Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-w95db Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-15T20:09:09.556Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

19 - Sex in Bombay in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Get access

Summary

The chapter provides an insight into the complex sexual milieu of Bombay in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning with the Rajabai Tower case as a key narrative, numerous facets of the city, such as cosmopolitanism, group identities, the link between forensics and sexual assault, racial profiling, and police corruption, are discussed. Also examined are the spatial controversies surrounding Bombay’s red-light neighbourhoods and links between spatiality and the identity of prostitutes. Pop culture’s role in shaping a sexual ethos, in Parsi theatre and later Bombay cinema, and particularly the unique position of performative androgyny, is reviewed. Further, the impact of contagious disease acts and the fluid definition of prostitution is studied. Finally, the role of eugenics is surveyed, and the extremely divisive and convoluted politics of the eugenics movement is analyzed.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Alter, Joseph S. ‘Somatic Nationalism: Indian Wrestling and Militant Hinduism’. Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 3 (1994): 557–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, David. Science, Technology, and Medicine in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bala, Poonam. Contesting Colonial Authority: Medicine and Indigenous Responses in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century India. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012.Google Scholar
Burman, Tanya. ‘From Pari Khanas to Lal Bazaars and Further Away: Female Performers in Nineteenth Century Awadh’. Pakistan Journal of Women’s Studies 28, no. 1 (2021): 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doniger, Wendy. ‘From Kama to Karma: The Resurgence of Puritanism in Contemporary India’. Social Research 78, no. 1 (2011): 4974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Ellen. The Lord Who Is Half Woman: Ardhanarisvara in Indian and Feminist Perspective. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Guha, Ambalika. ‘The “Masculine” Female: The Rise of Women Doctors in Colonial India, c. 1870–1940’. Social Scientist (New Delhi) 44, no. 5/6 (2016): 4964.Google Scholar
Hinchy, Jessica. Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c. 1850–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolsky, Elizabeth. ‘“The Body Evidencing the Crime”: Rape on Trial in Colonial India, 1860–1947’. Gender & History 22, no. 1 (2010): 109–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Majumdar, Rochona. Marriage and Modernity Family Values in Colonial Bengal. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Mehta, Suketu. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. New York: Knopf, 2005.Google Scholar
Mitra, Durba. Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Sujata. Gender, Medicine, and Society in Colonial India: Women’s Health Care in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Bengal, 1st ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pande, Ishita. Sex, Law and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramberg, Lucinda. Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Savary, Luzia. ‘Vernacular Eugenics? Santati-Śāstra in Popular Hindi Advisory Literature (1900–1940)’. South Asia 37, no. 3 (2014): 381–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, Svati P. Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Shahani, Parmesh. Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharafi, Mitra June. Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sreenivas, Mytheli. Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Srivastava, Sanjay. Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities, and Culture in South Asia. New Delhi: Sage, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanita, Ruth. Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. New York: Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar
Wald, Erica. ‘From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women: Sexual Relationships, Venereal Disease and the Redefinition of Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century India’. Indian Economic and Social History Review 46, no. 1 (2009): 525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×