The statement that “British colonialism should be understood as the employment of masculine power over the feminine” provides a useful gendered framework for understanding colonial rule, but it needs to be critically examined. Colonialism was not simply a political and economic system imposed by Britain on a supposedly feminine India. Rather, it was a complex structure of power in which gender, race, class, sexuality, and imperial authority interacted. The metaphor of masculine power and feminine subordination helps reveal how colonial domination was represented and legitimised, but it can become problematic if it treats colonised societies as passive and uniformly feminine. Colonialism was fundamentally based on unequal power relations. Britain presented itself as strong, rational, modern and civilised, while colonised societies were frequently represented as weak, irrational, backward and incapable of governing themselves. These characteristics were strongly gendered. British colonial discourse often associated masculinity with authority, discipline, reason, military strength and political maturity. At the same time, the colonised population was frequently portrayed as effeminate, emotional, childlike or incapable of self-government. Thus, colonial power was not merely exercised through armies, laws and economic control; it was also expressed through gendered representations of the ruler and the ruled. The idea of the “masculine” British ruler was particularly visible in colonial descriptions of Indian society. British officials and writers often claimed that Indian men had become weak and lacking in martial qualities. The stereotype of the “effeminate Bengali,” for example, contrasted the supposedly masculine British soldier with the allegedly physically and morally weak colonised Indian. Such representations helped construct a hierarchy in which British rule appeared natural because the coloniser was imagined as disciplined and powerful, whereas the colonised were depicted as requiring guidance and control. Colonialism also constructed the image of Britain as a masculine protector. The British Empire was frequently represented as a paternal authority responsible for protecting supposedly vulnerable populations. This paternalism had a gendered character. The coloniser positioned himself as the adult male who had the right to govern an immature or dependent population. The language of “civilising