Rereading 'Maila Anchal' in the Age of COVID Denial

Readers of Hindi literature will know that Phanishwarnath Renu’s 1954 novel Maila Anchal is not solely about pandemics. But it is a novel about contagion – of rumour, of fear, of faith and doubt moving faster than fact. Set in a small corner of post-independence Bihar, the novel brims with belief systems in friction: modern medicine meets jhar-phoonk, political slogans collide with devotional songs, and doctors walk the same muddy paths as sadhus and folk healers.

A stamp issued for Phanishwar Nath Renu.

In Maryganj village, truth is not absent. It is negotiated: through gossip, prayer, performance, and survival. From cautious ojhas to politicised sadhus, from anxious villagers to those labeled 'outsiders,' the world of Maryganj is one where doubt, tradition, and need entangle – responding occasionally to reason, but more often to rhythm, fear, and memory.

That world, woven with contradictions and improvisations, has felt unexpectedly close in recent weeks. In the United States, COVID-19 health websites have been repurposed under the Trump administration to promote the lab leak theory and to attack public health figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Gone are vaccine updates and long-COVID resources; in their place, a narrative of blame, suspicion, and theatrical certainty.

Renu’s Maryganj is a dusty village in 1950s Bihar, where healers chant over the sick and revolutionaries quote Gandhi between kirtans. Denial there doesn't wear the mask of policy. It wears the face of habit, fear, caste, and inherited mistrust. And like in any slow emergency, that denial doesn’t just delay healing. Sometimes, it quietly costs lives. Renu, however, never treats denial as malicious or singularly to blame. It’s part of a web of constraints: poverty, limited access, caste hierarchies, superstition, and a long history of fractured trust in authority.

That makes it all the more jarring to witness the kind of denial playing out elsewhere today. Contrast Maryganj’s quiet improvisations with the calculated theatre of the MAGA crowd. Their denial is malicious – or at the very least, wilfully performative. Whether they’re cynically preying on fractured trust and limited access, or simply falling prey to them themselves, the result is the same: lives will be lost.

But where today’s public figures often stoke mistrust for power, Renu gives us a different kind of figure: one who earns trust slowly, uncertainly, in a village learning how to weigh science alongside belief. In Maila Anchal, the visiting doctor, Prashant, certainly faces mistrust. But he is also revered. Villagers line up at his clinic while whispering rumours behind his back. Kamli, the tahsildar’s daughter, adores him, and he is respected (if sometimes warily) by the local intelligentsia. He is not rejected so much as absorbed into the social fabric, piece by piece. He walks the muddy lanes like a mythic figure, often called haija daktar (cholera doctor), a name both affectionate and absurd. Children follow him, villagers offer gifts, women write letters they never send. And yet, his very modernity – his sterile instruments, his scepticism of ojhas, his lonely rationalism – makes him an alien presence in Maryganj.

Hence the continual gossip, which does not merely undermine him; it builds him. As the cholera outbreak wanes, the village begins to speculate about the doctor’s closeness with Kamli, his habits, his silences. Some accuse him of pride. Others of hidden motives. But everyone, it seems, has a version of “his story.” He is longed for, teased, sometimes even resented. Like a modern saint wrapped in rumour and longing, he is watched not just for what he does, but for what he means. His is a heroism that must negotiate with disbelief, navigate gossip, and coexist with ghosts.

It’s a far cry from the landscape of American politics. But even there, we see the same dynamic at play. In the Trump-era rewrite of COVID history, Fauci suffers a parallel fate. He, too, becomes more than a man. He becomes a symbol. A reminder. An irritant. Trump understands the power of that social contagion: that what threatens his narrative is not any one action Fauci took, but what Fauci means. To acknowledge him is to acknowledge responsibility, complexity, care. Trume rebrands healers as heretics, because admitting their truth would mean admitting collective failure. There is no negotiation, no rhythm, no cultural entanglement. There is only rejection and blame.

Just as villagers in Maila Anchal explain a venomous snake attack through folk logic and accusations, today’s political leaders explain a pandemic through a new kind of superstition: geopolitical performance.

That kind of denial doesn’t just distort facts. It thrives in performance. Renu, ever attuned to the theatricality of politics, gives us one of its most striking depictions late in the novel. Toward the end of Maila Anchal, the villagers stage a grand Independence celebration. There are flags, speeches, even nautanki performances of Bhagat Singh dancing with bombs. But behind the show, real anger festers. A chant—“Azadi jhoothi hai!” ("This Freedom is False!") – threatens to split the crowd. The spectacle insists that freedom has arrived, that everything is fine, that the right slogans are enough. But the hunger is still real. The land is still unjust. The bodies are still tired.

That logic, of spectacle standing in for care, isn’t confined to Maryganj. It wears many costumes today, and speaks through loud microphones. It follows a familiar script. During our recent pandemic, denial wore that mask of patriotism. Political rallies were framed as national duty. Mask mandates were derided as weakness. Critics were labelled traitors. Instead of responding to grief, the state staged celebration. Instead of oxygen, it offered optics. Instead of testing kits, it gave us slogans and hashtags.

But beyond headlines and spectacle, ordinary forms of care persist. Sometimes, they even coexist with contradiction. During my PhD research on Phanishwarnath Renu, I spent many months living in his village in northeast Bihar, recording modern-day versions of the many folk songs that echo through his writing – bhaujiya geet, barahmasa, wedding songs, and revolutionary ballads. Once, when I came down with a run-of-the-mill stomach bug, someone quietly arranged for a local ojha-type healer to come and perform jhar-phoonk—that old ritual of smoke, chanting, and sweeping gestures across the body. Truth be told, I was fascinated, and not entirely ungrateful for the attention and care. But when he finished, he asked, with great concern, whether I was going into town to see a real doctor and get proper medicine. I joked, “Didn’t you already make me better?” He smiled: “No, no. This was just in case. You need your proper medicine.”

Renu did not give us simple heroes or easy answers. But he gave us a language for living alongside doubt – with rhythm, with memory, and with medicine, when needed.

Dr. Ian Woolford is lecturer and discipline lead, Hindi Language, Department of Languages and Cultures and Branch President, National Tertiary Education Union, at La Trobe University, Melbourne,Australia.

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