BODIES OF EVIDENCE, BODIES OF RULE: THE ILBERT BILL, REVIVALISM, AND AGE OF CONSENT IN COLONIAL INDIA

Judith Whitehead

'A Native, given that he has no high moral principles inculcated by an educated mother, is unfit to judge a European.' ‘Our Mother is in the hands of foreigners.'

ON January 9, 1891, an amendment to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which raised the Age of Consent for girls from 10 to 12, was introduced into India's Legislative Council. Its introduction followed long-term pressure by social reformers, particularly the publicizing efforts of the Parsi reformer, Behramji Malabari. Its aftermath was a veritable tamasha which I translate as a dramatic controversy with diverse implications. From January 10 until the amendment was passed on March 19, protest against it were especially sensational in west Bengal. Several demonstrations in Calcutta drew between 75,000 and 150,000 demonstrators, ending in a Puja at Kali Ghat which consisted of 200,000 protesters (Bombay Guardian, March 26, 1891). There were numerous petitions both supporting and rejecting the amendment from the Punjab and Northwestern Provinces. Demonstrations both for and against the amendment were also conspicuous in Bombay and Poona. The organization of support for the amendment in Maharashtra stimulated the development of important women's organizations and marked the first coordination of reform organizations on a nationwide level (Heimsath 1964: 157). Protests against the amendment had equally important political ramifications. Revivalist nationalists publicly unfurled a new rhetoric which opposed further colonial intervention in the domestic sphere,

Judith Whitehead is on the faculty of Institut Simone de Beauvoir, Concordia University, 1455 Demaisonneuve Blvd., Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8, Canada SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN, 45 (1) March 1996 30 Sociological Bulletin

regarded as the last remaining abode of Hindu traditions (Sarkar 1987: 2011). This discourse constituted a prologue to the display of nationalist strength in the early 20th century. The revivalists' idealization of the private sphere and Indian motherhood and their condensation of these with deshmata and past national glory pushed the reform movement on the defensive. Outright condemnation of Hindu conjugal relations from a Western epistemology of 'universal' reason was henceforward criticized as being anti-national. This strain of constructed the future symbolic boundaries of patriotism which fledgling Indian women's organizations had to negotiate in the early 20th century. Why did the amendment arouse such controversy, when similar reforms in 1925 and 1929 (Whitehead 1995a: 2) had provoked little op- position? It raised the legal age for consent to sexual intercourse from ten to twelve years for girls of all religious communities in India. Sex with an underage girl, whether married or not, was defined as rape and was punishable by a maximum of ten years' imprisonment or transportation for life (India Office Library and Collections L/P&J/5/54). In the historical milieu of Anglo-Indian racism and revivalist reaction in the late 19th century, however, the amendment provoked unconscious emotional reactions from the Indian middle class, particularly in Calcutta. The controversy reveals the dense connections between sexuality, conjugality, home, and national identity held by both the Indian and British middle classes in India at a major point of their ideological confrontation. It shows that the control and objectification of women's bodies was an important, if not central, component in the self- definition of each national community. It illustrates how gender identities possessed the power to provoke emotional reactions on both sides of the colonial divide. Many of the practices connected with the disciplining of masculine and feminine identities exist below the consciousness in daily, routine practices which Bourdieu defines as habitus. These practices condition individual choices and provide a 'feel for the game'; they orient our unconscious drives of sexuality and aggression with wider social directives through the 'hidden persuasion of an implicit pedagogy' (1990: 66-67). Conceptions of self versus the other among both the British community in India and the revivalists were highly polarized by the late Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 31

1880s. The iconography of national identities was reflected in their opposed gender identities. Both the British and the Indian middle classes fantasized their national 'body' by idealizing their mother figures as the bearers of national traditions. The Age of Consent controversy which occurred eight years after the Ilbert Bill agitation, reveals the metaphoric connections that exist between social bodies and gender identities. The Ilbert Bill, introduced to the Viceregal council on February 2, 1883, sought to provide Justice of Powers to all District Magistrates and Sessions Judges. The bill was resisted by the Britishers because it gave Indian judges the power to adjudicate on criminal cases involving the Britishers. The connections between individual bodies and social or political bodies appear to be entrenched, perhaps even universal modes of human symbolic expression (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987: 7). Since we experience our social and political worlds through our senses, our body mediates these relationships, providing a constant interchange of meanings between the social world and the 'natural' world of the body. Gender symbolism often becomes particularly charged during periods of social change or cultural anxiety. During the 1870s and 1880s in north India, roles of women and rights of women were important symbols of national pride or submission, enlightenment or backwardness. The honour of both British and Indian communities was often equated with the honour of its women, while their protection corresponded with the defence of the nation. The women concerned in these debates, however, were mainly silent, objectified as symbols and icons of traditions in which they had, yet, little input. The Ilbert Bill agitation and the Age of Consent controversy engaged with two forms of gender subordination, the Victorian-medical and the Brahminical revivalist. Each form of moral regulation possessed its own notions of propriety and impropriety, high and low status, respectable or dishonorable conduct. The linguistic dualisms defining right or wrong behaviour were connected to the body through daily sexual, ritual, and hygienic practices. In other words, specific bodily habits in each society oriented individuals to explicit philosophical discourses which defined and defended status and gender distinctions. Victorian legislators, medical practitioners and administrators in India frequently viewed their social body as a hierarchical organism. 32 Sociological Bulletin

