Introduction

One of the most distinctive features of Punjab’s colonial experience after its annexation by the British in 1849 was its close and sustained relationship with the military. The British laid the foundation of a civil-military regime in the region, which proved to be the garrison state of the British Raj during the colonial period.¹ The region’s stability was crucial not only for strategic geographical reasons but also because of the fact that the British Indian Army had made its home there by the 1860s.² Military exigency impinged upon the functioning of the region, which ultimately shaped the character of the colonial state and the society in Punjab. In particular, gender and racial ideology became a crucial yardstick in helping mark the contrast between the coloniser and the colonised in varied ways. This paper seeks to critically analyse the impulses that encouraged the ‘gendering’ process in relation to the masculine culture propagated by the institution of a military-martial structure in colonial Punjab. The objective is to examine the main aspects of the British imperial/colonial gender perception, particularly the masculine-feminine spaces in the context of the army. For the same, the paper analyses different aspects of the lives of both men and women, for example, their struggles, works, contributions, dreams, and their politics during one of the most cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, World War I (1914-18).

The dominance of military history as a means of approaching and understanding warfare meant that histories of World War I tended to be dominated by studies of battlefield tactics and political strategies. It paid only passing attention to the social and cultural impact of the war. In recent times, this arena has been well explored in the work of Jessica Meyer’s Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain, which argues that two identities emerge most clearly as masculine ideals, the domestic and the heroic, and that these identities were central to social definitions of appropriate masculinity during and after the war. Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh’s edited volume Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History highlights how soldiery, manhood and war played themselves out within familial relationships. Kathy J. Phillips’s Manipulating Masculinity: War and Gender in Modern British and American Literature discusses how the societies which arbitrarily label a number of purely human traits as ‘feminine’ can effectively manipulate male citizens to go to war because men are bound to detect some of these human traits in themselves and then worry that they have strayed into a feminine inferior realm. Prem Chowdhry in her book The Veiled Women: Shifting Gender Equations in Rural Haryana 1880-1990 puts forth the socio-political structure of the region in terms of paradoxes related to women.  Jyoti Atwal’s work on Cultural Trauma and Welfare for War Widows in India gives an insight into the debate on the war widows and their pensions question based on the paradigms of cultural trauma studies in terms of intersectionality, i.e. religion, customary laws, caste as well as remarriage issue.  Heather Streets’s Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 explored the intersection of Victorian gender norms and imperial military anxieties that formed a complex racial ideology. While Gajendra Singh’s The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars: Between Self and Sepoy provides a narrative on the ‘voice’ of soldiers from the colonies and double articulation of their own identity.

In totality, the whole force of the arguments is directed towards showing that the domestic and the soldierly were mutually inter-dependent aspects of identity, which incorporated women as well. The military structure repeatedly drew upon these anxieties and polarising gender discourses not only to inspire men to fight, but also to create increasingly brutal models of military masculinity over time. However, woman as a category is missing from most studies on military-history in India.³ As battles were generally fought by, and high politics overwhelmingly determined by, men as well as patriarchy, any major perspective on female’s role and representation is largely absent from these narratives. It is important that historical research moves beyond descriptions of military history pertaining exclusively to men, and become more inclusive of both female and male realities. This process would involve a transformation of the notions of time and space to include not only those within which women acted, but also domains normatively considered exclusively ‘male space’, to include a wide range of new activities.⁴ Rarely do scholars recognise the importance of armies and warfare in shaping modern and post-modern gender history.⁵

This paper discusses the surfacing of the martial-patriarchal setup and explores the ideology based on ‘ideal masculine’ as well as ‘safe feminine’ spaces in a colonial military ‘garrison’ region. This notion of ‘gendering’ is analysed through the structural examination of the growth of martial-masculine culture through soldiers’ perspectives and its repercussions on the women of colonial Punjab around the timeline of World War I.

