Sites of Desire: Chandrapore-Mayapore-Jummapur: Race, Sexuality and Law in Colonial India

The three selected texts by E. M. Forster, 1924 (A Passage to India Forster, 1924), Paul Scott, 1983 (Jewel in the Crown 1983), and Top Stoppard, 1995 (Indian Ink 1995) explore the complex interweaving of race, sexuality and law in colonial India suggesting the interpolation of subliminal desire that affected the relationship of the colonizers and the colonized. This essay focuses upon the intervention of race and sex in these narratives that defined the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized which have not be adequately discussed earlier. The narratives reveal the fraught and ambiguous attitude of the British colonizers towards the “natives” as objects of sexual desire though infected by the threat of racial contamination and miscegenation. Hence, such relations were either to be shunned or controlled by law. It has also been suggested that imperial administration may have used “sexual relations” as central political mechanism to control its subject population. The point to note is that the sexual gaze was in many instances reciprocal and the colonizer was also an object of desire for the colonized. The selected narratives explore three sites where the play of desire and their culmination take place.


Introduction
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet/Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat/But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth/When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth! -Rudyard Kipling (1889), "The Ballad of East and West".
Although the dynamics of European colonialism and the practices of imperialism have been discussed and critiqued widely, the emotional liaisons that shaped the material worlds of the empire invite more investigation. European colonialism across the world changed the lives of the colonized people and impacted their living condition, culture, religion, economy, attitudes and thinking in profound ways, the effects of which are felt long after the colonizers left those dominions. It needs no reiteration that the analysis of the colonial context taken as a system for the exercise of power had strong and far-reaching ramification and impact and therefore is relevant for understanding the past's relationship with the postcolonial present. In his path breaking study on Orientalism, Edward Said (1978) maintained that such understanding would reveal the construction of ideologies by the Western colonizers of the non-West/non-White worlds regarding matters of race and gender. It is equally true that all intimate relationships or sexual transgressions held an undercurrent of racial and class anxiety and a threat to the racial purity of the White colonizers, besides the fear of miscegenation (see Bryder, 1998). It has been argued that the colonizers sought to create a passive sexualized native in the territories under their control which, ironically, also introduced a provocative element. As such, the "native subject" was actually a construction of the mysterious and exotic sexual imaginings of the European mind as it encountered during its colonial explorations the so-called "savage worlds" of the non-West and was caught in its own erotic projection of native sexuality of both "native" men and women as "noble savages" whose virile and seductive bodies held exotic allure and suggested yet unexplored realms of physical pleasure. Richard Berstein cites Richard F. Burton's description of the newly explored lands and writes that "For Burton, India, the Middle East, and Africa were all places of the sexual "artists" where the cultivation of love far surpassed the low and unsatisfactory levels attained in frigid Christian Europe. The East was a place where the erotic and the poetic mingled, where stripped of its taint of immorality, it could be the subject of a kind of connoisseurship, a learned cultivation" (107). Said (1978) argued that the sexual subjection of Oriental women to Western men "fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East and West and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled" (6) and that Orientalism takes perverse shape as male power fantasy sexualizes a feminized Orient for Western power and possession. The attitude doesn't seem to have changed much. Even now, the imagining and resourcing of Asian femaleness by White masculinity remains a social and cultural reality with routine stereotyping, exoticizing and objectification of Asian women with regularly repeated descriptions such as "submissive"; "sensual," "exotic," "feminine," "eager to please" [see Sheridan Prasso, 2005;Richard Bernstein, 2009]. In her article on "White Sexual Imperialism: A Theory on Asian Feminist Jurisprudence," Sunny Woan (2008) of Santa Clara University argues, "White sexual imperialism, through colonialism, rape and war, created the hyper-sexualized stereotype of the Asian woman. This stereotype in turn fostered the over-prevalence of Asian women in pornography, the mail-order bride phenomenon, the Asian fetish syndrome, and worst of all, sexual violence against Asian women" (278). Indeed, the exploitative, militaristic and violent conquest and dispossession that accompanied the project of colonialism leading to the expansion and consolidation of western imperial design were invariably and predictably linked with inter-racial and inter-ethnic confrontation resulting in inevitable emotional and psychological conflicts as evident in colonial narratives, and especially in the texts selected for discussion here. This research paper attempts to study and analyze through the selected narratives the intervention of race and sex that defined the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, to the extent of formulation of laws by the colonizers to regulate and control individual lives. This subject has not been adequately discussed earlier.

