The year was 1855. A third wave of the bubonic plague pandemic was sweeping the world. The epicentre of the outbreak, as is the case today, was China—a place called Yunnan. The plague rapidly spread to every single continent on which man lived. India was the worst affected. Rough estimates are that over 10 million people died in British India, and the pandemic continued to be active here till the 1960s—for over 100 years. To control the outbreak, the British introduced the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897. Nearly 125 years later, India is using the very same Act—with minor amendments in 1956—to combat Covid-19.
In British India, the Act created furore and uprising among Indians, who found the provisions extremely oppressive—forcible segregation, demolition of affected places, seizure of private property, strip searches and consequent violence against women. In June 1897, Chairman of the Special Plague Committee Walter Charles Rand was shot dead by Pune-based nationalists, the Chapekar brothers. Though the Act was modified in 1956, legal and health experts say it is grossly inadequate to deal with disease outbreaks in the modern day. The British, who introduced this Act in India, have a much more robust policy back home. Their Public Health Act of 1984 fixes the responsibility of each agency clearly during such outbreaks. Legal experts say the UK Act removes any scope for confusion over jurisdiction.
Back in India, the Epidemic Diseases Act has been put to use several times in the recent past, to deal with outbreaks of swine flu, cholera, dengue and even malaria. However, not much has been done to update the Act. The Act is largely used only to ban public gatherings, stop schools and institutions from functioning, and penalise those escaping tests or quarantine. There is a dire need to completely replace or massively strengthen this colonial-era law to fight disease outbreaks in the future. Activists have been attacking the current Act as it gives the state the right to penalise media houses spreading ‘misinformation’. The British themselves used the Act to imprison a journalist for 18 months. His name was Bal Gangadhar Tilak.