An unheard story of Smallpox eradication from India
The 1974 smallpox epidemic of India was one of the worst smallpox epidemics of the 20th century. In just five months from January to may 1974, 15,000 people contracted and died from smallpox. The total number of cases in that year was 180,000 with a total of 30,000 deaths. However, it took just two years of intense effort to conquer smallpox in all of India. This miraculous feat was achieved indirectly from a small place called Kaichi in the beautiful foothills of the Himalayas. This is where the story began…
Kaichi, a small village, 17km from Nainital is the abode of the great Saint and Siddha that people knew by the name of Neem Karoli Baba. He was popularly known by everyone as Maharaj-ji. Clad in a blanket, he sat or laid on a wooden bench, always surrounded by few devotees not just from India but from all across the world. Maharaj-ji was the Guru of the householders. He gave no discourses; the briefest, simplest stories were his teachings to love and serve all, as the highest form of unconditional devotion to God.
Among the many devotees who came to him from the West, one of them was a doctor named Larry Brilliant, a western physician who was brought to Maharaj-ji by his wife Girija. When Larry first met Maharaj-ji, he asked him, “Doctor America, how much money do you have?”.
Larry replied, “Maharaj-ji, “I have 500 hundred dollars”.
Maharajji immediately replied, “yes, yes, that’s in India, how much do you have in America?”
Larry got a bit concerned as he thought maybe this was an appeal by Maharajji for money to build some temple and he said, “I have only 500 dollars back in America as I have to repay my education debt”.
Maharajji was a great Siddha who could read people’s mind in and out, and so nothing was hidden from him. Larry knew this and he was telling the truth.
Maharajji then said, “What! you don’t have any money? You are no doctor. He looked at him and laughed and kept saying you are no doctor; you are no doctor; UNO doctor, UNO doctor…”
Larry didn’t understand what was going on. Then Maharajji said, “you are going to give vaccinations; you will go to the villages and give vaccinations”.
Larry was confused — was he supposed to vaccinate people here? Except him, everyone around seem to understand. Finally Maharaj-ji looked at Larry and said, “Doctor America — UNO doctor. United Nations Organisation. You are going to work for United Nations. You’re going to the villages to give vaccinations.”
Over the next few weeks Maharaj-ji always asked him if he got his job, but Larry didn’t know anyone at WHO. One day, Maharaj-ji said to him, “Go to WHO, you will get your job”. So he went to the WHO office in Delhi and met a man, who said to him, “WHO has no openings, and in any case they only hired expert consultants from Medical schools outside India.” Then he also said, “The Indian government right now is adamantly against expanding the WHO program for smallpox as they have other problems such as malaria and family planning. Smallpox is not their highest priority, but I will take you to see a French doctor, Nicole Grasset, who directs the program”.
Larry got the appointment and met Nicole, but to his dismay she said, “I don’t really have a job, but it was nice to meet you.”
So Larry went back to Maharajji who asked again, “Did you get your job?”. Larry said, “No Maharajji, let’s just cut this out.”
Over the next couple of weeks this continued to happen. Every time Larry would go to the UN office in Delhi he was turned back saying there was no job available and that there was no expansion of the smallpox program happening anytime soon.
Sometime later, suddenly Maharaji called Larry and asked him to go to WHO immediately. Larry went to Delhi, walked in the WHO office and met a man, who asked him what he was doing there. Larry told him that he had come to WHO to work for the smallpox program because his Guru told him so. Larry walked away from there and went to meet Nicole, who told him that the chief of Global smallpox program was there and he should meet him.
Larry went to meet the man, and of course, he was the same person whom he had met at the doorway and told that he would work for WHO. He was the program head, D.A Henderson. He interviewed Larry and wrote a note saying: “This man seems to like foreign cultures and would do very good international work someday. However, he has no experience in public health and I wish him good luck in the future. We have no job for him”.
