Empire, epidemic, and the agrarian world: Kala-azar (Visceral leishmaniasis) in Assam, 1883–1930

In the late nineteenth century, kala-azar, an unfamiliar epidemic, hit Assam, a province in the northeast of British India. Its devastations persisted till the 1930s. It killed an estimated 0.2 million people during 1880–1930 and was partly responsible for stagnating Assam’s population during 1891–1901. Its symptoms misled medical practitioners into faulty diagnoses and cures until the 1910s. Deaths and prolonged illness reduced peasants’ capacity to cultivate and pay land revenue. In areas affected by the disease, fields lay uncultivated and the villagers abandoned their homes. The lingering impact threatened efforts to rebuild families for multiple generations. Works on agrarian history view kala-azar’s effect as episodic and not long-term. Historiography of the disease does not analyse how its discordant relation with medical science impacted Assam’s agriculture. This article argues that besides death and despair, kala-azar had lasting impacts on Assam’s agriculture as it increased tenancy, disrupted village boundaries and peasants’ ties with the land, and exacerbated social divisions. These outcomes undercut the British colonial endeavours to create a settled and tax-paying peasantry, well-mapped property relationship, and a flourishing land market. By exploring the impact of kala-azar in Assam, this article demonstrates how epidemics are critical to understanding agrarian changes.