'Imperial Reason', National Honour and New Patriarchal Compacts in early twentieth-century India

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 66, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 208-226

  Nair, Janaki ^a  

^a CENTRE FOR STUDIES IN SOCIAL SCIENCES   (India)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 53649084208     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: 14774569     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/dbn043     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. National Archives of India, (hereafter NAI), F. J. Aylmer Quartermaster General to Commander in Chief O.M. Creagh, 19 June 1912, Foreign and Political, Internal B, February 1914, nos. 259-60.
2. Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915, Chapel Hill, NC, 1994
3. Phillippa Levine, '"A Multitude of Unchaste Women": Prostitution in the British Empire', Journal of Women's History 15: 4, 2004, pp.159-63
4. Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire, New York, 2003.
5. NAI, Letter to His Majesty's Under Secretary of State for India, No. 39/ f 808/29 Judicial, 19 April 1934, File 394, Political (1935), Foreign and Political.
6. This is a literal confirmation of Gayle Rubin's path-breaking suggestion (1975) that the anthropologists' discussion of kinship in terms of 'exchange' of women must be challenged to reveal the active element of trafficking central to all sex-gender systems. 'The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex', in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna Reiter, New York, 1975 (repr. Feminism and History: Oxford Readings in Feminism, ed. Joan W. Scott, Oxford and New York, 1996).
7. Madhava Prasad, 'The Natives are Looking: Cinema and Censorship in Colonial India', in Laws Moving Image, ed. Leslie Moran, Emma Sandon, Elena Loizodou and Ian Christie, London, 2004, pp. 1-4.
8. Among the compromise proposals that the Indian Cinematograph Committee was able to propose in 1927 was a censorship of the cinematic device of the close-up, which brought the western woman too close to the viewers: 'The Natives are Looking', p. 16.
9. Ashwini Tambe, Codes of Misconduct: The Regulation of Prostitution in Colonial Bombay City, 1860-1947, forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 117-54, esp. p. 153
10. Phillippa Levine, '"A Multitude of Unchaste Women"'; Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History, p. 160.
11. Mrinalini Sinha details the brief moment, offered by the 1929 'Mother India' controversy that spanned three continents, for early Indian feminists to seal the split between the social and the political that had been produced and maintained by male nationalists: Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire, Durham, NC, and London, 2006. See also Tanika Sarkar, 'Rhetoric Against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-Wife', in Economic and Political Weekly 28: 36, 4 Sept. 1993; and
12. Susan Pedersen, 'Metaphors of the Schoolroom', in this issue.
13. After nearly a century of attempts to get Rajput communities to stop the practice of female infanticide, the Special Act 1870 was passed to monitor pregnant women, and even imprison those responsible for early female child deaths. The act was considered so effective in curbing female infanticide in the North West Provinces that it was withdrawn in 1906. See Janaki Nair, Women and Law in Colonial India, Delhi, 1996, pp. 84-90.
14. See Prem Chowdhury, 'Customs in a Peasant Economy', in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, Delhi, 1990 for details of the colonial regime's revival of the custom of karewa (widow remarriage) in late nineteenth-century Punjab.
15. See Samita Sen, 'Offences Against Marriage: Negotiating Custom in Colonial Bengal', in A Question of Silence? Sexual Economies of Modern India, ed. Mary John and Janaki Nair, Delhi, (1998) 2000, for the ways in which the colonial regime attempted to restrict married women who migrated without the permission of male guardians to the Assam tea gardens, in order to restore them to their husbands.
16. See Dagmar Engels, 'The Limits of Gender Ideology: Bengali Women, the Colonial State and the Private Sphere, 1890-1930', in Women's Studies International Forum 12: 4, 1989, esp. p. 427, for the Government of India circular which effectively rendered toothless the 1929 Sarda Act against Child Marriage.