Relevant Literature
The subliminal issues of sensuality and sexuality and their imbrications in the imperial project profoundly impacted colonial governmentality (see Ronald Hyam's (2008) essay on "Concubinage and the Colonial Service: the Crewe circular 1909"). These issues become evident and perhaps significantly more pronounced in the narratives deriving from and reflecting the colonial condition and imperial domination. Regarding the British empire, Hyam (1986) claimed in his writing in 1986 that the history of sexuality in Britain had been rewritten, but that "the historians of empire have made no such parallel contribution… [being] extremely shy of putting "sex" on their agenda" (34). This comment was provocative enough and through the next decade a number of publications appeared on colonialism, race and sex. Hyam is one of the major writers on sexual relations between the colonizer and the colonized which he called "sexual opportunism built into colonialism."According to him, "sexual dynamics crucially underpinned the whole operation of the British empire and Victorian expansion" (Hyam, 1990: p. 1) and suggests that the imperial administration may have used sexual relations as central political mechanism to control its subject population.
Along with its consolidation, the colonial administration faced certain imperatives regarding the stay of its officials in India. For example, there was a demand for domestic help that the "natives" would provide and the administration also had to concede sexual access to native women. Hence, to a certain extent the presence of "native" men and women around military cantonments and colonial settlements, as well as liaison with public women were accepted (see Pran Neville, 2009 on "nautch" girls and prostitutes) to meet the domestic and sexual requirements of the British officials in India whether with or without their families. Mark Harrison (1994) Spivak (1985) refers to "the planned epistemic violence of the imperialist project" that was all too often backed up by the planned institutional violence of armies and law courts, prisons and state machinery (248). Durba Ghosh's (2006) detailed analysis of sex and family under the colonial dispensation discusses the financial compensation for the anglo-native relationships that the administration was forced to take cognizance of, especially the mixed raced offsprings of the native women "companions" of the sahibs(which gave birth to a hybrid race of Eurasian/Anglo-Indian community in India. See Frank Anthony, 1969). Robert Clive's "Pension Fund and Military Orphan Society" serves as an example.
Ghosh writes that the anxiety of the colonial administration to educate the mixed race children and make them loyal and productive subjects of the empire was however not shared by Britain.

Socio-Cultural Impact of Colonialism in India
In his book on the subject Kenneth Ballhatchet (1980) writes that anglo-native liaison decreased after the 1857 Sipahi Uprising when a strict segregation was put in place leading to a kind of "sexual apartheid". This may have been due also to the arrival of a large number of European women and the Evangelical attitudes of contempt and superiority towards Indian culture. Reviewing Ballhatchet's book, Eric Stokes (1980) comments that the racial savagery that overtook British and even American opinion after the Outbreak of 1857: …was seen as the crude and brutal assertion of superiority by "civilization" over "barbarism"-or what Macaulay liked to call the strength of civilisation without its mercy.… There was now an enlarged European community that felt much less secure psychologically and materially. Drawn in part from the British lower-middle classes, it found itself thrust into positions of unaccustomed authority and affluence, and yet compelled to live in conditions of legal equality and growing competition with an often highly-educated Indian élite. The assertion of European superiority was steadily to renounce the rough hand (or boot) of the master-servant relationship and resort to the quieter and deadlier psychological warfare of preventing social mixing by excluding Indians from clubs and inflicting other such snubs...

(17).
He ironically adds that "E.M. Forster's Chandrapore was just around the corner"! (17). Anne Laura Stoler (1997) explains that "colonial authority was constructed on two powerful, but false, premises. The first was the notion that Europeans in the colonies made up an easily identifiable and discrete biological and social entity; a "natural" community of common class interests, racial attributes, political affinities and superior culture. The second was the related notion that the boundaries separating colonizer from colonized was thus self-evident and easily drawn" (635). The colonial politics of exclusion was contingent on constructing categories, legal and social classifications designating who was "white," who was "native," who could become a citizen rather than a subject, which children were legitimate progeny and which were not (Stoler, 1997: p. 635). Stoler writes that neither premise reflected colonial realities.