Middle class males represented the head, middle class wives the angelic heart, and working class males 'the hands'. Menial workers, prostitutes and 'other races' were associated with lower bodily parts, usually unmentionable in the interest of preserving decorum (Davidoff 1983: 17-23). The ideal Victorian woman was one whose upbringing had enabled her to completely sublimate sexual and aggressive impulses, the difficulties of which were attested to by the widespread symptoms of hysteria during this period (Showalter 1985). Unlike middle class Victorian ideology however, women in north India were not though to be passive, repressed beings, either creatively or sexually. Rather, among middle class 'respectable' folk, women's active desires and aggressive impulses were to be controlled through early marriages and physical seclusion in the zenana or antehpur after marriage. These forms and norms of moral regulation were especially marked in 19th century Bengal, where Kulinist polygamy intensified status competition within the Brahminical community itself (Engels 1987: 91). In fact, Kulinist interpretations of the Sastras placed strong emphasis on marriage as the essential life-cycle ritual determining the status of the daughter's family. The overall reactions of middle class women in India to the amendment -e difficult to gauge, since only a small percentage of women of this period were literate. There were a number of petitions from emerging women's organizations in Poona and Bombay, which wholeheartedly supported the amendment on humanitarian grounds. One of these, from the Arya Mahila Samaj of Bombay, contained 20,000 signatures (IOLC L\P&J\5\54). In Bengal, where early marriages were apparently most prevalent, however, the historical sociologist finds a public gap on this issue, despite the attention which the Age of Consent controversy has received in the last decade. In fact, women's magazines in Calcutta, some established by male reforming elites, such as the Bamabodhini Patrika, Antahpur, Sahitya, and Mukul, barely mention the controversy. There was only one petition from women Brahmos in Bengal, organized by Kadambini Ganguly, and containing a mere 151 signatures (IOLC L\P&J\5\54). Although I have grounded my analysis from the standpoint of the middle class colonized Bengali women whom the amendment most affected, the gap in public discourse of these women can only Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 33 invite speculation. Did the simultaneous experience of gender subordination and racism arouse conflicting loyalties in women who were perhaps, like Sarala Debi Ghosal, already drawn into a nationalist fold in which colonial contradictions took precedence over social reforms? Or did their silence reflect an informal taboo on respectable Bengali women speaking publicly about issues of sexuality? Answers to these questions may only be found through a patient culling of such women's private correspondence. An indication of the ambivalent emotions associated with early marriages can be seen, however, in the diary of Rassundari Devi, who wrote the first autobiography ever published in Bengali:

The news of my marriage made me very happy indeed. There would be music. I would hear the women ululating .... Yet I felt scared at the same time. I cannot express the apprehension that came to my mind . . . (On my wedding day) I was cheered up by the ornaments, but when everything was over the next day, I heard people asking my mother, 'Are they living today?' I thought they were referring to the guests. Then I began trembling all over with fear, I was quite unable to speak. Somehow I managed to ask mother, 'Are you sure God will go with me?' Mother promptly reassured me that he most certainly would... With great effort they took me away from my mother. I still feel as when I think of the state of mind I was in and the agony I went through (Tharu and Lalita 1993: 92-93).

In order to adequately frame the standpoint of Bengali women, it is necessary first to contextualize the Age of Consent controversy in the growing racism of the Anglo-Indian community in Bengal and in revivalist reactions to this in preceding decades. The symbolic closure of the British and Bengali communities in Calcutta was reflected in the construction of opposing icons of ideal femininity in both cases. Images of British and Indian mothers expressed in the Ilbert Bill agitation and revivalist opposition to the Age of Consent amendment stand like two reverse mirror-images of each other, signalling the fear and social distance that existed at a fever pitch between the two communities in the closing decades of the 19th century.1 In this confrontation the many similarities which existed between Britain and India in gender, 34 Sociological Bulletin inheritance, marriage and class structures were largely forgotten, as both colonizer and colonized defended the distinctiveness of their own domestic traditions.

Racism and Revivalism in Bengal 1870-1890 Factors which contributed to the increasing racism of the British community in Bengal in the late 19th century included the historical memory of the 'Mutiny' of 1857-58 and the emergence of an important plantation sector after 1850. Less difficult to measure but also important, was the development of 'scientific' theories of race in Britain, the US and continental Europe which were integral to the disciplines of craniometry and eugenics. These ideas were also popular in mainstream criminology, physiology and physical anthropology of the period (Gilman 1985; Gould 1981; Harding 1993), and were an important component of the education of British administrators in India (Cohen 1987; Tolen 1991; Whitehead 1992).2 The plantation sector, which included tea indigo, and jute plantations, was the most important capitalist sector in eastern India during this period. Plantations were characterized by low degrees of capital investment, low wages, and perennial problems of controlling the supply of labour. Workers were hired on long-term indentured contracts. Extra- economic coercion in labour recruitment and labour relations was widely reported in the Indian-owned English-language press between 1870 and 1890, particularly in The Bengalee and The Amrita Bazaar Patrika. These newspapers contained numerous articles on forcible recruiting of coolies and some on the rape of wives of coolies by planters, managers and their agents. Editorialists expressed anger at the frequently light sentences which British planters and agents received for such abuses. Here, for example, is an excerpt from The Bengalee, edited by Surendra Nath Bannerjea, who had lost a hard-won judicial appointment just prior to the Ilbert Bill agitation:

We referred recently to the proceedings against Mr. Leigh, the manager of the Rungamatty Tea Estate. He was charged with having trespassed at night into the house of a coolie woman named Mangly. Mr. Leigh got hold of her in bed. When her husband commenced shouting, the coolies came up from neighboring lines and kicked up a Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 35

row, and Mr. Leigh left hastily on his pony. The magistrate showed great hesitation in taking up the case., and it has now been dismissed, upon the extraordinary grounds that Mangly was a woman of loose character. Another tea planter, a friend of Mr. Leigh's, swore to having connection with Mangly although he was aware she was married to one of his coolies. That Europeans could deliberately go to court to save one of their countrymen from richly merited punishment by pleading guilty to adultery in a flippant manner is a further stigma upon British justice, law, and character' (The Bengalee, March 8, 1888).