Martial Race Theory: Colonial Army and Assertions of Masculinities

The link between masculinity, soldiering and gendered spaces can be seen throughout the centuries. In this, a valorised military masculinity serves as a counterpart to femininity, which has long been linked with peace and with pacifism.⁶ The British attempt at redefining masculinity led to fluid gender identities getting rigid in nature. Ashis Nandy’s study pointed out that gender histories would be incomplete without examining masculinity, which is as vital for its analysis. He suggests that colonialism was not solely marked by political and economic gains. Psychology played an equally important role, as the coloniser also colonised minds: ‘Mastery over men is not merely a by-product of a faulty political economy but also a world view which believes in the absolute superiority of the human over the non-human and the sub-human, the masculine over the feminine, the adult over the child, the historical over the ahistorical and modern or progressive over the traditional or the savage’. In this psychological view of colonialism, Nandy explains the relationship between politics and society by focussing on two main aspects of British power – sex and age. Nandy draws a link between masculinity and colonisation, in which masculinity depicts power – both physical and psychological – that had its own share of effects on social and cultural domains.⁷ Mrinalini Sinha’s work examines the effects of colonial stereotypes on actual policy decisions in India during the 1880s.⁸ R.W. Connell suggests that masculinities, as socially constructed configurations of gender practice, are also created through a historical process with many dimensions.⁹ In Radhika Chopra’s opinion, the cross-dialogue between the different disciplinary locations established the urgent need to begin mapping the contours of masculinity and expand the orientation of gender studies.¹⁰

Gender relationships and power hierarchies in the caste households in nineteenth-century Punjab were reshaped in response to the colonial state’s structures, ideologies, and discourses as well as the agendas of ‘paternalistic reformers’¹¹ and internal tensions within the kinship unit.¹² With the ideologies undergoing a change in relation to the shift in political and social milieu accelerated by the recruitment in the army during 1860s-1920s, anxieties around male sexuality and masculinity became important, and women’s identity was being redefined in all spheres. This led to the beginning of a peripheral relationship with the army which provided a long-lasting model of gender relations.¹³ In relation to this, the feminists operating within the paradigm of New Imperial History throw light on new dimensions of the colonial army’s ideologies such as the ‘Martial Race Theory’. It emphasizes the connections between empire-building at the core and the periphery. The imperial culture is portrayed as the hybrid product of cultural exchange among the metropole and the colonies.¹⁴

In order to get a more nuanced understanding of the concept, some of the major elements of the ‘Martial Race’ theory need to be highlighted. The principal proponents of the Martial Race theory were Field Marshal Frederick Roberts (Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army from 1885 to 1893) and Lord Kitchener (Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army from 1902 to 1909) under whom the policy was carried to its logical conclusion. All the ideologues of the martial race camp made a division between the Orient and the Occident. The argument was that in the Occident anyone could become a soldier, but in the Orient, due to its peculiar historical and ecological conditions, only some groups were suited for soldiering.¹⁵ The regional bias was the result of this theory, which had influenced British recruiting strategy since the 1880s. It was felt that people living in the northwest of India, such as the Sikhs, Jats, Dogras and Pathans were martial. Lord Roberts believed that the ‘civilising’ effects of British rule had undermined the martial instincts of the populations of the Indian Army’s oldest recruiting areas of Madras and Bengal. Truly martial castes only existed in the recently conquered territory of Punjab. With setting up of Punjab region as the nucleus for recruitments made in the army – supplying 4,46,976 combatants and non-combatants in World War I – martial imagery became central to the colonial state.¹⁶

The youth of Punjab and the offspring of a lion are alike.

(Punjab de jawan te sher di santan ik braber)¹⁷

Overall, the British stressed on occupational and caste characteristics of prospective sepoys. Each caste was encouraged to develop particular attributes which set them apart both from other recruited castes and mass of the peasantry. There have always been important cultural and psychological differences between castes and regions in India. These differences were exaggerated and systematised by the British. Some military castes were relatively independent and calculating (Pathans), others were shy and proud (Dogras), others playful and comical, yet crazed and bloodthirsty in battle (Gurkhas), others prone to scheming and plotting, yet tenacious in defence (Sikhs), and still others stolid and dense (Jats).¹⁸

Punjab lived up to its reputation as the Sword-arm of India, where patriots of all castes and creeds vied with one another to help the Empire.¹⁹Nearly two million Indian men were recruited into the British army during the two World Wars. In spite of the anti-British feelings, recruits were obtained on such a large scale. The following factors were responsible: First, not many persons were affected by the anti-British movement. Secondly, the ‘marital classes’ had strong military tradition, which they were proud of and which they wanted to maintain. They had developed a feeling that the most suitable profession for them was soldiering. Lastly, the British gave incentives to recruits for joining the army. For example, after the First World War, many received jagirs (land grants), pensions and honorary ranks.²⁰ Recruitments in the army reconstituted the notion of masculinity, which, at the same time, intermeshed with the patriarchy in colonial India. The colonial state also played a crucial role in maintaining, modifying or aggravating patriarchal practices, social regulation and cultural production. In the process, patriarchy got entangled with modes of social structuring.²¹

