Ishita Pande
Biographic Data
| ID | 1251995 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ishita Pande |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ishita |
| FAMILY NAME | Pande |
| SIGNATURE | PANDE I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0191-685X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Sexology’s Childhood: Chocolate , a Politics of Age, and the Global Sciences of Homosexuality
This essay shows how the child was crucial to the scientification of sexual knowledge in the twentieth century, and how the universalization of the child was, in turn, aided by a globalization of sexology. An understanding of childhood as a formative stage of life was key to the understanding of the homosexual as a personage with a past, narratable in a case history. While the analysis of the coemergence of the child and the sciences of (homo)sex…
“Peeping Through a Chink”
In his field-defining manifesto, Ranajit Guha theorized subaltern as “the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender, and office or in any other way. This article reflects on why “age” has barely been historicized or theorized as “an attribute of subordination” or a category of analysis in South Asian historiography and shows how age, because it appears as a natural or…
Projit Mukharji, Brown Skin, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66
Journal Article Projit Mukharji, Brown Skin, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66 Get access Projit Mukharji, Brown Skin, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022. $35. Pbk ISBN 978-0-2268-2301. Ishita Pande Ishita Pande Department of History, Queen's University, Canada [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social History of Medici…
Author’s Response
Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937
Ishita Pande's innovative study provides a dual biography of India's path-breaking Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) and of 'age' itself as a key category of identity for upholding the rule of law, and for governing intimate life in late colonial India. Through a reading of legislative assembly debates, legal cases, government reports, propaganda literature, Hindi novels and sexological tracts, Pande tells a wide-ranging story about the importa…
Vernacularizing Justice: Age of Consent and a Legal History of the British Empire
This is a commentary on five papers included in a forum on the age of consent on the British Empire
Is the History of Childhood Ready for the World? A Response to “The Kids Aren’t All Right”
In a complement to the 2020 AHR Roundtable “Chronological Age: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (125, no. 2), this AHR Exchange focuses on the history of children and childhood. Sarah Maza presents a critical review essay, highlighting the limiting factors in the expanding field of childhood studies. Children, she observes, produce few sources of their own voices, have limited agency, and as individuals and as a group soon outgrow their …
Introduction to ‘Translating Sex: Locating Sexology in Indian History’
This introduction to ‘Translating Sex’ places the six essays included in this special section in the context of the history of sexuality in the Indian subcontinent, and argues for a need to write more comprehensive histories of sexology—the field of inquiry which promoted the understanding of sex as a ‘scientific object’ around the globe at the turn of the twentieth century. It identifies the divergent materials covered in, and the common grounds…
Power, Knowledge, and the Epistemic Contract on Age: The Case of Colonial India
This article scrutinizes the implementation of age-of-consent legislation in high courts across colonial India to foreground some of its quirky and unstudied effects, and to consider alternative juridical notions of consent conceptualized without the logic of chronological age. Breaking open the naturalized relationship between age and consent, it shows that the use of age standards to measure all humans can be traced to the history of liberal la…
Loving Like a Man: The Colourful Prophet , Conjugal Masculinity and the Politics of Hindu Sexology in Late Colonial India
Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife
‘Please let me sleep with you, didi [elder sister], don’t make me go to his bed; I beg of you, save me; that weight crushes me; I simply cannot sleep in that room.’1 Thus opens a novella-in-verse, written by a male author, in the form of a series of dialogues between the 12-year-old Sarojbala and a slew of female relatives, who appear in sequence to chide her for her misplaced reticence and to educate her on the duties and pleasures of conjugal s…
Listen to the Child: Law, Sex, and the Child Wife in Indian Historiography
The scholarship on the history of family, marriage and sexuality in India has proliferated in the last two decades. The child – as the presumed target of health care, education or family law – haunts these histories, but rarely comes into focus. In contrast to the careful historicization of ‘woman’ as a subject of law, or the vehicle for various political ideologies, the child has, by and large, been treated as an a priori category of analysis, o…
Phulmoni's body: The autopsy, the inquest and the humanitarian narrative on child rape in India
