90 days in 1918: When Spanish flu killed half-a-million in Karnataka

It’s been over three weeks since the country came under a complete lockdown to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. Reports and the government’s feedback point to many problems around its effective enforcement on the ground. Justifications apart, enforcement challenges arise from a degree of casualness among people about its purpose. Perhaps, to an extent, even people at various levels in the government are guilty of lacking in the required conviction and seriousness about the measure they themselves are tasked to enforce.

We seem to have no sense of history, and learn little from it. We dread in these grim circumstances to quote what philosopher George Santayana famously said about those who forget their history lessons. Therefore, it is only appropriate here to recall the unprecedented devastation suffered by our forefathers just over a hundred years ago, in 1918, when the Influenza pandemic -- better known as the Spanish Flu -- broke out. Not many are familiar with the unprecedented tragedy people suffered when the pandemic struck virulently in a matter of weeks in the last quarter of 1918.

Back in 1918, the areas which today constitute Karnataka existed as six separate political-administrative entities - the princely state of Mysore, Chief Commissioner’s Province of Coorg, princely state of Sandur, and as parts in three larger entities of the Nizam’s Hyderabad, Bombay and Madras presidencies.

In each of the six states/provinces, the respective governments and people were either complacent or plain ignorant. They had failed to respond to early signals of an impending health crisis, even though there were reports since mid-July about people getting infected, and of even deaths in the western parts of India. Medical infrastructure was still very rudimentary then, with fewer than 100 hospital beds per million people. The governments in each of the states were just establishing a full-fledged health and sanitation department. There was no health alarm in the provincial/state governments about the influenza until late September. Because the governments had failed to swing into action, people too were going about their routines unrestricted.

By the time the governments woke up, the influenza virus had already travelled deep into the rural areas, besides besieging urban centres like Bangalore and Mysore. Even at this stage -- late September 1918 -- many thought it was just the common flu or existing diseases like Typhoid and Malaria. But the virus was hitting people everywhere violently.

The first detailed medical emergency instruction by any government to district administration came in the princely state of Mysore. And this was on October 13, when the chief secretary of Mysore government wrote to district deputy commissioners, when mass deaths were already happening in the vast rural areas of the state. Indeed, the deputy commissioners could not even communicate the instructions effectively to people as the administrative machinery had already got paralysed because of the influenza – heads of taluks, hoblis and villages had either abandoned their responsibilities, or were themselves sick, or had already fallen victim to the deadly influenza. While there was no known medicine to cure Influenza, people became aware of the effectiveness of non-medical precautions like segregation, isolation, quarantine, etc., very late. People were at the mercy of providence.

The governments in different provinces were unaware of the magnitude of devastation that was happening on the ground during October, November and December. It was only after influenza made an unexpected retreat after a third wave of attack in early 1919 that estimates were made in areas of present-day Karnataka.

The official estimate for today’s Karnataka is indeed chilling. Out of a combined total population of 14 million across different provinces, at least four million (1911 Census) were infected by the influenza virus.

But the death toll was even more shocking. As per conservative estimates, at least 570,000 people, a majority of whom were women, had died in the districts that form Karnataka today. And a disproportionately large number of the dead of both sexes fell in the 10-40 years age group. The toll must actually be significantly higher, as the Nizam’s Hyderabad had underreported the death toll in Bidar, Gulbarga and Raichur districts, where conservatively 85,000 people had perished.

As per the count provided in the 1921 Census, in the princely state of Mysore, the death toll was put at 248,040. And going by a preliminary count made by the government just before the pandemic ended, the worst hit was Tumkur district, which must have lost close to 50,000 people in a matter of just three months, followed by Mysore city and district with a toll of over 35,000, Shimoga over 30,000, Bangalore city and district over 25,000, Hassan over 30,000, and Chitradurga, close to 30,000.

But the big picture of the scale of the tragedy was available elsewhere. The most tragic case was of Bijapur district, which lost almost 65,000 of its people to the disease, followed closely by Bellary district with at least 45,000 deaths, as also Dharwar and Belgaum districts with similar numbers. Fortunately, Coorg and South Kanara got away lightly from the influenza fury, with a death toll of less than 2% each of their populations.

In hindsight, if the administrations and people had woken up early to fight the virus by way of social distancing and quarantine, the magnitude of the tragedy may have perhaps been softened. At that time, today’s Karnataka lost as many of its people as the entire United States lost to the deadly influenza. Ironically, today, the US is again counting its dead in thousands each day for the past week or so.

(The writer is a former Associate Editor of Deccan Herald)