Birth on the Threshold. Cecilia Van Hollen
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of a general advance in education and a gradual increase of the confidence of the people in the methods of Western medicine. No greater mistake can be made than to attempt to do too much and to endeavor to advance our methods by compulsion.45
The notion that the best way to achieve desired changes is through education so that the public comes to desire change of its own will reflects what Foucault has noted as a change from juridical power to discursive power that has been a hallmark of the discourse of civil society.46
This attitude also reflects a general change in colonial policy in India following the Mutiny of 1857, after which the colonial government felt that it had moved too quickly to establish British-style institutions and morality under the leadership of Lord William Bentinck, and that it was too removed from the social lives of Indians to understand them and therefore to rule effectively.
Indian society was primarily conceived of in religious terms as “Hindu” society, and although there was a move to understand that society, there was also a retrenchment from becoming involved in or directly transforming “Hindu” institutions. Hence the reference above to the importance of training dais in such a way that their work is “in harmony with the religious feelings of the people.” The post-Mutiny policy was to move into the inner spaces of Indian society in order to gradually transform and reform those spaces, to “carry the people with us” toward progress. Nevertheless, Christian missionary activity in India during this time continued to actively seek out converts in part through the provision of biomedical maternal and child health care.47
The private sphere of women, and in particular of mothers, became a great new frontier for colonists during this period of High Empire following the Mutiny. The “dark,” “inner recesses” of women’s space had to be penetrated in order to change the Indian public’s attitudes about medicine and “sanitation.” The representation of these spaces as “dark” in and of itself equated them with bad sanitation, and in the context of childbirth, the darkness and stuffiness of the space in which women delivered was repeatedly cited as a cause for disease. But by penetrating this space and bringing to it knowledge of Western medicine and sanitation, not only the private space but the entire nation could become enlightened. In short, embedded in the discourse on childbirth was the notion that the hope for the progress of the nation lay in the minds and bodies of India’s women, who were homogeneously referred to as “the Indian woman.” As the Scottish doctor Dagmar Florence Curjel, working with the Women’s Medical Service in India, wrote in the Victoria Fund report:
[T]he real solution to the problem lies in educating the Indian woman in the case of her own health, and that of her offspring, and in the elements of domestic hygiene, by every possible means. It seems to me that the question is truly one of home rule—for the woman is the heart of the Indian home, and it is she who will be the decisive factor in improving the conditions of childbirth in India.48
In the passage above, “home rule” refers to the growing nationalist movements for independence and in particular to the Indian Congress party’s Home Rule campaigns, which were instigated by Balgangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant in 1916. Partha Chatterjee has argued that for Bengali nationalists during this time, Indian women—and the clothes draped around their bodies—became powerful symbols of superior Indian spirituality which was protected within the confines of the home and could thus resist internal colonization.49 In colonial medical discourse, however, Indian women’s desire and ability to improve the conditions of childbirth were construed as a prerequisite for political autonomy. As Scottish Dr. G. J. Campbell from Rainy Hospital in Madras wrote:
Much requires to be done in the way of improving conditions of childbirth by securing legislation to raise the marriage age for girls in the country to 15 or 16…. This want of readiness for social reforms should be taken into consideration when claims for home rule are made. As I have said before, if some political genius of Indian birth would devise a scheme whereby in each section of the community the attainment of self-government could be made to depend on its ability to do this and other elementary acts of justice to its own weaker members, a useful stimulus to progress would be given. Then when every section of the community had achieved internal reform India would be ready to take her place with honour, as an equal, in the council of nations.50
It is important to note that although Indian mothers were constructed as being ignorant, they were also viewed as innocent victims of Indian “custom” who were eminently malleable. Like children, they could be reformed if given the right direction. It was the younger women in particular who were viewed as more inclined to accept and adopt Western notions of “progress,” whereas their mothers-in-law were often viewed as conservative elements which had to be overcome or bypassed. Kathleen Patch, an English nurse working in the Winchester Mission in Mandalay, wrote:
It has been said that the Burmese woman is one of the most charming of women, the best bargain-driver in the world, but the very worst mother. Just as we do not expect much in the way of self-help from young children so we cannot at present look for self-help from the native mothers. We have to help them to help themselves, and the gradual introduction of European methods can be best effected by giving the native midwives a first-class training and sparing no effort to inspire them with high ideals for their very important vocation.51
This infantalization of Indians was a central part of the psychological force of colonialism, as Ashis Nandy has argued.52
In the above passage the point is that “native” women are bad mothers because they are ignorant, not because they are immoral. This distinction between morality and knowledge was repeatedly used in judging “the Indian woman.” As one woman doctor wrote, “The Indian woman is usually a good mother to her children, but her lack of knowledge often leads her to show her affection in ways inimical to the baby’s well-being.”53 The colonial construction of “the Indian woman” as moral differed from constructions of womanhood in some other colonial contexts, such as in Jamaica, where high rates of infant mortality were attributed to the illegitimacy of the children and thus the immorality of the mothers.54 Colonial notions of “the Indian woman” as moral were based on colonial and nationalist perceptions of upper-class, upper-caste propriety. In other colonial contexts where Indian women made up an important part of the indentured labor force on plantations and mines, such as in Fiji and Malaya, “the Indian mother” was in fact treated with greater disdain than her other colonized counterparts.55
In late-colonial India, in order to teach the moral but ignorant Indian woman how to become a “good mother,” colonialists began to run classes in “mothercraft” and to disseminate information about “mothercraft” through public lectures, pamphlets, magic lantern shows, exhibitions, and baby shows. “Mothercraft” classes went beyond lectures on feeding and rearing children to include such things as the “art of housewifery,” cooking, and needlework.56 Beginning in the early 1920s, National Health and Baby Week celebrations were carefully organized to take place in districts throughout India simultaneously. As part of these shows, babies were entered into competitions for “most healthy” baby. A report of a 1928 celebration in Madras Presidency shows that all babies entered in these competitions were given such things as free baths, biscuits, and sweets. Winning babies were treated to prizes in the form of silk jackets, silver cups, soap, Horlicks malted milk, and toys, and their mothers sometimes received new saris. And “poor feedings” were distributed to all who attended.57 Many of these “mothercraft” programs were modeled on similar projects being carried out in England and the United States.58 A key goal of the “mothercraft” programs in the West and in the colonies was to get women to view their babies as “citizens” and therefore to care about their well-being not only on a personal level but for the sake of the future of the nation.59 In the colonial context this was of course rife with irony: for India to become eligible for nation status, “the Indian mother” had to view her baby as a citizen even before the mother or baby was in fact granted citizens’ rights.
Some colonists also argued that messages about such things as hygiene and “mothercraft” could only be imparted to Indian women through Indian men, who, because they were more often given English educations, were