ABSTRACT
In 1853 a meeting was held in Amritsar, soon after the annexation of Punjab by the British colonial force as part of its wider project of ensuring a culpable transition from the chaos that followed the fall of Maharaja Ran jit Singh's kingdom of Punjab. This chapter aims to bring to light the continuities as well as departures which run through the colonial and postcolonial representations and discourses of son preference. The inexorable authority with which anti-infanticide and anti-foeticide proclamations were made by both the British colonial administration in the nineteenth century and by the Punjab government in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries show common strategies of disciplining culture through edicts, penalties and blacklisting. The British colonial engagement with gender in South Asia mirrors its strategic approach toward the management of social control and authority in the region.