The relative isolation of planters, managers and agents in outlying districts may also have promoted anxieties that stimulated the development of a white supremacist ideology that was openly articulated during the Ilbert Bill agitation. In Calcutta itself, racism helped consolidate the collective monopoly of European businessmen which was a striking feature of the industrial and commercial life of eastern India (Sarkar 1983: 23). Tea, indigo, and jute industries were dominated by Europeans at all the top levels, and by Marwari intermediary merchants at lower levels. In fact, the British-born business community and planters in Calcutta and eastern India provided the major support to the Ilbert Bill opposition. The Ilbert Bill would have enabled a mere eleven Indian magistrates who were then due for promotion to adjudicate on criminal cases involving the Britishers. The only official negative response to the bill was that of Griffith Evans, a Calcutta barrister who was piqued at the appointment of R. C. Mitter as temporary Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court during Sir Richard Garth's leave. No criticisms appeared in Anglo-Indian newspapers on February 3, the day following its introduction. It was in fact the London Times, an open supporter of the Conservative Party by the 1880s which initiated the attack on the Ilbert Bill. The Times objected to it on the 'grounds that no amount of English education could transform an Indian judge into someone competent to understand an Englishman's conduct, that the legal privileges of Englishmen to be tried before English judges were a natural right of a conquering race, and that if the Ilbert Bill were passed, British caital would flee India' (Hirschmann 1980: 41-42). Other English newspapers, 36 Sociological Bulletin on the basis of one dispatch from the Times' Calcutta correspondent, followed suit. As news of the Times' article reached India, Anglo-Indian newspapers there began to react. Most of these newspapers consequently reversed their stand on the Ilbert Bill. Only the liberal Statesman supported the position of Lord Ripon's government throughout the year-long agitation. Ensuing articles, editorials, and letters to the editor focused on three or four major themes which constituted the underlying motifs of the Ilbert Bill agitation. These themes included the untrustworthiness of Indian males, particularly educated ones, referred to disparagingly as Bengali 'babus', the dangers to British womanhood of courts presided over by 'native' judges, and the general subjugation of a superior to an inferior civilization which the bill represented. Often, Indian male judges were seen as incapable of understanding British, or a more globally European, character because of the lack cf education of the mothers who raised them. The Ilbert Bill upheaval continued throughout the summer of 1883, with major meetings convened by the Chambers of Commerce of Madras, Bombay, and Lahore, while smaller meetings were organized by the Anglo-Indian Defense Association and planters in Bengal and Madras presiencies. Meetings in outlying towns were financed and often coordinated by agency houses of tea and jute companies in Calcutta and sometimes by their head offices in London and Dundee. The most blatant expressions of English 'communal anxiety' were expressed in a Town Hall meeting in Calcutta on February 28, organized by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. I include excerpts from these speeches, since they portray the emotional pitch at which distinctions between self and the other were expressed during this period:

What the stiletto is to the Italian, the false charge is to the Bengalee . . . Picture the position of an English lady in a remote district who has been brought before a District Magistrate on a charge fabricated by a wealthy zemindar who has designs upon her, and there subjected to an examination at his hands with all the insolence that cowards are capable of ... Many of you have brough from afar some English girl for your wife who was entrusted to you by a loving father or a trusting brother ... If you give in now, you are betrayers Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 37

of that sacred trust. . . (Indignant cheers, cries of no! no!) ... Do not forget that the wily native is creeping about like a snake (Branson 1883, quoted in Hirshmann 1980: 301).

The speech by the President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Keswick, was only slightly less inflammatory. It referred to the potential plight of the daughters and sisters of planters being convicted 'on evidence of perjured villains and lying unprotected in remote prisons' before being finally tried by English judges in Calcutta. 'Do you think a native will become so Europeanized that he will be able to judge false charges against a European?' Keswick asked. 'Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin color?' (Ibid,1980: 299-300). In these speeches, as well as in Anglo-Indian newspaper accounts and letters' to the editor, metaphoric and emotional equations between protecting the body of the middle class Englishwoman and defending the privileges of the Anglo-Indian social body were apparent. The supposed backwardness of Indian civilization was symbolically yoked to the lack of formal education of many Indian mothers. The honour of the English nation then became identified with protecting the bodies of English wives, daughters, and sisters, while the presumed primitivity of Indian society was identified with the traditionalism of 'its' mothers. The Anglo-Indian community was closing its social boundaries against 'racial' transgression that the social mobility of Indian males represented. These anxieties were projected on to the bodily boundaries of English women. Particularly during periods of social change, anxieties about bodily boundaries often reflect an attempt to fortify and defend political and cultural enclosures (Douglas 1990: 115). The use of animal metaphors by the Anglo-Indian community throughout the Ilbert Bill agitation also reflected their concern to maintain racial boundaries. 'Natives', especially educated ones, were referred to as 'wily snakes' or as 'unchangeable, spotted leopards', closer to nature than culture. The 'unmanliness' of Bengali men was a recurring theme, reflecting the wedding of British middle class ideals of masculinity to the imperial imperative:

Indian civilians are men of ability but they cannot for years to come enjoy the confidence which Englishmen feel in the sturdy manliness, 38 Sociological Bulletin

the perfect independence, the imperviousness to all external considerations, the bold assertion of opinion against powerful influences . . . which they feel in their own countrymen (Hirschmann 1980: 59).

