Notes
Report on the working of the Penal Settlement of Port Blair by Mr. C.J. Lyall and Surgeon-Major A.S. Lethbridge, 26 April 1890, National Archives of India, New Delhi, hereafter NAI, emphasis added.
I want to thank Gita Dharampal-Frick, Claude Markovits, Roger Jeffery, Anna Lindberg, Jana Tschurenev and Katharina Schembs for helpful suggestions and comments on this paper, which was first presented at the 6th European South Asia PhD Workshop at Falsterbo, Sweden in September 2012. The paper stems from my PhD research on the manifold and incoherent colonial discourses on same-sex behaviour in the British Raj.
The term was first coined by the Hungarian Karl Maria Kertbeny in the late 1860s in a letter in German (Tamagne 2006: 167). It found its way into the English language via a translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ in 1892 (Bristow 2007: 4).
A lot of ground-breaking research has been conducted in the field of the history of sexuality, especially in the European or Western context. Canonical in this context is of course the work of Michel Foucault, e.g. Foucault (1990[1978]). For the development of the category ‘homosexuality’ see for example Weeks (1981). I situate my own research at the nexus of the fields of gender studies and sexual history as well as colonial studies and the history of South Asia.
For one of the very few theoretical conceptualisations of same-sex behaviour in the South Asian colonial archive see Arondekar (2005).
In other colonial realms such as the regimentation of Indian princes or the criminalisation of ‘eunuchs’ the topic of same-sex behaviour was also part of relevant debates, although in differing forms.
The colonial situation in this context calls into question the still canonical Foucauldian view of an absolute replacement of the system of public torture by ‘modern’, more efficient forms of penal technologies as described by him for example in Foucault (1999: 80-107).
For the history of the colonial jail system see Arnold (1994), Anderson (2004, 2007).
From F.E. Taylor, Secretary to Government, United Provinces to the Secretary to the GoI, H.D. (P.B.), dated Naini Tal, the 31 May 1907, NAI. Among the ‘habitual’ and ‘specially dangerous’ criminals to be deported were until 1921 also those convicted under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, ‘if it is shown that they are habitually addicted to those offences’. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code makes punishable the offence of ‘voluntarily ha[ving] carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal’ and cases of same-sex behaviour were tried under this section.
Scholars have done extensive research on the history of the penal settlement on the Andaman islands. The most pronounced trend in the historiography on the islands is the nationalist perspective and the focus on the islands as a penal settlement for so-called ‘freedom fighters’. Even today the Andamans rank very important in the national consciousness. Other aspects of the Andaman and Nicobar islands get obliterated in that kind of history-writing. Scholars like Vaidik (2010) and Sen (2000) present new possible foci for historical research, such as the history of the early colonial engagement with the islands as well as with the native Andamese people.
See for example Superintendent Major T. Cadell who writes to his superiors that convicts coming to the Andaman penal colony are already addicted to the vice on their arrival and who simultaneously attributes a rather lax view on such deviant sexual behaviour to Indian society by referring to Chever’s almost canonical work on medical jurisprudence: ‘That the unnatural prostitution of the body in sodomy in invariably commenced locally by prisoners there is no reason to believe, the evidence collected by Dr. Norman Chevers in his work on ‘Medical Jurisprudence in India’ justifying the assumption that it is not of rare or unfrequent occurrence amongst the natives of India, by whom, indeed, the practice is said to be comparatively lightly regarded; there seems also to be no doubt but that calamities habitually addicted to the practice are occasionally transferred here amongst other prisoners from India, the fact being in some instances drawn attention to in their jail descriptive rolls’. From the Superintendent of Port Blair (Major T. Cadell) to Offg. Secretary to the Government of India, No. 1048,5, dated 29 March 1880, NAI.
One example for this accusation was mirrored in the denial of several mainland jails to accommodate the juvenile convict Hari Das, who had been convicted of being the ‘passive agent in the offence of unnatural crime’ by a judge of the Court of the District Magistrate, Andaman and Nicobar Islands at Port Blair in March 1916 and should have been sent to a juvenile jail thereafter. The Inspector-General of Prisons in Burma declined the request of transferral, writing: ‘[H]e is a confirmed catamite and there would be grave risks of his contaminating the other inmates of the jail’. Letter from the Government of Burma, no. 481 M. – 16 J. 40, dated 2 May 1916, NAI. More general debates about the allegedly contaminating character of same-sex behaviour are more pronounced in the files of the mainland jails than in the Port Blair files.
