03-08-2005, 05:55 PM
The following si from the book I have - The writing under Raj
GENDER, RACE, AND RAPE IN THE BRITISH COLONIAL IMAGINATION, 1830-1947
NANCY L. PAXTON
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->ORIENTALIZING RAPE
In "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly," written in 1772, Edmund Burke describes the colonial relationship between England and India as poised between courtship and rape: 1767, he declared, marked the year when the "administration discovered that the East India Company were guardians to a very handsome and rich lady in Hindostan. Accordingly, they set parliament in motion; and parliament . . . directly became a suitor, and took the lady into its tender, fond, grasping arms, pretending all the while that it meant nothing but what was fair and honourable; that no rape or violence was intended; that its sole aim was to rescue her and her fortune out of the pilfering hands of a set of rapacious stewards, who had let her estate run to waste, and had committed various depredations." By 1787, Burke amplified his criticism of Warren Hastings, the Governor General of Bengal between 1774 and 1785, charging him not only with promoting the economic rape of India but also with the literal rape of Indian women. Moved by his inflammatory rhetoric, Burke's colleagues in the House of Commons initiated proceedings to remove Hastings from the seat he then occupied in the House of Lords.
During the trial, Burke enumerated his charges against Warren Hastings, proclaiming not only that he had countenanced the use of sexual violence as a strategy of control by his colonial subordinates but that he had also personally "undone women of the first rank" in India, noting especially his humiliation of the Princesses of Oude in 1772-1773. In one speech, Burke vividly catalogued the barbaric treatment that Indian women received at the hands of Hastings and his men:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Virgins, who had never seen the sun, were dragged from the inmost sanctuaries of their houses, and in the open court of justice, . . . (but where no judge or lawful magistrate had long sat, but in their place the ruffians and hangmen of Warren Hastings occupied the bench), these virgins, vainly invoking heaven and earth, in the presence of their parents, . . . publicly were violated by the lowest and wickedest of the human race. Wives were torn from the arms of their husbands, and suffered the same flagitious wrongs, which were indeed hid in the bottoms of the dungeons in which their honour and their liberty were buried together. . . . But it did not end there. Growing from crime to crime, ripened by cruelty for cruelty, these fiends . . . these infernal furies planted death in the source of life, where that modesty, which, more than reason, distinguishes men from beasts, retires from the view, and even shrinks from the expression, there they exercised and glutted their unnatural, monstrous, and nefarious cruelty. </b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In short, Burke charged Hastings with implementing policies that destroyed "the honour of the whole female race" in India.
Burke's criticism of the rapaciousness of British colonial policy in India was a minority voice at the time. Though his powerful descriptions of Hastings's unspeakable colonial acts inspired agitation in the large audiences attracted to the trial, Burke failed, nonetheless, in his efforts to convict Warren Hastings, and, after a trial that lasted seven years, the latter was acquitted in 1795. Burke died two years later, so, by 1797, his inimitable and inflammatory rhetoric about the rape of India by the lawless agents of the East India Company was silenced forever.
One of the features that made Burke's speeches about colonial policy in India so memorable was that they skillfully exploited the rhetoric of surprise, since most English readers, regardless of whether they endorsed or opposed state sponsorship of the East India Company or the colonial wars in India conducted in its name, were more likely to have read Oriental tales that focused on seduction rather than reports of the violently transgressive acts of rape that he so vividly described. A second feature that made Burke's speeches so important was, as Sara Sulieri has argued, that they also initiated a new period in British discourse about India because they were informed by his extensive reading of new English translations of major Sanskrit texts.
For contemporary postcolonial readers and critics, however, Burke's use of rape as a tactic and metaphor to describe England's guilty traffic with the women--and men--of India may seem unexceptional.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
GENDER, RACE, AND RAPE IN THE BRITISH COLONIAL IMAGINATION, 1830-1947
NANCY L. PAXTON
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->ORIENTALIZING RAPE
In "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly," written in 1772, Edmund Burke describes the colonial relationship between England and India as poised between courtship and rape: 1767, he declared, marked the year when the "administration discovered that the East India Company were guardians to a very handsome and rich lady in Hindostan. Accordingly, they set parliament in motion; and parliament . . . directly became a suitor, and took the lady into its tender, fond, grasping arms, pretending all the while that it meant nothing but what was fair and honourable; that no rape or violence was intended; that its sole aim was to rescue her and her fortune out of the pilfering hands of a set of rapacious stewards, who had let her estate run to waste, and had committed various depredations." By 1787, Burke amplified his criticism of Warren Hastings, the Governor General of Bengal between 1774 and 1785, charging him not only with promoting the economic rape of India but also with the literal rape of Indian women. Moved by his inflammatory rhetoric, Burke's colleagues in the House of Commons initiated proceedings to remove Hastings from the seat he then occupied in the House of Lords.
During the trial, Burke enumerated his charges against Warren Hastings, proclaiming not only that he had countenanced the use of sexual violence as a strategy of control by his colonial subordinates but that he had also personally "undone women of the first rank" in India, noting especially his humiliation of the Princesses of Oude in 1772-1773. In one speech, Burke vividly catalogued the barbaric treatment that Indian women received at the hands of Hastings and his men:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Virgins, who had never seen the sun, were dragged from the inmost sanctuaries of their houses, and in the open court of justice, . . . (but where no judge or lawful magistrate had long sat, but in their place the ruffians and hangmen of Warren Hastings occupied the bench), these virgins, vainly invoking heaven and earth, in the presence of their parents, . . . publicly were violated by the lowest and wickedest of the human race. Wives were torn from the arms of their husbands, and suffered the same flagitious wrongs, which were indeed hid in the bottoms of the dungeons in which their honour and their liberty were buried together. . . . But it did not end there. Growing from crime to crime, ripened by cruelty for cruelty, these fiends . . . these infernal furies planted death in the source of life, where that modesty, which, more than reason, distinguishes men from beasts, retires from the view, and even shrinks from the expression, there they exercised and glutted their unnatural, monstrous, and nefarious cruelty. </b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In short, Burke charged Hastings with implementing policies that destroyed "the honour of the whole female race" in India.
Burke's criticism of the rapaciousness of British colonial policy in India was a minority voice at the time. Though his powerful descriptions of Hastings's unspeakable colonial acts inspired agitation in the large audiences attracted to the trial, Burke failed, nonetheless, in his efforts to convict Warren Hastings, and, after a trial that lasted seven years, the latter was acquitted in 1795. Burke died two years later, so, by 1797, his inimitable and inflammatory rhetoric about the rape of India by the lawless agents of the East India Company was silenced forever.
One of the features that made Burke's speeches about colonial policy in India so memorable was that they skillfully exploited the rhetoric of surprise, since most English readers, regardless of whether they endorsed or opposed state sponsorship of the East India Company or the colonial wars in India conducted in its name, were more likely to have read Oriental tales that focused on seduction rather than reports of the violently transgressive acts of rape that he so vividly described. A second feature that made Burke's speeches so important was, as Sara Sulieri has argued, that they also initiated a new period in British discourse about India because they were informed by his extensive reading of new English translations of major Sanskrit texts.
For contemporary postcolonial readers and critics, however, Burke's use of rape as a tactic and metaphor to describe England's guilty traffic with the women--and men--of India may seem unexceptional.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->