Performing anti-colonial military identities in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, 1943–1945: War, diasporic women and decolonisation

Abstract

The processes by which diasporic colonised Indian women were constituted as anti-colonial military subjects offer a valuable corrective to the neglected role of colonised women in the scholarship on decolonisation and war. This article addresses how female officers of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment staged and performed anti-colonial gendered military identities across several novel sites. Reworking Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, it investigates the punitive consequences and agential possibilities of militarised anti-colonial performance of gender and considers how anti-colonial military identities, performed through the body and emotion, reproduced and disrupted gender norms.