State Violence and Punishment in India 2009021811, 0203865316, 9780415559706, 9780203865316, 0415559707

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State Violence and Punishment in India

Exploring violent confrontation between the state and the population in colonial and postcolonial India, this book is both a study of the many techniques of colonial coercion and state violence and a cultural history of the different ways in which Indians imbued practices of punishment with their own meanings and reinterpreted acts of state violence in their own political campaigns. This work examines state violence from a historical perspective, expanding the study of punishment beyond the prison by investigating the interplay between imprisonment, corporal punishment, collective fines and state violence. It provides a fresh look at seminal events in the history of mid-twentieth-century India, such as the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements, the Quit India campaign, and the HinduMuslim riots of the 1930s and 1940s. The book extends its analysis into the postcolonial period by considering the ways in which partition and then the struggle against a communist insurgency reshaped practices of punishment and state violence in the first decade after independence. Ultimately, this research challenges prevailing conceptions of the nature of the state in colonial and postcolonial India, which have tended to assume that the state had the ambition and the ability to use the police, military and bureaucracy to dominate the population at will. It argues, on the contrary, that the state in twentieth-century India tended to be self-limiting, vulnerable, and replete with tensions. Relevant to those interested in contemporary India as well as the history of empire and decolonisation, this work provides a new framework for the study of state violence which will be invaluable to scholars of South Asian studies; violence, crime and punishment; and colonial and postcolonial history.

Taylor C. Sherman is currently an AHRC Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Royal Asiatic Society Books

Editorial Board: Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London; Tim Barrett, SOAS, University of London; Owen Wright, SOAS, University of London; Ulrich Kratz, SOAS, University of London; Carole Hillenbrand, University of Edinburgh; François de Blois, previously SOAS, University of London; Gordon Johnson; Anthony Stockwell The Royal Asiatic Society was founded in 1823 ‘for the investigation of subjects connected with, and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to, Asia’. Informed by these goals, the policy of the Society’s Editorial Board is to make available in appropriate formats the results of original research in the humanities and social sciences having to do with Asia, defined in the broadest geographical and cultural sense and up to the present day. THE MAN IN THE PANTHER’S SKIN Shota Rustaveli Translated from the Georgian by M. S. Wardrop New Foreword by Donald Rayfield

STUDIES IN TURKIC AND MONGOLIC LINGUISTICS Gerard Clauson New Introduction by C. Edmund Bosworth

WOMEN, RELIGION AND CULTURE IN IRAN Edited by Sarah Ansari and Vanessa Martin

THE HISTORY OF THE MOHAMMEDAN DYNASTIES IN SPAIN Ahmed ibn Mohammed al-Makkari Translated from the Arabic by Pascual de Gayangos New Introduction by Michael Brett

SOCIETY, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN MAZANDARAN, IRAN 1848–1914 Mohammad Ali Kazembeyki THE ZEN ARTS Rupert Cox

THE COURTS OF PRE-COLONIAL SOUTH INDIA Jennifer Howes

PERSIAN LITERATURE: A BIOBIBLIOGRAPHICAL SURVEY Volume V: Poetry of the PreMongol Period François de Blois MUSLIMS IN INDIA SINCE 1947 Islamic Perspectives on Inter-Faith Relations Yoginder Sikand THE ORIGINS OF HIMALAYAN STUDIES Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling 1820–58 Edited by David M. Waterhouse GRIEVANCE ADMINISTRATION (S¸IKAYET) IN AN OTTOMAN PROVINCE The Kaymakam of Rumelia’s ‘Record Book of Complaints’ of 1781–83 Michael Ursinus THE CHEITHAROL KUMPAPA: THE COURT CHRONICLE OF THE KINGS OF MANIPUR Original Text, Translation and Notes Vol. 1. 33–1763 CE Saroj Nalini Arambam Parratt ANGLO-IRANIAN RELATIONS SINCE 1800 Edited by Vanessa Martin THE BRITISH OCCUPATION OF INDONESIA 1945–46 Britain, the Netherlands and the Indonesian Revolution Richard McMillan

THE POLITICS OF SELF-EXPRESSION The Urdu Middle Class Milieu in Mid-Twentieth Century India and Pakistan Markus Daechsel THE THEORY OF CITRASUTRAS IN INDIAN PAINTING A Critical Re-Evaluation of their Uses and Interpretations Isabella Nardi TRIBAL POLITICS IN IRAN Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–41 Stephanie Cronin MUSLIM WOMEN, REFORM AND PRINCELY PATRONAGE Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal Siobhan Lambert-Hurley HINDI POETRY IN A MUSICAL GENRE Thumri Lyrics Lalita Du Perron THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN MEDICINE IN NON-WESTERN COUNTRIES Historical Perspectives Edited by Hormoz Ebrahimnejad STATE VIOLENCE AND PUNISHMENT IN INDIA Taylor C. Sherman

State Violence and Punishment in India

Taylor C. Sherman

First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

© 2010 Taylor C. Sherman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sherman, Taylor C. State violence and punishment in India / Taylor C. Sherman p. cm. – (Royal Asiatic Society books ; 21) Includes bibliographics references and index 1. India–Politics and government–1919-1947. 2. India–Politics and government–1947- 3. Political violence–India–History–20th century. 4. Violence–India–History–20th century. DS480.030 5–dc22 2009021811 ISBN 0-203-86531-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN13: 978-0-415-55970-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-86531-6 (ebk) ISBN10: 0-415-55970-7 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-86531-6 (ebk)

For Ollie G. Barnes

Contents

Preface Abbreviations

x xii

1

Introduction: state violence and punishment in India, 1919–56

2

Jallianwala Bagh, the Punjab disturbances of 1919, and the limits of state power in India, 1919–20

14

3

Disobedience and discord: the non-cooperation movement, 1920–25

38

4

Extra-judicial punishments and the civil disobedience movement, 1930–34

58

Legislating against communal violence: the United Provinces Goonda Act, and the Bombay Whipping Act, 1929–38

79

6

The hunger strikes of the Lahore Conspiracy Case prisoners, 1929–39

93

7

The Second World War and India’s coercive network, 1939–46

111

8

Partition and the transitional state in India, 1947–48

133

9

The police action in Hyderabad and the making of the postcolonial state in India, 1947–56 151

5

10 Conclusion: rethinking colonial punishment, reassessing postcolonial Inida Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

1

170 179 181 221 240

Preface

This book began as a doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge, and as such, I would like to thank my supervisor, Chris Bayly, who offered me exceptional amounts of both time and inspiration during the writing of that thesis. My examiners, Tim Harper and David Washbrook, provided criticism which proved helpful in the re-formulation of that work for publication. I must thank Sarah Ansari at Royal Holloway and William Gould at the University of Leeds for their generosity in allowing me to complete this manuscript whilst also working on our project, ‘From subjects to citizens: society and the everyday state in India and Pakistan’. I was able to complete my doctoral work with funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Trust, the Smuts Memorial Fund, the Cambridge Overseas Trust, and the Cambridge History Faculty. The staff of the following institutions made the task of researching sometimes rather grim material a more pleasant undertaking: the Centre of South Asian Studies, and the University Library, Cambridge, the library at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the British Library, London, the UK National Archives, Kew, the National Archives of India and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, the Andhra Pradesh State Archives, Hyderabad, the Delhi State Archives, the Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai, the Punjab State Archives, Chandigarh, the Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow, and the West Bengal State Archives, Calcutta. Chapter 9 and half of chapter 6 have been previously published. Chapter 9 appeared in The Indian Economic and History Review, 44:4 (2007), and I must thank Sage Publications for granting permission to republish this piece. I would also like to express my gratitude to Berg Publishers, an imprint of A&C Black Publishers Ltd., for permission to reproduce the first half of chapter 6, which appeared in Cultural & Social History, 5:4 (2008), in a special issue on ‘Politics, Penality and (Post-) Colonialism’. I wish to thank Aishwarj Kumar in Cambridge and Francesca Orsini at SOAS, Sandesh Singh in Delhi and Anoop and Jagdeep Johar for their good humoured help in the development of my Hindi language skills, and Brahma Reddy for his assistance with my Telugu. Many people have generously offered their comments and criticism on various aspects of this work,

Preface xi although they are in no way responsible for the ways in which I have used these exchanges of ideas. I am grateful to Ricardo Roque who has critiqued large sections of this manuscript. I would also like to thank Rupa Viswanath, Uditi Sen, Dilip Menon, Stacey Hynd, Durbha Ghosh, Joya Chatterji and Clare Anderson for their comments on individual chapters or pieces of writing that have eventually made their way into this work. Rachel Berger, Vee Barbary, Max Horster and Hank McCurdy deserve separate mention for the time they put into reading and commenting extensively on these chapters when in dissertation form. I owe a special intellectual debt to Eleanor Newbigin for spending many a long and pleasant hour debating the ideas that were developed in this manuscript. And, I must thank Ashwin for his consistent support in everything I do. This book is for Ollie, in gratitude for the kindness and guidance he so generously offered more than a decade ago, which I will never forget. London, October 2009

Abbreviations

AICC AISPC APSA BLUK CDM CID CSAS CSP CNSWW CPI CWMG DSA HSRA IB INC IOR MLNG MSA NAI NAUK NCM NMML NWFP PBF PSA RSS SPO SWJN1 SWJN2 UPSA WBSA

All-India Congress Committee All-India States People’s Conference Andhra Pradesh State Archives British Library, United Kingdom Civil Disobedience Movement Criminal Investigation Department Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge Congress Socialist Party Congress, Nehru and the Second World War Communist Party of India Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Delhi State Archives Hindustan Socialist Republican Association Intelligence Bureau Indian National Congress India Office Records Muslim League National Guards Maharashtra State Archives National Archives of India National Archives, United Kingdom Non-cooperation Movement Nehru Museum and Memorial Library North West Frontier Province Punjab Boundary Force Punjab State Archives Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Special Police Officer Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, first series Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series Uttar Pradesh State Archives West Bengal State Archives

1

Introduction: State violence and punishment in India, 1919–56

This book explores the nature of the state in twentieth-century India by examining the practices of punishment and state violence which were used to counter large-scale unrest in India between 1919 and 1956. On one level this is a study of the different coercive techniques developed by the Indian state, and of the popular strategies which shaped these tactics. The following chapters significantly expand the study of punishment, which, hitherto, has focused almost exclusively on the prison. To this end, they develop the idea of the ‘coercive network’ to understand the interconnected institutions, laws and practices that made up the state’s coercive repertoire. Far from being limited to a single institution, coercive practices ranged from firing on crowds and bombing from the air, to dismissal from one’s place of work or study, to collective fines, imprisonment and corporal punishment. Sanctions were meted out not only by state employees acting through formal legal procedures, but also by intermediaries, quasi-state actors and private parties, whose actions were sometimes only tangentially linked to the formal criminal justice system. Moreover, these sanctions were always part of larger imperial agendas and strategies of rule which impacted the quotidian functioning of penal practices. At the same time, this is also a cultural history of state violence, for it seeks to explore the ways in which acts of coercion were interpreted and given meaning, not just by the government, but by the population. Thus, without ignoring the inherently dominant nature of the state in penal practices, this book emphasises the many ways in which the governed used the law and its enforcement as a site of negotiation and confrontation. In turn, it charts the very real changes which these representative processes inspired in the everyday functioning of the state. Ultimately, this research challenges prevailing conceptions of the nature of the state in colonial and post-colonial India, which have tended to assume that the state was able to use the police, military and bureaucracy to dominate the population of India at will. On the contrary, the everyday state in twentiethcentury India tended to be vulnerable, fluid and replete with tensions.

The study of the Indian state In the past decade, scholars of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century India have conducted a series of debates over the nature of the colonial state.

