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Female Infanticide: Selections from the Records of the Government of the North-Western Provinces, Second Series, Volume VIII, Allahabad, 1871


 In India, one example of gender discrimination is female infanticide or the consistent elimination of girl children aged 1-3 years in communities such as the Kallars of Tamil Nadu and the Rajputs of northern India. This paper examines the 19th century documents containing official discussions and debates on the subject of female infanticide, specifically the letters consisting of selections from the records of the Judicial Infanticide Department (set up by the government of the North-western provinces of India). The letters highlight issues that are still of importance, although the rhetoric of rule was clearly very different as were the ideological underpinnings of the colonial drive against female infanticide. Overall, these extracts suggest that then, as now, it was difficult to expose those suspected of female infanticide since the silence and complexity surrounding the act, together with the lack of trustworthy witnesses, made it extremely difficult for the colonial state to eliminate the practice. More concretely, Article 1 on Female Infanticide in the northwestern province of India reports the prevalence of the crime of female infanticide in the Bustee district, particularly among the Rajpoot families. Issues relating to the search for statistical evidence on the crime and the response of the police force are also described. Evidences suggest that the crime seems as rampant as before and the common police force is incompetent to cope with it.