For the feminist scholars, the martial race discourse was also an expression of racial super-masculinity. Heather Streets argues that the martial race discourse developed in response to the challenge posed by feminists and nationalists in Britain and in India during the late nineteenth-century. The feminists in Britain emphasised drunkenness, prostitution and poor health in the army. In opposition, the martial race doctrine portrayed the Gurkhas, Sikhs and Highlanders as loyal, obedient, healthy and masculine soldiers with a strong streak of morality. Martiality became a base for hyper-masculinity. The promotion of a ‘macho’ culture amongst recruits operated as a means of lessening individuality and building a sense of group culture in which traits such as sensitivity, understanding and compassion were routinely denigrated in favour of the unquestioning obedience and aggression believed to be essential for combat effectiveness. The articulation of masculinity with relations of power cannot be defined solely within the domains of ‘male-female relations’, as it transverses multiple levels of race, caste, class, sexuality, religion and ethnicity. Rosalind O’Hanlon has highlighted the connections between codes of martial masculinity and political culture in the context of the reinvention of ‘martial identities’ by patrimonial elites. According to O’Hanlon, the codes of ‘imperial masculinity’, defined ‘what is meant to be a man (in the political elite) at the level of individual identity and experience’. ²²The manoeuvres of power prescribe strategies that dictated the representations of masculinity and femininity, where the objective of power was to maintain itself by perpetuating social inequalities.

In sum, the formulation of the martial race theory, recruitments made in the army and the contrast of the British colony of Punjab with Bengal serves two important purposes in the analysis for the construction of a woman’s world in this region. Firstly, with primary focus on the male identity, females were relegated to a secondary position. The hyper-masculine ethos, that is, a certain notion of ‘masculinity’ created by colonial presence, led to a growing pride amongst the male population of Punjab, which subordinated the position of women further. Accompanying the emergence of the militarised Khalsa (religious Sikh doctrine) was a polarisation of gender. Increasingly, attention came to be given to ‘true’ manliness, true warrior-saintliness.²³ The primary focus on true Sikh identity, open only to males, demanded that women support the equation by being the negative or the opposite of that identity. In other words, when one gender was predominately fostered, it could only be to the determent of the ‘opposite’ gender. ²⁴ The emerging military class in Punjab, with the coming of professional service gentry (army), due to high rate of recruitments, necessitated a rethinking of women’s culture and position in society. Thus, it is important to analyse and deal with the question of sexuality in relation to domesticity and its changing contours over time. ²⁵

In colonial Punjab, practices of seclusion and suppression of a woman began at the time of her birth itself. Emphasis on male preference leading to female infanticide, conscious negligence towards educating girls, problem of child marriage, selling of girls for marriages – bride price, practice of veiling – a form of seclusion, demand for dowry, practice of the customary rite of ‘Karewa’ (widow remarriage without the consent of the widow), no inheritance rights, sexual abuses, high fertility rate, domestic violence – all formed the core of a woman’s life in Punjab. Girl’s reputation was a subject of constant scrutiny and public comment. Notion of ‘honour’ or ‘izzat’ characterized Sikh/Jat women. The ever-present fact of violence, both overt and covert, physical and non-physical has an overwhelming influence on feminine identity formation. While identity, the notion of the ‘self’, roles and obligations are worked out fairly early in the life of a woman, no stage is without change and questioning. ²⁶

European vs. Native Women: Perceptions of Soldiers and Army

Women were affected by global as well as local forces beyond their control, such as the beginning of World War I, and the changes which ushered along with it.²⁷ During the war, troops from India were dispatched to France. Indian troops also served in places such as Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, East Africa, etc.²⁸ The soldiers who went abroad had unique experiences that changed their outlook, and this change worked as a catalyst for the growth of different socio-historical perspectives. These ideologies of the soldiers are mostly revealed and reconstructed through the refracted lens of the Censor of Indian Mails, a department set up during the war to examine the letters by the soldiers and their families. ²⁹

Prominent in the sepoys’ experiences during the war, was an encounter, sometimes culturally unsettling, with Europe and with the Europeans. The contact between Indian soldiers and French civilians were extensive. They were frequently quartered in French homes during the war. They seemed to have had little contact with French soldiers. Even contact with Britain was limited. Many soldiers had very positive interactions with the French with whom they were billeted. They admired their beauty and generosity and tried to learn their language. Several soldiers exhorted Indian civilians to follow the example of bereaved French men and women. ³⁰ Moreover, the soldiers were particularly influenced by the position of women in European society. Attitudes to female literacy, late marriage and widespread education came alongside exposure to new agricultural methods. The essence of what may have been imbibed during service in Europe is apparent in the following set of sources. A letter from a Sikh soldier to someone in Peshawar gives a vivid description of his observation in regards to marriage. He says,