2

Introduction

They have disagreed on the state’s ambitions and its vulnerabilities, its forms of rule, and its impact on the population.1 For scholars of late nineteenthand early twentieth-century India this debate seems to have been won by those who favour the idea that the imperial project had few self-defined boundaries. Inspired by Foucault and Lefebvre, these scholars have analysed the colonial state’s medical programmes,2 its disciplinary regimes,3 its taxonomic activities,4 its domination of geographical space,5 and its management of the environment.6 The state in these studies is on a mission of medicalisation, categorisation, professionalisation, normalisation, rationalisation and, of course, modernisation. Most scholars concede that the colonial state fell short of its goals in at least some respects, but the picture which emerges from these works is of a state which is constantly expanding both its regimes of power and its ambitions. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that historians of the twentieth century have long taken the strength of the state for granted. Those members of the first ‘Cambridge school’ who researched the late colonial period tended to take at face value the British declaration that the imperial power could assert control over Indians when necessary.7 Whilst many scholars who published in the Subaltern Studies series did not concern themselves with the state at all, those who did turn their gaze to the colonial state have also tended to assume that its institutions, from the police to the archive, were routinely used to depoliticise and subordinate members of the population.8 Scholars inspired by postmodern theorists have tended to emphasise the ways in which the state’s totalising projects continued during this period.9 Finally, historians of the first decades of independence have tended to assume that the early postcolonial state was stable, and that it owed this strength to its colonial inheritance.10 And yet, by the end of the twentieth century, India’s state was looking more fallible. Its services were accused of corruption and politicisation. It had managed the transition to democracy, but had failed to forge social cohesion. It was being buffeted by the demands of the depressed castes and the Hindu right. It was the home of one of the world’s largest armies and some of the world’s longestrunning insurgencies. Its economy was enjoying unprecedented growth, but the state was nevertheless falling short of its development goals. How can one explain the incongruity between the alleged power of the colonial state and the apparent weakness of the postcolonial one? The answer, this work argues, is to re-evaluate the late colonial and early post colonial period. Only a handful of scholars have been sensitive to the twentieth-century state’s vulnerabilities, its practices of neglect, its impossibilities.11 Chandavarkar has suggested that in significant arenas the colonial state wilfully (and even negligently) restricted its scope.12 Specific studies of the Second World War and the Bengal famine in 1943 have indicated that the functioning of the late colonial state was often inefficient and obstructionist.13 The present work positions itself closer to this latter group of scholars. It finds that the techniques of power which Foucault identified did exist in India, but that they did not necessarily have the same functions or the same totalising effects as they supposedly had elsewhere in the world. And they existed alongside other state practices which

Introduction

3

were no less significant for not having been identified by Foucault. It is clear that the late colonial state contained both more complexities and more tensions than many scholars have acknowledged. This work employs a method of studying the state which makes no assumptions about its conduct or its final form. Taking its cue from anthropologists who have developed the idea of the ‘everyday state’, this work regards the state as a construct, constituted out of its quotidian practices.14 These include the ‘normalising’ processes which Foucault identified: ordering space and time, supervising and disciplining the population, and symbolically reiterating government authority.15 But apart from these, the state is also constituted by acts of corruption, coercion, violence and failure. It is through these everyday practices that the state makes its presence felt amongst the population. Whilst the state is experienced on this everyday level, it is also imagined.16 Bureaucrats and lawmakers draft policies and legislation which embody both their current conception of the state and their vision for its future. At the same time, political organisations as well as individual members of the public also imagine the state through discussions, petitions, and the media. These public representations of the state are often accompanied by criticism and demands for change, all of which shape the perception of the state. The experiential and the imaginary state are regularly integrated into one another. Local events can be given wider significance as they are analysed and retold by the media, the government and political parties. In these same processes the national is woven into the local as larger narratives are used to frame single events.17 In this understanding, policy is important, but implementation (or lack thereof) is paramount to the experience of the state. The key focus of analysis therefore becomes the individual acting on behalf of the state. These men (and they were almost exclusively men during this period) constituted several layers of administration. At the top were District Officers (variously known as Collectors, Magistrates and Commissioners), senior police and military officers, as well as the secretaries serving in provincial and national government offices. Most of these posts were filled by members of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), an elite cadre of officers and the self-styled ‘steel frame’ of the Raj. Upon closer examination, however, this steel frame does not look as homogenous or as unbending as the metaphor suggests. Even before the First World War, this group of elite Europeans had been becoming more diverse: the introduction of the competitive exam in 1853 and the falling real wage of these officers brought men of different social backgrounds into the ICS.18 With the First World War, rapid Indianisation took place as Europeans were transferred to fight the war, and, in 1917, Indians were promised a greater share of elite posts. For their part, the Indians who joined were a heterogeneous group. Though most were patriotic, only some were sympathetic to the Congress.19 Yet more diversity was added to the ranks when the Home Member, Sir Alexander Muddiman, promised to appoint Indians from minorities to the ICS, and thereby introduced the principle of communal representation into the services.20 When in post in the districts, these men, who were endowed with wide powers

4

Introduction

over everything from policing to revenue collection, embodied the state. These ‘men on the spot’ tended to value courage and action over intellect and ideology. They tended to be, unsurprisingly, rather independently minded, even when implementing directives that came from above. And yet, in the final five decades of British rule, the ICS numbered little more than a thousand men.21 Each had a cadre of subordinates, however, from Deputy Collectors to lowly police constables, nearly all of whom were Indian. The middle and lower ranks were far more numerous than their superiors. In the 1930s between 200,000 and 300,000 police could be found working in the service of the state.22 Thousands more served as low-ranking judges and provincial civil service men.23 In theory, the structural organisation of these services, with their strict chain of command, provided little room for the exercise of individual initiative.24 In practice, however, middle and low ranking officers had significant scope for independent action in their everyday activities. Subordinate police in Bombay, Chandavarkar has shown, were both reliant on local power structures, and regularly influenced by external social pressures.25 The autonomy of senior officers and the unruliness of subordinate ranks suggests that the everyday functioning of the state itself had not been completely disciplined by the twentieth century.

India’s coercive network This had important implications for the possibilities of punishment and state violence. Previous studies of the colonial state’s coercive institutions have tended to treat the police, military, judiciary and penal system as isolated entities. Very few scholars have ventured beyond the discrete categories of the colonial archive to consider practices which occurred outside of the police, military and prison.26 Much is known, therefore, about recruitment, training and supervision in the police and military.27 Similarly, historians have set out in detail the ambitious disciplinary plans of India’s jails28 as well as its other forms of incarceration.29 Whereas the colonial state’s coercive character is widely assumed, neither state violence nor forms of capital, corporal or collective punishment have been addressed in any depth. Overall, there seems to be an assumption that such sanctions were gradually replaced by imprisonment.30 By disregarding alternate forms of punishment which functioned in tandem with the prison, previous research has tended to overstate both the importance of incarceration and the significance of the disciplinary objectives of the colonial state. Separate studies of these neglected practices will not provide a complete picture of how the colonial state tried to maintain ‘law and order’, however. Relatively little is known about the ways in which the different institutions of the state interacted with one another and with government departments and individual officers as they actually tried to tackle unrest. In studying the state’s use of its coercive powers, the chapters which follow trace the entire process of the state’s response to an event, from policy formation (where there

Introduction

5

was a policy), to action on the ground by police, courts and local officers, to the negotiations over the punishment of those deemed responsible, and the representation of the occurrence in the public sphere after the event. When one examines the colonial state in this manner, one becomes aware of two things. Firstly, the ‘ordinary’ criminal justice system, whereby police arrested suspects, courts tried them and prisons reformed them, simply did not function according to this ideal. Criminals were not guided effortlessly through the system with disinterested methodical precision. In fact these institutions were regularly overwhelmed by unrest. Police preferred indiscriminate arrests to the investigation of crimes, cases quickly became backlogged in understaffed courts, and prisons remained unruly and unsanitary spaces governed by force. As a result, imprisonment did not assume an ascendant place in the penal system.31 Secondly, in response to these shortcomings, the state developed a wide range of alternative penal tactics, some of which had little connection to the formal criminal justice system. Indeed, governments in India tended to avoid trying to rectify the shortcomings of the ordinary criminal justice system. Instead, they tended to favour penal shortcuts. Informal, extra-judicial, violent and collective punishments remained important elements in the penal regime. These included firing on crowds, the exemplary use of bodily sanctions, detention without trial, the imposition of collective fines on the population of a ‘disturbed’ area, and the expulsion of students and teachers from schools. This work refers to this larger range of practices, along with the laws which enabled them and the institutions which supported them as the ‘coercive network’ of the state.32 This network was loosely knit: vulnerable, negotiated and occasionally irrational. It was constituted not so much by discrete institutions as by the everyday actions of individuals. Physical force retained an integral place in this coercive network. However, the existing scholarship on state violence does not provide an adequate framework for understanding this fact. This literature tends to fall into two genres. The first is concerned with formal counter-insurgency measures and with the success or failure of given strategies.33 Consequently, the violence deployed by the state has tended to appear rational and organised in these accounts. Acts of aggression which contravened orders or stepped outside of official policies have tended to be seen as aberrant, and therefore of little import. The second group of historians have been influenced by the ‘cultural turn’ and their works are thus concerned with the ways in which state violence was represented in contemporary texts and images.34 Thus far, however, this body of research has been concerned primarily with works of fiction, in English, designed for a British audience. These historians tend to argue that cultural works helped legitimate the empire back home, but their analyses are rarely re-grounded in the material. Nor do they consider contemporary indigenous representations of violence, evidence of which abounds in the twentieth century. As a whole, previous studies of colonial violence have not regarded the aggressive acts of the state as potential sites of negotiation between the state and the

6

Introduction

population. Nor have they been particularly sensitive to the ambiguities and ambivalences prevalent in practices of state violence. The following chapters examine state violence in both its extraordinary and its mundane forms. State violence in India was often not centrally planned. Instead, it tended to be perpetrated by individual officers operating under their wide discretionary powers. These acts of violence became battlegrounds of representation: Indians interpreted state violence as they pursued their own political goals; but official rhetoric attempted to assure the public that government servants used force only as a last resort. In turn, these contests had a very real effect on the everyday functioning of the state. This work tracks these modes of aggression, representation, reflection and adjustment over a period of nearly forty years. It is both sensitive to the complexities which arose from the fact that most colonial violence was perpetrated by Indians upon Indians and attentive to the slippages between principle and practice. In this research, state violence is seen not simply as a function of technological possibilities and ideological imperatives; it is regarded as a coercive technique which both enabled and eluded government control. Ideals of discipline and reform rarely underpinned the practices of the coercive network. Instead, these practices were defined more by their internal contradictions, than by the principles which governed them. As this study progresses, three key tensions will emerge. First, the state’s penchant for ruling collectives often ran up against the self-imposed liberal desire to govern individuals. Second, penal measures, which had been designed to humiliate and dominate the body, sat uneasily beside rising medical imperatives and evolving conceptions of the responsibility of the state for the well-being of its subjects.35 Finally, it was difficult to square the demands of an imperial economy designed to extract economic benefit from the colonies with the ideological promise of the civilising mission which necessitated investment. Because of these conflicts, practices of punishment and state violence tended to be determined by less lofty imperatives. First, competition between various levels of government, whether over principles or over funds, ensured that many policies were dictated by the desire to find a compromise within the administration, rather than by any concern with the reform of those being punished. Similarly, financial considerations bore heavily on penal practice: between the wars, the Raj suffered from severe fiscal constraints which influenced every aspect of punishment. After the British departed, the new rulers of independent India, with an eye on the electorate, preferred to fund economic development over the reform of coercive institutions. As a result, prisons suffered neglect, whilst police remained poorly trained and courts continued to be underresourced. Alternative punishments flourished in these conditions. Above all, politics determined the ways in which administrators responded to collective action. Particularly when Indians were punished for participation in a political movement, the penalties they received were determined by the political climate of the day. Prisoners tended to leave jails not when their sentence had expired, but when those in power felt the need to be conciliatory,

Introduction

7

either in the aftermath of a political agreement or in the hope of securing one. Equally, those involved in ‘communal’ violence were often only punished to the extent that the sanctions imposed upon one religious group could be ‘balanced’ by the punishment of the other. In sum, senior members of government in India were often more concerned with securing ‘law and order’ or creating a general sense that ‘justice had been done’ than with instigating prosecutions for specific crimes. These phrases took on a rather different meaning in India than they had in Britain, however. A stable ‘law and order’ situation signified the absence of unrest more than the smooth functioning of the police, courts and prisons, whilst the pursuit of ‘justice’ primarily entailed establishing that the government was powerful, but benevolent and fair. By using punishments for essentially spectacular purposes, governments in India helped to transform penal practice into political spectacle. The defining features of India’s coercive network, therefore, were not discipline and regimentation, but unpredictability and contingency.

