• Fascinating read about how Indian women, in the 19th century, were forced into prostitution to satisfy the needs of British soldiers who lived in military cantonments. This went on for nearly a century.

Listen to the Atharva Forum Talk on British Military Cantoments by the author. To hear video by author (1 hour 17 minutes) or read below.

In 1892 two American women, Katharine Bushnell and Elizabeth Andrew, visited various cantonments in India to understand how Indian women were exploited to satisfy the lust of British soldiers. The system of licensed prostitution which had evolved over decades to ostensibly reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in British soldiers also subjected the Indian women to forced physical examinations and other untold miseries.

In 1899, the two women published “The Queen’s Daughters in India”, a book that exposed how cantonment authorities continued the heinous system without any remorse.

More than a century before the book was published British soldiers had begun to be stationed in India and dedicated military areas called “cantonments” were established that included regiments, barracks, training grounds, and other facilities. The British soldiers were young and not allowed to marry, and homosexuality was “dreaded as a threat to military discipline”. Essentially, this meant that the only alternative to satisfy their lust was making Indian women available for prostitution, and the biggest issue with this was the spread of STDs such as syphilis and gonorrhoea. 

Each regiment of about a thousand soldiers was assigned about 12-15 young Indian girls who dwelt in tents, rooms, or a building which were collectively called chakla, the red-light area of the regimental bazaar. In charge of these girls was a matron or superintendent, an older Indian woman, who was called the dhai or mahaldarni. She supervised the girls, ensured that they behaved well, and procured more girls when commanded by the cantonment authorities. If a girl was suspected of being infected with an STD, she was sent to a hospital called a “lock hospital” for physical examination and treatment. 

In the early 1800s the cantonment authorities started regulating several aspects of prostitution from the procurement of Indian girls to their periodic and forced physical examination in lock hospitals. The regulations were eventually incorporated into Acts, such as the various Cantonment Acts and the Contagious Diseases Acts in the latter half of the century, whose core objective remained the same: how to contain the spread of STDs in British soldiers. The plight of Indian women who were subjected to inhuman persecution and humiliation because of the Acts was never even considered. In fact, with every amendment the Acts became increasingly stringent and arbitrary, and the Cantonment authorities refused to do away with the heinous system despite immense pressure from the British Government.

An idea of how the cantonment authorities treated Indian women can be gauged from the memorandum that was issued in 1886 by Chapman, the Quarter-Master General, in the name of Roberts, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army in India.

The memorandum, called the “infamous circular memorandum” by Bushnell and Andrew in their book, insisted that “In the regimental bazaars it is necessary to have a sufficient number of women [and] to take care that they are sufficiently attractive.” The infamous circular led to a stream of requests from Commanding Officers asking for the procurement of young and attractive Indian girls.

Bushnell and Andrew met several Indian women who worked as prostitutes in the cantonments that they visited, most of them forced by treacherous circumstances to lead a life of cruelty and abuse. “The fire of their hatred and indignation all centred upon the heart of the regulations, the examinations, and the violation of womanhood which these examinations were felt to be,” observed the authors. One of the women, while recounting what they were subjected to, remarked that “the Queen does not [endorse] it for she has daughters of her own.” The title of the book, The Queen’s Daughters in India, came from this conversation.

The women dreaded the physical examinations, but any attempt to avoid them, or escape from the lock hospital only resulted in a heavy fine, if not a worse punishment. Most girls were so beset with debt and fines that they could not think of escaping without being arrested on account of them. When the infections became serious and the girls became unfit for prostitution they were thrown out of the cantonment.

An infection was not the only reason for being thrown out; “too old to be any longer sufficiently attractive” to the British soldier was also one. A woman succinctly summed up what lay in store for her: “If we are expelled, where shall we go? We must leave all our friends, and no one will give us work. It means great hardship; we would starve.”

The opposition to the Contagious Diseases Acts in England came from the Abolitionists who believed that the only way to combat STDs in British soldiers was to simply prohibit prostitution. Josephine Butler was their leading voice and played a key role in the abolition of the Acts in 1886. In British India, however, the Acts continued to remain, and worse, the Cantonment Acts were far more entrenched as they were despotically executed by the military authorities. Any attempt to suspend them invariably invited trenchant opposition from the military authorities that even more British soldiers were infected with STDs.

Despite the repeal of the Acts by the British Crown the cantonments held steadfast to the essential regulations of licensed prostitution and forced physical examinations. When Butler came to know about this sordid situation, she urged Bushnell to visit India and find out the truth. The testimony by Bushnell and Andrew played a key role in getting the Cantonment Acts repealed but the story did not end there. Eventually, by the end of 1909, the incidence of STDs in British soldiers reduced considerably ostensibly due to better diagnosis and treatment.

In conclusion, for more than a century, the British authorities toyed with Indian women to satisfy the lust of their soldiers. From the turn of the 19th century to the First World War, the British authorities had set up a system of regulations and acts to subject Indian women to licensed prostitution, forced separation, and compulsory examination.

The first time the depravity of the system was even discussed seriously inside the British Parliament was in 1888, and that, perhaps, indicates the trivial status that the British accorded to Indian women. Even then, the system continued in a modified form for years.

The life of Indian women inside Cantonments was a continuous barrage of abuse and shame, punishment and debt, regret and rage, and when thrown outside because of disease or age, there was just darkness.

If your ideas of Indian women in prostitution during the British era have been coloured by the fabricated fantasy and contrived garishness of Bollywood, then this should give you an idea of what the reality was.