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“Surplus Woman”: Female Sexuality and the Concept of Endogamy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2021

Durba Mitra Open the ORCID record for Durba Mitra [Opens in a new window]
Durba Mitra*
Affiliation:
Durba Mitra ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University.
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Abstract

This essay traces the colonial origins of the concept of endogamy and its history as a foundational idea in the modern study of society in South Asia. The history of the concept of endogamy reveals how the control of female sexuality shaped the overlapping fields of Indology and ethnology. The invention and deployment of endogamy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is discussed in the writings of key colonial writers and British administrators, such as J. F. McLennan and H. H. Risley, and Indian intellectuals, including S. V. Ketkar and B. R. Ambedkar. It argues that the modern study of caste naturalized the control of female sexuality through the uncritical use of the concept of endogamy, which Ambedkar diagnosed as the irresolvable problem of the “Surplus Woman” in 1917. The essay reflects on the long life of endogamy and the enduring problem of nonconjugal sexuality in modern social theories of South Asia.

Keywords

castecolonialismendogamyethnologygenderIndologysexualitysocial theorySouth Asiaviolence
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 3 - 26
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Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2021

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