British colonial rule was imposed on most regions of South Asia (with the notable exception of present-day Afghanistan) from 1757 under the auspices of the East India Company, though it was not formalized until a century later when official Mughal sovereignty was dissolved in favor of direct rule by the British crown after the Indian rebellion of 1857. As early as 1826, however, the centrality of the Woman Question to Britain's “civilizing mission” in India was established when James Mill decreed in his influential History of British India : “Among rude people, the women are genera…