There exists a huge corpus of files on the topic of sodomy in mainland prisons in the colonial archive, especially related to the discussion on the reform of the spatial setup of the Indian jail system. Unfortunately not many historians have worked with this material, except historians of the Andaman Islands who have taken up the topic of sodomy and colonialism. For one example see Anderson (2004).
Herbert Hope Risley, influential ethnographer and Home Secretary in Lord Curzon’s administration, assessed the reformatory influence of the colonial penal regime in 1906 rather negatively and self-critically: ‘Finally whatever reformative influence there may be in the Port Blair system it certainly does not commence until the man becomes a self-supporter, that is to say, until he has spent ten years in association with a mixed crew of criminals under the laxest control and in charge of officers who are convicts themselves, and has passed his nights in barracks where unnatural crime is habitually practiced. If he goes through these and eventually turns out a respectable self-supporter the result is assuredly due to himself and not to his surroundings’. H. H. Risley, 13 January 1906, NAI. However, this form of outspoken self-criticism was not the norm among colonial officers.
‘I regret to add that symptoms are arising, showing the necessity of providing women for this Settlement, if we wish to avoid the horrible scenes for which Norfolk Island was formerly so infamously notorious’. No. 1000, dated Port Blair, 8 November 1870, from Colonel H. Man, Supdt., Port Blair and the Nicobars to E.C. Bayley, Esq., C.S.I., Secy. to GoI, NAI.
No. 1337, dated Port Blair, the 31 October 1871, from Major-General D.M. Stewart, C.B., Officiating Superintendent of Port Blair and the Nicobars to E.C. Bayley, Esq., C.S.I., Secy. to the GoI, NAI.
No. 1337, dated Port Blair, the 31 October 1871, from Major-General D.M. Stewart, C.B., Officiating Superintendent of Port Blair and the Nicobars to E.C. Bayley, Esq., C.S.I., Secy. to the GoI, NAI. On the provision, regimentation and surveillance of female prostitutes in Indian cantonments see for example Levine (1994) and Peers (1998).
No. 1337, dated Port Blair, the 31 October 1871, from Major-General D.M. Stewart, C.B., Officiating Superintendent of Port Blair and the Nicobars to E.C. Bayley, Esq., C.S.I., Secy. to the GoI, NAI.
‘Some advantages may possibly be gained by placing prostitution under prescribed rules. If, as is proposed, the Statue 33 Vic., cap. 3, is extended to Port Blair and the Nicobars, there can be no difficulty in framing rules under the Contagious Diseases Act, or the Cantonment Act, and give them the force of law’. No. 532, dated the 1 February 1872, from E.C. Bayley, Secy. to the GoI to the Superintendent of Port Blair, NAI. Of course, there were also those voices in the colonial regime which dismissed this idea of prostitution because of it being immoral or due to fear of a public outcry.
Self-supporters were ‘first-class prisoners who had been granted a ticket-of-leave and allowed to take up any profession of their choice for a living’. The classification of the self-supporter varied considerably over the years (Vaidik 2006: 224).
Vaidik (2006: 226) states that inviting one’s own family was understood as a privilege. 266 self-supporters were allowed to apply for their family’s emigration, but of those, only 12 females agreed to come and in only two cases did the woman actually arrive at Port Blair. The scheme of convict family emigration was supposed to contribute to the stability and efficacy of the penal and the colony’s labour regime, but it failed.
From the Superintendent of Port Blair (Major T. Cadell) to Offg. Secretary to the Government of India, No. 1048,5, dated 29 March 1880, NAI. Weston (2008) elucidates in how far the concern with regimenting same-sex behaviour in the penal colony made way for new and more exploitative forms of labour extraction. She analyses the example of the coconut oil press which was installed in order to provide for better lighting and thus not only put deviant convicts into novel labour regimes, but also altered the islands’ environmental landscape. Weston (2008) thereby connects political ecology and colonial penal regimes with a queer historical analysis.
