1st Edition
Pandemics and Literature Regional and Global Perspectives
List of Figures vii
Author Biographies ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
PART I
Popular Responses, Rumours and Political Resentments 21
1 Imagining an Epidemic: Literary Representation of Plague in Colonial Bengal 23
Arabinda Samanta
2 Plague, British Intervention and Variegated Indigenous Responses in Colonial Lahore 34
Maysoon Sheikh
3 The Plague Epidemic in Bombay and Poona, 1896–97: Perceptions of the Contemporary Print Media 47
Mridula Ramanna
4 Echoes of the Drum Beat of Life: An Exploration into Hindi Literature on Epidemics 61
Binda D. Paranjape
PART II
Social Transgressions and Changing Human Relations 73
5 Pandemic Poetry: Tropes and Transgressions 75
Akshaya Kumar
6 Pandemics, Literature and Re-visions of Society 88
Kamalakar Bhat
7 Pandemics: Time to Die, Time to Love 100
Gurupdesh Singh
8 Epidemics, Fascism, Absurdity and Resistance: Albert Camus’s The Plague 121
Parminder Singh
9 The Rajrog: Reflections on Tuberculosis in Bengali Literature 137
Suvankar Dey
PART III
Divine Punishment, Dislocations and Agonies 149
10 Epidemics in Tribal Folklore: Sub-Himalayan Bengal in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 151
Sahara Ahmed
11 Divine Punishment and Beyond: Epidemics and the Survey of Urdu Fiction 168
Shafey Kidwai
12 The Pandemic: A Literary Perspective 181
Manju Jaidka
13 Memories of the Unforeseen: Epidemics, Graveyard and Religion in Malayalam Literature 197
Shaheen Kelachan Thodika
14 Metaphorising an Epidemic: Khalid Jawed’s Ek Khanjar Paani Mein (A Dagger in Water) 212
Mohammad Afaan
Index 221
Biography
Kamlesh Mohan is an emeritus professor of modern history at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.
Saurav Kumar Rai is Research Officer at Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, New Delhi, India.
