‘Beware Oh Petticoats! There Be Leeches in These Parts’

Abstract

This chapter critiques the voluminous published and unpublished writings of Thomas H. Lewin, the first British deputy commissioner and would-be ethnographer of the CHT during the 1860s and 1870s. He had complex and, at times quixotic, views on indigenous history and the limits and nature of colonial intervention. In particular, this chapter interprets Lewin’s writings through the lens of gender and sexuality, by analyzing his interactions with both indigenous hill and British women. In particular, it examines his contentious relationship with the Chakma regent queen Rani Kalindi as well as his close epistolary relationship with his mother in London. Lewin’s record is a fascinating account of a (male) colonial administrator who was strongly influenced and jostled by two maternal figures: one indigenous and the other British. The chapter also examines the way he frames the geography and landscape itself in gendered language.