Liberalisation in India

Part II Paper 26. Topic 28: Globalisation, Inequality and the Politics of Culture. Last essay of term! I was supervised by Leigh Denault at Churchill.

Following independence in 1947 India opted to follow socialist influenced economic policies, nationalising major industry and making it difficult for private business enterprise to flourish. In 1991 it was finally recognised that the current system was failing India and a process of economic liberalization was initiated. The effects however have not been as positive as many would have liked. Poverty continues to be a problem; the sectors of society that had suffered before liberalization still experience many of the same difficulties. To a large extent the old hierarchies have continued to be the main beneficiaries of industry and government infrastructure; corruption remains rife for instance. This essay seeks to examine the impact of liberalization, and to highlight the long road India still has to travel before liberalization can be viewed as a real success.

Following independence India decided implemented a series of socialist polices. Figures like Nehru, India’s first prime minister, believed direct state control would ensure rapid economic growth, allowing India to become a powerful state in its own right. The government however faced massive challenges in the aftermath of partition. Cotton, for example, had been primarily grown in East Bengal under British rule. Partition saw this area incorporated into East Pakistan, meaning not only had India lost valuable resources, it now had to give over cultivatable land to cotton production. Combined with the large numbers of refugees and general upheaval created by partition it is perhaps unsurprising that serious economic growth failed to materialise. In fact the low annual rates of economic growth, stagnating at around 3.5%, were referred to derogatorily as the ‘Hindu rate of growth’. By the late 1980s the comparison between India and the so called ‘Asian Tigers’, countries like Taiwan and South Korea, was stark. The government was finally forced to acknowledge the problem, and to begin liberalising industrial practice culminating in a broad package of reforms in 1991 which were labelled ‘liberalisation’ by the contemporary Indian media.

At first glance, liberalisation appears to have massively changed the expectations of Indian people, reshaping the country’s economic landscape and presenting new opportunities. Innovation led to economic growth rates rising to around 6-8% per annum. Foreign investment in India played a large role in this, increasing from $132 million in 1991-1992 to $5.3 billion by 1995-96. This rapid growth reflects the dismantlement of the so called ‘Licence Raj’ of the previous decades, referring to the complicated process of obtaining licences for private enterprise. Only 18 industries remained subject to licensing, and privatisation began to become a reality for India’s stagnating government corporations. In 2007 India’s annual GDP growth was second only to that of China, widely recognised as the next economic superpower. Such figures present a glowing picture of liberalization, implying that the situation for average people within India must have improved drastically in line with these statistics.

The increase in car ownership can be examined as an example of the improving standard of living in India. Before liberalisation Edward Luce claims that only important political figures like ambassadors were likely to own a car. Today it is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. In 2000 0.5% of the Indian population owned a car; by 2007 7 in 1,000 were driving. It is predicted that India will be the third largest consumer market for automobiles by 2015. This increased demand led, in turn, to road building projects. Highways were laid to link India’s major cities. In 2007 the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry told the BBC they were laying 14km of road per day, compared to 7km in 2004.(see 2) This level of private car ownership in India would have been unthinkable before liberalisation, suggesting that it is no longer just the political elite who are benefiting from the Indian economy.

A closer look at India’s situation however reveals a less positive image. Edward Luce highlights the problems caused by the slow rate of urbanisation. Of a population of around 1.1 billion people, roughly 750 million continue to live in villages. This, of course, was preferred way of living advised by Gandhi before India had even achieved independence. Ambedkar was unconvinced, stating: ‘The love of the intellectual India for the village community is of course infinite, if not pathetic … What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism?’ It is this more negative interpretation of the village which rings true for modern India. Of 680,000 villages, Luce claims that around half do not even have access to all-weather roads. Cut off from adequate health and education provision, little improvement can be made. Even apparent increased literacy is revealed to be something of a sham on closer inspection: half of India’s women are technically literate, yet it is argued that a significant proportion of these can do nothing more than sign their name. Here we see an India in which those who have traditionally been marginalised, women and the rural poor, continue to suffer.