At that time smallpox had been eradicated in all but four countries, and India was one of them. Henderson asked Larry if he’d like to work for the smallpox program in Pakistan since the Indian program hasn’t started. Larry paused and sheepishly replied, “I am going to have to ask my guru”.
Then he went back to Maharajji. On being asked if he got a job there, Larry said, “No, but there is a possibility of a job in Pakistan”.
Maharajji yelled back, “No! I said India”. So Larry called Nichole and told that his guru insisted on working for WHO in India.
After a few months of going back and forth on this, Larry and his wife decided to take a break and go to Kashmir. Before going he called Nichole at WHO and told about his plans. He mentioned that if by any chance a job comes she should let him know.
And then she said, “You know Larry, a very strange thing has happened, maybe it’s your guru. I can’t hire you as a smallpox doctor but if you can write, maybe I could hire you as an administrative assistant”. She sent a telegram, “I am going to hire Brilliant” to the chief of the program, Henderson in Geneva. However, the position was not yet created in the WHO unit.
After his vacation and the tenth visit to the WHO office, Larry came to Maharajji and explained to him saying that he doesn’t think he will get the job even after the new turn of events as he will not get the security clearance. He said, “I had been part of the left-wing anti-war movement in the States; I’d been a leader of a radical organization, the Medical Committee for Human Rights. There was absolutely no chance for a security clearance.”
After hearing him Maharajji asked, “Who is the person who is supposed to give you the job?”
Larry said, “Not sure, but I guess Henderson”.
Maharajji pretended to be a real fakir. He sat up straight and put his blanketed arm up before his face and asked, “How do you spell his name?” Larry started spelling it. “Wait,” he said. And then he began repeating the letters slowly in a deep voice. He peeked out at him through his fingers, which were covering his face, laughing all the time. He continued spelling the name and he pretended to go into a trance, always peeking at him to be sure he was watching and properly impressed, but giggling as he did so. At the same time, the events to get Larry a job at WHO were unfolding in Geneva. Dr. Henderson was attending a cocktail party at the American Embassy and the American ambassador and the surgeon general were there. The surgeon general asked Henderson how the smallpox eradication program was going. “Great,” said Henderson. “We have thirty-four countries cleared and only four are left.” “Are all the countries helping you?” asked the surgeon general. “Yes. Russia’s given us vaccine. Sweden’s given us a lot of money. All the countries are helping.” The surgeon general asked, “What about America? What are we giving you?” “Well,” said Henderson, an expert in getting support for his program, “not so much.” “What do you need?” Henderson replied, “I don’t know how I got into this, and I don’t know why we’re doing it, but we want to hire this young American doctor who has been living in an ashram in India. We’ve never done anything like that before. And the kid can’t get a security clearance.” The surgeon general of the United States said, “Security clearance? What does he need that for?” Henderson replied, “Every American, in order to work for the United Nations, has to have a security clearance.” The surgeon general said, “I didn’t know that. Who gives him the clearance?” Henderson said, “You do.” “I do? Give me a napkin and tell me what the kid’s name is.” He took a cocktail napkin and wrote, “Brilliant — okay to start work.” He gave the napkin to Henderson, who then telegraphed WHO in New Delhi.
The next morning Maharajji called Larry and others to his room. He was being too nice. Laughing and smiling, he had tea and jalebees brought in, and he hugged them. The devotees were rubbing his feet and enjoying Maharajji’s blissful presence. Then suddenly Maharajji said, “Okay. Time for you to go.” Larry stood up, offered his salutations and then walked out. And just as he approached the gate of the ashram he saw a postman who came with a telegram from New Delhi: “We have been notified today that you have received a US security clearance. Come immediately to WHO — New Delhi to begin work.”
Thus, started Larry’s work with the WHO smallpox program. During the week he worked in Delhi, and on the weekends he came to the ashram to be with Maharajji.