Anglo-Indian ridicule of the 'Bengalee Babu' reflected the attempt to preserve its race/class identity against possible boundary-crossing. Letter-writer after letter-writer stated that 'while they loved the natives they abhorred the "babu."' The 'babu' was an English-educated 'native', hence neither wholly Indian nor wholly British. From the Anglo-Indian viewpoint, he constituted an anomalous category, embodying fears of linguistic boundary-crossing with a challenge to the Anglo-Indian sense of permanent cultural superiority. If Indians could master English and Western subjects (including cricket), then foreign rule was not a permanent and natural feature, but only a temporary phenomenon. The Anglo-Indian opposition maintained its attacks against the Ilbert Bill throughout 1883, even threatening non-constitutional action if it was passed, forcing Ripon to introduce a compromise measure. Submitted to the Legislative Council in December 1883, it proposed that Justice of the Peace powers be recognized for Indian judges, but that Europeans be given a right to jury trial before District Magistrates and Sessions Judges. While the bill recognized rights of promotion for Indian judges, it also maintained legal boundaries between Anglo-Indian and Indian populations, since only the former had the right of jury trials. One of the most far-reaching consequences of the Ilbert Bill agitation was its stimulus of the nationalist movement. Leading nationalist intellectuals, such as Surendra Nath Bannerjea, called for the immediate formation of a nation wide Indian Association in response to the successful agitations of the Anglo-Indian Defense Association. A.O. Hume, a liberal civil servant who sympathized with Indian aspirations, canvassed local leaders throughout 1884 to organize an Indian National Union. This organization called the first meeting of the Indian National Congress in Bombay in December, 1885. As Bipin Chandra Pal, a later revivalist-nationalist leader from Bengla, stated, 'The organization of nationalist political organizations cana be found in the history of the Ilbert Bill controversy'. From the late 1870s, particularly in Bengal but also in Maharashtra, Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 39

there occurred a gradual, even if incomplete, shift in the discourse of the intelligentsia towards what has been termed 'revivalist-nationalism' (Sarkar 1983: 23). The revivalists, who included Bankimchandra Chatterji in Calcutta and B. G. Tilak in Poona, consisted of a mixed group of newspaper proprietors, urban estate holders living in Calcutta, intellectuals and pundits (Sarkar 1993: 1869). They were differentiated from the orthodox in that they were Western-educated. However, they opposed themselves to reformers, also Western-educated, by placing political reform above social reform and by reviving pre-colonial, and sometimes pre-Islamic, Indian history. These organic intellectuals of the colonized middle-class defended the honour of Indian women in traditional terms. Although varied and having considerable ideological overlap with reconstructed reformers such as Kushub Chandra Sen, the themes of their writings represent an almost exact inversion of the negative stereotypes of Bengali femininity and masculinity that were so openly expressed during the Ilbert Bill agitation. The Anglo-Indian community's right-wing nationalism seemed to evoke its mirror image, as colonizer and colonized alike defended the boundaries and honour of their communities through the protection and idealization of their gender identities. However alike their underlying family and inheritance structures were, such similarities were often lost in the debate over cultural difference and moral superiority.3

Revivalism's Inversions The colonial middle-class in Bengal existed simultaneously in a position of subordination in one relation and dominance in others (Chatterji 1993: 36). Bengali males, excluded from the commercial and business world, pursued social advancement mainly through legal, educational, journalistic and medical careers. However, these were arenas in which they were also subordinate. The increasing trend towards revival of Hindu traditions in Bengal consisted of a piecemeal dismantling of Western reason in favour of Vedantic goals of monism and transcendence. In this emerging intellectual and cultural milieu, all further social reforms had to be justified within a Hindu epistemology, and not by reference to supposedly universal utilitarian reason and progress. Since national and gender identities are so mutually intertwined, the 40 Sociological Bulletin

reworking of gender images played a central role in this intellectual re- mapping. British disparagement of Indian middle-class masculinity especially targetted Bengali men, while excepting the 'martial races'. 'A low-lying people in a low-lying land', or 'people with the intellect of the Greek and the grit of a rabbit' were common slurs. This disparagement seems to have been frequently internalized by the Bengali intelligentsia as self-hatred. Recurrent newspaper editorials in The Bengalee, The Indian Mirror, and The Amrita Bazaar Patrika berated the supposed weakness of the Bengali male physique. Bankimchandra Chatterji, the nationalist novelist, declared that 'Bengalis lack physical valour', while Surendra Nath Bannerjea editorialized that 'Bengalis have been compared to grasshoppers, and perhaps this is true' (The Bengalee, June 12, 1888). Reformist writers tended to attribute the physical weakness of Bengali men to climate and cultural degeneration, while the revivalists attributed it to cultural emasculation. The Tagore family, as well as Sarala Debi Ghosal, launched organizations for physical culture and martial arts in order to raise the 'national' physique of Bengali men. In the late 1870s, editors of the Amrita Bazaar Patrika were urging readers to take up wrestling. Bipin Chandra Pal founded a secret society, whose aim was the development of physical culture. Clearly, the regeneration of the Bengali male physique marched hand-in-glove with the renewal of Indian traditions. If the nation of Bengal was to be revived and reshaped, however, the original strength to do so was found more in its female, than in its male constituents. Since the public world of education, work and politics was marked by humiliation, the private world of the home became valorized as the site where autonomy, self-esteem, and 'ancient' traditions could be preserved (Sarkar 1993: 1871). The mother's body evoked both the emotional imagery of a return to the past and the birth of as yet unrealized nationalist aspirations. Since motherhood was associated with goddess worship, it was seen not only as a site of cultural autonomy and stability, but also, if unleashed, a source of potential strength. In early revivalist-nationalist poetry, the multivocal imagery of motherhood as victim and origin of life and strength centred on the worship of Kali, a figure of deprivation, revenge and of a world turned upside-down. Even many reformers, for example, Kushub Chandra Sen, defiantly gloried in Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 41 the worship of Kali, popularized throughout the Bengali intelligentsia by the poet-saint Ramakrishna, as well as by Aurobindo Ghosh and Vivekananda (Chatterji 1993: 53). Revivalists poets, novelists, and dramatists linked Mother goddesses to the spiritual community of Bengali nationhood. Mother goddesses, the Motherland, an inner spiritual autonomy, and actual living mothers were metaphorically intermeshed with each other: all were seen as embodiments of shakti. These symbolic associations reached deep into individual psyches and fanned out into much wider national and macrocosmic imaginings. They condensed desires for a return to the precolonial past with the maternal self-sacrifice that nationalists would require to revive and create a nation in the future. The world- turned-upside down imagery of Kali evoked images of subordinate figures becoming ultimately triumphant. These aspirations were fused into one potent symbol of motherhood, evoking historical, linguistic and psychological associations. Some writers, like Bankimchandra Chatterji and Rajani Kanta Gupta, went so far as to idealize sati, or widow-suicide, as a heroic, patriotic act. Pativratya and patriotism were here joined, as the martial Rajput heroines of Bankimchandra's novels who preferred death to dishonour. These national heroines were upheld as role models for both women and men (Chowdhury-Sengupta 1993: 41-45). If the goal of colonialism was the drain of wealth and the goal of patriotism was to reverse its flow, then women, with their ancient traditions and self-sacrificing strength, had the potential to liberate Indian males from the trap of Westernization (Sarkar 1993: 1872). In the imagery of the mother's body as nation, the Bengali intelligentsia reversed many negative British stereotypes of their society. In contrast to the imagery of Hindu women as victims inside the zenana or antehpur, the revivalists counterpoised motherhood as a source of spiritual self-sacrifice and fierce strength. In opposition to the view that Bengali males were unfit to judge Europeans because they kept women 'ignorant and enslaved', revivalists instead worshipped a sacred feminine principle, shakti. They contrasted the imagery of Bengali males as physically effeminate and morally weak with an iconography of spiritual strength derived from Saivite goddess worship and identification with Rajput history. Finally, they counterpoised the 42 Sociological Bulletin

