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Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought
How British authorities and Indian intellectuals developed ideas about deviant female sexuality to control and organize modern society in India
During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. In Indian Sex Life, Durba Mitra shows how deviant female sexuality, particularly the concept of the prostitute, became foundational to this knowledge project and became the primary way to think and write about Indian society.
Bringing together vast archival materials from diverse disciplines, Mitra reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women’s performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality. British authorities and Indian intellectuals used the concept of the prostitute to argue for the dramatic reorganization of modern Indian society around Hindu monogamy. Mitra demonstrates how the intellectual history of modern social thought is based in a dangerous civilizational logic built on the control and erasure of women’s sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and the postcolonial world.
Reframing the prostitute as a concept, Indian Sex Life overturns long-established notions of how to write the history of modern social thought in colonial India, and opens up new approaches for the global history of sexuality.
During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. In Indian Sex Life, Durba Mitra shows how deviant female sexuality, particularly the concept of the prostitute, became foundational to this knowledge project and became the primary way to think and write about Indian society.
Bringing together vast archival materials from diverse disciplines, Mitra reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women’s performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality. British authorities and Indian intellectuals used the concept of the prostitute to argue for the dramatic reorganization of modern Indian society around Hindu monogamy. Mitra demonstrates how the intellectual history of modern social thought is based in a dangerous civilizational logic built on the control and erasure of women’s sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and the postcolonial world.
Reframing the prostitute as a concept, Indian Sex Life overturns long-established notions of how to write the history of modern social thought in colonial India, and opens up new approaches for the global history of sexuality.
302 pages, Hardcover
Published January 7, 2020
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About the author
Durba Mitra
2 books3 followersDurba Mitra is assistant professor of studies in women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University and Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 4, 2021
phenomenal. remarkably instructive and necessary. longer report soon.
April 14, 2025
Durba Mitra’s Indian Sex Life is a striking intervention into the history of sexuality, colonial governance, and the epistemological foundations of modern social science. At its core, the book dismantles the liberal-feminist desire to "recover" subaltern voices by demonstrating how the figure of the sexually deviant Indian woman—encapsulated in the figure of the “prostitute”—was not a social reality to be unearthed but a conceptual artifact produced through the classificatory and disciplinary operations of empire. Far from being marginal, the “prostitute” became central to the production of scientific knowledge in colonial India and thus to the making of Indian society as an object of modern social thought.
Mitra’s critical innovation lies in her framing of the prostitute not as a subject but as a method of knowledge. Across an expansive archive—spanning medical reports, legal records, criminological texts, nationalist writings, sociological treatises, and even pornography—Mitra traces how the colonial state and Indian male reformers alike mobilized the figure of the prostitute to articulate broader anxieties about degeneration, civilization, and modernity. What emerges is not merely a history of regulation or moral panic but a genealogy of how we came to know Indian sexuality and how that knowledge remains tethered to colonial epistemes.
A central analytic in Mitra’s work is the critique of the social sciences themselves. By detailing how early Indian sociology, criminology, and anthropology deployed the figure of the deviant woman as a tool of social diagnosis, Indian Sex Life offers a searing indictment of the methodological racism and gendered violence embedded within the very disciplines that claimed objectivity and reformist aspiration. Importantly, Mitra does not simply expose these as colonial excesses; she charts their continuity into postcolonial nation-building and developmentalism, showing how independence did not sever but rather reanimated colonial modes of sexual governance—now rearticulated through Indian statist and nationalist idioms.
The book also profoundly challenges prevailing notions of sexuality as a transhistorical or stable category. Instead, Mitra treats sexuality as a field of power—constructed, policed, and narrated through regimes of colonial expertise. Her refusal to reify “the Indian woman” or to rescue her voice from silence marks a critical departure from much feminist historiography. In doing so, she aligns herself with scholars like Joan Scott and Ann Laura Stoler, foregrounding not the absence of voice but the violence of legibility itself. The historical question is not "who was the prostitute?" but rather, "what work did the figure of the prostitute do for empire, for science, for the postcolonial state?"
What is particularly generative for readers working at the intersection of law, gender, and colonial governance is Mitra’s treatment of the legal archive. She demonstrates how colonial criminal law—particularly vagrancy, obscenity, and contagious diseases legislation—did not merely regulate but produced the sexual subject. Moreover, these laws tethered female sexuality to spatial logics (public vs. private), racial anxieties (civilized vs. native), and national imaginaries (reformable vs. pathological). Mitra’s attention to how legal discourse shaped and was shaped by extra-legal practices of surveillance, medicalization, and moral reform enables a richly textured analysis of how colonial rule was routinized through the management of intimate life.
