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 viewed as more accepting of Western “scientific” knowledge. As Dr. K. O. Vaughan, stationed in Srinagar, wrote, “In England women can and do manage their own affairs and those of other people too, intelligently, efficiently, and well. Without them where would be our educational system, our hospitals, our orphanages and a thousand other activities essential to the welfare of a great nation. Out here not only are the women not educated, but they have no power to reform things.”60
Although the “Indian mother” in this report is generally constructed as ignorant but malleable and potentially reformable, the construction of the dai which emerges in this report is much more ambiguous. On the one hand, dais are represented as ignorant products of the “traditional” society within which they must live and work. On the other hand, they are depicted as self-serving criminal agents who are rigid in their opinions and are thus obstructing progress. Most of the dais at the time were at least forty years old, and their age was viewed as a marker of their conservatism. Some distinctions were made between rural and urban dais. Urban dais, it was felt, were more malleable, whereas rural dais were rigid in their ways and a force to be reckoned with.61 But generally the report refers to dais as a homogenous category—sometimes calling them a “caste,” an “institution,” a “class,” or a “race.” Whichever label was used, they were always viewed as the lower rung of the social order, without access to education. Their low status itself was thought to preclude the possibility of their adopting Western knowledge and practices.
The dai was always depicted as dirty. In introducing two dais to the reader, Dr. Vaughan writes, “Their clothes filthy, their hands begrimed with dirt, their heads alive with vermin, they explain that they are midwives, that the patient has been in labour for three days and they cannot get the child out. They are rubbing their hands on the floor previous to making another effort.”62
In fact, dais were constructed as being inherently dirty due to their low caste position. Thus, while most colonial reformers claimed that caste was an obstacle to building a civil society, they employed their view of the logic of caste to condemn the practice of the dais. In addition to being dirty, the dais were often referred to as “evil” and construed as being “meddlesome,” echoing the condemnation of midwives in Europe and America by the church as well as the state and the medical profession.
In 1923, the director of public health for Madras Presidency even suggested that it was safer to deliver with no assistance at all than to be attended on by a dai. As he wrote:
Excluding the few fortunate women who are delivered without any assistance or intervention, there still remains some 10 lakhs [one lakh is 100,000] of labor cases which are managed by barber midwives or dhais [sic]. Their ignorance of hygiene, or even of cleanliness, is stupendous, as may be recognized when it is stated that the duties of physician, midwife, and scavenger are all performed by them. Their methods, the instruments used by them, and the medicaments given to both mother and child are so revolting that no language sufficiently strong can be used to condemn them. It cannot therefore be a matter of great surprise that maternal deaths amount to the colossal figure of 25,000 annually.63
The introduction to the Victoria Fund report acknowledges that the dai-training schemes had not been wholly successful and attributes the lack of success to the active resistance of the dais:
Many of the women were