autonomy of the domestic sphere, and their inner selves, as a last repository of ancient culture against the outer, colonized world. By the late 1880s, then, both the Anglo-Indian and Bengali middle-classes possessed highly conscious and systematic ideologies of their respective national cultures that were linked to gender identities and hence to embodied experiences of social and political worlds. The social distance between the two communities was reflected in the contrasting icons of wives and mothers. The fortification of national boundaries through the iconography of chaste daughters and honoured mothers set the stage for opposition to any further reform of the Hindu domestic sphere and for the controversy that swirled around the Age of Consent amendment.

Age of Consent Controversy The Age of Consent controversy reflected two different forms of moral regulation which disciplined two types of ideal feminine bodies and objectified them in contrasting ways. Recently, Janice Boddy has shown how ritualized wife-battering among fundamentalist Norwegian Christians and female circumcision in the Sudan produce historical traumas which inculcate repetitive gender behaviour below the level of conscious awareness. This unconscious 'memory' is connected to aesthetic polarities which form key metaphors of linguistic, ethnic and religious identities (Boddy 1989, 1994). In other words, community standards of what constitutes, 'the good, the beautiful, and the desirable' are often linked to literal and figurative transformations of the ideal feminine body, often imagined as the interior spaces of a society. Although less extreme, I would speculate that early marriages and childbirth produced much the same psychological and aesthetic effects among 19th century upper-caste Bengalis. Psychological denials of aggression and sexuality in middle class Victorian women were probably also crucial in defining the aesthetic components of 'proper' Victorian gender identities. In the Age of Consent controversy, these two forms of 'molding' female bodies and minds were starkly apparent, exhibiting the tight fusion that exists between sexuality, national identities and the channeling of emotion through aesthetic sublimation. Attempts to ban prohibitions on widow remarriage and legally raise the age of marriage in India were at the center of long-term campaigns in Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 43 the late 19th century and were spearheaded by Behramji Malabari. His famous 'Notes on Infant Marriage and Widow Remarriage' (1884) urged the government to ban early marriages and bar government employment to husbands of very young brides. Malabari, as well as Vidyasagar, saw early marriages as connected to high rates of widowhood. Noting that 1881 Census figures recognized 2,122,827 widows below twenty-nine Malabari argued that abolition of early marriages and acceptance of widow remarriages 'would give the widows a new found sense of self- respect'. In some districts, he noted, the census reported that nearly 25 per cent of the female population was widowed. He contended that 'early marriages led to a too early consummation of the nuptial troth, the breaking down of constitutions, . . . the birth of sickly children, the giving up of studies, and a disorganized household leading perhaps to sin' (Malabari 1884: 4). His newspaper, the reformist Indian Spectator, contained numerous editorials throughout the 1880s on the need for better female education, reform of widow remarriages and the need for raising the age of marriage. This, he thought, would counteract the tendency of an increasing number of young widows becoming vulnerable to 'unhealthy' urban influences. Reformers and revivalists, it seems, concurred in linking the honour of the Indian middle class with the honour of women. For both reformers and revivalists, the spectre of daughters falling into prostitution was a significant anxiety during this period (Whitehead 1995b: 51). Malabari's forthright views received comments from numerous English and Indian administrators and professional men. Most supported the goals of his reforms, but urged legislative caution and the importance of education and the 'slow progress of propaganda'. Even P. C. Mazumdar, a prominent Brahmo Samaj reformer, pleaded for legislative caution on the age of marriage issue. The Viceroy, Lord Ripon, rejected immediate legislative action, citing Queen Victoria's 1858 proclamation not to interfere in the religious customs of Her Majesty's subjects (Malabari 1884: 10). He urged Malabari to ascertain the Hindu community's religious sentiment on this matter. In 1886, Lord Dufferin also rejected immediate legislative intervention on similar grounds (Malabari 1884: 11). In response, Malabari conducted a lecture tour of north Indian cities and towns (Indian Spectator, June 13, 1888). In August, 1890 he carried his campaign to England, where he persuaded 44 Sociological Bulletin

