Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire

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Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal

This book focuses on the entwinement of politics and medicine, and power and knowledge in India during the age of empire. Using the powerful metaphor of “pathology” – the science of the origin, nature, and course of diseases – the author develops and challenges a burgeoning literature on colonial medicine, moving beyond discussions of state medicine and the control of epidemics to everyday life, to show how medicine was a fundamental ideology of empire. Related to this point, and engaging with postcolonial histories of biopower and modernity, the book highlights the use of this racially grounded medicine in the formulation of modern selves and subjectivities in late colonial India. In tracing the cultural determinants of biological race theory and contextualizing the understanding of race as pathology, the book demonstrates how racialism was compatible with the ideologies and policies of imperial liberalism. Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal brings together the study of modern South Asia, race theory, colonialism and empire and the history of medicine. It highlights the powerful role played by the idea of “pathology” in the rationalization of imperial liberalism and the subsequent projects of modernity embraced by native experts in Bengal in the “long” nineteenth century. Ishita Pande is Assistant Professor of History at Queen’s University, Ontario. Her research interests include the history of science and medicine, cities, gender, race and childhood.


Routledge studies in South Asian history

1 The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India Edited by Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison 2 Decolonization in South Asia Meanings of freedom in post-independence West Bengal, 1947–52 Sekhar Bandyopadhyay 3 Historiography and Writing Postcolonial India Naheem Jabbar 4 Nationalism, Education and Migrant Identities The England-returned Sumita Mukherjee 5 Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal Symptoms of empire Ishita Pande

Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 08:29 06 December 2012

Symptoms of empire Ishita Pande


First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Ishita Pande All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-203-09219-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–77815–8 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–09219–8 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–77815–2 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–09219–4 (ebk)

Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 08:29 06 December 2012 To Ma and Baba



Contents

1

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction: Medicine, race and liberalism in British Bengal

1

PART I

Race and place

19

2 3

21

Diagnosing character: Liberal racialism and the black Aryan Standard deviation: “National character,” phrenology and a science of government

44

PART II

Blood and morals 4

Seeing reason: Dissection, history of medicine and English education

63 65

PART III

City and citizenship

95

5 6

97

Sanitary subjects: Fevers, filth and freedom in a dual city Sensing modernity: Civility, class and citizenship in a sanitary city

121

PART IV

Sex and public

149

7 8

Degenerate nation: Sex, public and a government of self Epilogue: Bengali modern

151 177

Notes Bibliography Index

189 235 252



Acknowledgements

This is undoubtedly the hardest part to write: more friends have shared hours, ideas, stories and laughter with me over the last decade than I can thank adequately, let alone reduce to a few pages in a book. The thoughts that would eventually become a dissertation (that would later turn into this book) were perhaps first discussed over samosas and chai at the Ganga dhaba during a Delhi summer; since then they have been nurtured (and suffered) by many friends, over chelo kebabs on Park Street, pints at the Turf Tavern, lattes at Small World Café, and (puny) martinis by Lake Ontario. I will only attempt to thank those friends who had a formal and formative influence on this work (besides those who know how to hunt me down if they go unacknowledged). Majid Siddiqi and Neeladri Bhattacharya provided fabulous and refreshingly conflicting advice in the early years at Jawaharlal Nehru University. At Princeton, Gerry Geison, Ken Mills, Sue Naquin, Ruth Rogaski and Bob Tignor provided new perspectives, long reading lists and gracious comments on my writing. Gyan Prakash provided the usual supervisory support to the dissertation, and then some, with marvelous parties featuring Salman Rushdie and disco balls, and passionate anecdotes about his own research on the city. That this is not a book about the city in the way it might have been is not from lack of inspired prompting on his part. Mark Harrison played the perfect host as the director of the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine in Oxford, where he read early portions of the draft with patience and good humor. He traveled a very long way with the work indeed, when he crossed the Atlantic to comment on the final draft of the dissertation. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Douglas Haynes and Thomas Metcalf generously read through a draft of the book in its more recent avatar. Many thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers and the superb production team at Routledge. This work has moved with me between archives, libraries and apartments in several different countries over the years; I would have been robbed of this privilege of mobility without the funds and resources provided by Princeton University, to say nothing of the support (and at a particularly miserable time, the fancy lightweight crutches!) provided by the staff at the History department. The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at Oxford was a second institutional home for nearly two years, and with the British Library just a bus-ride away, I could complete much of the early research much more efficiently than would have been possible otherwise. More recently, the Department of the History of Science at Harvard provided


x

Acknowledgements

crucial support during the final stages, in the form of access to the library system and, more importantly, in the opportunity to retreat into writing and revising. Besides these institutions, I profusely thank the staff at the libraries I have consulted, especially the folks at the National Library and the Asian and African Studies Reading Room in the British Library. Thanks also to Abhijit Bhattacharya at CSSS in Kolkata for his help with the images. The writing was made easy by the presence of fellow travelers: the “original” dissertation writers group, Elizabeth Foster, Molly Loberg, Tania Munz, Katrina Olds, Mitra Sharafi and Karin Velez, spent several Sunday mornings bravely chewing their way through institutional muffins and very early drafts. The process might have been somewhat faster and much lonelier without the pleasant interruptions provided by Kutlu Akalin, Ryan Jordan, Mark Meulenbeld, Clara Oberle, Holly Sanders, Mitra Sharafi, Klaus and Pek Veigel, who shared flats, meals, beverages and laughter over the years, and made graduate school feel like a whole lot more fun that it is supposed to be. Arild Bergh (in Oxford) and Aditi Khanna (in London) – and their respective crews – provided real and symbolic shelter from the Bodleian, the British Library and other tangled archives, and brought fresh eyes to materials culled therein. Dwaipayan Bhattacharya helped make each return to Kolkata feel like a homecoming, and introduced me to the Center for Studies in Social Sciences. Thanks also to all the Bhattacharyas, Chaudhuris and Mukhias, the core of my extended family in Kolkata, Delhi and New Jersey, and providers of homes, chats and inspiration. Amrita, deep into her own project on surrogate motherhood in Gujarat, proved a stern study-buddy and generous cheerleader at a crucial time in Cambridge, while Aditya provided us with comic relief and some modesty-defying “awesome” cooking; shukran to both for reprising those good times in Tripoli. In the last three years, I have been lucky to find myself amongst marvelously supportive colleagues at Queen’s University. Of these new friends, Chris Bongie gets a special mention for catching some of the more peculiar “sentences” that almost made it to the book; the ones that remain are mine. Other good friends who have shared their space and time with me in all these years will indulge me once again and know that they are thanked (silently). Finally, my parents, Bratati and Shailendra Pande, have held me up and let go, in just the right measure: I could not thank them enough for their unrelenting support for everything I do, and they would rather have it left unsaid. The book is dedicated to them, my two favorite readers, as an attempt at an acknowledgement.

1

Introduction


Medicine, race and liberalism in British Bengal

There is ... a spontaneous and deeply rooted convergence between the requirements of political ideology and those of medical technology. Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, 19731

In The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault describes a “medicine of social space,” that emerged in the nineteenth century, wherein a political project to explicate the real nature of the social body came to mirror a scientific quest to reveal the truth of the physical body. In the space created by the convergence of medicine and politics, societies could be healthy or sick, races could be vigorous or degenerating, civilizations could be thriving or dying. This did not indicate a simple transference of biological concepts into the social world, Foucault explains, but a comprehension of the body and society in terms of the medical bipolarity of the normal and the pathological: medicine was to play an implicitly positive role, as an administration of the norm. Medicine was no longer confined to a body of techniques for diagnosing and curing ills; it assumed a normative role, distributing advice on healthy life, dictating the standards for the physical and moral relations of individuals, and thus unleashing processes that would generate the “subject” of modern power, ultimately coming to dominate the modern processes of the government of individuals and the management of populations. In the light of this insight on the convergence of politics and medicine, power and knowledge, it is possible to see how medicine might be a particularly illuminating example of the relations of power operating in colonial settings, and provide a fruitful archive for the analysis of the relationship between the colonial state and its modern subjects. In nineteenth-century Bengal, we will see, “in a concerted effort, doctors and statesmen demand[ed], in a different vocabulary but for essentially identical reasons,” the constitution of a free space of social medicine, “to allow the formation of an accurate, exhaustive, permanent corpus of knowledge about the health of the population.”2 Medicine became a fundamental expression of the ideology of imperial liberalism: “curing their ills” to “set them free.” Medical knowledge and expertise did not simply grant the colonial state the power to classify colonial populations as sick or deviant, although it did help rationalize these discourses of othering; more significantly, medicine permeated the very


2

Introduction

government of colonial populations, by setting the terms of their engagement with the state and managing their everyday behavior. Modern medicine, with all its power, contradictions, and ubiquity, sculpted the emergence of the colonialmodern subjects, as knowing and knowable beings, individuals whose conduct and normality, whose behavior and health, was mediated by a constant and pervasive supervision. Taking these insights into the colonial archive, this book tells a story about the convergence between political ideology and medical technology in British Bengal, and the articulation of the modern Bengali subject in the space opened up by this convergence over the course of the nineteenth century. Foucault’s insight on the entwinement of knowledge and power has, of course, animated studies of medicine in colonial settings in the last two-and-a-half decades. Foucault’s haunting presence in the field, despite the problems posed by his “Eurocentric” schematization of modernity, is a subject worth exploring in its own right; I will focus on a question particularly relevant to the understanding of colonial medicine: if, indeed, the regimes of modern power and knowledge are locked in a process of constant reactive co-creation, and the subject of modern power/knowledge is always caught in this web of relations, what is different about the colonial context? Indeed, this very question – What is colonial about colonial medicine? – has engaged scholars for over a decade.3 In formulating rich responses to this fundamental question, historians have largely abandoned the idea of medicine as a purely instrumentalist “tool of Empire,” for which the story of quinine and the conquest of Africa had long served as a shorthand. Colonial medicine is no longer a term used simply to describe medical practices disseminated to the colonies by an imperial influence, or a historical stage before the development of “national” medicine in these locations. David Arnold’s definition of colonial medicine as “the operation of colonial power within and through medicine in a colonial setting”4 places power/knowledge at the very core of analysis. Arnold’s Colonizing the Body, published in 1993, may be situated in relation to an entire body of critical studies on colonial knowledge and the exercise and extension of power through the discursive effects of the law and education, or institutions such as the census, jails, lunatic asylums and hospitals.5 In his pioneering work, Arnold described the ways in which doctors and surgeons helped to form and give a seemingly scientific precision to abiding impressions of India as a land of dirt and disease, of lethargy and superstition, of backwardness and barbarity ... and to contrast this Orientalized India with the coolheaded rationality and science, the purposeful dynamism, and the paternalistic humanitarianism of the West.6 Medical discourse, in this reading, served to pathologize colonial subjects, and thus helped to rationalize colonialism as a project of “curing their ills.” Besides analyzing these processes of objectification, Arnold also pointed to processes of subjectification engendered in the operation of medical discourse, suggesting that the case of India demonstrates “in a manner unparalleled in western societies, the


Introduction 3 exceptional importance of medicine in the cultural and political constitution of its subjects.”7 In practice, however, Arnold focuses less on the ubiquitous processes of subjectification, and more on the projects of social control and state medicine, played out through public institutions, sanitary policing and the control of epidemic disease. Also drawing upon a Foucauldian sense, that “it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together,”8 Mark Harrison has traced, amongst other themes, the displacement of the more “neutral” medico-geographic category of the “torrid zone” with the multivalent “tropics,” the transformation of the “tropical” from a descriptive climatic category to a diagnosis of underdevelopment and imperfect civilization, and a racialization of the tropics “through its association with qualities such as fecundity, lassitude and rapid decay.”9 Partially (with)drawing from the Saidian critique of Orientalist discourse which informs this formulation, he adds that there were, however, Europeans who “did not regard India as irremediably Other,” and even to those who were dazzled, drawn or repulsed by India’s difference, “these differences were often of degree rather than of kind.”10 Rejecting an interpretation of colonial medicine as always-already embodying and projecting “Western ideas of how India was intrinsically different from the West,”11 Harrison argues, first, that there was a greater degree of “dialogue” – albeit not one between equals – in the realm of knowledge-production than is usually acknowledged; second, that science and empire did not serve each other in some crude pact of social control and that “colonial encounters amounted to far more than the appropriation of knowledge for the purposes of command”12; and finally, that there were contradictions within and shifts in the relationship between east and west over time in the realm of medical discourse and practice. The last point is made forcefully by Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison in an essay on a colonial dialogue between European and Indian medicine, in which the authors provide a chronological schema of the developments from a moment of relative equality in theory and practice in the eighteenth century, to a greater western confidence generated in the wake of clinical medicine, followed by an appropriation of native pharmacopia, with western medical dominance becoming established only in the late nineteenth century.13 Mark Harrison’s work thus points to one way of overcoming the limits of a Said-inflected view of colonial medicine, with its un-historical focus on powerful discourses of othering and a complete negation of the possibility of negotiation. In doing so, it partially rejects the social (or cultural) constructionist position in the history of medicine; his developmental schematic rests on a notion of a universally recognizable scientific evolution in western medicine, which, in turn, determines its changed relationship with other systems of medicine within India. In other words, these critical understandings of colonial medicine – as a discourse on “curing their ills” and the practice of a state-sponsored “colonization of the (social and biological) body” – are inspired not so much by Foucault as such, but by a particular rerouting of Foucault after Edward Said’s Orientalism.14 Some of the limitations of the Foucauldian approach have been reflexively acknowledged even by those who have most vigorously pursued it; David Arnold recognizes that all modern medicine is engaged, in some ways, in a colonizing process, for

4

Introduction


the diverse array of ideological and administrative mechanisms by which an emerging system of knowledge and power extended itself into and over India’s indigenous society [was] in many respects characteristic of bourgeois societies and modern states elsewhere in the world.15 The limit-question to a Foucauldian analysis of colonial medicine is this: if modern medicine is understood as having a “colonizing” relation to the body of the patient and of society in general, “what was colonial about the colonization of the body?”16 And, approaching the question from a different angle: how do people and populations negotiate with, respond to or resist this kind of power, for surely, any colonial history must account for a history of resistance to colonial power? In order to emphasize the colonial in colonial medicine, Arnold has urged a return to the study of a state-centered system of scientific knowledge and power, rather than an analysis of the more diffuse and invisible effects of power/knowledge that Foucault, and Foucauldians, tend to privilege. Rejecting the notion of an all-pervasive power that emanated not from a particular social group but from the practices of everyday life, Arnold suggests that “western medicine was intimately bound up with the nature and aspirations of the colonial state itself.”17 The question of resistance to the colonial state constitutes Arnold’s main point of divergence from a faithfully Foucauldian analysis; in the colony, he writes “resistance [w]as an essential element in the evolution and articulation of a particular system of medical thought and action.”18 On the surface, an explicit linking of colonial medicine to the colonial state provides a clear, if autological, answer to the question as to what is peculiarly colonial about colonial medicine: colonial medicine is medicine administered in and by a colonial state. Trying to reconcile a story about the orientalizing effects of medical discourse with one about the universal progress of modern medicine, Arnold suggests that colonial medicine “strove to grapple with an abiding contradiction between universalizing and Orientalizing.”19 This key tension of colonial medicine, between orientalizing and universalizing, is reflective of the “tensions of empire” at large, which have to do with “universalizing claims of European ideology and the particularistic nature of conquest and rule, the limitations posed on rulers by the reproduction of difference as much as the heightened degree of exploitation and domination that colonialism entailed.”20 This “tension of empire,” understood as the enduring contradiction of the universalizing discourses of science and the modern state by their peculiar inflection in the colonial situation, is approached somewhat differently by Megan Vaughan in her 1991 book, Curing Their Ills. In a rich analysis of a fascinating literature on race, medicine and colonialism in the east and central African contexts in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, Vaughan illustrates how the “African” and “African illness” came to be produced through biomedical discourse. At the same time, she argues, while colonialist discourse (including medical discourse) was shot through with a male sexual imagery of conquest, penetration and subjugation, and the bodies of the colonized were represented in sexualized and gendered terms, representations of women and sexuality within the “west” were also permeated


Introduction 5 with images of pathology, akin to colonial otherness.21 For instance, in the nineteenth-century sciences of the body, the “child” and the “woman” were constructed in reference to the so-called primitive races; the difference between the sexes (and the races) was often made to fit a comparative framework of universal or natural laws, and a differential treatment of various classes was also rationalized within the realm of these laws.22 To be sure, while medicine was implicated in the pathologization of the colonial subject in order to naturalize and rationalize otherness, there were slippages from the pathologies of race to those of gender and class, as powerfully illustrated by Sander Gilman through the example of the assimilation of the (metropolitan) “prostitute” to the (colonial) “Hottentot” in nineteenth-century discourses.23 While Vaughan highlights the slippages between race, class and gender, and the organization of racial, gendered and other registers of difference on a universal schema via the technologies of medicine, she concludes that the gendering of colonial subjects was not monolithic but unstable, and that medicine did not always gender its colonial subject in any direct way.24 Having problematized the “orientalizing” or “pathologizing” aspects of colonial medical discourse, Vaughan offers two ways out. First, Vaughan clarifies, “whilst medical discourses must themselves be seen as constitutive of the problems they describe, they may also reflect albeit very indirectly, material and political circumstances outside the realm of the medical.”25 The “dialogue” highlighted in Vaughan’s approach is not just one between two medical systems in a colonial context; such dialogues are themselves subsumed by a constant interpellation of the political economy of colonialism and the (re)production of medical discourse. This is a fruitful intervention in the analysis of colonial medicine: it marks a shift from a focus on the operation of colonial power through medicine to an analysis of the constant articulation of colonial power on medical knowledge, and its respective relation to the “subject.”26 The colony no longer remains a passive receptor of medicine worked out elsewhere, but a space where medicine is produced and reproduced. Second, Vaughan gestures towards a late-Foucauldian analysis of colonial medicine. Highlighting Michel Foucault’s suggestion that while new scientific discourses objectified the human body and claimed to know the mechanisms by which the individual or even entire population functioned, they also developed individual subjects who partook of the new discourse about themselves, she suggests that instead of focusing on the creation of stereotypes – the process of objectification – historians of medicine could instead analyze the effects of this process on those who are so objectified.27 Having outlined this very fruitful way of reconciling the “tensions of empire,” however, she immediately draws back from it by noting that colonial states were hardly modern states, for they relied excessively on repressive power, and as a consequence of this difference, “processes of objectification occupied more ground than subjectification” in colonial contexts.28 Pointing to a basic problem with using Foucault’s notion of the operation of modern power, which privileges the power operating through the minute determination and specification of differences between individuals (through psychiatry and sexology, for instance), she writes, “there can be no discussion of the difference that difference makes in


6

Introduction

relation to power.”29 In other words, if power is not understood as an external force, there can be no accounting for the differential positioning of individuals and groups in relation to power. Holding on to this theme of the “difference that difference makes,” Vaughan suggests that medical power/knowledge was less central to the power emanating from the colonial state (as opposed to the modern European state) because of the ways in which every colonial person was always-already pathologized as other. She concludes that colonial power in Africa, for instance, was different from modern power because of the particular and uneven development of capitalism in that context. Finally, she suggests, much like Arnold, that there is no possibility of any effective resistance to power within a Foucauldian world-view, since the discourses of resistance themselves are permeated with the very ideas of freedom and liberation which constitute the modern power/knowledge regime.30 The two major limitations to looking at colonial medicine through a Foucauldian lens may therefore be summarized as the “problem of difference” and the “problem of resistance.” The question of difference refers, first, to the difference of the colonial from the modern state, and second, to the “difference that difference made” with respect to access to power, in the colonial context.31 Reframing the question about the specificity of colonial medicine in terms of this double difference, in reference to processes of subjectification, Gyan Prakash asks: What was colonial about the colonization of the body? How was the materialization of the body in institutions, knowledges, and tactics affected by the conditions of alien rule? To govern Indians as modern subjects required colonial knowledge and colonial regulation to function as self-knowledge and selfregulation, but this was impossible under colonialism.32 Explaining this diagnosis of impossibility, Prakash writes that in the colony, the practices of modern government – sanitation, the control of epidemics, the establishment of colonial institutions – had to operate as acts of colonial rule, and therefore, presumably, they failed to fulfill their “normalizing” functions. Continuing on the theme of difference, he adds, “the pressure to enact coercive rule as the welfare of the population forced colonial governmentality to occupy two positions at once – Western and Indian.”33 In suggesting first, that the medicalized practices of modern government did, in fact, produce the tactics of self-regulation and self-knowledge that were used by sections of the native society, and in refusing to focus primarily on the difference between the colonial and the modern, this book questions Prakash’s diagnosis of impossibility. While certain practices of modern government, such as sanitation, operated as “acts of colonial rule,” other related practices of government, such as the regulation of hygienic behavior, were disseminated as norms of self-government and self-regulation. Further, I would suggest, that instead of being forced to occupy “two positions at once,” colonial governmentality and biopower operated precisely by subsuming these “two positions” in a universal schema – as a scientific “universalization of difference.”


Introduction 7 And finally, by recognizing the processes of subjectification and self-regulation that operated in colonial contexts, despite the “problem of difference,” one might modify the terrain on which “resistance” must be identified. As Foucault would put it: while scientific and medical discourses objectified the human body and claimed to know the mechanisms by which the individual and whole populations functioned, they also developed individual subjects who used these categories to talk about the self, thus participating in the disciplinary regime. In other words, it is possible to identify instances of “resistance” and “dialogue” within the very tactics of self-constitution, rather than in physical revolts against the state’s health policies, or in conversations between practitioners of divergent medical systems, as has been more common in the historiography of colonial medicine.34 To summarize: by pushing beyond the Said-inflected critique of colonial power/knowledge and taking what might be termed a late-Foucauldian approach to the colonial medical archive, this book seeks to analyze the ways in which the disciplines (an anatomo-politics of the human body) worked with regulatory controls (a biopolitics of the population); and to recognize the role of biopower (those diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations)35 in the “universalization of difference.” By shifting the focus from processes of objectification to subjectification, I try to complement the study of colonialist representations with an analysis of the biopolitical basis of the colonized subjects’ self-representation. In doing so, I attempt to understand the nature of the modern/colonial state and its forms of government. In other words, I believe that “colonial medicine” recapitulates a wider concern, as captured in Partha Chatterjee’s query that haunts much of post/colonial history writing: “is there a difference between the colonial state and the modern state in Europe?”36 It is no surprise, then, that studies of colonial medicine have become quite crucial to a larger quest to understand the nature of colonialism and the colonial state. Waltraud Ernst has recently described this as a tendency to put the cart before the horse: “Instead of locating the subject matter (medicine) within the wider social context (colonialism) they have critiqued colonialism through the lens of medicine,” she complains.37 Instead of being too hasty in abandoning the pursuit of colonialism through a medical archive, it might be fruitful to persist on this path a little longer in order to follow Foucault, as it were, from power/knowledge to biopower and governmentality, in order to see if and how the medical archive alters our sense of the colonial state and the colonial subject. To do this, I put aside the somewhat obfuscating question of “difference” while systematically pursuing the question of “race” as one that is fundamental to the operation of biopower, in order to consider the colonial state as a biopolitical one.

Difference, race and the colonial state While we know something about that cordon sanitaire of medical discourse and colonial administrative practice that partitioned space and segregated populations, we have not explicitly considered colonial states as biopolitical ones. – Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire, (1995)38

8

Introduction


In the tremendously influential Nation and its Fragments Partha Chatterjee warns against the tendency to understand the colonial state merely as another form by which the (European) modern state becomes generalized globally, for the deployment of a “rule of colonial difference” distorted the very forms of modern government in colonial contexts. Elaborating on this rule, Chatterjee argues that while liberal administrators justified colonialism on the grounds that it would ultimately create modern subjects, the fulfillment of the promise would have eliminated the ideological justification for empire, and so, the insistence on difference had to accompany the promise of universal ideas and institutions. As Chatterjee puts it: The more the logic of a modern regime of power pushed the processes of government in the direction of a rationalization of administration and a normalization of the objects of its rule, the more insistently did the issue of race come up to emphasize the specifically colonial character of British domination in India.”39 As surprising as this may seem, such an explicit mention of race is rare, and a deeper theoretical engagement with the problem of race even more so, in the context of British rule in India. Chatterjee’s engaging analysis of the “rule of colonial difference” in the rest of the work does little to clarify the specific matter of race, or its special relationship with modernity. Seizing upon this problematic aspect of Chatterjee’s critique, David Scott poses some crucial questions about the historicity of ideas of race, the specific power-effects of race (as opposed to any other notion of difference), and its insertion into subject-constituting social practices.40 The present work is a partial attempt to answer these questions. A historicized understanding of race as a scientific idea contains a clue to the reconciliation of modernity and colonialism; it also eliminates the nagging “problem of difference” that confounds any comprehension of the colonial state as a biopolitical one. The phrase “rule of colonial difference” is possibly deployed by Chatterjee to convey something of the specificity of the registers of difference that operated in the Indian context, which cannot simply be equated with race, and which are perceived as both less than race and more. In a certain South Asia-based strand of postcolonial historical criticism, of which Chatterjee’s work is a good example, the “rule of colonial difference” operates, ironically, much like the very “ladder of civilization” of nineteenth-century British liberal thought that it seeks to critique: it softens the starkly-drawn lines of race. Race is completely missing, for instance, in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, another path-breaking work in the field. It is this very vanishing trick that baffled Amitav Ghosh into asking Chakrabarty upon the publication of the book in 2000: I do not understand (and this is a question I’ve also addressed to Uday Mehta) how it is possible to discuss J. S. Mill (or Bentham or any other 19th century British liberal) without accounting for the place that the idea of race occupies in their discourse. That the idea of race was largely unacknowledged within

Introduction 9


these discourses does of course contribute to the difficulty of giving it its proper place within the edifice. But surely, to omit it altogether is merely to ignore the ground on which liberal thought is built. Take for example, the idea of tutelage in liberal imperialism. This idea is after all founded implicitly on a theory of race: the “not yet” of which you speak, is in fact a “not yet forever” (which is merely a locution for “never”) and packed into the forever/never is the silenced term which makes this line of reasoning possible – “race.”41 That the idea of tutelage is implicitly founded on race is one which I discuss at some length in the first section of the book; in fact, I would argue, the inflection of race on the notion of tutelage was made quite explicit via the science of ethnology. In response to Ghosh’s question about race in the ideologies of liberal imperialism, Chakrabarty registers “race” as a double anomaly: in the “the ambivalence introduced into 19th-century European thought by the tension between the universalist aspects of ‘science’ and the particularist emphases on ‘race’,”42 and “the ambiguity that lies at the heart of liberalism, the ambiguity caused by the tension between the universal applicability that it claims for itself and the unacknowledged racism that runs through it.”43 Responding to Ghosh’s question, Chakrabarty further contrasts imperialist attitudes in settler-colonial contexts with their history of a racial annihilation of indigenous populations, and in places such as India, where imperialists largely acknowledged the existence of a prior civilization and admitted, at least in principle, the possibility of eventual self-rule for the colonized. Unconvinced by this somewhat simple but valid distinction, Ghosh contends, “we Indians flinch from it [race] partly in self-preservation, and partly because it so hopelessly contaminates that aspect of liberal western thought in which our hopes of social betterment ... are so well founded.”44 Ghosh submits that the silence on race in Indian historiography might be traced “to the necessity of what Ashis Nandy calls the need to forget.”45 It is because of this “need to forget” that the “ladder of civilization” and the controversy-generating “Aryan theory” have endured in history-writing on the subcontinent,46 while memories of being called “dirty nigger” and being kicked to death with impunity by reckless sahebs (deaths rendered natural by medical experts by reference to a peculiar somatic propensity of the native to die of a ruptured spleen) have been largely relegated to what Ghosh has evocatively termed the realm of “family secrets.” Engaging with these issues, in the first section of the book, I attempt to restore the silenced term of race from the domain of family secrets to the realm of history. By renaming “difference” as “race” and by recognizing race as a modern ideology, we might be able to analyze the colonial state as a (modern) biopolitical one. I agree with Ghosh that racism is not just any exclusionist and supremacist ideology (and thus easily comparable to casteism or communalism within India); it is an ideology founded on certain principles and methods that relate to science, nature, biology and evolution and it is therefore a specifically post-Enlightenment, modern ideology. In the light of its modern-scientific theorization, the concept of race no longer appears as an anomaly with regard to the universalist aspects of “science,” or to the universal claims of liberalism.


10

Introduction

To historicize the science of race in the context of the British–Indian encounter, I trace the history of the “black Aryan,” an oxymoronic category that I resurrect not to add another one to a long list of stereotypes created by colonial contact, but rather to illustrate the strength and flexibility, as well as the ambiguities at the core of race theory, and to show that the very possibility of certain racial categories was derived from colonial occupation. The history of the production of the “black Aryan” illustrates that colonial India was not merely “influenced by race science in Europe” as David Arnold suggests in his recent work,47 but was constitutive of race science in significant ways. The circumstance that Bengal’s “first public man,” Rammohun Roy, was also the first specimen of the type in Victorian ethnology, confounds the lines between family secrets and public history perpetuated in some recent scholarship on colonial modernities. The peculiar racial type also serves as an example of the production of race by the convergence of a science of empire (liberalism) and an empire of science (colonial medicine), which came together to rationalize difference, and thus to assuage the tensions between the “universalizing” and “orientalizing” impulses of modern power/knowledge in the colony. Or, as Shula Marks puts it, “western biomedicine has undoubtedly played a major role, both in making universalizing claims, and in creating and reproducing racial and gendered discourses of difference.”48 In this role of universalizing a theory of difference, medicine was a crucial ideology of the (liberal) empire. It served to produce and disseminate ideas of race in a way that race no longer seemed to be an anomaly, but appeared as one of the normalizing strategies of the modern biopolitical state. And if it is true, as Ann Laura Stoler suggests in her “colonial reading” of Foucault, that no historical context is more fruitful for an examination of a biopolitical state than the colonial one,49 it is precisely because the colonial context holds a clue to understanding the persistence of race as a normalizing strategy of modern power. Stoler further suggests that race (and colonialism) was fundamental to modern discourses on sex and selfhood, and that the establishment of boundary categories/identity markers of race, sex, culture and class flowed back and forth between metropole and colony instead of being conceived in one part of the world and imported to another. The emergence of the modern self can no longer be located in the West, she writes, but is marked by mobility and portability, for disciplinary categories and bodily tactics invented in one part of the colonial world were used in another in the formulation of private and public selves.50 In order to understand the colonial processes that created modern selves and subjectivities, she recommends that we look beyond the cordon sanitaire as the exemplary form of the convergence between medicine and government in the colony, to study intimate aspects of the lives of the colonialized – the toilet, the diet, the bedroom – in order to understand the colonial state as a biopolitical one. By turning to the intimate and the everyday, it becomes possible to study colonial medicine as the administration of health and the proliferation of norms that was so crucial to the sculpting of modern subjectivities, rather than interpreting colonial medicine simply as a tool for defining, curing and confining colonial pathology. If the norms and forms of modernity were premised upon the universalization of

Introduction 11


difference on the scientific register of race, the colonial state takes its place as a crucial example of the modern state, instead of a chimerical version (or an imperfect derivation) of it. Recognizing that there was a certain symmetry in the racial lexicon of empire and the various registers of difference – race, class and sex – at “home,” while insisting that “race” is by no means reducible to or derivative of “class” or “gender,” we might scrutinize if and how the colonial state did operate as a “modernizing” or “normalizing” one in relation to colonized subjects. Or, as David Scott writes: The point, therefore, is that the crucial question is not whether there is a difference between the colonial state and forms of the modern state in Europe, but how to compose a historicity of our understanding of the rationalities that organized the forms of the colonial state. [. . .] To be sure, modern power in its colonial career may indeed have operated by “rules of difference” nonidentical with those in its European career. But for me, approaching it entails a prior understanding of the alteration that brings into being the distinctively “modern” in which this “rule of difference” was to produce its effects.51 So, having settled the question of “whether or not and by what sign of difference power included or excluded portions of the native population,” as Scott recommends, we may turn to another set of questions: In any historical instance, what does colonial power try to organize and reorganize? ... What, in each historical instance, is colonial power’s structure and project as it inserts itself into – or more properly, as it constitutes – the domain of the colonial?52 It becomes necessary to recognize the specific political rationality that a moderncolonial state depended upon, for the very rationality determines the terrain upon which the colonized could produce their responses, and constitute themselves. While it bears no repetition that the colonial state was founded on coercion, radical inequality, economic exploitation and a fundamental dehumanization of colonial populations, it is also well known that the colonial state in nineteenth-century India was increasingly rationalized with reference to the principles of liberty. When colonial occupation introduced fundamental ruptures in colonial societies, it did so in the name of modernity. It produced the terrain of the (universal) modern upon which the “rule of difference” could be effectively staged, and categorically resisted. Pursuing these ideas, in the next section, I turn to the path of modern power in its colonial career, with its rules of difference that were rendered reasonable by the operation of biopolitics, and were administered via the techniques of “government.”

Liberal government and the colonial subject [O]nly when we know what this governmental regime called liberalism was, will we be able to grasp what biopolitics is. – Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (January 19, 1979), 200853


12

Introduction

In order to pursue the line of inquiry outlined in the previous section, to understand the colonial state as a normalizing one, one would have to rethink the concept of the “colonial state.” The concept of government, as defined by Foucault in a set of lectures in the 1970s, was no longer the domain of the institutional apparatus of the state as such. Developing his ideas on the disciplinary management of bodies and the biopolitical control of populations, Foucault suggested that modern government refers to all endeavors to shape, guide and direct the conduct of others; it also includes “the ways in which one might be urged and educated to bridle one’s passions, to control one’s own instincts, to govern oneself.”54 Instead of charting a shift from disciplinary to governmental power, Foucault suggests that modern power rests in a triangle of sovereignty–discipline–government, which targets the population.55 In this triangle, populations emerge as the objects and subjects of governmental regulation; they participate in their governance as they become normalized. In this light, Chatterjee’s contention about colonialism as a modern regime of power destined to fail in the project of normalization, given the racialized basis of the colonial project,56 is flawed: first, because it assumes racialization was not constitutive of modern government and that racism is not part of a modern state formation as such (which was no more true of the nineteenth century than it is of our present), and second, because it stops short of accounting for the “powers of freedom” unleashed in the terrain of modern government. As David Scott argues of nineteenth-century Jamaica, the story of modern government in the colony is not one that is contradicted by race, but it is “the story of the (re)organization of the rationalities, modalities, and instrumentalities through which raced subjects (and raced bodies) were constituted as such, and through which the conduct of conduct could come to articulate itself on the register of race.”57 The project of normalization in the nineteenth century, premised on a metaphoric transfer of concepts – function, hierarchy, norm – from a newly emergent physiology to the social realm, mapped antagonisms of race and class onto a common space of scientifically derived social norms.58 If race is not a stumbling block to the normalizing functions of the modern state, but rather constitutive of these functions, how do we revaluate our understandings of the subject of “modern colonialism” and the “modern subject” of colonialism? A clue to understanding the articulation of modern selves and subjectivities in the colony may be found in the Collège de France lectures in which Foucault links governmental power and biopower specifically to liberalism. Liberalism, he contends, is to be understood very broadly, not so much as a coherent political philosophy or a political ideology reducible to the work of a cohesive set of thinkers, but as a “political rationality.” In Graham Burchell’s succinct formulation, Foucault’s approach to liberalism consists in analyzing it from the point of view of governmental reason, that is from the point of view of the rationality of political government as an activity rather than an institution. On this view, liberalism is not a theory, an ideology, a juridical philosophy of individual freedom, or any particular set of philosophies adopted by a government.59

Introduction 13 As David Scott further clarifies, Foucault is concerned to illuminate something else about liberalism besides its ideological function – whether as promise of liberty and equality or as a tool of empire; he is concerned with its style of reasoning, for


what is distinctive about the political reason of liberal government is that it constitutes a form of power and utilizes a range of strategies that support the civilizing project by shaping and governing the capacities, competencies, and will of the governed.60 The story of liberalism in empire, in this light, is neither one in which the ideological content of liberalism is scandalously emptied of its fundamental principles by its confrontation with difference and race, nor one in which ideological disputes between liberalism and its enemies, or amongst liberals of different hues, hold center stage.61 This is how I approach liberalism as well: not as an exhaustive interpretation of liberal political philosophy, its developments and complexities (which I leave to the experts), but as an activity – the “conduct of conduct” via governmental reform that might be variously captured by the interventions of a Macaulay or a Mill, a particular legal enactment or medical institution, a reorganized bazaar or the placement of electric lights. Building on this modified understanding of liberalism, in Chapters 1 and 2, I trace the development of “liberal racialism”: the rationalization of imperial government produced by a convergence of a modality of political reasoning – liberalism – and the science (and metaphor) of pathology – the study of the origin, nature and course of diseases. Through a transcription of political discourse in scientific terms in the early nineteenth century, race and liberalism were reconciled so that they no longer appeared as a peculiar pairing but, rather, as a thoroughly scientific juxtaposition, even one of the “formative features of modernity.”62 In its nineteenth-century elaboration, racism was not only consolidated though the idiom of biological science, “but more directly in the biologizing power of the normalizing state.”63 The process of normalization was expressed in the rhetoric of reform that was so crucial to the liberal idiom; reform came to provide “the fundamental link between liberty (as individual autonomy) and social and moral progress.”64 Insofar as liberal reform in the nineteenth century worked on “character,” which in turn was founded upon an understanding of a “scale of civilizations” that divided the world into those who were ready for citizenship and those who had to be made ready for it, reform was perpetuated by and premised upon biologizing power. In this light, it comes as no surprise that the idea of “character” was formulated in strikingly phrenological terms by Mill in On Liberty, as he clarified that liberal principles applied only to those in the “maturity of their faculties” and excluded “those backward states of society in which the race itself was in its nonage.”65 The biologized underpinnings of the so-called liberal “strategies of exclusion” are further developed in the first section of this book. To be sure, the idea that liberal imperialism was premised on the exclusion of colonized populations has passed into post/colonial commonsense; scholars have convincingly argued that the idea of reform functioned as the key rationale for the

14

Introduction


subjugation of such populations. While a critical understanding of liberal reform as a rationale for empire is an important one that influences this work, there is a second theme that I pursue with greater interest: the processes of subjectification unleashed through these liberal imperialist projects of reform. Sections two and three in this book may be read as specific instantiations of three distinct projects of reform, in the realms of education, sanitation and the law, intended to produce improving effects on native “character.”66 Because the problem of reform is connected to the construction of a certain kind of knowledge (a rationalist, universalist knowledge), a certain kind of division of social-institutional space (the secular/religious, state/civil society divisions), a certain kind of historical understanding (a teleological and progressivist history), and a certain kind of subject (a self-improving one)67 reform was not just a crucial justification of empire but was also central to the operation of modern government and the forms of subjectification in the colony. In colonial Calcutta, a particular political rationality – liberalism – was articulated as a government of the biosocial body, to be realized not through coercive public health measures alone, but also through an everyday and intimate control of hygienic behavior. Liberal reform ranged from a tutoring in the disciplines of the market and the duties of economic exercise to a retraining of hygienic sensibilities and the dispensation of civic norms. The conduct of hygienic behavior was not just the domain of the colonial state, but was seized by the Bengali as a form of modern self-expression. The story of reform in the realms of education, sanitation and law, analyzed in Chapters 3 to 6, is therefore also a story about the “birth of the modern subject” in colonial Bengal. In Chapter 4, I focus on the emergent modern-colonial state’s attempts to align sanitary strategies with the principles of “free trade,” as an example of the “conduct of conduct” to attain the governmental ends of liberalism. That the colonial state was animated by the logic of extractive capitalism is certainly not one that I wish to dispute, and which, in fact, I underline in this chapter. Simultaneously, however, I highlight another principle of liberalism – the acceptance of a “limitation of government.” A “self-limitation of government” is established on the basis of the “naturalness” of its objects and practices; this naturalness is ascribed to wealth, of course, but also to individuals, not just as “obedient or intractable subjects, but insofar as they are themselves linked to this economic naturalness, insofar as their longevity, health, and ways of conducting themselves have complex and tangled relationships with these economic processes.”68 In Chapter 5, the themes of naturalizing governmental objectives and the corresponding processes of subjectification come to the fore; in this chapter I trace the development of institutions and a disposition of things that were intended to signal the self-limitation of government while constantly molding the rational and responsible self-conduct of the natives of Bengal. This was modern government, involved with the promotion in the governed population of specific techniques of the self, and the “acquisition of ways of performing roles like father or mother, the development of habits of cleanliness, sobriety, fidelity, self-improvement, responsibility


Introduction 15 and so on.”69 Confirming the multivalent power of pathology as a discipline, the delineation of modern selfhood by the Bengali elites was realized in the exclusion of abject things and certain others (women, lower classes, lower castes, minorities); I briefly allude to these systems of exclusion naturalized in the light of an expert discourse on “sanitary citizenship” in Chapters 5 and 6. In this way, the Bengali subject that seized the program of reform and improvement as a program of self-government and self-improvement was not a figure that bears witness to “the failure of the state to fulfill its normalizing mission,” exposes as a farce the promise of liberal freedom, or resists “government” by embracing “pre-modern” forms of self-conduct premised on “traditional” hygienics. This is not intended to suggest that the colonized subject is “liberated” from his premodern past; the rule of difference (or more precisely, race) is still at work. Nor has the colonized been trained to “collaborate” with the colonial state; the native might (and would) resist. But the very terrains of difference and of resistance have been constituted by the strategies of modern government. This does not mean that a marvelous new plot for “social control” has been hatched, but a relationship has been forged between government and the governed that “obliges individuals to become the ‘subjects of their lives,’ obliges them to exercise a responsible self-conduct.”70 In this scenario, the story of colonial medicine is no longer one about the pathologization of colonial others; it is a story about a power that is not just repressive, but is also productive. And yet, this understanding of the close relationship forged between modernity, liberal reform and subjectification is not a return to a “modernization theory” by another name, for colonialism was not a mechanism by which modern subjectivities were disseminated to the east. Rather, it confronts us with the recognition that we – the universal and undifferentiated subjects of the present – inhabit a world in which only new (i.e., modern) choices can be made. The reason for this is that the changes [effected by modern forms of power] involve the re-formation of subjectivities and the re-organization of social spaces in which subjects act and are acted upon. The modern state – imperial, colonial, postcolonial – has been crucial to these processes of construction/destruction.71 “We” are the subjects of modernity. Pushing beyond the tensions of empire – universalization and difference, social control and subaltern resistance – it is possible to see how a racially-grounded medicine served to extend colonial power, just as it created the modern subject of colonialism. In other words, and in the context of this book, the subjection of the Bengali to the intersecting strategies of expert knowledge, liberal reform and modern government also created the terrain from which he could launch his quest for self-discipline and self-government. This may be clarified by an anecdote: The embodied selfhood of the modern Bengali was expressed in a letter sent in 1885 by a reader to the Chikitsa Sammilani, a medical journal published in Bengali from Calcutta, describing his tortured self, weakened and reduced by masturbation. The writer of


16

Introduction

the letter explained that he had been tempted into solitary sex by bad company. While he had tried to clean up his act after joining the proverbial “English school,” his sins had returned to haunt him: Wet dreams continued to sap his strength. He was all but reduced to a skeleton. All blood had drained out of his face and body. His eyes were blank. His penis was twisted and diminished. He felt as though his entire substance had been depleted. He had no appetite. He was no longer brave.72 The self-image of the masturbator rehearses the objectification of the Bengali in the colonial stereotype that had circulated equally in medical and political discourse during the nineteenth century: the effeminate Bengali, enervated by malarious climes, his liver enlarged, pursuits sedentary, limbs delicate, movements languid, at the bottom of the ladder of the degenerate Indian races – the colonialized subject par excellence.73 But at the same time, the anxiety about solitary sex, which derived from the linking of undisciplined sex to the health of the population, and of individual abuse to racial futures, was a peculiarly modern phenomenon. The thoroughly biopolitical nature of the anxiety is captured in the Bengali editor’s insistence that the masturbator was not just guilty of the individual abuse of self, but that he was the symptom (and cause) of a degenerate, enfeebled and effeminate nation.74 In this insistence we may discern the acknowledgment of the power over and invested in individual bodies and concerned with the management of population. In the masturbator’s panic, we may also notice the converging terrains of discipline (in the English school) and self-regulation. In repeating the colonial stereotype as self-image, the Bengali becomes the subject of colonial modernity, transforming a discourse of othering into a desire for self-improvement. How did the natives of Bengal come to adopt the colonizer’s “tool of othering” as a tactic of self-diagnosis and a desire for self-government? In seeking an answer to this question in the colonial archive and medical literature produced in English and Bengali, this book recounts a story of the entwinement of politics and medicine, power and knowledge, in the age of empire, along three axes. On one level, it is the story of the creation of racialized medicine, through a dialogue between doctors and colonial administrators, which provided a potent justification for a liberal empire: as a cure for native pathologies. This part of the story emanates from the realm of analysis opened up by more classic accounts of power/knowledge in the colony. Second, this book shows how the insights of racialized medicine were crucial in the definition of the normal and the production of norms by liberal reform, and manifested in everyday, pervasive forms of power: I focus specifically on the creation of racialized selves and subjects realized via reforms in the realms of education, sanitation and law. In this, I urge a move from the analysis of colonial difference to an understanding of the colonial state as a biopolitical state that is always-already premised on race. Third, in tracing how the disciplines and norms of the body came to function as self-regulating regimes, this book is an account of the emergence of a particular iteration of the modern Bengali subject in the last decades of the nineteenth century. For by the end of the century, the bhadralok was no longer the passive object of the medical and ethnological gaze. He refused to be pathologized as other. He explained his loss of strength in the scientific idiom of degeneration and debility.

Introduction 17


He asserted that he was in fact plagued by the “pathologies of modernity.” While colonial medicine had incarcerated the Bengali into ethnological maps of mankind and colonial institutions, it had also committed him to “modern” ways of being. A “colonization of the body” came with the values of freedom made real within practices for the government of conduct,75 and may be best understood with reference to the two meanings of swadhinata – freedom (from alien rule) and subjection to (a particular, embodied) self.



Part I

Race and place


2

Diagnosing character


Liberal racialism and the black Aryan

The race by whom this rich tract was peopled, enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to peaceful employments, bore the same relation to other Asiatics which the Asiatics generally bear to the bold and energetic children of Europe … We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Lord Clive” (January, 1840), 18501 Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the considerations of the effect of the social and moral influence upon the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, (1848), 18662

The seemingly conflicting statements by Macaulay and Mill, on the effects of habit and nature on the character of people, constitutes the problem to which this chapter is a response: how did liberal thinkers come to justify colonialism through a constant reproduction of racial thinking, while denouncing racism as a particularly vulgar mode of thought? The contradiction may easily be attributed to the obvious differences of Macaulay and Mill; but between these distinct utterances, it is also possible to discern a “unified” field of discourse of liberal racialism. Upon rereading, the contradictions between the two statements seem to diminish: while Macaulay had emphasized the natural disposition of Bengalis to thrive under alien subjugation, he had certainly not discounted the role of habit in molding the Bengali character. Nor had Mill denied the possibility of attributing inherent differences in conduct and character to cultural or habitual differences. Macaulay did not let his biases dampen his faith that the native would be improved by proper government and enlightened cultural influences; his was not a racialism born of sheer prejudice, but one based on sound ethno-medical thinking. This was a racialism that rationalized, just as it recaptured, the idea of empire as a cure for native pathologies. Macaulay’s statement, and much of the colonial medical discourse that is analyzed in this chapter, may be read simply as Orientalist discourse: an ideological fantasy operating as a body of objective knowledge, which invariably comprehends the “east” in relation to the west and as its “other,” and derives from (and

22

Race and place


manifests itself in) a relationship of power. Taking off from Foucault’s suggestion that it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together, Edward Said elaborated upon the particularly powerful discourse of Orientalism in his classic 1978 work that has influenced postcolonial scholarship ever since. Building on this, this chapter restates an argument about empire as a site of profound, embodied, and what had seemed in its moment, “real” difference; a kind of difference that was powerful precisely because it had to be constantly constituted and was amenable to contradictory articulations. It is therefore important to recall, as Foucault clarifies: We must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable. To be precise, we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies.3 The discourse of liberal racialism may be understood, in this light, as less than wholly powerful, fully intentional or completely realizable; and yet it was crucial to the production of power and the strategies of government in the colonial context. As we will see, this discourse did not “develop” in the course of the nineteenth century in a cohesive way, but was strategically deployed in relation to colonial concerns. In his classic work, Eric Stokes elaborates on the colonial inflection on liberal thought: The whole transformation of English mind and society, as it expressed itself in liberalism, was brought to bear on the Indian connexion. And it was brought to bear – it is this which makes Indian history important to the most insular of English historians – by its most distinguished representatives, James and John Stuart Mill, Bentham and Macaulay.4 If, indeed, utilitarianism was an imperialist theory in its very inception, as Stokes suggests, was it also racialist? As liberalism came to bear on the colonial condition, it had to systematically comprehend its subject; and it did so through a formulation of liberal racialism. The coherence of liberalism and race science was neither accidental nor coincidental. The universalization of liberal discourse and western science may be seen to have been attained through the institutional vehicle of empire and triggered by it; and an inclination towards an aggressive mode of abstract thinking characterized western science and liberal imperialism.5 This inclination was linked to the imperial impulse to know and control, govern and cure, according to rational, natural and universal principles. The colonial context provided the raw material to analyze and locate objects and places, people and pathologies, according to a universal schema. The colonial context also introduced an urgency to abstract questions about the “true” nature of people and places, for the aim of rational, liberal government was the correct unraveling and replication of nature’s laws, in the social and political realm. The scientificity and abstraction of its claims made liberal values always-already universal and cosmopolitan. In this way, liberal racialism was erected on the overlapping terrains of society and biology. It was premised on a


Diagnosing character 23 disavowal of essential biological difference and the manufacturing of cultural difference as biological essence. As is clear from a juxtaposition of the statements by Macaulay and Mill, liberal racialism was implicitly articulated in its disavowal. This is best captured in the figure of the black Aryan, which may be understood as an exemplary stereotype of imperial liberalism in India, produced by the juxtaposition of the scientific study of nature and environment, on the one hand, and of habits and history, on the other. The Aryan idea derived from the study of the common roots and structure of the Sanskritic languages of the subcontinent, Persian, and the European languages. The new theory of language produced a new theory of race by the latter half of the nineteenth century; the speakers of languages of the Indo-European family have since been termed Arya or Aryan.6 The trope of Aryanism, as we also know, has animated revivalist, fundamentalist and supremacist ideologies within India and in Europe in the twentieth century; what is less commonly discussed is the figure of the black Aryan. The peculiar racial type signified the simultaneous assertion of essential somatic difference (black), and its denial (Aryan). The black Aryan remained largely unnamed, but lingered in race theories inspired by crucial colonial questions, and was especially important in assuaging the tension between the “universalizing” and “differentiating” functions of imperial liberalism, until it was brought to the surface by a chance encounter, between a doctor, a prominent Victorian ethnologist and his patient, Bengal’s most prominent public man of the early nineteenth century. On Thursday, September 12, 1833, Raja Rammohun Roy sat down to breakfast with his friends in the port town of Bristol. Roy had sailed to England in 1830 with a letter from the Mughal emperor to the King of Great Britain to negotiate better terms for the upkeep of the royal family in Delhi. An iconic figure of the British–Indian connection and an English-educated polyglot, Roy had been closely associated with British scholars and Unitarian ministers in Bengal. A strong spokesperson for liberal constitutional reforms, he had published widely in English, Sanskrit and Bengali and had founded the first Indian-run newspaper in the subcontinent. He had used these as platforms to critique the East India Company’s monopolistic practices in trade and governance while supporting English education and legal interventions for the abolition of sati. A vociferous critic of what he considered the worst of Hindu superstitions, Roy had rejected the many gods and the bonds of caste in favor of the Vedic monotheism he helped formulate and promote through the Atmiya Sabha and the Brahmo Samaj. It was all this that later won him the epithet of father of modern India. More recently, he has been hailed as the first native “public man” in a global public sphere built upon the political affect that emerged in the liberal constitutionalist moment of the early nineteenth century.7 On that morning of September 12, conversations turned on the Tory approach to the reform question at the breakfast table. The next day the Raja expressed his curiosity about the character of the West Indian Negroes. To answer his questions, a friend presented him with a prominent ethnological tract of the time, James Cowles Prichard’s Research into the Physical History of Man, which he had


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borrowed from the author himself.8 Prichard (1786–1848) was a prominent medical doctor and ethnologist, later regarded as the father of British anthropology. Physical History was based on his doctoral thesis that had tackled one of the biggest questions of the time: the origin of human races. What Rammohun Roy had thought of this book, we do not know. He was seized by a mysterious ailment soon after. On Saturday the 21st, the Raja’s friends called on Prichard to treat him; by Sunday his condition was deteriorating. Leeches were applied to his head. On September 26, the Raja was attacked by spasms and seemed to have lost sense of his surroundings. His head was shaved and cold water applied in an attempt to revive him. He slept with his eyes still open, the pupils dilated. The left arm and leg were paralyzed. On September 27 he drew his last breath.9 A postmortem revealed an inflamed brain, filled with fluid. There were many rumors surrounding his death, including one that suggested that Prichard had been somewhat negligent towards his patient. Contradicting another rumor that circulated at the time, his friend and host insisted that the Raja’s mind had not been thrown off balance. “Snatched from the world so cruelly and abruptly,” he wrote, his mind “will influence in death as much as in life, or perhaps still more so.” Prophetic words, but little may the author of these lines have suspected that Rammohun’s mind, or rather impressions and measurements of his face and head, would literally circulate in the collections, museums and written works of some of the leading scientific men of Britain at the time. The encounter between Prichard and Roy, doctor and patient, ethnologist and native specimen, may serve as a metaphor for a liberal empire based on a scientific diagnosis of “native character” and of imperial government as a “cure” for colonial pathologies. The rhetoric of empire as rational government based on an understanding of natural difference was to be embodied in the black Aryan, an ethnological category produced by this serendipitous encounter. This chapter grapples with an enigmatic phenomenon of British–Indian contact: the simultaneity of scientific racism and liberalism in empire, by tracing the peculiar afterlives of Rammohun Roy. On the morning the Raja died, a marble mason arrived to take a cast of his head, ostensibly to erect a statue in his memory. In the following decades, race theorists reproduced his visage, filled the cast with grain and water, and turned to his skull seeking answers to key questions about race. These included queries on the relationship between the colonizing Britons and the people of their vast empire in the east, the causes and nature of racial variation, white degeneration in the tropics and prospects for the improvement of natives and the civilization of savages.10 By the late eighteenth century, there were at least two discrete ways of answering questions about embodied difference. It is significant that both these ways concurred on the common origins of mankind. The first, natural historical in method, drew upon analogies from the plant and animal kingdoms to explain variation in mankind as degeneration caused by climatic and environmental influences. The second, philological in method, confirmed the thesis of common origins of disparate cultures by turning to structural similarities in the ancient languages of the world. James Cowles Prichard too was a firm believer in the shared origins of the human family. His major contribution lay in bringing together these strands of natural historical and historical evidence to strengthen the monogenetic thesis.


Diagnosing character 25

Figure 2.1 The Black Aryan Source: James Cowles Prichard, Plate 1. (Frontispiece) – “A portrait of Ramohun Roy, affording an example of a very dark complexion in a Brahman of undoubtedly pure race: a specimen of colour approaching to black in a tribe of the Indo-European stock,” Researches into the Physical History of Mankind., 3rd edn, Vol. III: Containing Researches into the History of the European Nations, (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1841).


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Confronted with a juxtaposition of somatic blackness and high culture in Roy (and in India), Prichard produced an inspired thesis on the black Aryan. By doing so, he also helped assuage some key imperial anxieties about tropical degeneration and naturalized a multifaceted mission to civilize. In this inspired discovery, he was perhaps most influenced by the works of Sir William Jones, founder of the Asiatic Society11, whose oeuvre formed the basis of the Orientalist triptych,12 which remained the foundational mode of comprehending Indian history for the next century. Jones had also postulated a theory of the common origins of Britons and Indians by pointing to a metaphoric connection between language and man.

Producing the Aryan: the Asiatic Society as a center of calculation In 1784, William Jones (1764–94) had founded the Asiatic Society, the center of a vast network of knowledge gathering about the east. In history, Jones has served as a shining foil to the exploitative regime of the Company nabobs who plundered Bengal of its material riches; Jones spent his time amassing the vast cultural wealth of Bengal, collecting and translating ancient Indian legal, religious and literary texts.13 His desire for an efficient administration, for direct access to indigenous knowledge through the elimination of untrustworthy native interpreters, and his political-scientific curiosity for understanding the relation between the languages and peoples of Europe and India had inspired him to learn several of the Indian tongues. The Asiatic Society was organized around this vision of an efficient accumulation of knowledge, and functioned as a colonial “center of calculation” where Indian texts and artifacts were systematically collected, processed and further disseminated.14 The Society also published the Asiatick Researches (1788–1839) and a Journal, and was arguably at the hub of the production of “Aryans” in the nineteenth century.15 The centrality of imperial or colonial networks in the collection of scientific facts, and in the formation of scientific interests, theories and collections has been well documented by historians of science.16 The sociologist of science, Bruno Latour, has described the cumulative processes by which local facts are converted into “combinable and immutable mobiles” – images, statistics, specimens, carried to “centers of calculation” to be standardized as information, and finally returned to the periphery.17 These recurring cycles, he argues, give metropolitan science its steadily increasing claims to universal knowledge. In practice, it is a network of relations, often made invisible through the attribution of authority to a single figure or institution, which creates the effect of universality. If the “universal is a network,”18 the formative influence of colonial connections on science cannot be exaggerated. In the nineteenth century, Calcutta was not only the imperial center from which political power and economic control emanated, it was an important hub in the network, and the “center of calculation” in matters of colonial science. Extensive scientific inquiries into the nature and culture of the subcontinent began soon after the Battle of Plassey in 1757, for populations not classified could not be governed, raw materials not discovered could not be extracted, lands not


Diagnosing character 27 surveyed could not be taxed, resources unseen could not be exploited. Colonial officials and men of science, both professionals and amateurs, initiated scientific inquiries when presented with the incredible variety of natural resources, plants, people, languages, arts and antiquities of India. These were discrete but related projects that were crucial to state building in India (and in Britain, one might add), undertaken not on individual whim, but through an entire complex of institutions.19 In 1765, James Rennell (1742–1830), who consolidated his scientific reputation as “the founder of oceanography” largely via his connections in the East India Company, was asked to produce a map of Bengal. In 1767 he became the first surveyor general of India. Colonel William Lambton (1753–1823), who had moved through the “webs of empire” having surveyed the border between America and Canada earlier in his career, proposed a mathematical and geographical survey of the entire subcontinent in 1802, and later headed the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India.20 In 1787, the Governor General Lord Cornwallis established the Royal Botanical Garden at Shibpur, right across the river from Calcutta. From here, William Roxburgh (1751–1815), a Scottish surgeon and botanist employed by the East India Company and hailed by some as the “father of Indian botany,” attempted a systematic tabulation of Indian plants in the Linnaean tradition. Plants and samples were collected from all parts of the country and sent to the garden in Calcutta, and thereon to the Kew in London. Meanwhile, a small museum was attached to the Asiatic Society to house archeological, geological, technical, geological and zoological exhibits in 1814. The Calcutta Medical and Physical Society was added to the Asiatic Society in 1823. The type of knowledge produced at the colonial center of calculation, and the amount of native support, collaboration or persistence of indegenous forms in this knowledge has been a subject of great debate amongst historians.21 While a small group of Indian artists aided Roxburgh in his attempts to produce an exhaustive set of natural history drawings,22 and Rennell oversaw a juxtaposition of disparate traditions on the same map,23 it will suffice to recapitulate that while knowledge produced in the colonial center was hybrid in nature,24 the power to classify lay with the practitioners of European science and medicine. It was as the manager of the Asiatic Society, that Jones produced a statement on the beauty and antiquity of the Sanskrit language. The statement clarifies why Jones’ analysis of Indian civilization seems to set him apart from the judgmental assessments of India’s contributions to the arts, letters and sciences that were to follow later in the century, and is possibly the most widely quoted of his works: The Sanskrit language, whatever may be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either … no philologer could examine the Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists.25 It was this statement of linguistic common descent that inspired Prichard to adopt and elaborate on the ethnological category of Aryan in his Natural History of


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Mankind. The idea of the derivation of extant languages from a common source that no longer existed provided a key analogy for monogenetic race theory, the doctrine that all of humankind had originated from a single pair that was perhaps no longer identifiable.26 More importantly, Jones inspired the development of the Prichardian method, which turned simultaneously to physical and cultural facts to understand the history of the races. To Prichard, the structure of languages bore a permanency lacking in the “direct authority of history” and constituted superior evidence for any quest for the origin of nations.27 Besides providing an inspired analogy that brought comparative philology and comparative anatomy to the service of the study of ethnology, languages were also perceived as ethnological clues to the deep structure of civilizations, much like mythological systems, civilian and religious institutions, and the law.28 As a jurist, one of Jones’ self-confessed desires was to be the “Justinian of India.” To master the existing systems of law in India, and to have them codified and explained, he wanted to prepare a complete digest of Hindu and Muhammadan law, with a little help from learned native pundits and Muhammadan lawyers. He did not live to complete this task, but he did publish a “translation” of the Institutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Menu in 1799, which were believed to be the foundation of ancient Hindu law. Citing Jones’ translation, Prichard pointed to the remarkable correspondences in the social structure of the ancient Indians and the Egyptian “castes” to conclude, “these singular arrangements are such, that they manifestly cannot have been produced by accident.”29 Likewise, from Jones’ “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India,” Prichard drew conclusions about the apparent parallels between Siva and Parvati, alternatively Iswara and Isi, to the Egyptian Isiris and Isis.30 In comparing the physical characteristics of different groups of people, Prichard turned to William Jones’ “On the family of nations,” to suggest that the physical features of the inhabitants of the hilly districts of Bengal could hardly be distinguished from that of the modern Ethiopians.31 Once knowledge of India was made mobile in the form of texts and specimens and circulated by institutions such as the Asiatic Society, it could be transmitted to the metropolis, for further processing by men such as Prichard.32 Prichard’s incorporation of the linguistic analogy in ethnology, and his view of language as a symptom of race, was a crucial intervention in the Aryan idea. In a comprehensive exploration of the Aryan idea in the British–Indian connection, Thomas Trautmann has contrasted the eighteenth-century discourse on Aryanism with the hate-filled connotations of the term in twentieth-century European history. “At the risk of being misunderstood,” he chooses to characterize the Indian story of Aryanism as a “story of love,” an inquiry into the relationship between Briton and Indian that yielded the unexpected news that the two were longlost brethren.33 Despite this “unexpected good news,” as Joan Leopold has clarified of the use of Aryan race theory in India, “even its adherents modified it with proofs of India’s historical inferiority in order to justify British Indian imperialism, urge it to be more conciliatory and convince the natives not to reject it.”34 Further, as we shall see, the first instantiation of the Aryan idea in ethnology was overwritten by


Diagnosing character 29 alterity and haunted by the prospect of physiognomic blackness. A “discourse of difference” was woven into the discourse of kinship.35 This vision of kinship as the paradigm of colonial interaction in British India in the late eighteenth-century derives from the belief that language and physique told the same story, and the study of physique was clearly subordinate in early discourses on Aryanism.36 This would seem to confirm the view that Mark Harrison offers in his reading of colonial medical discourses on racial constitutions: that the late nineteenth century biologization of race was a clear break from this “dialogic” understanding of difference earlier. Prichard’s own description of his method contradicts this interpretation, for a study of the “historical characters of nations of human races,” of which a key component was the study of the structural relationship between languages, was combined with methods “founded on physiology, or the laws of animal economy, that may serve to elucidate the relation of different tribes to each other in respect to their physical characters and constitution.”37 For the first part of his method, Prichard had leant heavily on Jones and his center of calculation at the Asiatic Society. For the second part of his investigation, Prichard relied in large part on colonial medical discourse. For no one had struggled harder to understand the impact of climates on constitutions than colonial doctors had done. This discussion on the impact of place on bodily and social constitution provided a counterpoint to the analogies between language and man.

Race, place and colonial medicine William Jones died of an inflamed liver before he could fulfill his significant ambitions in the east. Uncannily, he had died of a disease of the abdominal cavity, which seemed to confirm colonial medical commonsense. Colonial settlement in tropical environs had long generated speculations on the impact of “airs, waters, and places” on human bodies and diseases, in the manner of Hippocrates, and it was often stated that the human body itself was divided into tropical and temperate parts: “As the two hemispheres are divided, the eastern from the western, by the meridional line, so the diaphragm separates the two great cavities of the body.”38 Even as late as the 1930s it was believed that Indian climates produced disease of the abdominal cavity, Europe, of the thoracic cavity. Anxieties about colonial settlement had spurred entire subgenres of medical literature on “diseases of warm climates” and medical topographies that fixated on the impact of climate on human constitutions. A suitable reconciliation of the constitutional anxieties captured in and generated by these medical narratives provided one of the unarticulated motivations for Prichardian ethnology. The study of the relationship between disease, race and climate was inaugurated in Philip Curtin’s seminal study on Africa in 1864.39 These ideas have been developed in more recent works, which have suggested that major cultural myths – racial, cultural and theological – were built on a differential susceptibility to disease.40 The “tropics” of medical writing flowed out of the imaginary lines of the geographers, and tropical nature stood for many different qualities within


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European literary and scientific representations: heat and warmth, a dangerous and diseased environment, a place of superabundant fertility and fatal excess, lazy sensuality and sexuality, haunted by racial mixing and degeneration.41 David Arnold has suggested that the “tropics” of nineteenth century discourse represented more than a geographical concept; it signified a place of radical otherness to the temperate world, with which it was contrasted, and which it helped constitute.42 While the writing and images circulating on the tropics confirmed an imagery of tropical pathology, the relationship between the tropics and race in medical discourse was far from straightforward. Questions of disease location and racial immunity were only part of the bigger picture; questions of race came to the forefront in the biogeographical considerations that the tropics invoked, for climates were believed to have fitted human constitutions for their particular geographical locations, where they could thrive.43 In a key tract on “diseases of warm climates,” first published in 1828, James Annesley emphasized the “obvious and intimate relationship between the earth’s surface and the human species.” He underlined that the soil and atmosphere exerted an influence on the “mental and corporeal constitution of man” and the diseases to which he was susceptible. These environmental factors did not merely determine man’s susceptibility to certain diseases, but were also the Most productive although the most remote causes of national character – of advancement in all arts, sciences and refinements of life in some countries, and of moral and physical debasement in others. In one, their beneficent operation may be traced in the freedom, prosperity, and greatness of its inhabitants; in another, their noxious influences are manifest in the degenerate and debased condition of the species, whose wants, habits, enjoyments and desires, seldom surpass those of higher animals. In short, the constitution of the atmosphere derived from soil and situation ... are not only the productive sources of disease, but also the chief spring of the perfection of the human frame, and of its degeneracy – the influential causes of the various degrees of human science presented to us in different kingdoms of the world – of the freedom and greatness of nations, and of their enslaved and degraded conditions – of the rise and downfall of empires. They should equally interest the scientific physician, the philosopher, the enlightened legislator, and the arbiters of the fate of nations.44 Annesley was here evoking the many meanings of the term “constitution,” which related to environment, body and political norms. The effect of climates in molding human bodies and national histories indicated that these connections were not just crucial to the colonial project in terms of comprehending disease, but provided a scientific way of understanding the colonial subject. He thus made explicit the overlapping interests of the scientific physician and enlightened legislator; the cure of Indian pathologies was to be the goal of rational governance in the colony. In pointing to the ethnological significance of colonial medicine, Annesley also seized upon the problem posed to colonial settlement by the concept of degeneration, a central trope in monogenetic race theories.


Diagnosing character 31 The idea of degeneration linked physical and moral qualities of human societies, just as it brought together the natural and cultural histories of the human species. In the most succinct and simple explanation for human variation through processes of degeneration, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), German physician, physiologist and anthropologist, had emphasized that all the varieties of men belonged to the same species, and that variety was caused by the degeneration of a migrating common stock. These traits were subsequently inherited and led to the formation of races. Degeneration was the explanation for the five varieties of mankind in his schema: the Mongolian and the Ethiopian were extreme degenerations of the human species, while the American was in transition between Caucasian and Mongolian, and the Malay was located between Caucasian and Ethiopian.45 The degree of deviation from the white intermediate type to the two extremes was a factor of the longer or stronger influence of different climates on the migrating stock. As skin color and physical features varied according to climate, mode of life, the influence of soil and temperature, degeneration could cause white to pass into black and vice versa.46 This, however, was not a convenient prospect for colonization or the rule of difference in the long term. In India, while colonial medical men had already established that European troops in India became sick and “enervated,” and settlers lost their “vigor” over time, it was not the threat of strange diseases and tropical lethargy that posed the biggest threat. Drawing out the full significance of tropical degeneration, Annesley suggested that Indian climes molded settlers into a new race. The “malarious environs” of India, he insisted, tended “to limit the extension of, or entirely cut off, a native white population, either by producing certain diseases … or altogether blighting this variety of our species in their early youth …”47 In Annesley’s opinion, children born of white or European parents in India had to be sent to Europe to attain due maturity and strength; if the parents too had been born in India, then the offspring were weaker still, and “less likely to … reach the full physical development of the white variety of the species.”48 Annesley was not alone in taking such a pessimistic view of colonial settlement. James Johnson, a surgeon and author of a work on the impact of tropical climates on European constitutions also emphasized the problem posed to projects of colonization by theories of climatic degeneration.49 In the seventh edition of his book, originally published in 1813, and substantially rewritten by James Ranald Martin in 1856, Martin commented that although variations within the human species were not the immediate concern of the book, “one cannot help remarking that, if the native of Bengal proper is to be classed among the Caucasians – the standard of human race – the effects of climate and locality must indeed be great and remarkable.”50 James Martin noticed that while it seemed that the Indians and Europeans had only superficial differences of color, size and form: They are nevertheless moulded by a great variety of climates, localities, habits of life, diet, occupation &c, so as to constitute in reality a people varying exceedingly in moral and intellectual qualities, in physical powers and appearances … Of Caucasian origin, but exposed during countless generations to the same

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succession of external influences of high temperature, and corresponding habits of life and diet, receiving the same reiterated impressions peculiar to climate and religion, an acquired temperament is formed, which constitutes the Hindu and Mahomedan, men differing widely, morally and physically, from Europeans.51 In a rich analysis of such nineteenth-century medical topographies, Mark Harrison points to the peculiar problem posed by an increasingly rigid definition of race to colonial settlement: in the racial fluidity of the previous centuries when climates were seen to mold and transform human constitutions, Europeans could get seasoned, or acclimatized to strange environs that they came to inhabit, gradually acquiring racial immunities that would allow them to survive tropical assaults on the “tender frame of man.” Thus, he argues, the idea of the tropics was not, strictly speaking, racialized, and images of tropicality underlined European vulnerability in colonial (dis)locations, as much as they emphasized European superiority. A shift to more rigidly biological definition mid-century gave rise to a “doctrine of pessimism,” fanning the anxiety that the European would never be completely at home in the tropics, that he would suffer disease and enervation, and walk to an early grave.52 While it is true that the ideas of “seasoning” and “acclimatization” might have mitigated pessimism about colonization, they also brought with them the fear of degeneration: it was believed that prolonged exposure to the tropics would cause Europeans to degenerate over time, with a consequent loss of the superior qualities that had enabled them to hold down vast colonized populations. In the words of a colonial doctor, with firsthand experience of the climate of Bengal, “The enervating atmosphere of the climate of Bengal would dwarf a race of giants in three generations, if they lasted so long.”53 The racial underpinnings of this anxiety are best captured in the ethnological query framed by another doctor: “[W]ill … the fair complexion of Europeans … in two or three generations, acquire the sable aspect of intertropical natives, by exchanging situations?”54 The doctor’s own answer to his original question on the transmutation of constitutions by climates, rephrased as “Can the Ethiopian change his hue” was a resounding “absolutely not.” In other words, the medical pessimism of this formulation – India would never be home for the European, was compensated for by racial optimism – the Briton would never become black, or the Indian white. Racial and social distance could be maintained in perpetuity.55 Drawing on colonial medical literature, and partially resolving its paradoxes, James Cowles Prichard introduced more and more qualifiers into the theory of degeneration as an explanation for human diversity, making acclimatization a possibility while negating the possibility of total degeneration. Even as he drew upon Blumenbach’s work, Prichard vehemently denied the thesis that men could turn from black to white and vice versa. Prichard asserted that differences between the European and the Negro could not be ascribed to climate, for “no change of climate, however great, or for whatever period of time its influence might be exerted, could transform a race of the former people into one of the latter, or even make them approximate in any considerable degree.”56 So what about his theory of Aryan kinship?