Maharajji knew everything about the disease: where it was located in India, where the bad epidemics were, what the seasons were, what the transmission cycle was, what places they would have trouble with — everything about the epidemiology. Maharajji knew more than Larry had known after three months of working at WHO. When Larry asked him “Will smallpox be eradicated?” Maharajji said, “Smallpox will be eradicated. This is God’s gift to mankind because of the hard work of dedicated medical scientists.”
At the WHO office Larry was occasionally assigned to write up the operational plans, since his native language was English. Maharajji would help to organize the whole plan, and since it was so detailed, direct and good, Larry began to get more and more responsibilities. The project gradually moved to the point where WHO was about to go into the field. September was to be the first month. Some of the staff would go into the field, but not Larry as he was just an administrative assistant. He was to stay in New Delhi and mind the shop. However, it so happened that two of the Russian doctors who were to be assigned to an area where Maharajji had lived for a long period were held up by Soviet government formalities. There was a blank spot on the map — and there was just nobody except Larry who could be sent there. He was sent out of the office and into the villages. The jeep that Larry and his wife drove had a big picture of Maharajji on the dashboard. Often when Larry went into a civil surgeon’s office and told him about the importance of a serious smallpox program, he would say, “Yes, yes, thank you for coming. Now please leave. I’ve got so many other problems.” Then, because of Indian courtesy, he might walk them out to their jeep, and he’d see Maharajji’s picture on the dashboard and ask them why they had it there. Larry would say, “Oh, he is my guru. He told me to go work for the United Nations. He told me smallpox would be eradicated. He told me this is God’s gift to mankind through the hard work of dedicated medical scientists.” And then the civil surgeon might say, “Oh, please come back into my office. Take tea! Since smallpox is going to be eradicated, how shall we get organized?” It kept happening like that. Every time — simply because Maharajji had said smallpox would be eradicated, and because all the Indian officials had heard that anything he said came true. They took the drive seriously and put other things aside to help Larry and the team.
Even the skeptical Indian & WHO officials who said that India will never completely eradicate smallpox, on hearing what Maharajji had said, would often completely change their opinions.
Soon Larry and his team were assigned to areas that were selected because of the negative attitudes of the local doctors. All he did was talk about Maharajji’s prediction and so these doctors would change their attitudes and motivate their people to do tremendous work, to beat smallpox in their area. The effect of this was that, although Larry knew very little about smallpox or the UN system, every time he was sent to a difficult area, through Maharajji’s grace smallpox would disappear. WHO kept sending him to strange and remote places. In January 1974 Larry was sent to a remote part of Madhya Pradesh, to a place that just happened to be part of the Shahdol District — Amarkantak! — Maharajji’s old sadhu stomping grounds, which at that time was experiencing the worst epidemic in India. Nearly everyone in the district had known Maharajji, and when they learned that he had said smallpox would be eradicated, they cooperated and, despite their earlier skepticism, mounted a tremendous campaign in the remote hills.
The epidemic was over in just two years! People within WHO began to ask Larry about Maharajji. Nicole, his boss, really opened up to Maharajji in a beautiful way. She thought Maharajji had somehow influenced her to hire him. She always asked everyone’s advice before making difficult decisions and she got in the habit of asking Larry to seek advice from Maharajji on the specific problems in the eradication program. He would send his advice back through him. His answers were full of wisdom on every level, practical as well as spiritual.
Many smallpox workers began to respect Maharajji. They talked freely about Maharajji, as they were all devout individuals. It took less than two years of intense effort to conquer smallpox in all of India.
A total of 400 epidemiologists from 30 different countries and more than 100,000 Indian workers worked in a frenzy of compassion and commitment. Everyone in India had said it could never be done — even many WHO officials — but Maharajji said it could be done. He said it was God’s gift to mankind, and it was.
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Reference Reads:
Sometimes Brilliant: The impossible adventure of a spiritual seeker and visionary physician who helped conquer the worst disease in history — by Larry Brilliant