Lords Reay and Ripon, as well as Ilbert, the Earl of Northbrook, and Professor Max Mueller and his wife to form a Committee for the Abolition of Child Marriage (Kosambi 1993: 111). Malabari's campaign was strengthened by public reaction to two court cases which focused public attention on the issue of child marriage. The first was the Rukhmabai case of 1884-1888 in Bombay. Dadaji Bhihaji, married to Rukhmabai since childhood, filed suit for the restitution of conjugal rights. From a non-Brahmin, but economically elite family, Rukhmabai refused to reside with her husband, citing grounds of economic and personal incompatibility. The acrimonious court case ended in an out of court settlement in which her husband relinquished claims upon her. The second case was the murder trial of Hari Mohun Maitee, whose wife Phulmoni Dasi, died on her wedding night, allegedly from forcible consummation. While Hari Mohun was more than thirty year's old, his wife was merely ten. These much- publicized cases emphasized the unfortunate consequences of early marriages. Revivalists defended the rights of Hindu husbands in these two cases. In the Phulmoni Dasi case, they argued that death or injury to young brides were extremely rare consequences of early marriages. The mounting pressure for reform in both England and India persuaded the new Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, to agree to a diminished version of Malabari's proposals. By focusing on raising the age of consent, rather than the age of marriage, and leaving the issue of widow remarriage to 'educational progress', Lansdowne hoped to circumvent much of the anticipated opposition from revivalists. Preparation for the amendment began in August 1890, without publicity, to ascertain the extent of early marriages and early consummation of marriages. Responses from medical officials and magistrates throughout India indicated that Bengal was the only province in which early marriages and consummation were widely practiced, due to the popularity there of Raghunandan's interpretations of the Shastras. Raghunandan considered that ritual consummation of the marriage after the first menstruation, called the garbadhan ceremony, was necessary to ensure the purity of the first-born child. The latter, in turn, was necessary for male children to provide sraddha (last rites) ceremonies for their ancestors. The amendment held that sex with a girl under twelve years old, Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 45 either married or unmarried, was rape and was punishable by a maximum of ten years' imprisonment or transportation for life. However, marriageable cases were placed in the category of non- cognizable offences, that is, those in which police could not arrest someone without a prior warrant from a District Magistrate. This clause was inserted to provide protection against arrests on the basis of suspicion alone, since a number of commentators had warned that the honour of respectable families could be destroyed' through false allegations. Between its introduction in January and its passage on March 19, English-language and vernacular newspapers discuss the amendment. The debate which was wide-ranging had five distinct strands. The first strand was whether the various Sastras and their commentaries prescribed child marriages and early consummation. The second was whether contemporary practices included early betrothals and consummation, the third questioned whether the proposed legislation violated the promise of non-interference in religious customs. The fourth point of conflict was whether implementing the amendment would actually protect young women. And finally the medical argument about the physiological harm to women, their children, and hence to the 'race' as a whole due to early marriages constituted another strand of discussion. In the Legislative Council, the major opponent of the amendment was Sir R. C. Mitter from Bengal. He supported his contention that it represented an unjustifiable interference by a foreign power in Hindu domestic customs by citing the authority of the Shastras.

In Bengal proper the orthodox Hindus are guided by the interpretations of the Shastras given in Raghunandun Bhattacharjea's Ashtubinghastti Tuttos. Whether these interpretations are correct or not is, I venture to think, a question with which legislators in this country should not concern themselves, if they are to honor the 1858 Royal Proclamation not to interfere in religious customs of India (IOLC L/P&J5/54).

Labelling this position 'Raghunandoxy', Malabari countered with an editorial in The Indian Spectator He refuted Mitter by arguing that 46 Sociological Bulletin

Raghunandon was hardly known outside Bengal, and offered alternative Shastra prescriptions, drawn, ironically, from Manu:

Manu, in Chapter IX, verse 89, prescribed that a maiden may even remain till her death in her father's house, though she attained maturity; but she should not be married to one who is not fit. This is explained by the oldest commentator of Manu thus: 'A maiden is not to be given in marriage before puberty and she is not to be given after puberty as long as a meritorious bridegroom is not to be had {Indian Spectator, February 1, 1991).

The Spectator editorial concluded by stating that 'Ragunandadadoxy' in a portion of Bengal was not Hinduism in India. M. G. Ranade, one of the foremost Maharashtrian reformers, supported the amendment by citing classical ayurvedic medical authorities, such as Sushruta. Sushruta cautioned that motherhood in women of less than sixteen often led to stillbirths and weak offsprings. Ranade invoked the image of the Vedic Golden Age, arguing that early betrothals, marriages and consummation were decadent appendages to current Hinduism, due to wars, invasions and colonialism:

In spite of the authority of Manu, Hiranyakishen, etc., marriages after puberty have fallen into desuetude; but though infant marriages have become the rule, the texts which speak of the consummation of marriage do not, as Professor Bhandarkar has conclusively established, lay down that the garbhadan, or consummation ceremony, must be performed immediately after the attainment of puberty' (IOLC L/P&J/5/54).

Various petitions from reforms argued that those opposing the amendment were ignoring the fact that they worshipped female Vedic sages, such as Gargiwachanayi-and Subha-maitreyi, who were unmarried and educated in Sanskrit. The support of the garbhadan ceremony, which effectively inhibited girls' future education, stood in contradiction with these Vedic practices of educating women, they argued. The significance of this issue for the emergence of revivalist nationalism as an important political force is exemplified by the career Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 47 of B. G. Tilak. In October 1890, still in contact with Poona reformers, Tilak supported late marriages and widow remarriages, provided 4 they were voluntary. However, he developed strong opposition to the Age of Consent amendment, since legislation on domestic issues represented 'cultural emasculation'. He attempted to ridicule the reformers' argument that the Phulmoni Dasi case called for a change in the law, thus:

Hari Mohun could not be held responsible for intercourse with his wife.. His rashness made him guilty . . . but this consisted in nothing else than his having omitted to think on the possibility of his wife having an unusually dangerous organ, and his having omitted to speculate upon the comparative dimensions and vigor of the sexual organs of both ... Is not even the present law outrageously merciless if it can severely punish husbands for rarely expected risks of defective female organs? (quoted in Wolpert 1962: 53).