Diagnosing character 33 In Prichard’s monogenetic vision, the category Iranian or Aryan embraced


all tribes from the mountains of Himalaya to the Indian ocean, including the whole of Hindoostan and the Deccan, as well as Persia and Arabia, and from the Ganges in the east to the borders of the Atlantic, comprising the North of Africa and the whole of Europe. Yet, he added, there were important differences between each of these. He wrote that the “Iranian” came in “… all shades, from the white and florid color of the northern Europeans, to the jet black of many tribes in Lybia … In many races … the type has degenerated ... The Indians display some differences in the configuration of the skull.”57 This was a significant shift in ways of marking difference, which emphasized the permanence of varieties, molded by historical progress or degeneration, rather than the spatial distribution of species. With the introduction of “permanent varieties” into the discussion of race, the idea of biological essences was not far behind. Rejecting the influence of climate in molding basic racial markers, Prichard had refused to accept that the sun played any part in modifying the color of skin. He suggested it was necessary to pay attention not to the class of external powers, which produce changes on individuals in their own persons, but to those more important causes, which, acting on the parents, influence them to produce an offspring endowed with certain peculiar characteristics which … become hereditary, and thus modify the race.58 The changes produced by external causes on the appearance, such as a darkening of skin color due to the sun, could not be transmitted to the progeny. The proof of this thesis on the relation between skin color and race was discovered in Rammohun Roy. In 1833, you will recall, Prichard had met Roy. A few years later, in the volume on European nations in the third edition of Prichard’s Researches, Roy appeared as an illustration of “a specimen of colour approaching to black in a tribe of the IndoEuropean stock.” In the volume on the Asiatic races, Prichard referred again to the image and added “Ram-Mohun-Roy was much darker than many Africans.”59 Speculating on Rammohun’s “jet-black skin,” Prichard declared that as Brahmins of high caste placed severe restrictions on intermarriage with other castes within India, Rammohun’s complexion could not be ascribed to an intermixture with the blood of darker groups. Nor could his skin have been darkened by exposure to the sun, for he was “blacker than many peasants.” “If genuine Brahmins of high and pure caste are black, which is a fact,” he wrote, referring to Roy, then the conjecture on the correspondence of caste and skin color fell apart. “Since there are black Hindoos in Proper Hindustan, and even some black Brahmins of high caste,” there were no consistent relations between climate and skin either, within India. To Prichard this proved, first, that skin color was not a true indicator of racial difference, and second, that climate was not a good explanation for human variation.60 Rammohun’s accidental blackness was one of the quirky modifications that had become hereditary in successive generations.


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Despite the nods to such occasional quirks, Prichard saw human history as an unfolding of the laws of nature. This was in keeping with a tendency, within a broadly defined liberal politics, to govern according to nature’s laws, or conversely, to justify governmental practice as approximating the natural order of things.61 Suggesting a modification to the general law, “the warmer the climate, other circumstances being equal, so much the shorter is the average duration of human life,” he argued that it was not climate per se which determined length of life, but other criteria such as disease, conditions of savagery, unhealthy conditions or exposure to the elements.62 The “natural history” of man was becoming linked to the position occupied by human groups along a scale from savagery to civilization. Reworking William Jones’ thesis on the Indo-European languages, and drawing upon a comparative method illuminated by the linguistic analogy, Prichard proposed a theory of race in which culture became coded as biological inheritance, and the natural body was fundamentally acculturated. This was the significance of the black Aryan, a creature defined equally by nature and culture, history and natural history. An entwinement of the overlapping but deliberately separated categories of analysis – race and culture – was complete when Prichard proposed a positive correlation between culture and color. According to him Negroes in the same climate varied physically in accordance with their civilizational achievements, while American Indians in different climates were of the same color. This suggested to Prichard, “the process of Nature in the human species is the transmutation of the characters of the Negro into those of the European, or the evolution of white varieties in black races of men.”63 Going against the grain of ethnological and religious commonsense of the time Prichard had insisted, in the first edition of Physical History, that the original color of all of humankind had been black. Variation in skin tone was not caused by degeneration due to climatic factors, but by the whitening effects of civilization. He made this argument early on, in the 1813 edition of his work: “Civilized life holds the same relation to the condition of the savages in the human race, which the domesticated race holds to the natural and wild condition among the inferior animals.”64 This last point, of civilization pushing mankind towards paleness of skin, “proved too controversial” according to Prichard’s biographer H. F. Augstein, and he abandoned it in later editions of his work.65 Before this change, these two points, the impossibility of turning from white to black and the whitening influence of civilization, when taken together, had a perfect fit with the liberal impulse to improve and cure. Of the Victorian sickroom was born the “black Aryan,” kin and other. If the crossed paths of Prichard and Roy may suggest an embodied instance of colonial contact and exchange, of Indian influence on the British sciences, it also stands for empire as cure, as an encounter between English doctor and Indian patient. While their meeting highlights the role of imperial serendipity, the transformation of the “father of modern India” into a particular type of biped specimen in the imperial catalog is a reminder that such chance meetings occurred on an unequal terrain. In any case, the encounter precipitated the dominant paradigm of Victorian ethnology. The theorization of culture and the emphasis on the resonance between character and constitution in Prichardian ethnology cohered with the invocation of like terms in


Diagnosing character 35 imperial liberal discourse. Each of these concurred on the idea of a body – biological and political – that was eminently racialized, but could be reformed, to a degree, by a modification of cultural and institutional influences. Roy was, in this sense, an icon of the success of the liberal pedagogical regime, a premonition of Macaulay’s vision of the anglicized native, attaining a degree of Englishness while remaining somatically marked as other. In the jet-black Aryan lies the key to the reconciliation of liberalism and racialist thought in the British Indian empire and a hint to the haunted overlappings of race and culture in the history of man. The decades from the 1830s to 1850s saw a further development of this resolution, when a new generation of ethnologists broke away from Prichard’s monogenesis, but held on to the method of combining natural historical and historical evidence to “prove” the original diversity of the human races, on the one hand, and to defend the fundamental tenets of imperial liberalism, on the other.

Liberty, profit and polygenesis A prominent colonial actor amongst this new generation of ethnologists was John Crawfurd (1783–1868), a Scottish physician and officer in the Indian Medical Service since 1803. Crawfurd inhabited the webs of empire in south and south-east Asia, as he closely followed the method of “analogical investigations” established by Prichard through his career. Crawfurd served in 1826 as the civil commissioner of the British government in Rangoon for six months, before he proceeded to Ava as the head of an envoy to negotiate a peace treaty after the Anglo-Burmese war. In this mission to serve science and empire, he was accompanied by Dr Nathaniel Wallich, Superintendent of the Government Botanical Garden in Calcutta, whose task was to report on the resources of the forests of Pegu and Ava. In the accounts published by Crawfurd upon his return to Britain in 1829, descriptions of the flora, fauna and minerals of the region jostle for space with discussions of the habits and religious ceremonies of the Burmese, their physical appearance and speculations on the nature of the people. Wearing his ethnologist’s hat to his diplomatic encounters, he described one of the Wungwi he negotiated with as tall for a Burman, and, instead of the squat form which distinguishes the race generally, his figure was slender; his complexion, much fairer than usual; and his features, especially his nose, more distinct and better formed than common: his eyes, however, were Chinese. His manner was cheerful, unconstrained, and not undignified. He had, in short, the manners of an Asiatic gentleman. Contemplating the dancing styles of the Indians, the Burmese and the Europeans, Crawfurd speculated on the influence of climates on their bodies, and hence on their movements. Of the Burmese dance style, he wrote: It consists more of the movements of the body and hands than that of the feet; and there was little to admire in it, for a European, beyond the display which

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it afforded of the flexibility of fibre which distinguishes the natives of a tropical from those of a temperate region, and which I have nowhere seen more remarkable than among the Hindoo Chinese races. In these I have seen the elbow bent back in so singular a manner, as to appear like a partial dislocation or malconformation of the part.66 It seems that physical dislocations were merely the tip of the complex of pathological formations that the Asiatics had inherited and the British had to cure, for Crawfurd put his medical training and ethnological temperament to use in rationalizing his political and diplomatic assignments in colonial situations. A strong proponent of free trade, he aggressively demanded that the Indian government abandon the strange façade of protecting the weaker Indian community from the stronger and more energetic Europeans. Only through the stimulating effects of competition, he believed, would the feeble race of Indians get invigorated, and progress along the scale of society.67 It is not hard to believe that this faith was justified via his considerable ethnological deliberations, and later, as President of the Ethnological Society of London from 1863 to 1868, Crawfurd published over 30 articles on the scientific and political implications of race. George Stocking has provided a thorough institutional history of the differences between the Aboriginal Protection Society (APS), the Ethnological Society of London (ESL), and the Anthropological Society; I emphasize the colonial facets of the debates here. The ESL, Stocking notes, abandoned the active humanitarian involvement of the APS, but continued to hold on to the doctrine of original human unity. Their favored methodological tool was the comparison of languages to establish affinities between physically disparate groups. In the 1850s, the society was losing ground to physical anthropology; but the Ethnological Society was revived under the presidentship of John Crawfurd, recently returned from Java and Singapore.68 Crawfurd’s works on race bear testimony to his use of the analogical method and his polygenetic leanings. In other words Crawfurd used Prichard’s analogical method, carefully combining the cultural and natural-historical evidence of human difference, while he moved away from Prichard’s monogenetic convictions.69 We have seen that Prichard had rejected climatic explanations for human difference, while highlighting the role of civilizational influences. Pushing this argument to a logical conclusion, Crawfurd suggested that due allowances being made for differences in physical environment, any difference in the level of civilization between Europeans and Asiatics could only be attributed to differences of natural capacity, or differences in physical, intellectual and moral qualities. Rejecting the admiration of the early Orientalists for the ancient achievements of non-western cultures, he argued that the Vedas, the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, were all examples of “magnitude and durability, but without any purpose of usefulness or ornament.” Evoking the childhood metaphor which was to become a staple of imperial liberalism, he suggested that such artifacts merely confirmed the “precocity” of the eastern nations.70 Crawfurd listed a series of cultural factors that were simultaneously the symptom, cause and proof of the racial inferiority of the Hindoos. These included their style of government – despotic; their treatment of


Diagnosing character 37 women – indicated by customs of polygamy, child marriage, concubinage; and their religions – polytheistic and superstitious.71 The cultural-hereditarian theory of the body, largely a creation of Prichard’s inspired refusal to attribute racial transformation to climate, had initially allowed a way out of the double bind of degeneration. Now, it created a scientific idiom for the articulation of Indian pathologies and a justification of empire as a mission to cure. The consistent overlaps between Crawfurd’s ethnological theories and the lofty ideals of imperial liberalism are clarified in one of his earlier works from 1834, “a faithful account of barbarous countries suffering under slavery and superstition,” dedicated to King George the Fourth, “the Sovereign of the greatest of the free nations.” The dedication confirms the utility of the work to the colonial government in India and is a paean to enlightened imperialism: In contemplating the unhappy lot of tyrants, debased and corrupted by the absolute power which they are doomed to exercise, your Majesty may now see new reason to be gratified with the constitutional exertion of authority by which you redress the grievances of your subjects, and enlarge the fabric of civil and religious liberty … A comparison of the conditions of the people of the British territories with that of the subjects of the surrounding states is sufficient to show the beneficial power of the English Constitution, even in its remote and faint influence; and to awaken sanguine hopes of the blessings that await your Indian subjects72 Besides lauding the imperial mission to cure, which would inevitably improve the colonial subjects, Crawfurd also offered consolation that the imperial control of India would last forever. The proof of the superiority of the European nations lay in their ability to wage successful wars and colonize peoples, according to Crawfurd. Given these assertions, the so-called revolt of 1857 registered sharply on the ethnological commonsense of the time. If the anxieties of a race of rulers who were a minority in a vast empire had been hidden under the façade of imperial confidence, a liberal faith in the universal qualities of mankind, and in the teleology of progress, the tensions burst through the surface after the revolt. In 1857, when some of the native troops of the British Indian army mutinied in an uncannily coordinated sequence of revolts, and eventually, albeit for a very short time, reinstated the Mughal ruler in Delhi as the emperor, racial tensions reached a peak. English families were murdered brutally, stories of murder and rape of English women circulated widely. In retaliation, sepoys were blown from cannons if suspected of mutiny, villagers were shot or hanged, and Delhi was sacked. Before the mutiny, the very air was pregnant with rumor: one that suggested that the Company’s ammunition was greased with the fat of pig and cows, is believed to have triggered the revolt. After the revolt, another medicalized rumor emerged fueling anxieties on the European side: the mutineers had deliberately chosen the hottest months of the year to launch their attack, to hit the European when his vitality was at its lowest. After the revolt, racial tensions were brought to a head. A number of precautionary measures were put in place. The numbers of British officers to native soldiers

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was increased. The British Indian army began to recruit along ethnic lines, aided by a theory of “martial races” that distinguished between the loyal, “manly” races and the disloyal, “effeminate” races.73 A typical reaction was to condemn the native of India as a race apart, an irrational and ungrateful lot that had militated against the state’s attempts to improve their condition.74 Crawfurd provided a version of this argument, and insisted that the final outcome – the defeat of the natives – proved Indian inferiority: The Hindus and Persians have imitated the tactics and organization of the armies of Europe to little purpose. Forty thousand Sepoys, disciplined by ourselves, but deprived of the European officers who alone gave them spirit, cohesion, and confidence, got by chance possession of a well-provided and fortified arsenal; but Delhi was besieged, stormed and captured by a European force which did not exceed one-eighth part of the number of the mutineer garrison.75 The prolific production of statistics on disease, death, racial types in the years that followed was, in large part, triggered by the anxieties generated amongst the ruling race.76 The army statistics confirmed the worst fears: the climate seemed to kill more than combat, and those who survived seemed to get weaker over the years. James Martin produced military statistics that “proved” that the European army had “disappeared in Bengal in about ten and a half years; in Bombay in thirteen and a half; in Madras in seventeen and a half; or in all of India, in about thirteen and a half years.”77 These statistics made their way into Britain and were extensively used in an important article by James Hunt (1833–1869), the founder of the Anthropological Society with its polygenist leanings, the group that broke away from the Ethnological Society that Prichard had founded, and Crawfurd had subsequently presided over. One of the rationales for the new society founded in 1863 was a desire to see a group devoting its primary attention to a study of the “anatomical aspects of ethnology.”78 The aim, for him, was to transcend Prichard, whose works, to the disgrace of science, remained the textbooks of the day. In an article that made explicit the relationship between climate, racial anxieties and colonial politics, and rejected the theory of human cosmopolitanism,79 Hunt proposed a new science of ethno-climatology, to “discover the laws which regulate the health of man in his migrations over the world.”80 Hunt sought a “physiological system of colonization” based on an understanding of the “geography of disease.”81 While agreeing that plants and animals varied in different climates, he emphasized other factors: “the mental power of the race” and the “purity of blood” apparently modified the influence of climate on European constitutions.82 “As the rose will under no change of external circumstances become a blackberry, so neither will a dog become a wolf, nor a European an African Negro,” he added, reassuringly. Hunt was responding to and reflecting the anxieties generated by the theories, facts and statistics generated by colonial medical men.83 He quoted James Ranald Martin’s assertion that Europeans at the bank of the Ganges would inevitably fall victim to climate and that “the successors of all would gradually and assuredly degenerate … the third generation of unmixed Europeans is nowhere to be found in

Diagnosing character 39


Bengal.” He evoked Dr Ewart, Professor of Midwifery at the Calcutta Medical College: “Our race in process of time undergoes deterioration, physically and intellectually, with each succeeding generation, and ultimately ceases to multiply and replenish the earth.”84 Military returns were considered particularly important; Hunt asserted that military statistics, “properly organized and digested, served as the most useful guides to point out the limits intended by nature for particular races, … which neither the pursuit of wealth not the dreams of ambition would induce them to pass.” Referring to Julius Jeffreys’ 1858 work on the health of the army in India, he underlined that Few children of pure English blood can be reared in the plains of India, and of that few the majority have constitutions which might cause them to envy the lot of those who die in their childhood … the soldiery leave no descendants of unmixed blood. These works cited by Hunt had been published in the years after 1857 in India, and reflected the attempts of colonial medical men, administrators and army statisticians to strengthen the European presence in India and prevent the events of 1857 from recurring. Besides changes in colonial policy, the aftermath of the revolt also saw a hectic generation of military and medical statistics, which had a very concrete influence in the work of at least one significant British polygenist. Of course, Hunt did not make explicit the local context of the statistics he used, and reproduced them as neutral evidence derived from the “science of sciences” – statistical science. Nor could any such theoretical reconciliations of the problem of man assuage colonial anxieties; statistics elicited more statistics and new questions were generated as old ones were answered. A committee to inquire into the progress of European colonization and settlement in India was appointed right after the revolt:85 Was it climate, or other factors, that caused Europeans to lose their racial vigor in the colony? Would they be better off in the hills? Was it wise for a white soldier to cohabit with a native woman? Were there differences of degree in the various types of Eurasians descended from mothers of different races? As Ann Laura Stoler has suggested: Pathos and statistics may seem a strange pairing but both were at the political heart of state inquiries. Some commission reports were searingly detailed; some were impressionistic and abstract. Vignettes about the unnamed and anecdotes of the everyday established truth claims of the local officials, their local knowledge and ethnographic authority.86 The commission’s demands elicited just such vignettes and anecdotes, and each colonial resident claimed ethnographic authority. An army officer reiterated that we do not understand the native character, its habits of thought, its springs of action … When it is combined with the natural superiority of the Europeans its influence on the natives is irresistible ... It is like the mixture of two chemical substances, by which the latent qualities are developed.87


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At the same time, any mixture was to be produced in controlled environments: soldier’s children were to be relocated to hills and asylums, mixed marriages were to be avoided at all cost, for “although the half-castes possess occasionally many qualities of the European, still they have many of the vices of the natives.”88 The medical topographer and presidency-surgeon of Bengal, James Ranald Martin, appeared before the committee on April 15, 1858, and confirmed that “there is no example of a third generation of Europeans born in India.”89 One respondent confirmed the commonsensical slippage between the cultural and the racial: with marriage an Englishman “becomes domesticated in Indian habits, he volunteers to remain in India when his regiment comes home, he becomes an old Indian, in fact, an indolent man, and too much domesticated in India.”90 Mr J. P. Wise suggested, significantly, that it was the lack of education and not climate per se that made the second and third generations degenerate. These inquiries, framed in response to a crisis, generated greater anxiety, perhaps, or served to suspend and delay finalities while producing more facts about race. These anxious vignettes from the colonies were transformed into ethnological facts in the metropolis by men such as James Hunt. Historians of anthropology have commented on Hunt’s explicit antiDarwinianism, for he saw in Darwinian ideas a reassertion of the Prichardian doctrine of the unity of mankind. The basic orientation of the ASL was uncongenial to a developmental view of man, Stocking suggests.91 The embrace of polygenetic views, and the retreat from an optimism about colonial settlement and development, resonated with the general mood of the post-1857 moment. After the rebellion, the native of India was declared to be another race, while India was formally incorporated into the British Crown. Bernard Cohn has commented on the paradoxical development in the colonial state at this time. The formal declaration of a policy of non-intervention in local social practices, captured in the Queen’s proclamation of 1858, coincided with a normalization of an extended regime of state control through diverse “modalities of rule.”92 This affirmation of respect for the “ancient rights, usages and customs” of the natives, while continuing on the quest to cure the social body, is perhaps the formalization of the strategic deployment of “culture” that would mark the liberal empire in the late century. An admission of essential difference, and a pessimism about improvement by forced intervention: these were the lessons of Hunt’s diversitarian or polygenetic views as well. While the polygenetic views of Crawfurd had been allied with a liberal imperialist view on the colonies, Hunt launched an assault on the “religious mania, and the rights-ofman mania,”93 rejecting both the mission to civilize, and the quest to cure. In his account of these institutional shifts, Stocking concludes that the anthropologists “took for granted the British Empire and the White Man’s Burden, but it was not actively concerned with either colonial policy or savage uplift.”94 I would suggest , instead, that the question of race science could not be separated from the question of colonization. The colonies provided key questions, raw materials and clues, and an urgency to the science of man. While it might be an exaggeration to suggest that Victorian anthropology was driven by colonial policy, it was most certainly a science haunted by empire.


Diagnosing character 41 The relationship between race theory and colonialism was anything but simple. At least one element in the monogenist’s toolkit – the theory of acclimatization – provided a rationale and hope for colonization in a way that the polygenetic thesis did not. A partial reconciliation lay in an understanding of race as the accumulation of cultural influences over time. Or perhaps, as Robert Young puts it, “the racial was always cultural, the essential never unequivocal”; “carrying much of the meaning that ‘culture’ carries today, ‘race’ was a kind of summation of historically accumulated moral differences sustained and slowly modified from generation to generation.”95 For the ethnologists, we have seen, the use of analogy, as scientific method and literary trope, served to thread together the natural-environmental and the human-cultural spheres.96 In this schema, the politics of colonization was mediated by nature’s laws, and physical degeneration was a political crisis. Such a stitching together of science and politics constituted a particularly strong (pre)text for colonization as a cure for Indian pathologies. To recapitulate, ethnology was a science developed in the shadow of empire, even though the colonial context of the production of the science was erased in becoming reconfigured in the metropolitan classics of race theorists such as James Cowles Prichard and James Hunt. Second, ethnology drew upon the discursive strategies of political theory and history while claiming a position of scientific objectivity, while scientific statistics, morbid specimens and medical texts were manufactured by colonial anxiety. And finally, the sciences of the body reframed questions on colonial politics as queries about nature.

Race science and imperial liberalism Let us return to the question with which we started: how did the liberal imperial project, based on an explicit disavowal of inherent natural difference, come to coincide with the formulation of an increasingly biologized race theory and an enhanced racism in colonial policy? Since the nineteenth century, empire – the governance of an alien territory by an occupying force – has almost unexceptionably been erected on theories of racial and cultural difference, while imperial governance has been rationalized as an improving influence on colonized population through the extension of certain principles of universal good. Despite the centrality of ethnological principles in a liberal justification for empire, historians have remained remarkably silent on this issue. The silence is striking in the case of otherwise complex and sophisticated histories of colonial India. The belief that race was relatively unimportant in colonial governance in India may be traced to two discrete strands of scholarship. The first tends to suggest that biologized notions of race were completely displaced by the Aryan idea, and the influence of comparative philology on ethnology, in the subcontinental case. A strong version of this argument takes the position that the Aryan idea, developed through the work of the late eighteenth-century Sanskritists in India, was a discourse on “kinship” between colonizer and colonized. It is suggested that a relatively easy corporal interaction and epistemic dialogue was displaced by increasingly biologized notions of race only with the


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development of “deeper,” anatomical forms of scientific knowledge in the latter half of the nineteenth century.97 Responding to these ideas, I have shown, instead, that the early nineteenth-century discussion on “civilization” within ethnological discourse was already biologized, and that the idea of culture was invariably racialized. Instead of focusing too closely on univocal discourses of “othering” that developed in stages or underwent rapid transformations, I highlight the “tactical polyvalence” of racial discourses. A second body of literature that serves to erase “race,” is focused on the political thought of liberals in empire, and homes in on another concept: the “ladder of civilization.” The apparent absence of race from liberal thought has been replicated in historiography with a silence on questions of race.98 This, despite the wide acceptance of the chronological correspondence in the development of liberal thought and colonial occupation. While imperial occupation might have seemed inconsistent with certain liberal principles such as tolerance, the right to representation, equality, consent and sovereignty of the people, it was perfectly consistent with another impulse which became determinative and singular in the context of empire – the impulse to better the world and civilize primitive others. Confronting this resolution of the “paradox” of liberalism, Jennifer Pitt has persuasively demonstrated that neither utilitarianism nor English liberalism was necessarily imperialist. While the superiority of European politics and culture was taken for granted by the mid-nineteenth century, by political thinkers and in broader political discourse, Pitt argues that this idea of superiority was decidedly not biological, and was theorized as cultural, political and economic. She suggests, for instance, that Jeremy Bentham was decidedly anti-racist, even culturally sensitive, for despite his arrogant desire to legislate for the world, he paid attention to the peculiarities caused by the influence of climate, custom, religion, prior laws and other factors that would make it necessary to adapt a standard legal code to each new location.99 It is the strategic ambiguity of such formulations, and the easy slippages between climate, custom, religion, prior laws and race in these discussions, which I have traced here. It is against this backdrop that the following chapters put forth an argument about the overlapping domains of race and culture, and a strategic deployment of a racialized concept of culture for the extension of some rights, and the denial of others, to colonial populations within a liberal structure. As Nancy Stepan puts it: By being embodied as qualitatively different in their substantial natures – by creating group identities in difference – communities of individuals were placed outside the liberal universe of freedom, equality, rights. In effect, a theory of politics and rights was transformed into an argument about nature; equality under liberalism was taken to be a matter not of ethics, but of anatomy.100 A further clue to the philosophical resolution of race and liberalism, anatomy and ethics, and the biosocial basis of this reconciliation, lies in the childhood metaphor that is so often invoked in liberal discourse.101 A central idea of liberal


Diagnosing character 43 political doctrine was what has been termed the “teleology of progress.” James Mill suggested a direct correspondence between a society’s stage of historical development, indicated by their customs, laws, sacred and secular literatures, and the mental capacities of its members. While his son, J. S. Mill, was far subtler in his views on social development and national character, he persisted with a rough dichotomy between savage and civilized. More importantly, he rendered diversity as variation along a single axis of progress. Further confirming the biosocial basis of this idea, he evoked an analogy between barbarians and children to suggest that the liberal dogma of minimal interference in people’s lives by the state allowed for some exceptions: children “who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury,” and, analogously, backward societies, “in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.” The analogy between childhood and primitiveness rested on what is called “recapitulation theory” in nineteenth-century sexology and ethnology, which linked the life history of the individual with the history of the species.102 In this understanding, an individual was seen to retrace the history of its race, passing from primitiveness to maturity within its life history. In the transference from anatomical observation to ethical understanding, children, women, and primitives were all seen to lie in that chronological “nonage” that justified the suspension of liberal norms. The connections of racialism103 and liberalism are further clarified in the next chapter through a colonial history of a defeated science, phrenology. While colonial artifacts were taken as proof of phrenological truths, these truths in turn rationalized a particular style of colonial governance. Rammohun Roy returns as a ghostly presence in this history of colonial phrenology, for Roy had collected a sample of typical Hindu skulls to make his own contribution to the empire of science. In the end, his own skull, or rather a likeness of it, was manipulated endlessly for the science of empire.

3

Standard deviation


“National character,” phrenology and a science of government

The mental capacity of an individual, at any given time, is the result of his natural endowment of faculties, modified by the circumstances in which he has been placed. The first element, or natural constitution, is admitted ... to form the basis of, and prescribe the limits to, the operation of the second ... A nation is composed of individuals, and what is true of all the parts ... must hold good of the whole; nevertheless the fashionable discourse is, that national character depends altogether on external circumstances. – George Combe, A System of Phrenology, 18601 That which alone causes any material interest to exist, which alone enables any body of human beings to exist in society, is national character: that it is, which causes one nation to succeed in what it attempts, another to fail; one nation to understand and aspire to elevated things, another to grovel in mean ones; which makes the greatness of one nation lasting, and dooms another to rapid and early decay ... A philosophy of laws and institutions, not founded on a philosophy of national character, is an absurdity. – John Stuart Mill, “Bentham,” 18382

To resolve some crucial questions about individual and national character, and their relation to history and to the future of government in the colonies, George Murray Paterson, a physician with the East India Company in Bengal, aided in part by Rammohun Roy, undertook a somewhat peculiar exercise. He carefully placed “in a row, one Hindoo skull between two European skulls, and one European skull, between two Hindoo skulls” and contemplated them for an hour or two at a time, for several days. He observed that the average size of the “Hindoo” matched that of a European of 15; he concluded that the mental energies and capacities are proportionate.3 While the method favored by Paterson may have fallen out of favor soon after and been condemned as pseudoscientific, his conclusions were not so laughable. In fact, they seemed to have a neat fit with a certain political philosophical commonsense on empire at the time, particularly with the idea that the native of India, tottering at the very childhood of societal development, must be guided to civilizational maturity by the “leading strings of empire.”4 Paterson was not alone in these attempts to determine the national character of groups of people and measure their deviations from certain standards in order to diagnose the modes of

Standard deviation 45 government suitable to their varied nature. Just as other experts of the body pondered over the impact of climates and social milieu on individual and national character, on bodily and political constitutions, Paterson chose phrenology to concretize imperial ideology as scientific fact. This chapter presents colonial phrenology as a transcript of imperial liberalism.


The government of mind in science and society It has been said that phrenology, the science of reading character from manipulating cranial bumps, revolutionized and democratized science in Victorian Britain. Responding to the key anxieties of the day, at home and in empire, and offering a simple rational explanation to the problem of human difference, individual and national, phrenology was at once radical and conservative. The phrenologists manipulated skulls to challenge the prevailing understandings of Man, God and Nature by discovering the startling fact that the brain was the “organ of mind.” For some, this correlation between structure and function in the “organ of mind” confirmed the natural basis of God’s laws. For others, it denied humans a soul. While subsequent developments in the psycho-sciences, on the one hand, and the popularization of phrenology as street knowledge, on the other, have led positivists to dismiss the science as nothing but mumbo-jumbo, phrenology was founded on sound scientific methods and principles of the day, and had tremendous intellectual and popular significance in its own historical context.5 Not unlike some other continental ideas, phrenology had initially been rejected as pseudoscientific and pseudo-philosophic by British scientific elites. Phrenology was developed on the continent by two German-born, Vienna-trained physicians, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) and his associate Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832). What were the fundamental facts of this new and controversial science? First, that the mind was not a single psychological entity but a congeries of organs, numbering between 27 and 33. Second, all things being equal, the size of the cerebral organ determined the power of its functions: a large organ of “intellect” indicated great mental capacity, a large one of “amativeness” amounted to a greater sexual appetite. Third, the contours of the skull followed that of the innate organs in a manner that one could diagnose the size of the organs from the bumps on the skull. This was termed the method of “physiological investigation.” The “proof” of phrenological principles did not rest on the study of cerebral anatomy at all, but on the correlations of observed behavior and external cranial contours. While the ocular proof of phrenology came from the skulls, statistics, busts and charts that were collected, measured, displayed and classified by experts, the observation of human behavior was crucial to the interpretation of these material artifacts. The system was perfected and rendered more “scientific,” so to speak, in the mid-1820s, when the “realistic” human head was replaced by a stylized sphere with the various organs clearly demarcated. The names of the organs were given a more serious tone: Gall’s Zeugungstrieb, the organ of sexual gratification, became Amativeness; Jugenliebe/Kinderliebe, the love of offspring, was rendered as Philoprogetiveness. These were further classified and organized according to a


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“natural” hierarchy, the superior organs were situated near the forehead, while the baser organs were relegated to the bottom of the skull. New societies with their official journals anointed the system as science. As the final step in this process of scientification, and replicating the methods of the medical profession in general, experts marginalized itinerant phrenologists and condemned them as inferior and corrupt practitioners of an otherwise legitimate science. As in the case of other sciences of the body, medical doctors were keen contributors to the new science. Of the 28 or so phrenological societies in Britain before 1840, some were wholly composed of medical men, while others had doctors and surgeons in their ranks. Phrenology also represented a significant conceptual triumph: it transformed abstract metaphysical conceptions into organic entities, and made abstract ideas about character accessible to the public and comprehensible to the practicalminded. When under attack, the proponents of phrenology posed as victims of orthodoxy, not unlike Galileo. Once successful, they flattered their followers’ rationalism, nationalism and liberalism. If social and economic interests shaped the fortunes of the science, the science also reflected and confirmed the organization of an emergent social order. The scientific, seemingly esoteric, classification of the cerebral organs in phrenology reflected at once a botanical arrangement of orders and genera, and a bourgeois moral order of hierarchies and classes. The phrenological focus on the head, as opposed to the hand, Roger Cooter suggests, placed intellect over labor in the organization of society. The organs of mind, too, were placed in a hierarchy, reflected in their physical location and numbering: Amativeness (No. 1) was at the base of the skull, while the perceptive and intellectual faculties (Nos. 22–35) were located higher up, near the forehead. If such an arrangement reflected and naturalized the arrangement of “virtues” and social classes in their context, the newly discovered organs of Time, Order and Concentrativeness reflected a bourgeois ethic. As a science that made its findings transparent, with its theory and practice easy to grasp, phrenology was also anti-elitist, and appealed to a democratizing impulse. The entwinement of science and society – inevitable but not invariable – was complete in Britain with George Combe’s entry upon the phrenological stage. His Constitution of Man, published in 1828, circulated more widely that Darwin’s Origin of Species would later in the century. The publication of Constitution popularized the science of phrenology, and it was seized upon as a vehicle of liberal social reform. While Combe was no radical, he popularized phrenology by making Spurzheim’s system cohere with the political and social context in Victorian Britain, and emphasized its practical relevance in the matters such as the reform of criminals and the reorganization of education. Combe insisted, for instance, that prisoners were not to be hanged or put to forced labor, but ought to be removed from their environment so that new moral influences could be fed into their evacuated faculties. While Bentham had rejected phrenology as a “sick man’s dream,” Combe managed to weld phrenology to a reformist impulse in a way that prompted a philosophical radical of the time to comment that Jeremy Bentham and James Mill would have hesitated to concur with anything Combe formulated.6 In his seminal work on the British reception of phrenology, Roger Cooter has argued


Standard deviation 47 convincingly that Combe helped consolidate the appeal of phrenology by attaching it successfully to an emergent bourgeois culture. Impressed and influenced by Malthus’ delineation of the “inevitable” laws of nature, and Smith’s prognosis of civilizational progress through an extended division of labor, Combe buttressed their ideas as phrenologically sound, and confirmed their basis in nature’s laws. Just as within Britain, it enabled a particular understanding of the self in relation to the world and ordered differences of race, class and gender into a simple schema, the extended project of phrenology helped explain the colonial order of things, and provided a further rationale for empire. As we have seen, the Constitution was more than a description of the natural relationship between man and his environment, it was literally a constitution for proper social behavior and daily living that preached the value of temperance, cleanliness, regular habits, work discipline, individualism, property rights and free trade. These aspects of phrenology – the ordering of mental functions to understand the character of man and nations, ordering nations in a schema of standard deviations, and the promise of social and political constitutions suited to their peculiar character – resonated with the desire to discipline colonial populations. A theory that suggested that the journey from unhappiness to happiness, immorality to morality, savagery to civilization, was to be attained not by subjugation and repression, but through liberty and freedom, based on an understanding of nature’s laws, held a certain appeal for rationalists and liberals involved in the imperial project. Spurzheim’s question on the universality of morality and its relationship to the law certainly had an imperial resonance: “Is the law or positive justice arbitrary? Or is there a natural law which ought to be universally acknowledged and obligatory to all countries?” To illustrate these differing universes of morality, Spurzheim referred in passing to sati, abolished in 1829, just a few years before the 1833 edition of his book: “The widow in Europe desires to have a good settlement made by a deceased husband: in India she desires to be burnt on his funeral pile.”7 It was the desire to govern men in accordance with their character, by laws fitted for them by nature, which encouraged the study of “national character,” a subfield of phrenology that had a particular relevance to the colonial situation.

National character and colonial situations In the colony, phrenological interest was channeled into the study of the character of groups, rather than individuals.8 This aspect of phrenology is often linked to the rise of polygenism in Victorian race science, and the general trends in the rise of physical anthropology which exhausted the culturalist focus of early nineteenthcentury ethnology.9 Even as Spurzheim had warned that there were individual differences in every nation, he had generalized about the races: “the foreheads of Negroes are narrow, and their talents for music and mathematics are also in general very limited. The Chinese are fond of colors, and have the eyebrows much vaulted.”10 He had urged the study of the “heads of different nations,” as a way of ascertaining group characteristics, and underlining that human behavior was the outcome of structures and functions of the mind that were fixed by heredity. The


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search for “national types” was particularly fruitful in the colonies and amongst races classified as inferior, for it was believed that primitive cultures gave rise to typical formations that remained largely unmarred by individual differences within the group.11 A study of many individual heads was assumed to lead to a representative average, a national or racial type. Phrenologists urged the collection of a large number of skulls from different nations so that the relative sizes of their heads could be established and correlated with various cultural manifestations.12 The colonies were a fertile ground from which material on comparative phrenology could be collected and the truths of phrenology confirmed. In discussing the influence of the size of brain on character, George Combe chose the “national character” of the colonized populations as an important example to elucidate a fundamental phrenological fact: Nations in whom the brain is large, possess so great a mental superiority over those in whom that organ is small, that they conquer and oppress them at pleasure. The Hindoo brain, for example, is considerably smaller than the European, and it is well known that a few thousands of Europeans, have subdued and kept in subjection millions of Hindoos. The Native American brain is smaller also than the European, and the same result is exemplified in that country.13 The colony, then, was not just a field where phrenological facts could be uncovered, it was also the place where the science would prove its utility by rationalizing colonial styles of government. Here, I take issue with Nancy Stepan’s suggestion that: Social and political factors such as the existence of black slavery in the Western world, or race relations in the British Empire, where the European always ruled the non-European, sometime with genuine care but always with an ineffable sense of his own mental, moral and even physical superiority, did not determine directly the specific form scientific arguments took about race.14 Phrenology linked national crania with physical anthropology, on the one hand, and to political philosophy, on the other. An “Essay on the Phrenological Causes of the Different Degrees of Liberty Enjoyed by Different Nations” that appeared in the very second volume of the Phrenological Journal and Miscellany published from Edinburgh in 1825, attempted to “subject the doctrines of political science to phrenological principles.” Defining liberty as “the exercise, at will, of the whole propensities, sentiments and intellectual faculties, in so far as this exercise is not prejudicial to, or inconsistent with the legitimate exercise of all or any of the faculties in others,”15 the author confirmed Montesquieu’s climatically-based dictum that “liberty is not the fruit of all nations”; only the method to demonstrate this truth had changed.


Standard deviation 49 Phrenologically, an individual was pronounced fit for liberty when the animal propensities, sentiments and intellectual faculties were balanced, so that “the excesses or abuses of the lower propensities are restrained by the possession and activity of the higher sentiments.”16 Those in whom the lower propensities predominated were to have their excesses restrained externally; the exact degree of external restraint, or the severity of the laws required to govern them was to be determined by the degree to which the baser propensities dominated. Those nations alone that displayed a fine balance of the three orders of faculties – animal propensities, sentiments and intellectual faculties – could acquire and enjoy the blessings of freedom. In Hindostan, George Lyon confirmed, the masses had been kept from developing their moral and intellectual faculties by the cunning Brahmins, and could never have been considered free as a nation. How was this capacity for freedom to be determined? According to the phrenologists, size did matter; independence was produced by a certain cerebral size: “without a considerable size in the brain, a nation can never maintain its independence, but, ceteris paribus, must inevitably fall before a nation more highly endowed in this respect.”17 The Britons, highly endowed with the faculties of morality and intellect had a natural advantage, but even if “their superiority had been in size alone ... still we might have witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of 40,000 Europeans maintaining an easy and peaceable sway over 100,000,000 of Asiatics.” Lyon hastened to add that these matters of size were relational; “the same Hindoos, when opposed to a people not better endowed than themselves, might have asserted their independence which they were unable to maintain against the superior cerebral size of the British.”18 The large size of certain organs gave the Briton a greater advantage: combativeness, destructiveness, firmness and a good endowment of the knowing faculties were necessary for the actual possession and preservation of independence; self-esteem and a big love of approbation promoted a desire for independence as “nothing is so galling as national servitude”; moderate Secretiveness preserved the nation. Without a large endowment of these organs, “no forces, natural or artificial, will protect a nation of slaves.”19 As the national character, defined by the size and relative dominance of certain organs of mind, in turn determined the capacity for freedom, the governmental style of each nation was to be determined by a careful study of this “character,” for free institutions were doomed to fail amongst nations lacking in the organs that made the exercise of liberty plausible. The skulls and casts of skulls in possession of the Phrenological Society from a variety of nations were used to demonstrate that “their respective laws and modes of government are in strict accordance with their phrenological development.”20 The proof for this, it appeared, lay in India. An attempt to introduce the English system of jurisprudence into India, “to supersede their own barbarous and absurd code of laws,” had been utterly abortive; so uncongenial were the laws of a free people to the low and degraded Hindoos, that it excited universal alarm and discontent, and, had it been persisted in, might have lost to us forever the dominion of India. It was found impossible to govern them as a free people.21

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By the same measure, the people of England were free


not because the barons of England extorted the Magna Carta from King John of Runnemede, but because they had inherited from their ancestors those qualities of mind that enable them to wrest from their rulers those memorable concessions to liberty. The general phrenological principle on political liberty was this: “nations are free, or susceptible to freedom, only as they possess the requisite endowment of the sentiments and intellect, and that in every case, free institutions are the effects, and not the causes of liberty.”22 All these queries on the Hindoo national character, and the mode of government that was suited to this type, were answered when a colonial doctor in the somewhat obscure location of Monghyr in Bihar in eastern India discovered the “Hindoo type.” In the very first volume of the Transactions of the Phrenological Society, George Murray Paterson published his article “On the Phrenology of Hindostan,” analyzing the differences between the cerebral developments of the “ancient and peculiar” Hindoo and the “civilized” European. This was to form the basis of all phrenological writings on the Hindoo type for years to come. A zealous supporter of the science, Paterson had arrived in Calcutta in 1824 with “ninety casts ... illustrative of phrenological facts.”23 Soon after, he had set up an exhibition of these casts at the Asiatic Society on Park Street, initiated a series of public lectures on the science and founded the first Phrenological Society of Calcutta in 1825.24 To illustrate his account of the Hindoos, and to get his findings authorized in Edinburgh, he also packed about a dozen Hindoo skulls, and shipped them over to Britain. The twelve skulls that Paterson submitted to the Phrenological Society were “selected by Rammohun Roy, a native of distinguished talents, as affording as nearly as possible, an average specimen of the Hindoo skull.” When Rammohun sent the skulls to Paterson, he could hardly have known he was helping to create a phrenological type, from which he himself would posthumously deviate. Besides the dozen skulls supplied by Roy, Paterson used “over three thousand heads ... from Cashmere to Cape Comorin, and from the banks of the Indus to the forest of Aracan,” to measure the Hindoo deviation from an European standard.25 His colonial situation was particularly helpful in the second step of his study: the correlation of external cranial contours that established the relative sizes of various phrenological organs to the observed behavior displayed by the individual. He collected this supplementary information by observing his native servants at home, from his trips through the “oriental bazaars” and by poring over accounts of fellow travelers to India. Many a resident had been frustrated at the rate at which their bearers mislaid their garments; Paterson attributed this to the native’s diminutive organ of location. Some had noticed the peculiar manner in which servants stole from their white masters, filching a little bit every day until vast amounts of sugar or tea were siphoned away; this peculiarity was attributed to the generous endowment of Secretiveness and Acquisitiveness amongst the Hindoos. The Hindoo’s welldeveloped organ of physical love, or amativeness, was apparent to the casual observer from the “swarms of children in the villages and towns”; the situation was


Standard deviation 51 exacerbated since they lacked the higher reflective organs of mind to resist the irresistible propensity to procreate. Paterson’s ambitions went beyond offering scientific explanations for the everyday frustrations of the colonial resident. Even though he modestly claimed that his intention was not to confirm or dispute the racial typology of Blumenbach and others, he was determined to contribute evidence for the study of “national” or “comparative” phrenology. This led him to the crucial question that ethnologists had considered for generations: the relative influence of culture and climates on human and social constitutions. Paterson, like others before him, pointed to the example of the Parsees who “had preserved their mental and bodily powers in the burning climate of Bombay”; climate could not be the transforming force that it appeared to be, he argued, exactly as Prichard had done, by emphasizing the inheritance of culture which marked the human body.26 Where did the answer to the question of human difference lie for the phrenologists? On the one hand, phrenology seemed to suggest that the innate and irremediable structure of the brain determined the character of humans and groups. On the other hand, the connections established between the structure of the skull and the functions of the mind, manifested in everyday behavior, allowed the phrenologists to point to a dialogic relationship between cultural influence and cranial structure in the formation of character. The phrenologists gave a concrete basis to common stereotypes about the physical and mental imbecility of the natives, their uncontrolled sensuality, their mendacity and duplicity, by tracing these traits to the shape of the skull. Phrenology thus served to concretize the stereotypes already in circulation; the structure of the skull and the pre-existing stereotype confirmed each other. It has been suggested that the stereotype was a particular strategy of colonial rule, a strategy of managing and organizing difference, of knowing the people.27 The stereotype ordered the mess of colonial reality, just as it justified and aided colonial practices: after the revolt of 1857, for instance, the stereotype of the “martial races” justified discriminatory recruitment to the colonial army and rationalized the exclusion of mutinous sections of native society, while the stereotypes of the “thug” (and later, a host of criminal castes and tribes) rationalized the disciplining of habitual criminals.28 Phrenology contributed to the reality effect of colonial stereotypes and made them palpable and manipulable.

Phrenology and the Hindoo type The influence of colonial “facts” and stereotypes on phrenology is evident in the phrenological reading of Rammohun Roy’s skull. On September 27, 1833, a day after Roy died in Bristol, a marble mason took a cast of the Raja’s head and face. Traveling through scientific circles, the cast found its way to the Phrenological Society in Edinburgh, and later in that year, an anonymous writer published a detailed description of his “cerebral development” in the journal of that Society.29 Roy had supplied the skulls that helped formulate the Hindoo type; he posthumously confirmed the validity of the type, as the exception that proved the rule.


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Figure 3.1 Rammohun’s head Source: Anon., “On the Life, Character, Opinions, and Cerebral Development, of Rajah Rammohun Roy,” Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 8 (1834). 579.

While it was a common phrenological practice to study the minds of great men, corroborating the sizes of their organs of mind with their biographical details, the author was clearly more interested in the national type of the Hindoos. Roy, it seems, was well endowed in terms of the organs that mattered: his self-esteem was pronounced unusually large, and contrasted with the “meanness and feebleness of mind” of the small-headed generality of Hindoos. Large organs of Combativeness, Self-esteem and Firmness explained his radical lifestyle and thus verified the truth of phrenology. Rammohun’s skull was used to make another key theoretical point: that the innate structure of the brain, and not climate, determined the character of


Standard deviation 53 individuals, and hence of nations. “Even the passive but ill understood character of the Hindoos, exhibiting few and unimportant shades of distinction ... has, in every part of these diversified climates, been occasionally roused to achievements of valour.”30 In each case, Roy did nothing to dispel the stereotype of the Hindoo. He was the exception that proved the rule, an individual who had risen above his culture, a success of the English pedagogic regime, and the proof of the universal path of improvement. What was emphasized was his exceptionalism or his deviation from the Hindoo head marked by its child-like size and imbecility. The racial formulation was further affirmed in James Straton’s 1845 tract, Contributions to the Mathematics of Phrenology, where Rammohun’s skull bore silent witness to the truths of phrenology. Straton’s claim to fame was a formula to measure the skull with mathematical precision by filling a cast of a skull with water (as opposed to the use of dry millet promoted by some others) in order to “graduate a scale indicating the average size, the average range, and the extreme ranges of size which have been found among the various races of men.”31 To this end, various parts of the skull were to be filled with water to determine the size of the various organs and a “cubic measure” of the head and its organs was determined as per his formula.32 “Proof 190” was Roy’s head, which was subsequently compared with the heads of Dr Gall (phrenologist), R. B. Sheridan (playwright and politician) and Hare and Burke (the notorious murderers of Edinburgh). Commenting once again on Roy’s exceptional size, the author moved to the more important concern – racial averages and national character. Drawing on craniometrical statistics from 77 European, 20 Mongolian, 4 Asiatic, 38 Malay, 27 American aborigine and 38 Ethiopian skulls, Straton provided numerical averages for the races outlined by Blumenbach, and found them to measure in at 137, 127, 119, 127, 130 and 126 inches in cubic measure, respectively.33 While at 220 inches Joseph Hume reached “about the extreme limits of size that the healthy human head ever attains among the Caucasian race,” at 185 inches Roy was pronounced “preeminent among the Asiatics, known in this country for a head of great size, finely balanced.” An exception to the Hindoo type, Roy “towers over fellow Asiatics like a giant among pygmies, he being 190, they averaging 119.”34 Rammohun’s role in this history of ethnology and phrenology perhaps helps clarify the nature of the native’s agency in matters of science and empire; he supplied the “typical Hindoo skulls” but had little control over the manner in which they were classified. What Rammohun shared with his liberal friends was a faith in the universal value of certain sciences. Rammohun’s “jet-black skin” threatened to disturb Prichard’s theory, much as his unusually large cerebral contours had challenged the phrenologist’s thesis about the feeble-minded Hindoo. In both cases, however, the flexibility of race allowed Rammohun to be smoothly accommodated as the exception that proved the rule, and proof of the existence of the races and the possibility of improvement brought about by the leading strings of imperial rule. If Rammohun was an exception, the ferocious “thugs” – classified as a tribe of hereditary criminals devoted to habitual highway robbery and murder through strangulation – were prototypical “Hindoos.” So perplexing and widespread was the phenomenon of thuggee that the governor general William Bentinck had


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devoted an entire Department of Thagi and Dakaiti to cracking the code of the secret sect of murdering robbers.35 The threat of thuggee was made to appear larger and more mysterious by sheer panic, a desire to classify criminality, and a quest to diagnose Indian pathology. The department tracked down suspected thugs and extracted confessions and confirmations for the worse aspects of their crime and, at times, carried out mass executions of the heinous criminals who made “murdering their fellow creatures the business of their lives.”36 All this would appear to confirm the exceptional character of the thugs, but a phrenological reading of thugs which appeared in a leading journal in 1834 rendered them as representative examples of the normal Hindoo type.37 While the method of physiological investigation – the correlation of the organs of mind to symptoms of individual and group behavior – seemed to have encountered a limit case in the thugs, whose way of life confounded all the stereotypes about the apathetic, lazy and weak “Hindoo,” the phrenologist remained unfazed. An expert in Edinburgh, and Combe’s nephew, Dr Robert Cox, chose to emphasize one particular fact about the skulls to resolve this seeming contradiction: while the worst of the thugs did, indeed, have large organs of Combativeness and Destructiveness that confirmed their “natural inclination for the work of death,” most of them were not particularly well-endowed in this regard. Thuggee was a hereditary crime not because the thugs had an inherent capacity for ferocity, but because they blindly followed their fathers down this mysterious path of crime out of veneration, or because of their inability to challenge fate. The Edinburgh phrenologist would have been lost without the colonial networks that were mobilized for the sake of science: George Swinton, chief secretary to the supreme government of India, who was in charge of the final decision on the execution of prosecuted thugs, was also a fan of phrenology. Before leaving India, he requested the skulls of a few thugs. These were gladly supplied by Henry Harpur Spry, an employee of the Bengal Medical Service with a penchant for phrenology, who had decapitated seven heads from amongst 29 thugs executed under his charge at one time in Saugor in Central India. He sent these along to the Phrenological Society at Edinburgh, along with a description of thuggee.38 He described the rituals of the gang murderers for his metropolitan audience, with many a juicy anecdote. The partridge, deer, jackal and jackass were seen as omens. The thugs visited their guru for blessings before each murderous undertaking. They carried with them a kodalee or pickaxe consecrated by solemn religious rites believed to convey magical powers to the carrier. They traveled in packs. On the road, they indulged in “every carnal propensity” and fought over favorites. They were more disciplined in their murderous activities, however, and it was an “invariable rule” that they never robbed before strangling. A caste-like division of labor separated those who were permitted to throw the angocha or handkerchief for strangling from the inferior gravediggers who disposed of the bodies of the victims. On their return from the murderous expedition, they propitiated their presiding goddess Bhowanee.39 Besides this general background on thuggee culled from official reports, Spry attached individual case histories for the seven thugs, based on the approvers’ testimony and their own confessions.


Standard deviation 55 Back in Edinburgh, Dr Cox recounted the rites performed before a goddess before a thug hit the road, deciphering signs from the goddess that allowed him to go forth to the highways to murder and rob on some days, but not on others. The manner in which new recruits were initiated before the goddess and the bonds of fraternity that tied one thug to another, indicated to this phrenologist that the gang-murderers were, in fact, provoked into violent and destructive action by the influence of their large organs of Veneration, Love of Approbation and Self-Esteem. Instead of having large organs of Destructiveness or Combativeness, like the common European criminal, the thug was pronounced just like the average Hindoo, even more so. If crime confirmed Paterson’s type, so did Hindoo law. Law, read as the product of the mind of individuals in society, was seen to conform to, and confirm, the size and shape of the organs of mind in the Hindoo type. As the anonymous reviewer of Nathaniel Halhed’s Code of Gentoo Laws declared, “the Laws of an ancient people are not enacted in a day ... they contain strong indications of natural character.”40 The Code, published in 1776, was believed to be the basis of Hindoo social law, and treated by the colonial state as such; to the phrenologist, it contained a clue to the Hindoo mind. The reviewer simply juxtaposed a long extract from Halhed’s Code with a phrenological commentary on the Hindoo skull, derived from the article by Paterson. The truth of phrenology was supposed to be self-evident from this juxtaposition – the laws explaining (and being explained by) the structure of the Hindoo skull. The laws against adultery were attributed to a large organ of Jealousy and not to Conscientiousness, for Paterson had confirmed that Hindoos were lacking in that organ. The use of spies and secret signs in statecraft, common phenomena in early modern politics, were not proof of intellect or combativeness, but of secretiveness and individuality, pronounced “large in the Hindoo and ... essential among a people so given to cunning and duplicity.”41 These mental capacities determined everything from cultural artifacts, such as the law, to everyday behavior. George Combe quoted Paterson and confirmed that secretiveness, “when predominantly active, produces a close sly look; the eyes roll from side to side; the voice is low; the shoulders are drawn up towards the ears, and the footstep is soft and gliding.”42 The science of phrenology merged with the imperial phantasmatics to produce a “Hindu mind.” This, in turn, explained how colonization and racism were consistent with nature’s laws, for as Combe confirmed The sentiment of Truth is known by the English judges to be so low in Africans, the Hindoos, and the aboriginal Americans, that the natives of these countries are not received as witnesses in the colonial courts; and it is a curious fact, that a defect in the organ of Conscientiousness ... is a significant feature of the skulls of these nations, in possession of the Phrenological Society.43

The government of mind This smooth rationale for colonial racism did not go unchallenged. The poet James Montgomery’s critique of Paterson’s “Hindoo type” coincided with another prevalent (and equally biased) discourse on Hindoo nature. Criticizing the dubious


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wisdom based on the manipulation of skulls, Montgomery suggested that the Hindoo had deteriorated as India had “groaned successively under the yoke of Tartarian, Mahomedan, and European usurpation,” during which time the natives had sunk lower and lower, “into the apathy and imbecility that the hopelessness of slavery inevitably brings.”44 For Montgomery, the most important aspect of Hindoo culture and social organization – religion – contradicted the findings of the phrenologists; for there was no race “more prodigal of human blood in their religious rites and observances, and that blood is shed by the hands of their kindred.” Recounting instances of parricide, infanticide and suicide carried out by men in the throes of religious passion, he conjured up bloody images of devotees crushed under “Juggernaut’s car [sic]” on an annual basis, shocking penances by fire and water that resulted in death, the practice of exposing the dying to the elements, the immolation of widows and rituals involving child sacrifice, to point to the habitual cruelty of Hindoos at large45 Montgomery concluded that the Hindoo gods were bloodthirsty, and “since man makes gods in his own image,” the Hindoos could no more be thought to be non-violent or passive. This lack of fit between the Hindoo’s natural gentleness and habitual cruelty, suggested to him that if the skulls of the Hindoos suggested otherwise, it must be the influence of cultural institutions – such as religion, caste and the history of slavery – that had modified the Hindoo over time. In other words, it was not the phrenologist’s description of Hindoo type that irked this particular critic, but their faulty diagnosis. Montgomery insisted that powerful institutions – such as caste and Hinduism – had shaped the native, and institutions of a superior kind would therefore improve them. His chief interlocuter, a medical doctor, defended phrenology on two counts. To Dr Thompson, historical accounts proved, first, that the Hindoos had not degenerated under a system of slavery, but had always been inferior to the Europeans; any exceptional displays of valor or mental prowess by Hindoos were “only relative to their own country.”46 Second, the “anomaly” of natural gentleness and habitual cruelty could be explained by the phrenological organization of the Hindoo brain, in which the defective anterior lobe, home of reason, could not contain the “passions” of the better developed posterior lobe. Whatever their differences on the truth of phrenology, the two men agreed on some significant details: both agreed on the fact of the “deplorable mental and bodily imbecility” of the present Hindoo.47 They agreed that cultural behavior and social institutions helped diagnose the natural capacity of a people. Both turned to colonialism as the final proof of phrenology. Thompson reiterated that the average size of the Hindoo head did not exceed that of a European of 15, and this, he wrote, explained the “weakness of the Hindoo, taken as a nation, and their subjugation by a few thousand Europeans.” Montgomery, we have seen, believed that colonialism was not caused by Hindoo cranial defects, but was, in fact, the cause of Hindoo degeneration. It is significant that Thompson, locked in debate with Montgomery, had reiterated the one point on which the phrenologists would be flexible in the colonies: “no phrenologist denies the capability of improvement under proper treatment,” he insisted.48 A debate in the Calcutta Phrenological Society between the evangelical educator Drummond and the phrenologist Paterson replicated the contours of this


Standard deviation 57 metropolitan debate.49 David Drummond argued that it was not an immutable cast of mind, but the institution of caste, which explained the Hindoo character. Paterson disagreed; we have seen that to him, caste was better explained as the product of a deficient organ of mind. The two nevertheless shared a faith in the improving influence of colonial occupation. While Drummond emphasized that political institutions and the climate were formative influences on the character of Hindoos, Paterson, we have seen, would not have contradicted him on the reforming potential of enlightened institutions. Despite the association with polygenism, some phrenologists had innovatively interpreted the innatist aspects of the science, emphasizing cultural changeability rather than the biological fixity of man. For Paterson, colonialism was in itself an agent of improvement: he claimed that the “processes of Nature are slow, but sure” and a slow but steady improvement had occurred in northern India where the Hindoos had been exposed to “the presence of the disciples of Mahomet.” He concluded: From the administration of British justice, and I fervently hope from the light of the Gospel, Hindoos in British India will change in cerebral organization, and consequently, in mental manifestation, and will be very different from natives subjected to the caprices of a native power.50 It was a matter of polemics, then, that led Drummond to insist that the phrenologist is a Hindoo himself, and believes that each caste is sprung from an essentially distinct creation – that the Brahmins come from the Brama’s mouth, the Chheteree from his arms, the Bice from his belly, and the Sooder from his feet. As for the reason why “a handful of Europeans overcomes in combat and holds in permanent subjection thousands, nay, millions of that people,” it is also clear that “a handful of that very people when brought under European discipline, well paid, well fed, and well furnished with the material of war” can defeat their own “undisciplined, unpaid, unfed, and unfurnished countrymen.” Paterson would possibly have concurred on this detail, for they were in agreement on the reforming capacities of colonial governance. For Drummond, the key to cerebral improvement and the path to civilization lay in education. The proof of this was the Hindoo College and other private seminaries, where natives were exposed to European culture and English education. Human nature, whatever phrenologists say to the contrary, is always the same ... if instead of conducting all proceedings in the Persian language – a language which is equally foreign to both rulers and subjects, the English language were substituted, a powerful motive would thus be given to studying the latter, and with the knowledge of our language our superior policy, domestic, civil and political, would ... be fully appreciated.51 The cure for Hindoo “imbecility” lay in English institutions, for it was not an immutable cast of mind, but the institution of caste, which lay at the heart of Hindoo defects.


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This, then, was the phrenological iteration of a key question of imperial liberalism: could the Hindoo type be improved through the influence of British institutions? Could the Hindoo ever be free? George Lyon, we have seen, had asserted that England was free because of their inherited “qualities of mind,” suggesting that free institutions could not create liberty as such, but were, in fact, created by a liberal state of mind.52 Other phrenologists were more flexible; one suggested that while the “Negro’s large organs of Acquisitiveness and Love of Approbation” made him the perfect slave, his skull also indicated a capacity for freedom. But his liberation had to be postponed in order to educate and prepare him for the full extent of his liberty.53

The “science of character” and ideologies of empire It is here that a certain strand of phrenology fell in line with a particular politics of empire. If the links established between the brain and mind allowed the phrenologist to be the ethnologist or anthropologist, the connections between national crania and national character allowed the phrenologist to elaborate upon a political theory of civilization. “Social civilization is the intellectual and moral improvement of the individuals of which a nation is composed,” wrote W. F. Richards.54 He formulated this, phrenologically, as a move away from the savage and barbarous states when the animal faculties governed the individual, to a civilized state, when the mental faculties controlled the animal propensities. The savage and barbarous states, he clarified, were to be understood as “a sort of analogy to the legal division of nonage into pupilarity and minority.”55 The unqualified animalism of savage life, with the preponderance of the animal faculties manifested as “sensuality, cunning, covetousness, revenge and cruelty, pride, vanity, obstinacy, and superstition” were facts confirmed equally by history and by “our nautical discoverers.” Simply put, W. F. Richards confirmed that savages were like children, in the “nonage” of a biological and historical cycle: “our” past was “their” present. This formulation cohered with liberal thought. Liberalism and phrenology represent discrete attempts to comprehend human character in order to govern society according to nature’s law; the two approaches cohered in the early nineteenth century. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can condemn phrenology as a pseudoscientific race science, and appreciate that liberalism was at work to make race invisible. While on the surface the innatist typology of phrenology seemed to fly in the face of the faith in the modifying influence of liberal government and enlightened institutions, the liberals evoked the notion of the “national character” even as they explicitly denied a doctrine of innate differences amongst humans. It was political philosophy that inaugurated the quest for a “true science of national character.” For a brief moment in the 1830s, militating against his utilitarian upbringing, and varying the repertoire of influences upon human character, J. S. Mill considered the significance of race, suggesting that there was no doubt “of the great influence of Race in the production of national character.”56 He later retreated from this position; a complete volte-face on race came with Principles of Political Economy of 1848, when he wrote: “Of all the vulgar modes of escaping the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences


Standard deviation 59 on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences.”57 In later writings, he compared the tendency to attribute variations in the character of peoples to indelible differences of nature, without considering the influence of education and social and political circumstances, to a backward tendency to attribute everything to the influence of gods. This clarified the position of liberalism on race, which affirmed the power of enlightened influences and institutions (as well as “natural difference”) in shaping national character. To understand the possibility and limits to the operation of these influences a “science of national character” was required; Mill called this science “ethology.” The emphasis on national character, Peter Mandler suggests in a recent work, had strong democratic implications, because it critiqued the civilizational assumptions that people’s fates were determined by political influences handed to them by their rulers.58 In the colony, Mill emphasized the influence of social and political institutions on national character. In other words, while confirming a faith in the biological unity of the races and a utilitarian conviction in a singular path of progress, the “science of character” enabled a hierarchical ordering of societies, naturalized the limits to rights in the colony, and encouraged an optimism about improvement. This was the diagnostic value of ethology. Its prescriptive value lay in that it could also be used to guide the civilizing process among the backward races of India and Africa. The attempt here is not to trace direct links and references between Mill and Combe. While Mill had almost consistently balked at the doctrine of innate differences, the phrenological movement was a forerunner of the scientification of social thought that occurred in mid-century, and captures the impulse to turn questions of rights, morality and justice into questions about nature, biology and anatomy.59 Combe denied the influence of circumstances (particularly government) on individual and national character, attributing them to the constitution of the brain. But this innatist doctrine was only part of the theory. If the degree of liberty a group could be permitted to enjoy was determined by the size and proportion of their heads, good government had to be based on an understanding of national character, and a consideration of constraints posed by difference. The suggestive overlaps between the principles of liberal government in empire and phrenological commonsense is perhaps clarified by this quote from Combe: The mental character of an individual, at any given time, is the result of his natural endowment of faculties, modified by the circumstances in which he has been placed. The first element, or natural constitution, is admitted, by most thinking men, to form the basis of, and prescribe the limits to, the operation of the second. If a child be by nature extremely combative, and very little cautious, highly prone to covetousness, and very insensible to justice, a reflecting guardian will adopt a different method of education and expect different consequences, than if his natural dispositions are exactly the reverse; and he will not expect education to change his nature. A nation is composed of individuals, and what is true of all the parts ... must hold good of the whole; nevertheless the fashionable diatribe is, that national character depends altogether on external circumstances.60

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In other words, a correct determination of the natural character of individuals and nations would make for better programs of tutelage in the colonies, and natives could certainly be improved, but only to the extent permitted by their nature. While J. S. Mill held far subtler views on social development and national character, he would have concurred on this with Combe. In a formulation that resonates with Combe’s statement, Mill emphasized that nations and national character must be understood as diverse, molded by “time, place and circumstance”; writing on liberty he evoked the analogy between barbarians and children as a key rationale for imperial rule: Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which the law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury. For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage ... Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.61 Liberal norms did not apply to children, women and those societies “in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.” If Combe (and the phrenologists following him) espoused a moral philosophy wherein social and political institutions were to respond to the differential capacities of people, phrenology was far more complex than it is made out to be when it is described as an anomalous racist pseudoscience par excellence. It was more than that and less: it was produced in dialogue with the social context and political questions of the day, and if it dovetailed into polygenism in the realm of science, its politics on the colonial question was akin to a “liberal strategy of exclusion.”62 Colonial debates on phrenology, in a way, capture the tensions inherent in liberal imperialism, between the quest for difference in national character, and the faith in a universal path of improvement The “softer,” politically “polluted” and socially responsive phrenology developed after Combe, had better answers to the pressing questions of the mid-nineteenth century; phrenology was the science of standard deviations from a white, male, bourgeois norm, and rationalized the government of various “others” – the lower classes, criminals, women, colonized races – by scientifically measuring the degree of deviation. The example of phrenology complicates an understanding of the “colonization of the body” and the mind in India. It suggests that race science did not develop wholly within Britain as a single coherent undifferentiated body of knowledge, or a homogenous way of knowing the body. The validity and popularity of phrenology, as a particular example of race science, was buttressed by the simple method of resolving political questions by the manipulation of skulls. Combe’s success lay in his ability to assign ideological


Standard deviation 61 concerns to knowledge claims,63 and the colonial phrenologists likewise offered a resolution to certain colonial questions and anxieties. Two of these themes, of utter practical relevance, had to do with European cultural and biological degeneration in the tropical environment, and the possibility of the regeneration of the native through the influence of superior institutions. There was no single phrenological position on the colonies, but the questions that the phrenologists and their adversaries raised, may be read as attempts to join the science to key ideological and practical concerns of colonial settlement. In the liberal empire, the doctrine of innate characters, not modifiable by the effects of enlightened institutions and a reformed cultural influence, was of limited utility. The science could not remain unresponsive to these questions. The polysemous promise of phrenology, and its value as scientific and reformist, was not lost on natives of India, who seized upon it as a program of self-improvement as early as 1845. Fully convinced that “a correct knowledge of human nature is likewise indispensable for the philosopher, the politician, the legislator, the physician, the school master, the merchant, the rich man, the poor man and even the menial laborer,” Coolycoomar Doss (Kalikumar Das) proposed that a new Calcutta Phrenological Society be formed, for and by the “natives of India.” The Society was short-lived; we do not have records on the native phrenologist’s discussion of the Hindoo type. Doss hoped that the Calcutta Phrenological Society would become an active instrument for regenerating the nation, the education system, and social and religious institutions. He was optimistic that phrenology would enable the native to diagnose, cure and govern the self and the nation. Doss was sanguine that science would not take sides, and that knowledge could be transformed into power in fantastic ways: “Nature will reveal her secrets to us ... Phrenologists of other countries will afterwards take notice of us and offer us their voluntary aid and God will smile on us.”64 That dream, too, was deferred. Let us return, in closing, to one of the key articles summarizing the variety of opinions on the Hindoo type that appeared in 1830 in the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register. This piece indicated the direction that theories of race would take in India in the decades to follow, by replacing the homogenous “Hindoo skull” with several ethnological varieties. While upholding Paterson’s general conclusions, the authors conceded that the skulls sent to the Society by Paterson were all “Bengalee” and that the “skulls of the Mahrattas must indicate Combativeness and Destructiveness.”65 The Journal therefore called for the collection of a wider variety of skulls from all parts of India. Even while phrenological organology was waning in the latter half of the nineteenth century,66 the measurement of skulls became important in the analysis of racial variation through anthropometrical measurements.67 For the moment, in the 1830s, there was some agreement that the cranial deficiencies of the Hindoo confirmed his inferiority, but he could be “cured” through the exercise of enlightened institutions, to the extent permitted by his nature. For Montgomery, the improvement would come with religion, for Drummond, through English education. Both would have been pleased with the direction of the education reforms of 1835. Montgomery insisted that the truth of science must rest on


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substantial forms that could be seen, handled and made palpable to the senses. Challenging the phrenologists on the very claims of transparency and palpability on which the truth of their science had initially rested, Montgomery was not out of line with the contemporary scientific quest for “deeper” forms of bodily knowledge when he demanded that to prove phrenological truth, “the mind itself ... be laid bare by the anatomist’s knife, and the operation of thought exhibited naked to the bodily eye.”68 Fulfilling this demand for a deeper form of bodily knowledge, “laid bare by the anatomist’s knife,” the Calcutta Medical College was opened amidst fanfare in 1835. At the new medical college, students were to learn the truth about the human body through the science of dissection, and in doing so, provide proof of the possibility of the improvement of the native character. It is to the dissecting room that we now turn.


Part II

Blood and morals


4

Seeing reason


Dissection, history of medicine and English education

Medical rationality plunges into the marvelous density of perception, offering the grain of things as the first face of truth, with their colors, their spots, their hardness, their adherence. The breadth of the experiment seems to be identified with the domain of the careful gaze, and of an empirical vigilance receptive only to the evidence of visible contents. The eye becomes the depository and source of clarity; it has the power to bring a truth to light that it receives only to the extent that it has brought it to light; as it opens, the eye first opens the truth: a flexion that marks the transition from the world of classical clarity – from the “enlightenment” – to the nineteenth century. – Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, 19731 We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. – Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minute on Indian Education, 18352

On January 10, 1836, as though in partial fulfillment of Macaulay’s vision of producing black Englishmen, the “first dissection” upon a human cadaver was performed at the Calcutta Medical College by Pundit Madhusudan Gupta: It had needed some time, some exercise of the persuasive art, before Madhusudan could bend up his mind to the attempt; but having once taken the resolution, he never flinched nor swerved from it. At the appointed hour, scalpel in hand, he followed Dr Goodeve to the godown where the body lay ready. The other students, deeply interested in what was going on but deeply agitated, with mingled feelings of curiosity and alarm, crowded after them, but durst not enter the building where this fearful deed was to be perpetrated; they clustered around the door, they peeped through the jilmils, resolved at least to have ocular proof of this accomplishment … And then Madhusudan’s knife, held with a strong and steady hand, made a long and deep incision in the breast, the lookers-on drew a gasping breath, like men relieved from the weight of intolerable suspense.3

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As the ecstatic Professor Bramley would proclaim, by adopting “a mode of study hitherto contemplated with such horror by their fellow countrymen,” Gupta had taken “the greatest step of progress towards true civilization which education has yet effected.”4 The colonial government celebrated this giant leap up the ladder of civilizations with a fifty-round cannon salute. What was lost in the din of the cannon fire and the journalistic hyperbole was the fact that, centuries before this, an Indian medical text had described the art of studying the human body through dissection: When a proper body for the purpose is selected, the dejections are to be removed, the body washed, and placed in framework of wood [sic], properly secured, by means of grass, hemp, or the like. The body is then to be placed in still water, in a situation in which it will not be destroyed by birds, fishes, or animals. It is to remain seven days in the water, when it will have become putrid. It is then to be removed to a convenient situation, and with a brush, made of reeds, hair, or bamboo-bark, the body is to be rubbed, so as by degrees to exhibit the skin, flesh, &c.; which are each in their turn to be observed before being removed. In this manner, the different corporeal parts of the body, already enumerated, will be exhibited.5 The shift from this manner of dissection, later dismissed as “poking in the pond at a putrid carcase,”6 to the neatly executed operation of 1835 has been narrated as progress – the death of “native superstition” and the birth of modern medicine in India. This chapter will argue that the modernizing magic of the moment lay elsewhere. What the dissection of 1835 signifies is a certain way of thinking about the history of the world, the conversion of the native of India to a new way of seeing, a shift in the relationship between language and things, and a changed relationship of man to himself.7 In 1835, English medical education was introduced in India not just to train “black doctors” to treat diarrhea or gunshot wounds, as the initial reports on education would have us believe, but to effect a deeper cure. The discussions that immediately preceded Macaulay’s infamous “Minute on Indian Education” have been memorialized in history as the “great debate” in Indian education,8 and as the “Anglicist-Orientalist controversy.”9 The literature on this debate is vast and well known, and I will not attempt to summarize it here. I will focus, instead, on the relatively understudied implications for medical education. The fact that medicine was crucial to this debate is hardly surprising, given that some of the prominent orientalists were men of medicine. Not only had William Jones included a comprehensive study of Indian systems of medicine in his original list of tasks to be executed in India, Horace Hayman Wilson, the most prominent spokesperson of the Orientalist persuasion during the education debate, had arrived in Calcutta in 1808, to serve in the medical branch of the East India Company. His translations of the rich literary works of Kalidas and the Rig Veda and his editions of Sanskrit grammar and Hindu Law buttressed his scholarly reputation, and bore witness to his wide interests in history, literature and language. He was the Secretary of the


Seeing reason 67 Asiatic Society from 1811 to 1833. As the secretary of the Committee of Public Instruction, he advocated reforms in the Indian curriculum, encouraging the introduction of European science and English literature alongside the classical Oriental languages. Founded in 1822, the Native Medical Institution (NMI), the first medical school in Calcutta that was run in a “western” style, had reflected this spirit of curiosity and commingling: the curriculum had combined the doctrines of Ayurveda and Unani with elements of English surgery, and students were instructed in Indian languages. In 1835, this hybrid mode was abandoned. Upon its abolition, the Native Medical Institution would be retrospectively remembered for its syncretism, as a place for dialogue between the indigenous and western medical traditions.10 While the debates on education were still ongoing, however, these adjustments reflected attempts to locate the indigenous medical systems in an ethnographic map, derived from the kind of historical, linguistic and naturalhistorical explorations discussed in the previous section. The paradigm of this debate was therefore not confined to a matter of language preference, but included a discussion on the status of different systems of knowledge, for the choice between western and Oriental learning became recast as a choice between truth and error.11 In no other realm was the choice as urgent perhaps, as it was in the case of medical science; India’s false history might have contradicted a convenient rationalization of colonial occupation, but the consequences of false medicinal doctrines that “would disgrace an English farrier,”12 could certainly be morbid. At the Calcutta Medical College, English and anatomy were instituted as the twin symbols of modern medicine; by seeing and touching an open corpse, the native of India would see reason. Race loomed large in this debate: Macaulay’s plan for the creation of brown Englishmen may be interpreted as a specific instantiation of liberal racialism, a doctrine of inherited but partially modifiable physical and cultural difference. There was a minor hitch in this plan: the chronological lag between the promise and its fulfillment was absolutely tied to the somatic difference between being English and becoming Anglicized.

