To add to the emotional turmoil caused by the tribal turbulence between the Tatas and the Saklatvalas, in 1896, there befell a plague on both their houses. In the late summer of that year it was officially reported that the bubonic plague had assailed the city of Bombay. It was a scourge of disastrous proportions and was to rage until 1902, with periods of varying intensity. It was against this terrifying and depressing background of poverty, sickness and death that Shapurji spent the early years of manhood
It is astonishing to me that this plague was never mentioned at home, either by my father or mother; nor was it ever spoken of by Kaikoo Mehta who was with us all continually and who was almost like a second father to the family. Indeed, the first hint I had of it was when, after starting to delve into Shapurji's past, I began to read all his speeches in the House of Commons in Hansard.There was a debate in the House on the 25th November, 1927, when it was proposed to send a Commission under the leadership of Sir John Simon to India. In the course of this debate, the Under-Secretary of State for India made a time-worn reference to the various religious factions in India, emphasising their mutual prejudices and dissensions; and to illustrate that the British in India were also showing that same prejudice, Shapurji , in the middle of a long speech, told the following anecdote:
"...The Under-Secretary then told us about the trusteeship of minorities and one thing and another, and he made a big picture. There are Hindus, Mohammedans, Sikhs and Parsees. We have heard it often and often, but may I ask whether this Bill, whether the Imperialist rule in India, whether this Commission, intends to give ONE religion to India? Is that your object? Is that what you are doing? If you are merely 'chewing the rag' because there are many religions in India, how does that entitle you to go as pirates into somebody's land and establish a rule? Will that make LESS religions? You will only make one more. What is the meaning of talking about all these irrelevant things? If you tell me that this Commission is going out to India and the unmistakable result is going to be a unification of religions, I will be ready to support it; but merely to talk about all the differences of religion in India and then argue from that that Great Britain is entitled to rule the whole of India, is an old-time deception that an enlightened world can no longer swallow.
If I may be permitted just to give something from my memory of a personal character in this matter. In 1902 a plague was having a devastating effect all over India. It was to be taken in hand not merely as a grave problem, but as something to save human lives. There was a Professor Haffkine in those days who was the first man who, with some measure of success, gave out an anti-plague serum for inoculation. His experiments were being conducted on a large scale. I was then associated as Secretary with an important committee of welfare workers. The Governor of Bombay, who was then himself staying out of Bombay, immediately sent a telegram to Professor Haffkine to go to him with certain facts and figures because the matter was becoming of vital importance. Professor Haffkine asked me to go and assist him. I gave up my work in the office, and I went to the place where he was staying, and that was his European club. People talk about untouchability! Although I had facts and figures at my disposal which were the result of months of study, and the Professor had only four or five hours at his disposal, I was actually prevented from entering the white man's club. Yet a representative of that race today talks nonsense about untouchability among the Hindus. Ultimately, when it could not be helped, the messenger of the club, after telephoning to various Government officials, took me to the back yard of the club, led me through the kitchen and an underground passage to a basement room, where the Professor was asked to see me because I was not a white man. That happened 25 years ago.
I got the Indian newspapers last Monday, and there is an example quoted of a European officer of very high position, a Britisher and his wife, who were travelling in a first class railway carriage. They had only reserved their own seats and a Mohammedan of very high rank, occupying a very high position in the Government of India, had his seat reserved in the same carriage. When he wanted to enter the carriage the British officer would not allow him to sit in another seat in the same carriage. He held the door of the railway carriage so that the railway officials were unable to open the door, and that Mohammedan official had to take his seat in another carriage. Yet a man of that British race here today stands up and pours contempt upon the Hindus for insulting Mohammedans. Talk about depressed classes and untouchable classes!............."
This reference to my father's voluntary work in connection with the plague led me to investigate further. In fact, in 1902 Bombay was only witnessing the last dying swish of the tail of the dragon. This bubonic plague had made its first recognised appearance in Bombay on the 31st August 1896 by the registration of the death of an inhabitant in Broach Street from this cause. Earlier in the year, the monsoon had been unusually short and severe and was followed by serious floods which destroyed crops and made roads and railways impassable. The torrential rainfall at one time burst the main water conduit from the storage lakes and the city was without water for eighteen days. I have not found any contemporary descriptions of the plight of the people at that time, but perhaps an apt picture is that described in the apocryphal Book of Judith: "And the cisterns were emptied, and they had not water to drink their fill for one day, for they gave them drink by measure. Therefore their young children were out of heart, and their women and young men fainted for thirst and fell down in the streets of the city, and and by the passages of the gates, and there was no longer any strength in them"?
