of the invincibility of the white race. Ipshita Nath’s In Sickness and in Death draws on a vast body of medical and academic research to not only examine how disease reshaped colonial policy, contested imperial ambition and altered everyday life in the subcontinent, but also show that the politics of disease-determined by fear, force and power structures-are glaringly present even today, in the post-pandemic era.