Bombay Fever/Spanish FLU: Public health and native press in Colonial Bombay, 1918–19

Abstract

In view of the topicality of pandemics, this brief article discusses the responses of the vernacular press in Bombay during 1918 following the influenza pandemic of that year. With occasional inputs from English language dailies, such as The Times of India and The Hindu of the period, the aim is to understand how, as the epidemic receded, the government’s response to the epidemic was questioned and the influenza epidemic was constructed as a part of anticolonial rhetoric by the ‘native press’, closely monitored by the British.