Defining Prostitution and Redefining Women’s Roles: The Colonial State and Society in Early 19th Century India

Abstract

The seismic shifts in Indian society which took place over the course of the 19th century have been the focus of a number of studies in recent years. These changes permanently altered the lives and livelihoods of many groups across the socioeconomic spectrum. Among the most dramatically affected were those women who would come to be categorised as ‘prostitutes’. Prior to their inclusion in the category of ‘prostitute’, the women ranged from temple dancers, erudite courtesans and (monogamous) concubines to those women who come closest to our contemporary understanding of ‘prostitute’– working as they did in bazaars or cantonments as sex workers. Yet, in the century before, very few of these groups of women would have considered themselves to be of ‘ill‐repute’. These ideas about ‘morality’ and ‘prostitution’ in India were not simply adopted from Europe. Instead, they were born out of a complex process of contestation and negotiation across the subcontinent, involving various parties, from army surgeons to pandits. As this article will argue, analysing the conditions which prompted these changed categories is as important as understanding the political and social implications of the practice of prostitution in India and the empire.

Women in Cantonments: Evolution of Regulated Military Prostitution in Colonial India

“…However, the increase of venereal disease among British troops threatened military efficiency. It is estimated that during the 19th century approximately one-quarter to one-third of troop strength was depleted at any given time due to venereal infections (quoted in Wald, 2009Wald, , p. 1476. Although venereal diseases (henceforth VD) in India was known as 'firungi rog' (as it was believed that the Portuguese brought the disease to Indian soil), British officials recognised it as an outcome of the sexual indulgences between the native prostitutes and the soldiers (Arnold, 1993a, p. 3).…”

Mobility, Gender and Empire in Maria Graham's Journal of a Residence in India (1812)

“…By the turn of the nineteenth century, and much influenced by the evangelical Christian and director of the East India Company, Charles Grant (1746Grant ( -1823, British writing on India placed a growing emphasis on the 'effeminacy' of Hindu men and the apparent 'barbarity' of practices relating to sex and gender. 90 Enlightenment thinkers had long linked the 'torrid zone' to notions of femininity by representing non-European males as weaker, less virile, more sexually promiscuous and less rational than European males. 91 Yet in relationship to India, this gendered discourse became considerably more marked and pejorative.…”

Bodies That Cohere: Notes on Ganja and Gender in Colonial India

“…In contrast, this essay brings a gendered historical analysis to bear on ganja to argue that various bodies, particularly those of the prostitute and the plant, cohered around ganja to materialise it as a legible subject, object and category in 19th-century British India. The 19th century witnessed the gradual shift in conceptions of prostitution as the category became more charged with notions of immorality, sensuality and deviance as a product of imperial anxieties and emergent notions of chaste womanhood in the Indian public sphere (Sarkar, 2001; Wald, 2009). The enactment and operation of the Contagious Diseases Act (1868) until 1888, and the longer history of policing venereal diseases in cantonments, lock hospitals and cities under the Indian Penal Code evidenced how sex work was central to modern colonialism and imperial feminism (Burton, 1994; Legg, 2012; Levine, 2003; Tambe, 2009; Wald, 2014).…”