Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for India to inquire into the rules, regulations, and practice in the Indian cantonments and elsewhere in India, with regard to prostitution and to the treatment of venereal disease : together with minutes of evidence and appendices.

  • Great Britain. India Office. Committee on Prostitution in India.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for India to inquire into the rules, regulations, and practice in the Indian cantonments and elsewhere in India, with regard to prostitution and to the treatment of venereal disease : together with minutes of evidence and appendices. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    279/524 (page 229)
    Report. III.—CANTONMENT PROSTITUTES. without their approval first obtained. They regulate the place of residence of all inhabitants of Cantonment land. And they exercihe the power, on rare occasions, of expelling from Cantonments a person whose presence there they consider undesirable. 11. The Sadar bazaar is considered the especial charge of the Cantonment ~ , ,,. , ... , ,• Magistrate. His authority extends to the ia<> Controlling authorities and their police. p Jf . lou regimental bazaars also ; but they are imme- diately under the control of the Officers Commanding Regiments ; and the Cantonment Magistrate would not ordinarily interfere unless General Regulations or Standing Orders were being infringed. The. Cantonment Magistrate has under his ordeis a police force, which, forms a portion of the general Police of the province ; and consists, sometimes wholly of police constables, as at Ambala and Meerut, and sometimes partly of constables and partly of chaukidars, as at Lucknow. These are the civil police of Cantonments. In addition to them is maintained a body of Military Police. At Meerut this body consists exclusively of Regimental Police, under the orders of the Officers Commanding Regiments. 190 At Ambala and Lucknow it includes also a Garrison Police, under the orders of the Officer Commanding the Station. The duties of this Military Police are confined to keeping order among the soldiery. They apprehend drunken soldiers ; they see that men do not go out of bounds, and aie not away from barracks out of hours; and they put down disturbances and affrays. The duties of the Regimental Police are mainly confined to regimental limits, and their concern lies chiefly with men of their own regiment; those of the Garrison Police are co-extensive with Cantonment limits and the British garrison. III.—CANTONMENT PROSTITUTES. 12. Prostitution is regarded by society in India in a very different light 200 _ ... . T from that in which it is looked upon in England We Prostitution in India. , l,. s • t i- 11 do not say that it is, even in India, a reputable or an honourable calling. But the disrepute which attaches to it is wholly different, in kind as well as in degree, from that which attaches to it in Europe. This fact is probably due to two main causes. In the first place prostitution in India is, like most other callings, largely hereditary. Probably, from the very nature of the case, a larger number of recruits are admitted from outside than in many other occupations. But there are distinct castes, including very many thousands of human beings, of which the male members are by hereditary calling pimps, and the female members prostitutes ; and are no more ashamed of being 210 so, than a sweeper is ashamed of being a sweeper, or a tanner of being a tanner ; though like them, they will claim a higher caste, if circumstances are not such as to render the claim too obviously absurd. At Ambala, where alone we succeeded in obtaining information on this point, we found that only eight out of thirty-nine prostitutes questioned did not belong to such hereditary caste. The second cause is that the woman of India, if she belongs to the poorer classes, is a mere drudge, living only for her very heavy household duties, or for the labour by which she earns her living, and rapidly losing all pretensions to feminine charms. If she belongs to the higher classes, at any rate in 220 Northern India, she spends her whole life within the four walls of the zanana. The one is wholly uneducated ; the other wholly unacquainted with men and manners: both are without that intelligence which wider experience alone can give. The prostitute is, excepting among the Parsis, the only woman in Upper India who, while preserving her charms unimpaired by a hard life and by manual labour, possesses that cultivation which springs from free contact with men and with the world. h h 2