Ilbert Bill - Controversy

Controversy

The most opponents of the bill were British tea and indigo plantation owners in Bengal, led by Griffith Evans, who feared that, unlike British judges, Indian judges would not overlook their mistreatment of Indian workers. At the same time, rumours began circulating of an English female being raped by an Indian in Calcutta. In reference to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when it was alleged that English women and girls were raped by Indian sepoys, many British colonialists expressed great concern over the humiliation English females would have to face appearing before Indian judges in the case of rape. The British press in India even spread wild rumours about how Indian judges would abuse their power to fill their harems with white English females. The propaganda that Indian judges cannot be trusted in dealing with cases involving English females helped raise considerable support against the bill.

English women who opposed the bill further argued that Bengali women, who they stereotyped as "ignorant", are neglected by their men, and that Bengali babu should therefore not be given the right to judge cases involving English women. Bengali women who supported the bill responded by claiming that they were more educated than the English women opposed to the bill, and pointed out that more Indian women had academic degrees than British women did at the time, alluding to the fact that the University of Calcutta became one of the first universities to admit female graduates to its degree programmes in 1878, before any of the British universities had later done the same.