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breathedoutI made an off-hand remark in a post the other night about Richard Burton's missing report on the male brothels of Karáchi, and a number of folks got in touch to say how interested they were in hearing more. All excerpts are from Anjali Arondekar's For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India, which I am only a chapter and a half into but which is so far FASCINATING. I'm not going to try to summarize Arondekar's entire thesis here, since it's very nuanced and I'm not sure I fully grasp it yet myself. I'll just give the basics of her treatment of Burton, Napier, and the colonial politics of the hotly-contested missing report.
So here's a recap of Burton's version of events:
To this day, the report has never surfaced. Arondekar goes on to touch on the extensive back-and-forth that's apparently gone on in historian circles, as folks have debated ad nauseum the probable contents and location of the report, and even whether it ever existed at all. Obviously, many people are extremely eager to get their hands on it so as to partake of the scandalous—and, presumably, historically instructive—contents; and in the absence of the report itself, are happy to speculate on what it might have said. Others, even relatively contemporary readers, argue that this is part and parcel with Burton's other outlandish claims to accomplishment:
According to this argument, Burton's story about the commissioning of the report—particularly the details wherein he was the only officer capable of speaking the language and therefore collecting the intelligence—was just another opportunity for him to toot his own horn, and the report-as-actual-object probably doesn't exist at all, and never did. As for Burton's claim that he was fired because of the report, it's certainly not backed up by any official record, all of which speak glowingly of his service.
But Arondekar's argument goes deeper. Putting aside the question of whether or not the report exists or ever existed, she asks: why would this story, of this report, be a relevant one to tell in this particular historical moment?
In 1845 Charles Napier, the general who supposedly gave Burton this assignment, was fresh from having annexed (read: invaded and colonized) the Sind region: an incredibly controversial move which was widely viewed, even in England, as unjust:
In addition to the moral outrage about violating the trust of Indian rulers (which, let's face it, would only go so far in stirring outrage in a white supremacist culture), a lot of the debate in England about the further colonization of the Indian frontier had to do with the resources involved in maintaining control over, and even knowing what was going on in, the Indian territory that had already been colonized, let alone additional acquisitions. This lack of control was sometimes military but it was also informational: the Intelligence Department lacked the reach or resources to gather or communicate reliable intel, so even from a colonialist, British-centric perspective, the decision to increase territorial holdings was strategically questionable. Contrary to the popular official myth of the all-seeing British colonial eye, anxieties were running rife that resources were stretched so thin that the British were not even able to glean a cursorily accurate idea of what was going on in their own colonies. Furthermore, this tension was well-circulated in the very public scandal surrounding Napier's actions:
In this context, Burton's claims that he, acting under Napier's orders, was able to effectively infiltrate and report on, not just any activity, but some of the most private and illicit activity out there—not only sexuality but male-male sexuality; and not just male-male sexuality but white male-native male sexuality—can be read as an attempt to rehabilitate the myth of the far-reaching, all-seeing British eye in India. The scandalousness of the sexual content becomes less about sex-in-itself, and more about a sign of the reach and scope of British influence—and also a distraction from the political scandalousness of Napier's annexation of Sind. This point remains true regardless of whether the report was ever actually commissioned or written, and regardless of what its contents may or may not be—which is key to the larger point that Arondekar is making in this book as a whole.
So here's a recap of Burton's version of events:
In the final pages of his famous translation of The Arabian Nights, Richard Burton turns his attention to le vice contre nature, the unnatural vice: pederasty. It is here that the reader first encounters the scant but calculatedly sensational details of a secret government report on Karáchi's "three lupanars or bordels, in which not women but boys and eunuchs, the former demanding nearly a double price, lay for hire." Having recently "annexed Sind," General Charles Napier (the "Devil's Brother") had authorized the report in 1845, specifically requesting Burton, the only officer who could speak Sindhi, to "indirectly make enquiries and to report upon the subject." We are told that Karáchi is not more than a mile from camp, and that Burton agreed to undertake the project "on express condition that the report should not be forwarded to the Bombay Government." Disguised as a traveling merchant, Mirza Abdullah the Bushiri, Burton proceeded to infiltrate Karáchi's multiple sites of "porneia" to procure the "fullest details, which were duly dispatched to the Government House." Napier's departure from Sind soon after resulted in Burton's report being sent to Bombay by Napier's rivals. So scandalous proved the contents of the Karáchi report that its exposure resulted in Burton's "summary dismissal from the service." Burton provides no further details, neither on the report's contents nor on its current location. Or so the story goes.