Research Focus
The texts selected for discussion in this paper are from the twentieth century when the British imperial control in India had begun to face nationalistic strug- gle, yet held strictly on to colonial policies of racial segregation. They draw upon the relationship of the colonizer and the colonized that presents a complex interweave of race, sex and colonial law in the post-1857 scenario. Soon, conflicting economic and political agendas, frictions over colonial privilege and power, anti-imperialistic attitudes heightened the tension in the anglo-native relationships. The interesting point the texts make evident is that desire and sexual gaze were reciprocal. The colonizer and the colonized succumb to mutual attraction and desire despite authorities and laws prohibiting such desire. The resulting complications obviously provoke political ramifications that impact the master-subject/ruler-ruled and British-Indian relationships. That this was not confined to India is clear from the consequent research that was undertaken in the latter part of the century and 1995 saw the publication of three investigative studies on "colonial desire" and its implications by Anne McClintock (1995), Ann Laura Stoler and Robert C. Young (1995). The studies, located in postcolonial discourse, combine methods from literary criticism, anthropology, political economy and psychoanalysis to focus on Europe's possessions in namely South America, Africa, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

Methodology
The essay is planned as a critical analysis of literary evidence that how historical forces of colonialism divided the people by driving an insidious wedge between them on the basis of race and sex. It also studies laws formulated by the colonizers to serve this aim.

Discussion: India as a British Dependency
India was not the first colony in the British empire, nor was it the last to win independence; but in can be confidently asserted that it was in India, more than in any other place, that British colonial practices were redefined and sharpened for imperial governance in their territories around the world.  (Walsh, 1999: p. 21) that reflected British notions of political sovereignty, moral and cultural supremacy, as well as the right and rightness of British rule. As such, the vast and exotic terrain called India held a special place in the British mind as the jewel in the crown of an empire, literally and figuratively, so much so that Lord Curzon proclaimed in 1901, "As long as we rule India we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it we shall drop straightaway to a third-rate power" (quoted by Judd, 2004: p. 101).

Desire Motivating Colonialism
I argue in this paper that "desire" as a driving force to fulfill a "lack" and seek its subject in the realm of the real applies to human action of many kinds. This idea combines the essential insights from the metaphysical discourse formulated from Plato to Kant with psychoanalytical concepts forwarded from Freud onwards as "desire and unconscious" or "the unconscious as desire" to which many philosopher-psychologists have contributed. After Freud, Jacques Lacan's (1981) definition emphasizes "desire for the Other"(235) 1 while Deleuze and Guattari (1972) extend the idea of "desire" (perhaps led by Marxist thoughts) to show that desire does not emerge merely as "lack" but produces a direction and that the subject missing/lacking in desire is not some fantastical object. Drawing insights from Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, Deleuze and Guattari (1972) see colonialism as a field of desire and will [to power], of the conscious and the unconscious forces that relate desire directly to the social field and to a monetary system based on profit. They explain in Anti Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, If desire is the lack of the real object, its very nature as a real entity depends upon an "essence of lack" that produces the fantasized object. Desire [is] thus conceived of as production… On the very lowest level of interpretation, means that the real object that desire lacks is related to an extrinsic natural or social production, whereas desire intrinsically produces an imaginary object that functions as a double of reality, as though there were a "dreamed-of object behind every real object," or a mental production behind all real productions. (48) Thus "lack" operates as a residuum of desire located in the real and the social, combining the intrinsic with the extrinsic. So "desire" becomes a fundamental motivation for "colonialism" and feeds imperial ambitions for commercial gain, territorial and political control and exercise of military power-all seeking to be justified by an attitude of civilizational, ideological, moral and religious superiority, as John Dewey (1927) once remarked, "Imperialism is the result, not just 1 Lacan's (1981) theory of desire appears to have two poles: one related to "the object small a" as a desiring-machine, which defines desire in terms of a real production, thus going beyond both any idea of need and any idea of fantasy; and the other related to the "great Other" as a signifier, which reintroduces a certain notion of lack. In Serge Leclaire's article "La re'alite du desir" (Ch. 4, reference note 26), the oscillation between these two poles can be seen quite clearly.

