MOTHERS AND MURDER: CONSTRUCTING THE INFANTICIDAL WOMAN IN IMPERIAL BRITAIN AND INDIA

Abstract

From the 1850s, the British administration became increasingly concerned by the notion that an epidemic of infanticide was coursing through Britain and India. Much of this worry arose from the similarities between the profiles of women who committed infanticide in both countries, leading to a series of changes on the part of the British government to differentiate Britain and India. The 1870 Act that was introduced to address the practice of female infanticide in India eventually came to define Indian women being solely responsible for infanticide. The phenomenon of female culpability in India contrasted sharply against Britain in the same period, where English laws grew ever lenient towards women accused of infanticide. The difference in construction of the infanticidal woman in Britain and India led to a similarly divergent development in infanticide legislation. In the decades to come, both countries saw a push for the abolishment of the death penalty for infanticide, and for it to be acknowledged as a crime separate from murder. For Britain, this culminated in the 1922 and 1938 Infanticide Acts, but the laws of infanticide in India remained deliberately static. These efforts by the British to create a gap between infanticide in Britain and India represented a growing anxiety over the precarious position of the British empire. Britain’s success in characterizing India as the land of female infanticide during this time has continued to influence contemporary understandings of India and the status of its civilization.