In 1895, Tilak. chased the Social Conference from the National Congress' pavilion, arguing that political reforms and independence had to take precedence over social reform. The Indian National Congress became similarly divided over the issue, partly due to the strong opposition from Bengal revivalists. In the 1890 Social Conference held in conjunction with the National Congress, a resolution to raise the age of marriage was unanimously passed. Yet by March 1891, various sections of the National Congress were deeply divided over the implementation of the act, which they thought could ruin falsely-charged families. The objectification of female bodies was evident not only in Tilak's prose. It eddied through various positions in this controversy. Debates occurred between British medical doctors, the orthodox and the revivalists concerning the age at which Bengali girls began menstruation and on whether early marriages harmed the physiology of young women. Perhaps the most dramatic, yet convincing intervention in this controversy was provided by a group of fifty-five British lady doctors, adducing as evidence thirteen cases of physical injury to young brides during their careers. The various injuries they judged to result from premature consummation included lacerated flesh, paralysis of the lower 48 Sociological Bulletin extremities, dislocation of the pubic arch and crushed pelvic bones (IOLC L/P&J/5/54). Medical practitioners frequently used the eugenics' argument that immature sexual congress implied dire consequences to the welfare of the race, and to the tone and well-being of society in general (IOLC L/P&J/5/54). The reformers were keen to buttress this issue of social justice with a wide range of arguments in order to strengthen their case. Malabari also cited the medical consequences of early marriage and extended these dangers to the family and society as a whole:

Early marriage leads to early motherhood, and thence to the physical deterioration of the nation; it sits as a heavy weight on our rising generation, enchains their aspirations, and generally dwarfs their growth, and fills the country . . . with weaklings and sickly people . . . (Gidumal 1888: 14).

However persuasive the eugenics' argument for the reformers' case, it was also embedded in a discourse of racial, sexual and class differences, in which Bengali males were viewed as a hypersexual and unmanly 'race'. Hence it ran the danger of appearing anti-nationalist. The Calcutta Medical Society fixed twelve as the natural age of menstruation, declaring that Bengali girls who menstruated before that age had been artificially stimulated by the early excitation of their sexual instincts. The Civil Surgeon of Mymensingh, for example, informed the Viceroy's hearings that:

There is reason to believe that mechanical measures are not infrequently used to dilate the sexual passage, and it is difficult to decide which is the greatest evil and disgrace, the injury caused by the natural method or the degradation due' to the artificial. A native medical witness here testified that in about 20% of cases, children were borne by wives of from 12 to 13 years. This leads to still-borns, sickly offspring, and often puerperal fever in the mother (IOLC L/P&J/5/54).

While reformers, revivalists and moderate nationalists debated a variety of points, the reasoning accepted by Sir Andrew Scoble, the Legal Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 49

Member of the Viceroy's Council, was the medical evidence of the lady doctors on the physiological consequences of early marriages on young women and their children. Scoble, in refuting Mitter's arguments that child marriages did not lead to baneful physiological consequences, argued:

There is, moreover, much reason to fear that comparatively few cases of this class find their way into the Criminal Courts and not many, perhaps, into the hospitals. But I would invite the attention of the Council to the terrible list, sent up by Mrs. Mainsail and other lady doctors, of cases which had come under their personal observation of little girls aged from nine to twelve, who had died, become paralyzed or crippled, or been otherwise severely injured, as the result of premature cohabitation. Against such positive testimony, I attach little importance to the negative statement of a number of native doctors practicing in Calcutta that not a single case of bodily injury to a married girl has come to their knowledge in the course of their practice (IOLC L/P&J/5/54).

Lansdowne also cited the Lady Doctors' memorial as a major reason for introducing this reform, coupling his announcement with the statement that no further interference in social customs affecting marriage was contemplated (IOLC L/P&J/5/54). Revivalists responded by stating that the amendment represented a cultural emasculation. Because the Age of Consent controversy engaged gender and colonial appositions, it has provided ample evidence for differing historical explanations in the past decade. By way of conclusion, I summarize these differing interpretations and then show how a multiple-subjective approach can reconcile and perhaps transcend them. 5 In defending the domestic sphere against legislative intervention, Sinha has interpreted the revivalist protest as opposing a totalizing colonial reason. He views the revivalists as resisting the racist disparagement of Bengali male sexuality which, according to him is a crucial element in the defence of the Raj (Sinha 1979: 100). He holds that introduction of the amendment represents British colonial intervention in a dominant rather than hegemonic phase, in which legi- slative controls were becoming more predominant than moral suasion. 50 Sociological Bulletin