Political choreography and the coercive network Far from being a comprehensive and all-encompassing system, there were gaps in the network of coercive practices. Time and again different types of ‘disorder’ – from non-violent political agitations, to the operations of terrorist cells, from ‘communal’ rioting to communist-inspired guerrilla warfare – forced the coercive network to adapt to cope with the unique problems arising from these different challenges. In addition, the weaknesses of the coercive network regularly opened up opportunities for the population to contest both penal policy and the specific acts of individual state actors. Some of these groups created alternative structures of authority and regimes of discipline which attempted to undermine the state’s claim to the exclusive right to rule. An examination of the mechanics of these political movements will augment our understanding of the ways in which Indian collective action forced the state to reconsider both its organisation and its functions. Although the Indian National Congress was certainly not the only group which challenged the government, the activities of the mainstream nationalist movement significantly altered the state and politics in twentieth-century India. Hitherto, the historiography on Indian nationalism has been concerned primarily with the internal mechanics of the Congress party and with the relationship between the party and its following. The fascination of some in the early Cambridge School with the party’s internal ‘factionalism’36 was accompanied by a focus amongst historians of the nationalist school on the ways in which the party mobilised the public.37 Factionalism and mobilisation have given way, in the wake of the Subaltern Studies intervention, to research on the fragmented nature of the nationalist movement. These scholars, interrogating Congress’ claim to represent the entire Indian nation, have emphasised the ways in which the main nationalist party often alienated, disappointed and subordinated the interests of Muslims, workers, peasants and

8

Introduction

women to its own programme.38 Historians have underlined the fact that, where Congress campaigns succeeded, they had often combined with preexisting socio-economic grievances.39 They showed that Congress was as preoccupied with disciplining and controlling its unruly and unpredictable followers as it was with mobilising them.40 With the rising prominence of Hindu nationalism in the last decades of the twentieth century, the historiography has turned to consider the implicit and explicit connections between Congress and a (largely Brahminic) Hindu nationalism, a field of study which seems to complete the demolition of Congress’ claim to speak for the nation.41 These studies of the internal character of the nationalist movement have ignored, for the most part, the ways in which the Congress not only transformed India’s political landscape but also brought about changes in the everyday functioning of the state. After Mohandas K. Gandhi came to prominence in the party following the First World War, the campaigns of the Indian National Congress were always both confrontational and constructive. Because the successive movements were intended to be non-violent, Congress campaigns centred on symbolic challenges to British rule. In the 1920s and 1930s, nationalist leaders tried to imbue ordinary Indians with a sense of the nation by focusing on common symbols. Indians were encouraged to wear khadi (homespun cloth) and the Gandhi cap, and to engage in ritualised national performances such as producing salt, marching, singing national songs and saluting the flag.42 Whilst the constructive aspects of Congress’ campaigns, especially the importance of khadi, have long been recognised, it is easy to take for granted the fact that one of the first objectives of nationalists was to confront and reform the (colonial) state. This second facet of their programme emphasised the brutality of the colonial state and the civility of Indian protesters, and gave rise to its own symbolism. Thus, the political prisoner, quietly suffering in jail for his country, became an important element in the nationalists’ semiotic pantheon.43 Moments of state violence, too, were given larger meaning by the nationalist cause. Indian political parties, as they imagined the colonial state for the public, routinely criticised the conduct of individual members of the police, military and bureaucracy. In so doing, they transformed separate instances of state violence or discriminatory penal treatment into evidence of the injustice of colonial rule as a whole. Gandhian concepts of ahimsa (non-violence) and satyagraha (lit. zeal for truth, non-violent civil resistance) were central to the Congress’ conduct during these clashes.44 But even those who did not ascribe to Gandhi’s philosophy tapped into the power of these symbols. Although they were intended to forge Indians into a nation, these endeavours could also open fissures in the population.45 For example, as nationalists criticised the state for its violence, they ran up against the fact that Indian members of the colonial forces were in many cases the primary perpetrators of that violence. Although Congress attempted to convert government servants to their cause, their inconsistent approach to servicemen – sometimes courting them, sometimes criticising them – failed to convince many of them, and so left the relationship between the two shot through with political discord.

Introduction

9

Moreover, once created, these symbols were not easy to control.46 Congressmen, of course, were not the only ones to use these methods. Revolutionaries – known as terrorists in the twentieth-century colonial lexicon – used political trials and hunger strikes in jail to further their cause. The Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, particularly from the late 1930s, contested the punishments of the religious groups they claimed to represent. While the colonial state adapted its forces to try to face down these challenges, Congressmen had to decide what relationship they wanted with these groups. The views of Congress members were neither unitary nor consistent, and, as a whole, they displayed a distinct ambivalence towards these parties. These groups could be useful in the confrontation with the colonial state, but they were not easily integrated into the constructive side of the mainstream nationalist agenda articulated most often by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. After independence, Congress’ reluctance to reconcile fully with these other nationalists seemed prescient. Because similar strategies of opposition had been adopted by all parties, the contests over the treatment of political prisoners or over the conduct of local officers did not end with the departure of the British. These tactics helped integrate the conduct of state forces into larger political choreographies. Punishment and state violence became sites of political affect, where meanings were attached to practices in order to draw them into the political strategies of competing parties.

Themes and arguments Historians who have ventured to remark upon what effect nationalist activities had upon the state have only been able to offer vague assertions that the movement undermined the authority and legitimacy of the imperial power.47 The present work re-grounds popular interpretations of the state’s coercive methods by examining the changes which these representations wrought in the everyday conduct of the state. During the period under review successive crises, which were brought on by a combination of these political strategies and the shortcomings of state institutions and practices, forced the coercive network to adapt. Although many changes occurred, they can be grouped into a few general themes. The first theme is the increasing diversity of penal tactics. Contrary to the assumptions of those who have studied colonial prisons previously, penal strategies in India did not become centred on formal imprisonment.48 Rather, they became more diverse over the course of the first half of the twentieth century. In this process, a person’s social position increasingly defined the terms of his or her punishment. The body was a key site where the boundaries of gender, race and class in India were articulated.49 Therefore, many of the negotiations surrounding the use of various penal tactics were framed in terms of whether a given practice was appropriate for Indian bodies generally, or for certain classes of Indians in particular. Imprisonment, for one, had always been differentiated on the basis of status, and class distinctions

10

Introduction

amongst prisoners were reinforced in this period. Some penal tactics, especially those involving physical violence, were ruled out entirely for the middle and upper segments of Indian society, but extended for the lower orders. Interestingly, there was almost a complete absence of any mention of caste in the archival materials covering these changes. Of course, class and caste were inextricably interlinked, but this signals a shift away from the nineteenthcentury obsession with how to square the demands of caste with the imperatives of penal practices.50 Finally, the punishment of several different groups was moved out of the formal criminal justice system altogether. For those who were able to use the mechanisms of the ordinary judicial procedures to their own advantage, and for those who were able to evade conviction, the state developed several alternatives to imprisonment, from detention without trial to corporal punishment and banishment. As the state’s coercive measures diversified, the use of physical force retained its prominent place in this repertoire. The second set of themes, therefore, concerns state violence. Although there was consensus between governments in India and Indian political parties that physical violence could be used to quell unrest (in certain circumstances), non-official Indian organisations all reserved the right to criticise individual cases in which they believed the resort to force had not been justified. India’s governments responded to these criticisms in two ways. On paper, the use of force was subjected to increased regulation. Rules for the use of whipping or the resort to firing on crowds were elaborated and disseminated to local officers; when force was used these officers were required to provide more detailed reports on the events surrounding it. Concurrently, as British rule ceded the loyalty of its traditional supporters to the nationalist movement, it became more reliant on – and less critical of – its own coercive forces. Fearing that nationalist campaigns to woo servicemen from their posts would succeed, governments grew ever more reluctant to investigate allegations of wrong-doing, or to discipline members of the police, military and bureaucracy when complaints were made against them. These men tended to prefer to confront non-violent protesters with batons on the street rather than with the penal code in the courtroom; they targeted violent collective activities with judicially sanctioned violence in the form of whipping, and with their own forms of improvised violence. During periods of unrest, when communication was often difficult and decisions had to be made by ‘the man on the spot’ the state tended to continue to resort to the use of physical violence. State violence, therefore, increasingly took the form of tacitly permitted transgressions of the standing orders on the use of force. As a result, a gap grew between official rhetoric, which affirmed the government’s commitment to the minimum use of force and the ‘rule of law’, and its private approval of increasing levels of physical force. Undoubtedly, this gap existed before 1919, but the pressures of the national and ethnic unrest in this period widened this fissure into a chasm. Third, these trends in punishment and state violence in turn provide a window through which to view what was happening to the Indian state

Introduction

11

during this period. It is clear that the state was subject to several conflicting pressures. To begin with, the late colonial state was structurally unique in that successive constitutional reforms had devolved power to Indians at the local, provincial and national levels to create a governmental system which was occasionally paralysed by the ideological fissures which these structural changes introduced. Second, no matter what shape the constitution took in India, local-level government servants consistently claimed a right to act autonomously to fulfil their duties. Their independent actions often impeded central government objectives. Third, and as a consequence of this, the Government of India tried to assert more control over its men on the ground. The central government took upon itself more policy-making responsibilities, even as it ostensibly devolved power to provincial governments in the 1919 and 1935 constitutions. Although the centre’s command over policy-making increased, its control over policy implementation did not. State servants in the localities fiercely guarded their autonomy. Many protested loudly when their powers were unofficially curtailed and some simply refused to act on government recommendations. Centralisation, therefore, was not so much an ineluctable trend in Indian government, as an unrelenting source of tension between the centre and its foot soldiers.51 A picture of the Indian state thus emerges which disrupts the current scholarly consensus on the nature of the state in twentieth century India. The state was not a static entity: not only was its constitutional structure regularly reordered, the lower levels of the state were constantly adapting to changing circumstances. Indeed, in so far as it was able to reorganise scarce resources to try to meet new challenges, it was remarkably flexible. But for this very reason, it could be highly improvised and it could lack internal discipline. Taken as a whole, the state tended to react to events: it was vulnerable to popular pressures; it did not proactively shape realities on the ground. In consequence, the colonial state’s coercive policies were inconsistent, and their implementation was patchy. The centre only exercised intermittent control over the lower ranks of state actors. Individual officers alternately obstructed the centre’s plans and overstepped its orders in implementing them. Battles over the shape of the state therefore tended to take place on the ground rather than in provincial assemblies or cabinet meetings. Government records are at the centre of this investigation, but they are supplemented by private papers, newspapers and vernacular publications. This work tries to maintain an awareness of the archive’s function in the production of knowledge about the colonised and in the imagination of the state from within, even though the primary concern here is the material impact of state action rather than these discursive practices themselves.52 This work uses Hindi and Urdu published literature, including proscribed publications.53 Although these works were banned, censorship laws, like those in the rest of the coercive network, were often patchily enforced. Police, customs, postal inspectors and censors ‘had difficulty coordinating decisions’, whilst ‘squabbles’ in the bureaucracy were common.54 Moreover, volunteers courted imprisonment

12

Introduction

by carrying copies of banned publications, and proscribed literature was disseminated through kavi sammelans or poetry meetings.55 In sum, these works often reached the public and played an important role in interpreting state violence. Finally, newspapers also inform this study. Governments used press releases to tell their side of the story and they hoped to shape the way events were recorded by patronising sympathetic newspapers. Indians of every shade of political opinion used newspapers to debate, define and disseminate their agendas and to inform their readership of their activities.56 Through letters, interviews and reports, newspapers were also sites where editors, political leaders and ordinary people could confront the government: they could present non-official versions of contested events, give voice to those put on trial and interpret government actions and policies for their audiences. This book is organised as a series of interlinked case studies, rather than as a blanket analysis of every instance of violence in India in this period. The chapters which follow are organised chronologically, and focus on events rather than provinces because many of the issues under examination were not confined to the administrative boundaries of the colonial state. Each chapter analyses one or more extraordinary challenges to law and order. Each investigates how the state was adapted to meet these challenges and explores the ways in which Indians interpreted state actions and negotiated their own punishments. The work begins with the ascent of Gandhian nationalism in 1919, and concludes by considering the first decade of independent rule in India. This time frame draws attention to the legacies of colonial systems of governance in the postcolonial period and emphasises the ways in which popular forms of negotiation and confrontation that came to the fore during the anti-British campaigns continued after 1947. Chapter two examines the Punjab disturbances of 1919, sketching out the broad outlines of the coercive network as it functioned during this unrest. The third and fourth chapters examine the non-cooperation movement (1920–22) and the civil disobedience movement (1930–34) respectively, and analyse the different strategies by which the mainstream Indian National Congress used the state’s coercive measures in its own political choreography. These chapters highlight the ways in which the dramatisation of imprisonment and state violence prompted governments to move the punishment of non-violent political protesters outside of the ordinary criminal justice system. Communal violence in the United Provinces and Bombay is the subject of the fifth chapter, which demonstrates the ways in which governments confronted extraordinary unrest of this kind with their own routine violence. The next chapter aims to understand the tensions in the relationship between the revolutionary-terrorist movement in North India and the mainstream Indian National Congress by examining hunger strikes which the former group undertook in Indian jails between 1929 and 1939. Chapter seven covers the two major Congress-led movements during the Second World War: the individual satyagraha, and the quit India movement. It charts the ways in which the state’s coercive tactics were adapted both to a more industrialised economy and to a political scene

Introduction

13

dominated by communal strife. This is followed by an investigation of the ways in which the police and military were altered during the violence of the partition of the subcontinent. The penultimate chapter considers the ‘police action’, and the counter-insurgency operations against the communists in Hyderabad, 1945–56. The concluding chapter examines the connections between state violence in India and in the other sites of empire, including the Caribbean, Africa and South East Asia. These chapters aim to establish a framework for a new way of studying punishment and state violence. This more integrated and comprehensive methodology in turn gives rise to a new understanding of the complexities and tensions within states in the colonial and postcolonial world.