“Black doctors” and English education: Institutional transitions Established by a government order on June 21, 1822, the NMI was initially conceived to fulfill a very specific need: to train assistants for European doctors. Ever since the establishment of the trading outposts by Europeans in India in the sixteenth century furious debates had raged about death and disease and means of minimizing the loss of European life and preserving health in the colonies. Initially, some Europeans had turned to indigenous practitioners; others had sought to amalgamate Indian drugs to European therapeutics.13 By the late eighteenth century, there was an increasing pressure to obtain medical assistants for European practitioners. The Bengal Muster Rolls (1718–1771) lists 17 “black doctors”; the government appointed two each to the regiments, and one to serve each of the civil stations. The military sub-medical department formed in the early nineteenth century did not admit natives, preferring to train and employ European and Eurasian boys to serve as compounders and dressers. These boys could rise through the ranks


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to become sub-assistant surgeons and apothecaries to be employed in the European or native corporations, in the medical depots, or in the field and general hospitals.14 With the expansion of British territories, and an increase in the size of the army, the demand for native medical assistants kept growing. As the field and general hospitals were abandoned in the 1820s, the few opportunities that existed for the training of such assistants were eroded. Following a request by the medical board, the government decided to establish the NMI, where native students were to be taught the “rudiments of medical science by a skilled medical officer.”15 The NMI initially reflected the modest aims of the medical board that controlled it. Many of the students in the early years were sons of native soldiers. Confirming the utility-driven motives behind their education, the graduating students had to accept compulsory employment with the Indian Medical Service for 15 years. The superintendent was expected to decide on the curriculum, make all necessary translations of texts required for instruction, and prepare the apparatus used in the lectures. Qualifications for admission were minimal. The students had to be “aged below 20 years, of good family, and to be able to write Hindustani in both the Persian and Nagri characters.”16 In their first year at the Institution the students were taught pharmacology, materia medica, physiology and anatomy. In the second year, they were taught medicine and surgery. The study of Ayurvedic and Unani texts was supplemented by some lessons in anatomy.17 The earliest reports of the NMI had noted with surprise the ease with which the students took to the study of medicine. Surgeon Breton, superintendent of the Institution from 1825 to 1830, had reported to the Medical Board that the students did not even balk at the study of anatomy: Even the Hindoo students, convinced that nothing that really has for its object the preservation of human lives is repugnant to the tenets of their religion, regularly attend and readily assist in dissecting human bodies as opportunities occur, the majority of students who arrived in Calcutta in 1823 can themselves give a clear demonstration of the thoracic and abdominal viscera, of the brain, of the bones, of the structure of the eye and have distinct notions of other parts of medical science which have been explained to them.18 By all accounts, then, the Institution was a great success. When it was abolished in 1835, 136 native doctors had been trained at the NMI; in 1839, 124 of the 305 native doctors employed in Bengal were alumni of that institution. The school was abandoned not because it failed to fulfill the initial goals; the goals had been transformed. By the 1830s, the Institution was no longer just a school that churned out men to occupy the lowest rungs of the East India Company’s medical service; it had become a site for experiments with colonial knowledge, a place where orientalist scholars converged to turn indigenous medical knowledge into colonial objects, and a laboratory to test native “capacities.” Reflecting these loftier goals that went beyond the medical board’s desire for compounders and dressers, the superintendent Peter Breton confirmed the “grand object” of the Institution was “to diffuse among the natives, generally, of Hindustan, medical knowledge according to


Seeing reason 69 European principles.”19 In other words, medical education was incorporated into a comprehensive program to cure the native of various pathologies – physical and moral. To effect this cure, William Bentinck, riding high on a wave of reform that involved a legislative fix for sati and thuggee, set up a committee to inquire into the state of native medical education. In 1835, the Anglicists, who favored the English language as the suitable medium for the western arts and sciences, proposed a withdrawal of all funding from Oriental learning. That year, the NMI was abolished and replaced by the Calcutta Medical College by an order of the government of Bengal. The committee concluded that rational medicine could not be translated into the “inferior” languages of the natives and instruction must be carried out in English. Most importantly, they insisted, real medicine could not be taught at all without the study of human anatomy through dissection. Given Breton’s reports on the study of anatomy at the older institution, this insistent twinning of English and anatomy requires further probing. The transition from the vernacular to the English language was carried out within the framework of larger discussions on Aryan history and colonial ethnology. Underneath the apparent break or rupture signaled by the establishment of the Calcutta Medical College lay a long-term continuity in which analogical thinking had mapped medical (and other forms of) knowledge onto a racialized hierarchy of civilizations. This was, in large part, a legacy of those very Orientalists who studied indigenous modes of learning as a source of ethnographic affect. This was played out in a particular reconstruction of “Aryan medicine.” The history of the education policy, we will see, was also consistent with liberal racialism in practice: it reveals a peculiar juxtaposition of “universal” human values and goals, and a strategic deployment of the idea of “cultural difference” within this universe of discourse.

Orientalism, “Aryan” history and medicine An efficient administration of difference understood according to a universal schema was, arguably, an impulse shared by the science of empire and the empire of science. To make sense of the seemingly absurd and the unfamiliar, colonial men of science resorted to maps, classification tables and numbers, on the one hand, and to analogy, metaphor and imagination, on the other. The surgeon-naturalist Benjamin Heyne, translator of the Kalpastanum, the Telugu edition of a Sanskrit medical tract, had been confounded with the following list of causes for fevers in that text: An exposure to the heat of the sun, at an early hour in the morning while fasting; eating voraciously any food of a very hot nature, when the body has been previously weakened by extreme hunger or fatigue; drinking stagnated water, into which withered leaves have fallen; taking a full meal without appetite; unseasonable weather; sudden vicissitudes of temperature; wooded, ill ventilated valleys; neglected adoration of Crishna; air we have not been accustomed to, whether that of the plains or of the mountains; the malign influence of an

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evil spirit or dewta; checked perspiration; fear; grief; sleepless nights; long continued constipation; in a word, whatever exposes our mortal frame to deviations from its natural and accustomed movements, or clogs nature so much, that it requires great agitation, and consequent heat, to bring the body back to sound health.20 As the hapless translator attempted to render this slippery medical text into the English language, its supposedly innate irrationality frustrated translation into English, the language of reason. He then tried to make extracts from it, only to be disappointed again, by its “aphoretical” style, which abounded in “similes, metaphors, and all kinds of figures.” He was similarly perplexed at the contents, “replete with allusions to customs, propensities, and religious ceremonies, unintelligible to an European.”21 Failing to comprehend, frustrated by the allusions to customs, metaphors and inflated analogies, the scholar classified the text as “unscientific”; this done, he was free to resort to his own analogies to understand the nature of the native, his forms of knowledge and his patterns of thinking. Nancy Stepan has argued that the dichotomization of science and metaphor, erected during the “scientific revolution” of the seventeenth century, served to reclassify metaphorical or analogical science as non-scientific, even as the continued use of metaphors and other literary devices in science immediately calls into question the idea of science as politically neutral, empirical and universal in its scope.22 The use of metaphor and analogy in understanding Indian knowledge was common in the latter half of the eighteenth century; as we have seen, the proliferating literature in the history and comparison of languages was born largely of a concern to map philological patterns and ethnological kinship metaphorically. Elaborating on the use of analogy in colonial knowledge in a comprehensive study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writings on India, Kate Teltscher has argued that while India was frequently represented as the antithesis in European texts, it was also occasionally rendered as the analogue of Europe. She suggests that while narrative devices were generally used to distance and subordinate India, at times they were used to diminish Indian strangeness and challenge European assumptions of superiority.23 Using this strategy of analogizing little-known objects and exotic places were given familiar names and assigned particular positions in relation to each other in a universal scheme, in the form of maps, tables of classification or histories. The quest for new lands through voyages of exploration, the study of languages, the collection of specimens, had helped unroll the “great map of mankind” that made the world cohere, making apparent at once the relative positions of all its people, in time and place.24 These were, in most cases, racialized maps that assigned a relative position to people, languages and knowledge systems, creating the effects of universality (being able to account for global phenomena), while preserving a hierarchy of difference.25 The use of analogy, to aid a process of comprehension, was common in colonial medical writing. Many of the medical writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century began their works on surgery, pathology, or materia medica, with a synopsis of the historical and analogical connections between familiar and


Seeing reason 71 unfamiliar systems.26 The conclusions engaged with and echoed conclusions drawn from the comparative study of languages after William Jones. The analogical relationship established between language, knowledge and people was reflected in the “objectification” of oriental knowledge in colonial texts.27 While the existence of three textual medical traditions in India meant that indigenous traditions could not be dismissed simply as witchcraft or magic, the Orientalist attachment of these traditions to the corpus of western medicine nonetheless involved the creation of a racialized hierarchy of systems of knowledge. Explaining this, Ashis Nandy and Shiv Visvanathan have identified the creation of an “industrial grid” under colonialism that assigned fixed hierarchical positions to types of medical systems. Within such a grid, the curative power of the different systems became quite irrelevant and “lower” forms were located not as other, but as defeated unscientific structures to be absorbed, assimilated or marginalized.28 From the discussion on the translation of medical texts within the larger discussion on medical education, it appears that the colonial state made no attempts to replace the existing structures, but instead pushed them into the realm of the unscientific and the non-modern. While Orientalist scholars and colonial doctors clearly distinguished between educated practitioners who were well versed in Ayurveda and Unani, and the people they referred to as barbers, tikadars (variolators), dhaees and jharphoknawallahs, they analyzed these textual traditions for their historical and analogical connections with the western medical corpus, and assigned the indigenous systems a specific place in a strict hierarchical classification. The hierarchy underlined that indigenous medical knowledge would not add much to the treasure of world medicine. While William Jones included eastern medical systems in his original list of researches to be conducted in India, he also suggested: I have no evidence that in any language in Asia, there exists one original treatise on medicine, considered as science; physic, indeed, appears in these regions to have been from time immemorial, as we see practiced at this day by Hindus and Muselmans, a mere empirical history of diseases and remedies … The Ayurveda, supposed to be the work of a celestial physician, is almost entirely lost, unfortunately, perhaps, for the curious European, but happily for the patient Hindu; since a revealed science precludes improvement from experience, to which that of medicine, above all others, is to be left perpetually open.29 While eastern medical texts were pronounced to be devoid of scientific content and curative efficacy by the early orientalists, these were deemed to have crucial historical and ethnological significance. Or, as William Jones put it: On the whole, we cannot expect to acquire many valuable truths from eastern books on the science of medicine; but examine them we must, if we wish to complete the history of universal philosophy, and to supply the scholars of

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Blood and morals Europe with authentic materials for an account of the opinions anciently formed on this head by the philosophers of Asia.30

H. H. Wilson, who held a far more sympathetic view on oriental contributions to medicine than Jones, also felt that while it could not be expected that the


Baids and Hakims of India shall offer any instructive lessons to their more educated brethren in Europe: still, to liberal and cultivated minds, the progress and condition of science in all ages, and in all climes, must be objects of interest.31 A generation after Jones, Benjamin Heyne and Whitelaw Ainslie in Madras, and H. H. Wilson in Bengal, began their explorations of Ayurveda. A few translations of Sushruta and Charaka seem to have been in circulation already.32 These scholars were, however, more interested in the ethnological and historical evidence that the texts provided. John Forbes Royle, in an essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine, explicitly pointed to connections between the ancient Greek and the Hindu systems of medicine, in much the same way as Jones in “The Gods of Greece, Italy and India.” Pointing to structural similarities in language, ethnography, and mythology, he suggested that the Hindu system was possibly the most ancient system of medicine in the world.33 Thomas Alexander Wise, on the other hand, offered a theory of diffusion, through war, trade and travel, between Asiatic and the Grecian and Egyptian states, to account for the common roots of various systems of medicine.34 While some scholars went so far as to suggest that the Aryan civilization in India was the cradle of this ancient and commonly held medical tradition, the more acceptable view was the one already posited by William Jones: The identity of the Greek and Hindu civilizations, whether established by a study of their gods or divisions of the zodiac, was attributed to their common descent from an (unidentifiable) older nation. Wise introduced his important work on the history of medicine by extracting Max Muller’s views on the Aryan race and compared the different achievements of the east and the west – the former taking a more philosophical turn, the latter being concerned with the “succouring of the wounded and maimed.” Mankind was “assailed by wickedness, sorrow, and diseases” in ancient times, until relieved by the assistance of compassionate deities. Amongst the Greeks, he continued, these deities were called Apollo and Esculapius, and among the Hindus they were called Siva and Dhanwantaree. The historical reverence for the physician in the Hindu tradition was evident from the fact that one of the 14 retnas or precious stones that their gods produced by churning in oceans was a learned physician.35 Significantly, Wise saw his work as a sympathetic attempt to correct a Eurocentric narrative which traced the origins of medical science in the “great family of Hippocrates,” and perpetuated the belief that the Greeks, “with some hints from the Egyptians,” were the originators of both the medical science and art of Europe. Wise suggested, instead, that a more thorough research revealed that the sources of medical knowledge lay in “a mysterious nation in the east, which we have proved was the Hindu … and … was communicated through the Egyptian priesthood to the philosophers


Seeing reason 73 of Greece.”36 “The remarkable Aryan race early separated,” he wrote, “and sought their fortunes in different countries … and each promoted, in part manner, the progress of the science of medicine.”37 Ayurveda was a branch of the ancient “Aryan” corpus. The decline of the ancient tradition came, for Wise, with the “Mohammedan invaders … who called the medical poetry mantars (prayers), and considered them haram (sinful).”38 Through centuries of occupation, much of the knowledge of Ayurveda was eroded. The “prominence of superstitious fancies” in the work of the modern Hindu practitioners had led European scholars to believe that there was nothing of value in Indian medicine. Other scholars and medical doctors, most prominently John Tytler (who differed from Wise on the theme of “Mohammeden decline”) emphasized the shared GrecoArabic heritage of the western and Unani systems. Beyond these interesting differences and variations that complicate any simple-minded notion of an Orientalist monolith, there was a significant agreement on one theme: the key point on which the western tradition diverged from the “Hindu” and “Mohammedan” systems lay in the study of human anatomy through dissection.

Dissection, difference and colonial education This theory about the lag – and lack – in Indian medical traditions was maintained in the face of some evidence to the contrary. When William Jones had discovered an account of the internal structure of the human body in the remains of an Ayurvedic text, he had confidently maintained that the “enumeration of the nerves, veins, and arteries, a description of the heart, spleen and liver, and various disquisitions on the formation and growth of the foetus” described therein could only have been the result of philosophical speculation.39 Echoing this line of thought, Whitelaw Ainslie asserted that whatever may have been the status of dissection in the past, touching the corpse was contrary to the Brahmanical tenets of the present day … so that all the knowledge they have of the anatomy of man, can be little else other than conjecture … formed from what they may have seen in looking into the bodies of brute animals.”40 While Ainslie did not challenge the antiquity of the Indian medical texts, nor the fact that they gave minute, if strange accounts of diseases, he argued that “they … betray a woeful ignorance of the nicer functions of the human frame; and are but too often obscured by mystical illusions, and a blind belief in the powers of magic and enchantment.”41 Wise had suggested that while the Hindus seemed to have had “a certain acquaintance with anatomy, they classified diseases according to a systematic order, and they treated them upon a uniform plan, agreeable to their philosophical theory.”42 In other words, their theory limited their ability to see clearly. In a lecture to students at the Calcutta Medical College, Allan Webb, Professor of Descriptive and Surgical Anatomy, rehearsed the dominant paradigm of “Aryan medicine.”43 He insisted that “The medical doctrines of Plato and Hippocrates are

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one in theory with the Hindu sages Charaka and Sushruta,”44 but the paths of the two diverged from the time that an experimental tradition was established by Galen, who remained the “chief light during the dark night of Europe.” While the


invention of printing in 1440 and the glorious reformation, dispelled this Egyptian darkness … no such light broke upon India. Until the institution of this college, as regards the science of medicine, India has not advanced one step since being invaded by Alexander.”45 The divergence of the “western” and “eastern” medical traditions came to rest on a single key element: the study of anatomy through human dissection. And it is to underline this divergence that Allan Webb quoted in detail a dissection described by Sushruta cited earlier in the chapter, contrasting it with the neatness of the procedure when conducted according to western principles. This absence or insufficiency of anatomical study, he continued, was evident in Indian art: Neither at Ellora nor at Karli, not at Elephanta, nor even among the fresco paintings of Adjuntah, have I seen any thing that could lead me to suppose they had ever attained to a knowledge of the muscles, or their power of expression. From their writings therefore, and the specimens of their art, it may be concluded that the Hindus never attained to better knowledge of anatomy, than this poking, in a puddle, at a putrid carcase, might be supposed to confer.46 In the colonial ethnographic universe, where Hinduism was erected on the system of caste and its rigid prescriptions on purity and pollution, being a Hindu inevitably involved a refusal to touch corpses, and all knowledge of anatomy had to have been derived from fancy, if not from accident. My intention here is not to resurrect a prior tradition of anatomical study, for the question of dissection might have been superfluous to a certain understanding of Ayurveda. The tangible body, of organs and tissues, was brought into being by a particular way of perceiving the body, what Foucault has termed the “medical gaze” and has a fairly recent history even within the west.47 Describing the entwinement of perception, language and theory in the comprehension of an ostensibly tangible thing as the body, Shigehisa Kuriyama has brilliantly shown that not only were bodies perceived differently in the Greek and Chinese traditions, for instance, but also that neither had a direct connection to medical perceptions of the body in modernity, an observation that disturbs the progressive teleology from ancient Greece to modern west.48 In terms of a more conventional understanding of the development of western medicine, an organ-based understanding of the body had come into being with the development of pathological anatomy, which was based on the recognition that a systemic, or medical theory of pathology could be elaborated around solid, rather than humoral, components of the body; and the humoral system was rejected in the face of a more “solid” understanding of disease.49 Anatomy became crucial given this transformed understanding of the body; and given the importance of anatomy in


Seeing reason 75 “modern medicine,” a fluent or fluid understanding of the body came to be perceived as always-already outdated. In like way, the knowledge of organs, and anatomy, was quite possibly irrelevant to Ayurvedic therapeutics, for anatomical knowledge is crucial primarily to a system that treats organs.50 While the organs of the Ayurvedic body are named using words that are habitually translated as heart, liver, intestines, and so on, physiological phenomenon have been inscribed cartographically on the body only in twentieth-century Ayurvedic treatises, which reproduce anatomical maps from English handbooks, and often replace the English captions with Sanskrit names. In a system that Francis Zimmermann has described as the “cooking of the world,” the “organs” of the body are only mentioned as reservoirs or receptacles to which fantastical contents are attributed, and wherein “from chyle is born blood, from blood flesh, from flesh fat” and so on.51 But even though anatomy might have been superfluous to the Ayurvedic therapeutics, it was critical to colonial histories of “Aryan” medicine, which underlined the “common origins from an unknown ancestor” of the Aryans of the east and the west, and thus confirmed the main contention of a philologically derived ethnology. In this view, the eastern Aryans were the “degenerate” branch of the family, and colonialism was a means to effect a cure. Much later in the century, in a lecture in 1879, Kenneth Macleod, Professor of Surgery at the Calcutta Medical College, made explicit the connection between dissection, history and colonialism, using this very same image of “poking, in a puddle, at a putrid carcass.”52 His history of colonial anatomy comprised of a deft weaving together of the Orientalist triptych, a theory of Aryan kinship, and a thesis on the curative value of empire. He charted the ways in which the fortunes of the two branches of the Aryan family had diverged. While India had no print revolution, no reformation of religion, so that the Brahmins continued to jealously guard their knowledge from the people, the western branch of the Aryans improved upon their ancient medical systems, derived from the Greeks and returned via the Arabs into Europe. British imperialism in India therefore signified a return of the stronger branch of the Aryan family to resuscitate the weaker one, by reintroducing rational medicine as colonial knowledge. When Macleod presented his history of Indian anatomy before the students of the Calcutta Medical College in 1879, nearly 40 years had passed since the inauguration of the College. Yet, the narrative of Aryanhood, of the relationship of the English and the Indians, and of the racial deficiencies of native systems of knowledge showed a remarkable tenacity. In a bizarre refraction of the colonialist argument of the progressive Aryan brother pulling out the weaker branch of the family from barbarity to civilization through a Darwinian lens, MacLeod rendered colonial history as natural evolution: The Darwinian doctrine of survival of the fittest has been abundantly illustrated in the struggles and vicissitudes of the nation, and the law of successive displacement of weaker by stronger races has been exemplified in every country of which we possess authentic annals. But not only did the Aryans overcome and displace the aboriginal races of other countries, but history

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tells us that the more powerful Aryan races have displaced weaker, and repeated among themselves the struggle which gave them mastery over aboriginal savages. India has been no exception to this grand historical law.53 The grand historical law, in other words, had a natural or scientific basis. In the end, the ethno-logic of colonial medicine confirmed a cognitive map in which the Ayurvedic, the Unani and the “western” systems, stood in the same relation to each other as the ancient, medieval, and the modern in a longue duree, seemingly nonEurocentric, account of a universal history of medicine. The clear “rupture” in this narrative came first, with Galen, and more recently, with the enlightenment. The ancient and the medieval systems of medicine shared a humoral understanding of the body, while the modern body contained organs that were made visible through human dissection. The relative locations of the systems – Ayurvedic, Unani and European – mapped temporally as ancient, medieval and modern respectively, were further fixed by establishing an analogy with the languages which “contained” these medical systems – Sanskrit, Arabic and English. Finally, these were made to fit into ethnological maps, as the “Hindu,” the “Mohammedan” and the “English” systems. Once the map was in place, the English language contained all of rational medical knowledge. India had missed out on Europe’s history of progress; the way forward lay in a vicarious experience of European history, made possible through the mechanics of empire. This history of medicine based on an analogical mapping of men, language and knowledge, allows us to make sense of the significance of January 10, 1835, when Madhusudan Gupta picked up the scalpel and shook off “centuries of superstition” to take a giant leap in the history of (native) mankind. The contact between eastern and western systems of medicine had marked the coming together of the incommensurable: on the one side was a body that was “fluent,” in which the humors flowed, their harmony bringing health, their imbalance causing disease; on the other side was a body filled with organs, on which disease left perceptible marks, visible for anyone to see once the body was opened up. It was believed that the errors of the first could be exposed through dissection; in fact, dissection did not prove the absence of humors. The place of dissection in the colonial history of medicine, however, allowed for a comparison of two systems: it hinted at a common origin, aiding comprehension of the exotic systems, and easing translations into the alien culture, while confirming Britain’s superior attainments. The act of dissection, retrospectively represented as crucial to the development of rational medicine, and of man emerging as both the subject and object of this science, was rehearsed in Calcutta, as a repetition of a process that had already occurred elsewhere. In fact, the act of repetition was part of the process by which western medicine sealed its boundaries and claimed its modernity, for epistemic identities were mutually constitutive in the zone of contact and “western science” in Britain was closing off its boundaries not just to everything that belonged to another place, but also to another time. In other words, these historians of medicine represented dissection as crucial to modern medicine in an attempt to reject simultaneously the dubious science of other cultures, and the errors of European science of another time.54

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The Orientalist production of “Aryan” medicine, and the retrospective significance attached to the foundation of the Calcutta Medical College, was based on a fundamental faith in this analogical mapping of men, knowledge and language. Let us see how this discursive formation played out in practice in the transition in 1835, specifically in the question of medical translation, to revisit some of our conclusions on the relationship between theory and perception, between language and things.

Of language and things: Translating the body The problem of language and translation had plagued the educators at the NMI from the moment of its inception in 1822. One man devoted his career to resolving the problem of medical and scientific translation by using the map of analogies as a guide, even as he subverted some of its conclusions. John Tytler, the staunchest supporter of the “Orientalist” model in medical education, took over from Surgeon Breton as superintendent of the NMI in 1827. Tytler was a scholar of Arabic, and also taught anatomy at the Sanskrit College and the Mahommedan College, two other institutions credited with providing a “syncretic” platform for the dissemination of useful knowledge amongst the native population. Tytler had taught at the Sanskrit College since 1828, and in 1831 a small hospital was attached to the College in response to the overwhelming enthusiasm of the students. In that year, students training to become assistant surgeons regularly attended “94 house patients and 158 out ones.”55 In 1828, John Tytler offered to the Schoolbooks Society “an entire course in the medical and mathematical sciences for native students” which, he somewhat immodestly predicted, “will be referred to always and will constitute a greater work of the kind than has ever been attempted.”56 The aim of the Society was to provide textbooks for native students in a digestible form, and Tytler offered an abridgement of Avicenna’s works, along with translations into the Arabic of Hooper’s Physician’s Vade Mecum and the Anatomist’s Vade Mecum, Thomson’s Conspectus to the Pharmacopoeias and Conquest’s Midwifery, William Twining’s The Diseases of Bengal and Thomas’ Practice of Physic on Plague as a Disease. As the head of the Education Press and Depository, and the Superintendent of the Translations Committee, he wielded considerable influence on deciding what texts were to be translated and how, what was to be taught and in what way. As a man of obvious literary talents, competent in Sanskrit, Arabic and Hindustani, and having been in charge of native students at three different institutions, Tytler spoke with authority on the character of native languages as well as that of native students. Tytler emphasized the practical benefits of translations, which allowed the translator to filter out information unnecessary for the recipient culture and to introduce extra information where required. In his words, translation was a pedagogical strategy that created the effects of dialogue while enabling a transformation; it provided a “means of reconciling them to European science in general and inspire them [sic] with a zeal for further attainments.”57 Outlining this expanded plan for curing the native, he wrote:

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European science, like Christian religion, has by far the best chance of succeeding among the natives of Hindoostan by our avoiding even the appearance of coercion and allowing them and even encouraging them to study their own system and ours together and quietly making the comparison themselves … Coercion always produces the opposite effect to what is intended. The outward profession of belief in any system of science, like that of belief in religion, is of no value unless attended with an inward conviction.58 The curriculum followed at the NMI reflected this philosophy; Tytler believed that the character of the natives of India, and that of their languages, would resist an importation of foreign elements. To avoid this problem, western texts in translation were to be made “as conformable to their ideas as is consistent with Reason and Truth.”59 To bring about a smooth conversion to rational medicine, Tytler “discovered” a corpus of autochthonous authoritative texts that he re-presented through translation by including key annotations. He filtered out principles he deemed inconsistent with reason, and introduced certain progressive elements into what he deemed to be outdated native texts. Thus far, Tytler was in line with the dominant paradigm of Orientalist thought; he strayed in his selection of the preferred language of translation: Arabic. Besides contradicting key aspects of the Orientalist triptych, Tytler’s decision to translate into Arabic had appeared rather odd to the General Committee of Public Instruction at a time when Calcutta’s elites may have boasted of a knowledge of Persian, the language of governance and law, and Bengali and Hindustani, the most widely used vernaculars. Also, it was unlikely that too many with a competent grasp of the classical languages would enrol in the Institution only to train for the lower rungs of the army’s medical services. To Tytler, however, with his views on the connected histories of the east and the west, the choice of Arabic as the language of science was anything but obscure. Taking the analogies between the structure and history of languages and man too literally, perhaps, Tytler proposed, moreover, that the language of instruction ought to be Sanskrit for the Hindus, and Arabic for the Mohammedans of Calcutta. And so, as though his Arabic projects were not ambitious enough, Tytler volunteered to translate, compile and adapt the works of Sushruta and Charaka, long identified as the emblematic texts of Ayurveda, into digestible forms in Sanskrit. These choices derived from the Orientalist vision of the connected histories of the east and west, wherein Avicenna functioned as the classic “bridge” between the east and the west. He clarified that: [T]he medical works of this country may be considered abridgements, one of another, being all partial abridgements of Galen, and in reading one you read the whole. They set out with the Galenic account of humours and temperaments and faculties, in a manner that has long been rejected in every rational system of medicine.60 To understand the Unani corpus metonymically through the works of “Avicenna,” Tytler asserted that “nothing more is necessary than to be familiar with Galen and


Seeing reason 79 the humoral pathology, and this surely is not a task of great magnitude.”61 Since, in his understanding, “Avicenna” had served as the bridge between east and west, old and new, the choice of Arabic as the favored language of translation made perfect sense to Tytler. His interest in Arabic (and Unani) ended here; because the great revolution in medical science in the west had come with a displacement of humors by organs, the system of Unani was always already irrational. Not only did Unani have the status of a knowledge located in the past, being analogous to a defunct European medical system, it had degenerated even further, the “creed and the customs of the Mohammedans being averse to the study of anatomy.” The Arabs had apparently wasted their time in the study of fanciful, erroneous hypotheses, which as they receive amongst them not the smallest amount of observation or experiment, answer no purpose but to bewilder those who do not understand them, and disgust those who do.62 Tytler’s theorization, then, did not end with the discussion of texts and languages, but extended to the nature of the people who spoke the languages. According to Tytler the character of the Hindus and the Muslims was reflected in that of their languages, and was reinforced by their social structures: The Mohammedan breed considers all its disciples of whatever kind on a perfect equality as relates to spiritual affairs and therefore its literature, such as it is, is acceptable to all ranks and to a certain extent diffused among them while on the other hand the Hindoo absolutely precludes the lower orders from anything similar to a learned education, and condemns them to perpetual ignorance. Even of such medical terms as exist with them I have no resource but to use English words and express their meanings as required by a periphrasis, sometimes of less and sometimes of greater elegance … As the European and the Mohammedan systems of medicine have a common origin in the writings of Galen so there are multitudes of technical terms exactly parallel in each, which are generally understood among Mohammedans … but with Hindoos little if anything of this kind exists, at least I have not yet found them in their medical writings, independent of which there is an essential difference in the literary qualification of the two classes of people.63 Thus explaining the principle differences between the “Oordhoo” and “Nagree” versions of his translation of Hooper’s Anatomists’ Vade Mecum, Tytler rendered the capacities of the languages as analogous to the culture and society of the Muslims and Hindus of India. If the language of the monotheistic Arabs was more suitable than that of the idolatrous Hindus, the advantage was somewhat undermined by the linguistic, and analogously, ethnological character, for there was “no language that abhors the introduction of foreign terms as Arabic.” The character of the Arabic language and the people posed similar difficulties: “We may apply to the language the prophetic character of the people who speak it – their hand is against every man and every man’s hand is against them.”64 In an explicit admission of the

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dependence of “facts” on theories and cognitive categories, Tytler complained that “wherever these theories differ as those of Europe and India so widely do, there can scarcely be corresponding technical terms at all except in such simple matters as the names of organs and drugs.65 Peter Breton, the first superintendent of the NMI, had tried his hand at translation, and had been less sanguine about the capacity of the native languages to signify specific organs, given the absence of dissection in the “eastern” systems: The Asians from being unacquainted with anatomy, have no words equivalent to a number of anatomical expressions, and many oriental names for medical terms are quite inapplicable … They know not the distinction between an artery and a vein, and consequently the appellation of rug or shirra are indiscriminately applied to both … The names used by the natives generally for the throat are applied to both the esophagus and trachea from the ignorance of the differences existing between these two passages … [I]t appears that many anatomical and medical terms may be rendered intelligible to the natives by definitions accompanied with demonstrations.66 In other words, the problem of language could be resolved by seeing and touching a corpse. At the NMI, Tytler had carried out anatomical lessons through the dissection of sheep, which he considered a tremendous improvement over the instruction from plates and models that had been the practice under Breton’s supervision. But just as western science was lost in translation to a lower language, the committee which subsequently fired him also concluded that the knowledge of human anatomy was lost in the dissection of “lower” animals. The committee questioned Tytler extensively on the possibility of attaining proper knowledge of human anatomy through the dissection of animals. He insisted that this was possible. His interrogators pushed on, asking him to clarify the anatomical difference between the stomachs of humans and sheep. As he somewhat reluctantly admitted before the committee of inquiry that sheep had four stomachs, the curtains were also going down on the project of translation and accommodation.67 But there was more to the insistence on human dissection than the difference in the guts of sheep and men. This had to do with the project to effect a deeper cure for the native, based on a certain vision of history, and intended to bring about a new way of seeing, and a new way of comprehending the body and the self. First, as we have seen, a particular history of medicine, with its ethnological underpinnings, had erected the study of anatomy through human dissection as the key sign of the divergence between the eastern and western traditions. More importantly, human dissection was tied to a certain way of seeing the body, as a receptacle of organs. This was linked to a process of reconceptualization between the relationship of language and things. It was impossible to translate into an archaic language, in which there were few words to signify tangible things, let alone abstract ideas, for each word was burdened with a prior, erroneous meaning. The Board of Education, ironically, extended Tytler’s own argument on the insularity of the native cultures to subvert his project:

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Preconceived ideas of an opposite tendency are so often attached to the terms which are so borrowed that the spirit and tone of the original writer can seldom be conveyed and the translations become obscure, and not infrequently childish and disgusting.68 The new institution, the Calcutta Medical College, was intended to wipe the slate clean of false beliefs – be it in the realm of superstitious religion or archaic science. Dissection would provide proof by sight, and do away with the excruciatingly difficult task of finding technical terms to describe organs and functions that the native had apparently not yet learnt to name. The Report on the state of Native Medical Education that sounded a death knell to the Institution and led to the abandonment of the translations in 1835 proclaimed English as the language of reason, because that language contains in itself the circle of all the sciences and incalculable wealth of printed works and illustrations, circumstances that give it an obvious advantage over Oriental languages, in which are only to be found the crudest elements of science or the most irrational substitutes for it.69 A true conversion to rational science (and religion) required a clean break from the errors of a superstitious system. Alexander Duff, one of the most prominent missionaries of the nineteenth century, had summed up similar frustrations in trying to convey the word of God to the native of India: “Every native term which the Christian missionary can employ to communicate the divine truth is already appropriated as the chosen symbol of some counterpart deadly error.”70 The theme of conversion resonated through the discussions on medical education at the time, since rational knowledge was, after all, the knowledge of God’s nature. When Alexander Duff was called upon to testify before the Committee of Native Medical Education, he reiterated that any rational study had to begin with moral lessons, so that “the minds of the youth are doubly prepared by a knowledge of things as well as a knowledge of words, for the reading and comprehending of the book of life.”71 In his opinion, true conversion to Christianity and to rational medicine, could come only with the acquisition of the English language. By the time they have acquired a mastery of the English language under judicious and enlightened instructors, their minds are almost metamorphosed into the texture and casts of the minds of European youth and they cannot help expressing their utter contempt for Hindoo superstition and Hindoo prejudice. If inferior languages were to be used to convey rational science, it could distort the real meaning of rational medicine and camouflage an incomplete conversion to medical science.72 Medical education had gone beyond the practical needs of the colonial state; it had become transformed into a project to cure the native of his erroneous theories, to which he was enchained by his religious superstitions. In this schema, by taking up the scalpel, the native of India would not just obtain ocular

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proof of the body according to the western system, he would also provide evidence that he was ready to be converted to reason. At the Calcutta Medical College, the students “were expected to practice human dissection, and perform operations upon the dead body, or be discharged.”73 And so they did.


Difference in the light of reason: A cultural history of colonial anatomy74 In the Calcutta Medical College at College Street in Kolkata, hangs a portrait of a Madhusudan Gupta, the man memorialized as the “first Hindu dissector of British India.” Following the convention of painting men of science with the objects of their study, the artist, Mrs Belnos, painted him with a skull in his left hand. The portrait was commissioned to preserve his memory, but also so that the image of the native touching the skull could forever hang above the heads of generations of medical students, as a constant reminder for the natives of India that the way to rational knowledge lay in the touching of human bone, and the breaking of religious taboo.75 At that time, Gupta’s dissection was presented as the founding moment of modern medicine in India. The image of Madhusudan Gupta, who proceeded alone to insert a knife into a human cadaver, to receive and provide proof of the triumph of reason, continued to circulate in colonial discourse throughout the nineteenth century; Gupta’s portrait has a pride of place at the college in Calcutta today. The magic of the moment was a bit of a trick. In this secret yet much publicized “first dissection,” four other students assisted Gupta, the demonstrator of anatomy. The names of these men were allowed to remain shrouded in mystery for, we are told, they would have become outcasts in their own superstition-laden society if their hobnobbing with corpses in the dark were to be made public. Complete secrecy was maintained on the events that night; the Principal of the College preserved the pact of silence. He refused to name them in the annual report, lest they suffer persecution, or their families face excommunication from their superstitious brethren.76 While the name of the students who assisted Gupta was kept secret, the colonial government celebrated the dissection itself with a fifty-round cannon salute for the “first” dissectors of India. The repetition of the dangers associated with the touching of corpses for Hindus in particular continued. It was a natural conclusion to draw given the widespread image of Hindu society as rigidly organized according to caste hierarchies and rules.77 This exaggeration of the Hindu’s antipathy to corpses served another important function, it emphasized the cultural roots of the differences between the indigenous and western medical traditions. The emphasis on anatomy performed another symbolic function in the history of medicine: the exaggeration of the Hindu antipathy to dissection served to normalize the study of anatomy in Britain at a time when it was very difficult to acquire cadavers for dissection in the metropolis. In Britain, the infamous “resurrection men” dug up corpses under the cover of dark, to supply them secretly to dissectors. Just six years after the controversial case of Burke and Hare had ended in the public hanging of Burke in front of enormous crowds, and very soon after the Anatomy


Seeing reason 83 Act of 1832 made the corpses of the poor available to dissectors as a matter of course,78 Frederick J. Mouat, the anatomy teacher at the Calcutta Medical College in the 1840s, could boast of the neatness of arrangements with which he could attain corpses for dissection in Calcutta. The floating population of the city made a monthly supply of about 90 bodies possible, he claimed, which included unclaimed bodies from the police hospitals, and the corpses of those whose relatives were too poor to cremate them at Nimtollah Ghaut. Cadavers were not acquired from the Calcutta Hospital as he realized this could alarm and drive away the patients. Mouat could also boast that while “frequent disturbances arise from the opposition of the lower classes, every dissecting season, I have been able to settle these differences quietly, without any appeal to judicial or other authority.” In 1837, 60 bodies were dissected at the College. By 1844, the numbers rose to over 500. As though exposing the gap that separated the “native” that haunted the imagination of the colonial policy maker, and the native that peopled the institutions he planned, dissection had, in fact, been accepted quite easily once it was introduced amidst much dread for this native antipathy to the touching of corpses.79 If there was a problem at all, it came from faulty structures and difficulties with storing the corpses: in 1848, for instance, 220 corpses were dissected, and 565 “rejected in consequence of rapid putrefaction.”80 These practical obstacles and structural defects at the college proved far less interesting than the meta-narrative of Hindu civilization built on caste, and John Tytler, too, focused on caste as he stated his belief that the archaic system would crumble with the spread of anatomical knowledge, which [h]as a most powerful influence in counteracting prejudices that arise from birth, or station, or caste, by demonstrating that, however mankind may differ in these externals, the internal organization is precisely the same. Before the knife of the anatomist, every artificial distinction of society disappears: and if all the individuals of the human race be equal in the grave, they are still more so on the dissecting table. The prince will not be found to possess a single artery or single muscle beyond the meanest subjects; and the Christians, the Mohammedan, and the Hindoo, the Brahman and the Sudra, have the same organs and the same faculties.81 In his schema, a removal of caste prejudice was not an accidental by-product of rational medicine and the clarity of sight; the removal of caste prejudices was a precondition for the spread of the practice of anatomy. By touching the corpse, the native would lie outside the system of caste that defined his world, and would be ready to be reformed. The picking of the scalpel was made into a rite of passage in the conversion to rational medicine – the first signs of being born again with English taste, intellect and morals. It is interesting, in this context, to remember the other history of anatomical sight, one that has less to do with the obliteration of bodily difference and more to do with its reification, discussed in the first section of this book. Tytler’s claim that anatomical sight would obliterate prejudice is rendered particularly ironic in the light of the Edinburgh anatomist Robert Knox’s infamous statement that “race is everything, science, art, in a word, civilization depend [sic]


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on it.”82 In the later nineteenth century, scientists relied heavily on proof by sight and anatomical examination to prove the facts of racial difference. It is not surprising, then, that western medical practitioners in the colonies occasionally found that the claims of the universal applicability of their science were coming undone by their obsessive accounting of difference. The abiding tension between the universalizing and differentiating claims of a racially-based modern medicine had practical consequences in terms of medical education: Was the native learning anything that was of practical use, if their bodies did, in fact, differ from that of Europeans? David Hare, a prominent figure in native education in Bengal, for one, did not think so; he was unhappy that the native doctors went to the Calcutta General Hospital for practical instruction, where the patients are without any exception, European, whose maladies differ materially from those of the native constitution, which in after life most of these young men will be called upon to treat. Though it is undoubtedly necessary that medical students be made acquainted with all the various forms under which disease appears as well amongst foreigners as their fellow countrymen, more especially where the inhabitants of so many nations congregate as in India, it would certainly be very mischievous medical education which would direct their attention chiefly to the maladies of a class of patients who may rarely fall under their notice hereafter, and at the same time leave untaught the character of diseases amongst their own people.83 This instruction on the character and disorders of “their own people” was not easy either; Dr Bramley had pointed out that these “people” included several races and nations. What medical instruction did achieve was not the eradication of difference in the light of reason, but its very opposite: an objectification of bodily difference. At the simplest level, the annual reports of the medical college created the very multiplicity of races that seemed to undermine the promise of universal cures; each student was classified several times over, according to race, caste and religion, being enumerated as Hindu, Muslim, Christian natives or East Indians, Brahmins, vaidyas, druggists, weavers or goldsmiths. This method of classifying was considered important for predicting their capacity to learn. Generalizations abounded about Hindus being more forward looking than the Muslims, or the natives of the northern provinces being more capable physically that those of lower Bengal, and indicated the modern racialization of native society. At another level, the dissemination of a racialized corpus through colonial medicine brought about a transformation in indigenous conceptualizations of bodily difference. While some historians have argued that ideas of Vedic hierarchy (or caste) provided a pre-form of racism: Tony Ballantyne, for instance, suggests that “these ancient interpretations of community provided crucial material for the elaboration of racialized understanding of the Hindu identity in the nineteenth century,”84 even though the Vedic view of community lacked the heavy emphasis on biology and rigid categorization found in nineteenth-century European definitions of race; I would suggest that the racialized understanding of the anatomical body represented a break not an


Seeing reason 85 evolution, in biologized understandings of difference. While caste and community did not disappear by any means, the language of racialized medicine and the new perception of difference laid bare by the anatomist’s knife, transformed modes of self-perception amongst the western-educated Bengali later in the nineteenth century. For instance, an 1862 Bengali medical treatise added to the criteria of temperament, sex, country and age – considered crucial information for the administration of medicine – the new category of jatiya bheda or racial distinction. The jatiya bheda referred to in this instance was not the jatis that so confounded European classification, but an adoption of the classification based on physiognomy, and hair-type, into the racial varieties of Ingrej, Kaffer, Yehudi, Chiuinana and so on.85 “Before the knife of the anatomist, every artificial distinction of society disappears,” Tytler had proclaimed, hoping that the system of castes would fade away with anatomical sight. Ironically, the modernizing effect of English education lay not in the eradication of differences of caste, as the equality of all bodies was made visible by the knife, as Tytler had hoped, but in the rearticulation of caste in the light of reason. The reformulation of caste in racialized terms was most starkly expressed by a colonial doctor and instructor at the Calcutta Medical College. In his account of a universal history of medicine, Thomas Alexander Wise used the scientific method in which native texts and native bodies were studied as ethnological objects, to reflect upon the connections between different systems of knowledge, the racial capacity to know, and the prospects of improving racial character through education: As we trace the progress of science in different ages and countries, and among distant peoples, we detect the means by which new facts are accumulated and the beautiful structure of nature unfolded; and we observe how much civilization had gained or lost, owing to personal circumstances, and the character of different nations … Neither in science nor in civilization have the several races and nations started from the same point, or advanced by the same steps; and we must assign their differences not to the accidents of their conditions alone but to the peculiarities of their original mental capacity.86 This takes us back to the discussions in Section 1, on ethnology and phrenology, and on the racialist underpinnings of individual and “national character” that was to form the basis of the liberal reformist administration of Indian society. Signifying the biologization of race (and perhaps also indicating that native students were not unlike laboratory rats in the experiments with civilization), Wise provided sketches of the heads of his two native assistants, one a “learned Vaidya,” and the other “a petty barber-surgeon” to ascertain the effects of “the pursuit of learning and the want of education upon the physical organization of the Asiatic.” He concluded: The profile of Neem Chaund … forms a striking contrast to the profile of the barber surgeon, who was born of low caste parents, and had for generations received no education, and got their living by shaving, cleaning the ears,

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trimming the nails, inoculating for smallpox … If there be such a difference in the ranks of the medical profession, and in the organization of the Hindu physician and the barber-surgeon in the present adverse condition of the former, what must have been the inequality between the ancient and modern Voidya.87 By measuring the heads of his two assistants of diverse backgrounds, Wise was not demonstrating caste distinctions as much as he was giving them a scientific fix. The measuring of heads was also an experiment to demonstrate the effects of education on the Indian mind. While Wise might have interpreted the experiment more literally than others, English schools such as the Calcutta Medical College may be read as examples of a two-step modernist experiment that involved, first, the identification of the best means of educating natives through a reasoned understanding of their difference and their innate capacity to learn, and second, an analysis of the improving effects of such education on native character. The idea of education as “experiment” was not unusual; Londa Schiebinger has discussed the implications of the education experiments which were undertaken to determine the capacity of the minds of women and non-white men within Europe in the nineteenth century: in order to be recognized as equals, learned women or blacks had to excel in those arts and sciences recognized by the white male academy.88 In India, the idea of

Figure 4.1 Neem Chand Das Gupta (left) and an unnamed Barber-Surgeon (right) apprentices at the Dhaka Dispensary under T. A. Wise Source: Thomas A. Wise,”Preface,” Review of the History of Medicine (London: J. Churchill, 1867).

Seeing reason 87 English education as an “experiment in civilization” permeated colonial pedagogic discourse well into the mid-nineteenth century, as we see in the next section.

The school as a laboratory of civilization


In 1850, in an introductory lecture that opened the sixteenth session of the Calcutta medical college, Allan Webb, professor of descriptive and surgical anatomy, and the curator of the pathological museum at the College, said as much to the first graduating class: You are the first fruits of a great experiment, that of enfranchising the native mind from ignorance and dark prejudices. Recollect that the success of this most interesting experiment depends upon your future career. A false step on your part might be productive of disastrous consequences to the great cause of native education.89 Allan Webb thus clarified that the foundation of the first medical college in India was part of an experiment undertaken by “all who desired to raise her people in civilization,” and added that the “degree of enfranchisement of the native mind” had to be understood by comparing the history of the Indian systems with the present progress.90 The college was a site of experiments with the native mind, a place to gauge native capacities for the acquisition of scientific knowledge. Western medicine had taken its time before it moved out of the “colonial enclaves” of jails and armies, but the need to cure the native of irrational superstitions was on the agenda long before native health received serious consideration. In 1824, the East India Company’s government had appointed a General Committee of Public Instruction providing suggestions for “a better instruction of the people and the introduction among them of useful knowledge and to the improvement of their moral character.”91 The study of rational medicine was an important part of this moral endeavor, and the early schools were experiments to determine the limits of education – how much could the native learn? The experiment thus raised questions about the racial capacities of the natives, and placed the burden of proof on them. The first principal of the Calcutta Medical College, Professor Bramley, had some doubt about “whether a Hindu class of medical students could be formed at all for the study of the science of the European system, the peculiarity of their opinions, and the supposed pertinacity of their prejudices being duly taken into consideration.”92 It was not just these prejudices that were taken into consideration, but also their innate capacity, for liberal education was all about the administration of nature’s laws. While education could improve the native and help counter the effects of degeneration on his race, the curriculum had to take into account these pernicious prejudices and his innate capacity: I was struck with the unwholesome and unsettled state into which their minds had been thrown, and with the imperfect condition of their physical powers, owing partly to the nature of their early education, as to what had been done,


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Blood and morals but perhaps more as to what had been neglected. I found the natural precocity of the minds of these native youths, fostered and forced into unnatural action, by being employed in speculative subjects before they had been taught or understood the nature of practical ones. The general taste of all these boys took, I found, in this respect the same bent and inclination; at the same time their moral condition remained unimproved, while their bodily powers had been allowed to deteriorate as unhealthily as their minds had been pampered into luxuriance. […] Hence … they had learnt to cherish a false estimate of learning, in so far as the test of acquirement was held among them to be, the extent of abstract rather than positive knowledge ... Add to this the feebleness of the body and the want of physical energy by which all were distinguished, and it will not be considered far from the truth, when I say, they came to me, men in intellect, children in constitution.93

One antidote to this problem was a program of physical cultivation and bodybuilding. Bramley was convinced that study of medicine was indeed an enhanced experiment to study the conditions that might be required for an overall improvement. Entering the College was a break from the past that required a strong body, a relaxed mind and good company, for “the social anomalies, the habits and associations of the students are peculiarly averse to the full and active development of their moral powers.”94 The science of race was therefore useful knowledge; it was used to rationalize – make rational and justify – colonial policy. In this particular example, while the pedagogues referred to ethnological and philological maps to plan a system of medical education for the natives of India, they contributed further ethnographic evidence that could be used in the theorization of race. Drawing on the ethnological understanding of “savage” as child, and the medical condition of “precocity” often ascribed to primitive people, Bramley was critical of the tendency to “overeducate”: Experience proves that the mind is capable of certain exertions only, and if it is strained ... it wearies and declines, accomplishing much less ... Before the studies of maturer years are stuffed into the head of a child, people should reflect on the anatomical fact that the brain of an infant is not the brain of a man ... Mental precocity is the characteristic feature of the natives of Bengal … Every physician knows that precocious children are, in fifty cases for one, much the worse for the discipline they have undergone. In most of the remarkable cases of precocity which have been known in England, it has been observed that the mind overstrained appears to have imbibed the seeds of insanity, or that, at a comparatively early age, the originally acute mental energy has faded ... May not this account for the popular, but unproven assertion that the educated native is notoriously shrewd and intelligent, to the age of 25 ... but that after this age his mental power gradually deteriorates.95 In order to avoid the problems of the social anomalies and cultural impediments that the students’ background presented, the educators preferred to carry out their


Seeing reason 89 experiments in fairly controlled environments. In the 1840s, a plan was floated to make it compulsory for the medical student to reside in the school, in order to remove him from the pernicious influence of superstitions and the “social habits of people” in and around his home. Education thus entailed an overhauling of everyday life, and a distance from the home, where the student was “exposed to every influence resulting from ignorance, superstition, prejudice of caste, and similar means of weakening the effects of the intellectual and moral training he is undergoing in our schools and colleges.”96 These pernicious influences did not end with the walls of the native home; to carry the pedagogic experiment to its logical conclusion, the native education committee had suggested in 1835 that eight of the most promising students of the Calcutta Medical College should be sent to England for further education. This was necessary because even the best indigenous institution was lacking in the manifold moral adjuncts and elevating associations, that give such prodigious force to the impressions made upon the ductile minds of youth in Europe and in a thousand ways tend to refine their manners and to cultivate the mental faculties.97 By being removed from their native environment, and, incidentally, being forced to break a taboo against overseas travel, the natives would be given a fair chance to be “born again” as Englishmen; travel to a school across the oceans was a rite of passage to the age of reason.98 The Medical Board did not match the zeal of the educators and the students, and accurately predicted that the trip would only serve to overqualify the students for the tasks devised for them by the Board. After much deliberation, on March 5, 1845, four students from the Calcutta Medical College finally boarded the suitably named Bentinck with Professor Goodeve to begin their education at the University College, London (UCL).99 Initially, this particular experiment with English education was deemed a success: Soorjocoomar Goodeve-Chuckerbutty stood out for special honors for his facility with dissections. He was also the chosen companion of Robert Grant, professor of anatomy at UCL, whom he accompanied on several trips to Europe.100 During one of his trips to the continent with Dr Grant, Goodeve-Chuckerbutty learnt German and improved upon his French. Bholanath Bose and Gopal Chunder Seal completed the Bachelor of Medicine at London University; Bose won the gold medal in Botany at the University College, and Seal was elected one of Dr Williams’ clinical clerks. In 1847, when the students had attained the diploma of the college of surgeons, it was widely considered the “first instance of a native of India passing a college examination in Europe,” and the “first occasion of showing publicly their capacity for acquiring the sciences and professional knowledge of the Western world.”101 H. H. Goodeve pronounced the experiment a resounding success, and predicted that it would have a great bearing on the “future of civilization in India.” In the short run too, the four students in London were a recurring feature in stories about civilizing experiments, one that the Medical College appealed to each time it requested additional funds from the government for new apparatus or


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dissecting rooms, or for extensions to buildings or to the curriculum. In December, 1847, for instance, the College authorities requested a proper “dead-house” to replace the ordinary shed where the bodies stored for dissection were exposed to mutilation by rats, birds and jackals. In their request they mentioned the success of the four UCL graduates to remind the Medical Board that they were engaged in the important business of curing natives. The Medical Board was less interested in such experiments; it preferred to employ less-qualified “native doctors” over subassistant surgeons with advanced training, for they found that the high scholastic achievements of the latter did not, in the end, render them fit for independent charge of a jail, or dispensary, or with a military detachment. There was, after all, that insurmountable gap between being English and becoming Anglicized. The council of the education fought to keep the experiment going, by rehearsing the successes of the UCL students, who were not by any means the most intelligent or proficient … and yet they have competed on equal terms and with truly gratifying result, with the best students of the most distinguished medical school in Great Britain; it has proved that the mind of the native of India is fully equal to the acquisition of the most difficult and extended department of practical science as taught in Europe.102 The Medical Board had decided, it would seem, that although the mind of the Indian had been “fully equal to the acquisition of practical science” within the controlled environment of a laboratory, it could not be allowed to run loose in the world. The four students from the University College returned to Bengal to find that while they were overqualified for the roles of sub-assistant surgeons, these were the only positions available to them under the colonial government, and they had already signed away their right to seek alternative employment. Bholanath Bose spent several years petitioning the government for promotions, and later turned to private practice. Soorjocoomar Goodeve-Chuckerbutty was, in many ways, the most successful fruit of the experiment. He had opted out of the caste system by converting to Christianity even before sailing away to England and had taken on a hyphenated persona by anglicizing his Bengali name and merging it with that of his mentor’s. Goodeve-Chuckerbutty was enamored with the English language, the promise of overseas travel, and English methods of organization. His letters of reference from the University College suggested he was, indeed, English in morals and intellect: One referee commented that given his place of birth, “his successful career in London must be regarded as proving the existence of mental and moral capacities of remarkable superiority,” while another testified of Chuckerbutty that “with such European cultivation, and retaining the sympathies of his birth, I conceive no one will be better fitted to assist in raising the moral tone of his countrymen or to serve as a link between them and the English.”103 In other words, Chuckerbutty was Macaulay’s dream come true. He took his task as interpreter and his position as a black Englishman seriously; in a speech delivered to his fellow natives in Calcutta, he said, “I was born and bred


Seeing reason 91 as one of you, but what I then learnt, and what I have since learnt, gives me a right to speak authoritatively on the subject.”104 In the next two decades, he continued to give fiery speeches exhorting his fellow countrymen to cast aside all superstitions and sail across the seas to broaden their horizons, as he had done, “resolved to allow not effeminate sorrows or mistaken apprehensions to influence my conduct.”105 He urged them to embrace English education, the English language, and to translate the scientific treasures of that language for their compatriots: “Education, in its intellectual sense, means the drawing out, disciplining, strengthening, and refining the powers of the understanding; and no language is more calculated for this work in the present state of our country than English.”106 He made an impassioned speech about “quackery and its dangers, to be suppressed by the extension of the English Medical Act,” for he had little faith in unregulated medicine; of the traditional midwife, he suggested, “the knowledge of these crones was at par with their social rank, for, beyond tying the navel string and carrying off soiled linen, their practice generally did more harm than good.107 He seemed to be mimicking Macaulay’s reasoning that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia,” when he suggested, “I should not exaggerate if I said that a day in London is of more value than a month in Calcutta. London is the center of the great vortex of civilization …”108 In 1852, soon after his return, he addressed an audience at the Bethune Society on the issue of sanitation in Calcutta; after a minute examination of the everyday life of the native – food, drink, clothes, housing, drainage, sports, intellectual pursuits – he concluded that “East Indians,” unlike Europeans, were living examples of the “passive exercise of bodily and mental powers.” The colonial stereotype was recaptured in a set of alienated images of self that appeared in his speech – the idle, fat zamindar, the mentally overstrained and physically depleted babu, the half-clad Brahmin without gloves or stockings, and the open gutters and filthy homes. Reading Goodeve-Chuckerbutty’s speech on sanitation, Gyan Prakash has suggested that men like him incessantly criticized the native’s alleged lacks, in order to “diffuse a knowledge of the laws of health without which sanitary reforms would not work,” and “to attempt to educate the public in health and hygiene, and to disseminate colonial disciplines as self-disciplines.” He argues that in doing so, such men inserted themselves “in a mediating space between the people and the state” that was created by governmentality, in order to assist the state in educating and regulating the population. In their venture to diffuse “knowledges and practices with which Indians would constitute themselves as modern subjects,” however, they could not avoid the questions of difference.”109 Analyzing this “problem of difference,” Prakash goes on to discuss the demand for a “national medicine” and a cultural reinscription of colonial therapeutics. Prakash stops short of naming this difference as “race,” and leaps forward to the “national” project launched on the subversive translation of theories of difference. Pursuing the theme of colonial governmentality, and arguing that race was not an anomaly in this theme, I would further suggest that Goodeve-Chuckerbutty’s speech was punctuated by the insights of racialized medicine; his disdain for the “East Indian,” his quest to cure the self, his respect for liberal institutions, capture all of the conflicts of the racialized self


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brought into being by the convergence of medicine and politics in the colony. This racialized conception of a self committed to modernity inflected his peculiar insertion into the space of government. For soon upon his return from England, the hyphenated doctor found that he was destined to fall short of an English standard. Goodeve-Chuckerbutty’s paper was the first to be delivered by a native before the Bethune Society that had been established in Calcutta in 1851 as a joint venture of liberal white men and the black elite. The society had been founded in the memory of John Bethune, a senior colonial official known for his liberal views on race and for his advocacy of female education; the society’s Bengali membership consisted of the cream of the Calcutta elite. Goodeve-Chuckerbutty must have felt quite at home addressing others like himself in the Society’s meeting held at the Calcutta Medical College and presided over by a professor at the college, F.J. Mouat; this was the safe “space” where the Bengali could speak his modernity. It must have come as a shock to him, then, when his paper was described by a commentator as an “interesting performance … though it contains nothing on sanitation.” Passing over Chuckerbutty’s discussions on ventilation, drainage, habitation, food and dress, the commentary seized upon “the most heterodox opinion advanced … the advice to his countrymen to discard their Oriental garb, and don the scientific costumes of Europe!” Ridiculing the quasiphysiological explanations provided, say, for donning a hat or wearing stockings, the commentator wrote, Of all the innovations, which distempered fancy and perverted taste could possibly select, this is, without exception, the worst … Young Bengal is already sufficiently ridiculous in straps and tights. He would out-Bloomer the most outrageous of the tasteless innovators of our recent times were the predilection for tailcoats and alarming waistcoats to become epidemic.”110 The despicable desires of Goodeve-Chuckerbutty, the hyphenated babu, indicate the ways in which the most successful fruits of liberal racialist experiments returned as a repulsive hybridity – the ultimate threat of perversion and degeneration; his success bears witness to the limits of the project.111 Just over a decade after this “ridiculous” speech at the Bethune society, Goodeve-Chuckerbutty gave another lecture promoting vernacular licensing in medicine; the desire for English, London, waistcoats and stockings had become muted as he proclaimed, “Surely a knowledge of English is not an indispensable condition to make a gentleman; nor should it be so to make a doctor, lawyer or engineer.”112 This speech was delivered before the medical faculty at the Calcutta University. He bravely criticized his audience, suggesting “the great fault of the medical faculty at Calcutta University is that, with two exceptions all its members are Europeans, with little knowledge of the vernaculars and of the opinions, feelings, wishes, habits and customs of the natives. The result is that practically it represents only European opinions and interests, and ignores the national element ... this is one of the reasons why its

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degrees are so little esteemed and so long as this state of things continues, it will remain an exotic, instead of being naturalized and respected, among the people. It should not have one principle for the European, and another principle for the native … As a national university it should be perfectly fair to all classes of Her Majesty’s subjects.113 Following Homi Bhabha, Chuckerbutty’s speech might be read as enacted in a hybrid displacing space which develops in the interaction between the indigenous and colonial culture, and has the effect of depriving the imposed imperialist culture not only of the authority that it has imposed politically, but even of its own claims to authority. As Robert Young recapitulates, hybridity, working “organically,” is about hegemonizing and creating new spaces, and “intentionally,” is about intervening as a form of subversion, translation, transformation.114 In this instance, however, the cultural logic of “subversive” hybridity is imbedded in its hegemonizing ethno-logic, reflected in its obsession with “native forms” and “exotics.” Chuckerbutty may be read as a creature of the racial logic of liberal reformism – a theory of mutable difference based on culture and biology, optimistic about the improvement of others, but also certain of the limits to this improvement. In the end, then, he was the ironic “success” of the liberal pedagogic regime. The case of Goodeve-Chuckerbutty is an example of the modern forms of selfhood unleashed by the convergence of medical technology and political ideology. With dissection, Michel Foucault suggests western man would constitute himself in his own eyes as the object of science, he grasped himself within his language, and gave himself, in himself and by himself, a discursive existence, only in the opening created by his own elimination … [F]rom the integration of death into medical thought is born a medicine that is given as a science of the individual.115 While it was in the breaking of caste taboos (by dissection) that colonial discourse located the second birth of the native as rational man, it was this transformed vision of the self, this science of the individual, which ultimately committed the native to modernity. By touching the corpse, the Hindu might not have broken “centuries of superstition,” but he did start on a course that would transform his relationship to the self. Goodeve-Chuckerbutty performed his racialized selfhood in the endless speeches to his compatriots, as he struggled to insert himself into the governmental space. He was a symptom of the colonial condition; produced by the inflated anxieties of the colonizers that were sublimated in the ethno-logic of Aryan history and scientific racism, indicative of the damaged self of the colonized, condemned to speak in a forked tongue, and, deeply committed to a particular modernity. In the next section, we will continue to trace the history of this commitment to modernity, premised on the promise of self-discipline, by turning to the themes of sanitary reform and hygienic self-government.



Part III



5

Sanitary subjects


Fevers, filth and freedom in a dual city

We are accustomed to calling a country more civilized if we think it more improved; more eminent in the best characteristics of Man and Society; farther advanced in the road to perfection; happier, nobler, wiser. This is one sense of the word civilization. But in another sense it stands for that kind of improvement only, which distinguishes a wealthy and powerful nation from savages or barbarians. – John Stuart Mill, “Civilization,” 18361 Sanitation, is a mere matter of common sense … it is that instinctive feeling of self-preservation with which every savage is gifted, moderately developed and cultivated. The natural man washed himself, occasionally; the simply rational and decent man also washes his garments and his house; the highly civilized man keeps his city clean; and in doing so, becomes a sanitarian … [T]he progress of sanitation is very slow everywhere … wherever it rises, it extends. It is spreading distinctly in Europe. In India, its progress is tardy, but real. – Norman Chevers, “The Sanitary Position,” 18632

Making Calcutta sanitary, as Norman Chevers would suggest, was intricately linked with the projects of curing and civilizing the native of Bengal, by nurturing the natural instinct of “self-preservation” into a highly cultured rationale for selfdiscipline. The history of sanitation in the city helps retrace the ways in which imperial ideologies were captured in (and by) urban space and programs for sanitation, how the concerns for health and wealth clashed and were reconciled by imperial liberalism, and how the connections between poverty and barbarism, between cleanliness and civilization, came to be naturalized through a discourse on sanitation. A ‘sanitary city’ was imagined between the 1830s and 1850s, to replace the dual city of the days of the Company’s nabobs. In the dual city, the problem of sanitation had been resolved through the separation of “vulnerable” European bodies from Indian filth, realized in the segregation of the black and white towns. Such dualism could no longer contain the enthusiasm of the liberals in their eastern empire in the years of reform. Contrary to more common interpretations of colonial urbanism, medicine and racial discourse, by the mid-nineteenth century, neither could the sanitation problem be solved, nor the borders of white selfhood defined, by the abjection of filth to the black town. The built form of the liberal empire was the sanitary city, where


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goods and people would circulate freely, and the fittest bodies and trading practices would survive. Sanitation – the management of water and waste, a bourgeois discourse on morality, a tool of modern governance – was shaped in tropical Calcutta by a particular juxtaposition of colonial ideas: liberal racialism, free trade, and a mission to civilize. Its stated aim was “the diminution of mortality, the increase of health and wealth, and the advance of civilization of the metropolis of British India.”3 The diminution of mortality quickly disappeared as the end of sanitation, with health and wealth becoming completely conflated, and “civilization” coming to signify, primarily, the attachment of the colony into networks of global capital. This chapter explores this imagined move from a dual to a sanitary city, the changing ideas of race embedded in this transition, and the logic behind its failure.

The politics of pathology In an encyclopedic account of Indian pathology, a colonial physician summed up the effects of Calcutta’s “bad air” on the human constitution by taking a page from imperial history. On July 20, 1756, the nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daulah had packed 146 British subjects into a prison “eighteen feet square, with only two small windows, barred with iron.” From this “Black Hole” of Calcutta, not more that 23 emerged alive the next day. The Black Hole, evoked in imperial discourse as proof of the brutality of the “oriental despot,” and a triumph of the moral discipline of the survivors, was rendered here as a strange laboratory. To the historian the incident provided “the worst example of brute cruelty and ignorance”; the physiologist found in it “the most convincing illustration of the necessity of pure atmospheric air to the maintenance of the life of man.”4 If the very air of Calcutta was a threat to an imperial vision, nature and culture, the environment and the population, required simultaneous management. Circulation and sanitation were crucial to the preservation of imperial health and the civilizing mission. Shifts in visions of sanitation and the city capture developments in imperial ideology, and vice versa; this chapter traces the dynamic relationship between imperial ideology, medical theory and urban plans. In the classic colonial city, a division between native and alien populations was reinforced and captured through segregation in layout, density, housing and everyday life.5 The center of “European” Calcutta contained ornate administrative buildings, the viceroy’s residence, surrounded by the homes of colonial officers and the wealthier white population. This “city of palaces,” adjacent to a large open space, the maidan, was set apart, spatially and conceptually, from the “black town.” The borders between the two parts of the classic colonial form of the dual city were at once solid and eminently porous. While natives of the black town regularly crossed the borders to serve the white population, they were also aware that these were homes they could occupy but not own, and roads they could help build but were barred from walking on.6 The duality was maintained and reiterated in colonial discourse, despite everyday border-crossings by native servants, Indian bibis, crossfertilization of Indian and European styles in the architectural plans of homes, and a heterogeneous use of city spaces. Interestingly, this duality was characteristic of


Sanitary subjects 99 a time remembered as one of relatively easy intercourse between black and white populations, of an Orientalist appreciation for the Indian arts and sciences, a time marked by an accommodation, if not celebration, of Indian difference. The dual city presented a particular way of drawing the borders of the self and of negotiating the threat of eastern corruption. The polyvalent threat of such corruption returns us to the supposed atrocities of Siraj-ud-Daulah, the nawab of Bengal who challenged and resisted the East India Company’s trading practices in the region, suspecting that their wealth was gained at his expense. For the Company, the nawab’s recalcitrance was merely a temporary hitch in the business of empire. The Company’s victory in the battle of Plassey in 1757, represented as a masterstroke by Robert Clive, secured its rule in Bengal, and formalized a system of dual government – an uneasy alliance and a division of power between the Company’s servants and native nawabs. If Mir Jafar had conspired with the British during the crucial battle, it was also unclear who exactly Robert Clive, the so-called architect of empire, served. The Company’s servant retained a jagir (land grant) secured from Mir Jafar at the cost of Company profits while he continued to draw a handsome sum from the Company’s Bengal revenue for the rest of his life. For this, and other reasons, the last few decades of the eighteenth century came to be seen as a period of dubious dalliances between corrupt nawabs and the Company’s nabobs. At the end of the eighteenth century, the stench of corruption that pervaded the Company’s trading practices and political intrigues had started to waft home to England. “Asiatic” principles of government seemed to spread by contagion as the nabobs returned home with their ill-begotten wealth, to acquire estates and titles, and to bribe and force their way into the English Parliament. The fear and loathing of Asiatic corruption was most powerfully staged at the end of the century in the impeachment of Warren Hastings, when Edmund Burke invoked the specter of Asiatic despotism to roundly condemn Hastings’s treatment of the “people of India.” But the system of dual government, and its built form, the dual city, survived this assault. The political landscape was already changing with the tenure of Lord Cornwallis. Under him, recruitment, promotion and salaries were standardized, new regulations concerning private trade and presents were implemented, and land revenue was permanently settled with local landlords to secure regular funds for the Company.7 Under the governor generalship of the Marquis of Wellesley (1798–1805), the “dual city” model of Robert Clive was reformulated in accordance with a clearer hierarchy rather than a haphazard separation. The governor’s residence was distanced from the old factory and thus symbolically and physically detached from the East India Company’s interests. A new Government House stood out splendid in the center of the town, surrounded by lawns, and by the other grand mansions that earned south Calcutta the description of a “city of palaces.” The black town also came under enhanced scrutiny, and was transformed by the influences of mercantile capital: the original nucleus of the native area was the Burra Bazaar – the central wholesale market became much more important than the residential area, Gobindapur, to which all the old families of Calcutta belonged.8 The city continued


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to be shaped, in part, by the shifting ideologies of empire. In 1813, the Company’s charter was renewed, but it was stripped of all trading privileges and monopolies save for the tea trade with China. This inaugurated the years of reform in Indian society, and the triumph of a doctrine of free trade. It was its location that made Calcutta so crucial to the “empire of free trade.” Perched on the ocean and on the banks of a river, Calcutta was crisscrossed by natural waterways that made it easy to move goods in and out of the region. Bengal also had a dense network of bazaars that existed prior to the Company’s arrival, which were developed into an urban base for commercial enterprise and investment under the East India Company’s rule.9 The new city quickly developed as an outpost of the booming world of commercial and industrial Europe. By 1750, approximately half of India’s sea-borne trade passed through Calcutta. By the early nineteenth century, Calcutta was the colonial city par excellence: it was a river port close to a harbor, the center of colonial political power, had a mixed population, and was the key center of trade and communication in the region. These advantages of location were offset by peculiar disadvantages posed to bodily health in the city of swamps; Allan Webb, for one, suggested that the corrupted air in the “Black Hole” was a symptom of the city at large. Under the Mughals, as colonial medical mythology had confirmed, the “land of spectres, the seat of disease, and the mansion of death” had been the place of exile for the worst miscreants, the prison to which ameers who were found guilty of capital crimes, were sent off to a certain death.10 Under the Company, Europeans in the city met every November to congratulate each other on having survived another year in the city of swamps. Colonial medical commonsense and imperial anxieties were popularized in proverbs that circulated amongst the Portuguese, Dutch and English: “There are a hundred gates open to enter the kingdom of Bengal, and not one to come away again.”11 The tension between health and wealth, the desirability and destruction of the place that became the colonial capital, continued to be underlying themes in the history of the city. In the early nineteenth century, contagion and corruption were to be contained by the segregation of native populations, viewed as the repositories and creators of filth and contagion.12 In a Minute to the Council of the city in 1803, the Governor General Lord Wellesley described the wretched state of the drains, roads, markets and buildings, and the filth that spread out from the places of burial, the bazaars and slaughterhouses, and the haphazard street layout in the native parts of town.13 In 1817, a Lottery Committee was formed for the improvement of the city, to construct a better class of neighborhoods on the basis of planned layouts on the two sides of a systematically developed highway; the construction of a north to south highway accentuated the physical separation of the native and European parts of the city.14 The relatively dense population in the black town created more filth, if only by sheer force of numbers, while the white town of more recent origin and built with much higher input of capital, had a newer, more efficient network of drains and water supply, and restrictions on property ownership. While the “white” town was no picture of health, of the Native Division of Calcutta, one planner wrote:

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It is no figure of speech, but the simple truth, to say that no language can adequately describe its abominations. In the filthiest quarters of the filthiest towns that I have seen in other parts of India, or in other countries, I have never seen anything which can be, for a moment, compared with the filthiness of Calcutta.15 A general fear of contagion and corruption, of biological and moral degeneration, thus became materialized in the form of filth. Filth, as scholars have suggested, is essentially a term of condemnation, which instantly repudiates a threatening thing, person, or idea, by ascribing alterity to it. In the course of the nineteenth century, filth emerged as a powerful marker of national and racial distinctions, “overlaid – unevenly and unpredictably – on those of sanitary policy affecting conceptions of gender and class.”16 This filth, and the accompanying stench that emanated from the mehter’s (sweeper’s) tatties (privies), and from the decomposing corpses left at the burning ghats, did not know boundaries. The air flowed in and out from the human body in the act of inhaling and exhaling, it blew from homes to markets and back, it ran across the black town and the “city of palaces” and back again. While the color lines were often jagged and sometimes broken down, these were crucial to imperial identity and notions of colonial selfhood; the filth abjected to the black town served to define the self and clean for the colonizers.17 If filth thus served to define the limits of the white town, in generating fear of matter (and bodies) out of place, it also helped fix the boundaries of the self, in threatening the breakdown of borders between the body and the milieu/environment. As imperial identity and the imperial vision became transformed over time, the city was imagined in new and different ways, and the city plans reflected new concepts of empire and selfhood. By the early nineteenth century, the “enclavism” of colonial medicine had reached its moment of crisis; the dual city could no longer contain the rhetoric of improvement that circulated amongst doctors and administrators. Also, if the air of the city was poison, no one was exempt from disease. As Webb waxed eloquent, no one could be “like the ostrich who pushes her head into a bush, and seeing not the arrow which is already winging its flight, dreams that she is safe.”18 Within a few feet of the Government House were “the most abominable of native quarters”; if the English were to rule India, the capital must be one where “Englishmen, having the usual constitution of their race can live in the full possession of their faculties and vigour.” As the management of the city was increasingly understood in analogy with the human body, the maidan became the lungs of the city, the wide streets of the white town were the main arteries, and the black town represented the nether parts of the city that were embarrassing but obsessively scrutinized. It was the germs of an improving ideology, a liberal mission to civilize and a quest for a stronger imperial body, but more importantly, the shock of cholera, which dealt the first blow to the dual city.


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Figure 5.1 “The fever hospital with bamboo scaffolding (when building),” Calcutta. c. 1851–52. Photographer: Frederick Fiebig Source: Courtesy: British Library.

Shock city: Cholera, (dis)order and borders Once cholera struck, within hours the eyes would recede into the skull, the face would turn blue, the skin would thicken and wrinkle, and agonizing cramps would rack the body. The disease usually began with a sudden and watery diarrhea with a fishy smell, often combined with incessant vomiting. In turning the body inside out in this way, cholera signified disorder and the breakdown of borders. The type of cholera known as Asiatic cholera, an acute infectious disease of the small intestine caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, was characterized as a “shock disease” for the swiftness with which it ended life once it struck. On opening up the body of such a victim, the doctor would see organs bloated and disintegrating, the brain softened and disordered. The shock of cholera reverberated beyond the victim’s body. There was the shock of sheer numbers: fifteen million cholera deaths occurred in British India alone between 1817, when the century’s first major epidemic struck the Jessore district in Bengal, and 1865.19 There was the shock of its wide reach: epidemic cholera was reported in India in 1826, in Persia in 1829, Russia in 1830, in Poland, Hungary, Prussia, Germany, Austria and England in 1831, and in France


Sanitary subjects 103 and North America in 1832. Maps charting the spread of cholera across the globe confirmed that Bengal was the home of the cholera pandemics that traveled as far as the Americas from Asia through Europe in 1831–32, and then again in 1848–49, 1853–4 and 1866.20 In each location, cholera also shocked by its choice of victims, easily crossing lines of color and class. This was a scandal; the British Empire could no longer present itself as the agent of civilization, bringing light to benighted parts of the globe. Suddenly, it was a source of contagion, spreading disease to the civilized world. Overseas trade had expanded with the presence of the British in India. Within India too, the heightened movement and the annual relief of troops on an all-India basis, broke down the regional barriers that had slowed the spread of the epidemic.21 If Bengal was the home of cholera, colonial expansion and global trade were the causes of contagion. Cholera and India became linked as symptoms of the backwardness and disorder that had taken the form of the scourge invading the west – with its bracing climes and vigorous circulation. In Europe and in India, cholera caused governments and medical administrators to take a long hard look at the filth teeming within, ushering in new scientific practices, a new discourse of public health, new norms of social order and new spatial technologies. In each case, the link between power and knowledge proved extraordinarily potent, and the cholera ruptured many common ideas in society. The city emerged as a new object of analysis and intervention, a topographic understanding of disease was reevaluated, detailed social statistics were generated, and centrally administered medical institutions were constructed. All over the world, as Paul Rabinow suggests, a modern set of administrative practices emerged from the experiences of this shock.22 The global shock of cholera forged environmental concerns with urban visions, bringing public health models and urban planning in line with the law and (dis)order of nature. It forced a new understanding of pathology on administrators in the global cities of London, Paris, Boston, Calcutta, and spliced through the surface of local, colonial and imperial politics and rivalry.

Predisposition, primitiveness and fever theory The proliferation of medical theories indicate the widespread shock generated by the disease; explanations ranged from the prevalence of mal aria – bad air at large – to the consumption of a particular type of rice in Bengal. Using the “Reports on Cholera” generated by the East India Company in the “cholera years” of the early nineteenth century, James Kennedy traced the spread of the disease from Bengal to other parts of India, and then to the rest of the world, concluding that it was in extraordinary circumstances, such as famine or drought, caused by extreme climatic fluctuations, that the weakened body fell victim to diseases previously known only in milder forms.23 He pointed to such abnormalities as the rains of 1815, the droughts of 1816 which “killed natives and Europeans alike,” and the atmospheric disturbances of 1817, to explain the origins of malignant cholera. Importantly, climatic influences alone were no longer sufficient to explain the spread of epidemic cholera; Kennedy insisted that local conditions influenced the


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character the disease subsequently took on, as it did in Jessore, “a crowded, dirty, ill-ventilated place surrounded by a thick jungle.” Once the disease spread out from there, within a few weeks, 10,000 of the inhabitants perished in that district of Bengal. In September, 1817, the disease reached Calcutta, wreaking havoc everywhere, but “especially in the native town.” From there, it spread to Dacca and Patna, Balasore, Burrishol, Burdwan, Rungpore and Lamda, then to the north and south, apparently without following “any logical course.” On November 6, the disease arrived to strike the grand army under the command of Hastings, stationed near Bundelkhand. In the next five days, cholera proceeded to kill five thousand people.24 Describing the spread of the disease into Northern Europe, Kennedy reluctantly pronounced quarantine an important precaution. The health and wealth of the empire seemed to be poised in opposition. It was with good reason, then, that theories of contagion were not popular in colonial administrative circles.25 Whitelaw Ainslie, the President of a committee appointed to enquire into the nature of the epidemic in the years 1809, 1810 and 1811, rejected the contagion thesis outright. Emphasizing the capricious nature of the epidemics, which selected particular tracts and villages, and missed others adjacent to these, and swept through countries and climes extremely dissimilar,26 he concluded that there was no evidence that the disease spread by contagion, a conclusion that he hoped would “lead to important changes in the quarantine laws in the British Empire.”27 James Annesley likewise reiterated that there were tracts that remained unaffected in the path of the spreading scourge, even without any natural barriers to its extension. This “militates most conclusively against the idea as to its being a contagious disease,” he wrote, and proposed that the effective cause was an “unknown morbific condition of the atmosphere … a choleric constitution of air.” While cholera derived from particular climatic conditions, he clarified that it acquired epidemic form through “predisposing and occasional causes.”28 Each of these theories reveals a fluctuation between two types of explanations, identified by Charles Rosenberg as explanations of configuration, which conceived of health as a balanced, integrated and value imparting relation between humans and their environment, and explanations of contamination, or person-to-person contagion; the two were often reconciled in doctrines of predisposition.29 In the colony, where explanations based on climate subverted confidence in white settlement in the tropics, and contagion threatened the free movement of goods and people, an emphasis on predisposition offered a way out of this bind, resolving the conflicts between the needs of health and wealth in the capital. James Lind, writing in 1826 on the causes of Indian fevers, suggested that diseases of hot climates (or of temperate climates in the hot season), were caused, first, by “exhalations proceeding from the soil and decayed vegetation,” and second, by “those causes which dispose the system to be affected by the first – diet and regimen.”30 Kenneth Mackinnon, writing on the fevers of India, also separated the physical or climatic causes, which he identified as “exciting causes” and moral or predisposing causes, which included such diverse factors as a vegetable diet, clothing, the style of habitations, and unclean living. Mackinnon spent considerable ink describing the threat posed to public health by the “predisposing cause” of early


Sanitary subjects 105 marriages, which became the emblem for the most intimate of pathologies of Bengali life.31 Emphasizing the role of predisposition, he wrote, “The diseases of the natives of Tirhoot are generally those of a primitive people, ill-clothed, ill fed, ill-housed, and unacquainted with the comforts, much less the luxuries, of civilized life.”32 This association of cholera and fevers with primitiveness is highly significant. In late eighteenth-century intellectual thought, environmental conditions had racialcivilizational correlates: the tropical heat of the east spawned lethargic bodies and oriental despots, the balanced climes of Europe molded vigorous bodies, enlightened knowledge and commercial enterprise. The idea of predisposition realigned the racial-civilizational correlates that had accompanied a purely topographical understanding of disease and epidemics, as predisposition to disease fell in line with the economic and cultural “scale of civilizations” that charted people along the axis of progress from savagery to civilization, at home and in empire. By the 1830s, while cholera was still linked to atmospheric influences, it was also seen to be malignant only to those who had weakened themselves through predisposing causes, which prominently and significantly included sins of the flesh.33 Asiatic cholera – the most virulent form of the fever – was perceived as a disease of the sinner and the poor; in America, for instance, it was thought significant that two despised racial types – the Irish and the Negroes – were the most frequent victims of the disease.34 In Europe and America, cholera was seen as a retribution for the filthy, intemperate lifestyles of the dregs of society. Cholera appeared in India as an avatar of an awesome vengeful goddess, interpreted sometimes as chastisement for failing to resist British incursions and conquest.35 Such interpretations of the dreaded disease thus reflected wider social anxieties. For colonial officials, the discovery of a statistical coincidence or an “epidemiological connection” between cholera and Hindu pilgrimage, allowed a reformulation of a vaguely defined but strongly felt racial antipathy as a threat to public health. The communal cooking, eating, bathing and crowded conditions may well have facilitated the spread of cholera, and the sipping of water for ritual or spiritual purification further provided conditions for the spread of the waterborne disease. Even though this particular mechanism of its spread was not known until 1883 when Robert Koch, directing a German scientific mission in Egypt (or according to some in a tank in Calcutta in 1884) isolated the Vibrio comma, the statistical coincidence was enough for the 1866 International Conference at Constantinople to trace the pathology to Puri, the site for a major annual Hindu pilgrimage, and other such sites, and finally, to Mecca, as the second stage in cholera’s spread to Europe from India.36 On the one hand, the detailed studies of medical topographies, cholera maps and ethnological evidence provided existential evidence for a “biological” basis for class and racial antagonism, as pathology came to be located in the interstices of biology and society, of natural and cultural influences.37 On the other, the identification of cholera with primitive lifestyles and superstitious cultural practices modified older racial ideas that had rationalized segregation.

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Race, place and the tropics of liberal discourse From a disease of climate (with its racial-civilizational correlates), cholera was re-framed primarily as a disease of culture in the first decades of the nineteenth century. This resonated with an emerging medical-ethnological consensus on the long-term and inherited influence of culture on human constitutions. James Ranald Martin’s crucial work on the medical topography of Calcutta may be seen as straddling this shift from a predominantly environmentalist to a “cultural” theory of race difference. Martin had arrived in Calcutta in the hot season in June, 1817, the year of the Jessore cholera that eventually acquired pandemic proportions. He had suffered from fevers each of the twenty-odd years he had lived in Calcutta. Martin based his ruminations on Calcutta on a bedrock of statistics on disease and mortality, on ethnological speculation, and on his first-hand experience as a doctor and a white man in the city of swamps.38 His most lasting contribution to colonial medical literature is perhaps the substantial rewriting of James Johnson’s The Influence of Tropical climates on European Constitutions,39 in which he clarified: Although the physical effects of climate, in forming or influencing the differences by which the varieties of tribes of the human species are characterized, such as stature, physiognomy, color of the skin and hair, or form of the skull, are foreign to the present inquiry, still, one cannot help remarking that, if the Bengallee is to be classed among the Caucasians – the standard of the human race – the effects of climate and locality must indeed be great and remarkable.”40 Martin confirmed that although originally “of Caucasian origin,” the natives of India had come to differ widely, “morally and physically” from the Europeans, and thus deviated from a “standard.” In 1835, as the presidency surgeon of Calcutta – the highest administrative post open to a man of medicine in the East – Martin outlined a plan to establish a fever hospital, and a larger one for the “removal of all local defects, the structural improvement of Calcutta in conformity with modern science in sanitary affairs.” In his memoir on the draining of the Salt Water Lake to bring its extensive 12,000 acres under cultivation,41 Martin described the lake which lay about 3 miles east of the city, composed of pits and shallows, stretching about 18 square miles, as particularly offensive to health. The swamps were not only responsible for the raging fevers; Martin saw them as having a permanent effect on human constitutions. In his medicalized idiom, the climate had imparted to the Bengali a constitution that “partakes more of the lymphatic and phlegmatic temperaments than the sanguineous, predisposing them more to corpulence from laxity of cellular tissue and deposition of fat, than robustness from growth of muscular fibre.”42 Medical topographers such as Martin rationalized imperial discourse as natural knowledge, diagnosing the character of native populations and prescribing remedies to improve their constitution. Martin was, of course, not alone in making these connections. Thomas Babington Macaulay, a former member of the governor general’s supreme council in India, and the architect of English education for India, had


Sanitary subjects 107 described the people of lower Bengal in like fashion. Reiterating the advantages of Bengal for agriculture and commerce, he had nevertheless underlined that the place was peopled by a race “enervated by a soft climate … Whatever the Bengalee does, he does languidly. His favorite pursuits are sedentary. He shirks from bodily exertion ... there never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke.” The next year, as though confirming the analogies between race and gender in science,43 Macaulay added, “the physical organization [of the Bengali] is feeble even to effeminacy.” Medical topographies of the time thus recapitulated late eighteenth-century discourses on race and racial difference, but they also marked a key shift from older types of environmental determinism, by playing up the force of habit as well as location in shaping human temperaments and forms of government.44 The shift may be traced to the changing dynamics of imperial thought; Martin’s work straddled this transition from the determination of climates to the power of morals, as he turned to the population of Bengal with an ethnologist’s lens.45 In a chapter “On the Influence of the Hindu Superstitions and Morals on Health” in an official report submitted to the government of Bengal, he identified caste as the omnipresent evil that plagued the region. Caste, he wrote, “without which we can know nothing of the natives,” is a system which “wars with every passion of the human mind, good as well as evil, and that, being prejudicial to public happiness, it is eminently injurious to public health.”46 Martin recalled the familiar litany of evils associated with Hinduism and caste, particularly in Bengal – early marriage: “one of the most pervading injuries inflicted by caste on public health”; polygamy: the “source of a thousand evils”; and the polygamy of the Kooleen Brahmins, due to which “in Calcutta alone above a thousand abortions are procured monthly.” High dowries ensured that “borrowing keeps the poor wretches in a state of dependence.” Hindu festivals led to “every species of vice, exposing thousands to the inclemencies of season, producing every variety of disease and misery mental as well as bodily.” The diet, “by depressing all the physical energies through a diet purely vegetable … fastened with a stronger hand the moral bonds of Brahminical domination on the people.”47 The clinching argument for the shocking sanitary conditions in Bengal came, somewhat idiosyncratically, in the sound of Bengali music, which, Martin asserted, could only be compared to “the noise made by cows in distress, with an admixture of the caterwaulings of a feline congregation and the occasional scream of an affrighted elephant.”48 In Martin’s assessment of Calcutta’s topography, culture and government reinforced each other’s effects. “Employment, customs, and amusements are likewise powerfully influenced by climate and forms of government,” he continued. The underlying sources of insight were liberal discourses on government, particularly the critique of “oriental despotism,” as he recalled that James Mill had ascribed the “languid and slothful habits of the Hindoos together with the absence of motive for labor” to the “wretched government, under which the fruits of labor are never secure.”49 Much like James Mill, whom he quoted several times, he suggested that the Hindu had degenerated not by climatic influence alone, but from his religious superstitions and primitive forms of government.50 Martin’s work straddled a


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transition from a belief in the determination of climates to the power of reform. In 1835, a year of many reforms, most notably the move to English education to convert men “Indian in blood” into men who were “English in tastes, in morals and in opinion,” as expressed in Macaulay’s succinct if infamous summarization of the liberal (racialist) vision, Martin decided to take a stand to banish dirt and disorder from Calcutta. The ends of these reforms were not unlike, each being aimed at the creation of civilized, sanitary subjects, and nor were their methods, which hinged upon a comprehensive pedagogic regime. An emphasis on the climatic basis of disease and despotism fanned anxieties about tropical degeneration amongst Europeans, a fear partially assuaged by the emphasis on culture and lifestyle as determinants of health and character. Climatic determinism had also cast a pessimistic shadow on liberal tutelage: The moral as well as physical influences of climate have been considered so powerful … as to make some persons doubt whether a people, situated as our Asiatic subjects, are capable of receiving the impress of European knowledge and institutions.51 Martin reiterated the liberal position that good government and English culture could overcome these defects, for while the soil and the inhabitants … always react on each other … a sober, industrious race of inhabitants, for example, will have a greater desire to improve their country than men of a contrary character and will also possess greater physical power to carry their desire into execution.52 In his words, “a slothful squalid looking population invariably characterizes an unhealthy country,”53 and so, the country and the culture required simultaneous management. Finally, like other medical experts in empire, Martin used the idiom of medicine to turn questions of morality and justice into questions of biology and culture.54 The solution to the problem of filth no longer lay in racial segregation, but in its reformulation as “cultural difference” to be managed by the application of universally valid principles of utility and improvement. Sanitation thus came to be attached to a new moral and social order and to good government. This was fully captured in the reports of the Fever Hospital Committee.

Culture, circulation and the bazaar The Fever Hospital Committee commissioned by Lord Auckland in 1835 embraced a comprehensive approach to treat the horrors – physical and psychological – of cholera, and put into practice several of the principles outlined by the logic of imperial racialism. This Committee gathered evidence from doctors and laypersons, and pored over plans for Calcutta’s improvement, provided by doctors, engineers, architects and inhabitants of the city. What had begun as a minor project


Sanitary subjects 109 to build a Fever Hospital for Calcutta’s poor was transformed, over the next 12 years, into a multi-pronged project to cure Calcutta.55 The Committee was charged with the assessment, collection and appropriation of town taxes and the forms of municipal governance, besides policing the drainage and cleansing of the town. The ethnological underpinnings of such sanitary subjects were underpinned by the list of 26 questions handed to important residents of the town, European and natives. Besides questions on drainage, tanks, water supply, ventilation, roads, respondents were asked to “mention any native habit that you consider injurious to health.”56 The bazaar, a place of exchange and of the crossing of myriad borders, received particular attention. The food bazaar was perceived as a sensitive source of corruption and contamination, a place where the borders of the body were temporarily suspended by orificial transmission. In response to the questions circulated amongst a section of Calcutta’s population by the Fever Hospital Committee, abundant complaints arose about the state of the bazaars, especially those in which fish and vegetables were sold, “chiefly for the use of the natives … almost all are said to be offensive to the neighborhood.” Besides the filth and physical defects, respondents also condemned the forms of exchange that took place in the market. The provisions sold were described as rotting or adulterated, the shopkeepers tended to cheat in rice, dhal, ghee, etc. by mixing impurities, the sweetmeats were bad and unwholesome, the old was often mixed up with the fresh.57 In the native bazaar, exchange was marked by the double corruption of putrefaction and duplicity. Later in the century, the related spaces of the meat market and the slaughterhouse were likewise pronounced a nuisance to public health. Laden with putrefying offal, the flow of blood mixing with the fecal matter and urine of frightened animals, these spaces were made filthier by the humidity, lack of water, the want of proper drainage, and the “slovenly habits and total disregard of cleanliness” in Bengal.58 While the Fever Hospital Committee recommended the removal of markets and slaughterhouses outside the borders of the towns, this segregation of filth was no longer thought to be sufficient later in the century. To the sanitary gaze, the assault on the senses presented by the slaughterhouse went beyond the sight of filth and the stench of putrefaction: the unaesthetic mode of slaughter practiced by “Muhammadan butchers” was pronounced a revolting display of barbarism and an assault on civilized sensibility. Describing the scenes of animals being thrown on the pavement of the slaughterhouse, “the head bent round over the shoulder, the throat cut with a sharp knife,” thus presenting a “piteous sight” of “a long line of helpless beasts lying in dumb terror,” the sanitary commissioner continued, No doubt it would be difficult to overcome the prejudices, to root out old customs from the mind of the Bengali Mussulman, but … blind prejudice should never be permitted to stand in the way of sanitary reform or the calls of humanity.59 The practice of slaughter that was so horrifying to the colonial observer was the permitted way of animal slaughter, to render it fit for consumption by observing


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Muslims, based on the distinction of halal and haram. According to the hygienics of halal, the process of purification and cleansing involved a deep swift cut to the blood vessels of the neck, the jugular veins, so that the animal lost consciousness immediately, and the blood could be efficiently drained away to make it healthier for consumption. Slaughterhouses became a key site for regulating and standardizing ideas of purity and pollution, to enforce a set of ideational boundaries that separated clean from unclean. In other words, the problems of culture and religion were to be resolved through a viable techno-social solution – sanitation. The lines between the ritually pure and the hygienic were to be renegotiated, to define the “clean and proper body of the bounded self ” of the colonizers and modern subjectsin-waiting. The bazaar was of considerable material and symbolic significance in this order of things. The bazaar had long been an emblem of colonial society; the power of the Company lay not only in its ability to muster revenue from land but also from the prosperity of its markets.60 These were not just an ethnographic field, but stood for the whole idea of exchange, which needed to be modernized, regulated and “standardized.” The bazaar also carried symbolic force; Dipesh Chakrabarty describes it as the emblematic “outside,” as the place to be rubbished, in opposition to the pure spaces inside the house to be protected. Ideas about garbage, and the bazaar, had a bearing on the imagination of modernity, in formulating inside and outside, public and private, civic consciousness and public health.61 The problem of dirt, it has often been repeated after Mary Douglass, poses a problem of the outside and of borders, for dirt is, basically, matter out of place; elaborating on this symbolic logic that defines filth as something jettisoned outside borders and margins, Julia Kristeva has written of the abjection of filth as the basis of the “clean and proper body” of each social group.62 Taking off from this discussion on filth, borders and selfhood, this section traces the importance of the market – as a place of exchange, and as a place where borders were preserved and crossed as definitions of one’s “clean and proper body” were formulated for the inhabitants of the black and white towns. The ordering of the marketplace through regulated shops, and an easier flow of goods through wider roads and waterways, was tied up with the regulation of social and economic relations in the bazaar, and a control of the sites of production, passage and distribution. The sanitary city was also a natural extension of the colonial state’s desire to rationalize the market, while detaching it from what was condemned as the “vulgar extraction” of early Company Raj, associated with bribery, corruption and extortion, for which free trade was to be the antidote in liberal discourse. The sanitary city imagined by the Fever Hospital Committee may be located in an entire colonial “geography of order” unleashed in the eighteenth century; the ordering of commodities was depicted as a fundamental aspect of good government in a colonial geography manifested in maps depicting details of topography, roads and water bodies. In James Rennell’s late eighteenth-century atlas of Bengal, the earliest comprehensive mapping of the country, commercial routes and marketplaces had a prominent place; by the late eighteenth century, the Company was already reaching out for the instruments of surveillance, control and violence to establish a set of rules and practices which would ensure the freedom of trade and


Sanitary subjects 111 flow of revenue. The Fever Hospital Committee’s deliberations, with the attention to river and land routes, roads and canals, and markets in the region, employed this earlier body of work extensively, and contributed to its extension. It is the entwined logic of imperial liberalism, colonial extraction and epidemiological understanding that allows us to make sense of the deliberations of the Committee, which, after Martin, envisaged a complete reorganization of the built and natural environment of Calcutta. This reorientation and rebuilding was to reformulate the way the people lived their lives. As a corollary to his report on Calcutta’s environs came a note on the collection of various rents, taxes, assessments and tolls, a lottery to raise funds for the improvement of Calcutta, a plan of taxation for perpetuating and carrying on the improvements of the city and the suburbs, and finally, speculations on municipal “self-government.” In this modified political and epidemiological field, cholera could not be contained through a confinement of patients in fever hospitals or by quarantine, but by an increased circulation of air, of goods and of people. The sanitary city promised to resolve the conflicting goals of health and wealth in the colonial capital. The Fever Hospital Committee made inquiries about the drainage of Calcutta – in the broadest sense of the term. The respondents, native and European, experts and lay residents, answered questions on the draining of water, the provision of drinking water, ventilation in homes and streets, and the state of roads. The engineers and doctors found a viable technosocial solution to their concerns in a manner that simultaneously naturalized free trade liberalism. Focusing purely on the physical layout of the sanitary city, Captain H. N. Forbes proposed the construction of a canal running from the Chitpore Bridge at the northern tip of the city, south through the central part of the city, and then east to the Salt Water Lake. The canal was to provide drainage for all of north Calcutta, the native part of the city. He recommended that the canal be built wide enough to allow for the use of small boats delivering goods throughout the city. Lt Abercrombie had an even more ambitious plan in mind – a completely new matrix of streets, drains and tanks were to be cut through the Indian portion of the city. This included eight major new thoroughfares, 60 to 70 feet wide, to crisscross Calcutta connecting existing routes to each other, to river ghats, and to major bazaars in the region. Ultimately the Committee urged the adoption of a combination of the two plans. Only a very minimal portion of it was implemented over the next several decades, but it remained a planning blueprint for the city for over half a century, and several of today’s thoroughfares through North Calcutta were first imagined in this plan.63 Meanwhile, an older plan from 1822, which had little to do with the sanitary question, was also resurrected: Major J. A. Schalch’s plan for the “Formation of an easy and permanent communication between the upper and eastern provinces of India and Calcutta by water, during the dry season.”64 These visions of the sanitary city rarely dwelt on plans for regular waste disposal, or the supply of water – the staples of public health programs in the mid-century. Instead, they recast an older medical obsession with circulation. The idea of circulation, derived from a time when the circulation of fresh air was seen as a crucial antidote to ill health, was reformulated as an elaborate system of wide roads and


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canals to connect the various parts of the city. Just as in Britain, where plans for canal navigation had been combined with plans for sewers, greatly benefiting the carriage of goods, a new canal across the Salt Water Lake and around the Circular Road to the River Hooghly in Chitpore was to ease navigation. Major Schalch’s 1822 plan for canals was related to sanitation by the 1846 report of the Fever Hospital Committee, with that suggestion that “the probable influence of the proposed work on the health and cleanliness of the city was indeed as obvious a point of inquiry, as the degree to which it might be calculated to facilitate commercial intercourse.”65 The existing Tolley’s Nullah or canal was found to be “ill adapted for the export and import trade of the City of Calcutta, especially in respect to all articles destined for the consumption of the inhabitants of the city, such as grain, salt, firewood, and other gruff goods,” and a new canal across the Salt Water Lake and around the Circular Road to the river Hooghly in Chitpore was designed to resolve the issue of transit trade.66 The second report expressed deep concern that a canalling project that would have been of great importance to the commerce of this country, by opening an easy and permanent communication between the eastern Provinces of India and Calcutta during all seasons, and a direct line of communication between River Hooghly and the Ganges navigable though the dry season, besides accomplishing great objects of utility independent of this branch of commerce, has been, if not abandoned, allowed to fall asleep for upwards of twenty-two years, at what cost to life and property to those concerned in the trade it is difficult to contemplate.67 This enhanced meaning of circulation was clarified in the plans for another canal from Tolley’s Nullah to the Channel Creek, which was to ease the traffic of trade from the country south of Calcutta, particularly the movement of the immense quantities of rice brought from the town for shipment to Europe. The report emphasized that nearly all the table rice exported to England and the continent, about 680,403 maunds of rice, was from these districts: When it is considered that this district is 40 square miles in extent, and is described as so productive of an article in the greatest demand both for home production and exportation, and had been found … to be well calculated for the production of indigo, silk and sugar, it should seem an object of undoubted importance to open a safe, easy, and cheap mode of transit from it to the Town and Port of Calcutta.68 David Harvey has suggested, in another context, that the idea of circulation did double duty in Haussman’s Paris: emphasizing the cleansing functions of the free circulation of air, sunlight, water and sewage for the construction of a healthy urban environment, it also evoked a connection with the free circulation of money, people and commodities throughout the city as if these were entirely natural functions. As the circulation of capital became naturalized, the reshaping of the capital


Sanitary subjects 113 city could be viewed as in accord with natural design.69 In Calcutta, the engineers emphasized that with the new canal system, local produce would find its way first into Calcutta, and from there into the markets in the metropolis with greater ease. Commenting on the project for joining the Salt Water Lake to the Hooghly by a canal, an engineer confirmed his belief that European engineering would tame the insalubrious Bengali wilderness, and pronounced it a work “of great utility, very much required by the commercial interests of Calcutta,” and “a source of prosperity to the country in general as well as of revenue to the government.”70 He insisted on the need for additional facilities for general commercial intercourse by inland navigation. While the ostensible purpose of building such canals was drainage, engineers repeatedly emphasized the benefits to trade: through the canals, small boats could deliver goods throughout the city, and connect markets to the river and the harbor. It is little surprise, then, that drainage also took on a curious double meaning in the imperial city governed by a private trading company. Reflecting the dual meaning of drainage as the siphoning off of water and wastes, and of India’s raw materials and silver, the plans for curing Calcutta became escalated into schemes for a more efficient extraction of wealth from the city and a transport of goods into it. The details of the “drain of wealth” theory have been modified and qualified by economic historians over the years, but the fundamental schema of the nineteenthcentury colonial economy as one based on the draining of India’s wealth serves as a useful device to understand the nature of colonial extraction. Down to 1757, European traders had to bring in bullion to India to take home the cotton and silk goods that were in high demand. The problem of importing bullion into India was solved after the Company’s victory at Plassey. Profits made from the duty-free inland trade in Bengal and the Diwani revenue were used to purchase goods for export from Bengal. The decline in the export of textiles in the face of competition from Manchester was resolved with the development of indigo, and the export of opium into China for purchasing tea. In the classic Marxist schema of the colonial economy, the phase from 1757 to 1813 was marked by a direct plunder under the East India Company’s monopoly. The years from 1813 to 1858 were characterized as the age of free-trader industrial capitalist exploitation. In this period, India was converted into a market for Manchester textiles and a source of raw materials. The traditional handicrafts and the textile industry were almost completely wiped out.71 The two meanings of drainage seem to coincide neatly in the plans devised for the “improvement” of the Salt Water Lake to the west of the city. While the Presidency Surgeon J. R. Martin had expressed mixed feelings about the drainage of the Salt Water Lake, arguing that while reclaiming some land for agriculture would not be hard, the level grounds would continue to produce “noxious exhalations” injurious to health, administrators and engineers were keen on reclaiming the land for agriculture.72 Their optimism about the additional revenue that could be generated was only tempered by a belated concern for who would claim rights over land thus reclaimed. Of those consulted, Captain Prinsep stated that the western lake, the largest, comprised about 18 square miles, equal to about 12,000 acres of land once drained, and the eastern lake would yield about


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5,000 acres. He also asserted that the right to the reclaimed property would undoubtedly lie with the government, even though certain zamindars claimed and enjoyed the rights to fishing on the Lake.73 While Mr MacFarlan, the Chief Magistrate identified “the main object of the drainage and warping up the Salt Water Lake to be to improve the salubrity of the capital,” he added that if the estimate of profits was indeed just, capitalists would be encouraged to undertake the job, with a far better chance of economic management. If a private capitalist could not be interested in the project, a joint stock scheme ought to be formed.74 Thinking of a better way of cultivating the land, Captain Boileau suggested that warping the Salt Water Lake would be easier than draining it, as it would bring the entire surface under cultivation, and transform it into valuable table land. A letter from an engineer of the drainage committee indicates the degree to which the question of health was getting subsumed in the concerns for wealth: The draining, desiccation, or reclaiming of lakes is a measure, independent of the healthiness of Calcutta, much to be encouraged … a gradual acquirement of terra firmas would have another advantage and that of no small consequence … I am inclined to believe that the advantages likely to be derived, in a revenue point of view, would be more considerable, than is … calculated.75 Why did a plan designed primarily for the cure and confinement of patients suffering from fevers become transformed into a program for the easier circulation of goods and the prospect of profits? The two meanings of circulation and drainage that allowed this slippage are further clarified by John Stuart Mill’s essay on “Civilization” with which we began this discussion on sanitation. Civilization, as he clarified, was also a word of double meaning; it sometime stands for human improvement in general, and sometimes for certain kinds of human development in particular. We are accustomed to calling a country more civilized if we think it more improved; more eminent in the best characteristics of Man and Society; farther advanced in the road to perfection; happier, nobler, wiser. This is one sense of the word civilization. But in another sense it stands for that kind of improvement only, which distinguishes a wealthy and powerful nation from savages or barbarians.76 By the time the younger Mill wrote these lines, his father, James Mill, had already described the Indian marketplace as an example of those very barriers to trade posed by an arbitrary and despotic government. While Warren Hastings (1732–1818), the first governor of Bengal, had adopted a policy of adapting colonial governance to the “manners and understandings of the people,” to the free traders, the early colonial willingness to compromise with local tastes and institutions appeared as upholding the idea of essential difference. In 1818, the East India Company’s monopoly over trade in the region was revoked. The Company questioned the wisdom of this decision, arguing that India was not ready for free trade,


Sanitary subjects 115 and that the people of India would never have the desire, taste or means to purchase British manufactures. The liberals saw this as perpetuating a doctrine of innate and permanent differences between India and Britain.77 The advocates of free trade argued that the laws of economics were not suspended in the tropics, and that Indian trade would prosper in freedom from monopolies.78 In fact, the liberals suggested, the introduction of free trade was crucial to a plan for improving the native. Bearing witness to the entwinement of liberal imperialism, scientific racism and capitalist modernity, John Crawfurd, colonial surgeon, an ethnologist with polygenist leanings, and an active proponent of free trade, asserted that the Indian government should abandon the strange façade of protecting the weaker Indian community from the stronger and more energetic Europeans; only through the stimulating effects of competition, would the feeble race of Indians get invigorated, and progress in the scale of society.79 And in this way, in Sudipta Sen’s words, political economy “provided a moral rhetoric that linked the facts of commerce to the promise of liberty.”80 The doctrine of free trade, the quest to liberate trade from pre-modern, despotic strangleholds, was reflected in the plans to enable a free movement of goods and a transformation of the marketplace in the liberal city. Medicine further buttressed this rhetoric, attaching the question of profits to that of public health and moral improvement. The sanitary city gave expression to a pedagogic mission; it was a built expression of a desire to set the native on the path to municipal citizenship and bourgeois cultivation. None of these plans were implemented at this time. The Fever Hospital Committee was finally built in 1852. The Salt Water Lake was drained and settled in independent India. The sanitary city shimmered in the horizon for a time and disappeared, as building it was not considered urgent or profitable by a colonial government, perched between the pulls and pushes of a Company that had acquired an empire, and a distant sovereign across the ocean. The failure to build the sanitary city in the colony may also be traced to the significant slippage between race and culture in the discourse of imperial liberalism.

The culture of sanitation: Water, waste and hygienic subjects It was not until 1873 that Florence Nightingale could heave a sigh of relief: Calcutta’s water supply was now completed, she reported, and “all classes and castes use it, and find, indeed, the fabled virtues of the Ganges in the pure tap water.”81 At the time of the Fever Hospital reports, such a comparison between pure and sanitary water was not yet plausible. In colonial medical discourse, pathology was constituted as a complex of behaviors exhibited by the natives in their relationship to filth. As contests over purity and pollution, real and imagined, came to lie at the heart of discussions on management of water and waste, an imagined revolt of the masses set the limits to the realization of the sanitary city. The limit to sanitary technology, it was often reiterated, was posed by culture. In 1853, after the Fever Hospital Committee’s deliberations, F. W. Simms undertook a complicated calculation, counting homes and population, desires and needs, to determine the per


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diem requirement for water in the city of Calcutta.82 Basing himself on the count of 14,230 pucca houses and 51,289 native huts, and assuming that each person was allowed 15 gallons of water a day in London, and that “northern latitudes require less water than warm countries,” Simms projected Calcutta’s need at 1,214,400 cubic feet of water each day. These projections considered and reinforced the class hierarchy: the pucca buildings of the wealthy natives would receive piped water while the hut-dwellers were welcome to use the public tanks and ornamental fountains in some parts of the city. At the same time, the new sanitary technology modified the calculus of class and caste, doing away with the need for the water carriers or bhistis (in theory, if not yet in practice); partially replacing men with material – open conduit, canal, closed cast iron pipes, or aqueducts raised above ground – from which centrally filtered water would flow into an elevated cistern in each house. Traditionally, higher caste Hindus in the city had employed bhistis of their own caste, as the touch of Muslims, Christians or the lower castes would pollute the water; the poorer classes sent out their women, ghurra on hip, to the river. Simms admitted that Hindus might, therefore, object to the use of iron pipes to carry water, or to the engine greased with tallow to raise water to the elevated cisterns. The solution, he suggested, would be to avoid the use of leather and the kind of animal fat offensive to natives, to use grease from sacred animals in the pumps instead, and to employ high-caste Brahmins at the engine to supervise the pumping of water. Besides, he hoped, for the Hindus the pipes would become purified in contact with the source of the water – the holy, if not quite sanitary, Ganges river.83 Whichever way the borders of the city and the self were drawn, water had magical properties, cleansing sin, siphoning away filth, circulating goods. Polluted water, on the other hand, was a carrier of disease and a stranglehold to mobility. In 1850, J. T. Pearson, the presidency surgeon at Calcutta, had reiterated that while the rate of mortality from the cholera in London was in direct proportion to the purity of the water supplied to the inhabitants, matters were further complicated in Calcutta, where the Hooghly, the chief source of water supply, was contaminated not only by the impure matter produced by a dense population, but by the dead bodies of men and animals thrown into it for many miles above and below the town. Other sources of water supply were the tanks and puddles, filled with periodical rains: In these tanks the people bathe; vegetables and animals, generated in all the fertility of the tropics, live, die and decay in them; the filth of drains and tatties runs into them, either directly or in many instances, carried there by occasional showers; no regulation prevents people with the most loathsome diseases from bathing in them … and thus the water becomes more and more filthy as they dry up, though it is still used for cooking, washing, and to drink … Then comes disease, fever, bowel complaints, cholera …”84 Signaling a further shift from environmentalist explanations for filth, disease and disorder, he wrote: “Calcutta is said to have an unhealthy climate; when the truth


Sanitary subjects 117 lies in the habits of the people, and the neglect of supplying them with the great necessary of life.”85 This slippage between a critique of governmental neglect and an evocation of the “habits of the people” is significant. The program for sanitary science was estranged in Calcutta not because the natives did not take to new ideas of hygiene, population and western therapeutics, or because these were undone by superstitions, or archaic social structures. The “native informants” or autoethnographers – the terms are many to describe natives in dialogue with the colonizers, often representing the self in terms set by the colonizers – altered the significance of colonial ethnology by making demands for sanitary interventions that the colonial state could not fulfill. Mediating between the state and the people, these respondents (such as Madhusudan Gupta and Goodeve-Chuckerbutty) saw and revealed the passive Indians, their filthy habits, their dirty dwellings, their strange superstitions. Despite these moves by a section of the native elite, as far as the state was concerned, “culture” remained the so-called stumbling block for the least ambitious of plans. Let us return, for a moment, to the original plans for the fever hospital, to understand this discourse on cultural difference. The fever hospital was initially planned to provide much needed medical aid to the about 18,000 people attacked by fevers annually, of a total population of 200,000, or a floating population of 300,000, in the city. In the initial stages, medical doctors had been anxious that their good intentions would inevitably be thwarted by the superstitions of the natives, whose caste prejudices would keep them away from any such public institutions.86 The statistical evidence contradicted the anecdotal anxiety that the natives preferred to abandon fever victims to certain death on the ghat rather than bring them into hospitals; the committee was forced to recognize that between 1833 and 1837, large numbers of natives had in fact resorted to the Native Hospital. Nor were the urban poor driven to public hospitals by sheer destitution; the native elite raised the considerable sum of Company’s Rs 47,713.7.5 [sic] through public subscriptions to help build the hospital.87 Despite these signs of enthusiasm, the skeptics kept insisting on two fundamental flaws with the various plans: the problems posed by cultural difference, and the uncertainty regarding the expenses or profits for the state. Somewhere between this concern for difference and for profits, the health of the population slipped away. While this is not the place to enter into a complicated argument about the concept of culture, “culture” was (and often is) used to explain away the limits posed by capital to the dissemination of the promises of wealth and welfare to (post)colonial populations. The strategic and alternated deployment of universal values and cultural relativism/sensitivity was at the heart of an imperialist liberalism with a mission to cure and civilize. The limits to health and sanitation were posed not by “culture,” but by the commitment to bourgeois modernity and the logic of capital. A wide program of sanitation was simply not profitable to the colonial state. The vanished city of Calcutta, the spaces and structures imagined and abandoned, was an effect of liberalism in empire. This is clarified with a look at the recommendations of the third sub-committee, created to look into local taxation and municipal governance, which further dampened the enthusiasm for the sanitary city. This sub-committee to investigate the


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modes of assessing, collecting and appropriating the House and Akbaree tax of the Town of Calcutta, examined the magistrates and officers connected with the Assessment and Akbaree departments, and also minutely inspected their accounts. The committee concurred that it was easier to make assessments in the European part of town, where the houses were occupied by tenants, than in the native town, where owners occupied the houses.88 The natives posed many challenges to the assessment and recovery of house tax. While the wealthier natives usually paid up once a distress warrant was issued, or after some trifling property was seized and sold, in many cases, some “property was concealed in the zunanah into which the Bailiffs are not allowed to enter.”89 The sub-committee on municipal taxation took the view that the natives of Calcutta should take on the responsibility and the financial burden for the works of improvement recommended by the committee, but at the same time insisted that the natives of the city were not ready to bear the moral or financial responsibility for their own improvement. The governor general of India reminded James Martin that charitable works were generally carried out by liberal-minded humanitarians amongst the public. Slipping from an argument about cultural incapacities (the absence of liberal minded humanitarians in native society) to the problem of finances, he added that his government could not contribute to such a local concern a large portion of the general revenues of India. While the governor general insisted that a program of local taxation and independent local management would be necessary to raise and administer the finances, the committee promptly came to the conclusion that the natives of the city could not be charged with such responsibilities, for if the inhabitants of Calcutta were all, or even a majority of them, Europeans, such a plan, based on election by individual householders, would be found well adapted for municipal government; but considering that the European population is but an insignificant part of the whole of population of Calcutta, and that by far the greater part of them can only be considered temporary residents, your committee cannot take it upon themselves to recommend what they consider wholly unsuited to the present state and condition of the great majority of inhabitants ...90 J. H. Patton, Chief Magistrate of Calcutta, wrote it was futile to expect natives to voluntarily contribute their labor and means for this plan for their own betterment … Their indolent and penurious habits, backed by their belief in the doctrine of predestination, and their supine resignation to the decrees of fate, operate powerfully to check the direction of their disinterested energies towards it … particularly when such involve the smallest items of expense.91 A consensus emerged on the “danger of leaving pecuniary affairs to native gentlemen.” The committee proclaimed that municipal governance had to be carried out


Sanitary subjects 119 at the local level, by local residents, and with local revenue. At the same time, they asserted that such a localization of government was impossible, given the cultural impediments and the native character. The assertion that the native was not yet ready for municipal government was cloaked as deferral, not denial.92 The subcommittee continued, “when the young men educated at the medical College hav[e] received the improvements of Moral Character, as well as in Medical Skill, which an education in the European model is calculated to produce,” they would be trusted with greater responsibilities. Even though the native community came together and made demands of the government in a “modern” style, with petitions, public meetings, fund-raising through subscriptions, and other performances of civic responsibility, the alien government insisted that the people of Calcutta were not quite ready to manage their own affairs. In another context, Nancy Stepan has described the paradox of modern citizenship: by creating group identities in difference, communities of individuals were placed outside the liberal universe of freedom, equality and rights.93 At the same time, as we have seen in the case of Calcutta, to be accorded such privileges as health care and sanitation, these groups had to overcome this difference, and take the (financial and other) responsibility for their improvement. As these communities became attached to the liberal universe in their exclusion, the state demanded that they perform the very norm from which their deviation was the basis of their identity. Given these paradoxes, municipal “self-government” and the sanitary city could only become manifested as an absence. In tracing the history of the vanished liberal city, this chapter has sought to trace the tensions and reconciliations of imperial discourse and practice. The focus on the city, I hope, has served to reiterate that the colonial city was not a mere stage where events unfolded, but that the experiences of the city were shaped by, and in turn molded, the ideologies and practices of empire and the colonial economy in the mid-nineteenth century. By identifying the strategic deployment of cultural difference (in the nineteenth century) as a limit to the extension of sanitary life and of biomedical citizenship to the people of Calcutta, and by highlighting the notion of “inherited cultural difference” as the basis for rights (and the denial of rights) this chapter identifies the “problem of culture” as a tactic of liberal racialism. By showing how a demand for sanitation by the natives of Calcutta, was ignored on the ground of profitability and utility, it also points to the imbrication of race, culture and economy. Finally, this chapter seeks to illustrate how segregation came to be denounced in rhetoric and perpetuated through material technologies of modernity, such as sanitation. Conflicting terrains of political thought were reproduced in the social imaginaries of the city, when the black and white towns seemed to clash and disappear, for a brief moment in the 1840s. The imaginary separation of the liberal city of light from the city of dreadful night could not be demarcated on the ground, nor could a liberal city governed by the “rule of freedom” acquire a built form in the colony.94 Not quite, not yet. The history of Calcutta thus seems to confirm the complex entwinement of political ideology and medical technology where we began this discussion. During the Fever Hospital Committee’s deliberations in the first half of the


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nineteenth century, doctors and administrators had concurred on the need to suppress all obstacles to the free circulation of goods and people. In England, Victorian health legislation has troubled historians precisely because of its apparent contravention of laissez-faire;95 there was a long-standing resistance to quarantine, where the economic argument against it (that it impeded the movement of goods) met the political argument (that it was an infringement of liberty).96 Both these reservations had been resolved in Calcutta, where the Fever Hospital Committee managed to link the promise of health to the technological facilitation of free trade principles, and to defer the promise of liberty by welding “self-government” to sanitary subjects. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the drains, roads, canals and bazaars had been organized to effect a specific end: the triumph of free trade principles, as though government was “a right disposition of things, arranged so as to lead to a convenient end.”97 If governmentality is understood as techniques of rule that shape conduct, a disposition of things to attain certain objectives, Nikolas Rose suggests, liberal governmentality may be rendered as a quest to “invent the conditions in which subjects themselves would enact the responsibilities that composed their liberties.”98 Another set of things – electric lights, drains, slaughterhouses, cremation grounds, water supply, the municipality and privies – provided the basis for shaping proper self-conduct amongst the natives of the city. The next chapter traces the processes by which an intimate training in self-government was unleashed by a host of sanitary techniques, and which, in turn, successfully forged sanitary behavior to the logic of citizenship.

6

Sensing modernity


Civility, class and citizenship in a sanitary city

[W]ith sovereignty the instrument that allowed it to achieve its aim – that is to say, obedience to the laws – was the law itself … On the contrary, with government it is a question not of imposing law on men, but of disposing things: that is to say, of employing tactics rather than laws, and even of using laws themselves as tactics – to arrange things in such a way that, through a certain number of means, such and such ends may be achieved. – Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” 19781 Reform depends upon a “norm of civilization” and a division between those who are ready for citizenship and those who have to be made ready for it (blacks, women, the colonized, the working class.) – David Scott, Refashioning Futures, 19992

Khitindranath Thakur’s reading of the urban text, his Kalikataye Chalaphera, recapitulates the entwined strategies to produce the city and citizenship: first, through the material technologies that ensured circulation and movement in the city, and second, through a retraining of the senses of the population to perceive and manage sources of disgust. Khitindranath Thakur’s Kalikataye Chalaphera, a chronicle of his walk through space and time, is a paean to the modern city, and to its loss.3 By the time Thakur wrote, Calcutta, once the second city of the British Empire in the east, had been abandoned in favor of the older Mughal capital as the administrative center of the Indian Empire. The city would never fully recover from this taint of rejection. Bombay had emerged as the commercial capital, and would quickly become the symbol of modernity, the home of cinema, the site of myriad desires, the sign of the cosmopolitan. Calcutta would never feature in that breathless list of magical global cities: London, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, Bombay … In the global imagination, Calcutta would feature instead as the ironic “city of joy,” the home of abject poverty that would spawn saints for the wider world.4 In Thakur’s mind, Calcutta’s imaginary transition from a place of pathology to one of modernity had been completed. Walking through the city, following the “thicks and thins of an urban text,”5 Thakur evoked that other time – shekal – a past time of filth and darkness, to make sense of the present – ekal – the present time illuminated by electricity. He ambled through the streets, through this time and another


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time, as though blinded by light. At this time, he wrote, the municipal carts trundled up the streets at regular hours. At that time the garbage rails would trundle down the Upper Circular Road, spewing off filth as the cars knocked against each other; and there the filth would sit, until the bhistis would water the streets from the sacks on their backs, or until the rains washed the streets clean. At this time, piles of filth could no longer lurk in the shadows. At that time, people would wade through animal and human waste floating in pools of murky water. In this time, one could walk all over Calcutta on paved footpaths, and just dust off the shoes when they returned home. At that time, people boarded up their windows to keep out the stench of the city. In this time, they opened up their windows to let in the bright light and fresh air. At that time, the stench would assault the senses of the citizens yet to be sensitized to sources of disgust.6 In this time, the filth had been confined by the Calcutta Corporation to the subterranean city, hidden from the senses, in underground pits covered with corrugated iron lids. And so Thakur read the urban text as a story of sanitation. He described its material forms – the drains, footpaths, conservancy carts, markets and roads, which the municipality and the Corporation had laid out in the previous century. Thakur embodies, in part, this transition to modern sensibility, as he contrasts the shekal, the time when the senses were assaulted by the stench from rotting garbage, with the ekal, characterized by a heightened visuality.7 He recalls the gas-lamps of his childhood that gave off a dim light and cast shadows in the corners of large rooms. In these unlit recesses had lurked all kinds of dangerous objects – ghosts, thieves, filth. Now, the bright lights swept away such sources of disorder to the margins of the big city.8 With the privilege of clarified vision, Thakur could perceive sources of disgust, and locate them in the past, in superstitions, in various uncivilized others. The distancing of self from the unsanitary, dim-lit past, the very act of describing a relationship of the self to the city, makes Thakur’s Chalaphera a performance of sanitary citizenship.9 The new built forms of the city and the heightened sensitization to sources of disgust produced (and reflected) this kind of sanitary citizenship: a display of public virtue and a sense of selfhood developed around sanitary behavior. In sanitary Calcutta, the urban text evoked by Thakur, the promises of liberalism seemed to be on the verge of fulfillment, for the darkly drawn color-lines of the “dual city” seemed obscured by light. As Thakur transliterated, in the dark times of the past, the “saheb Company” could simply ignore the “native nigger”10; not so anymore. The very material of the city was cosmopolitan: the tram tickets and lamps came from England, the horses to draw the tram-carriages came from Australia. At the same time, the electric lights were confined to select parts of the city, and within a few years, the Australian horses would keel over under the heat of the tropical sun. Thakur’s ekal had the ephemeral quality of liberalism in empire – a heterochronic ghost returned to haunt the walker in time. Emphasizing the continued strategic importance of cities in the development of citizenship, James Holston and Arjun Appadurai argue that cities represent the localization of global forces in their built forms and norms of belonging. Even in the context where projects of nation-building have dismantled the historic primacy of

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urban citizenship and replaced it with the national, cities remain a “strategic arena in the development of citizenship,” defining membership in society with their concentration of the non-local, the strange, the mixed, and the public, cities engage most palpably the tumult of citizenship. Their crowds catalyze processes that decisively expand and erode the rules, meanings and practices of citizenship. Their streets conflate identities of territory and contract with those of race, religion, class, culture, and gender to produce the reactive ingredients of both progressive and reactionary political movements.11 Taking seriously the suggestion that “cities are spaces where the business of modern society gets done,” and moving away from the “paradigm of nation building that celebrates the rural as the fundamental expression of the indigenous and authentic,”12 it is possible to see the city as an important space for the development of burgeoning ideas of citizenship in the nineteenth century. Anti-colonial intellectuals and nationalists were, after all, most often associated with urban locations; this was not simply because the municipal corporation trained proto-nationalists in any straightforward way, as some have tended to suggest, but because the city created the “powers of freedom,” and revealed the shape of a Bengali modern premised on an urban location. Discussions on sanitary citizenship often involved struggles over key biosocial spaces, sites that literally mattered in terms of life and death, such as the sutikaghar (the room of confinement) and the cremation ghats. These spaces carried great semantic weight in discussions of culture, difference and modernity, and often, these discussions resurrected the racialized ruptures of a colonial society. At the same time, a hygienic government of these spaces was not merely an example of the colonial’s project to cure the native. More importantly, perhaps, for certain natives of Calcutta, ideas of sanitary citizenship became deeply connected with demands for self-government. It was as though by demonstrating his ability to govern the self hygienically in the home, the native would justify his demand for self-governing municipalities based on an electoral principle in the city. In this way, ideas of sanitary citizenship engendered a new series of exclusions that cut through colonizer/colonized binaries. To understand this particular matrix of relations produced by the crossing of race, class and gender within bhadra society, I turn to the city, a school for citizens where sanitary principles were intended to produce a proper disposition of men, and of things.

A proper disposition of things Just as disciplinary assemblages such as the prison, the workhouse and the lunatic asylum remolded the characters of deviants, of those who had transgressed, other built forms – homes and streets, sewers and markets, street lights and water pipes – attempted to create well-regulated liberty through practices of normality, rationality and sensibility.13 In the 1830s and 1840s, the desire for a certain kind of

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economic “freedom” – free trade policies – dominated the plans for a sanitary city. Drains, roads, canals, gaslights, salt, rice, bazaars, slaughterhouses, were among the things disposed in a fashion that would effect a specific end: the triumph of free trade principles. If freedom (free trade, free market, the autonomous family) were crucial to the shaping of conduct, a massive mobilization of material resources was required “to fashion cities into spaces within which civil conduct could both be secured and publicly displayed.”14 As Nikolas Rose has superbly argued: Reform of dwelling houses and public institutions, planned patterns of boulevards and streets, public gardens and squares, sewers and running water, street lighting and pavements – this was not just “civilized architecture” but the calculated use of architecture in the service of well-regulated liberty … through shaping the conduct of free individuals in the direction of civility.”15 Medicine lay at the core of these attempts to regulate such practices of freedom. In colonial Calcutta, hygienic architecture was an important element of a liberal mission to cure. The sanitary city was premised on the rejection of segregation and separation along the color line and an attachment of its various parts in accordance with a clear hierarchy; it was the urban body produced by liberal racialism. The black town was no longer treated as an appendage to be removed, but as the nether-parts of the city to be subjected to closer scrutiny. The Calcutta Corporation was charged with this task of scrutiny and cure. It was to look into the general conservancy of the town, carry out improvements, illuminate the town by gas and by oil, work out new ways of taxation, and arrange for a new system of sewerage and drainage for the town.16 Bright lights, it has been argued, were not just important to a clarity of sight, but a certain sense of self.17 In 1856, a lighting rate was introduced to raise funds for better illumination; 600 gaslights and 1000 oil lights were to brighten up the city. By the end of that year, 388 new lights were fixed, making a total of 808 lights lit at the expense of the commissioners. The lamps were imported from England. Brackets were preferred over pillars for the lamps, to allow free movement along the paths, for people were already forced to walk down the middle of the streets because of “numerous drains, gutters, holes, etc.” Access to light reinforced the racial and class structure of the town: on July 6, 1857, the Chowringhee road was for the first time lit by gas, other parts of the town were to remain in relative darkness for some years to come. Other “things” that were intended to realize the ends of government and produce sanitary citizens included the 367 cattle and 373 carts that were added to the municipal structure, a network of subterranean drains, 100 urinals in principal thoroughfares to improve sanitary conditions in streets and “to enforce common rules of decency, which are now totally disregarded.18 In 1861, a Municipal Committee was appointed to throw a further grid of hygienic order over the city of Calcutta. While this committee, unsurprisingly, produced a familiar litany of complaints about the indifference of the native population to questions of health and order, a solution to the problem of funds was partially addressed through increases in the water rate, the lighting rate and the carriage and


Sensing modernity 125 horse tax. Meanwhile, the city was made legible through programs of enumeration unleashed through municipal acts, the census and maps. The municipal act of 1876 defined the borders and boundaries of the city. The area under the military was left out from the sanitary calculation, but the suburbs were included, for Howrah contained the warehouses and factories that were so important to the wealth of the city, and that attracted people to the metropolitan area. Huts in bustis were numbered, each ward was divided and demarcated, the streets, drains and lanes were clearly identified. Next came the counting of people. The power of the census hardly needs to be rehearsed here. It has been suggested that the census informed the way in which nations and empires organized the new education, juridical, public health, police and immigration bureaucracies in the late nineteenth century.19 If the categories of religion and caste were indeed “objectified” by census categories, the symbolic and semantic weight carried by the census surpassed its accuracy. H. H. Beverley, the provincial registrar of Bengal observed after the 1872 census that the population of Bengal rose in one day from 42 to 67 million, so that “the Lieutenant Governor … suddenly found that he had unconsciously been the ruler of an additional population more than equal to the whole of England and Wales.20 Determined to set the record straight, Beverley, in his role as the census commissioner, led an endeavor to recheck all returns by counting the exact number of persons in each house within the borders of the city on a single night. The first official census of Calcutta was completed in 1881.21 The play of light and shadow was significant to this exercise. At a given hour on that magical night, all street lamps were extinguished. “As we drove along,” Beverley recalled in his report, “we could see that a light was burning in each house, showing that the inmates were still awake and still expecting the arrival of the enumerators.” The light signaled to the enumerator that the proper citizens-in-making were ready and waiting to be counted; the streets were blacked out as the “home” of unsavory elements that would not count. On their part, the census officers were advised not to ask the names of the females of a household, and in keeping with rituals of modesty, no woman was asked to name her husband. The census completed, everything was further illuminated: Calcutta had a population density of 107 people to an acre, as compared to just over 50 to an acre in London. The decline in population from previous estimates did not lead to an alarm about disease, climate or disorder. Beverley interpreted this fall in numbers as a symptom of modern urbanism: major projects of improvement had displaced populations. New roads had obliterated the entire western half of the Nikaripara busti, for instance. Other bustis had been taken over by the Tramway Company stables. As business and commerce spread outwards to the suburbs, fewer places were available for residence. As with most cities, natural increases to population were kept in check by an imbalance in the sex ratio, for the immigrants were mostly men. Confirming the status of Calcutta as the major regional urban centre, only about a quarter of the residents was found to be native born. While the communal and religious basis of the census was reinforced in the enumeration of the Hindus as a majority at 278,762 to about 124,430 Muslims, anxieties about whiteness were reflected in the distinct counts returned for British-born Englishmen (about 6,000)


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and those born in India and elsewhere (about 8,600). The cosmopolitan composition of Calcutta was borne out by the counts of speakers of French, German, Portuguese, Norwegian, Italian, Swedish, Greek, Danish and Spanish amongst the European and mixed populations. There were small numbers from China (671), Persia (267), Nepal (234), Arabia (214) and Asiatic Turkey (176). The borders thus marked and the people enumerated, Calcutta was rendered legible; the population could now be governed. But the ordering of the city and the management of populations was more than a matter of number crunching and hygienic architecture. The sanitary citizen had to cultivate a hygienic disposition.

Sanitary dispositions and the government of self By the last decades of the century, a new way of sensing the city was coming into existence, a logical culmination of the discussions on reform unleashed in the previous decades. While the Fever Hospital Committee’s sanitary city, with its complex of canals and layout of markets, had been molded by a desire to fix political and economic norms, its plans had lacked a comprehensive normative project for ordering a social milieu. The subterranean complex of drains and layout of markets had been molded by anxieties about political and economic norms. Such discussions of governmentality were brought above ground in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as the new sanitary vision of imperial liberalism transformed a technical project into a social one: the creation of citizens. The history of the municipal corporation ties the discussion of sanitation to the project of self-governing citizenship; following the lead of Hugh Tinker, this history has usually been framed in terms of understanding the development of local self-government institutions in India. It is argued that municipal corporations in the presidency capitals provided a site for the political education of the westernized elite and allowed these men to acquire the skills of public debate and political action. If the raison d’etre of nineteenth-century liberalism was the active creation of liberal subjects, captured in the impulse to proselytize, educate and remake the political self in the great metropolitan centers of England22, in the colonies also municipal corporations were envisaged as arenas for the political education of native elites.23 In these corporations, it is often suggested, natives were to learn the first facts about representation, elections and self-government, to subsequently form the vanguard of the nationalist movement. In Calcutta, municipal government of a sort was inaugurated in 1794, when the governor general appointed Justices of the Peace for the municipal governance of the town, its responsibilities divided up amongst the assessment department, the judicial department and the executive department. When the Fever Hospital Committee was appointed in the 1830s, local taxation was still an untried principle. In keeping with the liberal antipathy for excessive taxation, the magistrate recognized the importance and the danger of further taxation, unless the representatives of the people sanctioned it. In 1837, Mr D. M’Farlan, the chief magistrate of Calcutta, had made a case for representative government, suggesting that


Sensing modernity 127 committees ought to be elected by ratepayers who met certain criteria of property, status and education. The committee, we have noted, had done little to camouflage its lack of enthusiasm for municipal self-governance, concluding that the native inhabitants of the town were certainly not ripe for such experiments, and the Europeans were neither so numerous nor so permanent in their residence to justify any part in municipal government based on popular elections. An 1865 report confirmed this view, pointing to the difficulties faced by the municipality in carrying out sanitary improvements given “the indifference or passive resistance to all improvement on the part of the upper classes of the native community,” adding, “in such a state of society as this of Calcutta, a system of government, based upon the model of English municipal institutions, must be unsuitable and inefficient.”24 The sanitary commissioner’s report for 1868 described the “cumbrous machinery” of the Dacca municipality. The native members voted with the Chairman, usually without any discussion, and in the worst cases, they spoke up at the cost of public health: Natives are not fitted to give an opinion on sanitation. The best educated of them, with rare exceptions, keep their own premises as filthy and offensive as the poorest house-holder. Their religion, their habits, their family arrangements, all ignore any connection between health and cleanliness. Yet these are the individuals selected to enlighten the people on the best means of preserving health, and upon whom devolves the responsibility of keeping a town clean.25 Given these views, it was not until the Calcutta Municipal Consolidation Act of 1876 that the elective principle was finally introduced at the municipal level. Under the new system, the corporation was to consist of 76 members, two-thirds of whom were to be elected by the ratepayers who paid the highest levies in the town, with the rest being appointed by the local government and special constituencies. To the nationalist elite, Tinker suggests, the municipal corporation contained the contours of a charter of civic freedom. In the decade before this reform, while all classes, European and native, were to be suitably represented in the elected municipal body, well-established notables were usually offered positions in the corporation. The elective principle was introduced by Sir Richard Temple, lieutenant governor of Calcutta, to produce a desirable “moral effect” upon natives of the city, disciplining their conduct, forming their character, and preparing them for citizenship. The improvement of native character through a reorientation of the senses and the improvement of his social milieu resonated with the liberal idea of character.26 In England, the town was seen as a natural sphere of politics, but without the party spirit of politics. John Stuart Mill’s thoughts on municipal sub-parliaments emphasized the citizen who was active, and trained by his own activity because he had a direct stake in his own locality.27 For the bhadralok, then, the municipality and the town corporation were a training ground in self-government. The actual extension of even a curtailed citizenship in this new order was extremely limited. The electors were to be adult male persons resident in the town or suburbs and paying more than


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Rs 25 as municipal rates or taxes;28 electoral participation and membership of the municipal corporations was limited to about two percent of the city’s population. This was just one sense in which the city was a school for future self-governing citizens; and this kind of municipal citizenship was tied to the accident of birth in terms of caste and class, and the display of wealth. The city was also the space for learning the art and science of self-government in another sense, which was increasingly premised on a demonstrated self-subjection to the norms of hygiene and sanitation, for well-trained urban citizens had to “enact the responsibilities that composed their liberties.”29 The relationship between municipal politics and citizenship may thus be understood in this way: as the sanitary economy of the city came to be understood in analogy with the human body where the vital functions had to be ensured, the “hygienization of the city was accompanied by processes making for the individuation of the self, ones which, if distinct from governance, were linked to it, and to the creation of urban citizenship.”30 The hygienization of the city created a particular vision of selfgovernment, which involved a new way of behaving in relation to the self and the city. In other words, while the Calcutta elite might have had little success in acquiring key positions in municipal bodies, or instigating any form of mass mobilization for electoral politics (even though they did campaign widely to get elected to their posts in the municipal corporation) at this time, they helped secure the promise of sanitary citizenship to notions of personal character and public comportment. In the sanitary city as a school for citizens, the textbooks took the form of municipal acts that trained people on the rules of hygienic comportment. For instance, Bhairab Chandra Dutt, a pleader in the Howrah municipality, produced a “cheap handy edition” of the Bengal Municipal Act of 1884 for the “public at large,” to be placed in the “hands of every municipal citizen in Bengal.31 The compilation taught the citizen-in-making the formal distinctions between sewage, offensive matter and rubbish: “offensive matter” included dirt, dung, putrid or putrefying substances, and “filth of any kind not included in sewage” while “rubbish” was broken brick, mortar, broken glass, kitchen or stable refuse, or refuse of any kind not included in “offensive matter.” Each type of filth has its own place in the handbook, and in the city.32 The means of disposal reflected and created the rhythm of civic life. The place and time for the disposal of garbage was clearly signaled and publicized; anyone who failed to comply with these norms of sanitary behavior could be punished or fined. Ideas of public and private were also realigned in accordance with these rules of hygiene. An act to provide for the survey of the town of Calcutta (Act 1 of 1887) allowed the superintendent of the survey and his assistants to enter all property, to fix the boundaries of private property within the city, and to scrutinize private spaces in accordance with norms of public health. If a private house or wall or tree was obstructing a public drain or thoroughfare, the commissioner of the city could order it removed at the owner’s expense. A block of huts deemed unsanitary due to defects in construction, want of drainage or insufficiency of scavenging, could likewise be removed.


Sensing modernity 129 Each aspect of life came under governmental regulation: all drains, cesspools and privies were to be periodically inspected by municipal employees, even in private homes. In public places, privies and urinals were properly separated for the sexes, and were to be maintained in proper order and regularly cleaned. A mehter who shirked his duties or withdrew without a month’s notice would be punished. Death too was regulated by the sanitary mandate: the dying could no longer be abandoned on the banks of the river; government licensed burning ghats and burial grounds, located at a suitable distance from the habitations of the living, were designated as the proper sanitary spaces for the reception of the dead. In these, if a corpse was left unattended, the commissioner would have it cremated after two hours. Native bazaars could no longer operate without government licenses, no food could be sold if defined as “adulterated,” no drugs were to be sold which were not recognized in the British pharmacopia. Ideas of sanitation impinged on all aspects of life, through an operation of biopower, which “brought life and its mechanisms explicitly into the realm of calculations and made knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life.”33 The Bengal Vaccination Act made it compulsory for everyone born in the town of Calcutta (as defined by the Calcutta Municipal Consolidation Act 1888) to be vaccinated within a year of birth, or within six months of arriving, if brought into the sanitary city in infancy. Homes were no longer “private” spaces out of reach of the state’s regulations: Every person occupying any house, enclosure, vessel or an other place within the limits of the town or port of Calcutta, or in the suburbs of Calcutta, or the town of Howrah, shall allow the superintendent of vaccination, or a medical practitioner or public vaccinator … such access as they may require for ascertaining whether the inmates are protected or not, and as, having regards to the customs of this country, may be reasonable.34 Women were employed for the vaccination of women. While public vaccinating stations were to be established in Calcutta, provisions were made for visits to the home, precisely to safeguard notions of decency, class and privacy.35 All births and deaths had to be registered, making the policing of such measures plausible. If a magistrate was informed that a child was not protected, he had the right to call the parents in, and order a vaccination. Instead of forced entries into homes, the state encouraged compliance through a regime of fines: a failure to comply would lead to a fine of Rs 100, with a further Rs 25 for each additional day for which the offence continued, up to an aggregate of Rs 1,000. To modify the native habits of throwing out garbage in the streets at all hours of the day, a practice that made Calcutta “literarily unfit for the habitation of civilized men”36, refuse carters were to be provided with bells to signal their arrival.37 A slew of municipal acts governed the everyday behavior of sanitary citizens: Act XIV of 1856, for instance, authorized the commissioners to prohibit the deposit of refuse in the streets except at certain hours. In 1883, fixed hours for depositing refuse (midnight to 8.00 a.m. and noon to 2.00 p.m.) were introduced, and pronounced


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“a real advance in the conception of civil duty.”38 And there was a price to be paid for every deviation from the norm of bourgeois self-management and sanitary citizenship – slaughtering an animal by the side of a road: Rs 10; relieving oneself at the side of a road: Rs 5; urinating, defecating or throwing any rubbish into water bodies: Rs 10; failing to report the death of an animal: Rs 25; burying a corpse less than 6 feet under the surface: Rs 20; incomplete burning of a corpse: Rs 20.39 Such “power over life,” as Foucault defines it, was deployed along two axes: the first was effected by the disciplines and was centered on the body as a machine, and concerned with the optimization of its capabilities, an increase of its usefulness and docility, and its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls; the second was focused on the species body and the mechanics of life, on biological processes such as propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity – a biopolitics of the population, in short.40 A liberal government of population required responsible self-disciplining of individuals, and this regime of fines aimed to elicit sanitary behavior. A short handbook intended especially for “the educated members of the native community among whom true sanitation must originate and be propagated” reiterated the promised transition from subject to citizen: “it is not without difficulties that authorities would infringe on the cherished possession – the liberty of the subject.”41 The punitive measures were couched as temporary (much like the deferment of self-government for natives in general), to be withdrawn when these regulations were internalized as self-regulating regimes by truly sanitary citizens. The extension of such power over life, and a transition to a sanitary citizenship signaled by municipal signs, handbooks and a regime of fines was not smooth; in the next section, we visit the burning ghat which emerged as a site of cultural contest and (hetero)chronic disorder, to understand a crisis of “self-government.”