Tanika Sarkar has provided a useful critique of this one-sided interpretation. Since colonial discourse theory reserves for Orientalism the entire range of hegemonic possibilities, she contends that it creates a necessarily monolithic, non-stratified colonial subject who possesses no agency of his or her own (Sarkar 1993: 1860). Since all power is placed on the side of the colonizer, any contestatory act, even the support of sati, acquires by default a rebellious, emancipatory potential. She further argues that the controversy represented the political emergence of a distinctive strain of revivalist nationalism seeking hegemony of the nationalist movement. During the controversy, she perceptively notes that revivalist-nationalism staked out new ideological terrain in a discourse of pain and discipline of the femine body. Far from representing British colonialism in a dominant phase, she contends that British administrators tried to keep their distance from the Hindu domestic sphere in the post-1857 decades, responding only sporadically to reformist pressures (Sarkar 1993: 1873). Sarkar has highlighted the problems, especially for complex societies such as India of anti-colonial interpretive schemes which postulate a single opposition between colonizer and colonized. Yet her explanation, too, ultimately succumbs to a binary dualism, that of male versus female, so that the racist and patriarchal underpinnings of eugenics' arguments used by the reformers remain unchallenged. While her argument that British administrators were reluctant to intervene in Hindu domestic reforms after 1857 is correct, it ignores the fact that this reluctance was more the result of anti-colonial resistance than of British goodwill. Lannsdowne's personal correspondence indicates that the administration was aware of the divisive effects of the Age of Consent debate before introducing the measure, and was eager to use the splits in the nationalist movement to pressure the Congress to accept a diluted Council Act in 1892. On January 3, 1891, a letter from the public Works member of the Legislative Council informed the Viceroy that 'if Congress leaders side with the anti-reform party, they will show their true value to their sympathizers at home and may help to divide them from the reforming camp' (IOLC MS EUR D594: 7). Landsdowne also informed Lord Salisbury on March 26 that the 'age of consent controversy had produced extremely favourable circumstances for introducing a moderate council's act ... The Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 51 controversy which has been raging over the Age of Consent Bill has, for the moment, demoralized the Congress Party, almost as much as the Parnell Episode demoralized Irish Nationalists' (IOLC MS EUR D594 15) Although the British Indian government was far from being a monolithic source of power during the period implied by Sinha's discussion, it was also not, at least not yet, the totally passive political force implied by Sarkar's analysis For example, the London Times, not surprisingly, was openly jubilant at the divisions in the National Congress between reformers and revivalists

Lord Lansdowne's government thus had not only put an end to an immoral and cruel practice, it has also ruined that Congress party which, only four years ago, at Allahabad, threatened to lead a formidable seditious movement The abolition of the annual Congress, such as it was likely to become, is almost as important as the abolition of child marriage itself {The London Times, March 19, 1891)

Surely the Age of Consent controversy, like the Ilbert Bill agitation, engaged with both racial and gender subordination concurrently While these two forms of stratification can be analytically separated, they are often experienced simultaneously (Hooks 1981) They are also often metaphorically linked, since symbols of 'natural' gender differences become metaphoric templates for ethnic differences become metaphoric templates for ethnic differences and vice-versa6 The two public controversies show the extent to which metaphors of cultural difference delved into the inner unconscious of gender identities and fanned out into wider metaphors of 'racial', community and national differences Gender identities engage with powerful emotions of parenting and sexuality Since gender roles traverse biological and cultural realms, they can enforce cultural divisions between self and the other by 'naturalizing' cultural aesthetics As the widespread use of metaphors of the motherland or the fatherland in nationalist movements of this period throughout the world attests (Anderson 1983, Davin 1978, Koonz 1987, Mosse 1985, Parker et al 1992), gender identities provided a powerful emotional terrain where differences between self and the other were unconsciously played out Similarities in modes of moral regulation 52 Sociological Bulletin

between the colonizer and colonized were often lost from view during these historical moments of cultural polarization, while nationalism became eroticized by its fusion with culturally specific gender identities. It was difficult to read these documents without succumbing to the rhetoric of either form of moral regulation, the Brahminical-religious or the Victorian-medical. The revivalist defence of tradition opposed British racism, while European medical discourse provided authoritative support that challenged feudal forms of patriarchy. Yet, by combining elements of both discourses, while selectively overlooking their similarities the Age of Consent debates reconstituted old forms of gender and class distinctions in a new guise. The overriding impression in these legislative, medical and journalistic papers is that of the young woman's body laid bare as a set of moral precepts on the one hand or physiological 'facts' on the other hand. In each discourse, the cultural definition of the passage from girlhood or womanhood is objectified, inscribed, and perused. The actual experience of Bengali girls- becoming-women, however, is lost from view. 'Facts' come to mediate social relations, the experience of early marriage became a datum of administration and ruling, and male elites on both sides utilized the silent images of women to debate questions of political legitimacy and leadership of the future Indian nation.

NOTES

1 The opposition between the two communities prevented (or allowed7) both to ignore their similarities in gender, status, and class hierarchies See Goody (1990; for an explicit discussion of pre-industrial Eurasian similarities in family, gender, property and inheritance structures 2 There is now a large literature on the biological objectification of 'race' in the late 19th century For Southern Africa see Swanson (1977 387-410) Comaroff and Comaroff(1993) For the Philippines, see Anderson (1992 506-529) 3 The discounting of convergences and similarities in the habitus of colonizer and colonized has been a recurring feature of the contestatory movement between colonialism and nationalism Both seek to valorize distinctive cultural 'traditions', often ones of relatively recent reshaping See Keesing (1989 19-42) 4 Some biographers of Tilak have seen this as evidence that he was a moderate realist on issues of social reform Others, however, point out that Tilak only joined the Social Conference in 1890 in order to expose their supposed allegiance to the British government See Wolpert (1962 48-50) for a discussion of the controversies among Tilak's biographers 5 I have chosen the work of two historians for consideration because these two most clearly express two conflicting perspectives, that of Sinha (1979) and Sarkar (1993) 6 Lerner (1986) argues from Mesopotamian archaeological evidence that the Bodies of Evidence, Bodies of Rule 53

objectification of 'social differences' in general was first constructed through the objectification of women in marriages In other words, biological conceptions of difference were expanded from notions of female and male differences and then applied to ethnic and religious communities conquered by early Mesopotamian states

REFERENCES

54 Sociological Bulletin