Law, colonialism and gendered violence in late nineteenth century India

In 1884 Charles Webb, a European employee of the India General Steam Navigation Company, kidnapped, imprisoned and assaulted Sukurmani, a woman of Assam whose husband was a labourer on a tea plantation. Sukurmani died shortly thereafter, almost certainly as a result of the injuries Webb inflicted upon her. The Webb case, as it was known in the Indian press, galvanized public opinion in India. Discussion of the case overlapped with discussion of the controversial Ilbert Bill, a measure that allowed Indian magistrates to try British accused of a crime in India.  Some Indian journalists viewed the adjudication of the Webb case as a test of the impartiality of the colonial justice system—a test that the justice system failed. To the vernacular press in Assam sexual violence against Indian women such as Sukurmani was symbolic and public: violation of an Indian woman’s chastity was a violation of the purity and integrity of the nation as a whole.

 Using court records, newspaper articles and official correspondence relating to the Webb case and others, this paper will analyze the ways that legal procedures, assumptions and standards rationalized and integrated certain kinds of sexual violence into the colonial regime—not least by rendering them invisible because incapable of proof.