Colonialism, Sexuality and Law
This

Narratives and the Play of Desire: A Passage to India
The three selected texts are familiar and much discussed. The paper will focus on the issues of racial confrontation and its interpolation in the discourse on race, sex and law in colonial India as made manifest in the texts.
CHANDRAPORE: A Passage to India (1924) The novel opens with a mundane description of the town Chandrapore on the banks of the river Ganga that has nothing spectacular in it other than the Marabar Caves twenty miles away. The developing narrative shows the segregated living areas which seem to anticipate the final violent and climactic racial clash. The poverty of the lowest tier of the town is emblematic of the lives of the impoverished native population. The second tier indicates areas of the town inhabited by better placed Indians. The houses of the Eurasians separated from others "stand on the high ground by the railway station" (1). Only the uppermost tier occupied by the British residents exhibits any level of affluence. This is indicated by the well-laid out roads with lights to contrast with the chaotic parts of the town where the natives live. The roads are "named after victorious British generals and intersecting at right angles, were symbolic of the net Great Britain had thrown over India" (5). The separation of races, classes, and religions of the inhabitants is clear and the political hegemony, and the power imbalance is quickly established. The time of the story is uncertain, perhaps reflecting India of 1912, the time of Forster's first visit, or anytime between 1912 and Forster's second visit in 1919 after the Jalianwala Bagh Massacre when anti-colonial reaction had reached a volatile pitch. Forster explains his intention and his subsequent frustration for writing the novel. In a letter to Syed Masood on the 27th of September 1922, he states: "When I began the book I thought of it as a little bridge of sympathy between East and West, but this conception has had to go, my sense of truth forbids anything so comfortable. I think that most Indians, like most English people, are shits, and I am not interested whether they sympathize with one another or not" (quoted in Furbank, 1978: p. 106). Much of the book is conversation among social groups trying to make sense of the actions-reactions of the other social groups. The mutual puzzlement about behavioral codes of each group can be justifiably attributed to cultural difference. But the conversations aren't matters of mere curiosity but constitute a social process-of creating difference and oppression, comprising talk about the inferiority of the Indians and the magnanimity and justice of the British colonizers ruling India to help Indians. The central question the story poses is whether Indians can be friends with the British colonizers.
The narrative begins with the arrival of Mrs. Moore with Miss Adela Quested who has come to meet Mrs Moore's son Ronny Heaslop, the local magistrate, before they decide to marry. While visiting the British club restricted to the   They are attacked by a group that beats up Hari, ties up Daphne and rapes her.

Narratives and the
Fearing that Hari will be blamed for the crime, Daphne makes him promise not to admit being with her. But as soon as the sexual assault is reported, suspicion falls on Hari who is promptly arrested by Merrick along with several of his friends from Mayapore Gazette. It is assumed that the rape was racially motivated. Hari being an Indian is accused by the British and Daphne becomes the target of Indian prejudice as a white woman having sex with an Indian. Daphne refuses to co-operate in the prosecution of Hari and others arrested with him.
There is no legal trial in the judicial sense, but a trial of sorts on those assumed guilty embroils the people: In fact, such people say, the affair that began on the evening of August 9th, 1942, in Mayapore, ended with the spectacle of two nations in violent opposition, not for the first time nor yet for the last, because they were then still locked in imperial embrace of such long standing and subtlety, it was no longer possible for them to know whether they hated or loved one anoth-er…." (1).
In the absence of strong evidence, the rape charges are dropped against Hari and his friends, but they are deliberately implicated in political crimes as revolu-

