Drawing on contemporary critical theories and academic debates, Gendering Colonial India examines how notions of patriarchy were recast and challenged in colonial India between the early nineteenth and the first half of twentieth centuries. This definitive collection of essays analyses the close interaction between gender, caste and community identities.

This volume brings out various regional complexities and lively public debates on social reforms for women and their impact on issues like sati, widow remarriage, domesticity, sexuality and education. It shows how women emerged as both objects and subjects of popular discourse and discussions. Simultaneously, the essays engage with concerns around masculinity, inter-caste intimacies and communal identities.

The debates found multifaceted expression in an emerging dynamic popular-public sphere and also in a flourishing vernacular print culture. These in turn served as powerful tools for propagating dominant ideas about women and for fashioning national, regional and community identities.

The three primary texts translated by J. Devika, Anshu Malhotra and Charu Gupta bring out the relationship, most often fraught, between popular literature, reforms and women.

With contributions from both established and emerging feminist historians, this book will be an indispensible read for students and scholars of modern Indian history, colonialism, nationalism, gender studies and popular culture.

1. Giving Masculinity a History: Some Contributions from the Historiography of Colonial India
   
Mrinalini Sinha
2. Contested Sacrifice: Sati, Sovereignty and Social Reform in Colonial India
   
Andrea Major
3. Wicked Widows: Law and Faith in Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere Debates
   
Tanika Sarkar
4. Educated Muslim Women: Real and Ideal
   
Gail Minault
5. Re-inscribing ‘Womanliness’: Gendered Spaces and Public Debates in Early Modern Keralam
   
J. Devika
6. Print and Bazaari Literature: Jhagrras/Kissas and Gendered Reform in Early Twentieth Century Punjab
   
Anshu Malhotra
7. Theatre and Gender in Colonial India: Foregrounding Actresses’ Question
   
Lata Singh
8. Fluctuating Fortunes of Wives: Creeping Rigidity in Inter-Caste Marriages in the Colonial Period
   
Prem Chowdhry
9. Caste, Colonialism and the Reform of Gender: Perspective from Western India
   
Anupama Rao
10. Women, Abductions and Religious Identities in Colonial Bengal
    
Pradip Kumar Datta
11. Memory and History: A Daughter’s Testimony
    
Nonica Datta
12. Archives and Sexuality: Vignettes from Colonial North India
    
Charu Gupta

1. Sarojini: Womanliness: A Brief Commentary and Translation by
   
J. Devika
2. Bhai Sadhu Singh: Witches: That is the Siyapa of the Self-Willed Women A Brief Commentary and Translation by
   
Anshu Malhotra
3. Shiv Sharma Mahopdeshak: Women’s Education A Brief Commentary and Translation by
   
Charu Gupta
Select Bibliography
Notes on the Contributors
Index