While the focus remains on colonial Bengal, the theoretical stakes of the book are vast. Mitra intervenes not only in South Asian historiography but also in broader debates around the politics of knowledge, disciplinarity, and the ongoing imperiality of modernity’s sexual order. Her argument is a direct challenge to celebratory or nostalgic accounts of precolonial sexual plurality, as well as to developmentalist narratives that position sexual repression as a legacy to be overcome through liberal reform. In place of these, she reveals a more disquieting truth: that modern social knowledge in India was born through and remains haunted by the conceptual violence of sexual coloniality.
Indian Sex Life is thus a book about the making of the social—and about the sexual epistemologies that undergird modern authority. It is essential reading not only for scholars of South Asia but for anyone grappling with the imperial foundations of contemporary disciplines and the racialized production of sexual difference. Mitra offers no redemptive politics, no emancipatory horizon, but something more unsettling and more necessary: a precise anatomy of how we came to know what we think we know about women, sexuality, and the so-called modern world.
Mitra’s critical innovation lies in her framing of the prostitute not as a subject but as a method of knowledge. Across an expansive archive—spanning medical reports, legal records, criminological texts, nationalist writings, sociological treatises, and even pornography—Mitra traces how the colonial state and Indian male reformers alike mobilized the figure of the prostitute to articulate broader anxieties about degeneration, civilization, and modernity. What emerges is not merely a history of regulation or moral panic but a genealogy of how we came to know Indian sexuality and how that knowledge remains tethered to colonial epistemes.
A central analytic in Mitra’s work is the critique of the social sciences themselves. By detailing how early Indian sociology, criminology, and anthropology deployed the figure of the deviant woman as a tool of social diagnosis, Indian Sex Life offers a searing indictment of the methodological racism and gendered violence embedded within the very disciplines that claimed objectivity and reformist aspiration. Importantly, Mitra does not simply expose these as colonial excesses; she charts their continuity into postcolonial nation-building and developmentalism, showing how independence did not sever but rather reanimated colonial modes of sexual governance—now rearticulated through Indian statist and nationalist idioms.
The book also profoundly challenges prevailing notions of sexuality as a transhistorical or stable category. Instead, Mitra treats sexuality as a field of power—constructed, policed, and narrated through regimes of colonial expertise. Her refusal to reify “the Indian woman” or to rescue her voice from silence marks a critical departure from much feminist historiography. In doing so, she aligns herself with scholars like Joan Scott and Ann Laura Stoler, foregrounding not the absence of voice but the violence of legibility itself. The historical question is not "who was the prostitute?" but rather, "what work did the figure of the prostitute do for empire, for science, for the postcolonial state?"
What is particularly generative for readers working at the intersection of law, gender, and colonial governance is Mitra’s treatment of the legal archive. She demonstrates how colonial criminal law—particularly vagrancy, obscenity, and contagious diseases legislation—did not merely regulate but produced the sexual subject. Moreover, these laws tethered female sexuality to spatial logics (public vs. private), racial anxieties (civilized vs. native), and national imaginaries (reformable vs. pathological). Mitra’s attention to how legal discourse shaped and was shaped by extra-legal practices of surveillance, medicalization, and moral reform enables a richly textured analysis of how colonial rule was routinized through the management of intimate life.
While the focus remains on colonial Bengal, the theoretical stakes of the book are vast. Mitra intervenes not only in South Asian historiography but also in broader debates around the politics of knowledge, disciplinarity, and the ongoing imperiality of modernity’s sexual order. Her argument is a direct challenge to celebratory or nostalgic accounts of precolonial sexual plurality, as well as to developmentalist narratives that position sexual repression as a legacy to be overcome through liberal reform. In place of these, she reveals a more disquieting truth: that modern social knowledge in India was born through and remains haunted by the conceptual violence of sexual coloniality.
Indian Sex Life is thus a book about the making of the social—and about the sexual epistemologies that undergird modern authority. It is essential reading not only for scholars of South Asia but for anyone grappling with the imperial foundations of contemporary disciplines and the racialized production of sexual difference. Mitra offers no redemptive politics, no emancipatory horizon, but something more unsettling and more necessary: a precise anatomy of how we came to know what we think we know about women, sexuality, and the so-called modern world.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 10, 2021
The 19th century witnessed a massive reorganization of Indian society around monogamy due to the influence of the Christian colonial state who were heavily invested in monogamy as a model of an ideal society. Hindu male elites also adopted this ideology which led to a fundamental change in attitudes about women's sexuality and place in South Asian society. Written by an American historian and researcher of Indian descent, 'Indian Sex Life,' explores how British authorities and Indian intellectuals developed ideas about 'deviant female sexuality' to control and organise modern society in India.