A culture of sanitation and a crisis of self-government A heated debate over the management of burning ghats, for instance, developed into a full-blown crisis of self-government within the Calcutta Corporation. An 1858 report of the Commissioners of the town of Calcutta had stated that: The Burning Ghaut at Nimtollah has long been an eyesore to all who had to pass by land or by water. Leaving out of question of the disgusting sight of burning dead bodies, we apprehended that the stench arising from half burnt corpses, that wafted by a westerly breeze right into the heart of the densely crowded native parts of town, must be injurious to the health of its residents.42 The Gangadhartee, a structure built by private charity for Hindus who wanted to draw their last breath on the banks of the holy river, was proclaimed “a most unsightly edifice open to the gaze of passers-by and moreover in a most dilapidated and filthy state.” The ghat had been partially brought in line with new understandings of sanitation. It had been moved a 100 feet nearer to the river’s edge, and surrounded with walls 15 feet wide, leaving it open to the river on one side, to keep the


Sensing modernity 131 stench and smoke away from the native town. But the contest over the “power over life” was far from settled. In Christian cultures of burial, we are told, the modern renegotiation of the relationship between the living and the dead took the form of a clearer separation of the spaces of burial and the quarters of the living. As the corpse was redefined as filthy, and a source of disease, churchyards located in the heart of the town were moved to the outskirts of the city.43 In colonial Calcutta, a tense political and cultural contest on the management of death was played out in a crucial meeting at the Calcutta municipality.44 In 1864, the chairman of the Calcutta corporation urged the Justices of the absolute necessity of eliminating the practice of burning dead bodies within the limits of the town and the banks of the river, describing this as “a disgusting nuisance … a reproach to civilized government, a detriment of the health of the community and to public decency.” As he urged the closing of all burning ghats in the vicinity of the city, his suggestions unleashed a clash of cultures which firmly aligned Europeans against the natives within the corporation. While most native residents of Calcutta supported the ban on skinning animals at the Nimtollah Ghat that had been urged by the new sanitary regime, they balked at an interference with the rites of death. At a meeting of the municipal corporation meeting held at the town hall in 1864, Baboo Ramgopaul Ghose boldly stated his firm opposition to any interference on the part of the executive government in regard to the removal of burning ghats. This opposition was launched, in the first instance, on grounds of proper procedure: citing Section CCX of the municipal act, he clarified that a ghat could be removed only when it could be shown that it was “directly injuring the health of the neighborhood.” Ghose reminded the corporation that if a place of worship was found to be dangerous to the health of persons frequenting it, an alternative place was to be found within convenient distance before it could be removed. Once such a decision was reached and an alternative located, a certificate of notice was to be published in the Government Gazette, and a Bengali translation prominently displayed. A blanket ban on all burning ghats, he concluded, would be “highly irregular if not illegal.” Matters of procedure were only part of the problem. Such interference would be “offensive to Hindus, who believe in the sanctity of the holy river.” Restaging the drama that he had apparently encountered in opposition to the planned ban, Ghose described to those assembled his encounter with two Brahmins: One of them shook from head to foot, breathing heavily; the other fell tottering on a chair and his eyes were bedimmed with tears … Is it right to sow seeds of discontent among a vast body of unoffending peaceful subjects? ... Step not rudely forward with your bludgeon and tell the dying man – “thy faith is false – away from the banks of the river – this is no holy ground.” If the government can stop the practice on the banks of the Hooghly in Calcutta, because of a populous neighborhood, where will this stop? The cremation of the Hindoo may be prevented in the holy cities of Benares, Allahabad, and Huridwar ... Call it custom or usage, or if you prefer, superstitious prejudice, I submit you are equally bound to respect it.45


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Ghose went on to cite a recent enactment of the penal code, wherein the Government provided against any insult to religion, guarding against any indignity to a human corpse or any disturbance of the funeral ceremonies. He was just getting in his stride. Next, he turned to the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 and the expression of the majestic will that “none be any wise favored, none molested, or disquieted by reason of religious faith or observance.” The ghats could not be removed outside the city limits, he insisted, for Hindus demanded that a corpse remain untouched by any but members of the family, who were to carry the body barefooted on their own shoulders to the river. This would become impossible if the burning ghats were moved 8 miles to Tolley’s Nullah. Besides exposing imperial hypocrisy, such a move would also unleash ritual disorder, and a tremendous amount of popular resentment, he warned. On the other side, M. T. Hobhouse insisted “the religious feelings of Hindoos should give way to the paramount question of public health and decency.” The question of hygiene had never become separate from questions of morality, culture and race. At the meeting, biologized notions of culture were invoked again, and the cultural underpinnings of sanitary science were underlined. While Mr Sandeman, Dr Chevers, Dr Barry insisted that the ghats were an intolerable nuisance, Baboo Degamber Mitter retorted that burial was a bigger nuisance and less sanitary than cremation. In the end, the group broke up along the color line, with 25 Europeans and 3 natives voting for removal of the ghat, and 33 natives declining. The motion was defeated, but not before it had revealed faults in the colonial state’s citizen-producing sanitary machine. Other tensions soon emerged to the surface; the most prominent natives in the corporation were high-caste Hindu men, many of whom were lawyers affiliated with the leading political clubs in Calcutta, the Indian Association and the British Indian Association. A core of the commissioners had served on it since the very introduction of the elective principle; among these were men such as Surendranath Banerjea, Narendranath Sen and N. N. Ghose, who emerged as prominent public figures from their initial “training” at the municipal level. In a discussion of the politics within the corporation, Chris Furedy writes, Muslims were beginning to get concerned about their limited representation by the 1880s. Most often, however, the tensions erupted along the color line. In 1884, a commission to inquire into the health of Calcutta condemned the operations of the Calcutta Corporation and criticized the elective commissioners as “the brake-power in the municipal train.” The race basis of the condemnation was clearer when this special commission asserted that the European commercial community was inadequately represented and lacked the influence to which they were entitled. In 1897, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, lieutenant governor of Bengal, wrote: For the past ten years it [the Calcutta Corporation] has been dominated by Bengali Hindus. It embodies their idea of what a Bengali Parliament should be, and it gives the fullest expression to the demoralizing doctrine that practical considerations are to be subordinated to the supposed educational influences of Local Self-Government.46


Sensing modernity 133 The Bengalis, in their turn, blamed British apathy, financial constraints and executive inefficiency. By the last decade of the century, the fear of the Bengali clique – real or imagined – had acquired such proportions that the government of Bengal found it necessary to intervene drastically to curb the powers of the elected Hindu commissioners. The panic caused by the1896 plague epidemic provided the excuse to push through with an amendment to the Calcutta Municipal Act. The 1899 amendment might have been the most controversial piece of legislation passed by Curzon’s administration before the partition of Bengal in 1906. The amendment reduced the number of commissioners to 50, of which 25 were to be elected by ward elections. Of the rest, 15 were to be appointed by the government, four each by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Calcutta Trades Association, and two by the Port Commissioners. In effect, the elective section of the corporation was halved; this was an attempt to cut the so-called “Baboo Party” down to size. This was a major retreat from Ripon’s 1882 resolution on self-government. Surendranath Banerjea was prominent in organizing the opposition to the amendments, and staged a protest by leading 27 commissioners out of the Calcutta Corporation. The agitation acquired wider proportions: the Indian National Congress, several corporations and municipal bodies from other parts of the country, and the native press joined in to condemn the amendment. N. N. Ghose, a member of the corporation condemned the violations of the liberal position that the act entailed; highlighting that the amendments would virtually extinguish local self-government in Calcutta … will interfere with the private liberties of the residents of the town, reduce their comforts, add to their vexations, make life costly, affect rights of property, and may even drive out of town those respectable Muslim men of moderate means who may be described as the poorer middle class. According to Ghose, these reversals to the principles of self-government would threaten civic liberties in every other town and municipal area, “for there is not a town in the country that is not less fitted for Local Self Government than Calcutta, for nowhere is there a population larger, better educated, or possessed of larger interests.”47 Ghose reminded the state of the original mission to cure Calcutta: “to educate the people according to western methods, and up to western standards, not only in literature, art and science, but in the business of life, and the work of civil administration.” Ghose was baffled by this animosity towards the “well educated Hindu [who] was regarded as one of the triumphs of English rule.” The amendment had abolished the office of the vice-president, usually held by a native; Ghose believed this change revealed that an overt racism could no longer be contained by the rhetoric of liberalism: There is a feeling in official quarters that “nigger” commissioners must not be allowed to exercise authority over European officers of the corporation, such as the engineer, the health officer, and chairman. Besides, the changes in the composition of the corporation were intended so that commercial men would

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have a say twice over in municipal affairs, first as ratepayers, and then as traders, and most of these men represented European commerce.48 Shrewdly pointing to the nexus between race and capital, Ghose suggested the rhetoric of “empire as cure” had been emptied of all content. Resorting to his own number crunching, Ghose claimed that “facts, present and palpable facts,” disproved assumptions that the sanitary condition of the town was in bad shape. He insisted that the rise in the value and the rent of landed property in the town, and the annual administration reports pointed to the desirability of residence in Calcutta, and that there was no evidence that the sanitary affairs were any better before the days of self-government. Protesting against these amendments in no uncertain terms, he added: The people of Calcutta are … to be made the victims of official prejudice; and Self-Government, all over India, must tremble in the balance when its most successful exhibition has been summarily swept away. Official minds will probably not be at ease until “self governing” bodies are constituted in the plan of the Bengal Legislative Council, where there is a standing majority of official and European members. But will the most powerful microscope in the world discover the weight and value of the “self” in such constitutions?49 While Ghose thus drew attention to colonial doublespeak in this powerful attempt to exorcise the resplendent ghost of a self-governing future, in the end, it was not race alone, but gender, class and caste, which complicated notions of self and sanitary citizenship in colonial Calcutta. While the discussions within the corporation seem to confirm the historian’s view that liberal rhetoric was invariably compromised in colonial practice, they also reveal that colonial governmentality continued to exert an influence on the idea of “self-government.” To recapitulate the argument presented so far, until the mid-nineteenth century, ideas of sanitation had encouraged a demarcation of the physical borders between white and black Calcutta, rationalized as the segregation of frailty and danger. Recent accounts of the city show that the reality was far more complicated than this ideal separation, as evident from the ubiquitous racial proximities of everyday life, or the hybrid floor plans of colonial habitations.50 In fact, even the spaces of imagination had blurred borders, for the sanitary strategy of the liberal empire was based on tutelage and deferral, not segregation and exclusion, and the stark color lines of earlier times were embarrassing to the new order of things. Even when the color lines were starkly drawn, as they were after the 1899 amendment to the constitution of the Calcutta Corporation, other tensions were also revealed: the Hindu/Muslim divide, the elite/subaltern divisions were brought to the surface. In the last decades of the century, new systems of exclusions and inclusions were coming into being. All this served to shape bhadralok notions of selfhood, as the fracturing black town became integrated into the urban body and the borders most closely guarded and scrutinized were perhaps the flimsiest.



Liminal spaces of modernity The spaces routinely subjected to the sanitary gaze – the bazaar, the burning ghat, the tatti, the slaughterhouse and the sutikaghar – were spaces where the borders of the home, the body, the society, were temporarily compromised or suspended. We have seen how the temporary marketplaces of India were perceived as shifty, disordered, unhygienic and hard to control; the “moving market” of the street vendor further compromised distinctions between inside and out. In like way, the sutikaghar also defied the gendered logic of inside and out, for the room of confinement did not lie inside the home, but was a temporary structure that was erected outside its usual borders. While the home and bazaar have most frequently been contrasted as the emblematic inside to be protected and the outside to be rubbished and a place against which one needs protection,51 the bazaar and sutikaghar may be juxtaposed, instead, as analogous spaces that messed up the distinction between inside and outside. In these liminal spaces, therefore, the borders of the “clean and proper body” were enforced, by a set of rites, rules and regulations. The selfimposed regulations to eject sources of danger, disease and disorder to the body, were orchestrated by the state’s sanitary regulation. Just as the severance of the bazaar from older forms of exchange was crucial to an empire of free trade, the management of life and death in the sutikaghar and the burning ghat was central to the liberal ideology of tutelage and cure. In spaces such as the ghat, the sutikaghar, the bazaar – the history of liberal imperialism may be seen to coincide with that of colonial modernity, for this was the beginning of the regulation of exchange and flows, of life and death. In the crisis heterotopias of the sutikaghar and the ghat, the understanding of life and death underwent, as Foucault would say, a disciplinary and governmental transition into modernity. In the course of this transition to modernity, burial grounds and burning ghats were no longer tolerated in the heart of cities, and were increasingly relocated to the outskirts of the city; the sutikaghar and the tatti moved in a different direction, and were gradually reintegrated into everyday life and the modern home through a process of hygienization. Against the backdrop of these jagged, broken and blurry lines, the borders that were most anxiously guarded were those of the self. Taking off from Kristeva’s insight on the abjection of filth as the basis of one’s “clean and proper body,” the next sections turn to the tatti and sutikaghar to analyze the racial, class, and gendered underpinnings of the self-conception of the bhadralok. In theorizing abjection, Kristeva makes a suggestive distinction between two types of corporeal waste – menstrual and excremental – that signify the objective frailty of a symbolic order of purity and danger. Excrement and its equivalents (decay, infection, the corpse) stand for the danger to identity that comes from without; menstrual blood stands for the danger issuing from within the identity.52 This has suggestive implications for the semantics of the tatti and the sutikaghar – the places of excrement and blood – which serve as useful sites for analyzing the role of class and gender in the development of the bhadralok’s selfhood. First, to the tatti – a term used for privies as well as for the matter abjected therein, and a “dirty” word expunged from polite language.

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Excrement, class and citizenship Sometime in the middle of the century, one Dr Fawcus, determined to get a handle on the very matter of drainage and conservancy, carried out an important scatological experiment at the Alipore Jail in Calcutta. This is what he discovered: contrary to a common belief that all humans produce roughly the same amount of feces, about 8 ounce for adults and 4 ounce for children in a day, the amount produced by native prisoners was about 12 ounce on average. Hinting, perhaps, that the production of excreta could also yield a measure of man, Fawcus concluded “the natives of India excrete on an average by the bowels twice as much as Europeans.”53 Instead of dwelling on the medicalized phantasies of race that might have informed such a formulation, let us turn to the connections drawn between excrement, class and citizenship within bhadralok society. As though confirming the sense of Fawcus’ experiment, Dominique Laporte argues in his History of Shit that the management of human waste is crucial to our identities as modern individuals, the organization of the city, the rise of the nation-state, the development of capitalism, and the mandate for clean and proper language.54 Drawing on that insight, this section looks at the management of shit as a way to understand the emergence of the clean and proper body, and a burgeoning discourse on sanitary citizenship amongst Calcutta’s bhadralok. The color lines were already less than stark when the president of the sanitary commission of Bengal, John Strachey, wrote in 1864: The state even of the Southern Division of the Town, which contains the fine houses of the principal European inhabitants, is often most offensive and objectionable, while, with regard to the northern, or Native Division of Calcutta, which contains some hundred thousand people, it is no figure of speech, but the simple truth, to say that no language can even begin to adequately describe its abominations. In the filthiest quarters of the filthiest towns that I have seen in other parts of India, or in other countries, I have never seen anything that can be, even for a moment, compared with the filthiness of Calcutta ... the state of the capital of British India, one of the greatest and wealthiest cities of the world, is a scandal and a disgrace to civilized government ... the condition of the city is such that it is literally unfit for the habitation of civilized men. Even if we put aside all questions of public health, and look on the matter as one of common decency, or as one of good government, the state of Calcutta is disgraceful to the last degree.55 Continuing with this line of thinking in which the management of filth was inextricable from considerations of wealth, good government and civilized life, Dr Macrae, officiating health officer for the city, wrote in 1868, “There is more foecal pollution in Calcutta than in any other town I have ever visited …” describing the “primitive system of removal which existed centuries ago ….” Not much had changed over time, he concluded: “In the morning the private depots are cleaned and the contents removed in closed vessels to the public depots, where it remains all day.” Besides, there was the stench from the bullock-carts as they



passed through the streets bearing excrement. Airtight tubs could not be adopted in Calcutta, for it was feared that the night-soil was already in an advanced state of decomposition at the time of removal, and subsequent fermentation would have caused the tubs to burst. Even more horrifying, however, was the knowledge that excrement did not remain confined to these tubs and the tattis. In 1876, the health officers of Calcutta described the disorder of Calcutta’s already notorious bustis, singling out the water tanks in their vicinity as repositories of disease: Generally in the centre of these blocks there is a tank into which the sewage runs; on all sides there are privies which void their contents into the water. Official analyst reports show that the water in many of these tanks has the character of London sewage. Shoals of worms are visible to the naked eye, and animalcules are observed under the microscope. Every hour of the day residents use this water for cooking purposes, for washing and cleaning their utensils, their persons and their soiled clothes, in close proximity to the discharge for sewage from the latrines. While the establishment of the germ theory played a role in explaining the spread of bacterial diseases later in the century it did little to dislodge the long-standing association between filth, poverty and morality. The profound disorder of mixing bodily excrement and matter to be ingested was a particularly potent imagery even before the methods of disease transmission were fully grasped, for such blatant mismanagement of abject stuff seemed to threaten the very core of a sanitary sensibility and a bourgeois social order. The racialized horror evoked by “native habits” was becoming overlaid with the language of bourgeois disgust; and increasingly, the kind of blanket condemnations of native life that had shaped the dual city were no longer thought to be suitable. C.T. Metcalf, chairman of the municipal board wrote in his 1876 report that he preferred a more “moderate and conciliatory” tone to the “violent denunciations of their habit of life.”56 In stark contrast to the tone adopted by the Fever Hospital Committee, and its insistence that religion and culture prevented the natives from converting to sanitary behavior, Metcalf chose to criticize the municipal corporation instead. He emphasized that there was a strong demand for pure water even among the lowest class of natives; it was only when water supply was shut off by municipal corporation that they were driven back to the foul tanks, and hence, to cholera: While the streets of the wealthy quarters of the town were watered with filtered water, the supply of the poor was stopped, and they were driven to use of what the sanitary Commissioner describes as excrement and water ... [W]hen people are driven to drink sewage by the neglect to supply them with water, it seems to be adding insult to injury to describe them as reveling in sewage and drinking excrement and water as a matter of taste and choice. It is just as unreasonable as it is to describe the people, in another part of the report, as being unprovided with the most ordinary means and appliances of cleanly life, and then, because their habitations are dirty, to accuse them of “preferring disease to discipline.”57


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The racial politics of filth seemed to be on the wane; native life could no longer be condemned in its entirety. Somewhat paradoxically then, such critiques of the Calcutta Corporation often took the form of racially expressed attacks on the selfgoverning abilities of its native members. At the same time, the ordering of excreta was becoming linked to an emerging discourse on the disorderliness of the lower classes.58 In the 1830s, some of the respondents to the Fever Hospital Committee’s queries had complained about the mismanagement of excreta in the native town “in language … more forcible than polite.”59 While a heightened sense of disgust had not yet been encoded as a delicacy of speech, the ordering of excreta was becoming linked to an emerging discourse on the disorderliness of the lower classes. Babu Mishunath Motilal of Bow Bazaar had reported to the committee that whereas the mehter had traditionally removed night-soil in the wee hours of the night, they could now walk through the streets and high roads with baskets full of stink on their heads, at any hour of the day. But when it happens to a lot of a person who had just made a hearty meal, to fall before any one of these mehters, it is needless to say what is felt by him.” The ordering of excreta was crucial to ordering a bourgeois hierarchy in the city. In this sanitary order, the mehter’s disorderly conduct, his defiant walk through the street at “all hours of the day,” was seemingly a greater source of disgust than the mehter’s person as a source of pollution. If the jostling of bodies in urban crowds or the juxtaposition of castes in colonial institutions served to undermine some of the strictest caste-based demarcations of purity and pollution, some of the old fear of pollution might have become realigned with the more modern prejudice of class. As the colonial and Indian middle-class projects of modernity and social reform interlocked in the management of excreta, the poor and the lower classes became the target of sanitary reform. At the same time, they took the blame for frustrating the sanitary vision.60 The municipality had assigned mehters with the task of collecting night-soil from the private and public tatties, described in a report as “troughs (speaking roughly, for no man can ever stoop to measure them, about six feet long, two or three feet broad and one or two feet in depth, full … with a mixture of bubbling seething foeculence and maggots!61”) and carrying it to the tollah mehter depots. From these local depots, the matter was to be transported to the night-soil ghat on the riverbank, and then carried further downstream in municipal boats, and deposited into the river. As bad as this complicated relay of excreta might sound, the reality was worse. According to one Babu Srinath Mukherjee of Sobha Bazar, the excreta from the mehter’s tattis (compound tattis) were sometimes haphazardly thrown into a neighboring tank or pool, or “scattered over the adjoining spot and left to remain there forever to be dried by the sun.”62 In fact, as the chairman of the Justices confirmed, a very small portion of the night-soil found its way to the ghats at all; 90 percent was thrown into public drains under cover of night by those recalcitrant mehters.


Sensing modernity 139 The real problem lay elsewhere: much later into the century, no feasible alternatives had been found for the disposal of excrement in the city. The Fever Hospital Committee, we have seen, had considered a system of underground drainage. Rival plans had been examined and abandoned. The failure to build was usually attributed to a lack of funds and cultural obstacles. It was not until 1857 that a new scheme for drainage based on Major Schalch’s plans (discussed previously) and updated as Mr Clark’s scheme was finally approved. This plan, too, was deferred pending approval from the “English expert.” The final plan, approved in April 1859, was a “combined scheme” to carry away both rainwater and sewage. Sewage was to be pumped, and the drainage was to flow from the Hooghly to the salt lakes. The first part of the plan was completed in 1868 when the main sewer running down the city from Tolley’s Nullah to Dhurrumtollah was completed. At this time, drainage was limited to the area south of Park Street. Before the plan could be extended to the northern part of town, a Committee of Experts was appointed to report on the best means of draining the town “with due regard to efficiency, economy, and the habits of the population.”63 The experts recommended that the changes be carried out, as far as funds permitted. The cost of 56 lakhs to complete the scheme was found prohibitive, and the plan was further modified. The plans for subterranean drainage were carried out in fits and starts so that most of the main sewers of Clark’s scheme were gradually constructed over the next 16 years; by 1875 nearly 38 miles of brick sewers and 37 miles of stoneware pipe sewers had been constructed. It was not until 1890 that the underground drainage system had expanded to 37 miles of main or brick sewers with an additional 147 miles of pipe sewers.64 But even if things had run smoothly, and if the mehters had functioned as cogs in the wheels of the sanitary machine designed by the state, the Hooghly would have received 200 ton of untreated night-soil daily.65 This would not necessarily have been a very healthy prospect for the city’s inhabitants. In fact, David B. Smith condemned this system as: the systematic and willful pollution of the River Hooghly abreast of the town and above the Shipping of the entire Port … Day by day the water that many thousands of the inhabitants of Calcutta drink and that which is consumed by every sailor in the Port, is defiled, by orders of the Municipality, with I know not how many tons of night-soil.66 This extreme symbolic and epidemiological disorder of ingesting excreta was connected, of course, to the wider disorder of cholera. The incidence of cholera cases on ships that docked in Calcutta was so high that the harbour had been condemned as the “maelstrom of death.”67 Meanwhile, the mouths of the main sewers of the city opened up to the banks of the river, some near the main bathing ghats in the city: “as if the sacred stream was not already poisoned enough by the daily augean deposit of night-soil, the bathers are furnished a special fountain for themselves!”68 Worse still, the night-soil was hurled into the Nimtollah Ghat, where “the natives drink it with the greatest appetite, bathe in it every day, to clean both their bodies and souls, and carry it to an immense distance as the greatest imaginable treasure.”69

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The problem of native superstition, however, was but part of the tragedy of sanitation; colonial officials pointed to native corruption and inefficiency as further obstructions to the sanitary vision. In 1836, a lieutenant had described the chaos and disorder of the streets of Calcutta: Dust and rubbish and all kinds of dirt are thrown into them ad libitum, from every house, and picked up as may be when the carts of the present very inefficient establishment come around. The greatest number of these carts are common native hackeries of the worst description, which will hardly hold two ghurras of rubbish without its falling off. They are drawn by wretched old bullocks, unfit for employment by the merchants, and are supplied by a contractor. The drivers are obtained in the same manner, so that there is no effectual control over them ... the coolies are supplied in the same way.”70 The problem of sanitation was getting rearticulated as a problem of labor, even as, over the years, the city continued to generate more and more waste, and the final deposit of the refuse was pushed out further out of the town. Meanwhile, the process of conservancy – street cleaning, removal of night-soil, domestic and trade refuse, drainage of private premises and public toilets – had remained labor intensive, for plans for the subterranean drainage system were constantly deferred. The surface conservancy of the town was carried out in three stages: municipal cattle and carts from the Gowkhana collected refuse; the Municipal Railway removed it in bulk; and the filth was disposed of in an area referred to as Square Mile. In 1867, an attempt was made to substitute machines for manual labor, when refuse railways to transfer the filth from carts to trucks were introduced along two lines, one running along the Circular Road between Theater Road and Bagh Bazaar, the other running eastwards along the line of the main outfall and high-level sewers to carry it off to the Square Mile. The refuse rail failed to bring about the hoped for sanitary or technological revolution; in a sensational report from 1869, Dr David B. Smith, the sanitary commissioner for Bengal, protested this “vast nuisance being produced by the conjointed efforts of the Municipality and the Railway Company within a few yards of a public thoroughfare.”71 In the same report, Smith described a peculiar way of reclaiming land through the practice of filling up hollow places, broken ground, and even tanks with the off-scouring and filth of the city … [W]hen I first read the description of this process I thought the mistakes depended on the carelessness of the Printer, but I am sorry to say it is not so, they being due entirely to the suggestions of the Sanatarian [sic].” The Health Officer’s Report of 1864 had also mentioned the prevalence of this practice: two offensive ponds or receptacles of cow dung were filled up by the Conservancy Department with the excavations from the main drains of the neighborhood. The triangular block between the Upper Circular Road, Cornwallis Street

Sensing modernity 141 and Hogulcoorea Street contained eight such ponds filled with night-soil, cow dung, etc. The Health Officer’s Report of 1867 reported that


the sweepings of the town have been turned to good account for the reclamation of the Strand Bank, and the River Trust ought to consider themselves very fortunate having an immense area of valuable land between Armenian Ghat and Aheritolah reclaimed without expenditure by the sole agency of the Conservancy Department.72 In other words, while the mehter had been blamed for hastily disposing of excreta and other garbage in unseemly ways under cover of night since the 1840s, the conservancy arrangements officially sanctioned three decades later were not much better. Despite these official defects, the quickest fix to the problem of shit was found in a stricter regulation of mehters, by instituting a set of punitive measures to regulate their movement through the city, the time of removal, the location of depots, and so on. Under a system of negotiations between the Justices and the mehters, each of the depots for night-soil was assigned to a sardar or chief, licensed by the Justices, and supplied by them with buckets and carts at a fixed rate. The sardar was in charge of putting together his team of mehters; the license specified the area within which his team was to operate. The inhabitants of homes in the area served by his team paid him wages on a scale established by the Justices. These regulations were enforced by the Inspector of Nuisances, but apparently not very efficiently. The practice of tossing night-soil into the rivers was stopped after 1870; all night-soil was to be deposited at the main sewers of the new drainage system. The mehters paid the headman a certain fee for this facility, which was turned over to the municipality. This system of farming out the management of waste was also pronounced corrupt, and it was repeatedly stressed that the “defiant attitude of the mehters” prevented the authorities from keeping a firm check on the receipts (even though the receipts went up from Rs 10,210 in 1870 to Rs 44,540 in 1876).73 The municipal act of 1876 further increased the municipality’s control over the labor of the mehter, by licensing mehters, banning all informal tollah mehters, and bringing one portion of the town completely under the control of a municipal establishment. The tollah mehters immediately went on a strike all over the city, and according to official reports, “attempted to intimidate the municipal sweepers where they refused to join the combination.” The strikers sent word out to the mofussils to prevent other mehters from coming to the help of the authorities. In case these tactics failed, the mehters circulated a rumor that all sweepers serving the municipality would be sent to the West Indies.74 Charles Metcalf, the Chairman of the municipal board, recalled the mehter strike in a way that contains all the ingredients of the classic colonial panic, with visions of blind native obedience to heads and high priests, the circulation of cryptic messages and mysterious means to convey these. The mehters apparently went on strike on the agency of Monua jemadar, the head mehter serving under the municipality, who had the collection of the Tollah mehter depots in his hands. Two

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others, Lall, the high priest of the sweepers, and Ghasee, the Sirdar mehter of the suburban districts, were also involved. The other mehters had been bound down by an oath administered by one Haroo jemadar, the farmer of a public latrine in Sham Bazaar, that they would strike the moment they were ordered. According to Metcalf the entire system had to be abandoned because the mehters refused to be licensed, or accept the supervision of the municipality in any way. In this interpretation of the strike, oriental inscrutability was complicated by corruption and greed: the sardar mehters were apparently against any changes to the system because they were in the habit of keeping for themselves about half of the receipts they got from the mehters who cleaned the houses; as a result, the municipality had been losing about Rs 75,000 a year.75 Despite these frustrations, the municipal authorities remained reliant on the labor of the mehters. The refuse railway had done little good. An early plan to remodel and connect private privies to public sewers had to be abandoned due to an acute shortage of water. In fact, these connections were practically prohibited after 1876. In 1884, 2,000 private privies were connected to the drains, while about 39,000 remained unconnected; these unconnected tattis had to be served by 1,200 mehters.76 Technology failed to transform the labor-intensive system of using mehters until the next century when the supply of unfiltered water made some of these connections practicable. Meanwhile, these innovations did little to liberate the mehters, and, at best, they served to translate old prejudices into a “language of modernity, of civic consciousness and public health.” The discourse on the “recalcitrant mehter” that permeated official speech indicates the extent to which class and caste became recast in the language of modernity and public health. At the level of municipal politics as well, as we saw in the previous section, the racist exclusion of the natives from municipal institutions was couched in terms of public health interest, for all natives, with rare exceptions, were found to thrive “in premises as filthy and offensive as the poorest house-holder,” and were thus unfit to weigh in on matters of sanitation. The principle of sanitary citizenship recast social relations in the city in the language of modernity. As Vijay Prashad argues for twentieth-century Delhi, the labor process did not sabotage the sanitary system, as was often claimed but in fact enabled the system to remain functional, while the true limits to a complete sanitary transformation lay in fiscal conservatism. In his words, “the limit for the development of capitalist modernity … is not something extraneous, something ancient, or outside, but it is itself its limit … the limit of capitalist modernity is its constituents: the social nexus between technology and capital.”77 In this nexus, the disorder of shit would increasingly becoming expressed as a problem of class within bhadralok discourse: a problem either caused by the lower classes, or occasionally, something that concerned their piteous state. In a context where the bhadralok’s claims to sanitary self-government were tenuous, the borders of the sanitary self had to be carefully guarded. To contest the formulation that all natives, irrespective of class, caste and education, were unqualified for sanitary citizenship, the

Sensing modernity 143 bhadralok brought the project to expunge the filthy, the superstitious and the dangerous, from the world into the home.


Blood, sex and citizenship: Cleaning up the sutikaghar The notion of sanitary citizenship served to create a unitary analytic field between home and world within nationalist discourse. This was highly significant, for nationalism, to repeat Partha Chatterjee, was not just a political struggle for power, it related the question of political independence of the nation to virtually every aspect of the material and spiritual life of the people, and in each case there was a problem selecting what to take from the west, and what to reject. The nationalists, according to Chatterjee, resolved the problem of selection by drawing a distinction between the material sphere – where the west was granted superiority – and the spiritual sphere, to be kept immune from the myriad tools of empire. In this discourse of nationalism, the material/spiritual distinction was condensed into an analogous dichotomy between the outer and the inner; the latter was the site of one’s own true self.78 To put it another way, the everyday spatial expression of this ideology took on the (gendered) separation of the social space into ghar and bahir, the home and the world, and the home was to be preserved from the speculum of the colonial state. As the bhadralok were confronted with the unfulfilled magic of western education, the diminishing returns of petty landlordism, the claustrophobia of a clerical confinement and a pessimism about indigenous economic ventures, the home became the only zone where autonomy could be preserved. In a slew of household management manuals, the bhadralok discussed the home as an army to be strengthened, an enterprise to be managed, and a state to be governed. Seizing upon the home as the space of autonomous government, the bhadralok reconfigured the very activities from which they were, in effect, excluded.79 In fact, just as physiological issues of hygiene and health, sex and reproduction, tended to obfuscate distinctions between the material and spiritual domains80, the prose of sanitary citizenship blurred the lines between ghar and bahir, connecting a mastery of the home to rights to the city. This is clearest from the example of a vernacular rendering of modern gynecology, which attached the “science of woman” to the (re)production of sanitary citizens. Gynecology reinforced class and gender hierarchies in a peculiar way, by limiting the claims to citizenship of the unsanitary masses, and confining the bhadramahila to a sanitary regime within the home. To take on board Chatterjee’s formulation that Indian (or more accurately, Bengali) nationalism, “took up the women’s question as a problem already constituted for it: namely, a problem of Indian tradition,”81 is to recognize that the women’s question was also necessarily and simultaneously a problem of Indian modernity. The “new patriarchy” of liberal nationalism was imbricated with the disciplines of the body and a biopolitics of population, and as such, it was fully cognizant of the frailty of a symbolic dichotomization of home and world. The spatial logic of the home and the world collapsed in the relocation of childbirth from the outhouse to the bed in the late nineteenth century. The change did not come suddenly, or evenly. In the early half of the nineteenth century, responding to


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the Fever Hospital Committee’s queries on native life, as discussed in the previous chapter, Madhusudan Gupta had testified on the poor state of women’s health. He had brought to light three interrelated concerns: the natural difference of feminine bodies, the primitiveness of traditional practices of birthing, and the relation between the health of individual women at childbirth and the health of the population at large.82 Gupta emphasized Hindoo women “are not so subject to some of the diseases I have mentioned as the males … but they are very subject to hysteria, and irregularities of the menses.”83 While the “Sanskrit system of pathology” seemed to find happy agreement with gynecology in tracing women’s ailments to fertility and childbearing84, the metonymic relationship between ovary and woman was not a colonial creation.85 But the analogization of ovary, woman, inner sphere and private space, in opposition to the complex of mind, man, outer sphere and public space had added relevance in the colonial context. In colonial India, the deeply rooted mythology that “casts objectivity, reason and mind as male, and subjectivity, feeling and nature as female”86 met the anti-colonial nationalist myth-making that made the woman the protector of the pure, un-colonized, private space of the home.87 As the juxtaposition of womb, woman, and home was recast in the light of colonial politics, female bodies were made to bear the burden of excessive symbolization, as the biological reproducers of the members of the national collective, as the reproducers of the boundaries of national groups, as active transmitters and producers of the national culture, and as symbolic signifiers of national difference.88 Further, medical representations of the bodies of women, whether as morbid specimen in museums or as illustrations in texts, focused on the pathological and primitive. In Bengal, the woman’s body and the domestic space were often represented as containing the most deeply buried secrets of Indian pathology.89 Gupta described how the post-partum Bengali woman was placed in a “damp dark room very ill ventilated, with one small door only, and no window, or opening in the nature of a chimney.” The door, he wrote, was always closed, to protect the mother and child, but also because women were considered impure even after the delivery. During the time of ritual impurity, the mother was expected to remain in a temporary hut made of mats and bamboo, thatched with straw or grass and detached from the house and to be destroyed after the period of confinement ended. This violation of hygienic norms had morbid consequences: the mother “generally gets fever, pain in the belly, moderate sweatings, headache and giddiness, and inflammatory fever, within two or three days of confinement.” While Gupta mentioned that three to four women of twenty died of fever or tetanus produced by the primitive management of childbirth,90 the real horror lay elsewhere: The harm done to the public health by such customs is permanent and absolute … for children too suffer, by being kept in the same smoky room, the treatment of the mother has bad effects upon her milk, and this also disorders the child … I do not see in the town of Calcutta any children who are of perfect health.”91 The three elements of Gupta’s critique – feminine difference or hystericization, the primitiveness of native gynecology, and the un-eugenic consequences of the

Sensing modernity 145 mismanagement of parturition – were fully developed into a modern discourse on sex. In Foucault’s words, the process of the hystericization of women defined “sex” in three different ways:


as that which is common to men and women; as that which belongs, par excellence, to men, and hence is lacking in women; as that which by itself constitutes the woman’s body, ordering it wholly in terms of the functions of reproduction and keeping it in constant agitation through the effects of that very function.”92 The hystericization of women in vernacular gynecological discourse limited their place in the quest for “sanitary” citizenship, located in their bodies the symptoms of cultural pathology, and highlighted their role as (biologized) reproducers of the race. The question of sex was therefore thoroughly racialized, as the thematics of blood lent an historical weight to revitalizing a type of political power that was exercised through the devices of sexuality, captured in the development of eugenic thought and race-based notions of national and public health. In the hygienic sutikaghar can be traced a modernist transition from the “symbolics of blood” to an “analytics of sex,” – from law, death, transgression, sovereignty to norm, life, knowledge, discipline and regulations – underpinned, as it were, by the politics of race.93 In the management of reproduction, the colonial project of cure coalesced with a middle-class project of reform and self-government. What were the implications of this for sanitary citizenship? In a colonial situation, we have noted, the status of women was a mark of civilizational development, or a diagnostic device to gauge the self-governing abilities of Indians. Just as the sutikaghar (like the purdah) was represented as a cover over the worst of Indian pathologies in colonial discourse, it was the place of the birth of modernity in a bhadralok discourse on sanitary citizenship and hygienic selfhood.94 This birth required the expulsion of reviled elements and qualities within native culture, and the exclusion of others who had failed to convert to the norms of sanitation. Let us return here to Khitindranath Thakur, our interpreter of the urban text of Calcutta. In a book on and for “Aryan women,” Thakur repeated key elements of the all too familiar Orientalist triptych of Indian history: Aryan woman had enjoyed many freedoms in the past, the scriptures did not encourage early marriages, the system of purdah had been a “Muhammadan introduction.”95 A review at the end of the monograph evoked the sanitary metaphor, suggesting that the author was primarily interested in the question: “what does Indian society demand if it is to be kept healthy?” The answer: a hygienic life for upper-class Hindu women and the rejection of the influence of various others – Muslims, lower classes, older women, and primitives. By the second half of the century, the class basis of sanitary citizenship was becoming clearer, with the invitation to the bhadramahila, to govern their own selves, albeit within limits set by the liberal and/or Hindu nation. The “modern woman” came into being with the marginalization of traditional and popular knowledge, women’s expertise and the lower classes and castes;96 the reviled


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dhai (midwife) came to be seen as an embodiment for all that was to be abjected in the creation of the Bengali modern.97 These common themes in discussions on the home, the critique of the midwife, and the self-regulation of motherhood were brought together in works such as Gunga Prasad Mukhopadhyaya’s Matrisiksha, a treatise on the management of motherhood during parturition and of childhood in the early years, which was “lovingly given over to the hands of the educated women of Bengal.”98 While gynecological tracts in Bengali had circulated since the 1870s,99 most of these had been intended for an expert readership; Matrisiksha was addressed to the modern, self-managing bhadramahila. The book was an important one in this genre and was extensively reviewed in the Bamabodhini Patrika, the leading journal for Brahmo women. The author recapitulated the rapid progress made in women’s education, gently chided the women of Calcutta for spending their leisure time reading for pleasure, and offered to them, instead, his useful book on the management of maternal health during pregnancy and in the lying in room and also that of the child until “boyhood.” The modern bhadramahila was defined in opposition to the figure and the regime of the traditional midwife, who was represented as harmful and filthy. Even in situations where a dhai’s presence was felt to be necessary, she was to remain in the status of a paid assistant, her every move monitored by the housewife. The midwife was shorn of her traditional expertise, she was to be kept in the bhadra home during the course of her service, fed properly, her activity constantly overseen and governed by the new hygienic regime. In much the same way as the sanitary technologies of the new municipal regime reinvented the caste hierarchy in a bourgeois division of labor, the dhai was becoming the ayah in this prose of sanitary citizenship. The three chief objects delineated in Matrisiksha were to remove the “proverbial ignorance of our women,” to disseminate the general laws of hygiene during confinement and the management of infants, and to prevent women from “swallowing the ill advised though well meant injunctions and positively injurious counsels of those ignorant and self-sufficient matrons against whose dictums even the best informed husband is not able to raise his voice.” The dhai thus put in her place, the bhadramahila must turn to the regime of proper experts. Mukhopadhyaya repeated a critique of the sutikaghar – the lack of ventilation, the filthiness of the midwives in attendance, and the primitive pose of squatting on the madur (straw mat). He prescribed, instead, a well-ventilated room, a family doctor and a comfortable bed in which the mother could hold onto sheets as she cried out in the throes of labor. Each of the sections on daily hygiene began with a dismissal of traditional knowledge and beliefs associated with pregnancy and childrearing. The dhai’s proverbial wisdom that a pregnant woman eats for two, was dismissed as an invitation to digestive disorder. Dismissing the common way of bathing by pouring water over the head with a ghara as unhygienic, and bathing in the running water of rivers or the sea as dangerous in later stages of pregnancy, Mukhopadhyaya recommended the English bath, the marjan snana, which involved sitting in a gamla (tub) with some water while rubbing the body with a sponge or cloth.100 Commenting on the flimsy sari traditionally worn by Bengali women, the author recommended the use of stockings to keep warm, especially


Sensing modernity 147 during pregnancy.101 Besides this odd recommendation of stockings, he included more common advice on gentle exercise, walks through ventilated places, avoiding any mental excitement that could traumatize the unborn child, and instructions for assistants present during the process of childbirth. Finally, the author proclaimed the necessity of expert advice, in the form of a family doctor, even for uncomplicated pregnancies.102 The second part of Matrisiksha dealt with the “management” of infants and children during various stages of life, dispensing advice on clothing, diet, dentition, exercise, sleep, vaccination and hints on childhood education. In this way, the problem of “children” – their numbers at birth and the relation of birth to mortality – was joined by the problem of “childhood” – the correct management of this age of life.103 Each bodily function of the newborn infant was to be carefully managed in the light of medical advice. The section on the care of the infant included detailed prescriptions on bathing, clothing and bodily waste; for the care of adolescents, the good doctor dispensed additional advice on exercise and work, education, morals, and finally, balyabibaha (child marriage). In other words, the care of the child from its birth to its marriage was to be overseen by the hygienic mother, who was responsible for the nurture of (future) sanitary citizens. The corpus of works on the medicalization of childbirth and childcare, such as this one, may even be credited with the invention of childhood (although that would be too complex a topic to take on here), but it is safe to conclude that tracts such as Matrisiksha formed part of an entire corpus aimed at the care of the self, the cultivation of sanitary citizens, and the management of racial futures.104 At the core of this lay the disciplining of everyday bhadra life – defined by reading and leisure, a prolonged childhood, education and exercise, and other performances of hygienic virtue. In this prose of sanitary citizenship, racial and caste differences were preserved, reiterated and rearticulated as class by an urban, modern, upper class with their English baths, stockings and daily constitutionals. In other words the sutikaghar was not just a site of contest between the colonial state and the nation-inmaking, it was a crucial site for the elaboration of a sanitary selfhood and citizenship for the bhadralok. The sutikaghar mediated definitions of self and other, private and public, primitive and modern, within bhadra society. The hectic discussions about the sutikaghar also shed light on the extended meanings of public health in the late nineteenth century, and the dynamic interaction of race, class and gender in the definition of sanitary citizenship and the Bengali modern. The emerging discourse on sanitary citizenship had a significant bearing on one of the most heated contests between the “nation” and the “colonial state” which erupted in Bengal in the 1890s over the Age of Consent legislation. While the controversy has most often been interpreted as a reactionary response to “protect” the home and the woman from the speculum of colonial power/knowledge, the controversy confirms the maturation of a modern discourse on sex in colonial Bengal. In History of Sexuality, Foucault identifies four key lines of attack in the technology of sex that combined the objectives of disciplining the body and regulating the population. One of these “lines of attack,” the hysterization of women, involved a thorough medicalization of their body and their sex, in the name of the responsibility


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they owed to the health of their children, the strength of the family as an institution, and the society at large; another, the sexualization of children, was accomplished in the form of a campaign for the health of the race, wherein precocious sexuality was presented as a menace not just to the future health of adults, but the future of the entire society and species.105 These thoroughly modern themes of the sexuality of children, the degeneration of the race, and the body of the woman as the bearer of the code of race and culture, overwhelmed discussions on child marriage in Bengal in the last decade of the nineteenth century. In a prominent section on child marriage in Matrisiksha, for instance, Mukhopadhyaya drew on the voluminous ethnological and gynecological literature produced on tropical women’s bodies through the century, to conclude that both climatic influences such as heat, and cultural factors such as exposure to dirty talk, could induce early puberty in women. Despite this tendency to a precocious sexuality amongst Bengali women, he emphasized, the practice of child marriage must be prevented for the body was not fully mature before 19 or 20 years of age, even in hot climates.106 While the question of the physical health (and moral well being) of the individuals was raised, the author proclaimed that the real harm was to “public health” and the future of the race: “the progeny borne of such unions are weak, and the children of these children are weaker still … until, in a few generations, the country would be reduced to the state to which Bengal was already reduced.”107 The discussions on child marriage and the age of consent hold a further key to understanding the development of a modern discourse on sex, selfhood and the sanitary “public” in Calcutta. These discussions spliced through the tensions within a steadily expanding urban community, and came to focus on the “state to which Bengal was already reduced.” In a burgeoning literature on sex in the late nineteenth century, this “reduced state” was captured in the deeply sexualized and (im)potent image of the hapless masturbator.


Part IV

Sex and public


7

Degenerate nation


Sex, public and a government of self

Imbedded in bodies, becoming deeply characteristic of individuals, the oddities of sex relied on a technology of health and pathology. And conversely, since sexuality was a medical and medicalizable object, one had to try and detect it – as a lesion, dysfunction, or a symptom – in the depths of the organism, or on the surface of the skin, or among all the signs of behavior. –Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, 19901 The Museum of the Calcutta Medical College contains a preparation … displaying the uterus, vagina, and greater portion of the external parts of generation of a young Mahomedan female, showing laceration of the perineum, and a considerable portion of the vaginal sheath, the effects of violence done to the parts on the first act of copulation, by which a violent hæmorrhage, to the destruction of the child (barely twelve years old) was occasioned … But as a judicial inquiry elicited no facts or circumstances tending to show that any unlawful means had been made use by the husband to effect his purpose … this might be considered a case of extreme preternatural weakness or laxity of the genital system of the female, and of very rare occurrence, for the common practice of Eastern nations in forcing sexual intercourse upon children … would not appear to be attended with similar disastrous results. –Norman Chevers, Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for Bengal, 18562

You might recall from the Introduction a letter sent in 1885 by a hapless masturbator to the Chikitsa Sammilani, a medical journal published in Bengali from Calcutta. The writer of the letter remained unnamed, as was often the case with such confessional letters sent off in the quest for sound advice from distant and qualified experts. The angst-ridden writer of the letter related how he had been tempted into the sin of masturbation through bad company. While he had kicked the habit after joining the proverbial “English school,” where he had been carefully instructed of its bad effects and subsequently cured of the disorder, he was still paying for his sins. Wet dreams haunted him and sapped his strength; he was all but reduced to a skeleton. He felt faint when he tried to solve difficult problems. His body and visage had turned bloodless and weak. His eyes were blank. His penis had become twisted and reduced in size. He felt as though his entire substance had become depleted. He had no appetite. He was no longer brave. The editor used this letter to


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understand the pathology of the nation as a whole: the masturbator was the symptom of a degenerate, enfeebled, effeminate nation. The journal received hundreds of such letters each month, the editor insisted, which suggested to him that masturbation, and other forms of sexual pathology, were not diseases that afflicted individuals, but plagued the entire community and the race.3 Sex, in other words, emerged as a medical and medicalizable object: located in a hemorrhage on a child’s body or in the masturbator’s bloodless visage. The colonial doctor diagnosed the morbid specimen as a sign of widespread Eastern perversion; the depleted Bengali’s self-diagnosis revealed the symptoms of national degeneration. Modern sex had arrived in Calcutta; the management of populations, the disciplining of bodies, the regulation of the self, ideas about public and private, anxieties about racial histories, were mediated through the analytics of sex. Articles on sex and pathology proliferated in the last decade of the nineteenth century in Bengal, particularly in the wake of a scandal that shocked the nation and the empire in 1889 and confirmed Bengali pathology: a child wife raped to death on the conjugal bed. In 1892, the problem of masturbation and the tragedy of child marriage were juxtaposed in a dramatically titled series Purush Shatru: Stri (Man’s Enemy: Woman) published in a reputable Bengali medical journal. The twinning of masturbation, framed as a disorder for depleting masculine strength, and child marriage, denounced as a social pathology that hurt fragile female bodies, may appear anomalous, just as the image of woman as enemy, appearing in the immediate aftermath of countrywide and global discussions on the woman as a victim of abuse in marriage, is puzzling. The proliferation of the disciplines and the linking of intimate life to the health of the population by the mechanics of biopower were underpinned by the politics of race in the colony; it is via the mechanisms of racialized medicine that marriage and masturbation came to be twinned as key symptoms of Indian pathology.4 The idea of degeneration, “involving at once a scenario of racial decline and an explanation of otherness”5 was particularly important in these discussions. The full force of the techniques of biopower, and the power of pathology became apparent in the controversy generated in the wake of the Age of Consent Bill of 1891 that raised the age of “consensual” sex to 12 for girls, within and outside marriage. Reformers seized upon the disciplines of the body, rendering the archaic problem of “precocious” sexuality into a pathology of modernity, while depicting the woman as the victim and the agent of degeneration. This chapter returns to the discussion on pathology and biopower which I have traced in the deployment of an ethno-logic of medicine, the rearticulation of a racialized selfhood, and the discussions on sanitary citizenship in the previous sections of the book. The colonial state, and its native interlocutors participated in the public discussions of sex that homed in on the regulation of custom, hygiene, reproductive practice and family as crucial to national strength, to the health of populations, to racial futures and to the hygienic self. The juxtaposition of early marriage and masturbation as symbols of native pathology, moral and physical, recapitulates the early century ethno-logic of medicine that naturalized empire and


Degenerate nation 153 patriarchy in the age of liberalism. While the idea of pathology justified empire as a mission to cure colonial pathologies, native experts welded these discourses to their own political agenda, challenging the authority of an alien government over native bodies. The medicalization of sex induced urgent discussions on self and subjectivity; these discussions, we will see, had an uneven and paradoxical bearing on the creation of woman as biological and legal subject. The recalibration of an archaic misogyny through the modern disciplines bears witness to the multiple axes on which the power of pathology turned. At the end of the nineteenth century, the native woman emerged as the ultimate victim – the “child wife,” and the precocious seductress: “man’s enemy,” and was firmly relegated to patriarchal control. Paradoxically, this confinement was realized in the course of discussions on her “consent” to sexual engagement.

A science of woman and the administration of difference To understand the place of “woman” in the burgeoning nation, we must travel back in time. In the course of the nineteenth century, just as medicine was forging everstronger links with science in a quest to discover nature’s laws, liberal politics too was evoking nature as crucial to governance, for government was to be based on an understanding of these laws. In this attempt to rationalize government and naturalize social convention, the denial of liberal principles to women and other races had been given a natural basis, largely through sciences of the body such as anatomy, ethnology, gynecology, and medicine. As medicine was perceived as “the only excuse for empire,”6 the liberal empire was increasingly formulated as a mission to cure colonial pathology, physical and moral. Medicine’s intimate relation with the diagnosis and administration of difference in the colonies is captured, as already noted, in the powerful image of the effeminate Bengali, a vision petrified into stereotype by Thomas Babington Macaulay. It would appear that Macaulay had been drawing on and consolidating a long-standing discussion about the influence of climates on the physical, moral and social constitution of humans. If the key to unlocking man’s nature lay in a study of his mind (which explained the predominance of male skulls in the diagnosis of “national character” by the phrenologists), the woman’s nature lay in her sexual and reproductive traits, and race theorists spent years measuring sexual (and racial) traits as captured in the lips, hair, hips and the size and shape of breasts and clitorises, and various imagined degrees of sexual desire expressed by the different races.7 The “nature of woman” came to be inscribed with multiple layers of political and ethnological significance; this had a peculiar bearing of the woman question in the latter half of the nineteenth century. When John Roberton, a surgeon from Manchester, published a book on the physiology and pathology of women in 1851, in a location far-removed from Calcutta or any other colonial outpost, he referred at length to the “comparative periodicity” of women in various parts of the British empire.8 Roberton argued that women’s menstrual cycles in different parts of the globe could give an indication of racial difference, and thus help “rationalize” the laws put in place by the British Empire to


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govern them and to reform “some of the most debasing peculiarities that deform the face of the Pagan world.” On the surface, the statistics seemed to confirm the age-old belief that warm climates tended to “ripen” female bodies prematurely. Roberton suggested, instead, that the natural body of a woman was in fact a cultural product, acted upon by the customs of a people, which he presented as a somewhat awkward list that included, among other things, men refusing to eat with women, polygamy, early marriages, precocity, the treatment of widows, overtoil and lack of education.9 He concluded that it was not climate, as such, but cultural practice that crafted the woman’s body: early marriage had been the norm in India for thousands of years, those who matured earlier were preferred as wives, and thus, early maturity had become an inherited trait over time. Confirming that race difference was the cumulative effect of these cultural practices, rather than that of natural influences, Roberton underscored a liberal racialist optimism about reform: The difference between the European and the Hindu … must be sought in race, for if the early menstruation of tropical women was found to be a natural fact, then their inferiority is determined; and it will be in vain, by means of the missionary, of education, or of enlightened legislation, to attempt the reversal of laws based on physiological difference.10 It is significant that Roberton’s discussion of comparative menarche seemed to be prescient of John Stuart Mill’s 1869 The Subjection of Women, which he coauthored with his wife. In a work that has been viewed as challenging the patriarchal foundations of Victorian society,”11 Mill asserted that “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing – the result of forced oppression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.”12 By the time John Stuart Mill wrote his book, a discussion of the nature and social position of women in India was, by definition, a not so implicit critique of India as an inferior civilization. The circulation of his father’s book The History of British India (1817) would have ensured that it was almost impossible to separate a discussion about the position of women in Indian society from one about the position of India in a scale of civilizations.13 Liberalism, we have seen, had its own way of managing its encounter with the unfamiliar – the argument for liberty in Britain came together with a rationale for undemocratic, unrepresentative structures in the colonies.14 In this scenario, the issue of the subjection of native women by what was perceived to be an archaic patriarchal structure became a rationale for denying the uncivil Indians a right to self-government, and a call to the superior colonizing race to take on the task of liberating women of their own race, as well as those of the colonized races.15 By the mid-nineteenth century, then, conjugal and sexual practices were widely accepted as ethnological indicators, and physiological discussions regarding the woman’s body came to cohere with the liberal view of the female body as a symptom of culture. This view is well rehearsed in a title that evokes the multiple meanings of empire as pathology: Allan Webb’s Pathologica Indica published in 1848.


Degenerate nation 155 As the curator of the Museum of the Calcutta Medical College, Webb had presided over what he described as the “central depot for pathological contributions from all parts of the Indian Empire.”16 He personally oversaw an exhibition of the perverse sexuality of the native in the form of morbid specimen. In his theorization about and cataloging of Indian pathologies, the curator located the various morbid specimens in their cultural context; not surprisingly, the greatest horror was provoked by the morbid state of the sexual and reproductive organs of native women, and the cultural pathologies that these lesions represented. The lacerated perineum, aborted fetuses, deformed uterus, were interpreted as the symptoms of the most intimate of Indian pathologies, and located in their cultural context. Webb’s section on “pathologies of generation” opened with scenes of sexual excess – the veneration of the lingam, or “the worship of the power of generation under the gross representation of the male and female organs.” Connecting the morbid signs on the organs of generation with religious pathology, he pronounced such vulgar worship “fatal to that only safeguard of chastity: purity of mind” and the cause of many of the most serious lesions on the female generative organs. Offering further insight into the woman’s body as culture embodied, Webb concluded that Indian women did not menstruate earlier than twelve years unless “unnaturally forced” by mechanical or mental stimulation.17 Like Roberton, he concluded that the female body was molded by culture, not climate, so there was no “natural” excuse for the sexual excesses of the tropics, and no obstacle to the treatment of moral deficiencies. The same formula explained the evidence on abortion, which he traced to the practice of Kulinism.18 In an elaborate theory, he explained how the polygamous, aging, Kulin Brahmin groom left behind several attractive young widows upon his death. These widows were lured into illegitimate sexual liaisons, and it was their desperate attempts to get rid of the pregnancies that explained why the Hindus, “more than any other race,” indulged in feticide. Since these were cultural phenomena without a natural, biological or climatic basis, reform was a real possibility. This was the liberal racialist discourse on puberty, which at once bolstered imperial confidence in the reform of native women’s bodies, and helped assuage imperial anxieties about white (women’s) degeneration in colonial (dis) locations.

Degeneration: An imperial pathology Degeneration, as we have seen, was crucial to explanations of racial variation in ethnological discourse, and a source of fear in colonial medical discourse. It has also has been described as “a European disorder.” In a rich account of the comparative visions of degeneration in France, Italy and England, Daniel Pick has emphasized the fluidity of the concept of degeneration, a product of inflated anxieties that needs to be grasped “as part of a productive process of language, always in excess of the theory or concept into which it was petrified.”19 While evolutionary theory and racial anthropology derived from an insistence on the racial superiority of the world’s colonizers over the colonized, these ideas also reflected on European society. It was the very fluidity of the concept of degeneration around a core of more


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concrete themes that made the idea powerful, mobile and multi-functional. By the late nineteenth century, the idea of degeneration was getting reconfigured from a primarily religious, philosophical or ethical concept, to a problem of biology, medicine and physical anthropology, but it retained all of these elements. Theories of degeneration also had a specific relation to modernity, which had much to do with the fear that an exaggerated modernity could actually produce its very opposite: a descent into primitiveness. While the European disorder was concerned with the identification of criminal types and a dystopian future, the degenerate Indian was a constant reminder that the depletion of the European in India was a clear and present danger. In the context of empire, degeneration offered an explanation for the otherness of exotics, even as it presented a scenario of racial decline for the European.20 Confronting this imperial anxiety in A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for Bengal and the North-Western Provinces, the founding text of legal medicine for India, Norman Chevers did not chart degenerate “criminal types” to help weed out the good Indians from the bad; instead, he opened with a blanket description of the “criminal characteristics of the people of India,” culled from cases brought before the Sudr Nizamat Adawlut over several decades. It is only by thoroughly “knowing the people,” stressed the writer, “that their crimes could be understood.21 Significantly, Chever’s quest to “know the people” led him straight to Macaulay’s ethno-logical mantra, which he used to differentiate between two opposing racial types in India, and to locate the Bengali at the bottom of the hierarchy of degenerating Indians:22 The physical organization of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapor bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. Courage, independence, veracity, are qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally unfavorable. His mind bears a singular analogy to his body … what the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to the woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the lower Ganges.23 Just as Roberton and Webb had done before him, Chevers used the idiom of medicine to turn questions of morality and justice into questions of biology and culture. Arguing that given native duplicity, an expert manipulation of physical evidence ought to overrule accounts of witnesses, Chevers favored the evidence of the body itself laid bare, as he turned to sexual crimes inscribed on the bodies of native women. Evidence of prostitution and feticide were traced to widowhood caused by early or polygamous marriages. Reporting that 10,000 children were murdered in the province of Bengal alone every month, he concluded that feticide and female infanticide were “the chief and most characteristic crime of six-sevenths of the inhabitants of British India.” Significantly, all these pathological conditions, including cases of “fatal injuries inflicted on the first act of connexion,”24 were


Degenerate nation 157 attributed to the normal state of Hindu society, and defined as resulting from a blind obedience to religious precept. One of the cases he mentioned was that of a Hindu man, married to a girl for four years who had not yet attained puberty, who had “forced himself upon her,” and in the process, killed her. To hide the evidence, he took her body to the cowshed, tied a rope around her neck, and suspended the body to the roof, with the hope of making it appear that she had committed suicide.25 Such behavior testified to the difficulty of recognizing crime in India, and also confirmed that the Bengali was a degenerate. The inscription of child marriage in the medico-moral discourse on degeneration fit in well with the objects of liberal medicine vis-à-vis women’s bodies: the identification of Indian pathologies in these bodies, and a program for the cure of the deformities of native social structures that caused them.26 Native experts embraced the language of medicine, focusing on the woman as victim and agent of degeneration, to demand or to resist imperial cures for their pathologies, and in doing so, partially lost sight of the target of such reform – the native woman. This became clear in discussions on a “physiological system of marriage” in the 1860s and 1870s.

Physiological marriage: A rule of experts and the laws of nature An expert discourse on degeneration played a major role in the agitation against child marriage that gained momentum through the 1860s and 1870s, and ultimately helped push the Native Marriage Act of 1872. In an early native engagement with the new disciplines of the body, Keshub Chunder Sen, the Brahmo leader at the head of the Indian Reform Association, insisted that the question of child marriage, that potent sign of Indian otherness, was not primarily religious, but physiological, and its “religious bearings must be determined by the verdict of physiology.” Sen thus turned to doctors practicing in Bengal, requesting their opinion and observations on the effect of the climate and other influences on tropical bodies, to determine the “earliest marriageable age consistent with the well-being of mother, child and society.”27 In the course of the expert discussion, the landscape on which the discussions on child marriage were carried out had been transformed from 1835, when a few Bengali women of Chinsura had written to the Samachar Darpan: Oh, father and brother: why should you deprive us of the scope of education which the women of other countries avail? … Why are we transferred like cattle at the tender age of 4, 5, 10 and 12 to unknown men who have no education, wealth or beauty? Why do you treat us so cruelly?”28 Ironically perhaps, women’s voices would become less important in the light of medical expertise. The discussion generated by Keshub Chunder Sen is also an early sign of the attachment of social and political reform to physiological understanding, rather than to an abstract notion of cruelty and justice. A respondent to Sen’s letter confirmed that any political remedy for the pathology of child marriage


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was firmly entrenched in a sound physiological understanding of the body, adding that “Unfortunately, it is almost as difficult as it is important, inasmuch as a consideration of it brings us face to face with deep problems in physiology and political economy.”29 Tackling the problem of child marriage in a way that attached problems of political economy to that of physiology, and translated questions of justice and society into queries about biology and nature, Sen condemned the custom of premature marriage as “injurious to the moral, social and physical interests of the people, and ... one of the main obstacles in the way of their advancement.” The editor of the Calcutta Journal of Medicine hailed Sen’s turn to science rather than scripture, suggesting that “medical men have nothing to do with sects or sectarianism, we gave our opinion on this momentous subject on true physiological grounds.”30 These physiological grounds, alas, confirmed a theory of native difference; but just like Roberton, these doctors reiterated that the statistics did not represent a “natural” age of menstruation, and pointed to the existence of “forced puberty” by premature intercourse or by the “employment of unnatural means” by eager female elders in oversexed Bengali households, and the subsequent hereditary transmission of early puberty over time.31 The native woman, they confirmed, had deviated from the cycle of normal periodicity through the action of pathological customs upon the body. Through legislative action in favor of late marriages, “after a series of generations, menstruation would come on habitually at a later and later period and much more closely approach a western standard.”32 Early puberty and child marriage, mutually enforcing ethnological indicators, were reformulated as a sign of degeneration from a biological norm, or a western standard. All the ingredients of the theory of degeneration were falling into place, including the mutual interactions of biology and culture, and their influence in transforming the racial and social body. One of the responses to Sen’s letter emphasized that early marriage was “as mentally degrading as … physiologically objectionable,” and “involves a degree of depravity.”33 The question of public health and racial futures was soon added to this mix of physiological depletion and moral depravity, on the grounds that early marriage “panders to passion and sensuality, violates the requirements of nature, lowers the standard of public health ... and allows a present race to degenerate to its own disadvantage, and to the detriment of future generations.”34 The idea of degeneration was promptly co-opted by the native elite; in an article published in support of Sen’s efforts by Mahendralal Sarkar, the invocation of the theory of degeneration eclipsed appeals to Hindu religious or legal authorities. The evil that the reformers ought to treat was not, according to him, the culture of child marriage, but the physiological fact of early pubescence which confirmed the fact of degeneration.35 Emphasizing that early marriage was a cause, and not a result of early puberty, Sarkar made light of the argument put forth by those who resisted reform by suggesting that it would lead to an increase in sexual immorality. Physiologically, he argued, the “sexual instinct … is not immediately consequent upon the development of the physical signs of puberty” but may be delayed by moral training and education. Moreover, he argued, those against the reform of the pathological system were putting the future of the race at risk. Given that

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the object of nature, in the union of the sexes is, no doubt, the production of offspring for the perpetuation of the species … whatever interferes … with the production of healthy offspring must be looked upon as frustrating the intention of nature. Child marriage, not unlike solitary sex, went against nature’s laws in violating the sole justification for sexual union – the reproduction of a healthy race. To counter the “orthodox” Hindu insistence on early marriage as a guarantee for a healthier racial future, Sarkar invoked the powerful specter of degeneration and a Darwinian terminology: We know the disastrous effects that custom has produced in the shape of deterioration of race … The generations that are being born under the present system of things in the eye of modern science, and even of our own ancient Ayurveda are no better than abortions and premature births. What can be expected of such human beings, ushered into the world under such unfavorable circumstances? How can they be expected to compete in the hard struggle for existence, not to say, for intellectual and moral superiority? … If our orthodox community really have at heart the extinction of the Hindu race, they could not have invented a surer way of accomplishing its object than what they have done in following the custom of child marriages. But if they wish that the once glorious Hindu race should reassert its place in the family of nations, should contribute to the progress and well being of the whole human race, then they ought to see by light of science that the custom of early marriage is suicidal to the extreme.36 Sarkar’s position combined an invocation of Ayurvedic authority, colonialist history and in this case, hereditarianism, a strategy that was quite prominent in the Aryan revivalism of the late nineteenth-century in India. The extreme reliance on physiological discussions paved the way for early marriage to be firmly attached to the question of racial degeneration. In the end, the appeals to physiological sense, instead of religious faith, did not help forestall a reactionary Hindu backlash; the Bill that was finally introduced in the Legislative Council in 1872 was radical in its scope but very limited in its implementation.37 But the circulation of ideas about “un-physiological” customs and degeneration marked the beginnings of a transition to modernity and its tactics of bodily discipline: an appeal to physiology emphasized the union of the sexes as a corporeal issue rather than a matter of spiritual union or sacred duty, and deferred to the rule of experts, rather than to religion, morality, culture or custom. Subsequent discussions on sex were largely overdetermined by anxieties of race, and were marked by ambivalence towards women as victims and agents of degeneration. A “physiological system of marriage” had less to do with women’s desires or demands, than it had to do with their bodies. As we have seen in the ethnological underpinnings of colonial medical literature, women’s bodies were interpreted as bearers of the code of culture and race. At the same time, in signifying a body that


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could be represented, diagnosed, monitored and administered, modern medicine also established the object reality of the physical body, as a material order that preexisted the constitution of the social.38 In the native expert’s plea for an embodied, physiological truth, it is possible to discern the beginnings of a new regime for the management and self-regulation of such bodies. Modern disciplines of the body subjected Indians to new forms of surveillance and control in the nineteenth century; these were seized as a form of self-expression and tactics of self-improvement by the native male elite in the latter half of the century. Sex was a critical site for this transition of the disciplinary regimes of colonial power/knowledge into the selfadministration of a native public. The manner in which a vernacular discourse on sex and the body formulated in the shadow of race, pathology and degeneration, in turn translated and reiterated the gender hierarchy for modern times was violently revealed in a scandal of a child wife raped to death by her husband in 1889.

An age of consent? Sex, age and subjectivity in the 1890s consent controversy In September, 1889, a huge outcry rocked the Indian public when Phulmoni Dasi, 11, died of “injuries inflicted on her on her wedding night” by her husband Hari Mohan Maiti, 37. Evoking the medicalized idiom in which her death was discussed, the case was called the “exciting cause” for the passage of the Age of Consent Act of 1891 in Bengal.39 Phulmoni’s death came up repeatedly in discussions in the Legislative Council; in newspapers in British India and Britain; in letters to the queen; in nationalist, social reformist and orthodox Hindu organizations across the country; in the national congresses, in protest meetings and melas organized by emergent leaders of the community; and in medical memos passed between doctors, lawyers and administrators. The first public scenes unfolded in the Calcutta Sessions Court on July 6, 1890, where Hari Maiti was committed for trial. The mother, Radhamonee, reconstructed the events of the fateful night: ‘During the night I was roused by the cries of my daughter, “father and mother” … When I came out of my room I said ‘What is the matter? What is the matter?’ I went to the door of my brother’s widow. Hari, the accused, came to the door … and from the place where I stood I could hear my daughter groaning. She was on the cot and saying “Ah! Ah!” very slowly. I called out to my brother’s widow. She came with a light. I saw my daughter lying on the cot weltering in blood. Her cloth, and the bed cloth and Hurry’s [sic] cloth were wet with blood, and there was blood on the floor. My mother came and said, “What have you done. You have killed the child.” Accused said nothing. He remained silent.’40 The two other women, the grandmother and the aunt of the dead girl confirmed this narrative of events. Their voices, preserved in the court records, seem to belie a historiographical consensus, more or less, on the silence of women in the colonial archive.


Degenerate nation 161 Things had certainly changed from the early nineteenth-century discussions of sati, when the woman was treated as a metonym for indigenous tradition, or became the ground upon which the battle over tradition was carried out.41 This metonymy complicated the relationship between personhood and community: women, as bearers of the code of culture, were squarely subjected to the control of “their” men. This changed in the late nineteenth century; Tanika Sarkar suggests that legal reforms such as the Age of Consent Act of 1891 produced immunities and entitlements, if not quite “rights” for women that helped challenge the location of women completely within communal and kinship ties.Sarkar asserts that what looks like dead-letter liberalism in the political and public arenas actually created the space for women to challenge an arbitrary power of the community which designated women as the inner essence of its identity and hence subject to the internal self-regulation of the community.42 This seems to be borne out by the fact that the discussions which followed Phulmoni’s death were not based only, or even primarily, on the interpretation of scriptures or the norms of the community, but on a secular appraisal of the body. At the same time, however, while the communal control of women indeed seemed to be loosening (three native women spoke out in court, while the accused, a man, remained silent in their presence), the new institutions and expert medical discourse constrained these women to a modern, hygienic “self-regulation” of the community and race, and allowed a limited conception of the woman as a person. Distinguishing between the two kinds of evidence presented in Phulmoni’s case, accounts of witnesses and medical facts, the presiding judge emphasized the superior value of the latter. What were these facts? Dr. Annoda Prasad Das had responded to the mother’s frantic request on the fateful night, and had arrived to find the girl dying. “She was pulseless. Her breathing was hurried, I examined her vagina externally, I found clots of blood hanging from the orifice. There was blood in the inner parts of the thighs and on the mattress on which she was lying,” he testified, confirming the mother’s narrative of events. The mother had also emphasized that the girl had not menstruated at the time, and in her community of Oriya Kayasths, intercourse was not permitted until menarche. When asked to confirm if the accused had indeed violated this communal norm, the doctor faltered, pointing to the conflicting signs of the presence of hair, developments of breasts and the vaginal passage. Pushed further, and away, from the particular details of Phulmoni’s case, he admitted that: “Two in ten, that is twenty percent of Hindu women, are mothers at twelve.” Dr Cobb, the Police Surgeon, who examined Phulmoni’s body immediately after her death also seemed to confirm the mother’s claims with a clinical recapitulation of horrifying bodily violence: She was between 11 and 12 ... The uterus and ovaries were underdeveloped and she had not menstruated … On examining the part, I observed a blood clot protruding from the vulva, but no laceration or other mark of injury on the outside … From what I saw, I think hemorrhage was the cause of death, from the tear of the vagina, which might be caused by a full grown man having connection with a girl.