Narratives and the Play of Desire: Indian Ink
JUMMAPUR: Indian Ink (1994) Stoppard's play presents two time-periods. The first story is set in 1930 colonial India, the year of Gandhi's Salt March when Flora Crewe, a 35-year-old bright young thing who has modeled for Modigliani, hobnobbed with communists, and penned risqué poetry that makes her (in)famous in England, arrives in Jummapur to recover her health, as she suffers from severe tuberculosis. Ostensibly she is a guest of the Theosophical Society of the town invited to deliver some lectures on British literary life. Jummapur is a fictitious town which shows racial segregation between the British and the Indians although Flora Crewe is cordially welcomed at the station with marigold garlands by Coomaraswamy the president of the Theosophical Society and other members. She is escorted to the government circuit house with the promise of a touristic visit to the temples and a picnic the next day. Her lectures are a big hit with the Anglophile Indian elites who lap up her gossipy accounts of London activities. While at Jummapur, Flora fends off the attentions of the dashing but dimwitted "British Resident" David Durance who "quizzes her" on her motive for coming to India and after few meetings and dances proposes marriage. She also rebuffs an Indian prince who wants to show her off as he does his stable of cars. During her talks, she meets a shy young painter Nirad Das who shows his sketch of her made while she was speaking. He presents it to her with his signature. Flora is pleased and flattered when Das wants to paint her portrait. He comes to the guest house next day with a gift of a vintage copy of Emily Eden's 1866 collection of letters, Up the Country. He begins his painting while Flora tries to write poems. But unable to write poetry in the intense heat, shespends time writing informative letters to her sister Nell in London. She is disappointed with Das's painting and chides him for "Englishing" her instead of painting her in the Indian style. She invites him to paint her in the nude. Nirad explains to her the theory of rasa, especially the elements of shringararasa of erotic love along with the context of the lover and his beloved and the symbolic detailing of the moon, the woods and scent of sandalwood. He also explains the tradition of narrative art and rasa as the guide to art appreciation. Flora wants to imbibe the aspects of erotic love in the poem she is writing. Soon, however, Flora's ill health forces her to go away to a hill station where she eventually dies. Years later, Nell visits her grave.
The second time-period of the play is the 1980s. An American editor Pike

Intertextual Connections
The three texts appear intertextually connected, as though speaking with each other. They focus on complicated relationships not only between the colonizer and the colonized but also among the members of each group and share similar colonialist 2 preoccupations. Certain colonial motivations and stereotypes are replicated-for example, Callendars and Turtons of Forster are the Tuptons of Scott representing a class of colonizers who create racial distance and prejudice. There are also characters who follow their heart or conscience against terrible odds, some even losing their lives in that pursuit, compassionate people like Mrs. Moore, Cyril Fielding, Daphne Manners, Ludmilla Smith, Edwina Crane to some extent, Flora Crewe and Eleanor. The novels mention missionaries who profess to be racially unbiased but retain and demonstrate cultural and civilizational superiority. There are also the Eurasians, distinguished from Indians. Located at the core of Forster's story is the enigmatic void of the Marabar Caves with its Freudian imagery of snakes, bats, darkness and the booming echo. Forster seems to suggest that the caves represent India's complexity, ambiguity and eternal puzzle. He writes in the novel, "India calls 'Come' through hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal" (136). Similar dark mystery is hinted at in Jewel in the Crown: "Imagine, then, a flat landscape, dark for the moment, but even so conveying to a girl running in the still deeper shadow cast by the wall of 2 Nadine Gordimer (1974) explains that "a colonialist is one who advocates the policy of colonization; further, he may be one delegated, within the Colonial Service, to administer that policy, a colonial functionary in the European power's governance of territory taken by conquest of the original inhabitants. He is not a citizen of that territory, his country remains one across the world. A colonizer is a settler in the conquered territory, coming from another country but taking up residence and citizenship (usually granted after a period specified by the colonialist power). He occupies and owns, either under a settler dispensation to extend the "mother" country's domains, or purchased from it, land taken by that colonialist power from the indigenous people. The colonizer regards himself as a permanent inhabitant. The difference is important" (30-31). Advances in Literary Study the Bibighar gardens an idea of immensity, of distance…" (1). Scott's story highlights the inherent violence that accompanies the desire to transgress racial taboo. The Bibighar Gardens incident spreads its tentacles over the lives of several people as political antagonism and hostility escalates in tandem with the socio-cultural one, as Daphne says, "Well, Hari and I are the exhibits too". We could stand here on a little plinth, with a card saying "Types of Opposites: [male sign] Indo-British, circa 1942. Do Not Touch. Then all the people who stared at us in the cantonment, but looked away directly we looked at them, could come and stare to their hearts' content" (382). Being the introductory volume, the narrative holds promise of future closure in the sequel. Stoppard's story is of exploration of a relationship that may have been intimate but is not in obvertly violent. The subtly changing relationships are traced through the two time-scales, always with the awareness that the painting of an Englishwoman in the nude by an Indian would have been scandalous had it become known, certainly leading to racial repercussions. Nirad Das is arrested shortly after Flora Crewe's departure, although his friendship with Flora is not mentioned as the reason. All three recount the intervention of British law to ensure that the twain West and East should never meet.