During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and Indian scholars deployed problematic ideas about women's sexuality. The book reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, and ideologies about the 'dangers' of Muslim sexuality. Colonial British officers and elite Indian sociologists saw most Indian women as prostitutes. They saw Hindu widows, Muslim married women, women away from their husbands, women deserted by their husbands, and unmarried girls over the age of 15 as sexually deviant. This type of thinking continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia, according to the author.
The book reveals the influence the British had on attitudes towards female sexuality which is still held today. For example, the oft-cited saying that, "prostitution is the oldest profession in the world," dates back to British writer and colonial enthusiast Rudyard Kipling in 1888 in a story about an Indian woman called Lalun. The book also highlights how influencial the British were in introducing the Kamasutra to the modern world following the translations by Richard Francis Burton. 'Indian Sex Life' is an account of how ideas of deviant female sexuality, often named as 'prostitutes,' became foundational to modern social thought in colonial India. This academic study is a well-researched exploration on the intellectual history of a concept shaped by shame and stigma.
During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and Indian scholars deployed problematic ideas about women's sexuality. The book reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, and ideologies about the 'dangers' of Muslim sexuality. Colonial British officers and elite Indian sociologists saw most Indian women as prostitutes. They saw Hindu widows, Muslim married women, women away from their husbands, women deserted by their husbands, and unmarried girls over the age of 15 as sexually deviant. This type of thinking continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia, according to the author.
The book reveals the influence the British had on attitudes towards female sexuality which is still held today. For example, the oft-cited saying that, "prostitution is the oldest profession in the world," dates back to British writer and colonial enthusiast Rudyard Kipling in 1888 in a story about an Indian woman called Lalun. The book also highlights how influencial the British were in introducing the Kamasutra to the modern world following the translations by Richard Francis Burton. 'Indian Sex Life' is an account of how ideas of deviant female sexuality, often named as 'prostitutes,' became foundational to modern social thought in colonial India. This academic study is a well-researched exploration on the intellectual history of a concept shaped by shame and stigma.
August 2, 2025
A unique but necessary book that explores the outrageous British laws imposed upon Indian women in the height of the colonial occupation. Essentially, the book documents the insane laws that classified nearly EVERY Indian woman a potential sexual deviant who was committing the criminalized act of adultery. The laws handed the state the power to draft women into indentured servitude into the British Empire under the fake auspices of "saving them from their communities".
Women also faced constant humiliation and assault by doctors on required bi-monthly "viginity checks" and likely sexual assault by police who could arrest and "interrogate" any woman they suspected of prostitution with no real evidence needed. The book also briefly mentions laws that criminalized abortion.
The only downside is that I found some passages to be very repetitive and too much emphasis is placed on male opinions of women at the time and less on the laws themselves and their consequences. I would love to see the data on how many women were enslaved or imprisioned under the laws or some research on any of their accounts of the laws.
I wish the author had gone into the litany of laws that criminalized homosexuality. I also wish that more emphasis was placed on the various ways people were living before the British occupation. I think it would have helped to understand how the laws altered the various societies on the Indian subcontinent, some of which were matriarchal and polyandrous/polygamous.
Women also faced constant humiliation and assault by doctors on required bi-monthly "viginity checks" and likely sexual assault by police who could arrest and "interrogate" any woman they suspected of prostitution with no real evidence needed. The book also briefly mentions laws that criminalized abortion.
The only downside is that I found some passages to be very repetitive and too much emphasis is placed on male opinions of women at the time and less on the laws themselves and their consequences. I would love to see the data on how many women were enslaved or imprisioned under the laws or some research on any of their accounts of the laws.
I wish the author had gone into the litany of laws that criminalized homosexuality. I also wish that more emphasis was placed on the various ways people were living before the British occupation. I think it would have helped to understand how the laws altered the various societies on the Indian subcontinent, some of which were matriarchal and polyandrous/polygamous.
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September 27, 2020Post-colonial discourse often focus on the multi-marginalised subject: women, oriental, social classes etc. The main take away of this book is to confront these legacies that still exists today, through modern hybrid of cast system, and also the reliance of capital under sex work network. Another expansion for this book, would be sex and porn under information technology overarching structure and how India as a software power intertwining these relations.
April 12, 2023
有部分论调认为从原始乱交到妻妾制再到monogamy是社会的进步，monogamy也是最进步的表现，但是所有的这一切都是在patriarchy的框架和前提下，monogamy也是patriarchal monogamy，如果打破patriarchy的框架，monogamy这种保证继承权，等级制度，血统的婚姻解决方案并不是最优的解决方案，也许marriage本身作为家族利益交换，稳定社会结构的解决方案并非是一种合乎人性的制度，因此也未必是进步的最优选择。抛开patriarchy，也许有更多更好的选择和可能性
January 26, 2020
A study of how British colonial authorities classified most women in India as prostitutes. Read for graduate school.
November 20, 2021
Extremely well researched.
April 5, 2022
A test review
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews