Week 6 Civilizing Mission and Beyond

1. Week 6Civilizing Mission and Beyond Dr SupriyaAkerkar

2. Outline for this lecture • What is meant by civilizing mission? • Why and how was ‘the woman question’ mobilised by this civilizing mission in India? • What were the broad responses to this civilizing mission within India? • What alternative analytical frameworks were mobilised by the Indian women’s movement in relations to ‘the woman question’?

3. What is meant by civilizing mission?

4. Civilizing MissionPicture source: http://iprd.org.uk/Dec 30, 2006 • French term: mission civilisatrice • Official doctrine of imperialism • Assumption of ‘french superiority’ of culture and perfection • Colonial subjects seen as too backward to govern themselves and needed to be uplifted

5. Annual Colonial reports Moral and Material Progress of India • Key Phrases • Oriental despotism • Weak and Primitive creatures • Vile and Depraved • Lost country • Charles Grant: ‘observations on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of great Britain’ (1792) • James Mill’s History of British India (1817) • Made a case for ‘moral progress’ in the Indian society

6. Civilizing Mission.... • Instinct over reason • Liberty over despotism • Ignorance over enlightenment • to bring progress and modernity • Self legitimation of colonial rule • White Man’s Burden

7. Issues of moral progress in 19th century • Legislations by the Colonial Govt in relation to its civilizing mission: • Suppression of female infanticide • Sati immolation (1829) • Widow remarriage act (1856) • Age of consent (1891)/ child marriage consent act (1829)

8. Do you think these acts by the Colonial Government led to the civilizing of India? • Discuss

9. What do the contemporary critics say? • The colonial government also brought three acts which were against Indian women: • Restitution of conjugal rights (case of Rukmabai Vs Dadaji) • Indian contagious diseases act 1868 • Denial of female suffrage (source: Liddle and Joshi, 1985)

10. What do the contemporary critiques say? • Framing of these debates were a domain of power • Colonialist framed the debate in civilizing overtones justifying its rule • Denial of agency to colonized subjects and its social reform movements • Improvement considered a privilege of British • Women’s status not central to debates

11. Age of consent debate: Early Indian Reformers • 1850s: Reformer Vidyasagar wrote in support of abolition of child marriage. Girls at least 11 years and boys 17 years. • 1870s: KeshubChunderSen of BrahmoSamaj urged for minimum age of girls at 14 and 18 for boys. • 1870s: Ranade questioned girl marriage due to its population links. Urged increased marriage age. • 1884: Malabari too urged for legislation

12. Age of Consent: Response of the British and Indians • Initially reluctant to act in response to the reformers urges: Governors advised against interference by the Govt (Times, 15thoct 1886). • Govt asked for the opinions of Indians. • Several Indian organisations, reformers supported reform. • National Social Conference group formed to support reform. • Orthodox groups questioned reforms and the right of the state to interfere • Ranade asked why state interference in religious custom should be allowed. • In other words the debate now became centred around whether the government had a right to intervene or not • These were followed by sensational cases: • Phulmoni Vs H M Maitee

13. Age of Consent: framing of the debate: should the government interfere or not? • Orthodox Hindus continued to question govt right to interfere • While Hindu observers emphasised the difference between formal marriage and its consummation, between 1888 – 1891, The Times published dozens of articles on the evils of child marriage • Social reformers such as Malabari visited England in 1890 and spoke to groups to pressure the government. • In 1891, the age of consent was raised to 12 years by the government, as a compromise

14. Age of consent bill: discourses of power • The debate moved from women’s wellbeing - one of the reasons for some of the social reformers to take up the cause - to the right of the government to intervene, which brought in the civilizing overtones. • In reality, the debate shows a complex picture of mobilisation of discourses within a domain of power: • The progressive discourse mobilised by the social reform movement gave it a national recognition. • Orthodox discourse was able to revive anti-reform and revivalist nationalists together • British public opinion influenced government action and the age of consent bill was instituted only after careful strategic considerations of power by government.

15. Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929: Debates • Need to locate the debate within the emerging women’s movement and freedom movement within India • 1904: Indian women’s conference was formed to discuss women’s issues • 1927: All India Women’s Conference founded which called for political goal of independence for emancipation of women. Issues of purdah, women’s education, child marriage could not be separated from independence • Demand for equality before law, personal law reforms, voting rights • Gandhi’s mass mobilisation for non-cooperation with British

16. Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929: Debates • Linked with the age of consent debate within and outside marriage. • In 1921-27, several Indian reformers asked for legislation on minimum age of marriage. In 1926, Gandhi suggested that child marriage be null and void. • Government was reluctant to introduce the bill and the bill was introduced and withdrawn between 1922-27. • Katherine Mayo’s book Mother India (1927) attacked Indian society ferociously. Led to British outrage of public opinion against child marriage within Britain. Sections of British press called Indians bankrupt, with filthy personal habits, degraded women and argued why swaraj /independence should not be granted to Indians

17. Civilizing Mission • Mayo’s book brought the discourse of ‘civilizing mission’ by the colonial government once again to forefront. • Led to Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929

18. What do civilizing mission debates around child marriage restraint act show? • The silencing of the agency of Indian women’s movement and their supporters which were questioning the practice of child marriage. • The instituting of the child marriage restraint act by the colonial government as a rationale to sustain its civilizing colonial rule in India • Questioning of male as well as colonial domination and its civilizing mission by Indian women.

19. Civilizing Mission?? • Liddle and Joshi (1985) therefore conclude: • “They [colonial government] were highly selective in both their liberalising and their non-interference. This contradiction can be explained by the fact that the British were not interested in women's position for its own sake; they were concerned only with the way the divisions of gender mediated the structure of imperialism. By maintaining women's subordination they could show that India was not yet fit for Independence. By liberalising women's position they demonstrated the Western culture's superiority in relations between men and women”.

20. Do you agree or disagree with this assessment by Liddle and Joshi? • What can we learn about the civilizing mission from colonial interventions over ‘the woman question’ in India?

21. Next Lecture • Writings from Within

22. Thank You