Rural areas see poverty exacerbated by the survival of the caste system. Whilst it is true that caste segregation has been broken down to a large extent in urbanised areas, in accordance with the outlawing of caste based discrimination by the Indian constitution, over 70% of the Indian population continues to live in the countryside, urbanisation having increased by less than five percentage points between 1981 and 2001. This has led to a contradictory situation. On the one hand there has been far reaching social mobility. K.R. Narayanan who became President of India in 1997 belonged to a caste formerly regarded as ‘untouchable’. On the other hand 16% of Indians are still classed as ‘Dalit’, or ‘untouchable’. Even if they escape to the cities many find themselves living in squalid urban slums, still finding this preferable to the ingrained prejudice they face back in the village. In 2006 74 per cent of people questioned claimed they did not approve of inter-caste marriages. It is clear that caste continues to be something which divides India.

Traditionally the most coveted jobs in India were government positions, and these were almost exclusively preserved for the elite. During the time of the Mughal Empire these jobs went to educated Muslims, and this continued to be the case throughout the nineteenth century. However the rise of Hindu nationalism, and ultimately partition saw change. Today working for the government remains the ambition of many Hindus. Not only does it offer extensive job security, its high rates of pay and plentiful non-cash benefits such as subsidised housing and electricity make such a career a highly attractive option. This protection comes at the cost, many argue, of transparency. V.J. Kurian told Edward Luce that in Kerala corrupt officials are admired more than those who are scrupulously honest. ‘They say if you’re not making money, you must be really stupid.’ Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India, estimated that as much as 85 per cent of all development spending in India was pocketed by bureaucrats. Bribery, too, is rife; BPL (Below Poverty Cards) which should help those in need to obtain subsidised food are regularly obtained through bribes, meaning subsidised food is being stolen from those who need it. Government jobs remain in the hands of the educated middle and upper classes, proof that the traditional hierarchy of privilege is being preserved.

Some would argue that the examples put forward in this essay are too pessimistic, too focussed on India’s problems rather than the massive improvements which have been witnessed since liberalisation. One such area is education. Before independence less than one per cent of India’s ‘untouchables’ were literate. Today this figure is estimated to be in the region of 35 per cent. Amongst other sectors of society the quality of education depends very much on what you can afford to pay. There is a growing attitude in Indian private industry that it is important to hire the person best qualified for the job, rather than taking on employees as a form of familial patronage. The IT industry in particular offers great opportunities for social mobility. But to be employed by such companies, you need to have received an adequate education. This is why, although there has been significant change, it can still be argued that liberalisation in many ways has perpetuated traditional hierarchies of privilege. Upper castes can afford better education, and so continue to secure good jobs.

Income is obviously inextricable from how successful people are in the job market. So whilst disposable income has been rising in India, as evidenced by the growth in private car ownership and the increasing ‘brand culture’, how much this impacts on the lives of ordinary Indians can differ greatly. The lavish wedding ceremonies depicted in Bollywood movies might be filtering down through society, yet for many they remain an escapist dream. In Bihar less than one in ten homes even have electricity, the divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ of modern India appears to be as large as at any time in Indian history. The image India wants to present to the world is made up of modern success stories, the glamour of Bollywood and the influential software sector which has the ability to compete in the world market. Liberalization, which has allowed this image to be constructed, hiding India’s problems, can be said to perpetuate traditional privileges by preventing outsiders from looking too closely at the reality.

Although this essay has spoken of India in general terms, it should be remembered that it is far from a homogenous state. Whilst there are obvious class differences, and differences between rural and urban areas, conditions also differ greatly from region to region. In Bihar for example there is successful political coalition between Muslims and Hindus of the Yadav caste, described by Luce as the ‘traditional cow-herder caste of north India’. Corruption is high, whilst the economy is struggling: residents of Bihar have the lowest life expectancy in India. Life here is very different in that in Tamil Nadu, the most urbanised state in India. Here the chief secretary told Luce: ‘we estimate that roughly thirty per cent of public resources are diverted in Tamil Nadu, compared to about seventy per cent in the north.’ Almost ninety per cent of its population is literate. In a highly efficient, organised state education has enabled people to work liberalization to their advantage. In the corrupt states of north India it has done little more than continue to line the pockets of the traditional hierarchy.

