During the 1960s, a young hippie named Larry Brilliant came to Indian from his homeland in America and played a central role in eradicating smallpox in India. Though exciting, his tale is hardly known to many Indians.

Smallpox has killed an estimated 300 million to 500 million people in the 20th century alone. The disease was taking a huge toll on India when Brilliant became one of WHO’s smallpox warriors. He was a 27 year old physician at the time, with very little experience.

Brilliant says how in just one year in India, there were 1,88,000 deaths from the disease. Seeing how the patients suffered, he spent a decade in the country, helping to eradicate the disease.

The path to India

It was while living as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor that he heard Martin Luther King Jr. talking on campus about the civil rights movement. Brilliant became inspired by the speech.

His idealism took on the form of action when the young doctor went out to the island of Alcatraz which was occupied by the American Indian population in 1969. He helped deliver a baby boy and the child was named Wovoka- after the man who created the ghost dance religion in the hope of driving the white man away.

After this episode made him somewhat famous, the film studio Warner Bros. made a movie about him. The movie led him to meeting the do-gooder rock musician, Wavy Gravy.

When Wavy’s band played their final concert, he suggested that a bunch of hippies load a couple of buses with medicine and food and bring it to the victims of a cyclone that recently hit East Pakistan. If the hippies could deliver the aid, the UN and Red Cross would be embarrassed into doing more , that was Wavy’s idea.

However, a civil war between east and west Pakistan meant that the buses and the 40 hippies in them couldn’t reach their intended destination. Instead, they brought the food and medicines to Tibet where many people were in need of them.

Brilliant and his wife, meanwhile ended up in India where they lived in the Himalayan ashram of the mystic known as Maharaji. Though initially skeptical, the doctor became the guru’s disciple, as did his wife.

It was the guruji who instructed him to join the WHO’s campaign to eradicate smallpox from India. Brilliant had to try 15 times before they accepted him- he was the youngest among the team and as mentioned in his recruitment papers, the only person to have been recruited from the Hanuman Monkey Temple in the Himalayas.

The first time he witnessed the suffering of those with the disease, he got mad at God. However, he ddeciated himself to identify and isolate smallpox outbreaks and vaccinate.

People from about 170 countries worked together towards that end. In his memoir “Sometimes Brilliant” the doctor mentions how when the Cold War was raging, the Russians and Americans worked together in India to conquer history’s worst disease.

In 1977, they achieved the goal.

More to the brilliant career

Dr. Larry Brilliant, at his home garden in America

Eradication of the smallpox wasn’t the only thing that brightened Brilliant’s eponymous career. Once he got back to the United States, he and his wife along with the spiritual leader, Ram Dass founded SEVA- a nonprofit which has brought cataract surgery to over 4 million people in impoverished nations including Tibet. Steve Jobs was one of the persons who helped them in the endeavor.

Brilliant also went on to co-find the WELL, one of the world’s first digital social networks.

He started PanDefense- an organization that helps people prepare better for pandemics. He also became the first executive director at Google responsible for spending billions to fight climate change, pandemics and poverty.

Brilliant now chairs Skoll Global Threats Fund-which exists to afford protection against pandemics, nuclear proliferation, climate change and conflicts around the world.

Image credits: dreamynite.com, marinij.com
Images may be indicative

   Send article as PDF