2

Jallianwala Bagh, the Punjab disturbances of 1919, and the limits of state power in India

This first chapter examines the various forms of punishment and state violence that occurred during the Punjab disturbances, including the infamous firing at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, where over five hundred Indians were killed. In the following pages, a general picture will emerge of the extent and nature of the coercive network in India as it functioned in 1919. There were a wide variety of coercive tactics which the state could draw upon when needed, from imprisonment and bodily humiliations, to firing on crowds and collective fines. Each of these practices was both intrinsically connected with the others, and dependent upon the functioning of the police, courts and bureaucracy. Together these institutions and practices formed an interdependent coercive network, which, in spite of its size and diversity, was overwhelmed by the unrest. As a result, the coercive tactics which were used tended to be overwhelmingly collective, and often violent. Although the use of physical force was a regular part of this repertoire, most state violence resulted from the impromptu exercise of the discretion of individual officers, rather than from premeditated strategies drawn up by governments. The second aim of this chapter is to sketch out the ways in which popular movements could use specific episodes of punishment and state violence not only to criticise the government and increase their following, but also to negotiate the terms of their own punishment. The following pages highlight two major tensions which defined the coercive network: the first was the clash between the imperial power’s liberal pretensions to govern individuals, and its local officers’ penchant for ruling collectives; this was itself part of the larger conflict between the fierce independence of local-level state actors and the centralising tendencies of the higher levels of government.

Introduction The years preceding 1919 had been difficult in India. During the First World War, India’s resources had been tapped to an unprecedented extent as Indians provided nearly seven hundred thousand men and around Rs92m for the war effort.1 Those who remained at home suffered the additional burden of high prices and disease.2 To garner the support of India’s ‘moderates’ during this

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difficult time, the Liberal Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, had announced in 1917 that ‘responsible government in India’ was the long-term goal of British rule in India. With the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford he set about re-crafting India’s constitutional structure. Under the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, to be inaugurated at the end of 1919, Indians would, for the first time, be directly elected to provincial legislatures with law-making powers. Under this system of dyarchy, British Governors and the British Viceroy were, in theory, to retain control over essential matters and those relating to ‘law and order’, including land revenue, justice and the police and military. While these incentives had been designed for those Indians who were willing to cooperate with the imperial power, less generous measures had been aimed at Indians who were less amenable to the British presence in India. The 1915 Defence of India Act had provided extraordinary war-time powers to try ‘terrorists’ and ‘revolutionaries’ in camera or to detain them without trial. When these powers were due to expire at the end of the war, the Government of India drew up the Rowlatt Bill to extend them for three more years, arguing that they were essential to contain the activities the Ghadar party and the Bengali terrorist parties.3 Montagu did not have high regard for the powers, and every Indian member of the Imperial Legislative Council opposed them, but the Government of India pushed the Rowlatt Act through. In response, Mohandas K. Gandhi launched a satyagraha against the Act. By later standards, the movement in the spring of 1919 was relatively small as it was restricted to the larger cities in north and west India where Gandhi had gained prominence since returning to India in 1915.4 At the time, however, one Hindi-language newspaper reported that ‘such extensive enthusiasm was unknown … in the history of India’.5 But the campaign would quickly become more renowned for the violence that accompanied it. On 10 April, the Government of Punjab deported two prominent political figures in Amritsar, Dr Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal, in an attempt to stifle the movement. When Gandhi attempted to enter the Punjab on the same day, he too was detained and turned back to Bombay. The ‘arrest’ of Gandhi and the deportation of Satyapal and Kitchlew lit a fire under the movement in India’s larger cities. Calcutta, Delhi and Lahore witnessed strikes and processions.6 In Amritsar, an estimated 40,000 people gathered on 10 April to demand the release of Kitchlew and Satyapal. The military fired on the crowd, killing an unknown number of Indians. Popular aggression accompanied the violence of the state. People in Amritsar burned government buildings, killed three European bank employees and two other Europeans, and assaulted a European missionary named Miss Sherwood leaving her wounded in the street. Over the following four days, groups attacked government property and Europeans in Punjab and in the Bombay Presidency. In Kasur, Punjab, villagers attacked a train, killed two European officers and injured two more; in the Bombay Presidency, villagers near Nadiad derailed a train carrying troops to calm yet another outbreak, this one in Ahmedabad. Martial law was proclaimed in Punjab on 15 April, and remained in force in five of the province’s 29 districts until 11 June 1919.

16

Jallianwala Bagh

On the fourth day after disturbances began in Amritsar, when orders had been passed banning public gatherings, several thousand people assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, a rather undistinguished enclosure in the city regularly used for public meetings. When the man in charge of the army in Amritsar, General Reginald Dyer, heard of the meeting, he assembled a team of fifty soldiers and marched to the scene. Without prior warning Dyer ordered his soldiers to fire on the assembly. He directed them to continue firing for nearly ten minutes even as people began to disperse in panic. Casualty figures remain disputed, but the soldiers probably killed around 530 people.7 In both the popular and the scholarly imagination the massacre has become so infamous that the two words Jallianwala Bagh no longer merely indicate a location in Amritsar, but rather have come to symbolise the brutality of British rule in India. Was Jallianwala Bagh representative of British rule? Fein has argued that the colonial social order based on racial difference tended to produce just this type of class crimes.8 Bose agrees that it was ‘symptomatic’ of colonial rule generally.9 Dyer’s most recent biographer finds, on the contrary, that, ‘Dyer stands alone in modern British history’ because of his actions at Amritsar.10 According to Collett, Dyer’s ‘unique and difficult personality’, which left him prone to bouts of low confidence that ‘could erupt in outbursts of fury and violence’, explains his actions on 13 April 1919.11 The following pages answer this question by examining the firing at Jallianwala Bagh in the context of the entire coercive network and the range of punishments which constituted it in 1919. Early on, Montagu pushed for the institution of an enquiry into the disturbances. The result was the Punjab Disorders Enquiry Committee (the Hunter Committee), which held hearings in India in the autumn of 1919, and published its reports the following spring.12 Guided by Gandhi, the Indian National Congress appointed their own sub-committee to investigate the causes of the disturbances and the conduct of the police and military during the unrest.13 This chapter uses these sources as well as records from national and provincial archives in India to provide a fuller picture of the coercive network, its functioning and its contradictions, and Dyer’s place in it. To this end, four types of punishment are considered below: imprisonment, collective fines, corporal punishments and humiliations, and the use of firepower to punish crowds. These punishments functioned, along with police, courts, prisons and the bureaucracy, as part of an interconnected whole. Each practice in this coercive network, including imprisonment and corporal punishment, tended to be collective in nature. And each was highly imperfect: ideological tensions and practical shortcomings beset many of these sanctions. Deficiencies in one institution or practice served to justify judicial shortcuts and alternative punishments elsewhere. Above all, India’s coercive network was defined less by its institutions than by the acts of individual officers. These men on the spot were expected to act using the wide discretionary powers invested in them. Local officers tended to use their responsibility for ‘law and order’ not to punish individuals, but to put on a display of exemplary justice

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in what they thought was a demonstration of the strength of British rule. The punishments they meted out seemed specifically designed to target the Indian body. As a result, the dignity of the Indian body became a site of contestation in the debates surrounding the state’s response to the disturbances. Indeed, the events of the Punjab disturbances opened up new opportunities for India’s nationalist parties. Scholars are agreed that the events at Jallianwala Bagh helped propel the nationalist movement into the era of mass politics by crystallising anti-British sentiment in India.14 Few, however, substantiate this assertion by examining just how nationalists translated the events of the spring of 1919 into support for their cause. This chapter demonstrates the ways in which nationalists carefully chose select events to publicise as the ‘Punjab wrongs’. They then interpreted these in poetry and prose to create national sympathy for the victims of state violence and to foster anti-British sentiment. In the face of a nationalist movement which fought its battles without reference to provincial boundaries, it became increasingly imperative for the government to develop uniform, all-India policies because these were easiest to defend. As part of this process, the power of local officers would have to be circumscribed, and the man on the ground would have to be subject to an increasing number of rules. Similarly, provincial concerns would have to bow to those of the central government. The centralisation of policy making did not secure the centre’s control, however. Any single policy devised for such a diverse political environment was bound to fall short of universal approval. Local and provincial authorities, acting in accord with their own perception of their interests, often deliberately thwarted these all-India plans. In the aftermath of the Punjab disturbances, therefore, India’s state was characterised above all by the tension between the desire to centralise policy and the necessity of allowing local officers to retain their discretionary powers.

Imprisonment in the context of large-scale unrest During turbulent times the police were expected to arrest people, and this they did with great aptitude in the summer of 1919. Though they detained thousands, the police pushed members of the public into jails without first collecting evidence against many of their prisoners. As a result, many were held without charge and released without trial. Others were convicted, but later freed at the whim of the Lieutenant Governor or the Viceroy, who considered their pleas for clemency. Therefore, imprisonment was used in ways which conformed less to an ideal of discipline than to the executive’s understanding of justice. The primary concern in this process was to establish a general sense that justice had been done. In this endeavour, there were pre-determined roles for the different actors. Accordingly, the police indiscriminately arrested a large number of people. Specially constituted Martial Law Commissions passed severe sentences, believing that it was their duty to do so, no matter how harsh the result. The Commissions explicitly reserved for the executive the right to be benevolent and exercise the prerogative of mercy by

18

Jallianwala Bagh

commuting sentences.15 Together, these procedures were to balance the scales of justice. Neither the police, the Commissions nor the Lieutenant Governor were overly concerned with legal niceties. The use of imprisonment without trial on a large scale, and the haphazard use of executive powers to commute sentences or to grant amnesty ensured that imprisonment was a collective punishment. According to the Hunter Committee, in the immediate aftermath of the disturbances, the police detained over 3200 people in Punjab.16 Once they had secured them in custody, the police began their enquiries, as some members of the force attempted to extract confessions and clues from their captives. In spite of these endeavours over one-fifth of those imprisoned under the martial law regime never stood trial because ‘the evidence was ultimately considered insufficient to warrant their being put upon their trial’.17 The high proportion of cases in which charges were not brought suggests major deficiencies in the ability of the police to gather evidence which ranged beyond mere suspicion. The Hunter Committee considered whether the practice of detention without trail was ‘unreasonable or oppressive’. The majority of the committee approved of the large-scale arrests, writing that, ‘It was certainly necessary that arrests should be made at once of all persons against whom tangible evidence existed of complicity in the riots or outrages.’ They felt that the number of persons detained but not tried was, ‘regrettably large’, but they concluded that ‘this very difficult work was not done badly or oppressively on the whole’. Disorders on the scale which had been witnessed in the Punjab, they reasoned, ‘were bound to strain any system that could be improvised to deal with them’.18 This complacent assessment reveals a great deal about the priorities of the twentiethcentury state in British India. First, there was an expectation that police should arrest people in order to bring unrest to an end as quickly as possible. That the police had fulfilled their duty in this respect was of primary importance. After this obligation had been discharged, however, the police could be excused for not seeing each case through to trial. Investigation was an arduous business, after all. It was, therefore, not necessary to consider reorganising the police with the aim of bringing more people to trial. This did not mean that imprisonment was not used, but rather, it was one of the first stages of any programme to quell and then punish unrest, rather than one of the last. For those against whom the police had gathered sufficient evidence to prosecute, the next stage was to stand trial. Two types of person were likely to be formally prosecuted. First, there were the cases of those in the leadership. Their trials continued into the summer of 1919 in what was then dubbed the ‘Lahore Conspiracy Case’ and the ‘Amritsar Conspiracy Case’. Second, those implicated in the more serious cases of train derailment, loot and murder were put on trial. In order to manage the influx of cases for which sufficient evidence did exist to press charges, Martial Law Commissions were constituted. Under the rules of procedure for these tribunals, the standard of evidence was relaxed, and judges did not have to record evidence in full. Using this truncated procedure,

