Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

Durba Mitra; Durba Mitra

Book

Indian Sex Life

Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

Durba Mitra and Durba Mitra

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2020

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About this book

How British authorities and Indian intellectuals developed ideas about deviant female sexuality to control and organize modern society in India

During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. In Indian Sex Life, Durba Mitra shows how deviant female sexuality, particularly the concept of the prostitute, became foundational to this knowledge project and became the primary way to think and write about Indian society.

Bringing together vast archival materials from diverse disciplines, Mitra reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women's performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality. British authorities and Indian intellectuals used the concept of the prostitute to argue for the dramatic reorganization of modern Indian society around Hindu monogamy. Mitra demonstrates how the intellectual history of modern social thought is based in a dangerous civilizational logic built on the control and erasure of women's sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and the postcolonial world.

Reframing the prostitute as a concept, Indian Sex Life overturns long-established notions of how to write the history of modern social thought in colonial India, and opens up new approaches for the global history of sexuality.

Author / Editor information

Durba Mitra is assistant professor of studies in women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University and Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute.

Reviews

"[Indian Sex Life] commendably contributes to the broader fields of intellectual history and South Asian history, specifically to the historiography of sexuality and gender in colonial India. It is a must-read."---Sreya Mukherjee, South Asia Research --- "A great step in the proper understanding and decoding of colonial knowledge structures and as to how and why women’s perceived sexual deviancy functioned as a primary engine for change."---Samuel Bell, The Middle Ground Journal --- "A powerful critique of how the present-day study of society is entangled with histories of colonial, caste supremacist, and communalist knowledge production. Indian Sex Life is sure to become a classic in the fields of gender and sexuality studies and South Asian history."---Jessica Hinchy, Journal of the History of Sexuality --- "Winner of the Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies" --- "Honorable Mention for the J. Willard Hurst Book Prize, Law and Society Association"

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Frontmatter
i

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Contents
vii

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Introduction. Excess, a History
1

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1. Origins: Philology and the Study of Indian Sex Life
23

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2. Repetition: Law and the Sociology of Deviant Female Sexuality
62

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3. Circularity: Forensics, Abortion, and the Evidence of Deviant Female Sexuality
99

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4. Evolution: Ethnology and the Primitivity of Deviant Female Sexuality
133

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5. Veracity: Life Stories and the Revelation of Social Life
176

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Afterword
203

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Acknowledgments
209

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Notes
215

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Bibliography
255

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Image Credits
277

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Index
279

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A Note on the Type
291

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Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

February 10, 2020

eBook ISBN:

9780691197029

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691197029

eBook ISBN: 9780691197029

Keywords for this book

Prostitution; Human female sexuality; Promiscuity; Sociology; Infanticide; Social science; Sanskrit; Sexual desire; Social theory; Deviance (sociology); Culture of India; Caste; Abortion; Monogamy; Ethnology; Contagious Diseases Acts; Narrative; Colonial India; Social Practice; Social exclusion; Government of India; Philology; National Archives of India; Ideology; Medical jurisprudence; Colonialism; Kolkata; Indology; Modernity; Writing; Social issue; Episteme; Publication; Sultana's Dream; Widow; Prostitution in India; Banerjee; Positivism; Sex life; Hermeneutics; Chastity; Treatise; Ethnography; Society; Forensic science; Perversion; Exclusion; Objectivity (science); Testimonial; Prostitution law; Literature; Sodomy; Courtesan; Historiography; Afsaneh Najmabadi; Puranas; Women in Islam; Pathologica; Eugenics; Sexology; Crime; Ancient India; India Office; Concubinage; South Asia; Short story; Social fact; Chatterjee; Patriarchy; Gender role

Audience(s) for this book

For a non-specialist adult audience

Indian Sex Life

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction. Excess, a History

1. Origins: Philology and the Study of Indian Sex Life

2. Repetition: Law and the Sociology of Deviant Female Sexuality

3. Circularity: Forensics, Abortion, and the Evidence of Deviant Female Sexuality

4. Evolution: Ethnology and the Primitivity of Deviant Female Sexuality

5. Veracity: Life Stories and the Revelation of Social Life

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Image Credits

Index

A Note on the Type

Bibliographic data