Vaccination before and during the Colonial rule in India

People refusing to get vaccinated is not new and in fact, it is widespread. There are cultural reasons some based on religion and some based on superstitions and beliefs. Often accidental curatives are attributed to divine intervention. However, there indeed was the concept of curing Small Pox using a weakened version of the same.

Small Pox was responsible for many political changes during the Colonial Rule in India. At least one royal family lost their base when the ruling kind died of smallpox. Naturally, his widow took upon herself to change the heart of those who refused by getting herself inoculated. 

Read this fascinating account here:

https://www.theheritagelab.in/portrait-of-three-princesses-mysore/

"In his book ‘An Account of the manner of inoculating for smallpox in the East Indies‘ written in 1767, Dr. J.Z Holwell claimed that smallpox inoculation was practiced in India by Brahmins (variolation)."  It is not clear from the above whether they had an indigenous source of vaccination.

However, it appears there was indeed an Ayurvedic system-based Smallpox vaccination in India during those times.

More here: https://www.sanskritimagazine.com/vedic_science/how-ayurveda-pioneered-smallpox-inoculation/

Here is an illuminating piece depicting the vaccination procedure:

"They inoculate indifferently on any part, but if left to their choice, they prefer the outside of the arm midway between the wrist and the elbow, for the males; and the same between the elbow and the shoulder for the females. Previous to the operation the Operator takes a piece of cloth in his hand, (which becomes his prerequisite if the family is opulent) and with it gives dry friction upon the part intended for inoculation, for the space of eight or ten minutes, then with a small instrument he wounds, by many slight touches, about the compass of a silver groat, just making the smallest appearance of blood, then opening a linen double rag (which he always keeps in a cloth around his waist) takes from thence a small pledget of cotton charged with the variolous [smallpox] matter, which he moistens with two or three drops of the Ganges water, and applies it on the wound, fixing it on with a slight bandage, and ordering it to remain on for six hours without being moves, then the bandage to be taken off, and the pledget to remain until it falls off itself…The cotton which he preserves in a double calico rag is saturated with matter from the inoculated pustules of the preceding year, for they never inoculate with fresh matter, nor with matter from the disease caught in the natural way, however distinct and mild the species."

It is unfortunate that Colonial rulers took it upon themselves to encourage Allopathy and did great harm to the indigenous medicine in India. The Siddha system of medicine said to have been handed down from the sages did have a significant amount of information on the maladies that humans undergo. We hardly hear about the system.