This article provides a close reading of the circulation of the case of the ‘child-wife’ Phulmoni Dasi, which is acknowledged to have triggered the Age of Consent Act of 1891. Instead of assuming that the evidence of corporeal trauma triggered the various responses to the problem of child marriage – reformist or reactionary – that have been comprehensively documented by historians, this article scrutinizes the unfolding of a humanitarian narrativ…
Coming of Age: Law, Sex and Childhood in Late Colonial India
This article revisits child‐marriage legislation in colonial India between 1891 and 1929 to re‐envision the ‘child’ as a subject constituted by laws governing sex, rather than as an a priori object requiring protection from patriarchal sexual norms. Focusing on the digital construction of the child in the twentieth century, this essay introduces a new angle from which to examine recent conclusions regarding child‐marriage reform in India. By draw…
Stages of Capital: Law, Culture and Market Governance in Late Colonial India , by Ritu Birla
Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire
1. Introduction Part 1: Race and Place 2. Diagnosing Character: Liberal Racialism and the Black Aryan 3. Standard Deviation: 'National Character' and a Science of Government Part 2: Blood and Morals 4. Seeing Reason: Dissection, History and English Education Part 3: and Citizenship 5. Sanitary Subjects: Fevers, Filth and Freedom in a 'Dual City 6. Sensing Modernity: Civility, Class and Citizenship in a 'Sanitary City' Part 4: Sex and Public 7. De…
Coming of Age: Law, Sex and Childhood in Late Colonial India
This article revisits child‐marriage legislation in colonial India between 1891 and 1929 to re‐envision the ‘child’ as a subject constituted by laws governing sex, rather than as an a priori object requiring protection from patriarchal sexual norms. Focusing on the digital construction of the child in the twentieth century, this essay introduces a new angle from which to examine recent conclusions regarding child‐marriage reform in India. By draw…
Listen to the Child: Law, Sex, and the Child Wife in Indian Historiography
The scholarship on the history of family, marriage and sexuality in India has proliferated in the last two decades. The child – as the presumed target of health care, education or family law – haunts these histories, but rarely comes into focus. In contrast to the careful historicization of ‘woman’ as a subject of law, or the vehicle for various political ideologies, the child has, by and large, been treated as an a priori category of analysis, o…
Loving Like a Man: The Colourful Prophet , Conjugal Masculinity and the Politics of Hindu Sexology in Late Colonial India
Is the History of Childhood Ready for the World? A Response to “The Kids Aren’t All Right”
In a complement to the 2020 AHR Roundtable “Chronological Age: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (125, no. 2), this AHR Exchange focuses on the history of children and childhood. Sarah Maza presents a critical review essay, highlighting the limiting factors in the expanding field of childhood studies. Children, she observes, produce few sources of their own voices, have limited agency, and as individuals and as a group soon outgrow their …
Phulmoni's body: The autopsy, the inquest and the humanitarian narrative on child rape in India
This article provides a close reading of the circulation of the case of the ‘child-wife’ Phulmoni Dasi, which is acknowledged to have triggered the Age of Consent Act of 1891. Instead of assuming that the evidence of corporeal trauma triggered the various responses to the problem of child marriage – reformist or reactionary – that have been comprehensively documented by historians, this article scrutinizes the unfolding of a humanitarian narrativ…
Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire
1. Introduction Part 1: Race and Place 2. Diagnosing Character: Liberal Racialism and the Black Aryan 3. Standard Deviation: 'National Character' and a Science of Government Part 2: Blood and Morals 4. Seeing Reason: Dissection, History and English Education Part 3: and Citizenship 5. Sanitary Subjects: Fevers, Filth and Freedom in a 'Dual City 6. Sensing Modernity: Civility, Class and Citizenship in a 'Sanitary City' Part 4: Sex and Public 7. De…
Stages of Capital: Law, Culture and Market Governance in Late Colonial India , by Ritu Birla
Phulmoni's body: The autopsy, the inquest and the humanitarian narrative on child rape in India
This article provides a close reading of the circulation of the case of the ‘child-wife’ Phulmoni Dasi, which is acknowledged to have triggered the Age of Consent Act of 1891. Instead of assuming that the evidence of corporeal trauma triggered the various responses to the problem of child marriage – reformist or reactionary – that have been comprehensively documented by historians, this article scrutinizes the unfolding of a humanitarian narrativ…
Coming of Age: Law, Sex and Childhood in Late Colonial India
This article revisits child‐marriage legislation in colonial India between 1891 and 1929 to re‐envision the ‘child’ as a subject constituted by laws governing sex, rather than as an a priori object requiring protection from patriarchal sexual norms. Focusing on the digital construction of the child in the twentieth century, this essay introduces a new angle from which to examine recent conclusions regarding child‐marriage reform in India. By draw…
