Colonial officials mobilized stereotypes of Indo reticence to resist invasive pauper questionnaires

Evidence

Calling upon racial common sense, he reminded the commission that “the” Indo was “well known” to be excessively timid and reticent, with a strongly developed, if sometimes “misplaced,” sense of pride. He renounced the circular as “absurd” and derided its directive. Point by point he dissected its “unbelievably immodest and indiscreet” questionnaire, providing a list of the intrusive, personal questions to be asked. How long have you lived out of wedlock? How many illegitimate children do you have? With whom have you had them? How often do you pray? How often do your children skip school? Do you speak with them in Malay? Have you ever engaged in prostitution? Do you sleep on a bed, a mat, or the floor? Was your mother a concubine? What charity do you depend on? How many of your natural children do you not support? Why were you dismissed from your last job? — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 918

Categorization

• SEED: Angles: the questionnaire itself is a startling primary document — an essay could reconstruct the colonial European paupers’ inner world purely from the interrogatives they were asked.
• XREF: The question set reads like an inverted domestic ethnography — connects to the reader’s interest in how colonial common sense gets operationalized through bureaucratic instruments.