Governing Gender And Sexuality In Colonial India

Download or read book Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India written by Jessica Hinchy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the colonial and postcolonial governance of gender and sexuality through the history of transgender Hijras in north India.

Download or read book Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India written by Jessica Hinchy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-26 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1865, the British rulers of north India resolved to bring about the gradual 'extinction' of transgender Hijras. This book, the first in-depth history of the Hijra community, illuminates the colonial and postcolonial governance of gender and sexuality and the production of colonial knowledge. From the 1850s, colonial officials and middle class Indians increasingly expressed moral outrage at Hijras' feminine gender expression, sexuality, bodies and public performances. To the British, Hijras were an ungovernable population that posed a danger to colonial rule. In 1871, the colonial government passed a law that criminalised Hijras, with the explicit aim of causing Hijras' 'extermination'. But Hijras evaded police, kept on the move, broke the law and kept their cultural traditions alive. Based on extensive archival work in India and the UK, Jessica Hinchy argues that Hijras were criminalised not simply because of imported British norms, but due to a complex set of local factors, including elite Indian attitudes.

Download or read book Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India written by Jessica Hinchy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1865, the British rulers of north India resolved to bring about the gradual 'extinction' of transgender Hijras. This book, the first in-depth history of the Hijra community, illuminates the colonial and postcolonial governance of gender and sexuality and the production of colonial knowledge. From the 1850s, colonial officials and middle class Indians increasingly expressed moral outrage at Hijras' feminine gender expression, sexuality, bodies and public performances. To the British, Hijras were an ungovernable population that posed a danger to colonial rule. In 1871, the colonial government passed a law that criminalised Hijras, with the explicit aim of causing Hijras' 'extermination'. But Hijras evaded police, kept on the move, broke the law and kept their cultural traditions alive. Based on extensive archival work in India and the UK, Jessica Hinchy argues that Hijras were criminalised not simply because of imported British norms, but due to a complex set of local factors, including elite Indian attitudes.

Download or read book Indian Sex Life written by Durba Mitra and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "During the colonial period, Indian intellectuals--philologists, lawyers, scientists and literary figures--all sought to hold a mirror to their country. Whether they wrote novels, polemics, or scientific treatises, all sought a better understanding of society in general and their society in particular. Curiously, female sexuality and sexual behavior play an outside role in their writing. The figure of the prostitute is ubiquitous in everything from medical texts and treatises on racial evolution to anti-Muslim polemic and studies of ancient India. In this book, Durba Mitra argues that between the 1840s and the 1940s, the new science of sexuality became foundational to the scientific study of Indian social progress. The colonial state and an emerging set of Bengali male intellectuals extended the regulation of sexuality to far-reaching projects that sought to define what society should look like and how modern citizens should behave. An exploration of this history of social scientific thought offers new perspectives to understand the power of paternalistic and deeply violent claims about sexual norms in the postcolonial world today. These histories reveal the enduring authority of scientific claims to a tradition that equates social good with the control of women's free will and desire. Thus, they managed to dramatically reorganize their society around upper-caste Hindu ideals of strict monogamy"--

Download or read book Sex, Law and the Politics of Age written by Ishita Pande and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative study of the establishment of 'age' as a political category in late colonial India.

Download or read book Sexual States written by Jyoti Puri and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sexual States Jyoti Puri tracks the efforts to decriminalize homosexuality in India to show how the regulation of sexuality is fundamentally tied to the creation and enduring existence of the state. Since 2001 activists have attempted to rewrite Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which in addition to outlawing homosexual behavior is often used to prosecute a range of activities and groups that are considered perverse. Having interviewed activists and NGO workers throughout five metropolitan centers, investigated crime statistics and case law, visited various state institutions, and met with the police, Puri found that Section 377 is but one element of how homosexuality is regulated in India. This statute works alongside the large and complex system of laws, practices, policies, and discourses intended to mitigate sexuality's threat to the social order while upholding the state as inevitable, legitimate, and indispensable. By highlighting the various means through which the regulation of sexuality constitutes India's heterogeneous and fragmented "sexual state," Puri provides a conceptual framework to understand the links between sexuality and the state more broadly.

Download or read book Converting Women written by Eliza F. Kent and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of British colonialism, conversion to Christianity was a path to upward mobility for Indian low-castes and untouchables, especially in the Tamil-speaking south of India. Kent examines these conversions, focusing especially on the experience of women converts and the ways in which conversion transformed gender roles and expectations.