In conclusion, liberalization has been beneficial for all sectors of Indian society. Poverty has been reduced, and the economy has witnessed massive growth allowing India to compete for the first time in the modern economic market. However the transformation has been neither as radical nor as complete as many would like to claim. Upper castes continue to benefit from job opportunities, having the money to secure the necessary education. In turn they then safeguard the future of their children through education. Corruption continues to be a huge problem which sustains the traditional hierarchies of privilege. Upper castes hold government positions, which allows them to benefit from not only government subsidies but also the complex system of bribes which operates in modern Indian society. In short, whilst there has been improvement, and a move towards greater social mobility, India still has a long way to go.

• Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Public Worlds V. 1. 
• Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 
• Luce, Edward. In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India. London: Little, Brown, 2006. 
• Nussbaum, Martha Craven. The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.

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Part II, Paper 26. Essay Topic 16: Recasting Religion: Muslim Identity 1850 – 1920. Week 5 essay, I was supervised at Churchill by Leigh Denault.


Muslim politics was to become very important to the history of India, even leading to the creation of separate political states in the twentieth century. However this outcome was by no means seen as inevitable in the years after the first war of independence in 1857. Muslims may have been singled out by the British as the instigators of what they called the Indian Mutiny, but Muslim campaigners were just as likely to work with Hindu political activists, as against them. Indeed Muslim figures played a big role in the early National Congress. This essay will seek to show that, nevertheless, there were some ways in which Muslim politics were becoming distinctive after 1857.

There had been a significant Muslim population in India for centuries by the mid nineteenth century. The continent had been ruled by Muslim emperors from the sixteenth century, as part of the Mughal Empire. Indeed the British method of exerting power from behind a figurehead traditional ruler meant that Muslims still filled many elite positions within Indian society. Bahadur Shah retained the title of King, for example, even as the area he had actual control over contracted massively. Although tensions rose as it became clear his privileges would not be passed on to his heirs. The Muslim population were afraid of losing their advantages within society.

During the mutiny of 1857 many Muslims saw an opportunity to restore the Mughal Empire, and so regain the authority that had been eroded by European powers, particularly the British. Muslims rallied behind the figure of Bahadur Shah, determined to see him fully reinstated as emperor. The British were forced out of Delhi and Bahadur Shah held court for the first time in many years. Such actions compared unfavourably in British eyes with, for instance, the Sikhs of the Punjab who remained loyal and helped the British regain control of Delhi. The massacre at Kanpur, where dozens of British women and children were murdered, served to confirm the British view that Muslims had incited the entire rebellion and could not be trusted.

Robinson claims that one of the main reasons for separatism among Indian Muslims identified by historians is deliberate division of society by the British. The argument is that the desire for revenge after 1857 led the British to treat Muslims very harshly. By singling the Muslim community out a sense of identity then began to emerge in response. Certainly in the days after the recapture of Delhi punishments were severe. At Kanpur some Muslim sepoys were sewn into pig skins before being hung, something which punished both the body and the soul as pigs are deemed to be unclean by the Muslim faith. Bahadur Shah was exiled to Burma, and anti-Muslim sentiment remained strong for the rest of the year. Even in 1871 W. W. Hunter felt there was concern enough to make his writing ‘The Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen?’ worthwhile. 

However there is little evidence that this ill-feeling continued to cause substantial problems for Muslims in India. In 1859 Sayyid Ahmad Khan wrote a critique called ‘The Causes of the Indian Mutiny’ which highlighted Muslim fears that British education was attempting to force Christianity upon India. Officially the British resolved to be more conciliatory. They gave financial aid to the Aligarh Muslim University founded by Khan in 1885 for example. In addition large numbers of Muslims continued, as they traditionally had, to serve in the civil service. The 1881 census revealed there were over 50 million Muslims in India; if they were believed to be causing a serious threat surely British reaction at this time would have been much stronger.

Other historians have argued that Muslim politics began to emerge as a distinctive entity in response to a growing sense of Hindu nationalism. The 1860s saw the work of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar attempt to consolidate the prominence of Bengali for example, and Michael Madhusdan Dutt reframed traditional Indian mythology into something more coherent. Where before there had been many ‘Hinduisms’ there was now a growing cohesion to the faith. To be Indian was to be Hindu, and vice versa. Clearly this was an exclusive viewpoint, something which many Muslims must have felt strongly.