There is affection between the two parties, who are never less than eighteen years of age. After marriage there is never any discord between husband and wife. No man has the authority here to beat his wife. Such an injustice occurs in India only. Husband and wife dwell together here in unity. ³¹

Another common observation was that the French, both men and women, were unusually friendly, open and considerate. French women were admired for their kindliness as well as for their moral strength in the absence of their men. In addition, all comments made on the extent of education in France were favorable, and the education of French girls was often described with special approbation. One Jat cavalryman observed that ‘in Europe everyone, men and women, boys and girls are educated. The men are at war and the women are doing the work. They write to their husbands and get their answers. You ought to educate your girls as well as your boys and our posterity will be the better for it’. ³² In comparison, the native Indian woman soon became the sign of male backwardness, which was not in balance with the image promoted with the coming of ‘modern and civilised’ imperial army culture, where this whole military structure was being equated with development of the colonial natives and their regions. To counter this, it was proclaimed that the influence of the army for good might be almost as great with women as with men, if the opportunities offered were used to the fullest. As highlighted above, most of the veterans who had visited France, were highly impressed by the high standard of living and education, economy, culture and cleanliness. Due to this, the army was viewed as a modernising agency which transformed the peasant recruits into progressive individuals. Thus, mobilisation for global warfare not only modified the social relationship and mentality of the soldiers, but also transformed colonial society as a whole. In relation to this, it has been pointed out that mainly after World War I, Sikh/Jats soldiers became agents for social change in Punjab. In connection to women, the whole question of respectability and standardisation began to take a central role which accelerated the shift in discourses on gendered sexuality and domesticity in various domains.

The influence of the army upon the peasant has been one of the things which drew M.L. Darling’s interest on his tour. In Beri, he came across around eighteen ex-soldiers/ retired officers out of which fourteen were literate and among whom were included the Honorary Captain, a Risaldar, and a Subedar. According to them, they were trying to change certain practices related to the working role of women. ³³ Darling saw that the wife of an official, did not do the usual tasks, as a Jat said, ‘we are educated and said it was not good’. In this set-up, education of men became women’s best ally in which the army was helping in various ways. ‘Since the war, we have been trying to give them less to do’, said the soldiers of Beri. ³⁴ Soldiers’ wives too were realising for the first time what cleanliness meant and learned how to take care of themselves and their children. The fact that this was appreciated by their husbands is demonstrated through following instances. In one Sikh regiment, sepoys began sending their wives to have their babies in the regimental lines under expert medical aid instead of in the village where an untrained midwife looked after them. ³⁵ Women, too, were exposed to some of the same influences when they went to reside with their husbands. It was forbidden for the unvaccinated wife or family of a soldier to stay in cantonments. Married quarters were regularly inspected and perforce kept clean. ³⁶ The war killed many men from Punjab, but it gave the province something of value to balance its loss in widening the minds of those who served abroad and returned. It also introduced a new humanity into the village life. ‘Before  the war’, said the Captain from Beri, ‘women had no izzat and men beat them with shoes, but now beating is stopped and a woman has two annas’ worth of izzat.’ ³⁷

One can thus see a marked change in the opinion of native males of the region. Wives were beginning to be treated more than servants, which was a growing habit among the sepoys. But this is majorly a depiction of scene put to practice largely in urban areas. In most of the rural places, the village woman played every part from a queen to a slave, but rarely that of a companion. In the same area, it was pointed out that the percentage of contented couples would seem to be highest, as a Rohtak Jat's explains, ‘The greatest reason why men and women live happily together in Rohtak is that they look upon themselves as the slaves of their husbands and think it their duty to do their bidding in everything.’ ³⁸

Margaret and Patrice Higonnet have described this pattern of gender roles visible as a ‘double helix, with its structure of two intertwined strands’. Within the double helix, they argue, the female strand is both opposed and subordinate to the male. Whenever the female strand moves, the male strand moves in tandem to maintain its position of superiority. During the war, women moved forward to take up male roles in some sectors, but men moved forward into the higher status role of combatant – a symbol of soldierly masculinity. In other words, gender relations essentially remained unchanged. This approach depicted that in this game, both gender relations move forwards, with women always remaining one step behind men, as it was always told that they are fighting to defend women and the home.