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Upon cross-examination he appeared to become somewhat less certain of the facts, or perhaps confused as to which facts were important to the case:


The breasts of Phulmoni were beginning to be prominent; the beginning of prominence is not a sign of puberty; when they are more or less developed, it is. I am of the opinion that Phulmoni had had several previous acts of intercourse. In my opinion great force was not used. In the end, the doctor was asked if the accused could, in that case, have foreseen that a fatal rupture would be the result. The doctor faltered: “I can’t say. I examined the accused, his male organ appeared to me to be of natural size. I found no marks or abrasions upon it.”43 Medical experts were called upon to confirm Phulmoni’s age, whether or not she had attained puberty, whether it was indeed violent sexual intercourse that had caused her death, and if so, had Maiti known, given the commonsensical understanding of the native woman’s body (“twenty percent are mothers at twelve”) that intercourse would prove fatal, given he had managed not to kill her during previous sexual acts. All this suggests that the court had, indeed, succeeded in loosening the grip of the community on women: the women could testify against their own men in court, and the community’s rules on cohabitation were no longer inviolable. The mother insisted that Phulmoni had not been ready for garbhadhan – the rite of consummation – while the Justice Wilson deemed that such rules were irrelevant, that it was a matter to be determined by facts. He made much of the particular fact that the couple had slept together on previous occasions, without any evidence of bodily harm. He declared that as she had been 11 years old, Maiti could not be tried for rape but only for the lesser charge of committing a “harsh and negligent act.” While Maiti gave his name to a peculiar Indian pathology – death by intercourse between man and wife – and other cases of Hari Maitism came to light where the husbands of child wives had either been acquitted in courts, or awarded relatively minor sentences for “causing bodily harm,” the man walked with a light sentence. It is paradoxical, given the imperial mission to cure native pathologies, that Hari Maiti and child marriage were exonerated.44 Maiti had remained silent in court, but it was the women who were silenced by the sheer weight of medical interpretation, even as the rules of ritual context and community norms were being edged out by experts of the body in the new government of intimacy. The outrage expressed by the native community in Bengal after this much-publicized case silenced the orthodox opposition to the Bill long enough for the Law Member, Andrew Scoble, to revive a proposal that had been drawn up by Bombay reformer Dayaram Gidumal, to raise the age of consent from 10 to 12 years for Indian women. Questions about the future of the race were also revived, as a rethink on the correct age of consent was demanded “to deal with a matter which intimately concerns the health and well being of the female population of India, and which through women, affects the health, well being and vigor of all the communities concerned.”45 The evidence gathered by Keshub Chunder Sen in the 1860s was circulated in the proceedings of the Legislative Council, and mentioned in private


Degenerate nation 163 memorials such as the “Memorial of certain women of India to her gracious majesty Queen Victoria, empress of India,” which was denounced as a hoax by the opposition.46 As the reformers increasingly turned to medicalized interpretations of the body, to avoid a messy and impolitic interference into native culture, they found themselves on thin ground. The native woman’s body had been imbued with deeply cultural and racial meanings over the previous decades, which made such a separation impossible. Meanwhile, the discussion of woman as victim and agent of degeneration was continued by Surgeon Macleod, as he overwrote the pain of early cohabitation with concerns about the un-eugenic consequences of such union: The state of matters thus revealed implies consequences of a very harmful nature to the victims of the practice of immature sexual congress, to the welfare of the race, and to the tone and wellbeing of society in general … [M]ore physical injury and mortality are probably due to premature maternity than premature copulation … [E]arly maternity causes premature aging and accordingly the women of this country lose the bloom of youth and vigour of adult life long before they ought or would, if they were allowed to mature before becoming wives and mothers ... As regards the race, there can be equally little doubt that the marriage of children, often to aged males, tends to the physical deterioration of the human stock, and physical deterioration implies effeminacy, mental imperfection, and moral debility. The effect of premature covering and bearing is very well understood in stock breeding, and the more robust races of the world contract and consummate marriage after and not before maturity.47 This association of marriage and motherhood underlines the (proto) eugenic concerns that overwhelmed discussions on sex and conjugality, on the one hand, and signals a further role of expertise in the government of intimacy, on the other.48 The evocation of the “motherhood archetype,” to use Judy Whitehead’s term, suggests that biomedicine was beginning to define the terms of the debate through which the value of both invented traditions and invented modernities was being contested by the nationalist intelligentsia.49 In other words, the orthodox opposition which saw the Act as an attack on Hindu religion, on privacy, on the race and nation, was equally engaged with the language of medicine and racial difference, as it remolded each of these categories in light of the disciplines of the body. This was clear in the formulation of the greatest religious objection to the Act, that it interfered with the Hindu rite of garbhadhan, and in doing so attacked the very fabric of Hinduism. The garbhadhan, variously described as the rite of conception or the sacrament of impregnation, is the first of the fundamental life cycle rituals in Hindu life and involved the performance of certain chants and ceremonies as an invocation to the gods to prepare the womb for the conception of healthy offspring, and an invitation for a soul to enter the womb. According to the Manusmriti, generally accepted as the primary code for the management of Hindu life, and a prescription for retaining Hindu personhood, a husband is


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obliged to approach a wife for the performance of the garbhadhan between the fourth and sixteenth days after her monthly course. Its non-performance, the revivalist Hindu opposition insisted, had multiple consequences for the person, the family and the community: the father of the girl incurred the sin of feticide, the womb became polluted so that future sons born of the womb could not offer pinda or ritual offerings to ancestral spirits, and a woman who failed to perform it was fated to be a widow in many successive births. In explaining the fundamental importance of the rite to Hindu life, A. Sankariah, the president founder of the Hindu Sabha, insisted that any evidence from medical men was irrelevant to the question of garbhadhan, for medicine was not a legitimate paradigm for a discussion of Hindu ritual. What Europeans call child marriage, he asserted with some deft translation, was the “Hindu baptismal sacrament for girls to be trained in the general rules of caste, comprising ablutions, prayers, fasts, pollution, etc.”50 There were also particular religious duties, to seek the blessings of the rishis, devas and pitris – sages, spirits and ancestors – unknown to modern science, but who were the teachers and saviors of the Hindus. Such key ceremonies as the agnihotram (sacrifice by fire), sradha (worship of progenitors), yagnyam (worship by fire) and danam (giving of alms) could only be performed by males as principles. Marriage was crucial, as it allowed females to share in their merit by cooperation, as saha-dharma-charanam. In this view, the woman’s personhood as a Hindu was confirmed and sustained only in association with a husband. Drawing a distinction between the spiritual and the physical person of woman, he emphasized that the worldly notion of physical consummation was absent in the concept of saha-dharma-charanam. In his horrifying insistence that “it was a thousand times better for one out of a ten thousand girls to suffer from the hasty indiscretion of a husband, than for several girls to be defiled and outcasted by an invasion of their persons by strangers”51 he hinted at the two discrete notions of personhood at play, one focused on age and sex, another on soul and community. This also revealed the “choice” presented to the Hindu woman – your life, or, your life – the woman had the option of possible physical death in the performance of garbhadhan, or certain ritual death in its non-performance. The garbhadhan was deemed central not only to the perpetuation of the life of the community, but also to the spiritual life of the woman. While the reformers conceded the significance of the ceremony in principle, they argued that the new Act did not interfere with the performance of the rite, for a normal body was seldom ready for intercourse before 12. B. L. Gupta, Districts and Sessions Judge of Cuttack, argued that according to the Vedas, the ancient Hindu books of medicine, and the different codes of smriti there was no injunction to perform the garbhadhan ceremony before the age of 12, the scientifically established age of puberty. Gupta emphasized the peculiar degeneracy of the Bengalis amongst the Hindus, by suggesting that no essential or important principle of the Hindu religion was involved in the question, and the “pernicious custom” that prevailed only in certain parts of India, certainly had no sanction in religion. He added that it was no surprise, therefore, that “in Bengal where the degeneracy of the ancient Indian race is most marked, the opposition should be loudest.”52 He ascribed


Degenerate nation 165 this, first, to the inferiority of Bengali religious texts, and second, to the degeneracy of the race itself; he suggested that the age of consent of 12 posed a problem only amongst the sexually precocious Bengalis. At this time, much of the “religious” or “scriptural” discussion on the Age of Consent Bill was becoming steeped in the language of physiology and was mapped in terms of the biological criteria of sex and age: the Secretary of the Jalpaiguri Dharma Sabha (Religious Society of Jalpaiguri), while alluding to the ritual context of garbhadhan as the principal sanskar (rite) after marriage, rendered it in physiological terms, as marked by the ritu (menstrual cycle). Adding that the occurrence of ritu before a girl’s marriage is considered a great sin, he suggested ten years was the proper age of marriage.53 This was the position taken up by many of the orthodox critics of the Bill, who insisted that if “age of puberty” were to be substituted for “age of twelve” in the Age of Consent Bill, all interference with the Hindu religion would cease. Kabiraj Ganga Prasad Sen, a practitioner of indigenous medicine, explained why: the time of garbhadhan was determined by a “certain event” that could take place anytime between the eleventh and fourteenth years, and not a certain age. Continuing a discussion on the physiological basis of “childhood,” the authors of a pamphlet issued by the Bali Sadharini Sabha argued that the kanya of the scriptures was a girl under ten. The earlier law of 1868 that had fixed the age of consent at ten had not interfered with Hindu religion in the way that the new law did, for it was written in the shastras that a husband did not incur a sin in avoiding garbhadhan with a wife of two types: one who was not pushpita, literally, ripe, or, one who was still a kanya, under ten. The pamphlet also clarified that the word apushpita (unripe) implied the absence of catamenia, and not maturity in any other sense.54 It was perhaps with the intention of resolving this seeming lack of correspondence in two visions of the woman’s person and body, one based on chronological age and the other on the rhythm of the monthly cycle, that one Babu Bhudeb Mookerjee suggested that it would be easier to follow “the line traditionally adopted by Hindu and Mussulman legislators,” according to which sexual intercourse before menstruation, in each individual case, had been illegal. The ambiguities of reformist medicine became clear when J. H. Bernard listed his objections to this solution: it would be impossible to try cases based on whether the individual woman had attained puberty or not, as men could not have access to the information required to determine this, women of the family could not be trusted as witnesses, and the girl victims were too immature to provide any relevant information. Confirming that a woman could only ever be a passive witness in a discussion of her own body, even in these changing times, Bernard continued that it would be “impossible to know whether a girl had reached that condition or not; nothing but a post mortem could declare it for certain.” The girl could bear witness to her own situation only in death.55 The woman had the same non-option as she had in choosing between risking her physical health or her communal self in the old patriarchy defended by the president of the Hindu Sabha. In the compromised legal situation of late nineteenth-century Bengal, as Bernard admitted, “The law would … only be workable in cases where the girl died.”56

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Further indicating the anachronism of women’s rights in this scenario, consent, too, was given a purely biological definition by Dr Joubert: With undeveloped organs the amount of pain experienced in early connection … must be intense, and serious injuries must often be inflicted, sometimes proving fatal, as in the case of Phulmani Dasi. Amongst animals, “consent” is apparently necessary for fertile intercourse, as the immature female will not allow the access of the male if the approach produces pain instead of the reverse. In this lies a safeguard not allowed to the unfortunate human child wife.57 The figure of the “unfortunate human child wife” was, in fact, constructed as a natural category by a convergence of biological and political discourse, to the detriment of the development of rights. There was no easy justice for individual women or children here, the discussion on legal majority and biological maturity that followed the Age of Consent legislation indicates the coming into being of a certain notion of woman and child, plotted on a grid of sex and age, factors that could be determined objectively through mechanisms such as medical examinations, the registration of birth and sexology. Significantly, the languages of Hindu ritual, Ayurveda and liberal medicine were converging on the point of “physiological” truth as the basis of a society and polity based on natural laws, embodied and decipherable in the native woman’s body, even as they offered radically different ways of subjecting the woman’s body and person to patriarchal control or “protection.”58 The dubious language of protection was not limited to the colony; Philippa Levine has shown that global Age of Consent legislation is couched in the language of protectionism and aimed only at women, thus establishing political gender boundaries delimiting female rationality and marking men as natural citizens of the world. In this way, she continues, sovereignty as an expression of free will within an increasingly rights-based system of governance, implied by consent, was made masculine, by women’s apparent incapacity to choose or reject sexual advances without the help of the state. In the modern West, the idea of consent has centrally implied two linked sovereignties: that of the freely consenting individual whose personal sovereignty in turn legitimized a state sovereignty based on collective political assent.59 In India, Age of Consent legislation was focused almost exclusively on “child marriage.” This had multiple effects. First, the emphasis on the childhood of wives served to underline the ultimate degeneracy of the native man, a move that denied the native man, as well as the woman, the capacity of free will, and thus of access to a rights-based polity. Second, it robbed the woman of reasoned “consent” twice over – as woman and as child, for the child, just like the savage and the insane, was not deemed able to consent to matters concerning their person. As Himani Bannerji clarifies, the age of “consent” pertained not to the consent of the woman, but to a legal guardian’s right to alienate a woman’s body to a male user as husband or client. Highlighting the notions of pathology and physicality at play in the age of consent discussion, she has argued that this legislation went far beyond (while it stopped short of) its stated legal aim – the protection of women – and provided a set of norms and forms for society


Degenerate nation 167 to adhere to, and was intimately involved with the production of identities for native men and women;60 the figure of the “child wife” was crucial to this production. While the “consent” of the child wife was by definition an empty promise, which makes a discussion of rights untenable, if not anachronistic, the construction of the “child wife” through the Age of Consent legislation is extremely important to the processes of subjectification in the colony. This is further clarified by the biological and sexological significance of the “child wife.” In nineteenth-century ethnology and sexology, the “survival” of periodicity in the woman was taken as evidence of her primitiveness, for the menstrual period was seen as a remnant of the animal past of humankind without analogy in the male. By a theory of recapitulation in biology and society (the belief that the individual recapitulates the life of the species, and that the stages of a child’s development recapitulate the stages of human development) the child was rendered analogous to the savage. Discussing these aspects of nineteenth-century sexology, Lawrence Birken argues that ideas of precocity and prematurity best illustrate the paradoxical position of children as well as women in the late nineteenth-century sexual science, for these ideas of prematurity presuppose the existence of immaturity and incompleteness.61 In biology, the doctrine of asymmetrical differentiation provided the tools by which sexual science was able to draw an analogy between the woman, the child and the primitive; like the primitive and the child, the woman appeared less mature, or undifferentiated. The consent of the child wife, as an embodiment of this complex of woman-childprimitive, was not really in question; her consent was to be read off her body, as menarche, or the attainment of a certain chronological age. At the same time, an extension of the period of childhood in a species was seen as a sign of its ascent on the evolutionary ladder from less to more complex organisms in the “animal scale.” Analogously, in human societies, the absence of a period of childhood, and the (mis)treatment of children in certain cultures confirmed their low position in a “scale of civilizations.” Child sacrifice, infanticide and child abuse of all kinds therefore become indices of uncivilized behavior. In other words, the idea of “childhood” had multiple significations: the child was immature and undeveloped, had a limited legal personhood and therefore had to be protected. At the same time societies that failed to protect their children were “primitive” and tottering at the “very childhood” of civilization, and therefore in need of protection (and incapable of consenting to acts concerning their persons) themselves. The “child wife” confirmed the degeneracy of her race and nation twice, as the biological subject of precocious sexuality, and as the victimized object in need of special legal protection. A section of the Bengali public was quick to seize upon the contradiction of “consent” in the colony, and was equally deft at reformulating the sexological discourse on the precocity and pathology of women to modernize patriarchal discourse. Newspapers screamed that an alien government based on coercion, exercising dominance without hegemony, must not meddle with issues of conjugal sexuality. Those in support of the “British Indian Garbhadhan Act,” a Bengali memorialist announced, did not represent the feelings of the people of India, for they were not “priests, pundits, headmen and neighbors who are present at the


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sacrament of marriage and garbhadhan,” while the Viceroy was ignorant of “the first principles of Hindu religion, law and nationality.”62 Insisting that the sovereignty of the government had to be based on collective assent, and a representation of the collective will of individuals, the memorial clarified that the Hindus were not opposed to the regulation of marriage and sex as such. Referring to the Congress leader Romesh Chunder Dutt’s note of dissent presented to Andrew Scoble in the Legislative Assembly, in which he had argued that the council as constituted could not decide whether the Bill contradicted Hindu religious practice, the pamphlet clarified that if the Legislature were constituted on the basis of representation by an elective system, it could have interfered. If the people were allowed to make their own laws, they could of course, if they chose, interfere with any of their religious beliefs ... For an alien government to introduce social reform by legislative measures regardless of the wish of the majority of people is neither wise, nor just, nor humane.63 In this way, a section of English-educated Bengalis embraced the modern sciences of the body as self-regulating mechanisms, while questioning the power of an alien state over their bodies. Even while the references to woman, nation and race were conflated in these discussions, the woman did not merely remain the “ground” on which discussions over tradition were carried out, as was the case early in the century (brilliantly discussed by Lata Mani in her seminal work on sati).64 New ways of looking at the woman’s body forced a rethinking of the categories of nature and culture, tradition and modernity. The “silencing” of the women in court in Phulmoni’s case, at a time when women were already being trained as doctors, taking their husbands to court, participating in global feminist networks, was different from the “absence” of women in the discussions on sati early in the century. The child wives (and their female family members) at times testified to their situation and petitioned the state, but in Bengal in particular, the judge, the state, the native man, were interested in other issues – the pathology of the race or the native’s ability to govern the self.65 Against the background of an ethnological discourse on effeminacy, subsequently embraced in the “self-image of effeteness” by the native man,66 developed a sociological and popular discourse on the woman as a subject of sexual precocity, as much as an object in need of protection. So much so that child marriage was presented as an antidote to the women’s precocious and pathological sexuality in a tract against the Bill, authored by “A Woman,” and presented as a dialogue between two women. One of the characters, Sureshbhamini, lent her voice to confirm the medicalized “hystericization” of women, declaring in an important moment in the text that: We are women, and so we can well know, hear, and understand about women’s nature and wants. Girls who are hale and hearty ordinarily start menstruating at ten or eleven, and in this country most girls reach puberty at that age. There is no physical harm if a woman cohabits with her husband after menstruation.



Rather, it is likely to be harmful if she does not do so. After beginning menstruation, if … she is not fortunate enough to cohabit with him, we can see that she becomes visibly worn-out and emaciated … [N]ot cohabiting with husband at the appropriate time is among the causes of hysteria.”67 Likewise, rationalizing child marriage as an antidote to feminine pathology, a native insisted that after a certain age “females desire to have intercourse with males, otherwise there is likelihood of unnatural or false conception … [It] is not only necessary on religious grounds, but for the preservation of health of girls.”68 If the nature of women was an eminently artificial thing and the product of culture, as liberal racialism suggested, the “new” cultural influences were up for scrutiny as much as the “archaic” ones. In his 1897 book Stri-Siksha (Education of women), Kamakhya Charan Bandopadhyaya repeated the commonsense of much of Victorian gynecology to condemn modern education for women as fundamentally disruptive of the natural laws governing the sexes: men, with their larger brain size of 49.5 ounces, as opposed to the 44 ounces of brain in women, were more intelligent and intellectual, while the woman’s intellectual inferiority was compensated for by the qualities of kindness, compassion, affection: daya, maya, bhalobasa.69 Men were intended for intellectual activity and hard labor in the world; women were to give birth, care for infants, and work within the home. In this schema, education for women was a subversion of nature’s laws, and a threat to woman’s biological destiny. This neat postulation of nature’s laws had naturalized the continued disenfranchisement of women and sealed their destiny as virtuous companions and strong mothers in Victorian Britain; these laws were invoked also to defend the segregation of women: the woman was in possession of greater and uncontrolled sexual passion than man, and as a sexual threat to him, had to be kept in seclusion. This discourse on the nature of women also helped defend other archaic practices, as it did in the particular example of a fabricated voice of a woman demanding child marriage as a channel for her precocious sexual desire, in the startling tract on a “very beautiful newly married wife’s first entry into her husband’s bedchamber.” Written by a man and centered on female characters, the story unfolded, in verse, with a young woman expressing her anxieties as to what might await her in the marital bedchamber, as female relatives alternately jokingly abuse her to fulfill her marital duties, and cajole her to partake in the joys of conjugal bliss. The particular tale ended with the warning: Women’s freedom is a dangerous thing Such a principle is alien to the Arya race Observe nature’s laws amongst the birds and bees “Female liberty” is an unnatural stance!! Who is repulsed by her own lord’s touch? Sick from an elixir? Damn such education! True, the first connection hurts a bit But that melts away into ultimate bliss!!70


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The year of publication of this raunchy morality play that advised women to sleep with their husbands and beware of female liberty was 1891. Defying and defining the stereotypical norms of Victorian morality and native protection of the home, public discussions of sex proliferated in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Bengal. Women, as managers of the home and sexual subjects, received a prominent place in the reinscription of colonial governmentality in a manner that, nonetheless, reproduced the gender hierarchy. The interpretation of the woman as agent and victim of degeneration, and the identification of sexual precocity as one of the chief signs of degeneration, inflicted a further misogyny on these discussions. This provides a further clue to the misogyny and self-loathing that welded solitary and conjugal sex in the native man’s quest to govern the self. Modern sex had arrived in Calcutta, unleashing a particular regime of the care and cure of the self. Perhaps it was the shadow that Phulmoni’s death cast over layers of colonial mythmaking – on the childhood of India, on the effeminacy of Bengalis, of “white men saving brown women from brown men” – that explains the peculiar misogynistic undertone to the critiques of alien rule and ideas of national selfhood that emerged in the late nineteenth century. The modernity of the discussions on sex, self and consent lay not in the benefits it brought for women, but in the reconstitution of the categories of man and woman, self and sovereignty, public and private in Bengal at the time. These myriad discussions help explain why the woman flits in and out of the courtroom and archive, in the process of disappearing, just when her body becomes the focus of excessive public scrutiny. It also explains the peculiar twinning of child marriage and masturbation in this modern discourse on sex. For solitary sex and child marriage had another thing in common: in both cases, the woman’s personhood was immaterial.

Marriage, masturbation and the government of self Let us return to the masturbator, the reader who sent a letter to the Chikitsa Sammilani71 describing his anguish about masturbation. While the depletion of strength caused by sexual and other excesses had been part and parcel of medicomoral ideas since antiquity, the exaggerated horrors of masturbation as solitary sex were a thoroughly modern phenomenon. The very act of public confession marks the emergence of a modern self in a particular relationship with the body, simultaneously occupying a position of subjectivity by being in the body and observing the body as an “object,” and turning bodily experience into a narrative of self. In midnineteenth century Britain, the critique of masturbation reflected bourgeois concerns about self-control, marriage and population growth. An “unmanly vice,” it erupted in Britain amidst economic crisis, labor unrest, fears of depopulation and the rise of feminism, and served as a shorthand for some of the deepest anxieties about contemporary society and its effects on virility, gender identity and physical selfhood.72 In colonial Bengal, such anxieties found a fertile ground in the imagination of a people coming to terms with their colonial classification and self-image as an



enfeebled, effeminate and degenerating race. Masturbation as disorder contained an added element in the east, for the loss of semen became linked, literally, to the loss of control over self, the loss of masculinity, and the loss of the nation to aliens. In a serialized article, dramatically titled ‘Purush Shatru: Stri’ (Man’s Enemy: Woman), a Bengali doctor juxtaposed marriage and masturbation as the twin evils that plagued the Bengali man. The odd twinning of child marriage and masturbation came, in the first instance, as a direct response to the Age of Consent Bill. The unnamed author, “A Citizen of the World,” clarified that late marriages of the sort prevalent in Europe were not unknown to India, but in the tropical climate of India the development of genital powers being much earlier, deferred matrimony led the perverse genius of man to the abuse of sexual appetite, so much so that feticide and infanticide to destroy the proofs of illicit sexual intercourse became too common.73 Deferred sexual gratification led to another evil, masturbation, which in turn produced dire mental and physical aberrations. British laws against infanticide or feticide were “only curative and not preventive … [T]heir law cannot successfully cope with the destruction of myriads of human beings in their initiatory form of spermatozoa in the perpetration of unnatural crimes.” Hindu legislators, according to this logic, tried to prevent such crimes “providing for an appetite in the human species; their highest object is the propagation of the species.” Hindu legislators had sanctioned early marriage in keeping with the “fact of nature” that the quality of the semen deteriorated with advancing age. According to this global citizen, then, marriage was an antidote to a greater evil, masturbation and other forms of degeneration. Reformers reworked this very logic that welded marriage and masturbation; child marriage often topped their list of depleting factors, and was pronounced more dangerous than prostitution: for sex with prostitutes caused venereal disease in individual bodies, but child marriage endangered the future of the entire race, produced weak offspring, and distracted men from more meaningful pursuits such as education. Polygamy caused physical debility through an excessive excitement of the generative organs, leading to a loss of sperm, the essence of masculine strength.74 Amongst these secondary sins and crimes against the self and the race, masturbation was perceived as the worst, for it left the depleted body open to attacks of disease, even mental retardation and epilepsy, and finally, it was held responsible for causing a loss of manushotto, or humanity.75 In colonial India, the critique of masturbation hinged not on the solitariness of the act, as it did in Europe; it was not just about morals, virtue and vice, it was fundamentally about strength. Joseph Alter has described a medicalized brahmacarya – a particular doctrine of celibacy – based on an understanding that it is not the (moral) act of self-control, but the (physical) preservation of semen which builds character. In this sense, “self control” translated directly into power of


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various kinds – both public and private.76 In this particular understanding of celibacy, brahmacaris reserve their harshest critique for child marriage. Young men, given access to sex, lose the principles of self control and self development, for the bio-moral effect of semen flow is in no way affected by the way in which semen flow is effected; in fact, the extreme position points to the dangerousness of the family as an institution that legitimizes sexuality, and by extension, the threat posed by women who demand semen flow. Such a link between semen and selfhood, Sudhir Kakar has argued, was commonsense within the Indian culture of sexuality, within which virya – a word that simultaneously signifies semen and energy – was the essence of manhood; “in this tradition,” he asserts, “sexual urges amount to a creative flow, not only for procreation, but equally, in self-creation.”77 In late nineteenth-century Bengal, the native man, burdened with the stereotypes of degeneration and perversion that he had incorporated in a self-image of effeteness, expressed an almost paranoid fear of the squandering of sperm, which resulted in a heightened ambivalence towards women that verged on misogyny. Here, modernization also became a project to retrieve a lost masculinity, expressed in a development of hypermasculinity – the “rejection of the feminine” in culture and self.78 This bore down heavily on the imagination of the woman in the nation; the damaged self of the man – speaking with a forked tongue, dressed in dhoti and shoes – was captured by, and rendered as, a sharp divide between home and world. In this schema, the home-world, the women, and the inner spirit of the nation, were to be protected from the colonial onslaught by various tactics, such as leaving the shoe by the door, changing into Indian clothes, keeping the woman from the gaze of the colonial state. The extreme form of this discourse of protection, a mirroring of liberal protectionism, took the form of the rights of man over the woman’s body, as revealed in the reactionary responses to the Age of Consent Bill.

Sex and the “public” On January 22, 1891, thousands of people assembled at the Sobha Bazar Rajbari, the home of the most spectacular Durgapuja in Calcutta. Thousands were turned away for want of space. Hindus and Muslims, pundits and kaibirajes, men and a few women from prominent Calcutta families had assembled this time not to worship the goddess as they did every year, but to talk about sex.79 This was not the only meeting of its kind; similar “monster meetings” were called and attended in different parts of Calcutta. On February 25, a meeting at the Maidan apparently attracted crowds from the neighboring towns of Dacca, Mymensingh, Rungpore, Dinagepore, Jessore, Beerbhoom, Bancoora, Murshidabad and Berhampor. The uncommonly large gathering of the previous Congress faded in comparison to this gathering, according to reports; the entire stretch from the Esplanade to the Race Course was one sea of heads. Meanwhile, the “Bhattacharyas and Mukherjis were flocking to the House of the Mullicks.” Newspapers reported on these proceedings, and conducted their own discussions on sex, self and government. The subject


Degenerate nation 173 matter of these public discussions was the most private of spaces – the antahpur (inner quarters) and the conjugal bed; the most sacred of rites – Hindu marriage; and the most intimate of bodily functions – menstrual cycles, sexual intercourse and masturbation. The growing literature on dietetics, exercise, sexual hygiene and procreation relocated sex in the domain of the public. In this public discussion of sex lay the roots of the reconceptualization of sexual activity as a private matter. The management of intimacy by the elders of a family, the grandmother’s involvement in the garbhadhan, “vulgar” feasts and floral decorations to celebrate menarche, talk of sex in front of children, the “obscene” jokes and songs of the antahpur, were becoming inappropriate.80 Natives used the very stereotypes of colonial ethnology to warn the alien government not to carry its interference into the sacred precincts of the bedchamber of millions of its subjects, rich and poor alike, Hindu and Muhammadan alike … whether the peaceful trader or the turbulent soldier, whether the apathetic coolie, or the sensitive and high-spirited Rajput.81 Just as the management of sex was wrested away from the realm of religion, the community and the home, into the world of experts, it was reconstituted as a private matter, and the state was warned not to “deeply embarrass itself by undertaking to scientifically regulate the time and exact degree of sexual intercourse in millions of bedchambers.”82 During the consent discussions, defending child marriage, Dr Bose had argued that the weakness that western medicine blamed on the Indian pathologies and premature consummation and young motherhood were caused by “a luxurious and artificial style of living,” which Bose traced to “malaria, want of exercise, the insanitary [sic] condition of our houses, and the improper management of the puerperal state.” Besides, he added, “It is abundantly clear that just as civilization … advances, so does the increment of sexual trouble among women.”83 Dr Joubert, who had faltered before the Sessions Court in the discussion on Phulmoni’s case, would not have disagreed. In a speech before the Indian Medical Congress, he affirmed the new commonsense on precocious menarche: women with a developed nervous system, who grew up in an atmosphere of sexual indulgence, whiled away their time reading stimulating plays and novels, enjoyed the theater and jatra performances and constantly talked about sex and marriage, were stimulated to menstruate precociously. What affected the woman was not climate alone, but “education, company, traditions, habits, ideals and other causes”; old ethnological wisdom was here reformulated as a critique of modernity. This critique of modern excesses served, at times, to rationalize a universal gender hierarchy while defending Indian therapeutics and indigenous patriarchy. Meanwhile, pointing to the multiple axes along which the power of pathology could be mobilized, the problem of sexual debility was reformulated as a claim to cosmopolitanism. In fact, as we have seen, women too, then, were being recruited to these disciplines of the body, in a manner that simultaneously preserved and modernized the


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gender hierarchy. For instance, the Bamabodhini Patrika propagated domestic hygiene amongst women through a regular column on swasthyarakkha, compared national and international conjugal practices in a column on bibahapranali, discussed the Hindu ideal of conjugality in which the woman is sahadharmini, criticized the bad custom of confining women in an unhygienic sutikaghar outside the home during parturition, offered notes on sharirswasthyavidhan or personal hygiene, and provided advice on dhartividya or childcare. Some of this advice was certainly inspired by medical science: a long extract from Dr Gangaprasad Mukhopadhyaya’s Matrisiksha appeared in this journal. Matrisiksha was a text to educate mothers that described, in five parts, rules for pregnancy, confinement, and the management of children during infancy, childhood and youth, which reiterated that child marriage was a practice by which “children and generations suffer physical and mental ills.” The editors of the journal added to the causes of precocious sexuality and puberty: exposure to constant talk of marriage, obscene conversations and excessive physical affection.84 While this literature sought to recruit good wives and healthy mothers to the nation, at times perhaps, women challenged or subtly subverted patriarchal norms through their own appropriations of expert knowledge. What is clear is this: these discussions hastened the medicalization of childbirth, the sanitization of sex and the management of children, thus confirming a new regime of intimacy and practices of the self, to which women too were gradually adapting.85 Sexual categories and norms, we are told, constitute at once a social body and a way of thinking about and organizing power through the medium of actual bodies.86 In this chapter I have used sex in a few different senses, to talk about a complex of ideas about sexual conduct and sexual categories – the sexualized underpinnings of age and race, the cultural variable of legitimate sexual practice, and the political purposes realized by the creation of man, woman and child in biology and in society – to analyze the ways in which “sex” was crucial to the constitution of modern selfhood and a national body in Bengal at this particular time. In a European story about modern power and selfhood, in the transition to a bourgeois capitalist order, the regulatory and punitive functions exercised by the absolutist state passed into the hands of professionals trained in fields such as medicine, criminology, pedagogy and the law; from this, both power and personhood emerged transformed. In the colony, while the state retained despotic power, the proliferation of the disciplines, and the genesis of self-administering instruments of rule, marked the emergence of modernity. Discourses on sex and the body reveal how colonial regimes produced and regulated bodies as a way of promoting their civilizing missions”87; and how the sciences of the body were deeply “involved in the cultural and political construction of its subjects in India.”88 As evident from Bengali writing on sex and race, these categories were not just crucial to understanding a history of “othering,” or even “social control,” but also to the history of “self ” constitution and a vernacular modernity. This was not a modernity born of liberal “fathers” of the nation; the experts – doctors and lawmakers – with the lofty principles of physiological truth, consent and the protection of children, did not come to the rescue of native women.


Degenerate nation 175 But the nexus between the colonial state and the orthodox patriarchy, and even the liberal reformers, need not be traced to the dubious politics of non-interference, or simply to the “colluding patriarchies” that sought to limit the rights of women in India and Britain;89 the roots for a common ground may be found in colonial knowledge, a reliance on scientific expertise erected upon an inflated presence of racial anxieties. Nor can the elision of the woman question in the nationalist project in the late nineteenth century be explained by a schematic and untenable separation of the inner and outer realms of the nation.90 No longer bodies “still held to be pure and unmarked, loyal and subservient to the discipline of the shastras alone,”91 the woman had become altogether vulnerable to the onslaughts of modernity – dissected, discussed and demonized by male experts. In this process, the deeply rooted mythology that “casts objectivity, reason and mind as male, and subjectivity, feeling and nature as female”92 met the anti-colonial nationalist myth-making that made the woman the protector of the pure, un-colonized, private space of the culture, religion and home. As colonial reformers, a Hindu orthodoxy and native liberals increasingly concurred on the physiological basis of the government of sex, they also limited the imagination of the woman’s personhood and her rights. In accounting for the apparent limits of the reformist project, and the modernist reformulations of an archaic patriarchy, my intention is neither to absolve the colonized subject “of all complicity and culpability in the makings of the structure of colonial exploitation in the last two hundred years,”93 nor to applaud a misogynistic indegenism and exonerate Hindu nationalism as a radical anti-colonial program. Expert knowledge in the form of modern medicine supported the often contradictory and sometimes overlapping concerns of a colonial state, a liberal reformer, a Hindu pundit, and a misogynistic babu, allowing a certain strand of Hindu revivalism, and a vernacular misogyny, to lay claims to being modern, even emancipatory, in a certain colonial context.94 This was not a function of the “distortion” or “incompleteness” of colonial modernity, but was engendered in a modern discourse of sex underlined by race. In a vernacular fashioning of modern subjectivities, brought into being by the disciplines of the body and molded by anxieties of loss of self in the private and public domains, the woman paradoxically disappeared as a person, just as her body was opened up to public scrutiny like never before. The woman in her body came to be seen as the bearer of the code of race and culture, and its pathologies; meanwhile, theories of sex linked the life of individuals to the life of the species as a whole.95 The scientific notion of “degeneration” brought together the management of sex and race, the disciplining of individual bodies and ethnological groups, the home and the world.96 And it paved the way for the Bengali literature that increasingly conflated discussions on the nature of women and the “reduced state” of men. This, in turn, allowed for the peculiar entwinement of marriage and masturbation, reflected in the misogyny of vernacular medical writing. In medico-moral terms, and given the Bengali(man)’s self conception, masturbation and child marriage were both inscribed as instances of a premature and pathological development of a sexual sensibility, and both failed to meet the moral and physiological criteria for legitimate sexuality – the reproduction of offspring.


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Together they constituted the core problem of Bengali degeneration, and were located in the conjunction of individual and social pathologies on the one hand, and of physical and moral pathologies on the other. These theories of heredity and degeneration were turned on their head by Bengali doctors, who successfully translated the archaic pathology of child marriage into the modern diagnosis of debility. The age of consent controversy marked the final episode in the colonial narrative plotted as “white men saving brown women from brown men.”97 In an excessive gesture to protect the (national) womb, woman and home from the speculum of the colonial state, while opening them up to expert knowledge, the colonial plotline was seized by the native author of “Man’s Enemy: Woman,” and rewritten as farce, in a demand to save the brown man from the brown woman. This farcical rendition of the dominant narrative of colonialism in Bengal captures the ambivalence of liberal medicine underlined by a politics of race, an uncertain resolution of the “woman question” in a hypermasculine nation, and the misogyny that underpinned modern sex in Bengal in the fin de siècle.

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Bengali modern

Pathologies may be cured by making the person swallow medicines, but culture is not an edible object. — Anon., “Bibahasankar Sambandhe Malabari Mahashoyer Chesta,” 18901

Let us return one last time to the Bengali’s self-conscious reflection on his sarir or body. In analyzing the image of the masturbator’s quest for self-discipline, this book has tried to contextualize his bodily anxieties in the light of the development of racialized medicine as an ideology and practice of empire. A racialized medicine, created through a dialogue between doctors and colonial administrators, was at the core of the definition of the normal and the production of norms by liberal reform in colonial Calcutta. The disciplines and norms of the body disseminated through the technologies of modern government and a racialized medicine were embraced as a self-regulating regime and a “tactic of resistance” by the Bengali expert. In this light, it is clear that the misogyny of vernacular medicine traced in the last chapter was not a symptom of the archaic that Orientalist writing on India so often emphasized as part of its strategy of “othering” in order to locate India on the lower rungs of a persistent “ladder of civilization.” The misogyny articulated by the bhadralok in the idiom of debility, degeneration and protoeugenic concerns in the late nineteenth century was rather a mode of self-expression entrenched in biopolitical concerns that linked the intimate behavior of individuals to the health of the population. In other words, this rejuvenated misogyny was a symptom of modernity. I have turned to the concepts of power/ knowledge, biopolitics, and governmentality to understand a shared space of modernity, the difference (or not) of colonial modernity, and the idea of race, which did double duty as a strategy of modern government and a tactic of resistance to it. In offering these closing thoughts, I begin by discussing the “same-difference” of our (colonialized) modernity and modernity at large. I argue that the biopolitical and racialized basis of our (shared) modernity is evident in the discussions on jatiya swasthya (racial health) in vernacular medicine at the end of the nineteenth century. I also reiterate an argument that I have made throughout the book: that a resistance to colonial power and its forms of government need not be located outside of the


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networks of modern power, but was conceived within its frames. Instances of physical revolts against the administration of medicine in colonial contexts have been documented by others; I have turned to the unnoticed processes of resistance and critiques of the idea of empire-as-cure engendered in the self-fashioning of the modern Bengali, which were deeply embedded in the very medical discourse that was often rejected as bijatiya chikitsa (alien cure). Finally, after pointing to the biopolitical underpinnings of the Bengali discourses on jatiya swasthya and bijatiya chikitsa, I turn to the trope of abanati (decline), expressed in strikingly bodily terms, to reiterate my belief that an ambivalence and dis-ease with modernity was simultaneously a symptom of empire and a sign of a total commitment to modernity in late nineteenth-century Bengal.

“Ours is a modernity of the once-colonized”2 In a lecture delivered in Bengali in 1994 and subsequently translated into English, Partha Chatterjee sets out to discuss the difference of “our modernity” from Europe’s in order to analyze how “we have conceived our modernity.”3 Chatterjee begins this important discussion with Rajnarayan Basu’s 1873 essay, Se kal ar e kal (Those days and these days), the essence of which is reminiscent of Kshitindranath Thakur’s tract from 1930 that we encountered in Chapter 5. In this essay, comparing the time before English influence and the nabya (new) time of modernity, Basu delineated seven areas that had either improved or declined: health, education, livelihood, social life, virtue, polity and religion. The subject that consumed much of Basu’s attention in this comparative exercise was the sarir or body; he concluded that the men and women of Bengal, especially the bhadralok, had become short in stature, feeble, sickly and short-lived in “our time” of modernity. The idea of decline and loss of health, described as “factually baseless” by Chatterjee, was traced by Rajnarayan Basu to environmental change, a lack of nutritious and healthy food and water, untimely labor, the lack of exercise, and an anglicized way of life defined by new needs, wants and luxuries. Basu asserted that “by imitating uncritically the ways of English modernity, we are bringing upon us environmental degradation, food shortages, illnesses caused by excessive labor and an uncoordinated and undisciplined way of life.” Chatterjee argues that Basu’s sentiments from 1873 were regularly echoed well into the twentieth century, as Bengalis continued to lament the tortured birth of “our modernity.”4 The conclusion that Chatterjee draws is this: Rajnarayan Basu’s ambivalence towards modernity is not the product of something akin to postmodern irony, but an acknowledgment of the colonial situation that proves “there cannot be just one modernity irrespective of geography, time, environment and social conditions,” and that “true modernity consists in determining the forms of modernity that are suitable in particular circumstances.”5 Chatterjee insists, for “us,” the once-colonized, modernity is like a supermarket of foreign goods; we are the consumers, not the producers of modernity. For “us,” “these days” of modernity are a confirmation of our subjection. We are condemned to an ambivalence towards the modernity we inhabit, and to a nostalgia for an (imagined) past of a healthy sociability.


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Chatterjee thus clearly weighs in on the side of the “difference,” attributing the skepticism about modernity to “our shrewd guess that given the close complicity between modern knowledges and modern regimes of power, we would forever remain consumers of modernity.”6 I, however, will pursue an insight that he seems to have abandoned in favor of analyzing colonial difference. Paraphrasing Foucault, Chatterjee writes that the regime of power in modern societies prefers to work not through the commands of a supreme sovereign but through the disciplinary practices that each individual imposes on his or her behavior on the basis of the dictates of reason. As I have argued through various examples in this book, the repressive power of the colonial state was constantly supplemented by the very dissemination of disciplinary practices that Chatterjee is referring to here. Chatterjee further confirms, while modernity was put forward as the strongest argument in favor of continued colonial subjection, it was “the same logic of modernity” that rendered imperialism illegitimate; “the burden of reason, the dreams of freedom; the desire for power, resistance to power: all of these are elements of modernity.”7 While Chatterjee retreats from this statement of universality, pointing to an “attachment” to a pristine past that is the “driving force of our modernity”8 I would suggest, instead, that while a recognition of the very “close complicity” between knowledge and power might have triggered some skepticism amongst the bhadralok, it also enabled the Bengali schooled in expert knowledge to stake a claim to self-government. In other words, the same logic of modernity empowered the bhadralok in the private and public realms, and shaped his demands for selfgovernment. While acknowledging that modernity was/is a project of measuring difference by universal methods, such as the sciences of the body, this book has tried to recapitulate the same logic that animated a colonial government’s programs of reform and improvement, and conditioned a proto-nationalist resistance to it. This book has sought to analyze the conflicted modernity that “we” helped constitute, which we embrace and resist with ambivalence and vigor, and which we cohabit as the once-colonized and the once-colonizer.

Jatiya Swasthya: Race and a critique of alien rule Seen in this light, the power of medicine, even in its colonial administration, does not flow one way as social control and state medicine. Pathology – the science of the origin, nature, and course of diseases – may have been an effective tool to uncover native “lacks” and prescribe reformative remedies, but its promise was not lost on the natives of Bengal. The scientific method and metaphor of pathology were stretched and stitched to the art and science of self-diagnosis in Bengali medical literature in the late nineteenth century, which was focused on the disciplines of the biosocial body, the ideologies of hygiene and sanitation, and an analytics of sexuality. Concerns with heredity, degeneration and racial health were at the heart of late nineteenth-century discussions on jatiya swasthya, which may be translated as community health, national health, public health or racial health.9 Jati was a


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polyvalent term that had been one of the key elements in the enumeration and classification of the Indian population in colonial India; in the census the term was used to denote caste and religion as well as race. The discussions on jatiya swasthya in Bengali medical journals continued to reflect the many meanings of the term, but the constant references to ideas of depletion, enervation, loss of essence in the case of individuals, and to racial futures in terms of the population, suggest that the flexible jati was being used more and more in the sense of biological race by the last decades of the nineteenth century. In an 1878 tract promoting Ayurvedic remedies for native bodies, Ambikacharan Rakshita explained that just as the Jagadishwar – lord of the world – located different kinds of people in different countries, to suit their constitutions, so too he placed medicines to calm their discrete ills in their own countries in sufficient amounts.10 While Rakshita seemed to have been repeating an early ethno-logic about the resonance between races and places, Gourinath Sen attempted a reconciliation of a dosa-based understanding of difference with a jatibased one. He discussed the causes of debility according to Ayurvedic principles. Explaining the working of the dosas, he asserted that the choice of food for each individual had to be based upon a consideration of place, race and time. Food consumed could be poisonous if it was antagonistic to the place (desh biruddha), if it was consumed at the wrong time (kala biruddha), if it was unwisely combined (sanjoga biruddha) or went against the nature of the consumer (prakriti biruddha). One of the ways to understand prakriti (nature or character), he clarified, was through appreciating differences of jati: the human jati in contradistinction from animals; daishik or national jati such as English, Kaffer, Yehudi; and finally, khacchars or hybrids, such as the animals born of the union of the horse and the donkey, or the “crossing” of the English with the Bengali. An attention to racial character, he warned, was crucial to the administration of cures. He explained this with a medical anecdote: a Hindustani woman bore a son by a Bengali man. Later in life, when the son had a complicated case of fever, none of the medicines prescribed for him worked, until the doctor, diagnosing his correct lineage, treated him as a Bengali.11 The invocation of a racialized understanding of difference to reject alien cure and imperial government became more explicit in one of Sen’s later works from 1877, Deshiya Prakriti O Chikitsa (National Character and Cure).12 Replicating the early colonial ethnologies in form and in content, and invoking the liberal prose on “character,” Sen began with a recapitulation of the Orientalist triptych, describing the common origins of the eastern and western Aryans, and India’s decline under Muslim rule. This is where his analysis began to diverge from the familiar plot: while attributing Ayurvedic decline to a lack of freedom and a withdrawal of state patronage during the so-called Muslim period, Sen argued that the “civilized” colonial government had also acted in exactly the same way as the “selfish uncivilized yavanas.” Besides, Sen argued, for a native of Bharatvarsham, the purchase of medicine and cures from across the seas was contrary to reason. Indigenous drugs must be sought out and promoted not only to sustain the health of the people but also to prevent a drain of wealth from the country.13 The metaphor of imperial governance as a cure for native pathologies was so deeply entrenched that a critique of English medicine easily generated a critique of colonial education, the colonial


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economy, and the colonial state at large. Condemning western medicine as a tool of subjugation, Sen insisted that quinine, for instance, did not work on native constitutions in the long term, but merely suppressed the symptoms of the disease. At the most basic level, Sen is suggesting that Ayurveda could provide more efficacious cures for native bodies, but the promotion of indigenous medicine is but one of his aims; his is a trenchant critique of the metaphor of colonial government as cure for native pathologies and a resounding demand for self-government. Tracing the history of the “scientification” of Ayurveda in the early twentieth century, which consisted of a systematization of clinical methods; the creation of professional education institutions and societies for practitioners; the production of standardized versions of classical and recent texts; the commercial production of regulated drugs, and the institutional regime of schools, textbooks, syllabi, examinations and degrees, Partha Chatterjee has described the extent to which western medicine has influenced the “modern” curricula of Ayurvedic training. According to him, most practitioners consented to reorganization and borrowing, for they saw this cross-fertilization as consistent with the “universal nature of scientific truth”; these practitioners used the universality of science as a strategy for carving out a separate space for Ayurveda in an attempt to “find a different modernity … in the presumably universal field of science.”14 But it was not just the institutions of Ayurveda that were “westernized”: the very categories of ethnological and biomedical thought had a deep impact on the worldview of traditional medicine, its mode of reasoning and its relationship to society. Chatterjee writes of a “nationalization” of modern knowledge, “located in a space somewhat set apart from the field of universal discourse, a space where discourse could be modern, yet national.”15 In effect, arguments about cultural or somatic difference increasingly deployed a “universal” biomedical discourse on race; the space of the nation and a call for its regeneration was largely articulated by an appeal to universals. This may be understood with reference to the increasingly racialized, biopolitical slant to the term jatiya swasthya in a slew of Bengali articles that disseminated an understanding of heredity to the non-expert public, and linked sexual habits and racial futures. The principle of heredity was crucial to the proto-eugenic arguments that were often made in articles such as one which introduced in passing the idea of producing hybrids between Bengalis (with their superior brains) and Sikhs (with their superior physical strength) to make the Indian jati (nation) stronger as a whole. Sexuality was to be disciplined for the sake of the future of the nation; conjugality was to become reordered with an eye to racial health.16 In an 1888 article on “Bibaha Bichara” (Thoughts on marriage), for instance, Pulinchandra Sanyal, Bachelor of Medicine, repeated all the medical and hereditarian arguments on child marriage that had been circulating since the 1860s.17 He idiosyncratically combined the ethnological method of analogies from the natural world, a theory on the impact of climates on human constitutions, a version of natural selection, and the Malthusian law of populations, to formulate his own counter-theory to degeneration, to argue that the fruits of an aged body were likely to be as weak as ones from an immature body, and that a careful study of the plant and animal kingdoms had established that no race could ever become extinct, weak, or sickly from


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reproducing itself in excess. Putting a spin on the Malthusian thesis that human populations doubled every 20 years, he evoked the threat of colonization by an alien species unless countered by a prolific reproduction on the part of the natives: he pointed to the example of the papaya tree, exotic to India, which had taken over the entire country within years of its introduction, just as horses had colonized Australia. Enlisting Darwin as an ally, Sanyal reassured the anxious Bengali reader that the race as a whole would not suffer from the production of weak offspring by “premature marriages”; only the fittest would survive, and degenerates would be weeded out in time. In this scenario, he insisted, the custom of early marriages had its advantages: as women matured early in the tropics, such marriages ensured more years of active reproduction, allowing each couple to produce more healthy children than sickly ones. It was not early marriage, but a lack of nourishment, depleted vigor, poverty, that caused the death of infants and a decline in the population of Bengal. Sanyal’s theories indicate the ways in which physiological, evolutionist and hereditarian theories were reconfigured in the Bengali medical imagination. Sanyal’s analogizing of papaya trees and Englishmen harkened back to ethnological speculations on biogeography, colonization and cosmopolitanism from earlier in the century, and captured what was perhaps a popular suspicion regarding the state’s intervention in the management of sexuality and conjugality in Bengal. Interestingly, these sentiments were articulated in the idiom of a racialized medicine, and a fragmented phraseology derived from Linnaeus, Darwin and Malthus. Sen’s work is a good example of the race-inflected, biosocial basis of some of this early nationalist thought and its strategies of power. While Sen largely condemned western medicine as bijatiya (alien) or contrary to the nature of the Indian jati, Sanyal used his medical expertise to align a “conservative” strategy for the management of conjugality with the modern project of jatiya swasthya. Resistance to modern medicine (and power) was launched from within the frames of modernity: the power of medical knowledge was consciously invoked in the Bengali’s claim to self-government and for the rationalization of hierarchies within native society.

Bijatiya Chikitsa: Alien cures and “native resistance” The medical metaphor was utilized to challenge Malabari’s attempts to reform Indian marriage by a Bengali journalist: “Rugike ushodh giliya khawaile rog nibaran hai, kintu sanskar guli khawaibar bastu nohey.”18 Pathologies may be cured by making the patient swallow medicines, but culture is not an edible object, he wrote, to underline that its embeddedness in an alien cultural and political context made English medicine a particularly bitter pill to swallow. This 1890 article, which appeared in the Bamabodhini Patrika at the height of the age of consent controversy, compared the flawed logic of alien cures for native pathology with Behramji Malabari’s failed attempts at reforming Hindu marriage through an appeal to English law: whatever the evils of tradition, the author asserted, they cannot be forcibly taken away from society, for culture is not a pill that may be


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force-fed. This was not just a resistance to substances such as quinine, but a rejection of the colonial project of reform that had been erected on the metaphor of empire as cure. Just as bijatiya chikitsa forced on native bodies did not cure ills, but caused further disorder, the journalist continued, if Malabari’s proposals succeeded in allowing women to annul marriages arranged in childhood upon acquiring majority, the Hindu social body would become disordered. Girls without maturity or mental capacity would follow their whims. Parents would no longer have any authority over their children. Young girls would be led astray by bad men. Relatives would abuse the law for their own gain. What would be the cause of this chaos, disorder and overall degeneration? The alien cure of English law. A critique of western medicine as “alien cure” was by no means a rejection of western medicine as such; it was a self-conscious use of the power of racialized medicine to subvert the idea of empire-as-cure. The medicalized backlash to the Age of Consent Bill provides an example of how the power of pathology worked along multiple axes. For instance, the scientific theory of degeneration, firmly rooted in the biopolitical management of populations, emerged as a prominent trope in the reactionary defense of child marriage in late nineteenth-century India. Arguing against H. H. Risley, the prominent colonial ethnographer who had condemned the caste system as the root cause for child marriage, and thus for the degeneration of the race,19 Rajendralala Mitra, a prominent Bengali scholar, claimed that the Hindu caste system was possibly the oldest system invented to negotiate the very convulsions of purity and danger.20 While the liberal medical opinion insisted that delaying marriages and pregnancies would improve the physical character of the Bengali race, he argued that it was precisely to prevent the deterioration of the race, avoid miscegenation and preserve the purity of the race that Brahmin authors had institutionalized child marriage. He made striking use of the medicalized language of degeneration, conjuring up nightmare visions of hybrids and degenerates, rising from a crumbling social structure: Can we put a stop to early marriage without being prepared to meet the consequences thereof and of thereby benefiting the nation? It would be easy enough to get up hybrids, but would they be in all cases such as the nation would like to have?21 Much like Mitra, who turned the ethno-logic of medicine on its head, transforming the caste system from a symptom of Bengali degeneration to a preventive measure against degeneration, a certain Dr Juggobondhu Bose based his defense of child marriage on a careful scrutiny of western texts on physiology and women’s health. Recalling monogenetic ethnologies from the early century, he reiterated: The Hindus were of Caucasian origin, but having been exposed for countless generations to the same succession of depressing influence of climate, a temperament has been developed that differs widely from the European’s. This is seen in the want of energy, incapacity to withstand disease, and the tendency to early exhaustion, possessing as they do neither muscular nor nervous power …

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Residence in damp and marshy districts where malarious influences are rife has been shown to be the cause of a profuse menstruation in certain cases; here menorrhagia is not infrequently present with intermittent fever. Residence in tropical countries is in the case of Europeans followed in most cases by profuse menstruation; indeed, in most cases, where women return to England from India, in a broken down state of health, menorrhagia is a prominent symptom.22 Bose emphasized the common origins of Briton and Indian, and turned the specter of degeneration back on the colonizers: as a consequence of unreasonable (or even un-physiological) colonization, their women would menstruate profusely, thus reverting to a primitive state, and the men would follow, eventually walking the languid walk of the Bengali. Just as the European woman would degenerate from the effect of Indian climates, so would the Indian woman suffer from an exposure to English laws. Bose used modern medicine’s authoritative mapping of difference to subvert its claims to universal application, just as he used it to defend Indian custom. Bose’s tactic of resistance was not unusual in its context and was repeated in a number of responses to the Age of Consent Act that had established Bengali conjugality and sexuality as matters of public concern. To appreciate the modernity of this argument, and its reactionary ends, one needs to recognize the extent to which liberal (and liberal imperial) government was premised on the idea that society’s norms were to be based in nature’s laws; the very logic that had rationalized colonial occupation as a cure for native pathology was used in vernacular medicine to rationalize a conservative (Hindu nationalist) backlash against reform. Indicating that the colonized speaks his or her modernity from within a network of power erected on reason, the native expert made a bid for self-government and rearticulated an archaic gender hierarchy in the language of science in late nineteenth-century Bengal. The commitment to modernity came at a price; the state of modernity came to be expressed in a medicalized idiom as a nagging state of dis-ease.

Abanati: Modernity as regression Capturing this sense of dis-ease, and describing the time of modernity as not one of unnati (progress), but one of abanati (decline), a journalist with the Amrit Bazar Patrika wrote in 1875: Our healthiness has diminished ever since western civilization was introduced into our country … We now use castor oil and quinine when ill, but formerly we cured ourselves solely by fasting ... The natural drainage of the country has been obstructed by the construction of roads … What advantage will there be from the railways, telegraph, and Higher Education, if the death rate continues the same, and the people die away, till in a century or two the whole Bengali race disappears from the face of the earth.23 Between (roughly) 1875 and 1925, the trope of abanati emerged as a prominent one in much of the popular commentary on the health of the sarir, society, the city, the


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race. A serialized article on “Arya Swasthya Vigyan” (Aryan Health Science) published in a Bengali medical journal in 1899 criticized the methods of modern sanitation. The older method of waste disposal, of collecting night soil early in the morning and recycling it as fertilizer, was pronounced more hygienic than the municipal system under which the streets were allowed to stink through the day. One of the worst offences of mleccha sanitation was the profound disorder of placing chamber pots inside the rooms of the home.24 These material forms of pollution, of matter out of place, were further complicated by the altered norms of urban life. Instead of the intimate discipline of regular baths at specified hours, the urban youth tended to be lazy and gregarious, they gathered together in large groups chatting and chewing tobacco at street corners, and took hasty showers just before they left for work, at grave cost to their health.25 While it would be simple enough to attribute such critiques of modern life simply to nostalgia for an imagined golden age, a sign of the attachment to the past that characterizes “our modernity,” to paraphrase Chatterjee, alternative conclusions can and must be drawn, because many of the discussions on abanati were firmly rooted in ethno-medical discourse and engaged with biopolitical reason. Commenting on the health officer’s official report on Calcutta’s sanitary conditions, for instance, the correspondent for Swasthya announced that urban populations were rising despite rising death rates, as people from the mofussils flocked to the city. Marked by abject ignorance and poverty, without the benefits of vaccination, these people attracted disease; their crowded living conditions made matters worse.26 While the city’s poor were represented as steeped in the moral and physical filth of their bustis, the bhadralok’s home was seen to be collapsing under the weight of urban excess.27 Over-education and the lack of physical exercise produced by the nine-to-five rhythm of chakri had weakened the urban man.28 Meanwhile, the home was disrupted by the lethargic, literate woman, the Alakshmi, freed of domestic labor and slave to the novel.29 The urban woman was getting weaker than her rural sister. As the babu left home for his chakri, the woman was free to read, write, play, gossip and, basically, do as she pleased. During these hours, she was tempted by all manner of vices, particularly the seductive pleasures of the novel. Instead of the lone copy of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, the urban housewife had access to cheap novels, brought to her doorstep by street vendors who sang out the titles to seduce prospective readers. There were other temptations besides cheap books: the theatre, western clothes, jewelry, perfumes and music. As women chased fashion trends, they ignored their own health and that of their children. Here, the correspondent quoted “a famous writer” in English: “It is an astounding and lamentable fact that one out of eight – that is twelve and a half per cent of all wives of England are barren – are childless!” While the evocation of abanati served as a critique of state medicine and challenged the curative and modernizing justification of empire, the sudden comparison with England is significant for other reasons. First, the discourse on abanati indicated a commitment to modernity. Besides the failures of the colonial state, the various journalists’ reports drew attention to the problems posed by the filth and the crowds in the city, and by a failure to regulate one’s own behavior in the face of


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urban seductions. It is clear that the bhadralok were embracing hygienic selfmanagement as a crucial aspect of their claim to citizenship in a modern state, a regime in which power worked not only under the stern regulation of law, or the threat of punishment, but through a “conduct of conduct,” the internalization of disciplinary practices that a rational subject imposed on his or her own behavior. Second, the trope of abanati and the comparisons with England performed another function in this unfolding plot of the Bengali modern: it permitted the bhadralok to normalize their weakness as a universal condition of modernity instead of a particular instance of cultural pathology. While Chatterjee suggests that Rajnarayan Basu’s laments about decline stemmed from a “shrewd guess” that, given the complicity between modern knowledge and modern regimes of power, he had somehow been dealt a bad deal, Basu’s laments may be read alternatively, as a demand for coevalness, a strident claim that in this moment, “we” are stricken by the same diseases and disorder as “you.” This is reflected, in some measure, in the sexological literature of the early twentieth century, when child marriage, the ultimate sign of Bengali otherness until the end of the nineteenth century, began to recede into a longer list of sexual pathologies. One tract from 1923, for instance, explained debility as an urban disorder, warning male readers of the dangers of leaving the cure of “secret diseases” and “the solitary vice” to dangerous quacks who scattered destructive leaflets across the city, and advised them to take control of the self in order to deal with a long list of sexual traumas that included wet dreams, spermatorrhea, impotence, premature ejaculation, gonorrhea and syphilis; child marriage was but an absent presence.30 In his self-help tract for women, published in 1907, the same author had elaborated on a set of female maladies: menstrual irregularities, unwanted pregnancy, hysteria, nymphomania, sexually transmitted disease.31 The roots of these new ailments were traced to dirty conversations, cheap books, and obscene pictures, to young couples cohabiting freely and indiscriminately in “free” households, an exposure to intimate scenes between actors in the theater or bioscope, the public performance of obscene dances, open conversations about sexual experiences, proximity between young boys and girls, and the promiscuous sight of copulating animals.32 Hysteria made an appearance as a symptom of modernity. A practitioner of Ayurveda, Girishchandra Sena, for instance, linked hysteria to a particular style of life, suggesting that the incidence of the disease generally rose with increasing progress: it was more widespread in the city than in the country, was still uncommon amongst the lower classes, and more common amongst men trapped by western education and babugiri, who treated their women as household dolls. Amongst women, hysteria and menorrhagia were symptoms of excessive leisure, and usually struck women who spent their time reading novels and plays, and left their household chores to cooks and servants.33 Haridhana Datta discussed the transforming etiology of hysteria, from bhoote dhora (possession by spirits) or dhong kora (acting out), to behavior produced by changes in reproductive organs, to a pathology of civilization that was more common amongst the whites in America, and more prevalent in mahanagaris like Calcutta.34 Cultural difference or civilizational backwardness could no longer account for Bengali pathology; the Bengali was stricken


Epilogue

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by the pathologies of modernity. The causes of these disorders could be traced to a failure to discipline the self in the seductive urban milieux of London, Paris or Calcutta. A conflation of bodily degeneration with social and urban crisis was a nineteenth-century phenomenon that resonated in cities all over Europe; just as degeneration had been crucial for explaining the deviation of racial others, it had been used for the description of “the other empire,” the lower classes and other despised people on the margins, giving expression to a sense of crisis and disorder caused by industry, capitalism, social mobility and urbanism.35 By constantly invoking the themes of social and biological abanati – regress and degeneration – the Bengali was, in a sense, normalizing what used to be his special pathological circumstance. The trope of abanati was central to an emerging critique of the colonial state and “western” civilization, on the one hand, and to the demand for coevalness and a laying claim to cosmopolitanism by the modern Bengalis, on the other. The twin themes of deteriorating health in the ekal, and a corresponding desire for the healthy shekal, in Bengali (bhadralok) discourse led Chatterjee to conclude: In the world arena of modernity, we are outcasts, untouchables […] [W]hereas Kant, speaking at the founding moment of Western modernity, looks at the present as the site of one’s own escape from the past, for us it is precisely the present from which we feel we must escape36 And it is because of this difference in our relationship to modernity, that “no matter how adroitly the fabric of reason might cloak the reality of power, the desire for autonomy continues to range itself against power; power is resisted.”37 But if the “outcasts” of modernity expressed their resistance in the desire to escape from the present, they expressed it also in the will to force an entry into the world from which they had been cast out. In each of these instances, “resistance” was articulated in the language of (universal) modernity. Commenting on colonial resistance to science and medicine, specifically, some scholars have turned to instances of revolt against vaccination drives and sanitary methods.38 Others have mentioned more subtle cohabitations with the universal claims of modern power/knowledge, through the formation of institutions for the nationalization of modern knowledges,39 the quest for another reason and Hindu universality40 or the transformation of Ayurveda from a “set of health behaviors” to a “sign of culture.”41 If resistance to a universal modernity can be found in the institution of “national medicine” and the assertion of cultural rootedness, it is also to be found in the self-description of effeteness and panics about jatiya swasthya and abanati. For as often as not, vaids and western-trained native doctors submitted, even consented, to a subjection to biomedicine. At times, they subverted these universals of modernity not by rejecting or altering them, but by using them with respect, even with erudition, to ends and references quite foreign to the system they had no choice but to accept; modern medicine operated, ironically, as a “tool of empire” and as an “agent of modernity.” In fact, the irony of modern medicine offers a particularly good example of the contradictions of modernity, for as we


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have seen, while the medical gaze “created” the individual as the object and subject of his own knowledge, and discourses on public health and personal hygiene were crucial in disseminating the strategies of government as self-regulation, medicine had originated as an assault on the body in a fundamental sense. Imperial pathology, the science of diagnosing and curing ills, ideology objectified as medical science, went beyond the production of horror or difference. Pathology stood as a metaphor for the colonial condition: the inflated anxieties of the colonizers, partially assuaged but never erased by the development of scientific racism; the damaged self of the colonized, exploited and condemned to speak forevermore in a forked tongue; and, finally, a parochial way of thinking about humans, embodied and universalized as a commitment to modernity. In a vernacular medical discourse that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century, these very ideas of difference and degeneration were stretched and stitched to critiques of alien rule and to the Bengali’s quest to govern the “self.” The medicalized constructions of a “degenerate nation” and “racial health” continued to loom large in vernacular discussions on self-improvement and self-government; the embodied self was one liberated by and committed to modernity. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the original program of “empire as cure” was thoroughly subverted, just as it was firmly embraced. In this sense, colonial modernity itself may be understood not so much as a culmination of a positivist or diffusionist modernizing project emanating from Europe, but as a symptom of empire: a phenomenon that accompanied a particular disease or disorder and serves as an indication of it. The conflicts and contradictions of vernacular medicine – seen in the simultaneous assertion of bodily difference and pathological kinship, a demand for better sanitation and a denunciation of the colonial state’s mleccha hygienic regime, a rejection of foreign drugs and the reformulation of dincharya as hygienic self-management – might be read as “the aura of dislocation and disorientation [that] has always accompanied Indian modernity’s existence,” a symptom not just of a “tropicalization of its Western form, but rather … its fundamental dislocation.”42 But perhaps, and this is what I have argued, Indian modernity is not invariably marked by its difference and orientation; to embrace modernity is to inhabit its contradictions.


Notes

Introduction 1 Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973). 38–9. 2 Ibid. 38. 3 The question has generated a fruitful discussion on the state of the field, and the suggestion that we incorporate colonial practice, in all its plurality, into our understandings of metropolitan medicine, is discussed in Shula Marks, “What is Colonial about Colonial Medicine? And What Has Happened to Imperialism and Health?” Social History of Medicine 10 (1997). Warwick Anderson suggests that in taking a turn to postcolonial criticism, and specifically by following Dipesh Chakrabarty in “provincializing Europe,” historians of medicine and colonialism might break out of the rut of producing a number of national variations of a master narrative called “the emergence of modern medicine” (Warwick Anderson, “Where is the Postcolonial History of Medicine?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72, no. 3 [1997]. 527). Waltraud Ernst, on the other hand, is somewhat less than impressed by the focus on colonial power, discourse, governmentality, the status of modernity, and the condition of the colonizers and colonized, and recommends a consideration of structural issues of economics and politics alongside a focus on representations and the imaginary. She is also (justly) critical of the focus on “northern areas and elite groups,” and suggests that the challenge for postcolonial histories of the subcontinent is not so much to “provincialize Europe,” as to “globalize Bengal” (Waltraud Ernst, “Beyond East and West. From the History of Colonial Medicine to a Social History of Medicine(s) in South Asia.” Social History of Medicine 20, no. 3 [2007]. 520). The present work admittedly replicates some of these problems. Ernst urges, instead, the study of “indigenous medicine” or “medical pluralism,” i.e. the stories of different systems of medicine, such as Ayurveda, Unani and allopathy, interacting in (or even outside of) post/colonial contexts, which Ernst identifies as the authentic object of a social history of medicine(s). While the former project has the moral high ground of actually seeking out the “subaltern” voice/system, instead of merely analyzing the conditions of its silencing, or, of reifying the very system it sets out to critique by focusing exclusively on the colonial, it is analytically quite discrete from the project of “colonial medicine.” What she considers the “problematic tendency” to focus on “power” to the detriment of “medicine” is precisely the appeal of the latter approach, which is concerned with the operation of colonial power through medicine, to be sure, but therefore also with the political economy of colonialism. This is the approach that I take, through a specific historical focus on Bengal. I take Ernst’s concerns about “globalizing Bengal” and the dominance of Bengal in history writing seriously and clarify that I certainly do not wish to link my analysis of English-educated Calcutta bhadralok by metonymy to Bengal, or to India at large, but I am hopeful that some of the theoretical insights might prove fruitful in these larger contexts.


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4 David Arnold, Science, Technology, and Medicine in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 15. 5 David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). The works I am thinking of are largely inspired by the path-breaking critique of colonial knowledge in Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). The general thrust of the critique of colonial knowledge presented by Cohn is in symmetry with Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Routledge, 1978). 6 Arnold, Colonizing the Body. 292. 7 Ibid. 9. 8 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 100. 9 Mark Harrison, Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600–1850 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). 59. 10 Ibid. 112. 11 Arnold, Colonizing the Body. 59. 12 Harrison, Climates & Constitutions. 9. 13 “Introduction,” Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001). 14 Some of the more serious limitations to the analysis of power/knowledge in colonial situations derive from this rerouting of Foucault via Edward Said’s influential critique of Orientalist discourse, understood as an ideological fantasy operating as a body of objective knowledge, whilst deriving from, and manifesting itself in, a relationship of power. In a manner unrecognized in Orientalism, Foucault approached discourses “as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable.” Foucault, History of Sexuality. 100. 15 Arnold, Colonizing the Body. 10. 16 Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000). 127. 17 Arnold, Colonizing the Body. 9. 18 Ibid. 7. 19 Ibid. 292. 20 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). xi. Also quoted in Marks, “What Is Colonial about Colonial Medicine?” 21 Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). 19. 22 Cynthia Eagle Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 23 For a discussion of the comparison in the interstices of race, class and gender, of the prostitute with the Hottentot, where the prostitute is “the Hottentot on the scale of the sexualized female,” and the Hottentot is “the essential black, the lowest exemplum of mankind in the great chain of being,” see Sander L. Gilman, “The Hottentot and the Prostitute: Towards an Iconography of Female Sexuality,” in Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness, Sander L. Gilman (ed.) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). 83. 24 Vaughan, Curing Their Ills. 23. 25 Ibid. 7. 26 “We should not be content to say that power has a need for a certain discovery, a certain form of knowledge, but we should add that the exercise of power creates and causes to emerge new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of information ... The exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge

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27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

constantly induces effects of power.” Foucault, quoted in Colin Gordon, “Introduction,” in Power (New York: The New Press 2000). xv–xvi. Vaughan, Curing Their Ills. 9. Ibid. 10–23. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Besides these limitations, some would also argue that “western” medicine was not the dominant paradigm in colonial India, that it was largely confined to colonial enclaves, and for this reason, there is not much to be gained by pursuing the colonial subject through the operation of biopower. Of course, a similar claim about the limited influence of medicine, could be made, and has been made, for England in general: The medical historian Roy Porter analyzed copious historical evidence to suggest that the difference of France and England made Foucault’s analysis of a “great confinement” irrelevant to the history of England (Roy Porter, “Foucault’s Great Confinement,” History of the Human Sciences 3, no. 1 [1990]. In a recent review of a new and expanded translation of History of Madness, Andrew Scull, a prominent scholar of medicine, psychiatry and madness, points to the difference between discourses on madness and the complex and differentiated reality of (a small number of) actual asylums to dismiss Foucault’s analysis as one that is irrelevant to any specific historical context (Andrew Scull, “The Fictions of Foucault’s Scholarship,” Times Literary Supplement, March 21, 2007). Prakash, Another Reason. 127. Emphasis added. Ibid. 127. Arnold refers in various places to Michel Foucault’s work, paying great attention to the “social control” aspects of colonial medicine, but he has stopped short of considering the productive relations between modern disciplinary regimes and the birth of the modern subject. One of the persistent charges leveled against Foucault’s analyses of disciplinary regimes is that there is no possibility for “resistance” in the analysis. Seizing upon this critique, Arnold argues that resistance was “an essential element in the evolution and articulation” of colonial medicine in a manner unacknowledged by Foucault, citing examples of resistance to public health measures (Arnold, Colonizing the Body. 7) Arnold’s approach to studying social control and state medicine, and the physical resistance they elicited, is reminiscent of an early Foucauldian approach to colonial power/knowledge. Foucault, History of Sexuality. 139. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). 14. Ernst, “Beyond East and West.” 509. Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). 206. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments. 19. David Scott, Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 29–30. Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarty, “A Correspondence on Provincializing Europe,” Radical History Review 83 (2002). 148. Ibid. 151. Ibid. 155. Ibid. 154. Ibid. 154. For the only full-length treatment of race in India, and arguably a similar exercise in obfuscation/forgetting, see Peter Robb, The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996). This is a collection of 11 essays; full-length monographs on the theme are rare. Works that engage with the idea of race in colonial policies include Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class under the Raj: Imperial


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47 48

49 50

51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59

60 61

62 63 64 65 66

Notes Attitudes and Policies and Their Critics, 1793–1905 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980). Changes in scientific discourses of race is an underlying theme in Harrison, Climates & Constitutions. For a discussion on the gendered dimensions of racial stereotypes about Indians, and Bengalis in particular, see Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). For a brief account of the deeply problematic politicization of the Aryan idea in contemporary India, in the light of reflections on its place in nineteenth-century philology and race science, see “Preface to the Paperback Edition,” Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Delhi: Yoda Press, 2004). David Arnold, The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800–1856 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). Marks, “What Is Colonial about Colonial medicine?” 210. The “medicine and race” industry has flourished unabated since the publication of the article; for an updated summary of the literature in the field see the “Introduction,” in Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris (eds), Race, Science and Medicine, 1700–1960 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire. 206. Ibid. 7–8. For Stoler, the historical evidence for these processes, and of the primacy of colonial contact, are evidenced on the bodies of marginalized subjects of a certain kind: poor whites, those of mixed blood, “the enemy within.” She is less attentive to the subjectification of the colonialized subject who was increasingly rendered as irremediably black. Scott, Refashioning Futures. 30. Ibid. 31. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collége De France, 1978–79 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 22. Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 3. Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality with Two Lectures and an Interview with Michel Foucault, Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).102. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments. 10. Scott, Refashioning Futures. 90. For a further discussion of norms, in this sense, see Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). 10–11. Graham Burchell, “Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self” in Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose, Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, NeoLiberalism and Rationalities of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 21. Scott, Refashioning Futures. 83. Two key texts on the themes outlined here are Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), Jennifer Pitt, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire. 9. Ibid. 68. Scott, Refashioning Futures. 85. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863). 24. In this book, I have consistently used the term “native” as it was used in nineteenthcentury India, as an all-encompassing term that described any person on the subcontinent who was not white. The term native derives not from what all natives have in common, but is defined in opposition to the category “European,” and thus served as


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67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74

75

a basic racial category. Even in the face of increasingly complicated divisions and subdivisions of the people of India in the course of the nineteenth century, through the emergent colonial modalities such as the census, the term native could be used to describe an entire population, a racial type – the “native of India.” Hindoo/Hindu performed almost the same function, even in the early nineteenth century, except when used in contradistinction to Muslim/Mohammedan/Mussulman. Bengalee/Bengali may be understood as a subset of the category “native,” and was a particularly despicable type in nineteenth-century liberal racialism: the peculiarly effeminate Bengali was often distinguished from other, manlier, more energetic and handsomer Hindoos of northern India. Having clarified this issue, I will drop the quotation marks in all subsequent uses of racialized terms such as native, Aryan, Negro, Mohammedan and Hindoo. Scott, Refashioning Futures. 85. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. 22. Scott, Refashioning Futures. 85. Ibid. 89. Talal Asad, “Conscripts of Western Civilization,” quoted in Ibid. 23. Editor, Deshiya swasthya bigyana: Abhigaman o stri purusha sansarga’ (Indigenous medical science: Sex or the union of men and women) in Chikitsa Sammilani, 1885. Reproduced in Pradip Basu, Samayiki. Purono Samayikpatrer Prabandha Sankalan, vol. 1: Science and Society (Calcutta: Ananda, 1998). 194. Scott, Refashioning Futures. 83. Analyzing a similar anxiety about spilling semen expressed in 1936 by none other than Gandhi, Gyan Prakash suggests while Gandhi’s conquest of sexual desire was crucial to his philosophy of self-control in a manner that might appear to confirm Foucault’s analysis of modern medicine as a self-regulating regime, there was an important difference, evidenced in his rejection of modern medicine as a source of evil (Prakash, Another Reason. 124). While Prakash reads Gandhi’s rejection of modern medicine, and the fundamental difference of the philosophy of brahmacarya, as the limitation of a Foucauldian analysis of biopolitics and governmentality in the colony, my concern is with the thoroughly modern basis of much of the rejection of western medicine, which was premised on the argument that such medicine ultimately fell short of the aims of hygienic self-conduct and even of the governmental rationality of preserving life and governing bodily conduct. As I argue throughout the book, both modern medicine and colonial reason are resisted from within their frames. One might add that if Gandhi’s case is to be read otherwise, it is only because his was an exceptional critique of modernity. Rose, Powers of Freedom. 10.

