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India’s milestone of 1 Billion doses for its Covid vaccine proved its capabilities regarding its own healthcare. It’s a huge leap forward for India which was decimated by the British, who caused horrific epidemics that killed over 81 million Indians in the last century alone.
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In the 1800’s, Britain built vast networks of badly designed irrigation canals to squeeze profits from Indian agriculture. The canals changed the salinization of water bodies, allowing the Cholera bacteria to thrive. Historically, Cholera was never an epidemic in India.
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The canals became breeding grounds for cholera & flooded over nearby land, picking up cholera from infected villages & spreading it. Britain's haphazard construction & disregard for India’s natural ecosystem caused the first Cholera epidemic at Jessore (Bangladesh) in 1817.
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To make things worse, the British forced farm laborers to settle along the canals. They forced semi-nomadic, starving workers to adopt a fixed agricultural lifestyle in small unhygienic settlements, creating a perfect environment for the Cholera epidemic to spread.
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Statistics & data linking disastrous canal programs in Punjab & Bengal to Cholera outbreaks were purposely suppressed by the British to protect profits, even as millions of Indians died. They insisted it was not contagious, touting the lie that Cholera was “timeless” in India
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British showed their racism & bigotry as they blamed “vice, lethargy & filthy habits of Indians” for Cholera. Christian missionaries said Hinduism & the “degradation” of idol worship caused it. Kumbh Mela & Puri’s rituals were demonized as epicenters of the epidemic.
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Western "scientists" wrote horrifyingly racist & Hindumisic accounts of how Cholera was born when despair molested the Hindu “goddess of filth” & infected the Ganga. Hindu religion & pilgrimages were blamed directly for an epidemic that India had never faced before the British
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The "Angel of mercy” Florence Nightingale said “British had a civilizing & sanitizing mission in India, the land of domestic filth, where plague & pestilence were the ordinary state of things”. India was marked as the root of diseases like Cholera to justify racist superiority
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British historian, Sheldon Watts, estimates over 25 million Indians died of cholera under British rule, decimating India’s economic & demographic growth in the 19th & 20th centuries. But the British blamed Cholera on India's "uncivilized" Hindu religion, temples & priests.
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In 1894, bubonic plague erupted in Hong Kong, but the British purposely ignored it to ensure their profitable opium trade from Indian ports to China was not affected. Ships from Hong Kong carrying plague infected rats were allowed into Indian ports ensuring its spread in India
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An Indian doctor from Bombay, Dr. A.G. Viegas was the first to officially confirm a case of Bubonic Plague in India. But the British fiercely opposed him, trying to cover up the epidemic. They dismissed his correct diagnosis saying Indian doctors were irrational & inferior.
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British soldiers tried to isolate Indians in forcible house searches looking for the infected, manhandling them like beasts. In railway inspections, women were stripped in public view. Mass incidents of sexual harassment, insults & abuse by British created huge resentment.
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These horrific intrusive “containment” measures by the British included sexual harassment, destruction of property, defiling temples, breaking Hindu idols, & burning of Hindu books. Terrified Indians refused to go to hospitals or be inoculated out of distrust & fear.
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So many atrocities compelled the Chapekar brothers in Pune to assassinate officials Rand & Ayerst to show their protest. Distrust & fear of the racist British medical system led to widespread infection, resulting in more than 16 million Indian deaths due to the Plague.
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As Indians reeled from deadly epidemics, Britain was busy exploiting India's land for profits & export, causing terrible famines. Rotten grains from dirty warehouses infected by rats were distributed to starving Indians as "Famine Relief" spreading the Plague across all India.
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Millions of Indians died, too weak from starvation to fight epidemics. But the British were intent on frantically expanding the railways to transport & siphon off India’s food supplies. Unplanned construction wreaked havoc creating new environments for epidemics like malaria.
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They built embankments for roads & railways, ignoring drainage patterns, causing water logging & floods that became nurseries for malaria. Britain's insatiable greed created unplanned irrigation canals further spreading malaria, despite their own scientists' warnings.
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Malaria became the most common killing epidemic in India. Railway travel was a cesspool of infection. Over 20 million Indians died due to Malaria, as a direct consequence of Britain's colonial greed. Empire. Again they blamed India’s climate, Hinduism & people as the cause.
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In 1918 infected WW1 soldiers caused the Spanish Flu epidemic. Britain allowed a ship from Mesopotamia carrying infected soldiers to dock in Bombay. Soon the Influenza epidemic spread like wildfire through railways & postal system. The white Sahibs ran away to the hills.
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As the British in India lived in spacious bungalows with servants, they were hardly affected. Indians living in crowded, unhygienic cities were devastated by the Flu. Smaller towns had no hospitals & Indian Vaidyas were discredited by the British, so millions died from neglect
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By then the British had drained all of India’s food supply to feed its soldiers in WW1. Indians faced another horrifying famine even as they battled Influenza. Weak, starving Indians dropped like flies as the epidemic swept through the country leaving death & horror.
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The devastating effect on Indians can be seen from statistics. More than 20 million Indians died due to influenza alone. Total deaths in World War I were less than 20 million. From 1817-1920, pandemics caused entirely by British policies, had a catastrophic impact on India
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India’s fight for survival under the brutal, racist British regime reveals that their murderous lust for wealth directly caused pandemics which killed over 81 million Indians. This number does not even include another 20-30 million killed by the famines that Britain created.
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India’s milestone 1 Billion Covid vaccinations is proof of its incredible resilience. We survived deadly pandemics equal to many Holocausts at racist British hands. Today we stand self-reliant in control of our own health, guided by the strength & spirit of an undying culture.
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References
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