Codes of misconduct: The regulation of prostitution in colonial Bombay, 1860--1947

In feminist thought, the denigration of prostitutes is understood as a means by which all women's sexual practices are disciplined. Why states get involved in this process, however, is not always evident. This dissertation is an exploration of the criminalization of prostitutes in the case of Bombay city, from 1860 to 1947. The main questions posed are: why did the criminalization of prostitutes occur? What were the imperatives of the colonial state in this process? And finally, how did law-making and law-enforcement function?; This study is organized as a genealogy of laws and their enforcement. The phases of the state's control of prostitutes are traced through an analysis of archival sources. Primary sources were researched in Bombay, New Delhi, London, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. The chapters successively present a narrative which covers categories of analytical importance. Along the way, the relationship between forms of prostitution and the content of laws is probed---thereby linking the realms of the material and the discursive. Chapter 2 reviews relevant theoretical work on the colonial state, law and sexuality. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 each attend to distinct imperatives shaping the colonial state's control over prostitution. Chapter 3 illustrates the importance of official medicine, Chapter 4 follows the shift from a discourse of disease-control to one of managing racial purity, and Chapter 5 elaborates the adoption of the international discourse on abolition by Indian legislators. Chapter 6 uses an angle from below, and describes the effects of colonial policy on prostitutes' lives. Chapter 7 draws together general conclusions about colonial policies on prostitution, the rhetoric of law, and the emergent sexual order. The overarching conclusion of this dissertation is that laws targeting prostitutes in late colonial Bombay were not simply a response to the growing number of such women. Rather, they produced a type of prostitution amenable to public control. This study illustrates how laws fostered prostitution in defined neighborhoods and in a preferred form, the brothel. Together, these chapters not only contribute to an understanding of the limitations of the colonial imagination, but also the unintended consequences of regulation.