Paper long abstract:

Shortly after plague broke out in India in 1896, a commission of inquiry was established to investigate the disease. This commission sought to examine both government responses to plague, and the true nature of the disease itself. In doing this, it followed a historical precedent set by other commissions of inquiry in India, particularly those concerning cholera, famine, and leprosy. This paper examines how plague came to be the kind of object that could be evidenced through the particular methods of the commission. How is it that the commission operated so as to constitute plague as something that might have its truth told through the performative enactments of professional 'witnesses' called to testify in front of a panel of questioners? What kind of epistemological processes were necessary for plague to become an object whose reality could be elucidated through the methodology of the trial and judgment? Ultimately, how did the commission help to establish this disease as something about which judgments of responsibility and accountability could be made? The broader scope of this paper is to probe the commission of inquiry - still an important part of British political life and an oft-uncontested producer of 'truth' - by examining how it constructs particular forms of witnessing as evidentiary of objects that might be placed on trial.