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  • 19 - Sex in Bombay in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

  • Edited by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Mathew Kuefler, San Diego State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge World History of Sexualities
    Published online:
    26 April 2024
    Print publication:
    16 May 2024, pp 402-418

  • Summary

    The chapter provides an insight into the complex sexual milieu of Bombay in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning with the Rajabai Tower case as a key narrative, numerous facets of the city, such as cosmopolitanism, group identities, the link between forensics and sexual assault, racial profiling, and police corruption, are discussed. Also examined are the spatial controversies surrounding Bombay’s red-light neighbourhoods and links between spatiality and the identity of prostitutes. Pop culture’s role in shaping a sexual ethos, in Parsi theatre and later Bombay cinema, and particularly the unique position of performative androgyny, is reviewed. Further, the impact of contagious disease acts and the fluid definition of prostitution is studied. Finally, the role of eugenics is surveyed, and the extremely divisive and convoluted politics of the eugenics movement is analyzed.