17. G. Arunima, There Comes Papa: Colonialism and Transformation of Matriliny in Malabar c. 1850-1940, Hyderabad, 2004
18. Praveena Kodoth, 'Shifting the Ground of Fatherhood: Matriliny, Men and Marriage in Early Twentieth Century Malabar', Working Paper Series 359, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, 2004
19. K. Saradamoni, Matriliny Transformed: Family Law and Ideology in Twentieth Century Travancore, New Delhi and London, 1999
20. Amrit Srinivasan, 'Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance', Economic and Political Weekly 20: 44, 2 Nov. 1985, p. 1,873
21. Janaki Nair, 'The Devadasi, Dharma and the State', Economic and Political Weekly 29: 50, 1994.
22. For a pioneering analysis of the alliance between national elites and colonial authorities over the case of clitoridectomy in Africa see Susan Pedersen, 'National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts: The Sexual Politics of Colonial Policy Making', Journal of Modern History 63: 4 December 1991.
23. Among the more than 550 Princely States of India the five which ranked highest were Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, Mysore, Baroda and Gwalior, and their ruling princes were honoured with twenty-one-gun salutes. At the bottom of this ranking were the nine-gun-salute states.
24. For a critical evaluation of Mysore's claim to 'modernity' see my forthcoming book Mysore Modern: Essays in Political, Social and Cultural History.
25. For a useful discussion of the engagements of the contemporary women's movement and feminist theories with the question of sex work, see Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, 'The Prostitution Question(s): Female Agency, Sexuality and Work', in Rajan, The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship in Postcolonial India, Durham, NC and London, and Delhi, 2003.
26. I have considered the responses of women to the surveillance measures of the colonial military authorities in more detail in 'From Devadasi Reform to SITA: Reforming Sex Work in Mysore State, 1892-1937', National Law School Journal 1, Special Issue on Feminism and Law, 1993. I have also examined the transactions between the Mysore bureaucracy and the devadasis from 1892 to 1919 in 'The Devadasi, Dharma and the State', Economic and Political Weekly, 29: 50, 10 Dec. 1994.
27. Karnataka State Archives (hereafter KSA), Mysore Residency Files, Note by Resident, File 549, 1886, Sl. nos. 29-55.
28. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, Note by Resident, File 549, 1886, Sl. nos. 89-95.
29. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, Adjutant General in India to GOC Command Division and Brigade, 2 Aug. 1918, File 549, 1886, Sl. nos. 96-103, 108-9, 114-15.
30. Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics, 1793-1905, London, 1980, pp. 22-3.
31. As previous note, pp. 157-8.
32. Continual complaints were made, by both military officers and subalterns, about the difficulties of identifying, and therefore prosecuting, the 'native' women. NAI, Foreign Department Internal B, November 1904, nos. 285-6
33. NAI, File 256, 1912, Mysore Residency, nos. 21-44.
34. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, Resident of Mysore to Secretary, Government of India, Foreign, 7 May 1900, File 549 of 1886, Sl. nos. 96-103.
35. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, p. 28.
36. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, File 549, 1886, Sl. nos. 29-55.
37. As previous note.
38. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, Medical Officer in Charge Station Hospital Bangalore to the Principal Medical Officer Bangalore and Southern District, 14 April 1900.
39. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, Military Department, GOI, to Quarter Master General of India, 20 Nov. 1897.
40. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, Commissioner's Office, Madras Police to Cole, 8 March 1870, File 710 of 1885
41. also 'Subsidiary rules published for information and guidance' which covered dancing girls 'excluding those who are permanently kept by single individuals': Mysore Chief Commissioner to Foreign Secretary, 17 Aug. 1871.
42. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, Mysore Chief Commissioner to Foreign Secretary, 17 Aug. 1871.
43. NAI, Mysore Residency Records, Order No. 1503 General 341, 21 May 1875. Inspector General of Police to Secretary to Chief Commissioner of Mysore, 11 Feb. 1876, File 710, 1885.
44. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, Resident to Secretary Government of India Foreign, 7 May 1900, File 549 of 1886: Sl. nos. 29-55.
45. KSA, Mysore Residency Files, District Magistrate to General Officer Commanding Bangalore Brigade, 27 Aug. 1918. File 549, 1886, Sl. nos. 96-103, 108-9, 114-15.
46. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, pp. 79, 88.
47. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, pp. 54-5. The likelihood that women who had consorted with white men were considered 'unclean' by the Indian men was not considered.
48. NAI, Note by E. De Brath, 20 July 1904, Foreign and Political, Internal B, November 1904, nos. 285-6.
49. The Ibbetson Commission found that four out of a dozen women turned out of a regimental brothel promptly got married, unlike the European women who fell from grace. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, p. 163.
50. Radha Kumar, A History of Doing, Delhi, 1993.
51. Proceedings of the Mysore Representative Assembly, October 1893, p. 45. See also M. Shama Rao, Modern Mysore: From the Coronation of Chamaraja Wodeyar the X to the present, Bangalore, 1936, pp. 98, 432.
52. R. R. Diwakar, Karnataka Through the Ages: From prehistoric times to the day of the independence of India, Mysore, 1968, pp. 871-7.
53. Srinivasan, 'Reform or Revival'. 42 This is very brief summary of a process by which devadasis were removed from their positions in state-funded temples in Mysore. See Nair, 'The Devadasi, Dharma and the State' in Mysore Modern.
54. Inam: Gift to secular and religious leaders, institutions etc. of land or revenue from land.
55. Satyagrahi: Seeker after truth; Gandhi's definition of the non-violent agitator during the struggle for Indian freedom.
56. Stri Dharma, September 1932, 15: 11, p. 609.
57. NAI, F. J. Aylmer Quartermaster General to Commander in Chief O.M. Creagh, 19 June 1912, Foreign and Political, Internal B, February 1914, nos. 259-60.
58. NAI, Foreign and Political, Internal B, February 1914, nos. 259-60.
59. NAI, Foreign and Political, Internal B, February 1914, nos. 259-60: '... these white and foreign women showing themselves ... is most objectionable for imperial reasons but is a very strong incentive to the British soldier. I am sure that very many men, who would not be led away from the paths of virtue by a native would fall before a white woman'.
60. NAI, Foreign and Political, Internal B, February 1914, nos. 259-60.
61. Tambe, Codes of Misconduct.
62. NAI, Letter C265681/29 from India Office 8 Aug. 1929, File 394 Political (1935) Foreign Political. Act V of 1924 raised the age under sections 372 and 373 IPC (disposal of girls for immoral purposes) from sixteen to eighteen; the age of consent was raised to fourteen by Act XXIX of 1925; while the age of consent outside marital relations remained twelve.
63. NAI, Note by C. Smith, 11 Aug.1933, File 394, Political (1935) Foreign Political.
64. NAI, Note by J. D. Graham, 14 Aug. 1933, File 394, Political (1935) Foreign Political; Engels, 'Limits of Gender Ideology'.
65. NAI, Note by H. G. Haig, File no.394, Political (1935) Foreign Political.
66. NAI, Note by W. H. Turner, 8 Oct. 1933
67. Letter to His Majesty's Under Secretary of State for India no.39/f/808/ 29 Judicial, 19 April 1934.
68. Judith R. Walkowitz, 'Male Vice and Feminist Virtue: Feminism and the Politics of Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Britain', History Workshop Journal 13, spring 1982
69. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State, Cambridge, 1980.
70. Visvesvara Rao, Proceedings of the Representative Assembly of Mysore (PRAM), June 1932, p. 110.
71. As previous note, p. 424.
72. V. Ananthkrishna Iyer, Mysore Tribes and Castes, vol. IV, Bangalore, 1929, p. 422.
73. Proceedings of the Mysore Legislative Council (PMLC) December 1935, p. 177.
74. PRAM, October 1934, p. 121.
75. PRAM, October 1934, p. 126.
76. PMLC, December 1935, p. 184.
77. PMLC, December 1935, pp. 180-1.
78. However, neither was she like other proletarians, since the prostitute cannot sell her sexual services alone, what she sells is her body and her 'self': 'When a prostitute contracts out use of her body she is thus selling herself in a very real sense': Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract, Stanford, 1988, p. 207.
79. I have taken some liberties here with the distinctions developed by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan in her discussion of contemporary feminist positions, 'The Prostitution Question(s)'.