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Public Health and Sanitation in Colonial Lahore, 1849-1910 by Maysoon Sheikh a Thesis Presented to the University of Waterloo In

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Public Health and Sanitation in Colonial Lahore, 1849-1910 by Maysoon Sheikh a Thesis Presented to the University of Waterloo In Public Health and Sanitation in Colonial Lahore, 1849-1910 by Maysoon Sheikh A thesis presented to the University Of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2018 © Maysoon Sheikh 2018 Examining Committee Membership The following served on the Examining Committee for this thesis. The decision of the Examining Committee is by majority vote. External Examiner Rachel Berger Associate Professor, History Concordia University Supervisor Douglas Peers Professor, History and Dean of Arts University of Waterloo Internal Member Dan Gorman Professor, History University of Waterloo Internal Member Jesse Palsetia Associate Professor, History University of Guelph Internal-external Member Heather Smyth Associate Professor, English Language and Literature University of Waterloo ii Author’s Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. iii Abstract The British annexation of the Punjab in 1849 had important consequences for the city of Lahore. Indeed, the British occupation prompted Lahore’s transformation into a “modern” colonial city. New designs for urbanization, environmental reform, and sanitary improvement were implemented by the city’s new administrators, resulting in important changes in Lahore’s physical and social environment. At first, the impulse to redevelop the city stemmed largely from colonial anxieties about threats to the health of the army and Lahore’s British residents; however, by the late nineteenth century, this “enclavist” approach was replaced by a more extensive public health scheme that was geared towards managing and safeguarding the city’s entire population. With British regulations now aimed more directly at Indians, new geographic and social spaces fell under colonial jurisdiction. Particularly during outbreaks of epidemic diseases, Indian bodies and locally-inhabited spaces came to be targeted more explicitly under colonial surveillance, leading to the imposition of seemingly intrusive and restrictive state policies. But, as this study will demonstrate, the British government’s reform-driven agenda was often disrupted by local actions and behaviours that influenced the proper functioning of colonial rule. Guided by an unapologetic indifference – although not necessarily opposition – towards colonial “modernity”, local intervention into British plans for Lahore reshaped colonial knowledge about the city and its inhabitants. This way, Indians continually shifted relations between themselves and their colonizers and demonstrated, perhaps most importantly, that the scope of British rule in Lahore was often noticeably limited. With a particular focus on issues related to public health and disease, this dissertation draws attention to the important role that Indians played in Lahore’s development during the mid to late nineteenth century and highlights the range of spatial, moral, and social factors that worked to produce local responses to colonial objectives in the city. iv Acknowledgments v Table of Contents Author’s Declaration ....................................................................................................................... ii Examining Committee Membership .............................................................................................. iii Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi List of Illustrations ........................................................................................................................ vii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Development of “Modern” Lahore ...................................................................... 20 Chapter 2: Public Health, Urban Development, and the Politics of Sanitation ........................... 49 Chapter 3: The “Inscrutable” Inner City ....................................................................................... 76 Chapter 4: Cholera and the Grotesque Body .............................................................................. 118 Chapter 5: Disease and the Construction of Imagined Order – Smallpox and Plague .............. 153 Chapter 6: Opium Consumption as Subversion .......................................................................... 202 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 234 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 239 vi List of Illustrations Figure Page 1.1 Anarkali Church 29 1.2 Lawrence and Montgomery Halls 33 1.3 Lahore and its Environs, 1893 35 3.1 Registration Ticket for Prostitute, Mean Meer 95 5.1 Advertisement for Virility Oil, Lahore 229 vii Introduction Introduction Colonial Lahore has featured as an important subject of academic interest over the last decade. Among the studies that have examined the history of the city under British rule are William Glover’s Making Lahore Modern (2007) and, more recently, Ian Talbot and Tahir Kamran’s Colonial Lahore: A History of the City and Beyond (2016).1 Both works highlight Lahore’s position within the larger narratives of India’s colonial past, particularly as a case study for the ambivalent relationship that existed between the colonizers and colonized. The growing academic preoccupation with the city, however, should come as no surprise. Following the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849, Lahore emerged as a leading administrative, cultural, and political centre in North India. The city, moreover, was a key hub of communications and trade under the British and served as a strategic colonial stronghold throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indeed, as the capital of the Punjab (one of British India’s most economically prosperous provinces), Lahore became intimately connected with a new style of administration known as the Punjab School – noted for its paternalistic and authoritarian attitude towards governance and by its preoccupation with material development - that was idealized by many in India as a model system of rule.2 However, as Glover, Talbot and Kamran maintain, Lahore’s development into a “modern” urban city cannot be credited solely to the colonial presence; rather, they argue that Lahore’s rise to 1 William Glover, Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Tahir Kamran and Ian Talbot, Colonial Lahore: A History of the City and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 2 Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab (Berkley: University of California Press, 2010), 30. 1 prominence owed much to the contributions of the city’s indigenous population.3 In this regard, these studies offer critical insight into the view that colonial objectives were never simply imposed onto the city and, instead, depended considerably on collaborative projects between Indians and the British.4 Glover, Talbot and Kamran provide a valuable analysis of the colonial history of Lahore and serve as an excellent starting point for my examination of public health in the city during the nineteenth century. While my dissertation fits within a growing movement in historical scholarship to redefine the role of medicine in India – characterized by important studies such as Mark Harrison’s Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859-1914 (1994) and David Arnold’s Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (1993) – my focus on Lahore works within the bounds of a more recent academic trend that adopts a regional approach to the history of the colony.5 This way, it reinforces the importance of recognizing the diversity of Indian society under the British and draws attention to the specific ways that regional variations affected the larger processes of colonial rule. A more detailed survey of Lahore in chapter one highlights some of the distinct characteristics of the city which, as we will see throughout this study, played a critical role in defining the colonial experience in Lahore. More specifically, such an analysis offers new insight into British and indigenous responses to health and disease in the city by shedding light on the social, cultural, and political implications of the colonial state’s 3 Glover, 12; Kamran and Talbot, 4. 4 Ibid. 5 David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century Indian (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993); Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo- Indian preventive medicine 1859-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 2 medical objectives. As such, another important concern in this examination of Lahore is the British
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