... having been breathed out

In the 1820s, the American Colonization Society [which advocated deporting American Blacks to the newly-established US colony Liberia] grew into the preeminent race-relations reform organization in the United States. [Thomas] Jefferson was again endorsing colonization, and calculating segregationists were beginning to see it as a solution to Black resistance. Altruistic assimilationists figured that it was a way to develop Black people in both America and Africa. In 1825, a twenty-eight-year-old Yale alumnus, Ralph Gurley, became the new ACS secretary. He held the position until his death in 1872, while also serving twice as the chaplain of the House of Representatives. Gurley had a vision: he believed that to win the minds and souls of Americans to the colonization cause, it had to be linked to the Protestant movement. His timing was good, because the Second Great Awakening was at hand as he began his ACS post.

The American Bible Society, the American Sunday School Union, and the American Tract Society were all established in this period, and they each used the printing press to besiege the nation with Bibles, tracts, and picture cards that would help to create a strong, unified, Jesus-centered national identity. A good tract "should be entertaining," announced the American Tract Society in 1824. "There must be something to allure the listless to read." Allurement—those pictures of holy figures—had long been considered a sinful trick of Satan and "devilish" Catholics. No more. Protestant organizations started mass-producing, mass-marketing, and mass-distributing images of Jesus, who was always depicted as White. Protestants saw all the aspirations of the new American identity in the White Jesus—a racist idea that proved to be in their cultural self-interest. As pictures of this White Jesus started to appear, Blacks and Whites started to make connections, consciously and unconsciously, between the White God the Father, his White son Jesus, and the power and perfection of White people. "I really believed my old master was almighty God," runaway Henry Brown admitted, "and that his son, my young master, was Jesus Christ."

As the revived Protestant movement ignited the enthusiasm of students, professors, clergymen, merchants, and legislators in New England, the American Colonization Society drew more people into its fold. While southern colonizationists sought to remove free Blacks, northerns sought to remove all Blacks, enslaved and freed. Northern race relations had grown progressively worse since the 1790s, defying uplift suasion. Each uplifting step of Black people stoked animosity, and runaways stoked further animosity. Race riots embroiled New York City, New Haven, Boston, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh in the 1820s. As racial tensions accumulated, the ACS continued to gain adherents to the cause. Its agents argued forcefully that White prejudice and Black slavery would be eternal, and that freed Blacks must use the talents they had acquired from Whites to go back and redeem unenlightened Africa. By 1832, every northern state legislature had passed resolutions of endorsement for the colonization idea.

Free Blacks remained overwhelmingly against colonization. Their resistance to the concept partly accounted for the identifier "Negro" replacing "African" in common usage in the 1820s. Free Blacks theorized that if they called themselves "African," they would be giving credence to the notion that they should be sent back to Africa. Their own racist ideas were also behind the shift in terminology. They considered Africa and its cultural practices to be backward, having accepted racist notions of the continent. Some light-skinned Blacks preferred "colored," to separate themselves from dark-skinned Negroes or Africans.

Missing the enormous historical irony of his own words, Macaulay passionately claims that the primary reason for such a deplorable lack of legal models is that "all existing systems of law in India are foreign. All were introduced by conquerors differing in race, manners, language, and religion from the great mass of people."

Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Explanation: Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section.

The offence made punishable under this section requires that penetration, however little, should be proved strictly. Thus an attempt to commit this offence should be an attempt to thrust the male organ into the anus of the passive agent. Some activity on the part of the accused in that particular direction ought to be proved strictly. A mere preparation for the operation should not necessarily be construed as an attempt. Emission is not necessary.

"It is unnecessary to point out how desirable it is that our national character should stand high in the estimation of the inhabitants of India, and how much the character would be lowered by the frequent exhibitions of Englishmen of the worst description, placed in the most degrading situations, stigmatised by the courts of justice in India." Macaulay makes the point that Englishmen committing unnatural offences should not be tried in British India, for fear of the consequences of trial on public and civil life.

For antipornography laws to be instituted in colonial India, standards of obscenity had to be carried over from Britain to colonial India. The very presence of antipornograhy laws in Britain translated not only into the questionable morality of the supposedly civilizing colonizers but also undermined the rhetorical force of Britain's ability to govern India. Thus there apears a discourse of contradictory lament int he official archives with respect to the question of obscenity and pornography in the Indian context. On the one hand, we read of colonial officials repeatedly complaining about the rampant perversion of Indian culture and speaking of the need to regulate such outpourings in discursive materials. On the other hand, there is equal despair at the thought of brown subjects "viewing postcards of naked white women, or of English-educated Indians reading works like The Lustful Turk or Venus in India."