| Summary/Abstract |
The three-cornered nature of decolonisation—the decline of European power, the culmination of US hegemony, and the immediate appropriation of the new nation by a post-colonial elite—was foundational to G.S. Ghurye’s detailed riposte to Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. I show how the ‘Father of Indian Sociology’ marshalled statistics, sexology and Sanskrit, along with a static notion of heterosexuality, to caricature whiteness and thereby attack US power. More delicately, however, he directed his critique toward reshaping the identity and even the location of caste. I show how, through an act of translation, Ghurye deployed ‘the’ American orgasm to empower a new ruling class that could project itself as casteless and thus lay claim to a national–colonial mandate.
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