Listen to the Child: Law, Sex, and the Child Wife in Indian Historiography
The scholarship on the history of family, marriage and sexuality in India has proliferated in the last two decades. The child – as the presumed target of health care, education or family law – haunts these histories, but rarely comes into focus. In contrast to the careful historicization of ‘woman’ as a subject of law, or the vehicle for various political ideologies, the child has, by and large, been treated as an a priori category of analysis, o…
Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife
‘Please let me sleep with you, didi [elder sister], don’t make me go to his bed; I beg of you, save me; that weight crushes me; I simply cannot sleep in that room.’1 Thus opens a novella-in-verse, written by a male author, in the form of a series of dialogues between the 12-year-old Sarojbala and a slew of female relatives, who appear in sequence to chide her for her misplaced reticence and to educate her on the duties and pleasures of conjugal s…
Loving Like a Man: The Colourful Prophet , Conjugal Masculinity and the Politics of Hindu Sexology in Late Colonial India
Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937
Ishita Pande's innovative study provides a dual biography of India's path-breaking Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) and of 'age' itself as a key category of identity for upholding the rule of law, and for governing intimate life in late colonial India. Through a reading of legislative assembly debates, legal cases, government reports, propaganda literature, Hindi novels and sexological tracts, Pande tells a wide-ranging story about the importa…
Vernacularizing Justice: Age of Consent and a Legal History of the British Empire
This is a commentary on five papers included in a forum on the age of consent on the British Empire
Is the History of Childhood Ready for the World? A Response to “The Kids Aren’t All Right”
In a complement to the 2020 AHR Roundtable “Chronological Age: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (125, no. 2), this AHR Exchange focuses on the history of children and childhood. Sarah Maza presents a critical review essay, highlighting the limiting factors in the expanding field of childhood studies. Children, she observes, produce few sources of their own voices, have limited agency, and as individuals and as a group soon outgrow their …
Introduction to ‘Translating Sex: Locating Sexology in Indian History’
This introduction to ‘Translating Sex’ places the six essays included in this special section in the context of the history of sexuality in the Indian subcontinent, and argues for a need to write more comprehensive histories of sexology—the field of inquiry which promoted the understanding of sex as a ‘scientific object’ around the globe at the turn of the twentieth century. It identifies the divergent materials covered in, and the common grounds…
Power, Knowledge, and the Epistemic Contract on Age: The Case of Colonial India
This article scrutinizes the implementation of age-of-consent legislation in high courts across colonial India to foreground some of its quirky and unstudied effects, and to consider alternative juridical notions of consent conceptualized without the logic of chronological age. Breaking open the naturalized relationship between age and consent, it shows that the use of age standards to measure all humans can be traced to the history of liberal la…
Author’s Response
Projit Mukharji, Brown Skin, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66
Journal Article Projit Mukharji, Brown Skin, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66 Get access Projit Mukharji, Brown Skin, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022. $35. Pbk ISBN 978-0-2268-2301. Ishita Pande Ishita Pande Department of History, Queen's University, Canada [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social History of Medici…
“Peeping Through a Chink”
In his field-defining manifesto, Ranajit Guha theorized subaltern as “the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender, and office or in any other way. This article reflects on why “age” has barely been historicized or theorized as “an attribute of subordination” or a category of analysis in South Asian historiography and shows how age, because it appears as a natural or…
Sexology’s Childhood: Chocolate , a Politics of Age, and the Global Sciences of Homosexuality
This essay shows how the child was crucial to the scientification of sexual knowledge in the twentieth century, and how the universalization of the child was, in turn, aided by a globalization of sexology. An understanding of childhood as a formative stage of life was key to the understanding of the homosexual as a personage with a past, narratable in a case history. While the analysis of the coemergence of the child and the sciences of (homo)sex…
Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · History (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Colonialism (5 works) · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies (5 works) · History (5 works)