Reimagining Power, Sexuality, and Governance: Unearthing Colonial Biopolitics in South Asia and British Ceylon (1815-1948)

This thesis explores the racial, gendered, and sexual infrastructures of British colonial administration concerning the reordering of women's sexuality in colonial Sri Lanka, historically known as Ceylon. Through a Foucauldian biopolitical framework, complemented by feminist and anti-colonial perspectives, the study examines how colonial rule sought to regulate and control female sexuality as a means of sustaining imperial dominance. The analysis is structured around three interrelated themes: prostitution under the British Contagious Diseases Acts (CDA), the colonial intervention in the devadasi system, and the regulation of motherhood. These themes illustrate how the British colonial government utilised legal, medical, and socio-cultural discourses to exert power over women's bodies and reproductive roles. The CDA, enacted to protect British military personnel from sexually transmitted diseases, effectively subjected women to invasive surveillance and control. Similarly, the colonial administration's focus on the devadasi system-stripping it of its cultural and artistic significance-underscores the intersection of imperial moralism and gendered governance. Finally, the regulation of motherhood through colonial reproductive policies reveals the imposition of metropolitan norms onto local gender and familial structures.

Situating Ceylon within the broader South Asian context, this study compares colonial governance strategies between India and Ceylon, highlighting both shared and distinct mechanisms of control. The methodological approach aligns with the 'imperial turn' in historiography, emphasising the interconnectedness of the metropole and the colony as co-constitutive spaces of knowledge production and power. While Foucault's concept of biopolitics provides a foundational lens, this research also acknowledges its Eurocentric limitations and engages with scholars such as Ann Laura Stoler and Gayatri Spivak to critique and extend biopolitical analysis in colonial contexts. This thesis ultimately argues that the colonial administration's governance of female sexuality was not only an exercise in discipline and control but also a fundamental component of the imperial project, shaping racial and gender hierarchies that continue to inform postcolonial power structures.