Gender and Violence in British India : The Road to Amritsar, 1914-1919

In British India, the years during and following World War I saw imperial unity deteriorate into a bitter dispute over "native" effeminacy and India's postwar fitness for self-rule. This study demonstrates that increasingly ferocious dispute culminated in the actual physical violence of the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. "Cover"--"Gender and Violence in British India" -- "Contents" -- "List of Figures" -- "1: Resituating Gender and Violence during the Great War " -- "Excavating Masculinity and Femininity in the Prewar Empire " -- "2: The Violent Mahatma: Gandhi and the Rehabilitation of Indian Manhood " -- "Wartime Emasculation and Imperial Consensus " -- "The Great War, Indian Nationalism, and the Regeneration of Masculinity " -- "Gandhi and the Forms of Colonial Violence " -- "Premonitions of the Future: The British Press and Indian Loyalty " -- "3: Measures of Manliness: The Martial Races and the Wartime Politics of Effeminacy " -- "Our Soldiers, Ourselves: Constructing the Martial Races " -- "The Wartime Politics of Martiality " -- "The Transnational Politics of the Martial Races " -- "The Martial Races and the Intersection of Global Revolutionary Movements " -- "4: Frontline Masculinity: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914â#x80;#x93;1915 " -- "The First Two Months: Martial Races, British Officers, and Self-Inflicted Wounds " -- "Neuve Chapelle and the Official History of the War " -- "5: The Road to Amritsar " -- "â#x80;#x9C;Tophat Or Turbanâ#x80;#x9D;: Reform Opposition in the Imperial Press " -- "The Sinews of Empire: The Indo-British Association in London " -- "Reform, Rape, and the Amritsar Massacre " -- "6: Epilogue: The Historical Stakes of New Imperial History " -- "Notes " -- "1 Resituating Gender and Violence during the Great War " -- "2 The Violent Mahatma: Gandhi and the Rehabilitationof Indian Manhood " -- "3 Measures of Manliness: The Martial Races and the Wartime Politics of Effeminacy " -- "4 Frontline Masculinity: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914â#x80;#x93;1915 " -- "5 The Road to Amritsar " -- "6 Epilogue: The Historical Stakes of New Imperial History " -- "Select Bibliography " -- "Primary Sources " -- "India Office Manuscripts " "By the outbreak of the Great War, conventional wisdom in the British Empire held that the Briton alone possessed the 'manly' traits of logic and self-control necessary for good governance. Coupled with this was the belief that India's western-educated nationalist elite suffered from a crippling effeminacy of body and mind that precluded political power and independence. During the First World War, however, the colony sent over one million troops abroad to fight, fundamentally upsetting this symmetry and allowing Indian nationalists to challenge the tenets of colonial masculinity. What had been a moment of imperial unity in 1914 deteriorated into an increasingly bitter dispute over the relationship between 'native' effeminacy and India's postwar fitness for self-rule. In this groundbreaking, carefully argued study, author Robert McLain demonstrates that this dispute assumed a rhetorical ferocity that culminated in the actual physical violence of the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, when British led troops shot hundreds of unarmed Indian civilians. In this way, the Empire's reliance on gender as an ideological apparatus was deeply interwoven with the use of violence as an inherent and persistent feature of imperial power"--Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-ix Resituating Gender and Violence during the Great War....Pages 1-16 The Violent Mahatma: Gandhi and the Rehabilitation of Indian Manhood....Pages 17-40 Measures of Manliness: The Martial Races and the Wartime Politics of Effeminacy....Pages 41-60 Frontline Masculinity: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914–1915....Pages 61-88 The Road to Amritsar....Pages 89-117 Epilogue: The Historical Stakes of New Imperial History....Pages 119-123 Back Matter....Pages 125-170