King’s work on the controversy surrounding government language policy in colonial India exemplifies the tensions. The Islamic elites spoke Persian or Urdu, the latter earning greater prominence when Persian was replaced with English for administration purposes in the 1830s. The British generally preferred Urdu to be used at this time, and there was little encouragement given to vernaculars. However as Hindu nationalism grew stronger there was a feeling that Hindi should be recognised. This was particularly evident in published literature. By 1925 the number of Urdu publications had shrunk from being half of all published literature to one eighth, the equivalent of one sixth of the Hindu output. Such figures suggest that Muslim groups would attempt to form closer connections as a defence against the deluge of Hindu nationalism.

This could explain the setting up of Muslim dominated schools. There was, as already mentioned, the Aligarh Muslim University which styled itself as an Indian counterpart to Cambridge University. In doing so it could be said that the Muslim population was attempting to project respectability to the British, and win support from them which might otherwise go to the Hindu nationalist movement. More notable perhaps is the foundation of the Darul Uloom Deoband in 1866 which strove to educate theologians and clerics in order to spread Sunni Islam. Graduates from the school were instrumental in securing conversions to Islam in Bengal. These schools taught loyalty is Islam, and stressed its importance as a way of life. The schools also created their own sense of community. When Sayyid Ahmad Khan distanced himself from the emerging National Congress in the late nineteenth century, so did his pupils.

However the picture is not as straightforward as it might first appear. The aim of many boys at these schools remained admission to posts within the British administration. So, whilst their faith was important to them, their sense of nationalism was in many ways limited. There are other contradictions. At Aligarh Hindu day students were welcomed, especially in the institution’s early years. Sayyid Ahmad Khan had set up an alternative to the National Congress, the Muhammadan Educational Congress in 1886. But, after his death, his former pupils no longer felt the need to conform to his wishes to keep the two separate. In 1909 the Muslim League and the Muhammadan Educational Congress broke apart, the former moving slowly towards alliance with the National Congress. What is clear is that there were not two polarised ‘nations’, rather there were points on which they disagreed.

This idea is supported by Chris Bayly’s findings on Hindu and Muslim clashes in the early nineteenth and eighteenth centuries. Delhi was mostly free of Hindu / Muslim tension, even though this had been a seat of Muslim power which was being steadily eroded. On the other hand Calcutta saw violence between Hindus and Muslims as early as 1789 at the festivals of the Muhurram and Durga Puja, the Muslim population reacting violently to Hindu prosperity in the region. The strength of separatist feeling continued to differ from place to place into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

From 1913 there was a new approach visible. The politicians of the Muslim League sought to unite with the National Congress, something which would enable them to work together to obtain a greater say in the way India was governed by the British. In 1916 this arrangement was formalised by the Lucknow Pact. Gandhi became a leading figure in Muslim political policy too, proving that faith was not necessarily completely divisive at this time. Muslim and Hindu cooperation in the Congress was often rocky, but it wasn’t until later that the campaign to truly separate the faith into two nations was began in earnest.

In conclusion Muslim politics emerged as distinctive in the aftermath of 1857 in a number of ways. Education became very important as Muslims both sought to secure their faith, ensuring there were sufficient teachers available for the future. It also enabled them to keep their traditional elite status in the law courts and the civil service, and give them the respectability which was needed in order to be taken seriously by the British. Some policies were exclusive, such as the refusal to join the Indian National Congress, but this later gave way to a more cooperative stance, with the involvement of Congress and the Muslim League. At this time Muslim politics was distinctive in that it worked for Muslim benefit, trying to keep Indian vernacular languages out of official circles for instance, but it was only later that it became truly separatist.

• Powell, Avril A. Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India, London Studies on South Asia No. 7. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1993. 
• Bayly, C. A. "The Pre-History of 'Communalism'? Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860." Modern Asian Studies 19, no. 2 (1985): 177-203. 
• Robinson, Francis. Separatism among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces' Muslims, 1860-1923, Cambridge South Asian Studies. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. 
• Lelyveld, David. Aligarh's First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978. 
• Metcalf, Barbara Daly. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982. 
• King, Christopher Rolland. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in the Nineteenth Century North India. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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Part II Paper 26, Week Two. Topic 3: Imperial Transitions: Race, Gender and Culture c. 1757 – 1840.