2 Diagnosing character 1 Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Lord Clive” (January, 1840), in Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review, vol. IV (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1850). 34. 2 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy (1848) 6th edn (London: Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1866). 197. 3 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 100. He describes this as “the rule of the tactical polyvalence of discourses.” 4 Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959). xiv. 5 I am drawing here on Andrew Sartori’s critique of Uday Mehta’s understanding of how “Western … exceptionalism became abstract universalism through the institutional vehicle of empire.” Sartori contends that while the vehicle of empire might (in)adequately explain the universalization of liberal discourse, it does not explain at all its

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9

10

11

12

13

14

Notes “original inclination toward an aggressive mode of abstract thinking.” See Andrew Sartori, “The British Empire and its Liberal Mission,” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 78, no. 3, September, 2006. p. 626. Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 2. C. A. Bayly, “Rammohan Roy and the Advent of Constitutional Liberalism in India, 1800–1830,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 1 (2007). Mary Carpenter, The Last Days in England of the Rajah Rammohun Roy (London: Trubner and Co, 1866). These details are taken from Mr Estlin’s journal, fragments of which are reproduced in Lant Carpenter, A Review of the Labors, Opinions, and Character, of Rajah Rammohun Roy: In a Discourse, on Occasion of His Death ... A Series of Illustrative Extracts from His Writings and a Biographical Memoir, etc. (London: Rowland Hunter, 1833) and Mary Carpenter, The Last Days in England of the Rajah Rammohun Roy. The fear that Europeans were racially unsuited to the climate of West Africa – a fear confirmed by early nineteenth-century mortality rates – first received historical treatment in several works by Philip D. Curtin, especially the influential Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For an analysis of constitutional anxieties of Europeans in India, see Mark Harrison, Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600–1850 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). The historian of anthropology George Stocking Jr, who has written extensively on James Prichard and Victorian anthropology, suggests that the oriental studies of William Jones began to open up perspectives that would have remained unexplored in the use of other classical sources. Prichard saw the developments in oriental studies as an advance in knowledge almost as significant to the study of man as recent advances in zoology (James Cowles Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Man, 1st Reprinted/edited and with an introductory essay by George W. Stocking, Jr (ed.) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973). xxxix). The Orientalist triptych, David Arnold explains, lay in “contrasting the achievements of the ancient Hindu civilization with the destruction and decline of the Muslim middle ages and the enlightened rule and scientific progress of the modern age.” David Arnold, Science, Technology, and Medicine in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 4. The scholarly production on Sir William Jones and the Asiatic Society of Bengal is too vast for me to recount here. For a particularly relevant discussion on his role in the global networks of scientific knowledge production see Kapil Raj, “Colonial Encounters and the Forging of New Knowledge and National Identities: Great Britain and India, 1760–1850,” Osiris 15 (2001). For a critical reading of Jones’ activities in Calcutta see “Sir William Jones and the Pandits: The Legal Research, Poetry and Translations of William Jones” in Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India, 1600–1800 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995). Contesting the then dominant and still persistent historical paradigm that emphasizes Jones’ “disinterested” scholarship and portrays him as “the representative figure of the golden age of late eighteenth-century scholarship which flourished briefly before the onset of colonial insensitivity and blindness,” Teltscher shows how Jones’ work was inevitably circumscribed by the conventions of his time, and by the colonial context. A solid scientific infrastructure was put in place in Calcutta to enable this process. The stretch of Park Street, where the Asiatic Society of Bengal stood since 1808, may be imagined as the axis of power-knowledge in the colonial capital. The massive Indian Museum to house collections of Indian archaeology and natural history was built in 1875. To this was added the Geological Survey of India. Further down Park Street are the offices of the Surveyor-General of India. For a description and map of the

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15


16

17 18 19

20 21

22

administrative, commercial and scientific institutions that depicts the “complex of power and knowledge” in the colonial center, see Partha Chatterjee, Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). 5–8. For a discussion of the “web of relations” that created the Aryan theory, and an argument about the centrality of Aryanism in British imperial culture, not only in India, but also in South-East Asia, the Pacific, and Britain itself, see Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). See, for instance, Janet Browne, “Biogeography and Empire,” in Cultures of Natural History, N. Jardine, J. Secord and E. Spary (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Richard Harry Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986). 215–57. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Harlow: Longman, 1993). 24. The projects of state building in both countries – documentation, legitimation, classification, and the institutions therewith – often reflected theories, experiences and practices worked out originally in India and then applied in Britain, or vice versa (Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 4. For a through survey of mapping, and these men, see Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). This discussion has reflected in part the earlier historiographical contest over the amount of native “collaboration” in modes of colonial economic and social exploitation. For two discrete takes on colonial knowledge see C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. The radical incompatibility of their narratives of colonial power and knowledge is discussed in William Pinch, “Same Difference in India and Europe,” History and Theory 38, no. 3 (1999). The difference between the two rests in part on the power granted to classification. Caricatures apart, it is clear that there is agreement on the question that colonial knowledge was no monolithic formation, it was unstable, contested and hybrid in nature. Yet, the power to classify or reclassify, according to alien terms, lay with the colonizing culture. When the empire did strike back, it was not so much in setting the terms of the classification, but in unsettling these terms by claiming them for their own projects, and putting it to unintended uses. For instance, William Roxburgh’s collection of 2535 natural history drawings is attributed to a group of Indian artists commissioned for the project. Pankaj Kumar Datta suggests that these drawings are an instance of the development of the Company gharana (style) of miniature paintings. The artists used colors traditionally used for miniature paintings: indigo for blue, the Indian verdigras for green. The artists were discouraged from introducing supplementary elements, such as the landscape, clouds in the sky, butterflies, as had been common in the traditional miniatures. Sometimes elements of this form shone through in clever compositions showing both sides of the leaves, or in the juxtaposition of dissected parts with the entire plant. The western idiom shows in the use of light and shade to highlight the size of subjects. Further testifying to the contextual nature of classification, the drawings in Roxburgh’s collection existed in the form of loose sheets. They were first bound together in 1815, and rearranged according to the classification of Joseph Hooker’s Flora of British India in 1912. See Pankaj Kumar Datta, “Roxburgh Icons,” in European Artists and India, 1700–1900, Hiren Chakrabarti (ed.) (Calcutta: Victoria Memorial, 1987).


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23 Raj, “Colonial Encounters.”129. 24 Here, I am using the term hybrid as a mix of diverse elements and a way in which “denied knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority.” See Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 114. 25 William Jones, “The Third Anniversary Discourse, On the Hindus” in The Collected Works of William Jones, Garland Cannon (ed.), 13 volumes (New York: NYU Press [1803]) Volume 3. 34. 26 Monogenetic theories confirmed the Biblical account of creation; for the religious roots of Prichard’s monogenesis, see Hannah Franziska Augstein, James Cowles Prichard’s Anthropology: Remaking the Science of Man in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999). George Stocking also points to the role of religious commitment and biblical orthodoxy as the ultimate roots of Prichard’s faith in the unity of man (George Ward Stocking, “What’s in a Name? The Origins of the Royal Anthropological Institute,” Man 6, no. 3 [1971]). See also his introduction in Prichard, Researches (1973). For the significance of monogenetic thought in the conceptualization of race in general, see Janet Browne, The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 27 Prichard asserted that “the direct authority of history furnishes but a very imperfect insight into the origin of nations ... The permanency of languages is a remarkable fact in the history of mankind, and it appears to be more constant in proportion to the advancement of society.” (See James Cowles Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, 3rd edn. London: Sherwood, Gilbert & Piper: Arch, 1836). 243–48. 28 The analogical aesthetic in the nineteenth century sciences of man, which brought together ethnology, philology and comparative anatomy, and blurred the boundaries between nature and culture, is a recurrent theme in Stephen G. Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). He argues that the relationship between language and man did not merely provide an analogy to the ethnologists, language was read as a synecdoche for race and a sign of racial capacity. 29 James Cowles Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Man (London: J. & A. Arch, 1813). 330–39. 30 Ibid. 356. 31 Ibid. 391. Thomas Trautmann has pointed out that two out of the nine chapters of the Researches were devoted to proving the identity of Indians and Egyptians. Trautmann, Aryans in British India. 169. For a summary of other Jonesian ethnological speculations, see Trautmann, Aryans in British India. 50–2. 32 George Stocking, “A Guide to Prichard’s References,” in Prichard Researches into the Physical History of Man 1973. cxix–cxliv. Stocking’s list suggests that much of the information on Indians was drawn from the works of scholars associated with the Asiatic Society of Bengal, including the Asiatick Researches; or the Transactions of the Society instituted in Bengal, for Enquiry into the History, Antiquities of Asia, 20 volumes. (Calcutta: Military Orphan Press, 1788–1839) (Prichard, Researches [1973]. cxix–cxliv). This does not cover the sources used by Prichard in later editions of Researches. Trautmann has discussed the contributions of the Calcutta Sanskritists to Prichard’s ideas in Aryans in British India. 167–72. 33 Trautmann, Aryans in British India. 15. Trautmann clarifies that the theory did not promote actual feelings of love, but produced a political rhetoric of love and stood as a sign of kinship. 34 Joan Leopold, “British Applications of the Aryan Theory of Race to India, 1850–1870,” The English Historical Review 89, no. 352 (1974). 580. 35 By underplaying the attention to the ideas of physical and physiological difference, and the theories of degeneration and hereditarianism that were equally part of Prichard’s


Notes 197

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ethnology, Trautmann, and others including H. F. Augstein, Nancy Stepan and George Stocking, stop short of fully recognizing the colonial reasons for the success (and subsequent abandonment) of Prichardian ethnology. Trautmann draws a sharp distinction between early and late Prichard, suggesting that Prichard returned to climatic, instead of civilizational explanations of race difference in the later works. Trautmann, Aryans in British India. 172. H. F. Augstein makes the somewhat strange claim that the doctrine of monogenesis was “anti-racist.” Augstein, James Cowles Prichard’s Anthropology. Trautmann, Aryans in British India. 133. Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Man. 111. Henry Harold Scott, A History of Tropical Medicine: Based on the Fitzpatrick Lectures Delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1937–38, 2 vols. (London: E. Arnold & Co., 1939). 5. Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964). Alan Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Nancy Stepan’s work brilliantly demonstrates how “tropicality” and tropical nature were created through the circulation of medical, natural historical and ethnographic images and writing. See Nancy Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2002). David Arnold, Warm Climates and Western Medicine: The Emergence of Tropical Medicine 1500–1900 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996). Browne, “Biogeography and Empire” and Janet Browne, “A Science of Empire: British Bio-Geography before Darwin,” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences et Leurs Application 45 (1992). 425–75. James Annesley, Researches into the Causes, Nature, and Treatment of the More Prevalent Diseases of India, and of Warm Climates Generally, 3rd edn (London: Longman & Co., 1855). 9. Emphasis added. Blumenbach, in fact, defined species in the light of the idea of degeneration: if any observed differences could be attributed to degeneration within a single species, there was no reason to resort to the idea of plurality of origins. See Thomas Bendyshe, The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1865). 191. Blumenbach, “On the natural variety of man” in Ibid. 11. Annesley, Diseases of India. 43. Emphasis added. Ibid. James Ranald Martin, The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions, Including Practical Observations on the Nature and Treatment of the Diseases of Europeans on Their Return from Tropical Climates. Seventh Edition of an Original Work by James Johnson (London: John Churchill, 1856). Ibid. 35. Ibid. 212. Harrison has argued that climatic determinism gave rise to a “doctrine of pessimism,” and that gradually, over the course of the nineteenth century, differences between humans came to be seen as less amenable to environmental influences, as the new conception of difference stressed heredity and innate, unalterable characteristics of the “races” of mankind (Harrison, Climates & Constitutions. 11–20). Critiquing Harrison’s interpretation, Arnold suggests in a recent work that a “doctrine of pessimism” could not have been the dominant discourse; medical doctors saw their task as evading the malevolent effects of place and climate (David Arnold, “Race, Place and Bodily Difference in Early Nineteenth Century India,” Historical Research 77, no. 196 (2004). 261). Frederic J. Mouat, Rough Notes of a Trip to Reunion, the Mauritius and Ceylon: With

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56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65

Notes Remarks on Their Eligibility as Sanitaria for Indian Invalids (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, 1852). 62. James Johnson, The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions; to Which Is Now Added an Essay on Morbid Sensibility of the Stomach and Bowels, as the Proximate Cause, or Characteristic Condition of Indigestion, Nervous Irritability, Mental Despondency, Hypochondriasis, Etc Etc. Preceded by Observations on the Diseases and Regimen of Invalids, on Their Return from Hot and Unhealthy Climates, 4th edn, Enlarged edn (London: Thomas & George Underwood, 1827). 1. For a discussion of the threat perceived in colonial India from mixed populations, see David Arnold, “European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 7, no. 2 (1979) and Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their Critics, 1793–1905 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980). For the simultaneous expression of repulsion and desire in discussions of hybridity in race theory, see Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (London: Routledge, 1995). For a discussion of degeneration as a trope in writing about the lower classes within Europe, see Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, C.1848–C.1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Prichard, Researches (1813). 194. Ibid. 262. Ibid. 195. James Cowles Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, 3rd. edn, vol. IV: Researches into the History of Asiatic Nations (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1844). 237. Ibid. 243. Several scholars have pointed to a justification of gender- and race-based distinction in the formulation of rights, justified as a reading of “nature’s body” in the nineteenth century. See, for instance, Nancy Stepan, “Race, Gender, Science and Citizenship,” Gender and History 10, no. 1 (1998) and sections from Londa L. Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993). Prichard, Researches (1836). 116. Prichard, Researches (1873). 233. Young has also noted that the conflation of culture, civilization and race climaxed in Prichard’s theory. Young, Colonial Desire. 35. Prichard, Researches (1873). 209. H. F. Augstein, James Cowles Prichard’s Anthropology: Remaking the Science of Man in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999). For a shift in emphasis from the first to the later editions of his work, see “Introduction,” Prichard, Researches (1973). The theory of the original blackness of all of humankind was abandoned in the second edition in 1826, possibly because the older theory was becoming strained under the colonial evidence on British mortality and sickness in the colonies; at the same time, the flexibility of Prichard’s theory allowed for a degree of optimism. The complete retreat into the traditional environmentalist arguments in the third edition of Researches (published as five volumes between 1836 and 1847) is explained, according to Stocking, by the fact that by this time, Prichard was grasping at whatever support he could get against the rising polygenist tide. By this time, it was also impossible to tell what exactly explained the variations in mankind; Prichard himself skirted around the issue by avoiding a clear conclusion to his thesis, choosing instead to summarize his evidence in each of the volumes. This flexibility in fact allowed for the Prichardian method to become transformed, but remain useful. But he stood firm on the unity of the races, and the impact of civilization on racial character – savages would be domesticated, improved and civilized.


Notes 199 66 See John Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava, in the year 1827, with an Appendix Containing a Description of Fossil Remains, by Professor Buckland and Mr Clift (London: Henry Colburn, 1829). 12–21. 67 That there was no contradiction between liberalism and polygenetic racialism is evidenced by the fact that John Crawfurd authored a powerful pamphlet propagating free trade. He made a strong case for the improving influence of liberal institutions, arguing that the native of India would acquire the requisite means and taste to enjoy British manufactures as soon as the establishment of English law and order, a rational system of taxation, and the end of oriental despotism ensured that the Indian could enjoy the fruits of his own labor. See John Crawfurd, A View of the Present State and Future Prospects of the Free Trade & Colonization of India (London: J. Ridgway, 1829). 68 Stocking, “What’s in a Name?” 375. 69 Extending an obvious fact from the animal kingdom – that it was impossible to judge from a naked skull if it belonged to a lion, a tiger, a leopard or a panther, he argued that by analogy, skulls were no test of whether men belonged to single species. Crawfurd’s article, “Classification of the Races of Man according to the Form of the Skull,” Journal of the Ethnological Society of London 6 New Series (1866): 127–35 is devoted to debunking Blumenbach. In another article that followed a similar pattern, Crawfurd noted that the color (of skin, hair eyes, etc.) was not sufficient proof of race either, and that climate had no impact on transforming the appearance of humans (an argument he shared with the early Prichard). The Hindu of Cape Comorin, asserted Crawfurd, was no darker than the Hindu of Punjaub (sic.) even though he was located 20 degrees closer to the equator because “Nature has made a color distinction of species in lower animals, and it has done the same, although less definitely, in the races of man; and in both cases, we are equally ignorant of the grounds on which it has done so.” John Crawfurd, “On the Skin, the Hair, and the Eyes, as Tests of the Races of Man,” Journal of the Ethnological Society of London 6 NS (1866). 149. 70 John Crawfurd, “On the Physical and Mental Characteristics of the European and Asiatic Races of Man,” Journal of the Ethnological Society of London 5 NS (1865). 66. Precocity, as a condition that plagued the degenerate, was a popular idea in mid-to late nineteenth-century medical literature, and within this discourse, precocious development in childhood was manifested as arrested growth in adolescence and degeneration in adulthood. The same formula was applied to the development of civilizations. 71 Crawfurd wrote more than 30 articles, elaborating a polygenist thesis following Prichardian methods. The titles of the articles clearly signal both these elements, and include: “On the Aryan or Indo-Germanic Theory,” Journal of the Ethnological Society 1 (New Series) (1861), 268–86; “On the Effects of Commixture, Locality, Climate and Food on the Races of Man,” JES 1 (New Series) (London, 1861), 76–93; “On the Conditions which Favour, Retard, or Obstruct the Early Civilization of Man,” JES 1, 154–77; “On Language as a Test of the Races of Man,” JES 3 (1863), 1–9; “On the Classification of the Races of Man according to the Form of the Skull,” JES 6 (1866), 127–35. 72 Crawfurd, Journal v–vi. It may be useful to keep in mind that Crawfurd was in the Court of Ava to negotiate a treaty after the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26). The British East India Company had been trying to establish favorable trade relations with Burma since the eighteenth century. The War lasted two years, cost the British Exchequer nearly 5 million pounds, led to the deaths of 15,000 British and Indian soldiers and “tens of thousands of Burmese.” As per the Treaty of Yandabo that had been negotiated after the war, the Court of Ava had to cede to the British their territories of Manipur, Arakan and the Tennasserim, allow for an exchange of diplomatic representatives between Aamarapura and Calcutta, and pay an indemnity of 10 million rupees or one million pounds. See Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Crawfurd’s job was to clarify the details of the treaty and ensure the collection of the first installment of the indemnity.


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73 Thomas R. Metcalf, The Aftermath of Revolt: India, 1857–1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). 74 Highlighting the rips in the imperial fabric caused by the event, Jenny Sharpe argues that the exhibition and discussion of the mutilated and ravaged bodies of English women functioned as the “retroactive effect of a terror-inducing spectacle that ushered in a new imperial authority in which a feudal hierarchy was rearticulated as a relationship of race.” See Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 81. 75 Crawfurd, “On the Physical and Mental Characteristics of the European and Asiatic Races of Man.” 76 Metcalf argues after the 1857 revolt “radical reform was not just dangerous, it had ceased to be fashionable.” See Metcalf, The Aftermath of Revolt: India, 1857–1870. 18. Of course, this is an over-generalization. 77 James Hunt, “On Ethno-Climatology; or the Acclimitization of Man,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London 2 (1863). 67. 78 James Hunt, quoted in Stocking, “What’s in a Name?” 376. 79 Hunt scoffed at early ethnological speculations on man’s cosmopolitanism: the belief that the superiority of man within the animal kingdom lay in his ability to “thrive equally well in the burning heat of the tropics and icy regions of the pole,” he asserted, had encouraged an irresponsible policy of colonization in the tropics. That explained why “some plants and animals are peculiar to certain regions, and that if transplanted to other regions, they degenerate or die; the same is the case with man” (Ibid.). 80 Hunt, “On Ethno-Climatology; or the Acclimitization of Man.” 50. 81 The “geography of disease” suggested “the confinement of certain diseases to the tropical (or dysenteric zone), the temperate (or gastric and scrofulous zone), and the cold (or catarrhal) zone.” This explained why the European going to the tropics became subject to dysentery, and the Negro coming to Europe fell victim to pulmonary complaints (Ibid.). 82 “Uncivilized and mixed races have the least power, and the civilized races the greatest” (Ibid.). 83 Colonial works referred to in James Hunt’s article include several works on geography and disease, including J. R. Martin, The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions, Including Practical Observations on the Nature and Treatment of the Diseases of Europeans on Their Return from Tropical Climates (London: John Churchill, 1856), and works on the Indian army, including Julius Jeffreys, The British Army in India: Its Preservation by an Appropriate Clothing, Housing, Locating, Recreative Employment, and Hopeful Encouragement of the Troops, with an Appendix on India (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1858), and general works on Indian disease, including Charles Morehead, Clinical Researches into the Diseases of India (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1860). 84 All quotes are from James Hunt, “Ethno-Climatology,” 60–2. 85 The following details in this paragraph are taken from vignettes drawn from the testimony before a commission on colonization recorded in Select Committee Colonization and Resettlement (India), First Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Progress and Prospects, and the Best Means to Be Adopted for the Promotion of European Colonization and Settlement in India; Together with the Minutes of Evidence (London: 1858). 86 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 30. 87 Colonization and Settlement Committee Report. 10. 88 Ibid. 12. 89 Ibid. 21. 90 Ibid. 25. 91 Stocking, “What’s in a Name?” 378.


Notes 201 92 An investigative modality includes the definition of a body of information that is needed, the procedures by which appropriate knowledge is gathered, its ordering and classification, and then how it is transformed into usable forms such as published reports, statistical returns, histories, gazetteers, legal codes and encyclopedias. Cohn describes the historiographic, travel, survey, enumerative, museological and surveillance modalities. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. 5–11. 93 Hunt quoted in Stocking, “What’s in a Name?” 379. 94 Ibid. 386. 95 Young, Colonial Desire. 28. George Stocking, quoted in Young, Colonial Desire. 45. 96 Nancy Stepan, “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science,” Isis 77 (1986). 261–77. 97 Trautmann, Aryans in British India. This general notion of a shift from cultural to increasingly biologized notions of race is also repeated in Harrison, Climates and Constitutions. 98 Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 15. Amitav Ghosh draws attention to the silence on race in critical studies of liberal thought; I discuss this in some length in the introduction (Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarty, “A Correspondence on Provincializing Europe,” Radical History Review 83 [2002]). 99 Jennifer Pitt, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). 100 Stepan, “Race, Gender, Science and Citizenship.” 29–30. 101 For a rich discussion of liberal imperialism, with its emphasis on improvement, civilization and (arguably) cure, as “the most prominent and fully articulated ethical justification of empire in the nineteenth century” and its breakdown, see Karuna Mantena, “The crisis of liberal imperialism” in Duncan Bell (ed.), Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and Relations in Nineteenth-Centry Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 114. 102 Lawrence Birken, Consuming Desire: Sexual Science and the Emergence of a Culture of Abundance, 1871–1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). 103 A note on the term racialism: while racism is a manifestation of hatred for individuals with physical characteristics different from our own, racialism is a doctrine of human races. Elucidating this distinction, Tzetvan Todorov adds that when a political end is based on such a knowledge of race, and race theory is put to practice, the racialist joins the racist; it is therefore possible to talk of liberal racism in discussing policies erected on racialist doctrines. Examples abound in colonial Indian history – the denial of positions in the Civil Services to qualified Indians, the existence of separate spaces for natives in public places, the denial of military employment to certain natives based on a “Martial Races” theory, the refusal to let a qualified native judge preside over a European’s trial. In the chapters that follow, I trace liberal racialism as an ideology of empire, while pointing to some instances of racist practice. Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought, trans. Catherine Porter, Convergences: Inventories of the Present (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1993). 3 Standard deviation 1 George Combe, A System of Phrenology, 3rd edn (Edinburgh: John Anderson 1860). 599. 2 John Stuart Mill, “Bentham (from Dissertations and Discussions, Volume 1, 1838),” in Utilitarianism and On Liberty, Including Mill’s “Essay on Bentham” and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, Mary Warnock (ed.) (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). 72.


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3 George Murray Paterson, “On the Phrenology of Hindostan,” Transactions of the Phrenological Society (London and Edinburgh: John Anderson, 1824). 435. 4 Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 5 For the British reception of phrenology and its scientific development and popular reception through the century, see Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). My own discussion of metropolitan phrenology is largely drawn from this, and Steven Shapin, “The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy and Social Interests in the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes,” in On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, Roy Wallis (ed.) (Keele: Keele University Press, 1979). 6 Constitution appeared in several editions in Britain and the United States. I have consulted George Combe, The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects (Philadelphia: Richard Magee, 1848). The discussion on the reception of the book and its significance to bourgeois society is based on Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science. 7 Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, Phrenology: Or the Doctrine of the Mental Phenomena (Boston: Marsh, Caoen and Lyon, 1833). 231. 8 See Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982). 9 Prichard, for instance, was a vociferous critic of the science, yet he too encouraged the study of crania as an indicator of racial character. Anon., “Intelligence,” Phrenological Journal and Magazine of Moral Science, vol. 4 (New Series) (Edinburgh: Maclachlan, Stewart and Co. 1841). 295. The notice on the “Queries respecting the human race, to be addressed to travelers and others” drawn up by the British Association in 1839, notes Prichard’s input and the mention of heads: “This is not only good in itself, but is worthy of record as acknowledgement – although a late and imperfect and inadequate acknowledgement – of the assistance and precision which phrenological views have given to anatomical and physiological research ... and of phrenological decisions being the only ones upon which an investigation into national character can be founded.” (295). 10 Spurzheim, Phrenology. 100. 11 These ideas persisted, and an anthropological treatise composed in the 1870s that promoted phrenology as a tool of scientific ethnography, argued that “Nothing ... marks the difference between savage and civilized races, more than the complexity in variety and temperament ... of the latter, as opposed to the uniformity of the former.” See William E. Marshall and G. U. Pope, A Phrenologist Amongst the Todas, or, the Study of a Primitive Tribe in South India: History, Character, Customs, Religion, Infanticide, Polyandry, Language (London: Longmans, Green, 1873). 13. 12 For the connections between phrenology and polygenism, see W. F. Bynum, “Time’s Noblest Offspring: The Problem of Man in British Natural History” (Doctoral Dissertation, Cambridge, 1974). For the connections between phrenology and race science, see David De Giustino, The Conquest of Mind: Phrenology & Victorian Social Thought (London: Croom Helm, 1975); T. M. Parsinnen, “Popular Science and Society: The Phrenology Movement in Early Victorian Britain,” Journal of Social History 8 (1974); Stepan, The Idea of Race. 13 Combe, A System of Phrenology. 30. 14 Stepan, The Idea of Race. xiv. It is surprising that Stepan chooses to emphasize the separation of race science from its cultural and political context, especially in light of her later work, but I do take her point that it was not a deliberate attempt to mislead that drove the scientists, and that race science was not a “pseudoscience,” but even “good” science produced by the standard methods of the time. 15 George Lyon, “Essay on the Phrenological Causes of the Different Degrees of Liberty Enjoyed by Different Nations,” Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 3 (1825). 600.


Notes 203 16 Ibid. 17 George Lyon, “Essay on the Phrenological Causes of the Different Degrees of Liberty Enjoyed by Different Nations – Part 2,” Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 3 (1826). 223. 18 Ibid. 224. 19 Ibid. 225–9. 20 Lyon, “Essay on the Phrenological Causes of the Different Degrees of Liberty Enjoyed by Different Nations.” 605. 21 Ibid. 22 Lyon, “Essay on the Phrenological Causes of the Different Degrees of Liberty Enjoyed by Different Nations – Part 2.” 223. 23 George Murray Paterson, “Letter from Dr Murray Paterson to a friend in Edinburgh,” Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 3 (Edinburgh 1826). 101. 24 Ibid. 25 Paterson “On the Phrenology of Hindostan.” 445. 26 Prichard was explicitly against phrenology, but he granted that the size of skulls held an important key to the study of ethnological difference, an admission which the phrenologists seized as a belated acknowledgment for their science from the father of anthropology. 27 For a discussion of the stereotype as a colonial strategy of rule, see Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 66–70. Bhabha suggests that the stereotype is a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is already known and something that must be anxiously repeated. It is a function of colonial discourse constituting the subject population as a degenerate type on the basis of racial origins, and thus justifying conquest and rationalizing the system of administration and instruction. An important colonial strategy of rule, stereotyping went hand in hand with the scientific classification of colonized populations. 28 For a succinct summary of the concept of “martial races” and its uses in military recruitment, see Thomas R. Metcalf, Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 71–8. For a late nineteenth-century example of colonial stereotyping in practice, see Sanjay Nigam, “Disciplining and Policing the ‘Criminals by Birth,’ Part 1: The Making of a Colonial Stereotype – The Criminal Tribes and Castes of North India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 27, no. 2 (1990); Sanjay Nigam, “Disciplining and Policing the ‘Criminals by Birth,’ Part 2: The Development of a Disciplinary System, 1871–1900,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 27, no. 3 (1990). For a discussion on thuggee (thuggery), see Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). 29 Anon., “On the Life, Character, Opinions and Cerebral Development of Rajah Rammohun Roy,” Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 8 (1834). 30 Ibid. 578. 31 James Straton, Contributions to the Mathematics of Phrenology (Edinburgh: Machlachlan and Co. 1845). 4. 32 Here is the formula, for those interested in replicating the measurements, based on a chart giving the various points mentioned: “To find the average breadth, add the measurements from 5 to 5, 7 to 7, 8 to 8, and from 9 to 9, divide the sum by 4, the quotient is the average breadth. Length: the measurement from 3 to 30 is the average length. Height: add the measurements from 6 to 16, from 1 to 3, and from 22 to 13; divide the sum by 3, the quotient is the average height. Multiply the height by the breadth and the product of the length. The result represents the cubic measure.” Ibid. 8. The chart and formula yielded a result of 186.7320 cubic inches for Rammohun’s skull. 33 Ibid. 16. 34 Ibid. 32. 35 Captain W. H. Sleeman, who headed the department, in 1836 published Ramaseana, or

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45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Notes a Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language spoken by the Thugs, with an Introduction and Appendix, descriptive of the System Pursued by the Fraternity and of the Measures which have been Adopted by the Supreme Government of India for its Suppression (Calcutta: G. H. Huttman, 1836). As it turned out, though, Ramaseana was merely a dialect of Hindustani, commonly spoken by many in northern India. Henry Harpur Spry and Robert Cox, “Some Account of the Gang-Murderers of Central India, Commonly Called Thugs; Accompanied by the Skulls of Seven of Them,” Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 8 (1834). 512. Ibid. Henry H. Spry, Modern India; with Illustrations of the Resources and Capabilities of Hindustan (London: Whittaker and Co. 1837). 164. Spray and Cox, “Some Account ... .” 512–14. Anon., “Review: The Code of Gentoo Laws, or the Ordinations of the Pundits, from a Persian Translation, Made from the Original, Written in the Shanscrit Language. London, 1776,” Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 2 (1825). Ibid. 263. Combe, A System of Phrenology. 200. Ibid. 299. James Montgomery, An Essay on the Phrenology of the Hindoos and Negroes; Showing That the Actual Character of Nations, as Well as Individuals, May Be Modified by Moral, Political, and Other Circumstances, in Direct Contradiction of Cerebral Developments, with Strictures thereon by Corden Thompson (London: E. Lloyd, 1829). 12. Ibid. 15–16. Cordon Thompson, Strictures on Mr Montgomery’s Essay on the Phrenology of Hindoos and Negroes (London: E. Lloyd, 1829). 39. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 53. “The phenomena of the human mind cannot be accounted for on phrenological principles,” was the title of Drummond’s address of April 28, 1827. Paterson’s reply, “The phenomena of mind can ONLY be accounted for on phrenological principles” came three months later. See David Drummond, Objections to Phrenology. Being the Substance of a Series of Papers Communicated to the Calcutta Phrenological Society, with Additional Notes (Calcutta: Printed for the Author, 1829). Paterson, “On the Phrenology of Hindostan.” 445. Drummond, Objections to Phrenology. 186. Lyon, “Essay on the Phrenological Causes of the Different Degrees of Liberty Enjoyed by Different Nations – Part 2.” 223. “Phrenological view on the Question of Colonial Freedom,” quoted in Stepan, Idea of Race. 26. W. F. Richards, “Observations on the Phrenological Standard of Civilization, “Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 9 (1834–36). 360. Ibid. 360. Quoted in Peter Mandler, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 49. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy (1848), 6th edn (London: Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1866). 197. Mandler, The English National Character. See also Stefan Collini, “The Idea of Character in Victorian Political Thought,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 35 (1985). Nancy Stepan, “Race, Gender, Science and Citizenship,” Gender and History 10, no. 1 (1998), Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris (eds), Race, Science and Medicine, 1700–1960 (London: Routledge, 1999).

Notes 205 60 61 62 63 64


65 66

67

68

Combe, A System of Phrenology. 599. Emphasis added. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Boston: Tickner and Fields, 1863). 24. Uday Singh Mehta, “Liberal Strategies of Exclusion,” Politics and Society 18 (1990). Shapin, “The Politics of Observation.” Coolycoomar Doss, “Address Delivered before the Meeting Held at the School Society’s School on June 7, 1845, for the Purpose of Establishing the Calcutta Phrenological Society” (Not dated). 7. Review, “Phrenology of the Hindoos,” review of James Montgomery and Dr Comden Thompson, Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia 1, January–April 1830 (1830). 47. While phrenology disappeared as a measure of race after the 1850s, largely replaced by anthropometrical and craniometrical readings, the “natives” of Calcutta enthusiastically embraced the science. The first Phrenological Society for the natives of Calcutta was formed in 1845. A manual compiled by a member of this Society from the works of Combe and Spurzheim appeared in Bengali as Manattatva Sarasmagraha (Compilation on the essence of mind) in 1849. Popular phrenology continued to have a hold on the public until the 1880s in Calcutta: one Narasinha Chandra Haldar published a series of manuals of instruction on the science, and even advertised demonstrations on the examination of heads for a mere rupee. By this time, phrenology had taken on new meanings, and was used in the choice of marriage partners, servants or for selfevaluation for the natives. While a standard Hindoo skull was no longer viable by the late nineteenth century, the importance of skulls to ethnological inquiries continued. See “Editorial” on the Indian Ethnological Congress, Indian Medical Gazette, a monthly record of medicine, surgery, obstetrics, jurisprudence, and the collateral sciences; and on general medical intelligence, Indian and European, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1866), 229. Dr Barnard Davis, author of the Crania Britannica, outlined a project Crania Indica, and turned to the Calcutta Medical College as a “depot at which skulls may be received in Calcutta and from which they may be forwarded.” Barnard Davis, “Letter to the Indian Medical Gazette,” Indian Medical Gazette, Calcutta, 1867: 24–5. Montgomery, An Essay on the Phrenology of Hindoos. 9.

4 Seeing reason 1 Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973). xiii. 2 Thomas Babington Macaulay, Selected Writings, John Leonard and Thomas Pinney Clive (eds), Classics of British Historical Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). 249. Uday Mehta has suggested that in Macaulay’s imagination, imperial pedagogy “operates in the malleable and concealed space behind the starkness of blood and color to reproduce the familiar, even if somatically refracted, category of being English.” Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 15. 3 W.C.B. Eatwell, “On the Rise and Progress of Rational Medical Education in Bengal, Being an Introductory Lecture, Delivered on 15th June 1860 on the Opening of the Seventy-Fifth Session of the Medical College of Bengal,” Indian Annals of Medical Science (1860). 28. 4 Bramley, General Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI), Copybook of Letters. (West Bengal State Archives, henceforth WBSA). 55. 5 Allan Webb, The Historical Relations of Ancient Hindu with Greek Medicine in Connection with the Study of Modern Medical Science in India: Being a General Introductory Lecture Delivered June 1850, at the Calcutta Medical College, Indian Tracts VI (Calcutta: J. C. Sherriff, Military Orphan Press, 1850). 7.


206

Notes

6 Ibid. 8. 7 Michel Foucault discusses the history of clinical experience as the opening up of the concrete individual to the language of rationality, “that major event in the relationship of man to himself, and of language to things.” Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic. xiv. 8 British rule in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in India is referred to as the “Orientalist” phase: the official policy at this time was that efficient Indian administration had to be based on an understanding of Indian culture. Gauri Visvanathan in her pioneering study on English education has gone so far as to suggest that this phase was marked by “a tacit policy of what may be called reverse acculturation,” to train British administrators and civil servants to fit in with the culture of the ruled. Scholars produced in the wake of such official patronage, William Jones being the most prominent of these scholars, had the dual task of carrying the treasures of the east to the west, and of reintroducing the natives with aspects of their own culture that may have been lost over the years. In an earlier historiography, the Orientalists were often thought of the upholders of a golden age of syncretism, while the Anglicists were seen as the group vigorously advocating western learning and hence “erasing” indigenous learning. In recent years, both parties have been seen as forming a continuum in attitudes towards native governance. See Gauri Visvanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). 27–30. 9 Lynn Zastoupil and Martin Moir, The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843, London Studies on South Asia, no. 18 (Richmond: Curzon, 1999). See also Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest. 101–6. 10 David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773–1835 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). 183–4. Also see Poonam Bala, Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991). This story of a “transition” is challenged in Z. Khaleeli, “Harmony or Hegemony?: The Rise and Fall of the Native Medical Institution, 1822–35,” South Asia Research 21, no. 1 (2001). 11 Ibid. 101. 12 Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute Recorded in the General Department by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Law Member of the Governor General’s Council, Dated February 2, 1835,” in The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843, Lynn Zastoupil and Martin Moir (eds) (Richmond: Curzon, 1999). 166. 13 Mark Harrison gives an account of the early encounters of Europeans with the Indian climates, and the impact of these in theories of health, medicine and settlement. See Mark Harrison, Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600–1850 (New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). He also traces the development of accounts of Indian medicine through five stages, with an increasing distance between the systems with developments in western medicine (Mark Harrison, “Medicine and Orientalism: perspectives on Europe’s encounter with Indian medical systems” in Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India [New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001]). 14 Calcutta Gazette, July, 2 1812; cited in D. G. Crawford, The Indian Medical Service (London: Thacker and Co., 1907). 106. 15 The NMI was established by a government order on June 21, 1822 Board’s collections. No. 20085. Bengal Military. September 15, 1824. 16 April 24, 1826. Letter to Dr Adam, secretary of the Medical Board from Peter Breton, superintendent, School of Native Doctors, No. 9 (Home Medical, National Archives of India). 17 Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the students read from the medical tracts prepared by the Superintendent, and were expected to be able to “describe from memory

Notes 207

18


19 20

21 22 23 24

25

26

27 28

the components and parts of the brain, viscera, bones and structure of the eye.” On Wednesdays and Sundays the students listened to lectures delivered by the Superintendent in Hindustanee, watched the performance of experiments of any kind, and prepared or purified different chemical substances. When not thus engaged, the students were to read the pharmacopoeia and Ramsey’s Materia Medica. In the second year, they started receiving practical instruction at the Presidency General Hospital, the King’s Hospital, the Native Hospital or the General Dispensary in Calcutta. Letter from Peter Breton to the Medical Board, “On the training of native doctors,” April 20, 1826 (Home Medical, National Archives of India). Letter from Peter Breton to the Medical Board on the “Training of Native Doctors,” April 20, 1826 (Home Medical, National Archives of India). The causes of fevers from the Kalpastanum, translated by Dr Heyne Tracts on India, quoted in Whitelaw Ainslie, Materia Indica, or, Some Account of Those Articles Which Are Employed by the Hindoos and Other Eastern Nations, in Their Medicine, Arts, and Agriculture; etc, 2 vols. (London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826). xxix. Heyne did translate a few medical tracts despite the problems he elaborated on; he also suggested that on matters of practical principles, Hindu treatises “are very similar to our own, [and] even their theory can be reconciled with ours if we make allowance for their ignorance of anatomy, and the imperfections of the physiological speculations.” Quoted in Frederic J. Mouat, “Hindu Medicine,” Calcutta Review 8, no. 16 (1847). 398. Benjamin Heyne, Tracts on India, quoted in David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 50. Nancy Stepan, “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science,” Isis 77 (1986). 261–77. Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India, 1600–1800 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995). As Edmund Burke put it: “We need no longer go to History to trace it in all its stages and periods … now the Great Map of Mankind is unroll’d at once: and there is no state or Gradation of barbarism, and no mode of refinement, which we have not at the same instant under our View.” (Edmund Burke to William Robertson, June 9, 1777). See P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Dent, 1982). For a discussion of the congruence between philology and biology later in the century see Stephen G. Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). See Whitelaw Ainslie, Materia Indica; Frederic J. Mouat, An Atlas of Anatomical Plates of the Human Body (Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press, 1849); John Forbes Royle, An Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine; Including an Introductory Lecture to the Course of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, Delivered at King’s College (London, 1837); Allan Webb, Pathologica Indica, or, the Anatomy of Indian Diseases, Medical and Surgical: Based Upon Morbid Specimens from All Parts of India in the Museum of the Calcutta Medical College; Illustrated by Detailed Cases, with the Prescriptions and Treatment Employed, and Comments, Physiological, Practical and Historical, 2nd edn (London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1848). I am referring here to the scholarship generated in the wake of Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Ashis Nandy and Shiv Visvanathan “Modern Medicine and its Non-Modern Critics,” in A. Marglin Frédérique and Stephen A. Marglin (eds), Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture, and Resistance, Wider Studies in Development Economics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 170.


208

Notes

29 Mouat quotes from Lord Teignmouth’s edition of The Works of Sir William Jones. Frederic J. Mouat, “Hindu Medicine.” 399. 30 Ibid. 400. 31 Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, “Preface,” Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta. Vol. 1 (Calcutta: Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, 1825). iv. 32 Madhusudan Gupta (ed.) The Sushruta, or System of Medicine Taught by Dhanwantari, and Composed by his Disciple, Sushruta (in Sanskrit) (1825), for instance, was reviewed along with T. A. Wise, Commentary on the Hindu System of Medicine, (1845), in The British and Foreign Medical Review: Or Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine and Surgery 46 (April, 1847): 521–44. 33 Royle, An Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine. William Jones, “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India” The Works of Sir William Jones, vol. 3 (London: John Stockdale, 1807). 319–97. 34 Thomas A. Wise, Review of the History of Medicine, vol. 1 (London: J. Churchill, 1867). 35 Ibid. xxxi. 36 Ibid. xlix. 37 Ibid. xi–xv. 38 Ibid. lxxvi. 39 William Jones, Discourses Delivered before the Asiatic Society: and Miscellaneous Papers on the Religion, Poetry, Literature, etc. of the Nations of India, volume 2 (London: Charles S. Arnold, 1824). 39. 40 Ainslie, Materia Indica. 41 Ibid. xii. 42 Thomas A. Wise, Commentary on the Hindu System of Medicine (Calcutta: Smith, Elder and Co., 1845). xxxi. 43 In June, 1850, Webb delivered an introductory lecture to the students of the College on The Historical Relations of the Ancient Hindu with Greek Medicine in Connection with the Study of Modern Medical Science in India. 44 Ibid. 15. 45 Ibid. 20. 46 Ibid. 8. 47 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, according to Foucault’s account of modern medicine, doctors began to describe “what had remained under the threshold of the visible and expressible,” not because of a new breakthrough technology, but because the relationship between the visible and the invisible changed in structure. At this time, “a new relationship was forged between words and things, enabling one to see and say.” The last years of the late eighteenth century saw a “mutation in medical knowledge,” a rupture from “medicine’s basic tools as far back as the Greeks,” as the clinic appears “as a new outline of the perceptible and statable,” which included the welding of the disease onto the organism. This shift is captured in the changed question the doctor puts to the patient: no longer “what is the matter with you?” but “where does it hurt?” Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic. xii–xviii. 48 Hua Shou’s Shisijing Fahui (1341) and Vesalius’ Fabrica (1542) are compared in Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine (New York: Zone Books, 1999). 49 Russell C. Maulitz, Morbid Appearances: The Anatomy of Pathology in the Early Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 50 For a discussion of the superfluity of organs, and hence of dissection, in the Ayurvedic corpus, see Francis Zimmermann, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats: An Ecological Theme in Hindu Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). For a discussion of the body in Ayurveda, and its colonial and postcolonial transformations, see Jean Langford, Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance

Notes 209


51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71

(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). For a discussion on how the findings of anatomy are constrained by the universe of discourse of the anatomist, see Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. For an example of ruptures within the western system, of the switch from the “singlesex” to a “two-sex” model of the body as an instance of how “believing is seeing,” see Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). Zimmermann, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats.164. In this sense, what we call physiology today is the science of organic functions, while in Ayurveda, is it quite the opposite, a medicine of virtues and properties, a medicine of metamorphoses. (Ibid. 167). Kenneth Macleod, “Introductory Lecture on the History of Anatomy in India Delivered at the Opening of Session 1879–80,” Indian Medical Gazette (1879). 183. Ibid. 10. The idea of science became central to the practice of medicine in nineteenth-century Britain. The rhetoric of science in medicine served the function of imparting on the medical doctor an enhanced status as a man of science, while the surgeon was dissociating himself from his status as a craftmanlike apprentice attached to surgical training. See W. F. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Kopf, British Orientalism. 184. Letter to D. Riddell, Secretary and Superintendent of the Madrassah from John Tytler, superintendent of the NMI, dated February 1, 1831. (GCPI, Copybook of Letters). Letter from John Tytler to the General Committee of Public Instruction, dated August 10, 1829. (GCPI, Copybook of Letters, WBSA). “Correspondence and Proceedings, as to teaching of Avicenna and printing of several Arabic books,” May 20, 1833 (GCPI, Copybook of Letters, WBSA), 234. Detached extracts from The Calcutta Literary Gazette, in John Tytler “Essays on native education, and the study of Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian” (OIOC Tracts). Tytler, GCPI, Copybook of Letters, WBSA, May 1829. Ibid. Tytler, February 1, 1831 (GCPI, Copybook of Letters, WBSA). Letter from John Tytler to James Hutchinson, secretary, Medical Board. No. 33, Home, Medical, March 12, 1831 (GCPI, Copybook of Letters, WBSA). John Tytler on the subject of translating scientific works into the Arabic, GCPI, Literary Proceedings, Pro. 17, February 1830. No. 335C. To H. H. Wilson from John Tytler, dated 1828 (GCPI, Copybook of Letters, WBSA). Peter Breton, “Preface,” A Vocabulary of the Names of the Various Parts of the Human Body and of Medical and Technical Terms in English, Arabic, Persian, Hindee and Sanscrit for the Use of the Members of the Medical Department in India (Calcutta: Printed at the Government Lithographic Press, 1825). Tytler’s testimony in “Report of the Committee to look into the state of Native Medical Education submitted to Lord William Bentinck,” OIOC, Board’s Collection. Bengal Military. March 1836. No. 10. To H. H. Wilson, Secretary, GCPI, from C. Colebrooke, J. E. Metcalf, C. B. Trevelyan and E. Ranken, dated February 12, 1829 (GCPI, Copybook of Letters, WBSA). “Report of the Committee to look into the state of Native Medical Education submitted to Lord William Bentinck,” OIOC, Board’s Collection. Bengal Military. March 1836. No. 10. Quoted in Homi K. Bhabha, “Sly Civility “ in The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha (ed.) (London: Routledge, 1994). 101. “Report of the Committee to look into the state of Native Medical Education submitted to Lord William Bentinck,” OIOC, Board’s Collection. Bengal Military. March 1836. No. 10. Emphasis added.


210

Notes

72 The study of anatomy by human dissection, prescribed as an antidote to the confusion of tongues, and to native superstition, failed to put to rest the contradictions of liberal education. The switch to the twin signs of reason – English and human dissection – was achieved fairly smoothly at the Calcutta Medical College, but the students of the “English Class” – hybrid monsters – repeatedly failed to meet the needs of the Medical Board. A Hindustani (or Military) Class was attached to the College in 1842 to fulfill the rising demand for medical assistants. As students with a sufficient facility with Hindustani could be found in Lower Bengal, a Bengali Class was created in 1851. Several plans were proposed to deal with the problem of translation in the years that followed. Committees were formed to discuss the advantages of translation, the advantages of transliteration over translation, or the transcription of the English words in vernacular scripts. The problem persisted well into the nineteenth century; a particularly interesting case, to understand the limits of liberal racialism, is that of Rajendralala Mitra, described as “the first of India’s Sanskritists,” who was asked to provide a plan for the drafting of European scientific terms into the vernaculars of India in 1877. Significantly, Mitra dwelt not so much on the inability of the vernaculars to contain scientific information, as others had done, but on the aesthetics of translation, and which he discussed in analogy with racial transformations, by conjuring up images of a loss of racial purity, through hybridity, degeneration, and ultimately, annihilation. See Rajendralala Lala Mitra, A Scheme for the Rendering of European Scientific Terms into the Vernaculars of India (Calcutta: Thacker Spink & Co., 1877). For a discussion of Mitra see Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, 96; and Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000). 50–3. 73 Bentinck’s “Minutes on Medical Education,” January 25, 1835, from C. H. Phillips (ed.), The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, 1824–1835, vol. II (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977). 2. 74 By colonial anatomy I mean both the colonial renditions of Ayurvedic texts, and the discourses about and practice of anatomical study in colonial Calcutta. I do not discuss anatomy in ancient India, except when I recall colonial discourses on ancient Indian anatomy. For a discussion on Ayurvedic traditions of the study of anatomy, see Kenneth G. Zysk, “The Evolution of Anatomical Knowledge in Ancient India, with Special Reference to Cross-Cultural Influences,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106, no. 4 (1986). Zysk follows the framework of Ludwig Edelstein’s study of Greek anatomy to look for anatomical knowledge produced through sacrifice, chance observation and dissection, and argues for a Greek–Hindu exchange of anatomical ideas, while leaning towards the thesis that the impetus for such knowledge originated in Greece, rather than in India. I am more persuaded by the argument that anatomical knowledge was not crucial to the conception of the Ayurvedic body. 75 J. E. D. Bethune who commissioned the portrait had been aware of the pedagogic function that the image could serve at the Calcutta Medical College. See Mahendralal Sarkar (ed.), “Calcutta Medical College,” Calcutta Medical Journal: A Monthly Record of the Medical and Auxillary Sciences 4, no. 5. 76 The status of Gupta as first dissector is preserved to this day; despite an attempt in 1876 to restore the identity of the four students who accompanied him. In the Calcutta Medical Journal in 1873, the editors ran a series of articles on the misrepresentation of Madhusudan Gupta as the “first dissector” and tried to guess the names of the four students who had in fact, carried out that famed first dissection at the Calcutta Medical College (Ibid.). Instead of restoring this history, I am more concerned in the production of a misrepresentation, and its continued use as an icon in the annals of colonial medicine. 77 Nicholas Dirks argues that “in comparative sociology and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol of India, indexing it as fundamentally different from other places as well as expressing its essence.” While scholars such as Louis Dumont


Notes 211 have suggested that caste is misunderstood in the west as it is fundamentally opposed to the modern values of individualism and equality, Dirks shows that caste, as we know it today, is a modern phenomena, produced by the contact between India and western colonial rule (Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001]). 1–5. In the discussion of the study of human anatomy in India too it was the colonial definition of caste that was invoked as marking India’s essential difference from the west, and from modernity in general. 78 For further details on Burke’s case, and the practice of acquiring corpses for dissection by grave-robbers, and in this case, through murder, as well as an interesting account of the social impact of the Anatomy Act of 1832, see Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (London: Phoenix Press, 2001). 79 The following table by F. J. Mouat gives some indication of the number of dissections carried out in the medical schools. In his report on the Medical College Mouat insisted that each student should be able at least to dissect every portion of the human frame twice to get a correct knowledge of practical anatomy. (OIOC. Board’s Collection), General Report on Public Instruction in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1843–44 (Calcutta: 1845). Year

No. of dissections in Bengal

1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844

60 120 170 174 521 304 344 508

80 OIOC Board’s Collection, General Report on Public Instruction in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1848–49 (Calcutta: 1849). 81 John Tytler, “Preface,” Translation into the Arabic of the Anatomist’s Vade Mecum, OIOC Tracts, 11. 82 Robert Knox, The Races of Men: A Fragment (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850). 7. 83 “Bramley’s Report,” OIOC. V/24/947. 84 Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). 172. 85 Gourinath Sen Kabiranjan, Saririka Svasthya Vidhana. Rules for the Preservation of Health. In Bengalee (Calcutta: n. p., 1862). 14. 86 Wise, Review of the History of Medicine, vol. 1. ii. Emphasis added. Wise was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh, a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of London and Edinburgh, a Member of the Royal and Chirurgical Society of London and Edinburgh, and had served in India in the Bengal Army, as Secretary to the General Committee of Public Instruction in Bengal, and as Principal of the Hooghly and Dacca Colleges. 87 Ibid. lxxxvii. 88 Londa L. Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993). 191. 89 Webb, Historical Relations. 2. Emphasis added. 90 Ibid.


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Notes

91 As per a despatch to the Revenue Department, February 18, 1824, in the extracts from a public general letter from the Court of Directors to the General Department, dated 5 September 1827 (GCPI, Copybook of Letters, WBSA). 92 Bramley’s Report, OIOC. Board’s Collection. 32. 93 Ibid. 37–40. 94 Report of the GCPI of the presidency of Fort William of Bengal for the year 1837. Report on the Examination of senior students. To H. T. Prinsep, secretary to the Government of India, from S. Nicholson, surgeon, General Hospital; J. Grant, surgeon and Apothecary to the East India Company; J. R. Martin, presidency surgeon and surgeon, Native Hospital; D. Stewart, MD, Assistant Surgeon, superintendent general of vaccination, Calcutta, November 21, 1838. 95 “Bramley’s report,” OIOC. V/24/947. 96 Calcutta Medical College, General Report on Public Instruction in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1846–47 (Calcutta: 1847). 84. 97 Upon being removed from their environment, “the young men would learn to think in English … The salutary separation of these students from their present habits; their observation of the world under circumstances different from which what they have been accustomed to; and their contemplation of the position which the profession they seek to acquire, holds in Europe; would tend to form their character and give them one of feeling, sentiment, principle and demeanor which it would be in vain to expect of imparting here” (Report of the General Committee of Public Instruction to the presidency of Fort William in Bengal for the year 1837 ([Calcutta, 1837], 94). 98 In the nineteenth century, there was a surge in the number of Indians undertaking sea voyages. Many faced opposition from their families or caste groups: Gandhi had to undergo expiatory ceremonies after his return from England. In the late nineteenth century, there was a public debate on the issue, in newspapers and social reform organizations. There was little agreement on whether all sea voyage was banned to high-caste Hindus, and whether violations of the taboo should lead to excommunication. In 1892, sea-voyage supporters organized a committee comprised of eminent Bengalis such as Surendranath Banerjea. The committee gathered evidence that proved that overseas travel was perfectly in accordance with tradition. A strong argument in support of such mobility was the social, political and economic progress that it could contribute to. For a discussion of this, see Susmita Arp, Kalapani: Aum Streit Über Die Zulässigkeit Von Seereisen Im Kolonialzeitlichen Indien (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2000). 99 A prominent Calcutta native, Babu Dwarkanath Tagore offered to take two students to England at his own expense; three students volunteered to go, and H. H. Goodeve, professor of anatomy and surgery at the Calcutta Medical College, a prime mover in the “experiment,” offered to pay for the third one. The Board still refused to sanction the plan, and it was only after considerable effort by Goodeve, who raised enough money from the Nuwan Nazim of Bengal to include a fourth student, that the ship set sail. An entire decade had gone by before the plan was sanctioned (OIOC. Board’s Collection Council of Education Consultation No. 6–7). 100 S. Goodeve-Chuckerbutty, “Appointment of Natives of India to the Indian Covenanted Services by Competitive Examinations, and the Advantages Offered by a Visit to Europe, Illustrated by a Brief Narrative of Personal Travels. June 1, 1855,” in Popular Lectures on Subjects of Indian Interest (Calcutta: T. S. Smith, 1870). 56. 101 Half yearly report from Dr Mouat to the Government of Bengal, submitted on April 8, 1847, Board’s Collections, May 26, 1847, Nos. 6–9. 102 Board’s Collections, December 29, 1847, Nos. 12–13. 103 “Testimonies” appended to Popular Lectures. 104 Goodeve-Chuckerbutty, “Appointment of Natives.” 53. 105 Ibid. 52. 106 Ibid. 47.


Notes 213 107 S. Goodeve-Chuckerbutty, “Present State of the Medical Profession in India. February 2, 1864,” in Popular Lectures on Subjects of Indian Interest (Calcutta: T. S. Smith, 1870). 137–9. 108 Goodeve-Chuckerbutty, “Appointment of Natives.” 56. 109 Prakash, Another Reason. 144–5. 110 Editors, “The Bethune Society,” Calcutta Review 16, no. 32 (Calcutta, 1851): 483–500. 111 Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). 5. 112 S. Goodeve-Chuckerbutty, “Necessity of Forming a Medical Association of Bengal, Address to the Medical Faculty of the Calcutta University. May 27, 1863,” in Popular Lectures on Subjects of Indian Interest (Calcutta: T. S. Smith, 1870). 135. 113 Ibid. 136. 114 Bhabha discussed in Young, Colonial Desire. 23. 115 Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic. 197. 5 Sanitary subjects 1 John Stuart Mill, “Civilization.” Originally published in London and Westminster Review, April 1836, Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, vol. 1 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1873). 186. 2 Norman Chevers, The Sanitary Position and Obligations of the Inhabitants of Calcutta. A Lecture Delivered before the Bethune Society, Calcutta, on the 13th November, 1862. (Calcutta: BC Lepage and Co., 1863). 2. 3 “Proceedings of the Committee upon the Fever Hospital and Municipal Improvements, Tuesday 9th November 1847,” in Fever Hospital Committee, Second Report (Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press). Emphasis added. 4 Allan Webb, Pathologica Indica, or, the Anatomy of Indian Diseases, Medical and Surgical: Based Upon Morbid Specimens from All Parts of India in the Museum of the Calcutta Medical College; Illustrated by Detailed Cases, with the Prescriptions and Treatment Employed, and Comments, Physiological, Practical and Historical, 2nd edn (London: W. H. Allen, 1848). 217. 5 Anthony King lists 30 flexible criteria to define the “colonial city,” characterized by a dualistic economy dominated by non-indigenes engaged in a parasitic relation with the indigenous rural sector, occupational segregation by ethnic group, and a spatial plan that combines a grid pattern of town planning with racial segregation, with a large difference in the population densities between the areas of the colonial elite and native population. See Anthony King, Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity (London: Routledge, 2004). 16–20. For a description of Calcutta’s dual city, see Pradip Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1978). 7. 6 Swati Chattopadhyay suggests that theories on such a clear division of the city rests on scant evidence, on a static reading of urban plans and a reluctance to move between the city scale and the architectural scale. See Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism and the Colonial Uncanny (London: Routledge, 2005). 7 This summary draws on Nicholas B. Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2006). 8 Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History. 13. 9 For discussions of the bazaars and commercial networks in the region, see C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) and Anand A. Yang, Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Gangetic Bihar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).


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10 Francois Bernier, French physician, traveler, and author of the famous Travels in the Mughal Empire AD 1656–1668, quoted in James Ranald Martin, A Brief Topographical and Historical Notice of Calcutta: With a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Sanitary Improvement in the East Indies (London: Privately printed, 1847). 5. 11 James Ranald Martin, Notes on the Medical Topography of Calcutta (Calcutta: G. H. Huttmann, 1837). 8–9. 12 For a description of the evolution of a dual city, see P. J. Marshall, “Eighteenth-century Calcutta,” in Colonial Cities: Essays on Urbanism in a Colonial Context, Robert Ross and Gerard J. Telkamp (eds) (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1984). 87–104. 13 Wellesley’s minute, quoted in Rhoades Murphey, “The City in the Swamp: Aspects of the Site and Early Growth of Calcutta,” The Geographical Journal 130, no. 2 (1964). 14 Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History. 15 David B. Smith, Report on the Drainage and Conservancy of Calcutta (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1869). 4. Emphasis added. 16 William A. Cohen, “Introduction: Locating Filth,” in William A. Cohen and Ryan Johnson, Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005). xvi. 17 This idea, further elaborated later, is drawn from Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 18 Webb, Pathologica Indica (London: W. H. Allen and Co, 1848). 232. 19 According to statistics collected by James Jameson in Bengal Medical Board, the mortality was in excess of 10,000 in several districts. In Calcutta and its suburbs, there were nearly 37,000 cases of cholera between mid-September 1817 and mid-July 1818, although the number of deaths reported is significantly lower at 2,382. See David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 161–3. 20 R. J. Morris, Cholera, 1832: The Social Response to an Epidemic (London: Croom Helm, 1976). See also Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). 21 Morris, Cholera, 1832. 21. 22 Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). 23 James Kennedy, The History of the Contagious Cholera: With Facts Explanatory of Its Origin and Laws, and of a Rational Method of Cure (London: J. Cochrane and Co., 1831). 13. 24 Ibid. 21–9. 25 The problem that quarantine posed to trade has been noted by Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine, 1859–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Arnold, Colonizing the Body. 26 Whitelaw Ainslie, Observations on the Cholera Morbus of India: A Letter Addressed to the Honourable Court of Directors of the East India Company (London: Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen, 1825). 25. 27 Ibid. 87. 28 James Annesley, Sketches of the Most Prevalent Diseases of India: Comprising, a Treatise on the Epidemic Cholera of the East; Statistical and Topographical Reports of the Diseases in the Different Divisions of the Army under the Madras Presidency; Embracing Also the Annual Rate of Mortality, &C of European Troops: And Practical Observations on the Effects of Calomel on the Alimentary Canal, and on the Diseases Most Prevalent in India. Illustrated by Tables and Plates (London: Thomas and George Underwood, 1825). 149–51.


Notes 215 29 Charles E. Rosenberg, Explaining Epidemics and Other Studies in the History of Medicine (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 298. 30 James Annesley, Researches into the Causes, Nature, and Treatment of the More Prevalent Diseases of India and of Warm Climates Generally, 3rd edn (London: Longman & Co., 1855). 8. 31 Kenneth Mackinnon, A Treatise on the Public Health, Climate, Hygiene and Prevailing Diseases of Bengal and the North-West Provinces (Kanpur: Cawnpore Press, 1848). 6. 32 MacKinnon, Ibid. 35. 33 Rosenberg, Cholera Years. 40. 34 Ibid. 65. 35 Arnold, Colonizing the Body. 172–8. 36 For more on cholera and pilgrimage, see Ibid. 37 Rabinow, French Modern. 37. 38 Sir Joseph Fayrer, Inspector-General Sir James Ranald Martin (London, 1897), 19–42, passim. 39 For a detailed discussion of James Ranald Martin and his work, see Mark Harrison, Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600–1850 (New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 43. 40 Martin, Notes. 98. 41 Martin, Brief Topographical and Historical Sketch. 13–17. 42 Fever Hospital Committee, Abridgement of the Report of the Committee Appointed by the Right Honorable the Governor of Bengal for the Establishment of a Fever Hospital and for Inquiring into Local Management and Taxation in Calcutta (Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press, 1840). 153. 43 Nancy Stepan, “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science,” Isis 77 (1986). Emphasis added. 44 In an analysis of French work of this genre, Michael Osborne suggests that colonial medical topographers criticized Montesquieu for overemphasizing the role of environment in modifying human character, and suggested that the forces of social institutions and morals easily overpowered climatic determinations. See Michael A. Osborne, “The Geographical Imperative in Nineteenth Century French medicine,” in Nicolaas A. Rupke, Medical Geography in Historical Perspective (London: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2000). 45 Martin gave two estimates of this “population”: the number was 179,917 (with 13,138 Christians; 48,168 Mahomedans; 118,203 Hindoos and 414 Chinese) by one estimate, and 229,714 (3,138 Europeans; 4,746 Eurasians; 3,181 Portuguese; 13,677 Western Mahomedans, 45,067 Bengal Mahomedans, 17,333 Western Hindoos, 120,318 Bengal Hindoos, 19,084 low castes and others, including French Chinese, Armenians, Jews, Moguls, Parsees, Arabs, Mugs, Madrasses, [sic] Native Christians, of less than 1,000 each), by another (Martin, Notes. 44). There was greater consensus on the character of the diverse “native” population than on the actual numbers. 46 Fever Hospital Committee, Abridgement. 3. 47 Martin, Notes. 53–5 passim. “Owing to the better food and clothing of the Mahomedan portion of the inhabitants of Calcutta, but one in 38 1/2 die annually, whereas of the Hindus, the annual mortality is one in 17 1/3.” The lower mortality rates observed amongst the Muslims of Bengal was attributed to “the more rational religion of Mahomed [which] permits a better system of diet to its followers, and they are therefore on the whole more robust and more capable of sustaining effort than their Hindoo brethren,” he added. 48 Ibid. 52. 49 Ibid. 48. 50 “When we reflect on the habits and customs of the natives, their long misgovernment,

216

51


52

53 54

55

56 57 58 59 60

61

62

63

Notes their religions and morals, their diet, clothing etc., and above all their climate, we can be at no loss to perceive why they should be what they are.” (Ibid. 52). Martin, The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions, Including Practical Observations on the Nature and Treatment of the Diseases of Europeans on their Return from Tropical Climates. Seventh Edition of an Original Work by James Johnson. (London: John Churchill). 35. Martin, Notes. 45. “Place such a body of men in a district over run with noxious weeds and timber, and fast degenerating into a morass, and can there exist any rational doubt that they will clear it sooner, and longer preserve it in that improved state, than men of a different disposition? Place in a similar situation, or even in a district thus improved, a body of men who are idle and intemperate, and the immediate result will be, that the soil will deteriorate for want of proper care, the weeds will re-appear, the drains will become obstructed,” he continued. Ibid. 45. Waltraud Ernst comments on this transformation of questions of politics, rights and morals, into questions of nature, biology and culture, through the mediation of science and medicine; this is particularly true of the liberal empire. Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris (eds), Race, Science and Medicine, 1700–1960 (London: Routledge, 1999). The metaphor of sickness was not uniquely reserved to describe Calcutta, Paris too was dubbed a sick city, and Haussman had appeared in the guise of the surgeon. For a description of cholera, criminality, the problem of population growth, the erotic pathologies of urban civilization, see “Introduction” to Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes: In Paris During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York: H. Fertig, 1976). Fever Hospital Committee, “Abridgement.” 2. Ibid. 53–5. Reginald Craufuird Sterndale, Municipal Work in India; or, Hints on Sanitation, General Conservancy and Improvement in Municipalities, Towns, and Villages. (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co, 1881). 78. Ibid. For a discussion of the significance of the marketplace in eighteenth-century colonial India, and the ideology of free trade to colonial expansion, see Sudipta Sen, Empire of Free Trade: The East India Company and Making of the Colonial Marketplace (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). My description of the marketplace is drawn from Sen’s study. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Open Space/Public Place: Garbage, Modernity and India,” South Asia 14, no. 1 (1991). 22. See also Warwick Anderson, “Excremental Colonialism: Public Health and the Poetics of Pollution,” Critical Inquiry 21, no. 3 (1995). Kristeva, Powers of Horror. 65. Kristeva argues that subjectivity and position in a social order require that the improper and the unclean in the self be rejected and expelled. At the level of the individual self, any object that disturbs the borders of the body provokes horror. The horror is provoked by the blurring of self: eating, defecating, disease, death, reproduction, are processes that transgress bodily boundaries. This abjection of waste is not annihilation, it exists in the borders of the embodied self, threatening the constitution of the self, but also defining its existence. The borders of the self, and of society, are constantly produced through regulation and abjection. I find this particularly useful in considering bodily interactions and social relations in the socalled dual city, where the boundaries of the self, and of various parts of town were eminently fluid and constantly defined in relation to hygienic anxieties; it also nicely links sanitary projects to the definition of modern selfhood, and the regulation of society that were so important in nineteenth-century Calcutta. The Salt Lake City was ultimately built on the drained lake in postcolonial Calcutta. See

Notes 217


64

65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92

Haraprasad Chattopadhyaya, From Marsh to Township, East of Calcutta: A Tale of Salt Water Lake and Salt Lake Township (Bidhan Nagar) (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1990). Fever Hospital Committee, Second Report of the Committee Appointed by the Right Honorable the Governor of Bengal for the Establishment of a Fever Hospital and for Inquiring into the Local Management and Taxation of Calcutta (Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press, 1846). Ibid. 5. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 45–6. David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (London: Routledge, 2003). 252. Fever Hospital Committee, Appendix G to the Report of Committee upon the Fever Hospital and Municipal Improvements: Containing a copy of the Minute of the Draining of the Salt Water Lake, by the governor general (Lord William Bentinck, K.C.B) in the Financial and Revenue Departments dated 2nd February 1830, and its Connected Papers (Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press). 2. For a clear and concise discussion of the drain theory, see Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 (Delhi: Macmillan, 1983). Second Report. Fever Hospital. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 53. Fever Hospital Committee, Appendix G. 49. Mill, “Civilization.” For a discussion of this idea, see Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959). See John Stuart Mill on race in Chapter 2. Ibid. 39. John Crawfurd made a strong case for the improving influence of liberal institutions, arguing that the native of India would acquire the requisite means and taste to enjoy British manufactures as soon as the establishment of English law and order, a rational system of taxation, and the end of oriental despotism would ensure that the Indian could enjoy the fruits of his own labor. See John Crawfurd, A View of the Present State and Future Prospects of the Free Trade & Colonization of India (London: J. Ridgway, 1829). Sen, Empire of Free Trade. 100. Florence Nightingale, “How Some People Have Lived, and Not Died, in India: A Paper Read at the Social Science Congress, Norwich, October, 1873,” (OIOC Tract, 1873). F. W. Simms, “Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. X” Report on the Establishment of Waterworks to Supply the City of Calcutta. With Other Papers on Watering and Draining the City (Calcutta: Military Orphan Press, 1853). 10–13. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 36. Fever Hospital Committee, Abridgement. 33–4. Initially, the Native Hospital had only treated surgical cases; between 1833 and 1837, the medical cases (2,333) exceeded surgical cases (1,561). Hindoo, Muslim and Christians all applied for admission in great numbers, the number of Hindoos to Muslims was reported at three Hindus for every Muslim. The Hindoos seeking admission were almost exclusively of the laboring classes. Ibid. 101–3. Ibid. 131. Ibid. 137. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 4. Uday Singh Mehta, “Liberal Strategies of Exclusion,” Politics and Society 18 (1990).


