On 29 June 1893, Sir Charles Addis, the Rangoon agent for the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, witnessed a grotesque act of colonial violence in the city. Following a riot the previous day between the indigenous Burmese and Indian migrant labourers, the bodies of the dead were being gathered from the streets of Rangoon by British soldiers and taken to the dead house. The body of one Hindu man, with a swollen stomach, killed during the riots, was followed by a group of mourners, one of whose number touched the corpse against the orders of a British soldier. In response the soldier took his bayonet and plunged it into the belly of the deceased man, covering his mourning followers with blood. This brutal and public violation of an Indian body by a low-ranking British soldier was one of many instances of mundane violence that occurred throughout the duration of British rule in India.
Small episodes like this have been of only passing interest to historians of colonialism and imperialism, until recently.