W.J.S., 27 April of 1880, HD, Revenue and Agriculture Department, Port Blair, Proceedings May 1880, No. 1-3. ‘Suggestions to prevent unnatural crime among convicts in Port Blair’, NAI. In the context of punishing juveniles for same-sex behavior some colonial officials presented the idea that flogging might help to ‘cure’ or ‘treat’ sodomy.
Report on the working of the Penal Settlement of Port Blair by Mr. C.J. Lyall and Surgeon-Major A.S. Lethbridge, 26 April 1890, NAI. Weston (2008: 224) clarifies that those prisoners who ‘were caught in the act more than once’ were put in the so-called Habitual Offenders Gang and had to wear ‘readily identifiable chocolate-striped uniforms’. On the issue of specific convict dress for sodomites and catamites see also Anderson (2004: 119).
The Andaman penal settlement was the first place in the British Raj, in which experiments with Benthamian ideas of panoptic prison regimes were conducted. For the description of his panopticon see Bentham (1995).
Report on the working of the Penal Settlement of Port Blair by Mr. C.J. Lyall and Surgeon-Major A.S. Lethbridge, 26 April 1890, NAI. After some experience with settling female convicts in the Andaman penal colony the colonial regime changed its mind and called the system of supplying women in 1914 ‘morally indefensible’ because it ‘disregards all marriage laws, caste, religious, social and customary’, ‘licenses prostitution under a cloak’, and finally because children born out of these convict marriages would ‘grow up in the worst surroundings with strong hereditary tendencies to crime’. There was also anxiety surrounding the alleged usage of female and male convict children as prostitutes by their parents. H. Wheeler, 25 April 1914, NAI. See Vaidik (2006: 240) for a description of why female convicts in the Andamans were perceived as a threat by colonial officials—they were seen as ‘naturally promiscuous and fickle’.
H.G. Stokes, 14 June 1905, GoI, HD, Port Blair, July 1906: 38-40(A), Proposals regarding the abolition of transportation of convicts to Port Blair, NAI.
From the Superintendent of Port Blair to Offg. Secretary to the Government of India, No. 1048,5, dated 29 March 1880, NAI. The other important motive for murder as presented by colonial officials was the immoral behaviour of the few women in the settlement, who were seen as acting like prostitutes and not as wives.
One official writes in the 1880 report: ‘In our letter to the Superintendent of Port Blair dated the 2nd February last confirming the sentences of death passed upon two life-convicts we drew his attention to the circumstances that in both cases the attempts to murder appeared to have been connected with unnatural offences among the convicts, and we requested him to consider whether it was not practicable to adopt measures to check such practices’. W.J.S., 27-4-80); From the Superintendent of Port Blair (Major T. Cadell) to Offg. Secretary to the Government of India, No. 1048,5, dated 29 March 1880. Emphasis added.
Report on the working of the Penal Settlement of Port Blair by Mr. C.J. Lyall (Bengal Civil Service) and Surgeon-Major A.S. Lethbridge (Inspector General of Jails, Bengal), 26 April 1890, NAI. Emphasis added.
Proposals regarding the abolition of transportation of convicts to Port Blair, July 1906, NAI. Emphasis added.
In four of the six reported murder cases in 1916 in the Port Blair files the judges hold sodomitical acts responsible for the commitment of murders. INA, Port Blair files.
Case No. 11 of 1916. The Crown versus Life Convict No. 29910 Apser Ali. Judgment. Charge Sec. 303 I.P.C., Sd/. J.B. Leach, Add. Sessions Judge, 22 November 1916, NAI.
Case No. 11 of 1916. The Crown versus Life Convict No. 29910 Apser Ali. Judgment. Charge Sec. 303 I.P.C., Sd/. J.B. Leach, Add. Sessions Judge, 22 November 1916, NAI.
G.M. Young, 12 December 1916, NAI.
It has to be noted that the testimony as well as the petition are translations from Burmese into English and the question of the often problematic process of translation by colonial officers must be kept in mind as well.
