Aftermath: Mohandas Gandhi and The Spanish Flu

Annamaria on Monday

Eighteen to twenty million people died in India in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-20 - the worst death toll of any country in the world.  (In fact, ten percent of the total of all countries).

Under the yoke of British colonialism, some Indians believed that their oppressors were causing people to perish, by poisoning the wells to rid the subcontinent of unwanted population.  A writer in one newspaper claimed that the deaths came because poison gas from the trenches of France had drifted to India and killed thousands.  (If you think those people of old were a bunch of ignoramuses, think about how the ignoramuses of last April were retweeting the news that Covid-19 was the result of a chemical warfare agent escaping from a lab in Wuhan, China!)

In 1918, the real culprit was, of course, the H1-N1 virus, but the world knew nothing of such a critter in those days.  The bug first came to India with Indian troops returning to Bombay (now Mumbai) from service fighting with the British in Mesopotamia and East Africa.  On 29 May 1918, they disembarked and went home.  A few days later a policeman serving on the waterfront fell ill. Then in another three days, the illness had spread to more policemen, and eventually to many others who worked in the dockyards.  Soon it was laying people low throughout the country.

At this point, Mahatma Gandhi had been traveling by train around India, encouraging his countrymen to join the British in their war.  To his way of thinking at the time, Indians had become soft.  Becoming fighting men would harden them up.  Also, their helping to win the war would encourage the British to take a more beneficent attitude toward their Indian subjects.

Meanwhile, the flu was spreading and beginning to take lives.  Gandhi, too, fell ill.  On 17 August 1918, he wrote a letter that began, "I am on my back."  One might have said the same thing about his country.

And so the Mahatma and his country suffered in the ensuing months.

Bodies began to pile up around India, and when trains entered stations, the people descending were outnumbered by the corpses being carried off.  The colonial overlords could or would do nothing to stop the carnage.  Certain he was facing imminent death, Gandhi wrote many letters telling his wife and his friends and colleagues about how his thinking was changing.

"The more I contemplate this illness, the more deeply I realize what love of man to man must be.  And love of God...Nature is God, and God is love..My suffering is my own fault.  We get what we deserve...What have I done to bring this on....recruiting for the war effort.

"One need not  assume that heroism is to be acquired only by fighting in a war.  One can also do so by keeping out of it...We can cultivate manliness in another way, not to fight for the British but against them with non-violent means...Defy laws that are unfair..."

In those letters one can see Gandhi's thinking change and his commitment to nonviolence solidify.

He survived.  And though deeply wounded, India did too.  By January 1919, he was ready with a powerful message that would bring his countrymen to his way of thinking.  By the time of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar Massacre, he had convinced thousands to stand up non-violently for their right to independence.

On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Reginald Dyer, an acting Brigadier General in the British Army, ordered his men to fire on a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians.  At least 379 were killed and more than a thousand injured.  More corpses.  But this time, they died for the cause of independence.

It took another twenty-eight years and a great deal more work to reach their goal.  But it came.  On the 15th of August 1947.

We have no way of knowing for certain that the disease Gandhi suffered was the Spanish Flu, but his illness hit him at the exact time that the pandemic was spreading.  His daughter-in-law and her child died because of confirmed cases.

Two things we know for certain: it was during this illness that Gandhi's own thinking changed.  And the suffering from the pandemic and the societal ills of colonialism it laid bare awoke the will of the people to stand up and demand justice and freedom.

Let's contemplate what this lesson means to us.  In the face of our current woes.  And what we might achieve, in the next years, if we all stand up non-violently for justice. 

The memorial to Gandhi in Union Square that I salute
 several times a week.  These are the kinds of statues we
need to erect.

Aftermath 2020: The Pollyanna Prognostications

Annamaria on Monday

At this moment, no one seems to know when or how to safely restart the economy of a medium-size city anywhere in the world without risking a new epidemic spike and more deaths.  So how can little me, all by myself, possibly foresee the aftermath of Covid-19.  I can’t.  But I do have a glimpse of what to hope for.