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the Commissions passed extremely harsh sentences. This was because many of the accused were charged not with specific acts of arson, theft or murder, but with the general act of ‘waging war against the King Emperor’, for which the only available sentences were death or transportation for life. According to the Hunter Committee, 2537 persons were tried before ordinary courts, summary courts and Military Law Commissions and 1804 were convicted.19 In total, 107 persons were sentenced to death by Martial Law Commissions, and 213 more sentenced to transportation for life.20 These sentences were then sent to be considered for commutation by the Lieutenant Governor, and, if rejected, then to the Viceroy. Crucially, the Military Law Commissions and the Lieutenant Governor seemed to have been unconcerned with the veracity of the charges presented. Rather, they were intent upon producing a general impression that justice had been done. The following examples from some of the biggest Martial Law Commission cases in Amritsar illustrate this. In the first case the petitioner was Mussamat Mathri, an employee at the Zenana Hospital which had been attacked by a crowd in search of a European woman, Mrs Easdon. Mathri had been sentenced to transportation for life, and forfeiture of property, for opening the door to the hospital to let in the attackers. She appealed to the higher authorities and, like the majority of those who came before the Martial Law Commissions, maintained her innocence. The Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Sir Edwin Maclagan, considered her case and commuted her sentence to three years imprisonment. At the same time, he wrote, ‘I do not think it proved that she opened the door. This can be borne in mind later on.’21 If, in the opinion of MacLagan, Mathri was innocent, why did he not free her? The quotation reveals that he expected to have a second chance to review her case. He was already reserving prisoners to be amnestied in order to demonstrate the government’s generosity when such a gesture would be necessary for political expediency. A second example reinforces this impression. In the Amritsar National Bank Case, a Martial Law Commission had condemned a group of twenty men to death for the crime of waging war against the King. The manager and assistant manager of the bank had been murdered during the unrest in Amritsar on 10 April. In the confused circumstances, it was impossible to determine who had actually caused the death of the two employees. A conviction for murder was therefore impossible. On the basis that there was evidence that the accused had been present in the bank at the time of the murders, however, the Commission convicted twenty men, not of murder, but of waging war against the King. Soon after the Commission’s verdict, MacLagan considered their applications for mercy, but chose his own criteria to inform his decision. He commuted the sentences of fifteen men to transportation for life, but noted that they had all been at the bank, and ‘did damage there or elsewhere or took part in the looting, but they are not shown to have actively assisted in the murders’.22 The decision is remarkable first because Maclagan ignored the crime under the pretence of which the men had been convicted (waging war against the king). Moreover, he expressed belief that the convicts had not

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been involved in the murder for which they had been awarded the death sentence, even if under the wrong section of the law. Clearly, the Lieutenant Governor did not envisage himself to be correcting in detail the legal errors of the Military Law Commission. Seeking to mete out justice for the death of the two bank employees, Maclagan was not concerned with dealing out justice to those who caused their death. He made this clear in his orders: The attack was a brutal and unjustifiable crime and all the accused have merited the sentence of death … In view, however, of the fact that a considerable number of persons have been sentenced to death for offences committed in Amritsar on this same day, I do not think it is necessary in the interests of justice that the whole of the 20 petitioners should be executed.23 This was justice in its most abstract and subjective form. In the mind of the Lieutenant Governor, the specific crimes committed did not much matter. And the guilt or innocence of the persons implicated in them was only a minor consideration. Rather, the paramount concern was to create the spectacle of government being retributive but benevolent. The ‘conspiracy cases’ launched against the leadership of the movement were just as flimsy. Using articles and speeches written by these men the government tried to prove the rather incredible charge that there had been a conspiracy to wage war against the King in order to secure the repeal of the Rowlatt Act.24 In these cases Kitchlew, Satyapal and more than a dozen others were each sentenced to be transported for life.25 These convictions may have satisfied the Lieutenant Governor’s sense of justice, but India’s political leadership made great capital out of the severity of the sentences. They used newspapers, public meetings and petitions to the Viceroy to make the cases known ‘to the wider tribunal of the world’.26 The Bombay Chronicle, an English-language nationalist daily, discussed the merits of the ‘Lahore conspiracy case’, and determined that the judgment against the men had contained ‘an entertaining medley of misstatements and illogicalities’.27 Provincial branches of the India Association and the Home Rule League held meetings to protest against the ‘extraordinarily severe and unjustifiable’ sentences passed by the Commissions.28 Local Congress Committees demanded that these ‘political prisoners’ be amnestied.29 The Punjab Government responded to the public campaign for an amnesty by twice reducing sentences. In early August 1919, MacLagan reviewed 581 cases and granted clemency, in the form of shorter sentences, to those who had not committed ‘with their own hands acts of violence or destruction, so far as this class of men can be differentiated from the others’.30 Under these orders, death sentences were commuted to ten-year jail terms, and sentences of up to seven years in prison were reduced to as little as six months. Eleven ‘Punjab leaders’ who had been sentenced to transportation for life, had their sentences reduced to less than two years’ imprisonment. Musammat Mathri was freed on 4 August 1919.31

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The Secretary of State considered that the amnesties were proof that, in the decision to prosecute such a large number of persons for waging war against the King, ‘the wrong Section of the Indian Penal Code was largely used to deal with offenders’.32 The Viceroy, however, insisted that the act of clemency did not arise out of a desire to correct legal errors, but, rather, was intended to signal the government’s generosity ‘to the misguided dupes of the men who engineered these disorders’.33 Although the intention may have been to instil in the public an impression of a vengeful but forgiving government, this joint executive-judicial process was interpreted differently in many quarters. One nationalist newspaper reported the commutations under the headline, ‘Mercy but not justice’.34 As the inauguration of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms drew nearer, and public protests against the continued imprisonment of many participants in the disturbances did not abate, the Government of India began to contemplate a full-scale amnesty. The move was conceived as a ‘smashing stroke of moral strategy’ which could smooth the way for the introduction of the reforms by placating discontent caused both by the hardships of the war and by the Punjab disturbances.35 This policy, designed to correct the excesses in the west of the country, ran counter to the needs of Bengal, however. In that province, hundreds of members of the Jugantar and Anushilan parties had been interned during the war to prevent them taking part in anti-government terrorist activities. Lord Ronaldshay, Bengal’s Governor, feared that if a general amnesty were declared, his government would come under pressure to release the terrorists remaining in Bengal’s jails. If he were to decline to free them, this decision would overshadow the amnesty, and offset any goodwill which the gesture might have accrued. He therefore petitioned the Secretary of State, through the Viceroy, to reduce the scale of releases.36 Bengal’s unique situation put the Government of India in a difficult position. The amnesty was designed to soothe nationalist feeling and commemorate the introduction of a new era throughout India. It had to embrace the whole of the country. Montagu, therefore, refused to allow language into the amnesty proclamation which would protect the position of the Bengal government, though the declaration did provide for the review of cases before release. The aim of this caveat was to allow the Bengal Government to keep the most dangerous men in that province in jail.37 Ronaldshay and Chelsmford did not believe that this wording protected Bengal’s position. Feeling forsaken by the Secretary of State, the Governor of Bengal, with the collusion of the Viceroy, released all political prisoners and internees in his province.38 Montagu was furious with this decision.39 Essentially, he wished to have it both ways: in order to create a general impression of the government’s generosity and goodwill, he wanted to be able to announce a universal amnesty. At the same time, he wanted to pass on to individual provinces the responsibility for hemming in this amnesty after it had been declared. In Punjab, the government accepted this burden, and chose to keep some martial law prisoners in

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jail.40 Ronaldshay and Chelsmford, however, refused to play along, and the not-quite-universal amnesty became an all-Bengal one. It is clear that British administrators used the ordinary mechanisms for arrest, trial, conviction, sentence and commutation to make their own theatrical statements about British rule. For this reason, the everyday practice of imprisonment in India remained collective. The pursuit of a vague sensation that the police had done their work to stop the disorders, and that justice had been meted out for crimes committed, pre-dominated in the use of the prison in early twentieth century India. Many Indians spent time in jail on a temporary basis, without having been tried or convicted. Imprisonment as punishment for specific crimes dispensed at the end of a criminal trial was reserved for the men the government singled out as ‘leaders’ and for the most grievous crimes. Even this type of imprisonment, which included the option of clemency and amnesty, was also driven by a concern for the bigger picture rather than for individual justice.

Collective fines and the dilemmas of collective punishment Whilst imprisonment was designed for the punishment of individuals, but used to punish Indians collectively, the collective fine was used to impose joint responsibility on the population. This sanction stood at the juncture of politics, finance and criminal justice. Through this mechanism, the government imposed collective liability upon communities for damage caused and expenses incurred in places which witnessed unrest.41 The collective fine was useful because it could be employed in the absence of incriminating evidence against individuals and without reference to the courts. At the same time, this tactic not only penalised the innocent (including the government’s loyal supporters) along with the guilty, but it also depended on independently-minded, Indiancontrolled local government bodies for implementation. Thus, when faced with agitation over the use of this punishment after the Punjab disturbances, provincial governments were forced to remit many of the fines which had been imposed. In light of this retreat, the Government of India and some provincial governments endeavoured to reform the collective fine as a penal instrument. The modified procedures failed to resolve the contradictions inherent in the practice, however, and the new measures had to be abandoned. The collective fine served two main purposes in India’s criminal justice system.42 First, it was a penal shortcut used when the law-enforcement authorities were unable to secure a judicial conviction. In most cases fines were imposed after a crime had been committed but the authorities could not detect a culprit. Local officers could fine residents not only for participation in a criminal act, but also for failure to cooperate with the police more generally. The case of Nadiad, a town in the District of Kaira, in Bombay Presidency, provides an example of the use of a collective fine in this way. A train carrying troops to Ahmedabad had derailed on 11 April, after a sleeper had been removed from the line near Nadiad. Fourteen accused had appeared before a

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Special Tribunal for the offence, but only one had been found guilty. Moreover, according to the majority of the Hunter Committee, ‘he was a minor offender and received a light sentence: the leaders all escaped’. When this trial was unsuccessful, the participants were blamed for creating an ‘atmosphere which was so hostile to the detection of the offence that there was little truthful evidence forthcoming though the details must have been known to many persons at Nadiad’.43 After the failed prosecution, the collector of Nadiad imposed a collective fine on the town.44 Clearly, the collective fine was a useful penal shortcut in a setting in which the police and the magistracy were adamant that a crime should not go unpunished, and yet the mechanisms of the formal criminal procedure failed to satisfy this desire. Raising the funds necessary to pay for police despatched to riotous areas, and to recompense private individuals who had suffered damage to their persons or property during a disturbance was the second purpose of the collective fine. In Nadiad, the damage to the railway line was assessed at Rs4,577, while the punitive police posted at the village cost Rs11,366.45 One advantage of the collective fine was that it enabled the government to reduce the cost of police and of compensation by shifting the burden onto the public. A second advantage was that, in an age of heightened sensitivity about taxes, the collective fine allowed government to avoid using funds raised from general taxes to remedy local law and order difficulties. In the words of the District Magistrate of Kaira, ‘if the innocent villagers escape, the cost of the additional police will fall on the still more innocent public’.46 Those were the advantages. The complications involved were manifold. First, although they were resigned to the idea of taxing some innocent members of a community, administrators still worried over how to collect the tax most equitably. There were two possible ways in which the rate could be assessed: either through property taxes or through a poll tax. Logistically, to place the burden on landowners was relatively easy, as government could simply adapt its ordinary revenue-collection mechanisms to be used for a special levy. Further, those with property tended to be wealthier and were therefore more likely to be able to pay. This type of assessment, however, would put a much greater burden on the very men who tended to support British rule. Kaira’s District Maistrate, J.H. Garrett, calculated the impact a property-based fine would have on a local loyal Indian family, the Desai family. The family had sixteen adult male members and a large estate. If the assessment rate were based on the house tax, they would become liable for Rs1,125. If a poll tax were chosen, the family’s total obligation would only amount to Rs96.47 Clearly this tax adversely affected the very men who were the foundations of British support in India. At a time when the Khilafat/non-cooperation movement was gaining strength, the government was unwilling to antagonise its supporters.48 A poll tax was the logical alternative if they were to avoid completely alienating the loyal classes. Further, many officers felt that the poorer classes were to blame, and should not be allowed to ‘get off scot-free’, as they would under the house tax.49

