Gender, Violence, and Justice in Colonial Assam: The Webb Case, c. 1884

In 1884, Charles Webb, a European employee of a steam transportation company in Assam, sexually assaulted and killed Sukurmani, a woman who had left Bengal with her family to work on a tea plantation. The district magistrate dismissed most of the charges against Webb, assessing only a modest fine for wrongful confinement, and, though the case was appealed and brought to the attention of the viceroy, ultimately this verdict was upheld. The Webb case, as it became known in the Indian press, galvanized public opinion in India, as discussion of the case overlapped with discussion of the controversial Ilbert Bill of the previous year. This article traces the Webb case as it made its way through the courts and newspapers, arguing that a close study of this case reveals the ways that hierarchies of race, class, caste, and gender were constructed and were manifest in daily life. This article further argues that the treatment of the Webb case by the courts and later by the vernacular press indicates that sexual violence was a central element in nineteenth-century contests over colonial rule in India.