Policing Intimacy and Queering the History of the South Asian Overseas Migration in the Colonial Era

Speaker: Professor Crispin Bates

Decolonising the history of South Asian overseas migration in the nineteenth and early twentieth century must begin by challenging the dichotomous interpretations of nationalist and colonialist interpretations. It must also challenge the ideas of heteronormativity that govern most writings on the Indian diaspora. Thus, South Asian migrant workers in the colonial were often typified as immoral in their behaviour for exercising agency in their choice of partners by race and gender. This was one way in labour migration (especially indentured migration) was characterised as corrupt and in need of reform.

In response, colonial governments were persuaded to regulate intimate relations amongst migrants, to uphold recognised forms of heterosexual marriage, to discourage miscegenation, and to penalise same-sex relationships, most notoriously through use of section 377 of the Indian penal code and through laws against adultery and ‘enticement’.

However, these efforts were often ineffective, being confounded by the diversity of social and affective relationships amongst South Asian migrants, the inability of officials to recognise the possibilities of difference, and the superficiality of colonial control. This paper examines these issues using examples taken from the Malayan peninsula and elsewhere around the Indian ocean region in the period from 1850 to 1930.

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Crispin Bates  is Professor of Modern and Contemporary South Asian History at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Subalterns and Raj: South Asia since 1600  (Routledge, 2007) edited and co-edited numerous other books including a multi-volume series on the Indian Uprising of 1857 (SAGE Publications)