In this overarching picture of the ideas imbibed by the Indian soldier – the change during the war and these post-war reflections – it appears that there was a high degree of continuity and retention of tradition. All the above mentioned changes were mainly marked within the house due to the rise in the standard of living with army pays and with the appearance of the machine in the village, and could be attributed in a very lesser degree to the influence of education and the town. Most men stayed within their religious faith, their caste loyalties, and their restricted village-oriented outlook. During wartime, the contours of gender roles can be seen very clearly. Men go away to fight; women stay at home. ³⁹ For women, their lower status as mediators in society and their particular role as socialiser of children and the fulcrum of domestic stability, led logically to their more conservative socialisation and greater restrictions on their activity. Women were seen as repositories of the best in the old culture. Women were being represented as the continuity and the maintenance factor of the social order. Their role in wartime was to symbolise the society for which the men were fighting. In sum, the euphoria that colonial rule had evoked and the insecurities that it generated for the martial castes of Punjab led to an interaction between caste, class and gender with different forms of identities. This paved the way for a discourse of heroic masculinity of men and controlled sexuality of women, which led to their domesticity.

World War I worked in both ways – it provided women with limited access to public spaces as they moved out of the ‘traditional’ areas of female employment into a variety of occupations, which were previously the domain of men in Punjab, such as the agricultural sector. Though the coming of military culture legitimised women’s involvement and presence outside the home, but it did not liberate them from deeply held notions of female modesty and the necessity of male protection. ⁴⁰ In the quest for achieving appropriate caste behavior, women were re-situated within this sphere. Therefore, as highlighted above, these wartime changes in gender roles were short-lived, as they were usually soon curtailed by the continued existence of pre-war ideas about masculinity and femininity in the region of Punjab.

Conclusion

The colonial gaze of the British classified the people under its rule in ‘martial’ and ‘non-martial’ categories, further regrouped as caste and class. Such social processes also translated themselves into women’s lives. Here the task of defining ‘gender’ was a crucial step in the formation of dominant caste and hegemonic ideals, which operates at many levels in the socio-cultural layer. Following Simone de Beauvoir, it may be argued that women ‘become’; they are not ‘born’. ⁴¹ Masculinity within the colonial army was the key paradigm to a hierarchical relationship, which established superior male identity. The question always was how to dominate culturally, paving way for the idea articulated by Michael Foucault in terms of ‘cultural power relations’. This re-defined the relations between the ‘subordinator’ (military-masculinity) and the ‘subordinate’ (native-women). It was this struggle for ideological-cultural dominance or hegemony along with imperial interventions which shaped the relationship shared by military administration and the natives of colonial Punjab. All the agents, such as the military-martial culture of the imperial government and dominant patriarchal structures as well as the reformers (Arya Samaj) at one point or another were constantly contesting amongst each other for hegemony. All these agents aligned with each other for limited development of women. In order to balance the patrilineal structure of the region, the inbuilt conservative biasness was always at work. Each attempted to define women according to their own convenience. Woman became the site upon which larger claims were made and contested from time to time. These experiences indicate that the ‘gendering’ process in the case of women of Punjab was broadly carried at two levels: Firstly, as members belonging to the martial-peasant households, which adhered to superior masculine-culture, and, secondly, due to patriarchy, women had to face antagonistic social relations. Patriarchy aligned with the military culture accentuated the masculine imagery, resulting in the relegation of women and the feminine ideals in background. Both stereotype and archetype views prevalent in a patriarchal-dominated region, with an infinite variety of specificities oppressed women by the discriminatory systems created through masculine-martial privileges. The colonial-military structure aligned with the customs and traditions which were evolving, dictated and enforced by the dominant peasant ethos of this region to suit its own socio-economic needs. Thus, a complex construct of women’s sphere emerges from the above account, where denunciation of women forms a central theme. Masculine mentalities gave a nudge to the process of rigid-identity formation leading to the ‘gendering’ of colonial Punjab in political, social, cultural and economic domains.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declares no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding Source

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Acknowledgment

I am grateful for my Ph.D. supervisor, Dr. Jyoti Atwal, Associate Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, for her guidance and feedback in the development of this paper.

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35. Ibid., 330-333.
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37. Izzat meaning ‘Honour’. Darling, Wisdom and Waste in the Punjab Village, 332.
38. Ibid., 295-305.
39. The image of the ‘waiting woman’ is one which spans the centuries from the Lady of Shalot of Arthurian legend to the First World War posters telling men that ‘Women of Britain Says Go!’. See Noakes, L. (2006). Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907-1948, New York: Routledge, 2-4.
40. Forbes, G. (2005). Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine and Historiography, New Delhi: Chronicle Books, 3-6.
41. de Beauvior, S. (2010). The Second Sex, New York: Alfred A. Knopf,  2-10.