ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a close analysis of popular and official explanations for cholera outbreaks at pilgrimage sites and reveals a fundamental disconnect: while pilgrims blamed the inadequacy of sanitary arrangements, state explanations pointed the fingers at the inherent ‘antipathy’ of ‘natives’ towards sanitary principles. Why, then, despite plentiful evidence to the contrary, did the trope of the pilgrim as antithetical to the logic of sanitary science persist in official colonial discourse? In answering this question this chapter reveals how this pilgrim archetype served key political, administrative and ideological purposes for the colonial state.
