History Matters: A Comparative Exploration on the Spanish Flu and the COVID-19 in India

The history of the world is the history of pestilences, epidemics, and pandemics, affecting humanity – storylines of getting bogged down and bouncing back to crises. The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 has been called the greatest medical holocaust in history and the mother of all pandemics. The country that faced the greatest devastation in terms of human mortality from influenza in India. After a century, India has been hit by COVID-19, the greatest pandemic of contemporary times, exposing systemic failures in the functioning of the statecraft. This article is a comparative exploration of the two pandemics along survey of historical sources and secondary scholarship to finally forge the critical discussion: are we in a better position to tackle crisis? Lessons from previous pandemics, most importantly the Spanish Flu of 1918 can be significant in terms of analysis and assessment of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the country – then and now. This article conveys the larger rationale of looking back to look and move forward in terms of crafting just, inclusive and resilient policies from a diseased to a desirable (non)Anthropocene.