A punitive law criminalized what had long been acknowledged as ‘tradition’ (sati) ambiguously based on scriptural ‘sanctions’, while another law made the violation of tradition (that is, widow remarriage) legal and permissible, though it undercut custom—and therefore women's rights—in very different ways. Both legislative efforts were in some ways linked to the pernicious consequences of early marriage, hence early widowhood, and an absent or curtailed childhood. But this was also tied to fears about the ‘incorrigible’ sexual appetite of widows, which had resulted in infanticide, which had to be stopped or curtailed. One could argue that the 19th century, usually understood as being about women, was in fact all about the child.

Controlling Female Infanticide

Infanticide, and particularly female infanticide, the British ‘discovered’ in Benares in 1789, had grave consequences for communities as a whole in parts of northern and western India where intervention began at a brisk pace. This led to the passage of the Female Infanticide Prevention Act (or Special Act) of 1870 to curb female infanticide in the Northwest Provinces before it was withdrawn in 1906.

Was the Special Act of 1870 a philanthropic and humanitarian move, an attempt of the colonial regime to gain legitimacy, an invasion of the Hindu home with the intention of controlling it, or an effort aimed at merely pruning the excesses of the patriarchal family? Feminist scholars have also shown how the practice was intimately linked to the transformations of the agrarian structure brought about by colonial rule itself.

This is not to suggest that female infanticide was a creation of British rule. But it was treated as a gender-specific crime quite distinct from infanticide in England. Thus, T. P. Madhav Rao, dewan of Baroda state, demanded an amendment to the IPC but also urged the colonial regime to be very sympathetic to Indian social reality.