Theorization
The narratives have been discussed at great length in critical studies on colonial literature. Those arguments need not be reiterated here. But one viewpoint is of relevance to this paper. In his essay on "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literaure," Abdul Janmohamed (1985) writes, "The perception of racial difference is, in the first place, influenced by economic morives" (61). According to him, Colonialist literature is an exploration and a representation of a world at the boundaries of civilization, a world that has not (yet) been domesticated by European signification or codified in detail by its ideology. That world is therefore perceived as uncontrollable, chaotic, unattainable, and ultimately evil. Motivated by his desire to control and dominate, the imperialist configures the colonial realm as a confrontation based on differences in race, language, social customs, cultural values and modes of production. (64) He calls colonial societies deeply "pathological societies" (80) and summarizes the colonial situation thus: If every desire is at base a desire to impose oneself on another and to be recognized by the Other, then the colonial situation provides an ideal context or the fulfillment of that fundamental drive. The colonialist's military superiority ensures a complete projection of his self on the Other: exercising his assumed superiority, he destroys without any significant qualms the effectiveness of indigenous economic, social, political, legal, and moral systems and imposes his own versions of these structures on the Other. By thus subjugating the native, the European settler is able to compel the Oth- er's recognition of him and, in the process, allow his own identity to become deeply dependent on his position as a master. This enforced recognition from the Other in fact amounts to the European's narcissistic self-recognition since the native, who is considered too degraded and inhuman to be credited with any specific subjectivity, is cast as… a recipient of the negative elements of the self that the European projects onto him. This transitivity and the preoccupation with the inverted self-image mark the "imaginary" relations that characterize the colonial encounter. (66-67) Janmohamed categorizes two kinds of colonial writing: the "imaginary" and the "symbolic" (65). In the "imaginary" text, the emotive as well as cognitive intention alities are structured by "objectification and aggression", accompanied by the adamant refusal to admit possibilities of rapprochement between the Self and the Other. The "symbolic" text, of which these three selected texts can be taken as examples, attempts to find "syncretic solutions to Manichean oppositions between the colonizer and the colonized" and makes an effort to overcome the barriers of racial difference" but are unfortunately "seduced by the specular-

Rule of Law
The for him meant three things: "the legislative sovereignty of Parliament", "the universal rule or supremacy throughout the constitution of ordinary law" and "the dependence in the last resort of the conventions upon the law of the constitution" (see Principe, 2000). The lofty aims suggest that rule of law was more than a synonym for law and order and meant upholding the supremacy of the British legal system and administration. During the consolidation of empires, Western clusive of and discriminatory towards the colonized who had little say in its constitution. From the point of view of the "ruled", Stephen's "Rule of Law" was highly problematic, implying a monolithic structure presiding over various groups that can neither change that structurenor question its promulgations.
Each of the selected texts shows the contexts arising from draconian laws like the Evidence Act and the Rowlatt Act that provoked revolutionary reaction, the Dandi March, Quit India Movement and so on. Clare Midgley (1998) admits that the Rule of Law was a tactic for achieving colonial hegemony leading to "a reorganization of the civil society of the colonized […] through a diffusion of cultural ideological constructions and moral regulations" (21). She claims that "this legitimation aspect of hegemony is present in most colonial enterprises to varying degrees depending on the nature of the enterprise, it is the case with India that British colonialism sought to legitimize itself through self-characterization as rule of law and social reform" (21).

