Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2.10

c6.s2.10

Not receiving it ‘from indigence’, on the other hand, pertained to sections of the Indian population. Like many other categories of specialists, (including school teachers, doctors, establishments of religious institutions and places, village establishments, etc.), it is probable that the inoculators in India had also been maintained on subventions from public revenues. With the imposition of British rule, the Indian fiscal system began to collapse and various categories of specialists and functionaries were thrown out on the streets and left to wholly fend for themselves. It is this development, and the simultaneous deepening of poverty amongst the people, that most probably resulted in many not being inoculated ‘from indigence’. Such a situation must have naturally made the practice of inoculation seem even more undesirable to the Europeans who, while they themselves did not like to be inoculated, yet could not function without whole contingents of Indian domestic servants.