It was when the population was thus already debilitated that the bubonic plague struck. Food prices had soared and, as always, it was the poverty-stricken who suffered the greatest deprivation and hardship. At first, the authorities tried to play down the situation and, consequently, it was not until the 23rd September 1896 that measures for the eradication of the plague were adopted
Here I must interrupt the narrative of Shapurji to introduce a new character into our story. He is Professor Vladimir Haffkine, a Russian Jew who went to Calcutta in 1893, He was an exponent of the then comparatively new science of bacteriology. Since he was to have quite an important influence on the young and impressionable Shapurji, we must spend a little time to get to know him.
He was born in Odessa in 1860, the son of a schoolmaster of modest means. He managed with the frugal help of his elder brother to study in Odessa University and he received 20 kopeks a day from the University for his food; so he knew what poverty was all about. He was an ardent student and worked under Professor Mechnikov. He soon saw the injustices of the Tsarist regime which interfered constantly with the freedom of the University and he joined the revolutionary underground movement known as the Narodnaya Volya Party, an illegal organisation set up in 1879. Some of its members resorted to acts of terrorism in their fight against the tyranny of the monarchy. In 1882 he was expelled from the University for sending a letter to the Rector in support of Professor Mechnikov who was in disgrace with the authorities. In 1881 he was arrested and served a jail sentence and he was under police surveillance in Odessa for eight years, and three times endured the extremely harsh conditions of imprisonment under the Tsarist regime.
As a result of all this revolutionary activity, Professor Mechnikov escaped to Paris where he joined Louis Pasteur in his Institute. Later, Haffkine followed him and was found a minor job in the Institute until, in 1890, he was appointed as a Research Assistant there. Until then, the only vaccines that had been found were against anthrax and rabies. Haffkine now concentrated on finding a vaccine against cholera which was rife in Asia and the Middle East and was threatening Europe. Indeed, before he had been successful, there were outbreaks of cholera in Paris, in London, and all over his beloved Russia. He worked incessantly during all his waking hours and had no other interests or distractions and, eventually, he found a safe vaccine. The first human trials were carried out on himself and three of his fellow Russian exiles and, mercifully for all of us, the inoculations proved both harmless and efficacious.
Meanwhile, Russia was ravaged by the disease and Haffkine sought permission from the authorities there to return home and help to arrest the spread of the epidemic. But, because of his political associations, he was refused admission to his homeland. It was known that the disease had spread all over Europe from Bengal and it was for this reason that Haffkine applied in London to go to Bengal to set up a laboratory there and to help to arrest the further dissemination of cholera. There were many delays and it is almost certain that the British Government was informed by the Russian Ambassador in London of Professor Haffkine's politically stormy past; but eventually, early in 1893, Professor Haffkine set sail for Bengal to take up the post of Bacteriologist with the Government of India; and what a blessing his presence in India was to prove to be, not only for India but for the whole of mankind. And incidentally to this great cause, circumstances were to bring this Russian revolutionary, this brilliant and dedicated scientist and humanitarian, into contact with Shapurji Saklatvala.
Was it perhaps he who sowed the seed of revolution in the fertile garden of Shapurji's compassionate nature? It seems to me to be highly likely, for Shapurji was to work with the Professor for six plague-ridden years.
When the plague struck the city of Bombay, it had a disastrous effect upon trade and upon the municipal revenue. Official reports of the period show that almost half the population fled in panic out of the city and business of all kinds was paralysed for a time. Hoping to slay the insatiable monster that was killing the population by hundreds every week, the Government sent Professor Haffkine to Bombay to combat the terrible scourge. He arrived in the city on the 7th October, 1896, and the very next day set to work in a one-room laboratory, with no scientific staff, to find a prophylactic vaccine. His quest was for a system of inoculation of the healthy to prevent them being infected by the disease rather than to find a serum to cure the already stricken. After three or four months of ceaseless and painstaking toil, he finally produced a vaccine which, as with his cholera vaccine, he tried upon himself as the first human experiment. During this time he was joined by a few doctors and his staff was enlarged.