Narratives as Sites of Intervention
It is clear that law figures at the heart of several English novels on colonial India which made manifest the English legal practice in the procedure described, the architecture and inner spatial arrangement of the courts, the garb of judges and lawyers, modes of address, and more importantly the boundaries between the colonizer and the colonized. Rule of Law operated generally on the basis of racial criteria restricting high judiciary to White men to regulate sexual, conjugal, and prosecution and presents as "scientific fact" his assertion that darker races lust after fairer races, but not vice versa, and adds that Aziz lives a double life simultaneously "respectable" and depraved. He cleverly ignores the real "facts" of the case. Adela becomes flustered when a voice in the crowd protests that Adela is ugly. Aziz's lawyer remarks on the absence of a witness Mrs Moore and hence the lack of important evidence. The presence of the English contingent on the platform as though to intimidate the witnesses is objected to by Amritrao, the lawyer from Calcutta and the Indian judge Das agrees that everyone but Adela must return to the floor, as though suggesting a level playing field. When called to give evidence, Adela states quietly that she made a mistake, Aziz never followed her and withdraws all charges. The courtroom erupts into two screaming abusing groups. The end of the story leaves a pervasive sense of emptiness, nothingness and loss when what is seen and what occur seem less significant than what is not seen or does not occur. Two issues get intertwined in Scott's novel. The times are politically turbulent with riots everywhere. In this context, Daphne is found in the park with her Indian lover, is gang raped and Hari Kumar is arrested and tortured. Edwina Advances in Literary Study Crane is forbidden by Indian friends not to be out of doors during the riots. She disregards the advice, convinced of her infallibility as a White woman. While driving back with Mr.Chaudhuri, when their car is surrounded by a rioting mob, Edwina wants to face the crowd, sure they will show respect due to her. She is not attacked but Mr. Chaudhuri is beaten to death as a traitor for befriending the English. Daphne and Edwina must go through such horrific experiences to realize that complacency about racial superiority is illusory, a creation of the White society, that critically impacts human relationships. Although there is no legal trial and the police are forced to release Hari Kumar, the English people of Mayapore indict both Daphne and Edwina Crane for not identifying those who attacked them.
Flora Crewe's last letter to her sister from Jummapur: "Darling, that's all from Jummapur, because now I'm packed, portrait and all, and Mr. Coomaraswami is coming to take me to the station. I'll post this in Jaipur as soon as I get there […] something good happened here which made me feel halfway better about Modi and getting back to Paris too late. That was a sin I'll carry to my grave, but perhaps my soul will stay behind as a smudge of paint on paper, as if I'd always been here, like Radha who was the most beautiful of the herdswomen, undressed for love in an empty house" (44). A big part of the relationship between Flora and Nirad appears to be his instinctive understanding of her thoughts and awareness when she feels comfortable with him. Yet their relationship is tenuous and seems to break when she shows her disappointment with the painting. Nirad feels that since their artistic relationship is an extension of their feelings for each other, when she rejects his painting, she rejects him. She, on the other hand, feels this as cultural misunderstanding and the difficulty in forging a relationship that must transcend racial prejudices and cultural mismatch. After Flora leaves Jummapur the law intervenes to punish Nirad for daring to forge a relationship with a White woman. No other "evidence" is required.

Conclusion
The three texts seem to emphasize that the colonial Rule of Law as an authoritative system was flawed because it was founded on discrimination of Race and Gender. Yet, as claimed earlier, colonial laws still affect post-colonial conditions and several obfuscating laws continue to figure in the Indian Penal Code (IPC). First drafted by T.B. Macauley around 1860s and modelled on British laws, Louisiana Code of Law and the French Penal Code, the IPC has been amended many times since India's Independence and as many as 987 old and defunct "laws" of the Raj based on prejudice and discrimination have been repealed, including Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, Land Act of 1819, Foreign Recruiting Act of 1874, Elephant Preservation Act 1879 which levied Rs.500 for killing an elephant, as well as some bizarre colonialist laws. But even after changes and amendments made to the first copy of the document, the basic structure of the IPC remains the same as the last vestige of colonialism until it is further modified to meet the needs of India as a democracy based on equal rights of all its citizens.