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Once they had made the decision to impose a poll tax, there remained the question of actually collecting the money from members of the public. In the cities this was usually done through the municipalities. From 1883 Municipal Boards, with a majority of elected members, had been in charge of the collection of revenue in urban areas. The British devolved such powers to local government bodies in order to boost revenue collection. It was hoped that these boards, elected by a small but significant franchise, would have the legitimacy to increase taxation. In this way, the British hoped to pass power over contentious financial issues to Indians. Meanwhile, control over matters of ‘law and order’, it was believed, remained vested in legislative or executive bodies under British control.50 The key to ‘law and order’, however, was less in the writing of legislation than in its execution on the ground. When a District Magistrate imposed punitive police and a collective fine upon a city, it was left to the Municipal Boards to collect the funds from the people. Being elected, these boards comprised politically and socially aware Indians who had ideas of their own about the most appropriate means of ensuring order in society. And these civil intermediaries were in a position to paralyse parts of the coercive network. Nadiad’s Municipal Board did just that when it completely rejected the idea that the public of Nadiad, whether divided into groups or taken as a whole, deserved to be burdened with a collective fine.51 In this stance, they had the backing of Gandhi and the non-cooperation movement, which, by the time the sums were demanded in 1921, was in full swing. By focusing on the penal rather than the economic rationale for the fine, Gandhi was able to argue against the fine using the same language as a lawyer would use in a criminal case. Thus, he insisted that he did wish to see those who were guilty of the derailment punished, but, citing English legal doctrine, he argued that, ‘The principle that no one who has not been proved guilty should be punished must remain inviolate’. On this basis, Gandhi urged the people of Nadiad not ‘to submit to punishment inflicted without regard for justice’.52 He counselled them to refuse to pay and to petition the government for a complete remission of the fine. With the Municipal Board refusing to carry out its duties, and the noncooperation movement backing them, the Government of Bombay had three choices. The first was to collect the money themselves using specially employed officers. Such an effort was expected to be as difficult as it would be counterproductive. If they met with resistance these officers would have to seize property and arrest defaulters. Not only could this method affect the loyalty of landholders and bolster the non-cooperation movement, it could also adversely affect morale in the services on whom this unhappy task would be heaped.53 Unwilling to test the allegiance of these groups, the Government of Bombay weighed the possibility of withholding grants from the Municipal Board for refusing to raise a levy for the fine. Given that the funds overseen by the Board provided for education, health and sanitation, however, this could bring ordinary life to a standstill.54 Their final option was to remit the

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fine, and to bear the cost of compensation and of the punitive police themselves. Given the unpalatable nature of the other options, the Government of Bombay was persuaded to first remit the cost of compensation for the railways, and then the cost of the punitive police.55 The Municipal Board greeted this decision as if a jury had returned a not-guilty verdict. Its members declared that the move had served to ‘vindicate the innocence’ of the people of Nadiad.56 Ultimately, few of the fines imposed in India’s north and west were paid in full. In Delhi, where damage from the disturbances had been more extensive, the District Magistrate imposed fines of Rs68,513, and Rs35,656 for police and compensation respectively. After a long delay during which various exemptions were calculated, the Chief Commissioner had recovered only Rs752 of the Rs104,169 imposed by the District Magistrate.57 Delhi’s Commissioner, H.P. Tollinton, tried to persuade the centre to remit the fines, but the Government of India would only waive the fine for the police.58 In most of the Punjab, the local government remitted the cost of the punitive police, and only recovered for the cost of compensation. In Amritsar, after months of vacillation by the municipality, the matter was laid before the newly elected provincial Legislative Council, which remitted the fine.59 In light of the ambiguous efficacy of the collective fine in general, and the obstinacy with which fines were opposed in Nadiad, Delhi and throughout Punjab, the Government of India concluded that ‘recent experience in connection with the Punjab disturbances has satisfied them of the need for amending the law.’ With characteristic understatement, they observed that the method of assessment was ‘unsatisfactory’, while recovery had been ‘attended with serious difficulty’ across western India.60 In light of this, but in deference to the fact that, under the new constitution, ‘police’ was a subject over which provincial governments had jurisdiction, the centre requested local governments to consider modifying the administration of the collective fine. The Government of India proposed two reforms. First, given the difficulties which they had encountered when local government bodies refused to collect from the people, they recommended that the money for collective fines be recovered directly from the budget of the District or Local Board in such circumstances. Next, the Government of India proposed that assessment be made only ‘after opportunity had been given to the parties concerned or their counsel to argue their case’. The findings of these ‘summary’ hearings, the centre suggested, ought to be published and subject to an appeals process in which a District Magistrate’s decision could be reviewed by a District Judge.61 Many provinces simply neglected to act on the Government of India’s recommendations.62 In Bombay, however, the provincial government did try to make some adjustments to this punishment, but found that the collective fine was not easy to reconcile with the independence of local boards or with the idea of individual responsibility embodied in the centre’s second suggestion. The centre’s first recommendation had already been dismissed in Bombay because to confiscate the funds of such bodies would bring municipal work to a

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standstill.63 The Government of Bombay was in two minds about the utility of Municipal Boards in this penal process, but concluded that it would be proper to deal ‘with the regularly constituted representatives of a community in imposing a community responsibility’.64 Because the reliability of the boards was not certain, however, the Government of Bombay also empowered the Collector to recover funds directly from the people. Clearly, the higher echelons of government could not easily take up the duties which they had passed on to local governments without enormous expenditure, inconvenience and delay. The best that could be done was to empower local officers to pursue alternative routes when Municipal Boards refused to exercise their responsibilities. Divisional Commissioners in the Bombay Presidency offered a mixed response to the second suggestion. Many were reluctant to transform an executive power into a judicial one, for they wished to retain a ‘free hand’.65 In spite of these reservations, the Government of Bombay issued orders in May 1922 that, when imposing a collective fine, a District Magistrate ought to hold a public hearing to decide who should be exempted from the fine.66 Practically speaking, however, even a ‘summary’ enquiry would absorb enormous amounts of local officers’ time. Kaira’s new District Magistrate, S.H. Coverton, explained that any enquiry would mean, ‘the District Magistrate will have to hold a detailed if summary enquiry into the conduct of nearly every inhabitant of the affected area’. This, he argued, defeated the purpose of the collective fine, which was designed to be a summary punishment inflicted immediately in order to help calm disorders.67 The fines imposed after the Punjab disturbances had been so fiercely contested precisely because the officers in charge had not managed to act swiftly to assess and collect the amount due. Any measure which protracted the imposition of a collective fine was bound to foster discontent. Ultimately, the new measures tried to introduce an element of individual responsibility into the punishment without relinquishing the idea of joint liability. The Bombay Government concluded that these two ideas could not be reconciled. Retracting its orders from May 1922, the government reminded magistrates that, ‘the basic principle is not individual but communal responsibility’.68 A measure designed as a penal shortcut, which would enable a crime to be punished without the trouble of identifying an individual culprit, could not be adapted to allow individuals to claim their innocence. There was no middle ground between the collective fine and individual responsibility. Because local officers were unwilling or unable to single out criminals to be tried, but were also averse to letting a criminal act go unpunished, this paradoxical punishment remained in use.

Corporal punishments and physical humiliations: the debate over the autonomy of local officers While there seemed to have been a system – albeit an imperfect one – for imprisonment and collective fines, many other punishments were carried out in a more informal manner, which accorded large powers of discretion to

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local officers. Whipping, physical violence and humiliation aimed at the bodies of Indian subjects were common punishments during the disturbances. As penal techniques, these punishments had major advantages over imprisonment: they were quick, cheap and easy; they did not expose petty criminals to the miserable conditions of prisons; and they offered officers the chance to administer rapid retribution for crimes or to put on a powerful show of force without calling upon troops or law courts. At the same time, these penal strategies still allowed local officers to approach Indians as a collective, and to punish individuals arbitrarily. When the powers of local officers over Indian bodies came under scrutiny following the disturbances, however, these types of penal violence became a key point of contention within the colonial administration. The debates over bodily punishments were important, not because of the numbers involved, but because the tricky issues of racial discrimination, the colonial civilising mission, and the powers of local officers intersected in the use of these penalties. The ideological justification for whipping in India was convoluted and, at times, contradictory. Racialist discourses may have enabled the use of whipping in Africa, but racial difference played a more subtle role in India.69 Whilst in Africa, colonial administrators often argued that corporal punishment suited Africans’ own mentality and practices, local officers in India tended to emphasise the extent to which ‘Indian sentiment’ opposed corporal punishments.70 Indeed, whipping had long been forbidden in the Indian Army, and its use against civilians had declined as the number of Indian magistrates had grown.71 Because there were restrictions on the power of Indian magistrates to whip European subjects, however, there was an impression that this punishment was nonetheless administered on the basis of the racial inferiority of Indians.72 Whilst a discourse of racial difference did not form a primary part of the justification for whipping, those who did favour the use of corporal punishment in India tended to justify its use by pointing to the deficiencies of imprisonment in India. Though each province tended to have one or two central penitentiaries which were run according to ‘modern’ regimes of discipline, in the majority of smaller local jails, prison life was no paragon of discipline. Prison regulations stipulated that certain prisoners, such as undertrials and young offenders, were to be held in separate quarters, but in pratice there were few facilities for this. Less than half of those undergoing rigorous imprisonment were employed at all. The majority of those working were given tedious tasks like grounding flour. Because they were over-crowded and under-staffed, prisons relied on convict warders or poorly-educated free men to see that what order there was in jail was maintained. Thus, though sanitation, segregation and reformation were the ideals to which prison regulations aspired, brute force remained the modus operandi in most Indian prisons.73 As a result, many officials were convinced that a term in jail would only corrupt the newcomer, and ruin him and his family financially. For the individual offender, however, few alternative punishments were available. No system of probation or community

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service existed and fines were not only a challenge to collect, but magistrates believed that this penalty was unsuitable because it often punished a criminal’s family. Many judicial officers who sentenced men to be whipped, therefore, believed they were acting in the best interests of their victims.74 During the period of martial law, the number of whippings increased as flogging was used as a summary, exemplary and judicial sanction. On one occasion, in Kasur, Punjab, a number of schoolboys were whipped in an exemplary manner. A train had been derailed near the town and two Europeans killed and two wounded when a crowd attacked the train. The Assistant Commissioner believed that pupils at two schools, the Municipal Board High School and the Islamia High School, had taken a significant part in these events. The headmaster of the former school requested a military guard because ‘his boys were still beyond his control’. The soldiers could not be spared, however, and so Mr Marsden, the Assistant Commissioner, improvised his own show of force. He asked each school to send up the ‘three naughtiest boys’ to be caned in order to demonstrate to their fellow students the determination of the authorities to prevent further troubles. At the Municipal Board School, Marsden later explained, the boys chosen were ‘the poorest of the lowest castes’. Marsden concluded that these students were being made scapegoats, and proceeded to swap those chosen for a number of pupils ‘of a more prosperous appearance’. He then had them caned in front of the school.75 Marsden called this ‘a most ordinary and healthy mode of discipline for schoolboys’ and justified his methods by comparing the events in Kasur with his own days as a schoolboy back in Britain. When I was at Cheltenham College, the whole school was punished many times because of offences committed by culprits who did not come forward … If the occurrence had been in England no one would have made the least demur.76 Marsden was not the only officer who favoured exemplary corporal punishments. During the rioting on 10 April, a European missionary, Miss Sherwood, was attacked and left for dead on the street in Amritsar. Six men who had been arrested for the attack on Miss Sherwood in Amritsar were taken to the street where the assault took place and summarily flogged in public. Whipping was also inflicted for a range of martial law offences from breach of curfew, and refusing to obey an order, ‘for disrespect to a European’, ‘for refusing to sell milk’,77 for tearing down martial law notices, and for refusing to open one’s shop. According to official figures, 177 persons were flogged during the spring of 1919.78 In the immediate aftermath of the rioting, military officers also imposed an array of unusual and humiliating punishments on the residents of areas under their charge. These sanctions were imposed under powers conferred under martial law, according to which officers could command the public to do anything ‘necessary’ for the maintenance of order. Each of these bodily forms

