Rayana Ghosh explores how anxieties round sexuality formed the regulation of abortion in Colonial India
Colonial Medical Jurisprudence and the Politics of Reproductive Management in Bengal
In Nineteenth-century Bengal, India, abortion turned a web site of intense colonial scrutiny, entangled with questions of morality, legality, and medical science. On this article, I discover these concepts by means of an evaluation of Norman Chevers’ A Guide of Medical Jurisprudence for Bengal and the North-Western Provinces (1856), a foundational medical and authorized textual content referring to colonial India. The handbook supplied pointers for investigating crimes similar to poisoning, murder, and infanticide, integrating Western medico-legal practices with the precise cultural and environmental contexts of India. Whereas it superior medical jurisprudence and public well being administration, Chevers’ textual content additionally mirrored racialised colonial ideologies, portraying Western drugs as superior to non-Western practices and reinforcing stereotypes about Indian society.
Chevers, who was a outstanding British medical practitioner, gives an important lens for understanding how reproductive practices had been framed as each medical and ethical crises throughout the colonial undertaking. His 608-page handbook intricately linked abortion to cultural degeneration—described in Nineteenth-century medical discourse because the weakening of a society’s bodily and ethical well being—and to sexual deviance, casting it as a prison act necessitating judicial and medical intervention. For instance, colonial authorities typically argued that using abortifacient herbs by Indian ladies, significantly these exterior British medical oversight, represented a risk to the ethical material of society and contributed to the perceived decline of racial and social “health.” Chevers characterised his work as contributing to the “historical past of crime in India,” (1856, iv) underscoring using forensic drugs as an instrument of ethical and political governance in colonial settings.
Abortion, or pet phelano, was described by Chevers as a widespread however illicit observe, typically employed by ladies to hide socially stigmatised sexual exercise, similar to having (illegitimate) youngsters by means of wedlock or extramarital affairs. Indigenous midwives (dāīs), usually from marginalised and lower-caste communities, had been central figures in facilitating abortions, utilizing a mixture of mechanical interventions and medicinal irritants. These strategies included ingesting arsenic-based contraceptives, inserting sticks of laal chitra (plumbago rosea, regionally discovered roots), and inducing bodily trauma by means of stomach blows (Chevers 1856, 389). Though these practices had been deeply embedded in native data programs, colonial authorities intervened in instances the place maternal or foetal loss of life occurred, marking such situations as extreme crimes warranting medical and authorized examination.
At its core, the colonial preoccupation with abortion mirrored broader anxieties about regulating sexuality and reinforcing ‘respectable’ behaviour amongst colonised ‘topics’, significantly amongst ladies. Medical science performed a pivotal position in these efforts, setting up ladies’s our bodies as objects of surveillance and deviance. Forensic accounts lowered indigenous ladies to empirical topics of examine, the place abortion was framed as an emblem of ethical failure and cultural backwardness. This course of not solely criminalised reproductive practices but additionally positioned Indian customs as antithetical to the colonial state’s beliefs of morality and progress.
Colonial Narratives and the criminalisation of Indigenous Reproductive Well being Practices
In distinction to the colonial portrayal of abortion as an emblem of cultural and ethical decay, indigenous fertility practices reveal a classy and adaptable physique of conventional data. Fertility regulation in Bengal encompassed a big selection of strategies, starting from natural cures and bodily interventions, to ritualistic practices. Married ladies typically sought abortions to keep away from the pressure of repeated childbirth, whereas single ladies used them to mitigate the stigma of illegitimate youngsters. Widows, topic to stringent expectations of celibacy, often turned to abortion to hide extramarital pregnancies, inserting them on the centre of many abortion-related scandals (Guha 1996, 404).
Abortion-inducing substances like Randia dumetorum (mainphal), plumbago root, and neem smoke had been extensively used attributable to their affordability and accessibility. Different strategies included ingesting substances like ergot or oleander to induce uterine contractions or utilizing irritants similar to black pepper or papaya seeds. Proverbs, similar to Enro chheler kenre dagar (denoting the dangers of intently spaced pregnancies), replicate an embedded cultural consciousness of the necessity for fertility management. These practices had been typically facilitated by dāīs, whose experience in reproductive care prolonged past abortion to embody childbirth, postpartum care, and administration of problems like retained placentas.
Nevertheless, colonial accounts of copy in Bengal, together with Chevers’ handbook, stripped these practices of their cultural and social contexts, presenting them as barbaric and unscientific. Chevers’ descriptions, whereas meticulous, constantly linked abortion to deviance, portraying ladies who sought abortions as morally compromised and midwives as unscrupulous practitioners. These narratives exemplify the colonial tendency to doc indigenous data whereas concurrently discrediting its legitimacy.
