logo
  • About Ahmedabad
  • Stepwell
  • Student Affairs
  • Alumni
  • Collaborate With Us
  • Media
  • Academics
    • Schools & Centres
      • Amrut Mody School of Management
      • School of Arts and Sciences
      • School of Engineering and Applied Science
      • Undergraduate College
      • Graduate School
      • Centre for Heritage Management
      • Centre for Inter-Asian Research
      • Centre for Learning Futures
      • Global Centre for Environment and Energy
      • International Centre for Space and Cosmology
      • VentureStudio
    • Programmes
      • Undergraduate Programmes
      • Graduate Programmes
        • Masters Programmes
        • Doctoral Programmes
      • Continuing & Executive Education
    • Learning Initiatives
    • Libraries
    • Interdisciplinary Learning
    • Academic Calendar 2022-23
  • Admission
    • Undergraduate Admission
    • Graduate Admission
      • Masters Admission
      • Doctoral Admission
    • Fees & Financial Aid
  • Faculty
    • Amrut Mody School of Management
    • School of Arts and Sciences
    • School of Engineering and Applied Science
    • Centre for Heritage Management
    • Centre for Inter-Asian Research
    • Centre for Learning Futures
    • Global Centre for Environment and Energy
    • International Centre for Space and Cosmology
    • VentureStudio
  • Research
  • Covid - 19 Update
logo
logo
  • About Ahmedabad
  • Stepwell
  • Office of the Dean of Students
  • Alumni
  • Collaborate With Us
  • Media
  • Academics
    Schools & Centres Programmes Learning Initiatives Libraries Interdisciplinary Learning Academic Calendar 2022-23
  • Admission
    Undergraduate Admission Graduate Admission Doctoral Admission Fees & Financial Aid
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Covid - 19 Update

Blog Detail Page

Featured

  • A Learning Experience at IIT Roorkee

    By Nandish PatelJanuary 16, 2023
  • Crowdfunding in the Public Sector

    By Hetal JhaveriDecember 12, 2022
  • Taking India to the World

    By Anjali ChokshiAugust 23, 2022
  • Restoring an Art Deco Piece on the Ahmedabad Campus

    By Rahul MehrotraAugust 01, 2022
  • Spearheading Higher Education in India

    By Pankaj ChandraJune 08, 2022
  • How do I select the ideal college for me?

    By Raghavan RangarajanMay 09, 2022
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD): The role in scale-up of process equipments

    By Arijit GanguliOctober 26, 2021
  • A TALE OF MY LOVE FOR LEISHMANIA

    By Souvik Sen GuptaAugust 16, 2021
  • The meaning of life

    By Alok ShuklaAugust 09, 2021
  • DRIVERLESS CARS IN INDIA

    By Maryam KaveshgarNovember 17, 2020
  • The E-Learning Curve

    By Bijal MehtaJune 04, 2020
  • Engineering Trends: Material Processing with Lasers

    By Shashi PrakashMay 12, 2020
  • The Little Fruit-fly and Big Climate Change

    By Subhash RajpurohitApril 17, 2020
  • Pandemics and Environment

    By Murari JhaApril 17, 2020

Categories

  • Ahmedabad Blogs
  • Arts and Humanities
  • Beyond Classrooms
  • Business and Commerce
  • Careers and Employability
  • Engineering
  • Personal Musings
  • Perspective
  • Social Sciences
  • Sciences

Pandemics and Environment

April 17, 2020

Arts and Humanities

4 minutes read
Murari Jha

Murari Jha

Drosophila Females
The Black Death (bubonic plague)
Image Courtesy: history.com

As a school student in eastern Bihar, I often wondered about historical landscapes, the Ganga River, the annual floods and infectious disease outbreaks, the highways, the hills and jungles as the abode of bandits. The effect the overall environment of rural Bihar had on my mind was fascinating! I imagined that some historical battles must have been fought, right here, in the vicinity of where I stood. My young mind had recreated merchant boats plying in the Ganga with monks, military and merchants travelling through the highways. Well, that was how I thought of my natural surroundings when I was young. Today, as I write, the novel coronavirus continues to ravage the world, killing thousands, crippling the economy, and bringing countries to a grinding halt. And, I am left wondering, what insights can we as historians develop about the current pandemic COVID-19? Can it have anything to do with the environment as we have come to know from history?

In the mid-fourteenth century, the Black Death (bubonic plague) proved devastating for a large part of Eurasia. According to estimates, between 75 and 200 million people perished within a few years. A little over a century ago, in 1918, the Spanish flu ravaged the world, killing an estimated 21 to 50 million people. In considering a pandemic, historians usually invoke the environment and larger social and political processes at play. They ask whether there was a correlation between the end of the Medieval Warm Climate (900–1300 CE) leading to the new life-ways in the fourteenth century and the plague outbreak. I wonder what the environment may reveal to us about this current pandemic once historians start looking into it.

Intrinsically related to environments are regions. One question that I often asked myself was whether Bihar, in particular, and India in general, had been historically an impoverished region in the world during the early modern period (1500–1800 CE). My research at Jawaharlal Nehru University and later at Leiden University revealed that early modern India was fabulously wealthy. The region was a leading manufacturing hub and had an incredible entrepreneurial past. The society was diverse, and the cooperation and interdependence defined social and entrepreneurial fabric of life. The urban centers and port cities were inviting and welcoming to people from distant parts of the world. People in the region were sensitive to the overexploitation of natural resources which is demonstrated by their veneration of water bodies and worship of certain flora and fauna. 

I have not lost my curiosity about the environment, rivers, regional histories and global interconnections. At the School of Arts and Sciences in Ahmedabad, I try to evoke curiosity about the historical past in the classroom. Students try to develop an ability to formulate their research problems, ask interesting questions, and solve them by offering plausible explanations. Students carry out their research by studying the available sources: secondary literature written by historians, contemporary historical accounts, or primary sources. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach further enriches students’ research experience. For example, students pay particular attention to the natural environment and landscape to broad base their explanations. They look beyond dates, dynasties, event-focused, and terra-centric histories. They consider regions, rivers, seas, long-distance routes and their interplay in the historical processes. I invite you to join this exciting journey which starts here at Ahmedabad University!
 


Author's Profile

Murari Jha

Murari obtained his PhD degree at the Institute for History, Leiden University and subsequently pursued postdoctoral research in the Department of History, National University of Singapore. He taught postgraduate students at the School of Historical Studies, Nalanda University and later held a visiting fellowship at Harvard University before joining the School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University. His current research focuses on the processes of early modern globalisation by examining the Ganga River as a connecting fluvial bridge between South Asia and the global maritime economy. He offers courses on the Indian Ocean Interconnections, Early Modern South Asian Empires, and Introduction to Environmental History.

Tags:

Environment, history, Arts and Humanities, Covid-19,

Share this article:


Photo Gallery

logo
Ahmedabad University

Commerce Six Roads
Navrangpura, Ahmedabad 380009
Gujarat, India

[email protected]
+91.79.61911000/200/201
+91.79.26440396

  • About Ahmedabad
  • Our Purpose
  • University Leadership
  • Board of Management
  • Board of Governors
  • Schools & Centres
  • Research
  • Programmes
  • Admission
  • News
  • Events
  • Resources
  • Careers
  • Accreditations and Compliance
  • IQAC
  • Campus Visit
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Auris

COPYRIGHT AHMEDABAD UNIVERSITY 2023

CONNECT WITH US

Download Brochure

Please enter information in the form below. The download will start automatically on submission of the form.

Download Brochure

Please enter information in the form below. The download will start automatically on submission of the form.