The Jurisprudence of Aversion: The Lepers Act and the Regulation of the ‘Aesthetic Nuisance’ in Colonial India
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https://doi.org/10.66871/ihj.v1i1.008##semicolon##
Lepers Act of 1898, Colonial India, Pauper Leper, 1944 Sind Proposal, Leprosy Commission (1890-91)##article.abstract##
This paper examines the legal and social regulation of leprosy in colonial India, focusing primarily on the Lepers Act of 1898 as a key instrument of state control. It argues that the colonial response was shaped less by clinical understandings of the disease and more by what may be described as a ‘jurisprudence of aversion’, a legal logic concerned with managing the visible presence of diseased bodies in public space. By tracing the shift from hereditary to contagion-based theories of leprosy, the paper shows how the figure of the ‘pauper leper’ emerged as a primary target of regulation. This process was closely tied to efforts at spatial ordering and sanitation, aimed at maintaining the visual order and normative appearance of the colonial urban environment. In this sense, the regulation of leprosy was not only a matter of public health but also of governing how the city was seen and experienced. The paper further introduces a previously underexamined 1944 legislative proposal from Sind concerning the compulsory sterilisation of persons with leprosy marking an important shift from strategies of spatial segregation toward a more bio-political form of governance, focused on regulating reproduction and the future composition of the population. Furthermore, this proposal targeted the geopolitical regulation of inter-state migration.
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