Dāīs had been pivotal but vilified figures in colonial reproductive governance. Expert in managing pregnancies, inducing labour, and addressing problems, they had been indispensable to native communities. Nevertheless, their affiliation with abortion rendered them frequent targets of colonial suspicion and persecution. Chevers described dāīs as
“hags of low caste and evil reputation…carrying on a scientific commerce within the procuration of abortion by way of probably the most lethal poisons” (Chevers 1856, 92).
This rhetoric aligned midwives with criminality and hazard, reinforcing their marginalisation inside colonial authorized and medical discourses.
Regardless of colonial vilification, dāīs typically evaded detection attributable to their experience and neighborhood networks. Authors like Patrick Hehir and J. D. B. Gribble (1908) famous the problem of prosecuting expert village abortionists, who operated covertly to defend themselves and their purchasers. Nonetheless, when midwives had been implicated, they bore the brunt of colonial authorized motion, serving as scapegoats for broader anxieties about reproductive governance and social order.
Chevers’ handbook additionally highlighted the prevalence of self-induced abortions, typically tried in desperation by ladies who lacked entry to expert care. For instance, he recounted the case of a 30-year-old Hindu lady, Shama, who died of peritonitis after inserting a bamboo splinter to terminate her being pregnant. Dr. D. Stewart, Professor of Midwifery at Calcutta Medical Faculty, cited the case as a “melancholy instance of the deadly penalties of the ignorant and depraved makes an attempt…to supply miscarriages among the many natives of India” (Webb 1848, 330). Such instances underscored the dangers confronted by ladies navigating restrictive social norms and restricted reproductive choices.
Colonial Surveillance and the Regulation of Feminine Sexuality/Deviancy
The criminalisation of abortion was inextricably linked to the professionalisation of drugs in colonial India, which sought to marginalise indigenous practitioners and elevate Western-trained male medical doctors. Figures like Dr. Chevers positioned themselves as ethical and scientific authorities, discrediting dāīs and different conventional healers as untrustworthy. This professionalisation course of not solely bolstered colonial energy dynamics but additionally redefined medical observe in ways in which excluded ladies and indigenous communities from formal authority.
Chevers’ framing of midwives as criminals exemplifies this pattern. He remarked on the “nice crimes often practised to hide the outcomes of immorality,” (Chevers 1856, 492), portraying abortion as each a societal and particular person failure. By discrediting indigenous experience, colonial medical jurisprudence sought to switch conventional data programs with Western fashions of care, embedding reproductive governance inside a framework of racial, gendered, {and professional} hierarchies. In Britain throughout the mid-Nineteenth century, abortion was more and more criminalised, significantly after the Offences In opposition to the Individual Act of 1861, which outlawed abortion at any stage of being pregnant. This mirrored a broader Western pattern of aligning reproductive governance with ethical issues, bolstered by the rising authority of the medical career and non secular influences.
Whereas Western-trained medical doctors in British India often carried out life-saving abortions for European ladies, this was not a uniform observe throughout Europe. Attitudes towards abortion assorted considerably relying on native legal guidelines, dominant state religions, and medical norms. For example, Catholic-majority nations similar to France or Spain typically adhered to stricter anti-abortion stances in comparison with Protestant-majority England. In colonial India, nonetheless, such care was hardly ever prolonged to the indigenous inhabitants. As a substitute, colonial authorities appropriated components of indigenous data for botanical and medical documentation, whilst they criminalised its practitioners. This paradox displays the colonial state’s twin method to reproductive governance: appropriation for scientific development and vilification to consolidate management.
The authorized codification of abortion beneath the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1862 additional entrenched colonial management over reproductive practices. Abortion was designated a punishable offence, with enforcement primarily targeted on instances involving maternal mortality (Chowdhury 2013, 279-80). Regulation XXII of 1816 had beforehand restricted police authority in abortion investigations until a loss of life occurred, aiming to curtail false accusations, significantly in opposition to widows (Sharafi 2020). Nevertheless, because the IPC and the Indian Police Act of 1861 expanded colonial surveillance, ladies confronted invasive interventions by colonial medical doctors, similar to genital examinations in instances of rape, infanticide, or abortion. These practices violated bodily autonomy and mirrored the colonial obsession with figuring out and disciplining ‘deviant’ ladies (Mitra, 2018).
