It's interesting that what ultimately commutes Dom Sing's sentence is Verma's angle of Sing's inherent masculinity as given by his marital status, specifically catered towards the Western sensibility. "Verma emphasizes the wife’s ‘‘miserable condition’’ and her ‘‘cries for help’’ because she was without means of male support and would become destitute" (Shah 128). A damsel in distress is conjured to remind the court of Sing's patriarchal responsibilities, that he, too, is an honorable man like any other with a woman/family to provide for. This institution of Christian/moral monogamous heterosexual marriage so inherent to colonialism and white supremacy is used to reinstate the reputation of the non-white man and essentially undermine the white man's dignity in the process.
J
Jane Malek
@jane_malek