How syphilis marred British Raj’s racial supremacy card

A lithographic print from 1832 titled Une Nautch, depicting a “nautch girl” in Bengal being viewed by British officers and “memsahibs”. Pics/Wikimedia Commons

Socially, the high rates of VD in India under the British administration presented a sorry picture of the state of affairs in the colony, as it brought to light the high levels of depravity and dissolution amongst the European soldiers stationed there. In particular, it indicated the administration's inability to check promiscuity amongst their men and discipline their private lives, raising serious questions about their capacity to control and govern their Indian subjects. This even called into question the moral fibre of the empire's so-called defenders.

Indeed, the British had also taken pride in their military prowess for a long time, projecting it as the reason for their robust control over different nations. But this image of the mighty British army could no longer hold water if the sexual habits of the men regularly put them in hospitals and weakened their constitution due to drinking and disease. It exposed the poor will and lack of discipline amongst the men, which raised doubts about whether the men were capable of the higher imperial ideals that were projected as part of the British race.

"Nautch girls, Bombay" by E Taurines, dated 1880

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As it is, in India, the threat of diseases was generally recognized as one of the most significant hurdles in the way of the economic and political expansion of the British forces. VDs in particular were proving to be a great liability because of their sheer frequency. Besides, the European soldiers cost the East India Company, and later, the Crown, a substantial sum each year to maintain. Sickness or generally poor health caused a strain on the resources. The average admissions among European soldiers for VDs fluctuated over the nineteenth century, and depended on the regiment concerned. In 1805, it was observed that VD rates could be as high as 78 per cent in certain stations. One-third of European soldiers were found to be perpetually hospitalized due to VDs in the mid-nineteenth century, going as high as 359 per 1,000 in 1859.8 They were therefore recognized as a channel of great loss, as it regularly hampered Company work, and involved costly treatments with long recovery periods even for those treated in time.

In such a situation, VDs that were believed to hamper military men physically and even mentally, threatened to undo everything, and could potentially topple the Empire. The fear was so great that the British created conspiratorial claims that VDs like syphilis were going to be the weapons with which the natives were going to weaken the European armed forces.

"Nautch girl dancing with musicians" in 1900s Calcutta

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Despite the indiscriminate sexual activities of the British soldiers, they still occupied the position of the ‘victim' rather than the propagators of the diseases. The narrative was that these otherwise clean and virile white soldiers suffered from a direct and predictable consequence of being in the inflaming environment of India. Wayward as they may be, they were ‘white', and vulnerable to the ‘filth' they were surrounded with in the East. In the colonizer's narrative, this seemingly absolved him of his poor conduct.

Needless to say, prostitutes became easy targets of medical and legal control, and were defenceless due to their ‘outsider' position in respectable society… Pitted against the proper English lady - the wifely and maternal memsahib (British lady) who offered a medically safe, socially acceptable, and racially proper outlet for British men's sexual urges - Indian women were branded as a morally degenerate and degraded lot who provoked the base impulses of the British men. They were viewed as seductresses who deliberately tempted the sahibs (officers), and were therefore a risk factor by the authorities.

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Despite the determination of the British to shift the blame of syphilis onto Indians, the theory that British men were morally superior to Indians did not correspond with the figures. In the 1830s, the level of syphilis incidence was 32-45 per cent amongst British soldiers, as compared to 2-3 per cent amongst Indians. A surgeon with a regiment of the native army stated that he hardly came across cases of syphilis amongst Indian sepoys, possibly because most were married, whereas European soldiers were usually not. Here, the seemingly low rate of VDs amongst Indian sepoys in general could have been due to other reasons, such as non-reporting of such cases, as well as the government's policy of sending the reported cases (amongst sepoys) to lunatic asylums, given that syphilis often led to mental debilitation. There was also the possibility that the nature of society was such that many of the married sepoys were averse to visiting brothels in the name of religious principles, or were simply unable to afford such indulgences.

As far as the European soldiers were concerned, it is likely that specific EIC policies indirectly created the atmosphere of promiscuity, although this context does not rid them of the responsibility for their actions. Before the nineteenth century, most British officers were unmarried because family life was considered unconducive to imperial work. EIC rules dictated that wives were not permitted for all regiments, and couples seeking to be wed required official permission for marriage. Besides, given the gruelling nature of work in the subcontinent, even the men who were already married could not bring their wives and children to India. Additionally, the paltry sum the men received as salaries from the Company could not afford the lifestyle of an English family. In the absence of wives and families, and even a properly structured British society that supported monogamy, most men turned to Indian prostitutes for sexual fulfilment and/ or companionship.

Thus, interracial couplings were common as the British men typically frequented the local prostitutes and sometimes maintained concubines with whom they had seemingly monogamous relationships over long periods. This pattern was also seen in other crown colonies, arising primarily due to the skewed sex ratios. For instance, the migrant population in the Malacca Straits was predominantly composed of young single men. The relatively few migrant women often worked in prostitution.

Before the social climate changed (dramatically) in India in the nineteenth century, European men would even ‘marry' Indian non-Christian women, though this was not deemed equivalent to legal marriages. These alliances led to a growing number of native ‘wives' known as ‘bibis'. The reason why they were not legally recognized as wives of the British men was due to the racist attitudes of miscegenation. However, these relationships were, to some extent, socially accepted…

However, a crucial flaw in the system of interracial couplings inevitably emerged, which was the emerging pool of a largely illegitimate mixed-race population, referred to as ‘Eurasians'. Over time, as the number of Eurasians on the Indian scene began to grow, it posed specific political and administrative problems as well. Not only did the presence of an entirely new race of half-British people born outside marriage present an embarrassing reminder of the private activities of the men posted on the outposts of the empire, it also gave rise to the question of British supremacy. Eurasians were the living and breathing evidence of the all too permeable racial boundaries, which the British tried hard to uphold.

Excerpted with permission from In Sickness and in Death: How Faith, Medicine and Race Shaped British India by Ipshita Nath, HarperCollins Publishers India