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of humiliation tended to emphasise the racial difference between those in charge and those being punished. For example, General Campbell ordered that, because the inhabitants of Gujranwala District were ‘habitually exhibiting a lack of respect’ towards European officers, persons who found themselves in the presence of a European officer and were riding on animals or in conveyances had to dismount; those with umbrellas were required to lower them; ‘and all persons shall salute or “salaam” with the hand’.79 In Amritsar, 93 members of the local Bar were made Special Constables, and forced to work as coolies (porters, labourers). One barrister testified to the Punjab SubCommittee that there were sufficient police for the work, but that, ‘the local bar takes part in public affairs and took a prominent part in the Rowlatt Agitation, that is why the whole Bar was punished in this way.’80 Unruly school boys were made to attend roll call several times a day, and to salute the British flag daily.81 General Dyer’s ‘crawling order’ was the most infamous of these punishments. Seeking yet more justice for Miss Sherwood, Dyer erected military pickets on either end of the street on which she had been found, and placed a triangle for flogging in the middle of the road. He ordered that anyone passing along the street ‘must go on all fours’. There was some dispute as to whether people were made to crawl on all-fours or on their bellies, Dyer asserted the former, the Congress’ Enquiry Committee claimed it was the latter. What was clear was that Dyer intended this instruction to serve as punishment for the treatment of Miss Sherwood, ‘We look upon women as sacred’ Dyer explained, ‘I searched in my brain for a suitable punishment for these awful cases’.82 As tales of these bodily humiliations emerged, indignation followed from many quarters. The Congress’ Enquiry Report judged that the crawling order and other improvised forms of humiliation were not only ‘unworthy of a civilized administration’, but ‘symptomatic of the moral degradation of their inventors’.83 They deemed whipping to be ‘humiliating’ and ‘torturing’, and called the ideological justifications made in support of it, ‘barbarous arguments in … support [of] a barbarous punishment’.84 In a similar vein, the Londonbased India newspaper, commented on the threat made under Martial Law in Lahore that if shopkeepers refused to open for business, ‘their shops would be opened by force and their property confiscated and the owners would be liable to be fined, imprisoned, and whipped’, and sarcastically remarked, ‘That was the way to make Indian shopkeepers appreciate the difference between British idealism and fair-play and Prussian brutishness.’85 The administration was divided over these measures. For the Secretary of State these punishments had not lived up to universal standards of civilised government. Montagu condemned the acts of penal humiliation, writing that he believed these sanctions had flouted ‘the standards of propriety and humanity, which the inhabitants not only of India in particular but of the civilised world in general have a right to demand of those set in authority over them’.86 Montagu had opposed whipping from the inception of the disturbances, warning that he was ‘doubtful’ about the utility of this penalty.87

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He opposed the sanction on principle. He was not concerned with the details of each case, but recoiled at the very idea that local officers should have the power to whip men, except those who had committed violent crimes. Explaining his opinion to the Viceroy, Montagu wrote, ‘the idea of whipping a man for tearing down a notice is to my mind (and I know that you agree with me) ridiculous.’88 In the early stages of martial law, the upper echelons of the army appeared to respond quickly to these objections. Upon hearing news that people were being whipped in public for disobeying martial law orders, the AdjutantGeneral wrote to those in command in Lahore and Rawalpindi, on 22 April, ‘Public Opinion in India is markedly opposed to corporal punishment in any form … Chief would be glad if you could dispense with this form of punishment.’89 Initially, the Viceroy too seemed to agree. In April he asked Lieutenant Governor O’Dwyer not only to avoid whipping, but to keep publicity to a minimum where it did occur.90 While in his confidential directions, he requested a change of tack, Chelmsford also promised to stand in public solidarity with any decisions taken on the ground. O’Dwyer agreed to oblige the Viceroy, but warned against ‘a formal announcement which might look like an interference with the local Government or disapproval of the acts of the military authorities’.91 Indeed, whereas the Secretary of State approached the question as a matter of principle, at the Government of India level the focus was on specificities. Even though Chelmsford had counselled O’Dwyer to avoid flogging people, he was adamant that the option of doing so should be retained. As a result, he responded to Montagu, To whip a man for tearing down a notice is prima facie repugnant, but before we can pronounce such a penalty in individual cases to be ridiculous we must, I think, examine the actual facts in detail, and see if it can or cannot be justified.92 The important unit of analysis in this view was not the world, the country or even the province, but the individual circumstance, for which the autonomy of local officers ought not to be circumscribed by unnecessary rules. O’Dwyer and Chelmsford regarded the freedom of local officers as not only inviolable, but also as the keystone of British rule in India. Accordingly, requests or suggestions could be made to local officers from the higher levels of government, but ultimately it was not the place of provincial or national authorities to dictate how local officers acted. It was their duty, rather, to stand in solidarity with the men on the spot. This position was difficult to sustain in the face of three forces. First, an international consensus was building up behind the idea that ‘civilised’ governments ought to conform to certain standards of behaviour, even when punishing their subjects. These ideas, though by no means uncontested, were expressed in international agreements providing for the humane treatment of prisoners, or in treaties prohibiting the use of gases in wartime. The second

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factor was the nationalist movement in India. Because the everyday workings of government officials were the subject of daily criticism by various nationalist organisations, the upper levels of government were keen to rein in the powers of local officers in order to shield themselves from censure. Finally, the Indian Civil Service had always contained a mixed bag of individuals, and its character had become even more diverse since the onset of the First World War. This heterogeneity meant a diversity of actions which the higher levels of government would have to defend, and also a thinner sense of solidarity amongst the officers on the ground. These trends favoured centralised policymaking and necessitated disciplined and obedient government servants. Even the majority of the Hunter Committee, which was inclined to defend the actions of government servants during the disturbances, recommended, ‘some limitation on the nature of the punishment which he is to impose should be placed on the discretion of the officer on the spot’.93 After the Hunter Committee report had been published, several steps were taken to circumscribe the powers of local officers. First, those named by the enquiry were formally reprimanded. Mr Marsden, for one, was censured for the ‘humiliating’ whipping he had imposed upon schoolboys in Kasur in part because it made ‘no discrimination of innocent and guilty’.94 Second, the Secretary of State saw that a manual of martial law was drawn up in order to provide more detailed instructions for military men acting under martial law. The manual, which was first published in 1921, contained no new powers and no new offences, however. Rather, it was designed to provide ‘guidance’ to military and civil officers to ‘enable inexperienced officers to avoid measures which may lay them open to criticism and blame’.95 The manual warned officers that ‘penalties of excessive severity should not be inflicted’ under martial law, and that ‘the punishment of whipping … requires the greatest possible care and restraint’. They were instructed that ‘whipping should not ordinarily be awarded except for an offence of violence’ or for those offences laid out in the Whipping Act of 1909.96 Under this Act, which was appended to the manual, no woman, and no man over the age of 45 was to be flogged. The new manual was a rather feeble gesture towards centralisation. The government attempted to circumscribe the discretion of the men on the spot, but its reluctance to elaborate precise rules of conduct for military officers demonstrated just how sharp the tensions were between the policymaking imperatives of the centre and the power of local officers. In an attempt to formulate more precise instructions, Montagu ordered a review of whipping which spanned the next five years.97 When he asked civil officers to reconsider the practice of whipping, the debate over whether to circumscribe the powers of officers was supplemented by the question of which principles should be followed in designing any new rules for officers. The outcome of this discussion is considered in chapter three, whilst subsequent chapters track this changing relationship as the military and police adapted to the restrictions put on them, and the government responded to their manoeuvres.

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Firepower and the significance of Jallianwala Bagh Having analysed the workings of the larger coercive network, this final section returns to the question this chapter began with: was Jallianwala Bagh representative of British rule? The use of firepower was not uncommon during the disturbances. The police and military resorted to firepower on numerous occasions during the disturbances, first in Delhi on 30 March, again in major cities on 10 April, as well as at Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April. On the following day, under orders to ‘break up any gathering found doing damage to the civil lines or station and disperse any crowd’ within two miles of Gujranwala, two airplanes dropped ten bombs, and fired over 980 rounds from machine guns at four places in and around the town.98 At Gujranwala, eleven people were killed and 27 injured.99 A careful reading of even the most strident criticisms of these events reveals that within government, as well as between the government and the leadership of the nationalist movement, there were two agreed principles: it was accepted that this practice was a suitable means of countering already violent gatherings, but firing was only tolerable so long as officers used the ‘minimum force necessary’. The two sides diverged when it came to interpreting Dyer’s actions. Officially, Dyer was seen as an anomalous and solitary figure who had transgressed the norms of governance. In nationalist circles, Dyer came to epitomise British rule, and his actions were used to mobilise the public against the imperial occupation of India. When a large group of Indians gathered and threatened to destroy property or endanger the lives of people, the police (and if necessary the military) were expected to act. The idea of firing on crowds was not considered anathema to the government, to the Congress sub-committee or to the vernacular nationalist press. Indeed, it was regarded as suitable punishment when a crowd had transgressed certain boundaries of appropriate conduct. This point can be teased from the otherwise critical assessments of the occasions on which armed police and military fired on crowds which had gathered to protest at the ‘arrest’ of Gandhi and the deportation of Kitchlew and Satyapal on 10 April. In an editorial on these firings, the Hindi-language daily Calcutta Samachar wrote, ‘Firing on several innocent people in the meetings and crowds in Delhi, Lahore, Amritsar, Ahmedabad and Calcutta was not good.’ The key to this evaluation was the fact that the people assembled had committed no crime. ‘So long as the people do not break any law,’ the paper wrote, ‘they should not be interfered with.’100 The Congress report condemned the action of the authorities in Amritsar on the same day in a similar manner: ‘It should be remembered that the mob had not yet indulged in excesses. There was, therefore, no occasion for impatience, indifference or callousness’.101 Tucked inside these disapproving remarks was the idea that, in certain circumstances, the police could reasonably be expected to fire on violent crowds. This criterion exposed a tension in the practice of using firepower to punish crime. By its very nature, firing tended not to discriminate between innocent and guilty individuals. It was the collective which was guilty or not.