Studies into women in early colonial India have had a growing place in the historiography since the 1980s. Initially focussing on the European female in a colonial context, today there exist a number of in-depth studies into the importance of gender in the context of early colonial rule. At a time when women’s voices were seldom heard in the public sphere, their status, and the ways in which it was to be protected or enforced, became a key issue for contemporary men. British men could justify their own imposed rule by claiming it was for the protection of women. Native men could take interest in the position of women as a means of protecting traditional identities, or as an act of subversion to British rule. This essay seeks to outline how and why early colonial reformers chose to use women in their discourse, and to show the huge impact this made both in the colonies and back home.

From a British perspective the treatment of women by native societies was coming to be thought of as directly correlating to how advanced and ‘civilised’ that society was. Thus the people of Tahiti, who treated their women folk well, were believed to be superior to the Maori who excessively burdened their women, and committed violence against them. By the time of early British rule in India then it was established that women, or at least higher class women, ought to be protected from the rigours and harsher side of life, as were their European counterparts.

A good example of how this worked in practice can be seen in British reactions to the practice of ‘sati’, a Hindu custom whereby the widow of a recently deceased man would volunteer to immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. Modern research has shown that before colonial rule it was a relatively rare practice, and confined to the higher castes. However contemporary British journals such as the ‘Missionary Register’ framed their accounts in such a way as could not fail to incite horror. In the early years of the nineteenth century the Missionary Register stated: ‘Let every Christian woman who reads the following statement, pity the wretched thousands of her sex who are sacrificed in India to a cruel superstition…’ Eyewitness accounts from respectable Europeans, such as Francois Bernier served only to highlight the gruesome nature of sati.


The implication here is that India is being held back from modernization by clinging to these outdated ‘superstitions’. Sati provided the British with another reason for insisting that religious law be codified. In principal the British acceptance of native law seemed a sign of fair practice. In reality however such formalization of laws which had once been flexible made things more difficult for native peoples in India seeking redress. On the issue of sati British officials used less known scripture framed by the likes of Ram Mohan Roy to try and curtail its use; for example in 1813 sati’s voluntary status was cited as justification by the British for outlawing it for girls under the age of 16, or for women who were pregnant or intoxicated, as they were not deemed capable of making such a decision. Here we see how a way of rule, seeming to agree with custom and tradition, but in fact making major changes under its banner, is tried out and refined using the issue of women as a cover. 

The status of women was thus an important issue for native men too. Sati was something that had its fate discussed and, ultimately, decided by men. There is evidence that as the British began to restrict its use, some widows came under increasing family pressure to go through with it, a defiant act of traditionalism in the face of British ‘modernity’. The number of recorded instances of sati certainly rose; in 1815 there were 378 cases, by 1818 this had risen to 839. Until it was finally outlawed in British India in 1829 it could serve as a constant source of antagonism, made worse only by its close association with tradition and religion. Women were rarely involved in the discussion, unless their words were recounted by European men, often detailing how they seemed to have been drugged, or were simply too fearful not to go through with it. Else European women might be encouraged to campaign on behalf of their colonial cousins, as Ward’s ‘Farewell Letters’ put it: ‘these females doomed to a horrible death’. Primarily however women were excluded; this was a discourse about them, not one for them to participate in.

If sati provided a platform for native and European men to disagree, popular culture provided one on which they had common ground. Sumanta Banerjee describes how before colonial rule Bengali women found entertainment in songs, such as agamani and vijaya songs sung in celebration of the goddess Durga Puja. Other categories of songs such as the kheur which were lively and lighthearted, often somewhat risqué in nature. As the nineteenth century got underway the rising Bengali elite, the bhadralok, began to take exception to these forms of entertainment. Increasingly members of the bhadralok received a British style education, and modeled themselves on British elites, wearing western style clothing for example. In this they began to form self identity along the same principles of hard work and moral purity of the British middle classes. As a result of this more emphasis was placed on women’s moral worth, and opposition to such popular entertainment grew. Here we see British cultural values appropriated by the educated sectors of the Bengali population, and applied against what they viewed as their own ‘low’ culture.

This is an example of a shifting awareness of the definition of status. Before colonial intervention higher caste women were kept separate from men. For example Hindu women in a zanana would cover their faces when a man entered the room, and would not go outside unchaperoned. However the arrival of the Europeans sees an increasing emphasis on internalized behaviour, as well as its outer manifestation as a marker of status. Women’s clothing for instance became an important issue. The wearing of a sari represented a continuation of traditional practice, and it was the norm for wives to continue wearing it even when their husbands adopted the western mode of dress. Yet the introduction of more substantial undergarments could be said to reflect the concern with morality. 

Women’s status could attract the attention of early colonial reformers in other ways. Protestant missionaries for example focused on the problems of nudity amongst lower caste converts to Christianity. Under customary law women from these castes could not cover their upper bodies. However upon conversion the idea of demure clothing spread quickly and women rebelled against what was expected of them. In Travancore in the 1820s Christianized Nadar women were beaten and stripped in the streets for wearing the Nair breast cloth. Under pressure local rulers, such as maharaja of Madras, made concession and allowed Nadar women to wear the kuppayam, the traditional tight fitting jacket worn by Syrian Christians. Whilst many Nadar women continued to flout such rulings, and wear the Nair cloth regardless, it does show how European men could use women as a vehicle to prove their own influence in early colonial India. Schools were set up to teach Nadar girls how to make European style lace, the income from which allowed them to buy their freedom from their landlords. Outside religion, under the control of men, could thus subvert the traditional power structure.

Women themselves however rarely gained from early colonial intervention. Nirmala Banerjee in her essay on working women in colonial Bengal describes how the female workforce was made worse off. British legislation on the cloth industry for example saw a huge decline in the number of spinners. In 1812-13 there were 330,000 spinners in the Patna and Gaya districts. By the time of the 1881 census there were only 200,000 spinners in the whole of Bengal. Artisans were finding themselves discriminated against, such as the singers who were now falling foul of the bhadralok expectations of women, Women workers were pushed into the agricultural sector, or out of work altogether. This again may reflect the new acceptance of British moral culture amongst Bengali men, suggesting that women’s status was a way in which both groups of men could find common ground over.

The status of British women was also significant for early colonial reformers. Upper and middle class women arrived in India had to be protected from the natives, for example the importance of wearing full dress, including flannel undergarments, was stressed. If women did not presumably they were open to moving backwards in terms of civilized behaviour. They were used as an example to the increasingly westernized section of Indian men of the way their own women should behave. Also their safety and protection formed a means of justifying harsh and restrictive sanctions against the Indian population, in the aftermath of the Indian mutiny for example.

Sometimes the status of women could act as justification for a lack of reform. European men for example might describe in their accounts the health and vitality of women’s bodies, rather than highlighting the fact it is their lack of clothing that allows them to observe this. Cohn points out that European’s often cited the difference in skin colour as a reason as to why it was less shocking to see a half naked Indian than it would be to see a similarly attired fellow European. In this context Indian women are framed as ‘exotic’ and perhaps excused from the reforming zeal of the Europeans around them.

In conclusion the status of women was very significant for early colonial reformers. By flagging up instances of oppression of women they found justification for enforcing their own rule. The reverse is also true; instances where native women were treated well provided justification for allowing the continuation of some traditional and religious practices. Women’s status provided ways in which the British could show their authority; the ultimate outlawing of sati for instance. At the same time it could give British men and their Indian counterparts common ground; the education of Bengali women was something strove for by missionaries and the Bhadralok alike. Overall the status of women was an issue which gave early colonial reformers a platform from which they could prove the need for, and the success of their reforms, thus allowing them to widen the scope of their activities. 

• Ghosh, Durba. "Gender and Colonialism: Expansion or Marginalization?" The Historical Journal 47, no. 3 (2004): 737-55. 
• Sangari, Kumkum, and Sudesh Vaid. Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990. 
• Documents on ‘sati’ at the following website: http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/index.php 
• Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. 
• Mani, Lata. Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 

Supervision Comments - Overall, an engaging exploration of the topic that touches on all of the major themes. The conclusion is particularly clear and strong. You might perhaps focus a bit on writing style: some of your important points are lost in slightly confusing syntax. For revision, read the introduction to Malavika Kasturi's book on Rajput lineages, Embattled Identities, which deals with another key colonial intervention around gender, female infanticide. Comparing the anti-infanticide campaigns to those against sati suggests that sati, as a less-followed practice than infanticide presented a soft target to early reform efforts. You should definitely include more about the Utilitarians and Liberal reformers and the battle between Orientalists and Anglicists over how British India should be ruled.