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Locating Irrationality in Pandemics: An Appraisal of Indian Media and Literature

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Abstract

Biology tends to reveal its mysteries to humans in numerous ways. The uncountable shades of biological problems have always been countered through logical and rationalistic approaches. However, certain pathogenic diseases like pandemics have always resulted in irrational responses which, most of the time, crop up from fear. Albeit, fear is inevitable; its upsurge results in a plethora of irrational responses like superstition, hatred, blame, stigma, to name a few. The article contextualizes the Indian literature on pandemics from the nineteenth century and the media coverage on the current Corona crisis to examine the irrationality towards pandemics. It explores whether or not there is a change in the behaviour of people from medieval to modern India. It also reflects upon questions like why is irrationality aggravated during a pandemic. The study concludes with how the reaction of nineteenth-century India is incidentally similar to the response that has been recorded during the Covid 19 pandemic, despite the technological advancement and modernization.

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