Was the domain of sexuality primarily a site of colonial hegemony in South Asia? Were Indians involved in the fashioning of sexual norms and producing original sexual knowledge? Or did they simply imitate the norms and scripts of sexuality that had already been formulated in Europe? This panel interrogates how sexuality has been conceptualized in 19^th and 20^th century South Asian history by concentrating on its unique methodological foundations, the wide-ranging nature of its actors and the enduring influence of early modern texts on modernist notions of sexuality. While not denying the epistemic shift brought about by the colonial reorganization of sexual laws and customs, this panel aims to diversify and nuance our understanding of the historical production of sexual knowledge, subjectivities and norms in modern South Asia. Collectively, the panel argues that sexual knowledge in South Asia was produced through overlapping ethical, scientific, and reformist traditions rather than simply imposed through colonial governance or expert discourse.

Hasan Hameed’s paper contributes to this aim by demonstrating how a classical Persian text, the Gulistan of Sa’di (1291), emerged as a paradigmatic text enunciating a unique erotic ethic among Muslim and non-Muslim publishers and readers in the 19th century. Hamid’s reading of the reception of Sadi in 19^th century India highlights the enduring legacy of pre-modern Persian and Islamic ethical literature in shaping the sexual contours of Indian modernity. Reinforcing the methodological diversity of sexual knowledge production in modern India, Sohini Mukhopadhyay’s paper shows how elite Bengali physicians and sexologists produced an exclusivist national discourse on reproduction and child-rearing by selectively appropriating and braiding Euro-American sexual knowledge with indigenous intellectual traditions. Scientific sex education, particular dietary prescriptions and regulated sexual conduct were presented as the optimal tools for the collective regeneration of a nationalist and hygienic Indian sexual subject that explicitly excluded Muslims and lower-caste groups. Arnav Bhattacharya’s paper concludes this panel by further unpacking the layered and complex nature of Indian sexual modernity by repositioning socio-religious actors as central to the process of producing and disseminating sexual knowledge between late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century India. Going beyond, but not ignoring the role of physicians and psychiatrists, the paper argues that the popularity and relevance of Indian sexology lay in the ability of its diverse actors to fuse sexual knowledge with nationalist concerns of self-governance and social anxieties about the optimal sexual development of adolescents.

Drawing on a wide range of sources from both the modern and premodern periods, this panel argues that sexual knowledge in South Asia was not derivative but constituted through layered engagements with Persianate ethics, nationalist reproductive science, and socio-religious reform, producing locally grounded yet globally entangled sexual modernities. Challenging Eurocentric and statist histories of sexual knowledge, this panel reveals sexuality as a contested and locally inflected domain of knowledge—not merely a reflection of colonial imposition.