BODY POLITIC: SEXUALITY, HEALTH AND HYGIENE IN COLONIAL INDIA (1860-1930)

 

Mridul Megha

Ms., Janki Devi Memorial College, India

Abstract

The paper will be an attempt to examine the role of biomedical knowledge and practices in the perpetuation of colonial rule by focusing on the institutional development of biomedicine in colonial India. The framework adopted will be that of Michel Foucault’s theory of biomedicine as a ‘new technology of power’ which at the individual level is centrally focused on the human body as an object of power, and at the collective level aided political power in controlling populations through public health measures 1. Using historical literature in the form of reports on lock hospitals in the Central Provinces and North-Western province and Oudh of India, the objective will be to argue that introduction of biomedicine in the colonies was as much an administrative necessity as it was a part of a larger project of cultural hegemony and the spread of Western ideas, institutions and practices.

Unlike what the reports suggest the attempt will be to highlight colonial concern as a hegemonic one far beyond the concern of the public health of the “natives”. Health and medicalization of the body hence, as a site for the construction of the empire’s authority and control. In other terms, the paper will be based on the relationship of knowledge, power and sexuality and on sexuality as surveillance. Surveillance and control over the body constructed the “ideal social behaviour”. Law-taboo-censorship in tandem became mechanisms of control to examine the sexuality of individuals. Control of women, in particular prostitutes will be the focus of this paper. The feminine body during the colonial era came to be analysed, qualified and disqualified as being thoroughly saturated with sexuality. The feminine body was integrated into the sphere of medical practices. Foucault terms it as the “hysterization” of women’s bodies. This medicalization of feminine sexuality meant her being kept under close watch.

 The paper will also be an attempt to delve deeper into issues around sexualities and body politics, taking into consideration alternate sexualities. In order to do so, the attempt will be to look beyond archival resources for they provide limited information around this theme. Ronald Hyam and Anjali Arondekar have termed it as “the politics of the archives” for there has been a deliberate omission and an invisibility of alternate sexualities (for it disturbed the image of colonial heterosexual masculinity). In the absence of official records the attempt will be to useunofficial cultures of sexuality, i.e., the fictions of the British raj as well as “footpath” magazines.

Public discussions on sexuality became directly linked to the individuals, the society and the nation as a whole. These themes were common in journals of sex- education as well as ‘advice’ and ‘discussion’ publications, the most widely circulated of which were Nar-Naareeand Hum Dono. An entire range of experts turned their attention to the family and advised against the dangers of “bad” sexuality and ensuring its “good health”.

Keywords: British Rule in India, History of Sexuality, Body Politic, Health and Hygiene, The Cantonment Act, The Contagious Diseases Act

 

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