Examination of prisoner no. 30776, taken at Port Blair this 27 day of June, 1916, Sd/ - F.B. Leach, Additional Sessions Judge; Appeal originally in Burman, signed in presence of Med. Supt Jails, Port Blair by No 30776 on 29 June 1916, NAI.
Judgment, Sd/ - F.B. Leach, Additional Sessions Judge, Port Blair, 27 June 1916, NAI.
Judgment, Sd/ - F.B. Leach, Additional Sessions Judge, Port Blair, 27 June 1916, NAI.
Booth-Grovely, 19 July 1916, NAI.
A dah is a sharp blade, with which the convicts were supposed to cut coconut. In many of the murder cases the alarming question of where the offenders got their murder weapons from points to another failure of the colonial surveillance regime.
Sessions Case No. 10 of 1918-19. The Crown versus convict no. 33707 Balaka alias Bala Ram. Judgment, (Sd.) R. Lowis, Additional Sessions Judge, 21 February 1919, NAI.
Port Blair, January, 27 January 1919, in presence of (Sd.) G. B. Pulleyne, Assistant Commissioner, NAI. Chokra is translated in the file as the ‘passive agent in unnatural crime’.
Port Blair, January, 27 January 1919, in presence of (Sd.) G. B. Pulleyne, Assistant Commissioner, NAI; Petition of appeal from condemned prisoner no. 33707, Balaka, no date, NAI.
Port Blair, January, 27 January 1919, in presence of (Sd.) G. B. Pulleyne, Assistant Commissioner, NAI; Petition of appeal from condemned prisoner no. 33707, Balaka, no date, NAI.
Sessions Case No. 10 of 1918-19. The Crown versus convict no. 33707 Balaka alias Bala Ram. Judgment, (Sd.) R. Lowis, Additional Sessions Judge, 21 February 1919, NAI.
No. 528, dated the 12 May 1919, from Lieutenant-Colonel M.W. Douglas, Superintendent of Port Blair, to the Secretary to the GoI, HD, NAI.
The attempt to avoid a public scandal didn’t quite work out. There were questions in the British parliament regarding the report which specifically alluded to the topic of sodomy in the penal settlement as well as critical newspaper-articles in the British press.
W.H. Vincent, 28 October 1920, NAI.
Letter to all local Governments and Administrations, no. 27, dated 3 to 24 January 1921, communicating the orders, from C.W. Gwynne, Esq., O.B.C., Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, NAI.
Chief Commissioner’s proposals, October 1920, Supplementary report on the temporary reform of the Andaman Penal Settlement, 27 March 1920, by Lieutenant-Colonel M.W. Douglas, C.S.I., C.I.E. I.A., Chief Commissioner, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, NAI.
Supplementary report on the temporary reform of the Andaman Penal Settlement, 27 March 1920, by Lieutenant-Colonel M.W. Douglas, C.S.I., C.I.E. I.A., Chief Commissioner, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, NAI.
No. 17, dated the 13 January 1921, from C.W. Gwynne, Esq., O.B.E., Deputy Secretary to the GoI, Home Department, to the Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, NAI.
No. 260, dated the 23 April 1921, from Lieutenant-Colonel H.C. Beadon, C.I.E., I.A., Chief Commissioner, Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the Secretary to the GoI, H.D., Delhi, NAI.
Report of the Indian Jails Committee, 1921, pp. 277-8. Another more informal, confidential enquiry by a ‘reliable Indian Police Officer (Brahman)’ also suggested that ‘Pathans and Sindhis and men from the Northern cities of India are the principle active agents, more especially Pathans and Sindhis; that Burmans are the principle passive agents, though not naturally addicted to the vice’. Supplementary report on the temporary reform of the Andaman Penal Settlement, 27 March 1920, by Lieutenant-Colonel M.W. Douglas, C.S.I., C.I.E. I.A., Chief Commissioner, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, NAI.
For this argument see for example Bates (1995).
Burton as cited in Colligan (2003: 5).
Colligan (2003: 5) describes Burton’s understanding of same-sex behaviour as ‘geographically, rather than racially determined’.
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