On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India

230 Pages·2013·1.01 MB·English

FOR THE RECORD
NEXT WAVE NEW DIRECTIONS IN WOMEN’S STUDIES
A series edited by Inderpal Grewal,
Caren Kaplan, and Robyn Wiegman
FOR THE RECORD
On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India
ANJALI ARONDEKAR
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
DURHAM AND LONDON
2009
∫ 2009 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $
Designed by Heather Hensley
Typeset in Whitman by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear
on the last printed page of this book.
An earlier version of the introduction was first published
as the article ‘‘Without a Trace: Sexuality and the Colonial
Archive,’’ by Anjali Arondekar, from the Journal of the
History of Sexuality 14:1/2, pp. 10–27. Copyright ∫ 2005 by
the University of Texas Press. All rights reserved.
IN MEMORIAM
Lynda Hart
and
Leela Durgaram Shirodkar

CONTENTS
ix Preface
1 Introduction
Without A Trace
27 One
A Secret Report: Richard Burton’s Colonial Anthropology
67 Two
Subject to Sodomy: The Case of Colonial India
97 Three
Archival Attachments: The Story of an India-Rubber Dildo
131 Four
In the Wake of 1857: Rudyard Kipling’s Mutiny Papers
171 Coda
Passing Returns
181 Bibliography
205 Index

PREFACE
Let me begin with a vulgar question: ‘‘Tumhi kai shodhta, madam?’’
(What are you looking for, madam?) This was the question the head of
the Maharashtra State Archives in Mumbai impatiently asked me as I
arrived for my annual research visit. His impatience was occasioned by
what he perceived as my inability to answer a series of simple queries on
the nature of my research: Which colonial records did I want to see, and
for what purpose? My inarticulateness around his seemingly pedestrian
question was not organized (as one would predictably assume) around
my reluctance to reveal my interests in the figurations of sexual perver-
sions in nineteenth-century India—the state-sponsored intellectual cen-
sorship and vandalisms of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
notwithstanding.∞ Rather, my hesitations stemmed more from a sense of
archival aporia, from what I had realized through my own research was
an unrepresentable search for an impossible object. In many ways, the
present work is an attempt to trace and push against the force of that
archival aporia.
The writing of this book was sustained by a network of friends and
colleagues in multiple places. Geeta Patel has been instrumental in the
conception and fruition of the project. Through innumerable phone
conversations and readings, Geeta nursed me through the di≈culties of
archival and historical thinking. Central to this work was also the ex-
traordinary support of the South Asian Studies feminist posse, a.k.a.,
Sisters under the Sari: Indrani Chatterjee, Raka Ray, Bishnupriya Ghosh,
Parama Roy, Mrinalini Sinha, Kavita Philip, and Kamala Visweswaran.
Since the book’s first incarnation, they have all served as unfailingly
encouraging and critical commentators. I owe a special debt to Gina