GANDHI AND THE SPANISH FLU

The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was a great human disaster. It infected a third of the people on Earth and killed between 50 and 100 million people. However, a British author suggests that the 1918 pandemic also altered the course of India's independence movement

- Dilip Bobb

AUTHOR and journalist Laura Spinney's gripping narrative titled Pale Rider was written before the current pandemic but has been reprinted by her publishers because of its relevance to the Covid scourge and the many lessons it draws from history. One being that it had an impact on India's Independence. The highly infectious Spanish flu had swept through the Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat where Gandhi was living, four years after he had returned from South Africa. Gandhi and his associates at the Ashram were lucky to recover. The Spanish flu influenza killed between 17 and 18 million Indians, more than all the casualties in World War I. Yet, what did it have to do with India's Independence?