But enforcement was marked by inconsistencies and strategic leniency. For instance, a round order from 1824 deemed abortion ‘not heinous’ until it resulted in loss of life, illustrating the colonial administration’s reluctance to intrude in non-fatal instances. This selective enforcement highlights the contradictions inside colonial reproductive governance: whereas anti-abortion legal guidelines symbolised ethical authority, their implementation prioritised public order over the lived realities of ladies’s desperation and restricted company.
Reproductive Governance and the Legacy of Colonial Management
The colonial regulation of abortion in Bengal exemplifies the broader entanglement of reproductive governance with the politics of morality, legislation, and medical science. Figures like Norman Chevers used medical jurisprudence to border abortion not merely as a medical subject however as a marker of cultural and ethical failure, with Indian ladies’s our bodies forged as deviant, and indigenous practices dismissed as primitive. These narratives served the twin function of criminalising native reproductive practices whereas legitimising colonial authority by means of the professionalisation of Western drugs within the Indian context.
But, beneath the colonial narrative of cultural degeneration lies a posh and enduring historical past of indigenous data programs. Fertility management practices in Bengal had been deeply knowledgeable by social and financial realities, pushed by ladies’s company in navigating the constraints of widowhood, illegitimacy, and repeated childbirth. Midwives (dāīs), although vilified by colonial authorities, had been indispensable actors on this panorama, embodying a wealthy repository of reproductive experience that continued regardless of systemic efforts to erase and criminalise their roles.
The selective enforcement of colonial abortion legal guidelines additional underscores the contradictions throughout the colonial undertaking. Whereas legal guidelines just like the Indian Penal Code of 1862 ostensibly sought to impose ethical and authorized order, their implementation prioritised the state’s curiosity in public stability over the welfare of particular person ladies. The invasive surveillance practices, together with genital examinations and the confiscation of abortive instruments, reveal the extent to which colonial reproductive governance was rooted in controlling sexuality and sustaining racial and gender hierarchies.
The legacy of colonial reproductive governance continues to form up to date debates round reproductive rights, autonomy, and experience in India. Colonial authorities marginalised conventional data programs and criminalised reproductive company, embedding reproductive governance inside racial, gendered, {and professional} hierarchies. This historic backdrop influences present points, such because the enforcement of bans on sex-selective abortion, which echo colonial-era ethical policing (Sreenivas 2021). These bans typically emphasise ethical alignment over addressing structural inequalities or respecting ladies’s autonomy, resulting in insurance policies which will inadvertently hurt the very people they goal to guard. Strict laws can drive the observe underground, leading to unsafe procedures and additional marginalisation of weak teams. Understanding this colonial legacy is essential for creating equitable and culturally delicate reproductive insurance policies that genuinely empower ladies and respect numerous data programs.
In regards to the creator
Rayana is a first-year PhD candidate in Anthropology on the Geneva Graduate Institute, with a give attention to reproductive well being, world medical histories, and Indigenous data programs. She combines ethnography, oral histories, and archival analysis to discover ethno-medical practices and histories of reproductive threat. Join along with her on Twitter at @CalicoCatRay
References
Chevers, Norman. 1856. A Guide of Medical Jurisprudence for Bengal and the North-Western Provinces. Calcutta: Bengal Navy Orphan Press.
Chowdhury, Indira . 2013. “Delivering the ‘Murdered Baby’: Infanticide, Abortion, and Contraception in Colonial India.” In Medical Encounters in British India, edited by D Kumar and R Sekhar. Delhi: Oxford College Press.
Guha, Supriya. 1996. “The Undesirable Being pregnant in Colonial Bengal1.” The Indian Financial & Social Historical past Evaluate 33 (4): 403–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/001946469603300402.
Mitra , Durba . 2018. “Sociological Descriptions and the Forensics of Sexuality.” In Finding the Medical – Explorations in South Asian Historical past, edited by Rohan Deb Roy and Man N. A. Atwell, 23–47. India: Oxford College Press.
Sharafi, Mitra. 2020. “Abortion in South Asia, 1860–1947: A Medico-Authorized Historical past.” Fashionable Asian Research 55 (2): 371–428. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x19000234.
Sreenivas, Mytheli. Reproductive Politics and the Making of Fashionable India. College of Washington Press, 2021.
Webb, Allan. 1848. Pathologica Indica; Or, the Anatomy of Indian Illnesses. Second. Calcutta: Messrs. Thacker and Co. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/rqbe5j2z/gadgets?canvas=8.