He had many bitter critics, not least among the medical profession, but it seems that Jamsetji Tata was one of his enthusiastic supporters. He and his family, no doubt including Shapurji, were inoculated many times in the ensuing years and none of them succumbed to the plague. Jamsetji Tata instructed one of his close colleagues, one Burjorji Padshah, to give every possible assistance to Haffkine. Padshah recruited all the young Parsi students then studying at St Xavier's College to help the Russian professor, especially in the gathering and maintainance of statistical records of his work and, subsequently, of the programme of inoculation. Shapurji Saklatvala was among these young volunteer helpers. It was his first association with a man who was not only a dedicated scientist and humanitarian but who had been driven out of his homeland, Russia, because of his revolutionary associations and anti-Tsarist politics. Of course, in the situation in which he was now working, Professor Haffkine had neither time nor energy for politics and devoted himself entirely to his scientific research and his unceasing efforts to inoculate as many of the population as possible. But it is surely likely that he talked to Shapurji about his experiences when the two of them met. It is, I think, safe to assume that, when Shapurji was sent to a basement room in the European club and Professor Haffkine had to join him there, that some comment of the situation must have been made. It is recorded that the Professor was very critical of the British Imperialist authorities, noting as he did the abject poverty, overcrowding and insanitary housing in which the majority of the Indians lived; he saw that the victims of the plague were to be found mostly among the poor and scarcely any in the European or wealthier quarters of the city. When Shapurji presented him with the statistics, it is inconceivable that no comments were made and that no discussions took place between the two men. Their outlooks had much in common; and no doubt this close association between the older idealist and scientist and the young, compassionate student, must have helped to form and to crystallize the convictions of Shapurji. Haffkine's selflessness, like that of the Jesuit Fathers, must have had a profound influence on his young apostle.
It should not be imagined that all the lessons of compassion were to be found only outside his family. He was reared in an atmosphere of tenderness and benevolence, for it was said of Jamsetji Tata that success in business did not diminish his sensitive and sincere sympathy for the poor; indeed, when speaking of their problems , it is recorded that his eyes filled with tears and he was always prepared to spend money for the public good. So it is not surprising that compassion and caring for the poor were fostered in the heart and mind of Shapurji, surrounded as he was by great minds of a similar disposition.
During the Christmas holiday of 1896, the Tata family moved en masse to their family home in Navsari, an annual treat, especially for all the younger members of the clan who were able to enjoy their freedom from studies with picnics and all kinds of festivities. During those early weeks of the plague, when almost half the population of the city had fled, Dorabji Tata insisted on returning to his office and to the mills in Bombay as soon as the holiday period was over; it was important to encourage the workers to stay at their posts, otherwise the business could easily have failed. Many mills in the town closed down at that time, but the Tata mills kept going though of course the general commercial depression had an adverse effect on the development of the company.
By the time this Christmas holiday was over, the vaccine against the plague had been successfully developed and inoculations began. Jamsetji Tata was a zealous advocate of vaccination and when his son Dorabji married in 1898 and the bride's family entered the Tata household for the wedding, they were made to subject themselves to inoculation as soon as they arrived! Not everyone, even among the more educated, were quite so amenable. There was great antagonism to the system and many people were terrified that it would actually give them the disease rather than protect them from it. Professor Haffkine insisted always that vaccination should be voluntary; then, as now, the rights of the individual were SOMETIMES protected. Perhaps, though, had it been compulsory, it might not have taken six years for the plague to be brought under control.
But certain regulations had to be obeyed. All victims of the disease had to be removed from their homes and taken to hospitals and kept in isolation. Since very few of those struck down recovered, the poor and uneducated thought that the Government was sending them to hospital merely to hasten their death and they resisted this enforced removal from their homes with ingenuity and defiance. Deaths also had to be reported and the bodies safely disposed of. Army and police patrols circulated in the city, seeking out the sick and the dead. As early as October 1896, the mill-hands in several of the mills were so incensed by the laws of segregation and hospitalisation, that about a thousand of them assembled outside the Arthur Road Hospital and threatened to demolish the building and to disperse the staff. They pelted the building with stones and any missiles they could find and attacked any members of the medical staff who were intrepid enough to emerge. The police had to be called in to quell what could almost certainly be termed a riot.
There is a touching story appearing in the official report by the Commissioner for Bombay which demonstrates the intensity of feeling against compulsory hospitalisation of the victims. A Parsi family had taken in a Hindu boy, thirteen years of age, an orphan of whom they became very fond. The child was infected by the plague and the doctor said he must be removed to the hospital. The ladies of the family refused to let him go. When the doctor insisted , they armed themselves with kitchen knives and surrounded the sick bed, declaring that they would all kill themselves if the child were taken from them. The police were called. But before the patient could be taken, he was carried away by death. Sad as it no doubt was, his timely demise certainly saved the police from an ugly confrontation. But if women were prepared to go to such lengths to prevent a little adopted boy of another religion from being hospitalised, to what lengths would parents go to keep their own children with them in the home?