My studies of the aftermath of previous pandemics, as I have reported in these precincts over the past three weeks, have revealed that events like the Black Death and the Spanish Flu sped up some of the trends already taking place and slowed down or stopped others.  So I think it is safest for me to look at the trends that were already in process and talk about what I hope for in their regard.

In the United States, the country I know best, the greatest effect of the terrifying disease that has shut us down has been to lay bare the flaws in our society, the existence of which will not be news to anyone.  The difference now is that we can see those flaws as critical issues, because, in the worst cases, their existence has greatly contributed the virus induced pain and suffering.  My cock-eyed optimistic hope is that with the flaws now so obvious, we will find ways to fix them.

Let’s start with some really easy issues.  Pre-Covid, it had become unusual for families in the US to eat their meals together.  This was a trend I have known about from personal observation since the 1980s.  But during lock-down, families have been keeping at home and many more are together for all their meals.  This strengthens their bonds, a very important thing for parents and children.  To work their magic, these  gatherings need to look, NOT like this:

But more like this:

Wouldn’t it be nice, once the gyms are open and soccer practice is allowable, if families continue to gather and talk at dinner, if not daily, at least several times a week.

Telecommuting has been on the rise for some years, but Covid made it the only way many people can get their jobs done while observing social distancing.  Highways in heavy commuting areas have gone from this:

To this:

The result is good for the planet.  It also saves a lot of wear and tear on people’s nerves and frees up more personal time.  Once they can, people will want to go to the office, but I think not all the time.  I imagine that a goodly percentage of them will begin to split their time more judiciously between commuting and working from home.  And now that they have had a chance to get used to this new normal, managements will be more comfortable believing that their employees are on the job, even if they are not in the same building.

Is there any wonder why our healthcare system doesn't work?

The fair distribution of health care in the US has been lagging behind the rest of the world since the aftermath of the Spanish Flu a hundred years ago.  The current pandemic has shown that our lopsided system makes whole swaths of our citizenry extremely vulnerable.  Many of the least served by the system have been—by current designation—essential workers.  We now can see clearly that we need to protect everyone.

  

In fact, the whole of idea of who is important in our society has been set on its head.  There are the first responders: cops, doctors, firemen, etc.  We have known for some time how important they are.  But six months ago, who would have expected the people who check us out in the grocery store or who restock the shelves, the warehouse workers or the pizza delivery guy, the bus and subway drivers, the orderlies in the hospitals, the people who kill and package the chickens or pick the peppers and the avocados would be essential.  But there are, and they risk their lives to keep the rest of us going.  We need them a whole lot more than we need the sharks on Wall Street.  Now we know that.  I hope it means we will try to get them better paid and cared for.

For decades now, public education has been a victim of budget cuts and teachers have been grossly undervalued.  I can’t help but imagine that all those people who have been trying to educate their own children at home have woken up to how skilled a person really needs to be to teach a six-year-old how to read or a fourteen-year-old how to do algebra. When it comes to getting respect for teachers, will we begin to vote accordingly?

  

All of the people mentioned here need more respect, better pay, and healthcare that’s as good as everyone else’s

In order for the aftermath of 2020 to bring about the needed improvements, the underlying issues are what really need to be addressed.  In the USA, this means making the country a real democracy that works on the principle of one person-one vote, not one dollar-one vote.  And we need to stop allowing people to amass and keep more wealth than they or their progeny could possible spend in a thousand lifetimes.  The top five richest people in the world now own more billions than the GDPs of 131 countries.  These top five have combined net worth more than the GDPs of 164 countries.

If you want to understand the ramifications of these last statistics, well… even if you don’t, I urge you to see the documentary Capital in the Twenty-first Century.  It was made pre-Covid.  What it says is even more important than now that we may be facing a worldwide depression.

We are going through a lot of pain.  There may be a great deal more just over the horizon.  At the very least, let’s support the people who are helping us make it through.  And let’s do what we can to make sure our societies come out of all this suffering in better shape than when we went in.