To this day, the report has never surfaced. Arondekar goes on to touch on the extensive back-and-forth that's apparently gone on in historian circles, as folks have debated ad nauseum the probable contents and location of the report, and even whether it ever existed at all. Obviously, many people are extremely eager to get their hands on it so as to partake of the scandalous—and, presumably, historically instructive—contents; and in the absence of the report itself, are happy to speculate on what it might have said. Others, even relatively contemporary readers, argue that this is part and parcel with Burton's other outlandish claims to accomplishment:
The brief period of seven years [in India] would hardly suffice for the study of a single Oriental religion. In the case of Sir Richard Burton, if we are to accept his account precisely as it stands, it was sufficient for the study of eight languages, for a searching investigation into the mysteries of three creeds, for the discharge of official duties, for a number of journeys over unfrequented parts of India, and for a considerable quantity of sickness.
According to this argument, Burton's story about the commissioning of the report—particularly the details wherein he was the only officer capable of speaking the language and therefore collecting the intelligence—was just another opportunity for him to toot his own horn, and the report-as-actual-object probably doesn't exist at all, and never did. As for Burton's claim that he was fired because of the report, it's certainly not backed up by any official record, all of which speak glowingly of his service.
But Arondekar's argument goes deeper. Putting aside the question of whether or not the report exists or ever existed, she asks: why would this story, of this report, be a relevant one to tell in this particular historical moment?
In 1845 Charles Napier, the general who supposedly gave Burton this assignment, was fresh from having annexed (read: invaded and colonized) the Sind region: an incredibly controversial move which was widely viewed, even in England, as unjust:
In a series of newspaper articles, official reports, and trials, Napier was seen to have grossly violated the trust of native rulers, disobeyed East India Company orders, and initiated a dirty war whose victorious result did little to assuage public outrage. So strident was public ire in December 1843 that the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors for the East India Company in England initially condemned the annexation of Sind, only to later retract its resolution in response to pressure from high-ranking government officials.
In addition to the moral outrage about violating the trust of Indian rulers (which, let's face it, would only go so far in stirring outrage in a white supremacist culture), a lot of the debate in England about the further colonization of the Indian frontier had to do with the resources involved in maintaining control over, and even knowing what was going on in, the Indian territory that had already been colonized, let alone additional acquisitions. This lack of control was sometimes military but it was also informational: the Intelligence Department lacked the reach or resources to gather or communicate reliable intel, so even from a colonialist, British-centric perspective, the decision to increase territorial holdings was strategically questionable. Contrary to the popular official myth of the all-seeing British colonial eye, anxieties were running rife that resources were stretched so thin that the British were not even able to glean a cursorily accurate idea of what was going on in their own colonies. Furthermore, this tension was well-circulated in the very public scandal surrounding Napier's actions:
Central to the scandal of Napier's bungled annexation of Sind were key missing reports and treaties. Napier, some imperial historians argue, deliberately withheld and disappeared strategic official documents that would have made the territorial claims of the native Talpur Mirs harder to deny. Working against the more sympathetic wisdom of earlier company officials such as his rival James Outram, Napier allegedly fabricated treaties and reports of Mir treachery and ambition, ensuring that the annexation of Sind was complete even before the firing of the first bullet. A flailing Intelligence Department could do little to dissipate rumors about native greed and conspiracy, given its own haphazard and unreliable structures of intelligence gathering. Despite the fact that judicial reforms and systems of communication, hygiene, and surveillance, well-established in other parts of British India, were belatedly and unevenly applied in the region, Sind remains an uncharted and bewildering landscape for the British. Colonial and postcolonial histories of the region emphasize the "conundrum" of Sind [...] Scholars such as Hamida Khuhro carefully point out that the annexation of Sind was always understood to be on shaky ground: British officials who read the varied reports and accounts clearly realized that such documents did not represent the whole truth and in in large part constituted paper fictions cobbled together to maintain the facade of British control and knowledge gathering.
In this context, Burton's claims that he, acting under Napier's orders, was able to effectively infiltrate and report on, not just any activity, but some of the most private and illicit activity out there—not only sexuality but male-male sexuality; and not just male-male sexuality but white male-native male sexuality—can be read as an attempt to rehabilitate the myth of the far-reaching, all-seeing British eye in India. The scandalousness of the sexual content becomes less about sex-in-itself, and more about a sign of the reach and scope of British influence—and also a distraction from the political scandalousness of Napier's annexation of Sind. This point remains true regardless of whether the report was ever actually commissioned or written, and regardless of what its contents may or may not be—which is key to the larger point that Arondekar is making in this book as a whole.
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