The Commissioner for the city was wise enough to realise the extreme danger of this widespread terror inspired by the enforcement of the segregation and hospitalisation laws. He feared more than anything that the Halalkhors and Bigarries, who constituted the sanitation workforce, would panic and leave the city. Were this to happen, the disinfecting and flushing of the city's drains, water supply, roads and buildings would become impossible; if this essential service came to a standstill, the only remedy would be to remove the whole population out of the town, leaving the plague-ridden, bubonic-infested rats to take over a dead and derelict city. The threat of the withdrawal of the working people reached a climax on the 30th October and, the Municipal Commissioner issued proclamations explaining and modifying the enforcement of segregation and hospitalisation. Although it may have been, medically speaking, less safe, he thereby dispelled the almost certainty of extensive riots and wholesale abandonment of the city by the populace.
It was about this time that my Father should have sat for his B.A. Degree. Kaikoo Mehta merely says that he did not sit for his finals, giving no explanation. His brother Sorab indicated that the reason was that he became totally engrossed in things religious and philosophic to the detriment of his regular studies. But it appears that all his college cronies and himself were roped in by Burjorji Padsaw to help in the gathering and maintaining of statistics to help Professor Haffkine in his work. The information required was the precise number of individuals affected by the plague, how many were vaccinated against it and how many of those so vaccinated were infected etc. These figures and other vital information were obtained from actual visits to the homes of potential and actual victims. I think it is probable that Shapurji became totally engrossed in this work which he seems to have continued, alongside his work in the office for the family firm, until 1902 when, as referred to in his House of Commons speech already quoted, he says he was the Secretary of one of the Plague Relief Committees. The fact that Professor Haffkine had sent for him personally and that Shapurji called alone on the Professor, indicates that there was quite a close association between the two men. In a biography of Haffkine by Mark Popovski, it is said that Haffkine visited five and six storey tenement buildings, with many families living together in one room, without windows or ventillation. Haffkine is reported as having said: "When they showed me a row of buildings which housed between 700 and 1000 people and told me that there had been plague cases in similar buildings throughout the district, I saw at once that there would be no point in carrying through the measures decided upon by the municipal authorities..." No doubt, Shapurji visited similar hovels and talked to the inhabitants of them. Had it not been for his welfare work due to the sickness prevailing, it is doubtful whether anyone of his social background would have had any personal contact with those poor people. How could he see their suffering and return to the splendour of Esplanade House at the end of the day, without realising the need for a total and absolute change in the social structure of the community? Jamsetji Tata's Will refers to , "Esplanade House my residence in Bombay, my townhouse and my country seat at Nowsari and my bungalow Castle Hill at Matheran." What feelings of guilt and injustice must have assailed the earnest young Shapurji as he toured the plague-ridden slums of the city for Professor Haffkine?
It was in about 1901, according to Mr Spitam Cama and to Kaikoo Mehta, that, after a period of overwork, Shapurji became very seriously ill. No one has specified the illness; but he was sent to a sort of sanatorium in the hills of Panchgani, close to where Spitam Cama's family were staying. Jamsetji Tata also had a house there. Mr Cama describes Shapurji as being very depressed, spending whole days walking on his own in the hills. He wrote poetry at this time but since none of it was preserved, we will never know its worth. His brother wrote that the doctors at one time thought there was nothing more to be done to effect a cure and that afterwards, when he had recovered, the family doctor said it was only his supreme willpower that had pulled him through. Years later, we all had a holiday in the Surrey home of my sister's in-laws. In his letter thanking them, my Father said how the scenery near Dorking had reminded him of his retreats in the hills in India where they went to escape the heat of the plains. Perhaps,during that holiday, he was thinking nostaligically of those agonising days of sickness and the relief of his recovery. I do not think it was merely the physical overwork that affected him but the emotional stresses of those years while he was working among the impoverished masses, overtaken by sickness and deprivation.
Perhaps, whatever the illness was,the other effects of those years never really left him, for he spent his whole life thereafter struggling to better the lot of those masses of people living in destitution, want and humiliation. What he saw in those years of the bubonic plague must have remained always in his mind. It was to those victims of circumstance that he dedicated his life. The charitable and benevolent community of Parsis to which he belonged, always sought to alleviate the distress of the poor. This was not enough for Shapurji. He sought not to alleviate but to eliminate poverty entirely; and not only in India, but all over the world. The 1917 revolution in Russia and the events following upon it led him to believe implicitly that Communism could end abject poverty; it was for this reason and this reason alone, that he devoted the rest of his life to the propagation of world Communism. The reader may or may not agree with him, but there can be no doubt of his dedication, sincerity and self sacrifice in what remains in this country an unpopular cause.