218

Notes

93 Nancy Stepan, “Race, Gender, Science and Citizenship,” Gender and History 10, no. 1 (1998). 94 I am evoking Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and Modern City (London: Verso, 2003) here. 95 Thomas Osborne, “Security and Vitality: Drains, Liberalism and Power in the Nineteenth Century,” in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government, Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (eds) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 103. 96 See, for instance, Margaret Pelling, Cholera, Fever and English Medicine, 1825–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 97 Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, with Two Lectures and Interview with Michel Foucault, G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 97. 98 Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 72. 6 Sensing modernity 1 Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality with Two Lectures and an Interview with Michel Foucault, Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 95. 2 David Scott, Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 86. 3 Khitindranath Thakur, Kalikataye Chalaphera Sekale O Ekale (Walking through Calcutta Then and Now) (Calcutta: n. p., 1930). 4 Dominique Lapierre, The City of Joy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985). 5 I paraphrase Michel De Certeau, “Walking in the City,” in Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life, Margaret and Judith Farquhar Lock (eds) (Durham: Duke University Press, 1984). 6 Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1986). 7 The self-governing liberal subject “is watchful, of itself and others; this essentially observational quality, at a discursive level, involved privileging vision as the sense through which the self was to develop.” See Chris Otter, “Making Liberalism Durable: Vision and Civility in the Late Victorian City,” Social History 27, no. 1 (2002). 2. 8 Thakur, Kalikataye Chalaphera Sekale O Ekale. 21–8. 9 While citizenship was apparently premised on an idea of the apparently disembodied individual citizen of modernity, it was predicated on a white, male norm. Nancy Stepan suggests that in the colonial setting the history of embodiment must be part of a history of citizenship and its limits. Elaborating on this, Warwick Anderson discusses “biomedical citizenship”: a term that encapsulates the “simultaneously disciplinary and interpellating roles played by medicine and sanitation in eliciting performances of civic virtue.” He argues that colonial hygiene was a liberal strategy of deferral, not exclusion, in the sense that natives could be trained to behave hygienically to embark on a career of citizen-subject, in the future. The suggestive term is introduced, but not fully elaborated on in Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). 10. 10 Thakur, Kalikataye Chalaphera Sekale O Ekale. 82. Thakur used the term in explaining how the streets to his home had been blocked off to lay the lines for the new tramway in the 1880s, and the letters of protest his family sent in were ignored, “for the company was a saheb company, and we were but native niggers. At that time, Bharatvasis were classified as native, even if he was wealthy; at that time, he had not earned the right to be addressed as an Indian.” The English terms were transliterated into Bengali.


Notes 219 11 James Holston, Cities and Citizenship (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). 2. 12 Ibid. 3. 13 For a discussion of liberalism, technology and “self understanding,” see Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose, “Introduction,” Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 14 Chris Otter, “Making Liberalism Durable.” 1. 15 Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 73. 16 Calcutta Town Improvement, General Report of the Commissioners for the Improvement of the Town of Calcutta for the Year 1857 (Calcutta: Military Orphan Press, 1858). 17 Chris Otter, “Cleansing and Clarifying: Technology and Perception in NineteenthCentury London,” Journal of British Studies 43, no. 1 (2004). 18 Bengal Sanitary Commission, First Annual Report of the Sanitary Commission for Bengal, 1864–65; with Appendix, Containing Returns of Sickness and Mortality among Troops in the Bengal Presidency from 1858 to 1864; Together with the Resolution of the Governor General of India in Council Thereon, Dated 15th December, 1865 (OIOC: Printed by order of the House of Commons, 1866). 63. 19 See, for instance, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 20 H. H. Beverley, “The Census of Bengal,” Journal of Statistical Society of Bengal, XXXVII, 1874, quoted in Timothy L. Alborn, “Age and Empire in the Indian Census, 1871–1931,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30, no. 1 (1999). 21 H. H. Beverly, Report of the Census of the Towns and Suburbs of Calcutta. Taken on 17th February 1881 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1881). 22 Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London: Verso, 2003). 117. 23 Hugh Tinker, The Foundations of Local Self-Government in India, Pakistan and Burma (Praeger: Pall Mall Press, 1968). 24 Bengal Sanitary Commission, First Annual Report of the Sanitary Commission for Bengal, 1864–65. 61. 25 Bengal Sanitary Commission, First Annual Report of the Sanitary Commission for Bengal for 1868; with Selected Extracts from the Forty District Reports; Special Remarks on These; General Observations Regarding Sanitation in Bengal, Appendices, Etc. (Calcutta: Alipore Jail Press, 1969). 120. 26 Peter Mandler, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), Stefan Collini, “The Idea of Character in Victorian Political Thought,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 35 (1985). 27 Joyce, Rule of Freedom. 120. 28 Nagendra Natha Ghose, Destruction of Municipal Self Government in India. The Proposed Municipal Law for Calcutta – a History and Criticism (London: Morton and Burt Printers, 1899). 7. 29 Rose, Powers of Freedom. 72. 30 Joyce, Rule of Freedom. 65. 31 Bhairab Chandra Dutt and Anukul Chandra Mitra, “Preface,” in The Bengal Municipal Act: Being Act III of 1884 (B.C.), as Amended by Acts III of 1886 and IV and VI of 1894 (B.C.), with Notes and an Appendix (Calcutta: Rai Babadur M. C. Sarkar and Sons, 1895). 32 Ibid. 7–9. 33 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 143.


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34 Government of India, “Bengal Vaccination Act, 1880. (Bengal Act V of 1880); as Modified on 1st June 1902,” Legislative Department (ed.) (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1902). 35 On public vaccination, resistance to it, and special accommodations for the middle classes, see David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 133–50. 36 Sir John Strachey in S. W. Goode, Municipal Calcutta; Its Institutions in Their Origin and Growth (Edinburgh: Issued by the Corporation of Calcutta [by] T. and A. Constable, 1916). 159. 37 Lt Abercrombie’s suggestion in 1837, quoted in Ibid. 166. 38 Ibid. 167. 39 Dutt and Mitra, Bengal Municipal Act. 8. 40 Foucault, History of Sexuality. 135–45. 41 S. J. Thomson, Sanitary Principles: More Especially as Applied to India (Calcutta: Brown & Co., 1883); Dutt and Mitra, Bengal Municipal Act. 1. 42 From the Municipal Commissioners of the town of Calcutta to F. J. Halliday the Lt Governor of Bengal 15 April, 1858; Town Improvement Calcutta, General Report of the Commissioners for the Improvement of the Town of Calcutta for the Year 1857. 43 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986). 44 Calcutta Corporation, Proceedings of an Ordinary Meeting of the Municipal Corporation of Calcutta Held at the Town Hall, 7th March 1864, Containing a Full Report of Baboo Ramgopaul Ghose’s Speech Regarding the Suppression of Burning Ghats on the Banks of the Hooghly (Calcutta: Calcutta Corporation, 1864). n.p. 45 Ibid. n.p. 46 Government of Bengal to Government of India, Home Department, June 17, 1897, India Home Municipal Proceedings, Vol. 5419, 1898, in Chris Furedy, “Lord Curzon and the Reform of the Calcutta Corporation 1889: A Case Study in Imperial Decision Making,” Bulletin of the Victoria Memorial XI (1977). The following discussion is drawn from Furedy’s article. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, lieutenant governor of Bengal, described the clique as “a body consisting of five lawyers, two journalists, one ground landlord, one piece-goods dealer, and an attorney’s clerk,” and probably included the following active Bengali commissioners: Surendranath Banerjea (Editor of the Bengalee, elected ward commissioner 1876–1899); Bhupendranath Basu (High Court solicitor, elected commissioner 1892–1899); Devaprosad Sarvadhikari (High Court solicitor, elected commissioner 1895–1899); Narendranath Sen (Attorney and journalist, elected commissioner 1881–1899); N. N. Ghose (barrister and journalist, elected commissioner 1885–1899); Najin Behari Sircar (Merchant, elected commissioner 1889–1899); Pryanath Mullik (pleader, elected commissioner 1892–1899). These men were all affiliated to either the Indian Association or the British Indian Association and were Congress’ supporters. However, only four of them served extended terms upon the general committee, and they did not necessarily vote together as a bloc. 47 Ghose, Destruction of Municipal Self Government in India. 48 Ibid. 15. 49 Ibid. 16. 50 Swati Chattopadhyay, “Blurring Boundaries: The Limits Of ‘White Town’ In Colonial Calcutta,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59, no. 2 (2000). 51 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Open Space/Public Place: Garbage, Modernity and India,” South Asia 14, no. 1 (1991). 22. 52 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 71. 53 David B. Smith, Report on the Drainage and Conservancy of Calcutta (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1869). 104.


Notes 221 54 Dominique Laporte, History of Shit. Nadia Benabid and Rodolphe El-Khoury, (Trans.), (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). 55 “Minute by the President of the sanitary commission of Bengal of 1864.” John Strachey, in Smith, Report. 56 Charles Metcalf, Official Papers on Calcutta Municipal Affairs (Calcutta: n. p. 1876 OIOC Tracts). 4. 57 Ibid. 5. 58 For the symbolic and practical importance of the management of excrement by colonial regimes, see also Warwick Anderson, “Excremental Colonialism: Public Health and the Poetics of Pollution,” Critical Inquiry 21, no. 3 (1995). 59 Goode, Municipal Calcutta. 169. 60 In a brief history of garbage, Dipesh Chakrabarty argues that a discourse on crowds, disease and filth was not exclusive to western perceptions of India, nor “Orientalist” constructions of the other, but that it spoke “the language of modernity, of civic consciousness and public health, of even certain ideas of beauty related to the management of public space and interests, an order of aesthetics from which ideals of public health and hygiene cannot be separated” (Chakrabarty, “Open Space/Public Place: Garbage, Modernity and India.”16–17). Sudipta Kaviraj has noted that the control and regulation of urban space and eliciting the conformity of the power in the use of public spaces in accordance with bourgeois notions of hygiene and order were central to the assertion of middle-class social supremacy in the city (Sudipta Kaviraj, “Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices About Space in Calcutta,” Public Culture 10, no. 1 [1997]). 61 David B. Smith, Report on the Drainage and Conservancy of Calcutta. 10. 62 Goode, Municipal Calcutta. 168. 63 Ibid. 118. 64 Ibid. 18. The slight discrepancy in numbers is the source. 65 In his report, David B. Smith mentions the figure of 57 ton of night-soil as being thrown into the Hooghly, daily, although the total quantity removed ought to have been closer to 74 ton, given that the total population of 354,874, according to the census, with 291,415 adults and 63,459 children, producing an average quantity of 8 ounce per adult and 4 ounce per child, according to a memorandum by Mr Hogg. Based on a calculation of 8 ounce per head per day on average for adults and children, and a population of 400,000, Smith calculated that the total night-soil of Calcutta amounted to 89 ton daily. Smith, Report. 104. 66 Ibid. 14. 67 From Indian Medical Gazette, July, 1866, quoted in Ibid. 68 Ibid. 14. 69 Dr Ward, quoted in Ibid. 16. 70 Lt Abercrombie, quoted in Goode, Municipal Calcutta. 148. 71 Smith, Report. 11. 72 Health Officer’s Reports cited in Ibid. 73 Goode, Municipal Calcutta. 170. 74 Ibid. 171. 75 Metcalf, Official Papers on Calcutta Municipal Affairs. 125–30. 76 Goode, Municipal Calcutta. 77 Vijay Prashad, “The Technology of Sanitation in Colonial Delhi,” Modern Asian Studies 35, no. 1 (2001). 155. 78 Partha Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds) (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989); Partha Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989). 79 Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001).


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80 Joseph S. Alter, “Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India,” The Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 1 (1994). 81 Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women.” 623. 82 A formal Indian national discourse on eugenics did not develop until the early twentieth century. Indeed, the term itself did not occur in global scientific literature until the modern field was formulated and popularized by Francis Galton in 1883. For a discussion of eugenics in India, see Sanjay Srivastava, Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities, and Culture in South Asia (New Delhi: Sage, 2004); Sarah Hodges, “Indian Eugenics in an Age of Reform” in Reproductive Health in India, Sarah Hodges (ed.) (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006). 83 Fever Hospital Committee, Abridgement of the Report of the Committee Appointed by the Right Honorable the Governor of Bengal for the Establishment of a Fever Hospital and for Inquiring into Local Management and Taxation in Calcutta (Calcutta: 1840). 84 Supriya Guha, “The Nature of Woman: Medical Ideas in Colonial Bengal,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 3, no. 23 (1996). 25. 85 Rudolf Virchow famously proclaimed “ a woman is a pair of ovaries with a human being attached, while a man is a human being furnished with a pair of testes.” Quoted in Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men (New York: Basic Books, 1992). For discussion on the ovaries in constructions of femininity and hysteria, see Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830–1980 (London: Virago, 1987); Cynthia Eagle Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). For an account of hysteria in nineteenth-century medical literature produced in Bengal, see Guha, “Nature of Woman.” 86 Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 6–7. 87 Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question.” 233–53. See also Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). 88 Anne McClintok cites critical interventions in feminist scholarship that argue that while women are construed as symbolic bearers of the nation, they are denied national agency. See Anne McClintock, “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family,” Feminist Review 44, no. 1 (1993). 89 The focus on the pathological representations of women’s bodies dominated nineteenth-century medicine in general, with the woman represented as not-quite-man, or the woman’s sexual organs being understood as the “inversion” or underdeveloped versions of the male organs, and so on. In India, women’s bodies were read for the signs of the pathologies of the entire race, and its social structures and religious customs. Maneesha Lal argues that the bio-medical community presented practices such as the purdah as a chief cause of illness amongst women. See Maneesha Lal, “Purdah as Pathology: Gender and the Circulation of Medical Knowledge in Late Colonial India” in Reproductive Health in India: History, Politics, Controversies, Sarah Hodges (ed.) (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006). 90 Fever Hospital Committee, Abridgement. 62–3. 91 Ibid. 64. Emphasis added. 92 Foucault, History of Sexuality. 153. 93 Ibid. 148. Bhabha insists that while in Foucault’s writings on sexuality, racism emerges as a historical retroversion, something that “haunts and doubles the contemporary analytic of power and sexuality and may be subversive of it,” power must be “thought in the hybridity of race and sexuality,” which allows us to see “racism” “as part of the historical traditions of civic and liberal humanism that create ideological matrices of national aspiration, together with their concepts of ‘a people’ and its imagined community.” See Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). For an exhaustive discussion on the “problem” of race in Foucault’s work, see also Ann Laura


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95

96 97 98 99 100

101 102 103 104 105

Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). It is important to remember that the heuristic separation of blood/sex as signifying two distinct regimes of power is not chronologically broken, but marked by overlaps, interactions and echoes; preoccupations with blood and the law have haunted the modern administration of sexuality. Foucault traces the rise of modern racism precisely to this overlap, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the thematics of blood lent its historical weight to revitalizing a type of political power that was exercised through the devices of sexuality. Racism, in its modern, biologizing, statist form, took shape at this time, when the whole politics of settlement, population, family, marriage, education, social hierarchization and property, and a set of permanent interventions at the level of the body, conduct, health and everyday life, were justified in the name of the purity of blood and the triumph of the race (148). While Foucault highlights the moment of Nazism as the high point of this interface, colonial disciplinary regimes offer plenty of instances of this interface between “blood” and “sex” in “normal” discussions of race science and colonial policy. In the next century, a physiological and statistical confirmation of the ill effects of purdah came in Kathleen Olga Vaughan, The Purdah System and Its Effect on Motherhood. Osteomalacia Caused by Absence of Light in India, Etc (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1928). See also Lal, “Purdah as Pathology.” For a wonderful discussion of the “production of Muslim women as invisible and oppressed/backward in the written history of late colonial Bengal, equally by the politics of phallocentrism and majoritarianism and the modern discourses of liberal feminism and nationalism,” see Mahua Sarkar, Visible Histories, Disappearing Women: Producing Muslim Womanhood in Late Colonial Bengal (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). For a critique of Aryan glory in relation to the question of women, see Uma Chakravarty, “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism and a Script from the Past,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial Indian History, Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds) (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989). Sumanta Banerjee, “Marginalization of Women’s Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Bengal,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds) (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989). Dhai is also spelt dhaee. However, for the purposes of standardization the former spelling has been utilized throughout this book. Geraldine Hancock Forbes, Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 81. Gangaprasad Mukhopadhyaya, Matrisiksha, Arthat Garbhabasthaye O Sutikagirehey Maatar Ebang Balyabastha Parjanta Santaner Swasthyarakshabishayak Upadesh, 2nd edn. (Calcutta: Shashibhushan Chakrabarti, 1902). This literature is surveyed in Guha, “Nature of Woman.” For a comprehensive discussion on what may be termed a science of motherhood and the marginalization of the dhai, also see Samita Sen, “Motherhood and Mothercraft: Gender and Nationalism in Bengal,” Gender and History, 5, no. 2 (1993): 231–43. Mukhopadhyaya, Matrisiksha. 10–11. Ibid. 5–12. Ibid. 33. This is akin to the “privilege of the child and the medicalization of the family,” see Michel Foucault, “The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century,” in Power, James D. Faubion (ed.) (New York: The New Press, 2000). 96. Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, Paul Rabinow (ed.) (New York: The New Press, 1997). Foucault is concerned here with the early Roman empire, but concludes with hints about the transformation of these technologies from the late eighteenth century to the present. 249. Bengali works


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on the theme include Giribala Mitra, Ramanir Kartavya: Hints on Domestic Life to Hindu Housewives (Calcutta: 1888), Girijaprasanna Raychaudhuri, Griha-Lakshmi: Moral Instructions to Hindu Women on Their Domestic and Social Life in The Forms of a Conversation between Husband and Wife (Calcutta: 1887), Girijaprasanna Raychaudhuri, Dampatir Patralapa: A Novel Containing Advice to a Wife on Social and Domestic Topics in The Form of Correspondence (Calcutta: 1896), Isanacandra Vasu, Stridigera Prati Upadesa. Advice to Females on Social and Domestic Duties in the Form of Letters (Calcutta: 1886), Jagatchandra Majumdar, Nitigarbha Prasuti Prasanga. A Work on the Duties of Women in The Rearing and Education of Children (Calcutta: 1871). 106 Foucault, History of Sexuality. 146. The reverse – a move from discipline to regulation – applied in the case of the other two technologies: birth control and the psychiatrization of perversion. 107 Mukhopadhyaya, Matrisiksha. 232–33. 108 Ibid. 241. 7 Degenerate nation 1 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 44. 2 Norman Chevers, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for Bengal and the NorthWestern Provinces (Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1856). 481. 3 Editor, Deshiya swasthya bigyana: Abhigaman o stri purusha sansarga (Indigenous medical science: Sex or the union of men and women) in Chikitsa Sammilani, 1885. Reproduced in Pradip Basu, Samayiki. Purono Samayikpatrer Prabandha Sankalan, vol. 1: Science and Society (Calcutta: Ananda, 1998). 194. 4 Masturbation was a commonly discussed theme in the half a dozen or so scientific journals that were published in Bengali in the 1880s and 1890s; articles on child marriage and masturbation include “Bibaha Bishayak eta Deshiya kupratha” in Bibidartha Samgraha, (1908), “Bibaha Bichara” in Chikitsa Sammilani (1888), “Jatigata swasthya o bibaha” in Swasthya (1901), “Bibahapana o Swasthya” in Swasthya, (1901), Sri Pyarimohana Sengupta Kabiraj, “Hastamaithune balak o nabayubakagana” in Chikitsa Sammilani, 1892. For a selection of articles on health and medicine, psychiatry, ethnography, population, language and music, see Basu, Samayiki. The journals extracted in the compilation include Bibidartha Samgraha (1851–61), Rahasya Samdarbha (1862–74), Bangamahila (1875–76), Bigyan Darpan (1884), Chikitsa Sammilani (1885–94), Chikitsak o Samalochak (1895–1901), Swasthya (1898–1901). 5 Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, C.1848–C.1918, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 230. 6 This refers to an observation made in a different context altogether by Hubert Lyautey, a French field marshal whose battalion conquered Morocco in 1912, and quoted like a mantra in several critiques of medicine in empire, including Waltraud Ernst, and Bernard Harris (ed.), Race, Science and Medicine, 1700–1960 (London: Routledge, 1999). 4. 7 For a thorough analysis of these developments in the sciences of the body, see Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993). 8 John Roberton, Essays and Notes on the Physiology and Diseases of Women, and on Practical Midwifery (London: John Churchill, 1851). The book was largely a compilation of a series of articles published by Roberton in the 1840s on menstruation among the “Hindus,” “Negroes,” “Esquimaux” in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. This kind of a comparative analysis of the menstrual cycle, based on a juxtaposition of historical and natural historical evidence to comprehend racial difference was quite crucial to the Prichardian method discussed in Chapter 1. Roberton’s

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9

10 11

12 13

14

15

16

analysis, it turned out, was quite useful to Prichard’s thesis: before Roberton, Prichard had reluctantly attributed the differences in menarche among different races to climatic influences. Roberton’s findings, which allowed Prichard to de-emphasize climatic effects, were incorporated in later editions of Prichard’s work. See, James Cowles Prichard, The Natural History of Man; Comprising Inquiries into the Modifying Influence of Physical and Moral Agencies on the Different Tribes of the Human Family, 2nd edn. (London: H. Baillière, 1845). 486. Roberton, Essays and Notes on the Physiology and Diseases of Women, and on Practical Midwifery. Roberton’s eclectic sources included Monstuart Elphinstone’s History of India. W. Adam’s Reports on Education in Calcutta, N. B. Halhed’s A Code of Gentoo Laws, and Allan Webb’s Pathologica Indica. He had obtained his statistics on puberty for Bengal from Dr Goodeve, professor of midwifery at the Calcutta Medical College, who had obtained his information from Madhusudan Gupta, whom we have encountered as the “first dissector” of India. Gupta, in turn, had obtained the information via the husbands of Bengali women studying at the College. While this extended relay seems to confirm the difficulties associated with this kind of information gathering, Roberton’s missionary informant from Madras had assured him that the task was easy, for the onset of puberty was often marked publicly in a manner “disgusting to any English mind” – the poorer classes wore flowers at the back of their heads to mark the occasion, while the rich celebrated with feasts (160). Goodeve’s table, based on 90 cases, established the average age of menarche among Hindus as 12 years; a study of 2,169 cases from England established the English average as 14 years. Roberton clarified that the later dates for the commencement of puberty in Bangalore, for instance, were not to be explained by its “salubrious” location, but by the fact that the “revolting custom” of early marriage was not as common there as in Bengal. Ibid. 22. Cynthia Russett, in a critique of the representation of women in Victorian medicine, draws attention to the contrast between the ideas on womanhood in the writings of Mill and Darwin, suggesting that Mill’s emphasis on nurture over nature was necessarily liberating for women – a formulation that gets complicated in the colony. See Cynthia Eagle Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 1. See John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, “On the Subjection of Women” (1869), in Essays on Sex Equality, Alice S. Rossi (ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). The concern with domesticity and the “women’s question” as a crucial part of the civilizational critique of India, and a prominent trope in James Mill’s The History of British India (1817), is discussed in Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Difference-Deferral of a Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Modernity in British Bengal,” History Workshop Journal 36 (1993). 4. As Uday Singh Mehta points out, imperial pedagogy was at the heart of the argument for “empire’s at least temporary necessity and foreseeable prolongation.” (Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999]. 2.) The liberal pedagogic regime is discussed at length in Chapter 3. Liberal intervention into the woman question was central to what Lata Mani has termed the dominant narrative of colonialism: “We came, we saw, we were horrified, we intervened.” See Lata Mani, “Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multiple Reception,” Inscriptions 5 (1989). 18. An example from Webb’s catalog: “Specimen 204, the external parts of the organs of generation of a young Mohammedan female displaying laceration of the perineum and a considerable portion of the vaginal sheath, the effects of violence done to the parts on the first act of copulation, by which a violent hemorrhage to the destruction of the child (barely twelve years old) was occasioned.” Allan Webb, Pathologica Indica, or, the

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17 18

19 20

21 22 23 24

25 26

Notes Anatomy of Indian Diseases, Medical and Surgical: Based Upon Morbid Specimens from All Parts of India in the Museum of the Calcutta Medical College; Illustrated by Detailed Cases, with the Prescriptions and Treatment Employed, and Comments, Physiological, Practical and Historical, 2nd edn (London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1848) 285. Allan Webb, Pathologica Indica. 254–60. Ronald B. Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste and Clan in Middle Period Bengal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). Inden explains the concept of “Kulinism” as marriage of young girls to ritually superior Kulin Brahmin men in an effort to improve the ritual status of the girl’s families; such an improvement was thought to be possible only when the girl’s body was still “pure” – the girl ought not to have attained puberty. A Kulin could thus marry between ten to fifty wives, visiting each only occasionally, sometimes just once, during the marriage ceremony. The multiple widows had to live with all the constraints of widowhood in Bengal. See also Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 142–4. Pick, Faces of Degeneration. 72. For a discussion of degeneration in race theory see Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982). For tropical degeneration see Nancy Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2002). For a discussion of colonial Indian treatises on the impact of climates on constitutions see Mark Harrison, Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600–1850 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). Chevers, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for Bengal and the North-Western Provinces. 8. Emphasizing the extreme pathological condition of the Bengali, Chevers introduced the section on the “criminal characteristics” of the people of India by contrasting the “Rajpoots” and the Bengalis. Ibid. T. B. Macaulay, quoted in Ibid. 5–7. Ibid. 479–84. Chevers quoted Manu to support his thesis about the illiberal treatment of women by Hindus: “In infancy, her father should guard her; in youth, her husband should guard her; and in old age, her children should guard her; for, at no time, is a woman fit to be treated with liberty.” (515). Hinduism sanctioned early marriage, early marriages resulted in young widows, young widows were abandoned by families, and fell to immoral ways – this was the chain of events explaining prostitution in India. Statistics confirmed his theory: “Calcutta, with a population of about 416,000 supports 12,419 women of ill fame … London, with its 2,000,000 inhabitants, is said to contain not more than seven or eight thousand.” (489). The pathologies that affected women were covered in over a hundred pages in the later 1870 edition. See Norman Chevers, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India: Including the Outline of a History of Crime against the Person in India, 3rd edn. (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co, 1870). 671–774. Nizamat Adawlut Reports, January–March 1858, 5. Quoted in Chevers, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for Bengal and the North-Western Provinces (1870). 695. This is not intended to suggest that women were only read as signs of cultural pathology; western medicine and medical care was extended to Indian women at this time, especially after the establishment of the Countess of Dufferin Fund for Supplying Medical Aid to the Women of India in 1885. See Geraldine Forbes, “Medical Careers and Health Care for Indian Women: Patterns of Control,” Women’s History Review 3, no. 4 (1994). In the early to mid-nineteenth century, interventions in female health had been largely confined to the lock hospitals that treated native prostitutes for venereal disease. In the latter half of the century, there were widespread attempts at encouraging

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28

29 30 31

32

33 34 35 36

37

38

39

the hospitalization of childbirth in Lying-in Hospitals, while traditional dhais or midwives were gradually being replaced by experts. The Calcutta Medical College even started accepting female students in 1883. Mahendralal Sarkar, “Babu Keshub Chunder Sen’s Circular Letter Addressed to Certain Medical Gentlemen of Calcutta and Their Replies Thereto,” Calcutta Journal of Medicine: A Monthly Record of the Medical and Auxiliary Sciences 4 (1871). 251. Samachar Darpan, 21 March 1835. Quoted in Monmayee Basu, “Hindu Women and Marriage Law: From Sacrament to Contract,” in Women and Law in India, Sudhir Chandra and Monmayee Basu (eds) (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004). 39. D. B. Smith, quoted in Sarkar, “Keshub Chunder Sen’s Letter.” Ibid. 252. Soorjocoomar Goodeve-Chuckerbutty, in Ibid. 260. Dr Chevers had a novel, if odd, solution to the problem of establishing “the range of ages at which naturally Indian women would attain puberty” – by scrutinizing the cycles of “some hundreds of carefully brought up widows of child- husbands.” From Dr T. E. Charles, May 4, 1871, in Ibid. Emphasis added. Charles argued that just as horse breeders placed ponies and mares in close proximity in confined space to hasten sexual maturity amongst the animals, in Bengal, the “universality of early marriage” had established a pattern of premature menstruation amongst women, which had become hereditary over time. Dr D. B. Smith’s response to “Babu Keshub Sen’s letter.” Ibid. 272. Dr D. B. Smith, Ibid. 272. Sarkar, Ibid. 253. Mahendralal Sarkar insisted that an increase in the age of marriage would be wholly consistent with indigenous knowledge as well, for Sushruta, the most ancient Ayurvedic authority, had concluded that Indian girls did not menstruate before the age of 12. (Ibid. 266). The act was opposed by many sections of the population, including a section of the Brahmos, who did not wish to dissociate themselves from the main body of the Hindus. Ultimately, the act was limited to apply only to those who declared that they did not belong to the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Mohammedan, Parsi, Buddhist, Sikh or Jaina religion. The bill also clarified that “In order to guard against the Act being used inferentially to throw a doubt on the validity of marriages contracted otherwise than under its provisions, it is provided that, if the validity of any such marriage shall be questioned in any court, it shall be decided as though the Act had not been passed” (Government of India – Legislative “Act 3 of 1872,” Narrative of the Course of Legislation by the Council of the Governor General during the Official Year 1871–72 [Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1872]. 32). Gyan Prakash suggests that a body that is the object of hygienic regulations and medical intervention is a body that is different from indigenous discursive treatments of the person. See Gyan Prakash, “Body Politic in Colonial India,” in Questions of Modernity, Timothy Mitchell (ed.) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). Mitchell responds to this by pointing to a double difference in the “staging of modernity,” as biopower creates a new difference between the body itself, and its meanings. The proliferation of significations created by modern governmental power, each a representation of the same physical body, establishes the object reality of the body. See Timothy Mitchell, “The Stage of Modernity,” in Questions of Modernity. A very sophisticated and wide-ranging historiography on the Act of 1891 has considered the social context and consequences of the discussions conducted before and after the passage of the Act. These rich analyses range from discussions on social reform and the women’s movement, to the concept of rights and modernity, questions of identity visited through discussions on Hindu nationalism, race and masculinity, and processes


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43 44

45 46 47 48

Notes of modern power in the extension of colonial hegemony through the use of medical expertise in the social reform question, and the establishment of allopathy as the hegemonic medical formation in the 1890s. See, most notably, Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995); Himani Bannerji, “Age of Consent and Hegemonic Social Reform,” in Gender and Imperialism, Clare Midgeley (ed.) (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1998); Tanika Sarkar, “Enfranchised Selves: Women, Culture and Rights in NineteenthCentury Bengal,” Gender and History 13, no. 3 (2001). I build on these discussions to draw the consent controversy into a larger narrative about modern sex, moving from legal documents to a medicalized (pre)history of the Act, to suggest that some of the contradictory aspects of the Act vis-à-vis women (in Bengal in particular) are best explained in the light of this particular discourse on sex, race and the body. “Empress v. Hari Mohun Maiti.” Bengal Judicial Reports. L/PJ/6/288, File 1866. The following narrative of witnesses is entirely drawn from this. I will refer to this as “Empress v. Maiti” in subsequent references. The pagination is not consistent and continuous; I have tried to provide file numbers and/or page numbers where possible. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). This argument is developed in several articles, including Sarkar, “Enfranchised Selves”; Tanika Sarkar, “A Prehistory of Rights: The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial Bengal,” Feminist Studies 26, no. 3 (2000); and Tanika Sarkar, “Rhetoric against the Age of Consent. Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child Wife,” Economic and Political Weekly 28 (September 8, 1993). 1869–78. Developing Sarkar’s analysis, I will argue, instead, that discussions that followed Phulmoni’s death were not solely based primarily on a reactionary turn to the scriptures, but drew on a secular appraisal of her body, which unfortunately came no closer to acknowledging her legal personhood, or enlightened justice; this is a hunt for rights in the wrong place. Empress v. Maiti. 8. Due to the prevalence of child marriage in India, the legal age of consent was intended to apply equally within and outside marriage, thus giving rise to the anomaly (in relation to Britain) of the recognition of “marital rape,” an anomaly which generated much indignation. The state had chosen the politically expedient path of using an indirect way to deal with the issue of child marriage, by paying lip service to the myth of a relegation of marriage to the personal and religious realm while extending the age of consent to marital relations in India. This quick-fix backfired as much of the opposition to the Age of Consent Act 1891 was centered on its implications within marriage. Dated Calcutta September 1, 1890. From W. J. Simmons to the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bengal (Testimonial). Empress v. Maiti. 2. Emphasis added. From the Hon. Secretary, Public Health Society of Calcutta to the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bengal, Calcutta, dated September 1, 1890. Empress v. Maiti. (IOR/L/PJ/6/287 File 1770). Letter from Surgeon Kenneth Macleod, Professor of Surgery, Medical College, Calcutta to the Inspector General of Hospitals, dated 19 August, 1890. Empress v. Maiti. 13. I call this proto-eugenic as the full-blown theory of eugenics, the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race was not formulated until the twentieth century. The term was coined by Francis Galton in 1883. In India, too, sexuality, Swarajya (self-government) and eugenics came together most comprehensively in the 1920s and 1930s. For more on the vernacular discussion of eugenics, see Sanjay Srivastava, “Introduction: Semen, History, Desire and Theory,” Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia (New Delhi: Sage, 2004). See also Sanjam Ahluwalia, “Controlling Births, Policing Sexualities: A

Notes 229

49 50


51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58

59

60 61 62 63 64

History of Birth Control in Colonial India, 1877–1946.” (PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2000). 35. Judy Whitehead, “Modernising the Motherhood Archetype: Public Health Models and the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 29 (1995). “Letter from Mr A. Sankariah, president founder, Hindu Sabha, Trichoor, to the Secretary of the Government of India, Legislative Department, dated November 22, 1890.” In Express v. Maiti. “Papers relative to the Bill to amend the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1882 (Age of Consent Bill),” IOR/L/PJ/6/297, File 424, February 18, 1891. Empress v. Hari Maiti. File No. 162. Emphasis added. Secretary of the Jalpaiguri Dharma Sabha, quoted in Empress v. Maiti. File No. 140. The Bali Sadharani Sabha, “An Appeal to England to save India from the Wrong and Shame of the Age of Consent Act” (IOR/L/PJ/6/306, File 1683, September 23, 1891). To appreciate the full significance of this strange observation, one needs to turn to the historiographical discussions on the (im)possibility of recovering such voices. For a recapitulation of the problem of the agency of the actors (the sati, or in this case, the child wife) and the historian’s frustrated attempts at recovering such voices, see in particular Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds) (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Ania Loomba, “Dead Women Tell No Tales: Issues of Female Subjectivity, Subaltern Agency and Tradition in Colonial and Postcolonial Writings on Widow-Immolation in India,” History Workshop Journal 36 (1993). J. H. Bernard, magistrate of Howrah, to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Empress v. Maiti. From Surgeon Major C. H. Joubert, Professor of midwifery, Medical College, Calcutta, to the Inspector General of Civil Hospitals, Bengal. Dated 9 August 1890. Empress v. Maiti. 18. Women participated in this politics of medicine; Geraldine Forbes suggests that British women shared with British men a notion of the purdah as rigid, inflexible and unchanging (and the traditional midwife as dangerous, one might add), while they argued that in India women alone could administer to women, thus creating a space for British and Indian “lady doctors” to “equal rights” within the profession, and hastening the medicalization of women’s health. For more on India as a field for the professional expansion of British female doctors, see Forbes, “Medical Careers”; Geraldine Forbes, “Managing Midwifery in India,” in Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India, D. Engels and S. Marks (eds) (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994); Antoinette Burton, “Contesting the Zenana: The Mission of Making ‘Lady Doctors for India,’ 1874–1885,” Journal of British Studies 35, July (1996); Chandrika Paul, “The Uneasy Alliance: The Work of British and Bengali Women Medical Professionals in Bengal, 1870–1935” (PhD, University of Cincinnati, 1997). Philippa Levine, “Sovereignty and Sexuality: Transnational Perspectives on Colonial Age of Consent Legislation,” in Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, C. 1860–1950, Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann (eds) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Bannerji, “Age of Consent and Hegemonic Social Reform.” Lawrence Birken, Consuming Desire: Sexual Science and the Emergence of a Culture of Abundance, 1871–1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). Memorials on the Age of Consent Act. IOR/L/PJ/6/300, File 800, May 8, 1891. Memorial against the Age of Consent Act. IOR/L/PJ/6/306, File 1683, September 23, 1891. Mani, Contentious Traditions.


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65 Maharashtrians painstakingly distinguished themselves from the Bengalis. Western Indian newspapers declared Bengal was one of the most culturally backward regions of India. The western Indian reformers also repeated some of the stereotypes about Bengali sexuality, suggesting that since purdah was rife, women tended to crave male company, which explained the early consummation of marriages in the region. In Maharashtra, Padma Anagol-McGinn shows, women offered a gendered, contextover-text argument against child marriage, refusing to engage in the tussle over religious authority, pointing instead to the economic and practical conditions in society that had led to the prevalence of such practices. She concedes that the Maharashtrian example was exceptional, Bengali women having remained remarkably silent on the issue. See Padma Anagol-McGinn, “The Age of Consent Act Reconsidered: Women’s Perspectives and Participation in the Child Marriage Controversy in India,” South Asia Research 12, no. 2 (1992). 100–18. 66 John Rosselli, “The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal,” Past and Present 86 (1980). 67 “Meye kartrik Likhit, Ain! Ain! Ain! (Written by a woman, Law! Law! Law!) (Dacca, 1890), quoted in Borthwick, Changing Role. 127. Borthwick suggests “A Woman” was a man. 68 Anon., The Full Proceedings of a Public Meeting Held on the 22nd January 1891 at the Residence of the Late Maharajah Kamal Krishna Deb Bahadur, Sobha Bazar Rajbari, Calcutta, to Protest the Age of Consent Bill (Calcutta: Sobha Bazar Standing Committee and W. Newman and Co. Ltd, 1891). 11. 69 Quoted in Supriya Guha, “The Nature of Woman: Medical Ideas in Colonial Bengal,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 3, no. 23 (1996). 70 Hemachandra Kunda, Rupasi Bala Hudaki Somotto Sarojbala Arthat Atyanta Sundari Navayuvati Kulabadhur Swamir Shayan Grihe Pratham Prabesh Lila (Benares, 1891). 39. (My translation; the first line contains the words “ramanir swadhinata” (women’s freedom); “female liberty” is transliterated in the original Bengali.) 71 The scientific and medical journals published in Bengali in the 1880s and 1890s include Bibidartha Samgraha (1851–61), Rahasya Samdarbha (1862–74), Bangamahila (1875–76), Bigyan Darpan (1884), Chikitsa Sammilani (1885–94), Chikitsak o Samalochak (1895–1901), Swasthya (1898–1901). Some of these were intended to provide a forum for discussions amongst practitioners of allopathy, Ayurveda, Unani and homeopathy, while others informed a burgeoning community of native experts of the latest developments in western scientific knowledge. Topics included Charles Darwin, Mazzini, James Mill, the cholera of Calcutta, the municipality, African tribes, botanical specimens, Aryan science, and sexual relations between man and wife in the Bengali household. For a selection of articles on health and medicine, psychiatry, ethnography, population, language and music, see Basu. Samayiki. 72 See Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); Michael Stolberg, “An Unmanly Vice: Self-Pollution, Anxiety, and the Body in the Eighteenth Century,” Social History of Medicine 13, no. 1; and Alan Hunt, “The Great Masturbation Panic and the Discourses of Moral Regulation in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 8, no. 4 (1998). 73 Pamphlet. A citizen of the world, “No Necessity for the Age of Consent Bill,” Printed by UC Shome at the New Britannia Press. March 1, 1891. 74 The anonymous author of the piece suggested that it took the male body one prahar, or one-fourth of a day, to recover the depletion of physical resources caused by one act of sexual union; polygamy clearly heightened the problem. Charu Gupta draws attention to the two models of response to the crisis of masculinity: one promoted containment through brahmacarya, the other celebrated sex and virility; in the end, both upheld patriarchal notions – one by marginalizing women, the other by overpowering them.

Notes 231

75 76 77 78


79 80 81

82 83

84 85

86 87

88 89

See Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001). 70–83. Basu, “Jatiya Swasthya” in Samayiki. 138. Joseph Alter, “Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India,” The Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 1. Sudhir Kakar, Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality (Delhi: Penguin Books, 1989). 118–19. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). Anon., The Full Proceedings of a Public Meeting Held on the 22nd January 1891 at the Residence of the Late Maharajah Kamal Krishna Deb Bahadur, Sobha Bazar Rajbari, Calcutta, to Protest the Age of Consent Bill. The reformulation of bodily functions, especially menstruation, in terms of shame and secrecy, is discussed in a rich survey of gynecological literature in Bengal in Guha, “Nature of Woman.” Sir Madhow Rao, “Letter Addressed to a Few Select Thinkers and Well-wishers of the Hindu Community,” included in “Papers Relative to the Bill to Amend the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1882 (the Age of Consent Bill),” IOR/L/PJ/6/298, File 488. 25 February, 1891. Ibid. n.p. Dr Juggobondhu Bose’s opinion on the Age of Consent Bill. Dated 9 March 1891. Empress v. Maiti. File No. 217. For critiques of the Bengali “memsahib” see Chakrabarty, “The Difference-Deferral of a Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Modernity in British Bengal.” Review, “Granthasamalochana: Book Review Matrisiksha,” Bamabodhini Patrika 93, no. 7 (Calcutta, 1871): 395. With the spread of allopathy and the medicalization of childbirth, traditional female practitioners were marginalized, as they were elsewhere. On the colonial attitude towards the dhaee or dhai in Bengal, and the hospitalization of mothers during parturition, see Supriya Guha, “A History of Medicalization of Childbirth in Bengal in the Late Eighteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries” (PhD, University of Calcutta, 1996). For other examples from colonial India, see Dagmar Engels, “The Politics of Childbirth,” in Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India, D. Engels and S. Marks (eds) (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994), Forbes, “Medical Careers.” Katherine Mayo’s (in)famous Mother India published in 1929, which was one of the triggers to the discussion on the child marriage Bill of 1929, contained a systematic attack on native midwifery. See Katherine Mayo, Mother India, with Introduction by Mrinalini Sinha (ed.) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). At the same time, women such as Yashoda Devi, a woman practitioner of Ayurveda, based her claim to legitimacy and efficacy for the cure of native women’s sexual diseases on her status as a woman and a practitioner of an indigenous system of medicine. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community. 189. Foucault, History of Sexuality. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette M. Burton, Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 406. A good example of this is Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 9. Sinha argues that rhetoric of liberal rights and the practice of patriarchy were reconciled in the details of legislation in the passage of the Age of Consent Act 1891. Sinha, Colonial Masculinity. For a discussion of “colluding patriarchies,” in Sinha’s work, see Ashwini Tambe, “Colluding Patriarchies: The Colonial Reform of Sexual Relations in India,” Feminist Studies, no. 26 (2000). 590–1.


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90 Partha Chatterjee “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question” in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds) (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989) 233–53. 91 Sarkar, “Rhetoric.” 1871. 92 Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 6–7. 93 Sarkar, “Rhetoric.” 1871. 94 The ease with which “liberal medicine” lends itself to Hindu nationalist claims, is not a simple distortion; medicine lent itself to many conservative projects, of which colonialism and Hindu nationalism are two examples. This challenges a simple opposition between liberal and orthodox positions, in particular in relation to women. The othering of Muslims by the Hindu right through a discourse of birth control is also critiqued in Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community. 95 For a “colonial” discussion of this Focualdian problematic, see Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). 4–5. 96 The simultaneous management of the home and the world by modern medicine is but one of the instances in which the dichotomies between home and world, private and public life, public and domestic spaces, breaks down. See Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000). 97 The Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 raised the age of marriage for females to 14 and for males to 18. This, known as the Sarda Act of 1929, was distinguished by the extent of participation of women and women’s organizations in India. Sinha argues that the history of the Sarda Act made it increasingly difficult to defend colonialism under the banner of modernity, as women activists rallying around the bill found themselves obstructed as much by the colonial state as by orthodox indigenous patriarchy, for the resolutions of the women’s organizations often went beyond the provisions of the Bill itself. See Mrinalini Sinha, “The Lineage of The ‘Indian’ Modern: Rhetoric, Agency and the Sarda Act in Late Colonial India,” in Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities, Antoinette Burton (ed.) (London: Routledge, 1999). Geraldine Forbes has noted that marriage reform in India had less to do with the social position of women as such than with a commitment to modernity. See Geraldine Forbes, “Women and Modernity: The Issue of Child Marriage in India,” Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2, no. 4 (1979). I have defined this “commitment to modernity” in terms of biopolitics, not liberal rights, and taken the discussion into the nineteenth century. 8 Epilogue 1 Anon., “Bibahasankar Sambandhe Malabari Mahashoyer Chesta,” Bamabodhini Patrika 4, no. 4 (1890). 250. 2 Partha Chatterjee, “Our Modernity,” Sephis/Codesria Lectures (1997). 20. Available online http://www.sephis.org/pdf/partha1.pdf. Accessed on April 28, 2009. 3 Ibid. 3. 4 Ibid. 5–8. 5 Ibid. 8–9. Emphasis added. 6 Ibid. 14. 7 Ibid. 19. Emphasis added. 8 Ibid. 9 Partha Chatterjee has discussed the several senses in which the word continues to be used in modern India. It refers very generally to “origin” – and may be used to describe communities of religion (Hindu jati) or occupation (carpenter or beggar jati); a class of species (bird or human jati), varna (such as Brahman or Kshatriya); lineage (Aryan or Semitic jati); or nation (English or Turkish jati). See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and

Notes 233

10 11


12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19

20

21 22

23 24 25 26

27

Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). 221. Ambikacharan Rakshita, Bharata Bhaisajyatattva. Prathama Khanda (Calcutta: 1878). Gourinath Sen Kabiranjan, Saririka Svasthya Vidhana. Rules for the Preservation of Health. In Bengalee (Calcutta: 1862). 22–3. Gourinath Sen Kabiranjan, Deshiya Prakriti O Chikitsa (National Character and Cure) (Bhowanipore: 1877). Ibid. 29–40. Chatterjee, “Our Modernity.” 18. Ibid. 16. “Jatiya Swasthya O Bibaho,” Swasthya, 1901. Another article in the same volume of the journal, “Vivahapana o swasthya” (The arrangement of marriages and health) elaborated on the argument, suggesting that if only people were aware how many diseases were transmitted through generations, they would pay more attention to the health of the prospective brides and grooms, rather than to money, power, or status (Durgadas Gupta [ed.] Swasthya [1901]). Pulinchandra Sanyal, “Bibaha Bichara,” serialized in Chikitsa Sammilani, vol. 4 (Calcutta, 1888). Reprinted in Samayiki, 166–87. Anon., “Bibahasanskar Sambandhe Malabari Mahashoyer Chesta,” Bamabodhini Patrika 4, no. 4 (1890). H. H. Risley. “Hindu Infant Marriage,” November 13, 1890 (OIOC: Tracts on marriage). Risley was the census commissioner and superintendent for the ethnological survey of India in 1901, and is associated with the apotheosis of a caste-based understanding of Indian society. H. H. Risley suggested that infant marriage has been created to preserve the caste structure, and was bound up with the entire religious and social structure of the Hindus. Rajendralala Mitra, “the first of India’s Sanskritists,” was a frequent contributor to the journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and its first native president. We have encountered him in Chapter 4, providing the Government of Bengal with a plan for the drafting of European scientific terms into the vernaculars of India. Communication from Rajendralala Mitra to the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bengal. Empress v. Maiti. No. 188, File J 7-A/63, 5. Dated March 9, 1891, Calcutta. From Babu Juggobondhu Bose to the Secretary of the British Indian Association. Quoted in Empress v. Maiti. Bengal Judicial Reports. L/PJ/6/288. Bose is quoted twice, once as Babu Bose, and once as Dr Bose. Although biographical details on him are as yet lacking, from his language, references and style of presentation, one can safely assume he had been to one of the “western” medical schools in Calcutta. Extracted from the Amrit Bazar Patrika, February 4, 1875, in Reports of native papers (Bengal), 1874 (OIOC). Anon., “Arya Swasthya Bigyan,” Chikitsak O Samalochak (1899). Chandranatha Vasu, Grhastha Swasthanidhi 4th edn (Calcutta: 1899). The health officer, Neil Cook, had pointed to the usual cluster of ethnological causes. Swasthya disagreed on some counts, pointing out that the very pathologies, such as infant mortality, that were attributed to child marriage by the health officer, had been traced to the impact of western education and modern ways of life by others. “Kalikatar Swasthya” (Calcutta’s Health), Swasthya, (1907). Reprinted in Pradip Basu, Samayiki. Purono Samayikpatrer Prabandha Sankalan, vol. 1: Science and Society (Calcutta: Ananda, 1998). 283–8. “Stridiger Swasthya” (Women’s Health), Swasthya, (1900). Reproduced in Ibid. 312–15. Similar articles on the devastating reproductive effects of the unhealthy milieu of London are discussed in Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, C.1848–C.1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 196.


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Notes

28 Chakri is the Bengali word for waged/salaried labor, with colonial connotations for its association with impersonal cash nexus and authority, and the new rigorous discipline of clock-time. See Sumit Sarkar, “‘Kaliyuga,’ ‘Chakri,’ and ‘Bhakti’: Ramakrishna and His Times,” Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 29 (1992). 29 Lakshmi, the Lord Visnu’s wife, has been upheld in Puranic Hinduism as the model Hindu wife, united in complete harmony with her husband in a spirit that combines submission with loyalty, devotion and fidelity. Alakshmi – i.e. not Lakshmi – is her opposite, and embodies a gendered conception of inauspiciousness and all that the Hindu lawgivers upheld as the dharma or proper moral conduct of the householder. In the nineteenth-century tracts of the new domesticity, both women with too little education, and those with too much, could be termed Alakshmi. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Difference-Deferral of a Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Modernity in British Bengal,” History Workshop Journal 36 (1993). 59–61. 30 Jnanendra Kumar Maitra, Sachitra Rati-Yantradira Pira. Ganikagaman o Samajik Samasyadir Bichar Saha Garbharodhak Vishayadir Alochana Ebang Gonorrhea o Syphiliser Chikitsaye Injectionadir Bidhi Bichar Lipibasta Aache. Sexual and Venereal Ills and Evils (Calcutta: 1923). 31 Jnanendra Kumar Maitra, Stri Cikitsa: Diseases of Women and Their Homeopathic Treatment (Calcutta: 1907). 32 Hemachandra Sengupta, Indriyadaurbalya O Tahar Cikitsa. A Treatise on Sexual Debility and Its Ayurvedic Treatment (Calcutta: 1923). 4. 33 Girishchandra (Kabiratna) Sena, Swasthya Sahaya (Calcutta: 1902). 81. 34 Haridhana Datta, Narijiban. Nari Dehatattva O Swasthyarakkha Visayak Sadharaner Pathyapayogi Pustak (Calcutta: 1906). 35 See Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration; John Marriott, The Other Empire: Metropolis, India and Progress in the Colonial Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2003). 36 Chatterjee, “Our Modernity.” 20. 37 Ibid. 19. 38 David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 39 Chatterjee, “Our Modernity.” 16. 40 Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 98. 41 Jean Langford, Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002). 25. 42 Prakash, Another Reason. 234. Elsewhere, too, Prakash insists that colonial governmentality was radically discontinuous with the western norm, and that “British India was marked by the absence of the elegant sovereignty-discipline-government triangle that Foucault identifies in Europe” (125–6). As I have clarified before, I take into serious account these critiques of Foucault’s “Eurocentric” genealogy for modernity and his resolute blindness to the imperial frame, but I find it more fruitful to use Foucault to understand colonial modernity, by acknowledging the absent presence of race and the colony in his genealogies, rather than using India to point to Foucault's blind-spots, given the scope of this project (and his).


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Index

abanati, trope of 178, 184–7 Abercrombie 111 abjection 15, 97, 101, 110, 135, 216n62 Aboriginal Protection Society 36 acclimatization 32, 41; as domestication 40 Act to provide for the survey of the town of Calcutta of 1887 128 Age of Consent Act: passage of the 152, 160–8, 227n39, 228n44, 230n65; protests against the 172–6, 182–4; see also child marriage Ainslie, Whitelaw 72–3, 104 Alter, Joseph 171–2 Anagol-McGinn, Padma 230n65 analogy: in ethnology 28, 34–6, 41, 196n28; in liberal discourse 43, 60, 107, 156; in phrenology 58, 167; in sexology 167 Anatomy Act of 1832 83, 211n78 Anderson, Warwick 189n3, 218n9 Annesley, James 30–1, 104 Anthropological Society of London (ASL) 36, 38, 40 Arnold, David 2–4, 6, 10, 30, 191n34, 194n12, 197n52, 198n55 Aryan theory: 9, 23, 26–8, 41, 93, 191n46, 193n66, 195n15, 232n9; and ethnology 27–9, 32, 75; historical consideration of 192n66, 195n15; in histories of medicine 72–3, 77, 159, 180; and women 145, 169, 223n95; see also black Aryan Asiatic Society 26–9, 50, 67, 194n13, 194n14, 196n32 Augstein, H.F. 34, 197n35 Avicenna 77–8 Ayurveda: the body in 73–5, 208n50, 209n51; and jatiya swasthya (racial health) 180–1; practitioners of 186,

230n71, 231n85; scientification and cultural significance of 181, 187; social history of 189n3; in social reform of marriage 158–9, 166, 186; see also Aryan theory: in histories of medicine Ballantyne, Tony 84 Ballhatchet, Kenneth 191n46 Bamabodhini Patrika 174, 182 Bandhopadhyaya, Kamakhya Charan 169 Bannerjea, Surendranath 132, 133 Bannerji, Himani 166 Basu, Rajnarayan 178, 186 Battle of Plassey 26, 99, 113 Bayly, C.A. 195n21 bazaar see public health Bengal Municipal Act 128 Bengal Vaccination Act 129 Bentham, Jeremy 8, 22, 42, 44, 46 Bentinck, William 53, 69 Bernard, J.H. 165 Bethune Society 91–2 Beverley, H.H. 125 Bhabha, Homi K. 93, 196n24, 203n27, 222n93 bhadralok selfhood 15, 127, 134–5, 142–5, 147, 177–9, 185–7 bhadramahila 146–7 bijatiya chikitsa (alien cure), critique of colonial medicine as 178, 182–3 Birken, Lawrence 167 black Aryan 10, 23–6, 34–5 black town 97–101, 110, 124, 134 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich 31, 32, 51, 53, 197n45, 199n69 Board of Education 80 Bose, Bholanath 89, 90 Bose, Juggobondhu, Dr. 173, 183–4 brahmacarya 171, 172, 193n74, 230n74


Index 253 brahmins: in race theory 33, 49, 57, 107, 183; in sanitary discourse 116; see also Kulinism Brahmo Samaj 23, 157, 227n37 Bramley 66, 84, 87, 88 Breton, Peter 68, 69, 77, 80 British Indian Association 132, 220n46 Burchell, Graham 12 Burke, Edmund 99 burning ghat 101, 123, 129, 130–2, 135 Bynum, W.F. 209n54 Calcutta: Black Hole of 98, 100; as center of calculation 26–7, 35; and cholera 103–5; as colonial center 14, 100; drainage in 112–14, 124, 139; lighting of 124–5; and modernity 186; natives of 118–19; pathology of 98, 101, 106, 107–11, 117; and the “public” 172–3; water supply in 116–17; see also Calcutta Medical College, Phrenological Society of Calcutta, dual city and city of palaces Calcutta Corporation 122, 124, 130–4 Calcutta General Hospital 83 Calcutta Medical College 62, 65, 67, 69, 155, 227n26; and anatomical study 73–7, 82–3, 85, 210n72; and English 81; as an experiment in civilization 86–9, 92, 212n99 Calcutta Medical and Physical Society 27 capital 98, 99, 100, 112, 113, 117 capitalism 6, 14, 115, 174, 187 caste: and early marriage 164, 183; in ethnology 28, 33, 40; in medical discourse 83, 93, 107, 116–17; modernity of 211n77; and modern selfhood 15; in phrenology 51, 54, 56, 57; and race 9, 84–5; Rammohun Roy on 23; and sea voyage 212n98; see also jati census 125–6 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 8–9, 110, 189n3, 221n60, 221n13, 234n29 Charaka 72, 74, 78 Chatterjee, Partha: and colonial difference 7–8; on jati 232n9; and modernity 143, 178–9, 181, 185–7, 194n14; and race 12 Chattopadhyay, Swati 213n6 Chevers, Norman 97, 132, 151, 156–7, 226n24 Chikitsa Sammilani 151, 170, 224n4, 230n71 Chikitsak O Samalochak 224n4, 230n71

Child Marriage Restraint Act 232n97 child marriage: defense of 183; and degeneration 157–9; as ethnological indicator 37; and eugenics 171–2; physiological discourse on 173, 174, 224n4; and problem of consent 166–7; and public health 147, 148, 152; and sexual excess 158, 168–9, 175; see also Age of Consent Act childhood: hygienic management of 147–8, 223n105; medicalization of 43, 88, 143–6, 167; as metaphor in liberal imperialism 36, 42 cholera 101–6, 108, 111, 116, 137–9, 214n19; see also contagion and predisposition circulation: in medicine and liberalism 98, 111–12, 120–21 citizenship: and cities 122–3; and embodiment 119, 218n9; see also sanitary citizenship city of palaces 98–100 civilization: in liberal discourse 9, 105, 114; in medical-topographical discourse 108; in race discourse 27, 34, 36, 58, 72, 83, 85; in sex discourse 173, 184, 186 civilizing mission 13, 59, 97, 98, 174 Clive, Robert 99 Cohn, Bernard 40, 190n5, 195n19, 195n21, 201n92, 210n72 colonial city 100, 213n5 colonial stereotype: and medical discourse 5, 10, 16, 153; and race science 23, 51–2, 54, 91; and self-constitution 16, 172, 173, 230n65; as strategy of rule 203n27, 203n28 Combe, George 44, 46–8, 55, 59–60, 206n66 conduct of conduct 12, 13, 14, 186 contagion 99, 100, 101, 103, 104 Cooter, Roger 46 Cox, Robert 54–5 Crawfurd, John 35–8, 115, 217n79, 199n67, 199n69, 199n71, 199n72 cultural difference: in discourse on rights 117–19, 186; and race 23, 41, 67, 69, 108 Curtin, Philip 29 Darwin 40, 46, 75, 159, 182 Das, Annoda Prasad 161 Das, Kalikumar (Collycoomar Doss) 61 Datta, Haridhana 186 De Certeau, Michel 218n5


254

Index

degeneration: in Bengali critique of colonialism 179, 183–4, 187–8; and child marriage 157–60; of Hindoos 56, 87; as medico-moral concept 155–6, 175–6, 199n70, 210n72; in modern discourse of sex 148, 152, 157, 163, 170–2; and monogenetic race theory 30–1, 197n45; and tropical colonization 24–6, 32, 41, 61 dhai 71, 146 Dirks, Nicholas 211n77 dissection: anatomical study through 65–6, 68–9, 73, 76, 80–3, 210n76, 211n79; and the “modern” body 6, 62, 93, 210n72; in the trope of “Aryan” medicine 74–6; see also Ayurveda: the body in Douglass, Mary 110 drainage 113, 124, 139, 114; see also Fever Hospital Committee Drummond, David 56–7, 61, 203n49 dual city 97, 98–9, 101, 122, 137 Duff, Alexander 81 Dutt, Bhairab Chandra 128 Dutt, Romesh Chunder 168 East India Company 99, 100, 103, 113; and medical education 68, 87; scientists employed by the 27, 44, 66 effeminacy: Bengali 16, 28, 107, 153, 156, 170–1, 193n66; sex and 152, 163, 168 Ernst, Waltraud 7, 189n3, 216n54 Ethnological Society 36, 38 eugenic concerns 144, 145, 163, 177, 181, 222n82, 228n48 Fawcus (Dr.) 136 Fever Hospital Committee 108–12, 115, 117, 120, 126, 137–9, 144 filth: and citizenship 128, 135; politics of 100–1, 108, 122, 136–8 Forbes, Geraldine 229n58, 232n97 Forbes, H.N. 111 Foucault, Michel: on analytics of sex 145, 147, 151; and colonial discourse analysis 2–4, 7, 10, 22, 190n14; on liberalism 11–13, 121; on modern medicine 1, 7, 65, 74, 93, 130, 208n47; and the “problem of difference” 5–7, 179, 191n31, 193n74, 234n42; on race 222n93; and the study of colonial medicine 191n34 free trade 100, 111, 114–5, 120 Furedy, Chris 132

Galen 76, 78 Gall, Franz Joseph 45, 53 Gandhi 193n74 garbhadhan 162–5, 167–8, 173 General Committee of Public Instruction 67, 78, 87 Ghose, N. N. 132, 133–4 Ghose, Ramgopaul 131 Ghosh, Amitav 8–9 Gidumal, Dayaram 162 Gilman, Sander 5 Goodeve H.H. 65, 89–90, 212n99, 225n9 Goodeve-Chuckerbutty, Soorjocoomar 89, 90–3, 117 Gupta, B.L. 164 Gupta, Charu 230n74 Gupta, Madhusudan 65, 76, 82, 117, 144, 210n76, 225n9 gynecology: and citizenship 143–4; and the “nature of women” 144–8, 153, 169 Halhed, Nathaniel 55 Hare, David 83 Harrison, Mark 3, 29, 32, 192n46, 197n52, 206n13 Harvey, David 112 Hastings, Warren 99, 114 Heyne, Benjamin 69, 72, 207n20 Hippocrates 29 Hobhouse, M.T. 132 Holston, James 122–3 Hunt, James 38–41, 200n79, 200n83 hygiene: 117, 185; and conduct of conduct 6, 14, 152; domestic 174, 185; and selfconduct 15, 161, 174, 186, 188; and selfhood 97, 101, 110; sexual 173 hystericization 222n85, 186, 147, 168–69 Indian Medical Congress 173 Indian Medical Service 68 Indian Reform Association 157 jati 85, 177–8, 180, 181, 187, 232n9; see also jatiya swasthya jatiya swasthya: as racial health 178, 179–82, 187 Johnson, James 31, 106 Jones, William 26–9, 194n13, 206n8; and his influence on James Cowles Prichard 27–9, 34, 194n11, 196n31; on medicine 66, 71, 72, 73

Index 255


Joubert (Dr.) 166, 173 Kakar, Sudhir 172 Kant 187 Kennedy, James 103–4 King, Anthony 213n5 Knox, Robert 83 Koch, Robert 105 Kristeva, Julia 110, 135, 216n62 kulinism 155, 226n18 Kuriyama, Shigehisa 74, 209n50 Lambton, William 27 Langford, Jean 208n50 Laporte, Dominique 136 Laqueur, Thomas 209n50 Latour, Bruno 26 Leopold, Joan 28 Levine, Philippa 166 liberalism: and imperialism 22, 37, 41–3, 111, 154; and phrenology 57–8, 59; as political rationality 11–14, 22, 24; and race science: 24, 35, 37, 45, 199n67; and reform 121, 126, 177, 184; and silence on race 14, 16; see also liberal racialism and cultural difference liberal racialism 13, 21–3, 67, 69, 201n103 Lind, James 104 Loomba, Ania 229n55 Lord Auckland 108 Lord Cornwallis 27, 99 Lord Curzon 133 Lord Wellesley 100 Lyon, George 49, 58 M’Farlan, D. 126 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 21, 65, 66, 67, 106, 108, 153 Mackenzie, Alexander 132 Mackinnon, Kenneth 104 Macleod (Surgeon) 163 Macleod, Kenneth 75–6 Macrae (Dr.) 136 Maiti, Hari 160, 162 Malabari, Behramji 182 Malthus 181, 182 Mandler, Peter 59 Mani, Lata 168, 225n15 Marks, Shula 10 Martin, James Ranald 11, 31, 38, 40, 106–8, 113, 118 masturbation 15–16, 151–2, 170–2, 177, 224n4 Matrisiksha 146–7, 148, 174 Medical Board 89, 90

medical education 66, 69, 71, 77, 81; and race 84, 88 medical topography 106, 107, 215n44 Mehta, Uday Singh 8, 192n61, 193n5, 205n2, 225n14 mehter 100, 129, 138, 139, 140, 141 Metcalf, C.T. 137, 141 Mill, James 10, 43, 46, 97, 107, 114 Mill, John Stuart 8, 21, 22; on civilization 43, 97, 114; on local self-government 127; on national character 13, 21, 44, 58–60; on women 154 misogyny 153, 170, 172–3, 175, 177 Mitchell, Timothy 227n38 Mitra, Rajendralala 183, 210n72, 233n20 Montgomery, James 55–6, 61–2 Mookerjee, Bhudeb 165 motherhood 146, 163, 173–4, 223n100, 223n105 Mouat, F.J. 83, 92 Mukhopadhayaya, Gangaprasad 146, 174 Muller, Max 72 municipal corporation 123, 126–8, 131, 137 municipal government 11, 115, 117–19, 126–7, 128–31 Nandy, Ashis 71 nation: biosocial basis of 182; and degeneracy 152; in ethnology 28, 29, 33, 36–7; J.S. Mill on 116; and modernity 179; in phrenology 44, 47–50, 52, 55–6, 58 nationalist: Hindu 184; reformers 152, 160, 163; resolution of the woman question 175 national character: of Hindoos 50; in liberal discourse 43, 58–9; in medical discourse 30, 85; in phrenology 47, 48, 49, 51–3, 59; see also Mill, John Stuart: on national character Native Hospital 217n87 Native Marriage Act 157, 227n37 Native Medical Institution 67–8, 69, 77, 78, 80, 81, 206n17 night soil 139, 140, 141, 221n65 Nightingale, Florence 115 normalization 6, 8, 10–11, 12–13, 15, 40 Orientalist discourse 2–3, 21, 22, 99, 177; and medicine 4–5, 10, 68–9, 71, 77, 206n13 Orientalist triptych 26, 75, 145, 78, 180, 196n12

256

Index


Orientalist-Anglicist controversy 66, 69, 206n8 orientalizing 4, 5, 10 othering 1, 3, 16, 42, 174, 177 Otter, Chris 218n7 Paterson, George Murray 44–5, 50, 51, 55–7, 61, 203n49 pathology: of Calcutta 121; of Indians 37, 98, 115, 152, 155; as metaphor for empire 183, 188; as science 15, 74, 103, 179; sexual 153, 155, 222n89; tropical 30, 103, 105 Pati, Biswamoy 3 Pearson, T.J. 116 Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 48, 52 Phrenological Society: of Calcutta 50, 56, 61, 205n66; of Edinburgh 49, 51, 54, 55 phrenology: Hindoo type in 50, 53–4, 61, 205n67; and race 202n11, 202n12 Phulmoni Dasi 155–6, 160, 161, 162, 166, 173 Pinch, William 195n21 Pitt, Jennifer 42, 192n61 Prakash, Gyan 6, 91, 227n38, 234n42, 193n74 precocity: in colonial medical discourse 36, 88, 154; in discourse on sex 148, 152, 167–9, 173–4, 199n70 predisposition 104–5 Prichard, James Cowles: and Aryan theory 26–8, 194n11, 196n27, 196n32; and colonial medicine 29; and degeneration 32–4, 196n35, 198n65; and monogenetic thought 196n26, 197n35, 225n8; and polygenetic thought 35–8, 41, 47, 51, 199n69, 199n71, 202n9, 203n26; and Rammohun Roy 23–5, 33 public health: 20, 109, 115, 191n34; and bazaar 13, 100, 109–11, 120, 135; and caste 107; and cholera 103, 104; and racial future 158, 179; and selfregulation 188; see also child marriage, hygiene and Fever Hospital Committee quarantine 104, 111, 120 Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 132 Rabinow, Paul 103 race: and biogeography 30; and the colonial state 8, 12, 16; and class 11; and culture 41, 42, 115; and gender 5; historiographical silence on 8–9; and

medicine 4, 29–30; and modern power 10; and monogenesis 24, 28–32, 35–6, 41, 183, 196n26; and polygenesis 36, 38–41, 47, 57, 60, 115; and science 9, 10, 48; see also nation, liberal racialism, phrenology, ethnology, degeneration, Aryanism and black Aryan Rakshita, Ambikacharan 180 Rennell, James 27, 110 resistance: Foucauldian analysis of 4, 6, 7, 15, 191n34; and modernity 179, 182; to modern medicine 183, 184, 189; tactics of 177, 178, 190 revolt of 1857 37–8, 39, 40, 51 Richard, W.F. 58 Richardson, Ruth 211n78 Risley, H.H. 183, 233n19 Robb, Peter 191n46 Roberton, John 153–4, 156, 225n9 Rose, Nicholas 120, 124 Rosenberg, Charles 104 Roxburgh, William 27, 195n22 Roy, Rammohun 10, 23–5, 43, 44, 50–3 Royle, John Forbes 72 Russett, Cynthia Eagle 225n11 Said, Edward 3, 7, 22, 190n14 sanitary citizen(ship) 15, 122–3, 128, 130, 136; class and gender in 142, 143, 145, 147, 152; see also sanitary city and hygiene sanitary city 97–8, 124; limits to the 115, 117, 119; and rationalization of the market 110–12, 115, 121, 124; as a school for citizens 126–9 sanitation: as civilization 97, 108, 114; and class 116–17, 140; and a critique of alien rule 179, 185, 188; and difference 119–23; and modern government 6, 14, 91–2, 134; and municipal/selfgovernment 126–30; see also circulation, hygiene, sanitary city and sanitary citizenship Sanyal, Pulinchandra 181–2 Sarkar, Mahendralal 158 Sarkar, Mahua 223n95 Sarkar, Tanika 161, 228n42 Sartori, Andrew 193n5 Schalch, J.A. 111, 139 Schiebinger, Londa 86 Schoolbooks Society 77 scientific racism 24, 115; see also race Scoble, Andrew 162, 168 Scott, David 8, 11, 12, 121


Index 257 Seal, Gopal Chunder 89 self-government: municipal 111, 119, 126–7, 133; hygienic 14, 15, 93, 110, 120, 123 Sen, Gourinath 180–1 Sen, Keshub Chunder 157–8, 162 Sen, Narendranath 132 Sena, Girishchandra 186 sex, modern discourse of: 10, 145, 147–8, 174–6; and age of consent 160–6, 168, 171; and ethnology 153–155; and gender 153–4, 173; and medicalization 153–9; and pathology 151–2; and public 143, 167, 170, 172–3, 186; and selfhood 160, 170, 172, 174; and theories of difference 5, 11, 45, 145, 167, 169; see also masturbation, sexology and degeneration sexology 5, 43, 166, 167 Sharpe, Jenny 200n74 Simms, F.W. 115–16 Sinha, Mrinalini 231n89, 232n97, 192n46 Siraj-ud-Daulah 98, 99 slaughterhouse 100, 109–10, 135 Smith, David B. 139, 140, 221n65 Spivak, Gayatri Chakrabarty 229n55 Spry, Henry Harpur 54 Spurzheim, Johann Gaspar 45, 47 Stepan, Nancy 42, 48, 70, 119, 202n14, 197n41, 218n9 Stocking, George 36, 40 Stokes, Eric 22 Stoler, Ann Laura 7, 10, 39, 222n93, 192n50 Strachey, John 136 Stranton, James 53, 203n32 subjectivity: colonial-modern 6–8, 12, 14–16, 91; and medicine 1–3, 5–6, 10; and sanitary discourse 110, 130; and sex 144, 153, 160, 167, 170, 175 Sushruta 72, 74, 78 sutikaghar 123, 135, 145, 146 Swasthya 185, 224n4, 230n71, 233n26 Swinton, George 54

Teltscher, Kate 70, 194n13 Temple, Richard 127 thagi 53–4, 203n35 Thakur, Khitindranath 121–2, 145, 178 Tinker, Hugh 126, 127 Transactions of the Phrenological Society 50 translation: of medical knowledge 71, 72, 77–81, 210n72; politics of 28, 70, 76–8, 91, 93 Translations Committee 77 Trautmann, Thomas 28, 197n35 tropics: in discourse on sex 148, 154–5, 157, 171, 182, 184; in medical discourse 29–30, 116; racialization of 3, 32, 105–6, 197n41, 226n20; white degeneration and settlement in 24, 31–2, 61, 104, 108, 200n79 Tytler, John 73, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83 Unani 73, 76, 78, 79 University College London 89 urban: citizenship 123, 128, 134, 138, 185–6; disorder 186–7; space and sanitation 97, 103, 112, 124 urbanism 97, 125, 187, 121, 125, 147–8 Vaughan, Megan 4–6 Viswanathan, Gauri 206n8 Visvanathan, Shiv 71 Wallich, Nathaniel 35 Webb, Allan 73, 87, 100, 101, 154–5, 156, 225n16 white town 97, 100–1, 110, 119 Whitehead, Judy 163 widows: 47, 164; medical-cultural interpretations of the treatment of 56, 154–6, 226n24, 227n31 Wilson, Horace Hayman 66, 72 Wise, Thomas Alexander 72–3, 85–6 women’s health 151, 229n58, 226n26, 226n24; see also gynecology, sex, sexology Young, Robert 41, 93

Tambe, Ashwini 231n89 tatti 100, 116, 135, 137, 138, 142

Zimmerman, Francis 74, 208n50, 209n51

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