162 SOCIAL SCIENTIST servants numbered 21,884. While prostitutes numbered 1,22,228 and dancers 111).14 This state of things did not escape the British administration. In 1872, A. Mackenzy reporting on the ground of prostitution in Calcutta had sharply pointed out- In Bengal the prostitute class seems to be chiefly recruited from the ranks of Hindu widows. The prominence of Hindu women among the prostitutes of Bengal, often it is stated: women of good caste, and that even in districts where a large Mohammedan population predominates, is the most curious feature disclosed in the correspondence and quite different from what the Lieutenant Governor believes to be the state of things in other parts of northern India.15 The sheer number of prostitutes increasing each year in the larger Indian cities confronted the indigenous elites as a social evil which reflected on their leadership position. At the same time colonial education and missionary onslaughts held up images which shook their faith in themselves. The more progressive among the elite found an outlet in joining the campaign for reforms. Thus the major agendas of reform, such as polygamy, widow burning, child marriage and prostitution, brought Indian women continuously to the forefront of the debates. In fact they were now used as a site on which agreements and conflicts between colonisers and the colonised subjects took place. In the nineteenth century, Bengal was considered to be in the throes of a change by the rest of the country due to a number of social reforms considered progressive by the civilising standards of the west. The Bengali Hindus in their passage from babu to bhadralok assessed these reforms as their particular achievements; while the more conservative Hindus resisted the reforms as anti-traditional, liberals invested them with the logic of enlightenment. The subjects of the debates, however, remained passive and compliant. Their voices were largely heard as echoes of the one or the other group.16 From the very inception of the reforms it was clear to the campaigners that they were meant only for upper caste Hindu women. As participants upholding the Hindu moral order, lower caste artisans and peasants were kept on the very fringes of debates while Muslims were completely excluded. The dominant ideology looked upon upper caste Hindu women as the embodiment of moral order and a number of Bengali texts of the nineteenth century project this image as the central motif.17 The good woman, the chaste married wife and the mother empowered by a spiritual strength were also perceived as the iconic representation of the nation. She was at once a captive to be freed by her morally inspired children and the central figure who create^ and protected the sanctuary of the home, where the colonised intelligentsia persecuted by a foreign ruler could take refuge.18