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And yet, the assertion that members of a crowd must first commit violent acts in order to justify a violent response emphasised the actions of individuals. The fact that these individuals could not be extracted from the mass justified a violent and collective punishment. In taking this type of action, officers were expected to dispel crowds and to disrupt their activities, ‘using the minimum force necessary’.102 This principle was widely accepted in the government of India, but few recognised what a problematic concept it could be. Necessity was essentially a subjective criterion, which could rarely be used to permit or forbid specific acts. Indeed, the question of necessity was the focal point of the post-disturbances debates. For example, we have seen above that the Calcutta Samachar, and the Congress sub-Committee disapproved of the firings on 10 April. The majority of the Hunter Committee, in contrast, concluded that ‘this resort to firing was completely justified and absolutely necessary’.103 The question of necessity could also split the Hunter Committee, as it did over the use of airplanes. The minority ‘deprecated’ the use of airpower in towns given ‘the risk of hurting innocent people’.104 They also found the pilot’s use of the machine gun at Gujranwala ‘excessive’.105 The majority’s opinion was far more ambivalent, however. Whilst they felt ‘unable … to uphold’ the action which the pilot had taken in the villages around Gujranwala, the majority nevertheless found that the ‘decision to use bomb-carrying aeroplanes … was justified’ on the grounds of necessity because police ‘had definitely failed to impose control’ and troops had not been readily available.106 The majority acknowledged that, ‘It is difficult to feel certain that it was necessary to fire with the machinegun … in order to disperse these parties effectively’, but the report continued, ‘we are not prepared to impute blame for the officers’ decision taken in the air and at the moment’.107 Unwilling to criticise the action of the man on the spot, the committee, and the Secretary of State concentrated on the orders that were given to the pilots. Finding that the orders to the pilots ‘left much to be desired in precision’, Montagu promised to ensure that in future ‘explicit orders’ for the use of airpower would be issued.108 Dyer, too, had justified his action at Jallianwala Bagh on the grounds of necessity. He rationalised firing on those assembled by saying that, after the violence of the previous days, he had intended the firing ‘to punish’ the population of Amritsar.109 Moreover, in Dyer’s imagination those at Jallianwala Bagh had gathered in deliberate defiance of his order prohibiting public assembly and were, therefore, part of a dangerous conspiracy against the government. He fired on them, he explained, to produce ‘a sufficient moral effect … not only on those who were present, but more especially throughout the Punjab.’110 Because the existing scholarship has examined the British response to Dyer’s actions through Parliamentary debates, it has given the impression that there was general division over Dyer.111 In fact, with the exception of Punjab’s Lieutenant-Governor at the time of the disturbances, Michael O’Dwyer, the higher echelons of government in India and the Hunter Committee all

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condemned Dyer, albeit to different degrees. Montagu censured Dyer for firing on a gathering which, ‘when he inflicted that punishment, had committed no act of violence, had made no attempt to oppose him by force’.112 The Secretary of State reiterated his commitment to the minimum use of force necessary and found Dyer ‘was in complete violation of this principle’.113 The minority of the Hunter Committee broadly condemned Dyer’s action as ‘unjustifiable’.114 The majority of the Hunter Committee was more inclined to agree with Dyer’s view of the crowd as defiant and dangerous, but nonetheless found that notice ‘should have been given’ to the crowd before troops had been ordered to fire, and that Dyer had ‘committed a grave error’ in continuing to fire as the crowd dispersed.115 The Home Department echoed this view.116 The Viceroy did his utmost to shield Dyer from criticism, but even he admitted that, at Jallianwala Bagh, the General ‘did not act with as much humanity as the case permitted.’117 He removed Dyer from his command and forced him to resign from his commission. The Government of India claimed Dyer was unique: he was an aberration and had to be removed for breaking the rules. If Dyer was exceptional, there was little the government could or should do beyond reiterating the principles upon which officers should act when confronting crowds. The manual of martial law served this purpose. In regard to firing on crowds, it reminded military officers that they had a duty to stop unruly crowds, and to warn the public that they would be fired upon. But officers were to use the minimum amount of force necessary, and care for the wounded.118 The manual also contained a special appendix for the use of aircraft to counter unrest which outlined the procedure which airmen were to follow: each pilot was to first ‘satisfy himself as far as possible that the crowd is actually engaged at the time in violent crime’. He was to then sound his klaxon horn to warn the crowd; to fire ‘a few rounds of machine-gun fire’ and wait for the crowd to disperse before resorting to bombing, if the machine-gun fire failed. The manual went on to declare that pilots would not be held responsible if orders dispatched to them over the wireless were not received or not understood.119 In other words, the government chose to avoid imposing responsibility on individual officers for causing unnecessary harm to members of the population. The new instructions tried to bring the use of airpower into line with the use of firepower on the ground. Again, the instructions made a vague attempt to assert more centralised control over individual state actors. But once again, they left in place the very criteria which were the source of controversy. Whereas the Punjab disturbances at first did not appear to radically alter the government or its policies, it is widely agreed among scholars that the events at Jallianwala Bagh ‘changed the course of Indian politics’ by alienating those Indians who had supported the Raj.120 But it took some craftsmanship to transform the events of the spring of 1919 into support for the nationalist movement. Most of the state violence during the Punjab disturbances hovered in the conceptual no man’s land between permitted and transgressive acts because it was aimed at groups who were violent or later

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became violent. For this reason, the Congress could only criticise specific aspects of these incidents. They certainly did this, but these cases did not provide the same emotive material which Jallianwala Bagh did. In the aftermath of the disturbances, Congressmen wove Jallianwala Bagh and select individual incidents into a narrative of national grievance. And they used the imagery of Jallianwala Bagh to urge ordinary Indians to join the next agitation against the British, the Khilafat/non-cooperation movement. The story of events in Amritsar was spread across the country in poetry, in prose and in pictures.121 In this literature, ‘the cruel story of Jallianwala’ was told to the nation.122 In a poem published by Ramsammukh Shukla, ‘Nonviolent struggle’, the events at Jallianwala Bagh were used to represent British rule more generally: ‘Murder at Jallianwala / The Black Act of O’Dwyer /The bankrupt justice of the English / The cries of the Punjabis / The pain which Dyer has caused / Has permeated the heart of Mother’.123 At the same time, the bagh was sanctified as a monument to those martyred for Mother India, and the suffering of the Punjabis who perished in Amritsar was re-imagined as the suffering of the nation. One collection of fourteen poems, The Significance of Jallianwala Bagh, conveyed the new sense of gravity with which the location was endowed.124 In her contribution to the volume, ‘Spring in Jallianwala Bagh’, the poet Subhadra Kumari described the children, adults and the elderly who had lost their lives in the bagh. She urged the spring to come to the garden to spread flowers ‘in memory and in worship’ of those who had died. She implored the spring to respect the new monument to the nation, ‘This beloved garden has been smeared with blood / Come! Dear Spring! But come softly / This is a place of mourning, do not make a sound here’.125 This poetry was then explicitly tied to the non-cooperation campaign. The rear cover of the volume, The Significance of Jallianwala Bagh, implored those who ‘have some doubts on the subject of non-cooperation’ to buy the collection in order to realise their ‘proper duty’.126 The poem ‘Non-violent struggle’ also used Jallianwala Bagh to urge Indians to join the non-cooperation movement. In parts, this piece takes the form of a vow of allegiance to be taken by participants: ‘May cannon, arrow and sword be prepared / May the horrible machine gun be loaded / … Even so, let this resolve be in my heart / I will be broken into bits / But I will not take up arms’.127 In these few lines, death at the hands of the British became not just a cause for national mourning, but something that could happen to any Indian. These poems transformed this single incident into an event experienced by the entire nation. Whilst the Government of India had claimed Dyer was unique, India’s nationalist poets universalised Dyer. To them he represented British rule as a whole. His repression became a symbol of the threat to Indians everywhere.

Conclusion Was Dyer unique in India in 1919? When he approached Jallianwala Bagh, he acted as a single officer using his own discretion. He arbitrarily punished

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Indians as a collective without reference to ‘ordinary’ legal measures, and with violence. Given what we know about the functioning of the coercive network, he was not extraordinary. In times of crisis men on the spot were expected to act without reference to higher authorities. Many forms of punishment, including imprisonment, were just as arbitrary and collective as what Dyer did at Jallianwala Bagh. At the same time, his action was exceptional in two ways: first, the scale of Dyer’s violence was extraordinary. When the number of casualties rose into the hundreds, his act assumed greater significance. Second, notwithstanding the pockets of support which he did receive in Britain, Dyer was subject to both non-official and official censure in India. Though varying by significant degrees, this criticism was united in its condemnation of Dyer. Over the following three decades, this type of unity would become more elusive. For Montagu, who had ordered the Hunter Committee in a spirit of open government, the experiment had been a failure because it had provided fuel for the anti-British fire and undermined morale in the services. Hereafter governments in India would grow increasingly wary of publicly scrutinising the activities of their own officers. India’s political leaders were equally aware of the power of this type of investigation, and the Congress sub-committee is one of the party’s early experiments with this type of political theatre. Over the following thirty years, the task of enquiring into the conduct of government officers would move gradually into the hands of India’s political opposition, subjecting the everyday actions of the man on the spot to direct political pressure. At the same time, as more Indians engaged in these strategies of representation, their participation would serve less to unite the nation than to fragment the movement and alienate certain segments of the population. Over the next four decades, the state in India would change to develop new penal techniques to try to cope with new challenges. Even though India’s coercive network proved remarkably flexible, the existing frailties provided two key avenues through which individuals and groups could further weaken it. First, when the leadership of the nationalist movement, who often had had legal training in England, rallied in opposition to certain forms of punishment, as they did after the Punjab disturbances, this reduced the government’s options, and weakened their ability to respond to collective unrest of any kind. In addition, when the central government tried to assert its authority over local officers, these men could refuse to comply. And their insubordination could undermine the ability of the government as a whole to respond to unrest. The question of whether the options at the disposal of local officers ought to be reduced had become one of the critical debates within the government, and also between the government and the Indian population. In theory, at least, if local officers could be disciplined, this could begin to combine the Indian state’s divergent men and institutions into a more coherent and effective form. Sharp differences over this issue existed between the different layers of the administration, however. The following chapters elaborate upon these differences, and chart the changing relationship between the

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centre and its local representatives. The next chapter demonstrates how these two groups – the government’s political opponents, and the government’s own lower ranks – used the ‘mistakes in the Punjab’ to restrict the state’s ability to respond to the non-cooperation movement.

3

Disobedience and discord: the non-cooperation movement, 1920–25

This chapter and the following one examine the coercive measures deployed against the non-cooperation movement (1920–22) and the civil disobedience movement (1930–34). They also analyse the strategies which the mainstream nationalist movement developed to turn punishment and state violence into sites of political drama. Because the non-cooperation movement followed quickly on the heels of the Punjab disturbances, the events of 1919 inevitably coloured the new agitation. In this sustained campaign, the Congress modelled the political prisoner into a nationalist icon and challenged the practices of whipping and firing on crowds using similar tactics to those developed during the Punjab disturbances. Their relentless criticism of nearly every aspect of the criminal justice system forced central and provincial governments to introduce concessions for these middle-class non-violent convicts into the practices of confinement and corporal punishment. As a result, the practices of punishment diversified as class distinctions proliferated. For its part, the central government attempted to counter the non-cooperation movement centrally, but continued to suffer from internal disobedience. The administration remained riven by quarrels over which methods to use to confront political activity, and over how much independence local officers should be given as they carried out their duty to ‘preserve law and order’ in the face of such a threat. As a whole, therefore, the government could not be said to have responded adroitly to the non-cooperation movement. Rather, the imperial side lost several battles during this campaign.

Introduction The Khilafat/non-cooperation movement had its origins in the First World War, when the British were at war with the Ottoman Empire. During the war, the British had made ‘pledges’ that, after the defeat of the Ottoman empire, they would allow the Sultan to retain his position as Khalifah, or spiritual leader and guardian of the Muslim holy sites. The defeat was cause for grief throughout the Muslim world, including India. Several Muslim leaders, including the brothers Shaukat Ali and Mohammad Ali, toured India calling for the British to honour their word, and appealing for funds for their cause.1

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From August 1919, Gandhi had lent his voice to these calls. When the Treaty of Sèvres was signed in May 1920, however, the Sultan lost his throne and his position as Khalifah, and the holy sites were removed from Muslim hands. Objecting to the treaty, the All-India Khilafat Committee, with Shaukat Ali as its Secretary, passed a resolution in June 1920, committing its followers to a programme of civil disobedience which Gandhi had devised.2 By December of the same year the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) had overcome its divisions to add its support to the campaign.3 Non-cooperation was to comprise four stages: in the first two, those with government-granted titles and honorary posts and then those with government jobs were to give up these positions. In the third, more remote, phase the movement planned to encourage men to resign from the police and military. Finally, they would advocate the non-payment of taxes.4 When the Congress party joined, a more economic approach was added to the programme. Foreign cloth was to be boycotted, and the use of khadi (home-spun cloth) encouraged. In addition, the programme envisioned a ‘gradual’ boycott of schools, courts and hospitals. The non-cooperation movement followed so shortly after the Punjab disturbances that the former cannot be understood without the latter in mind. Lord Hunter’s report was published in the spring of 1920, almost a year after the first days of rioting in the Punjab, but just before the Khilafat Committee passed its first non-cooperation resolution. With disputes over the payment of collective fines still unresolved, and a few participants still in jail or under deportation orders, the events of the previous year had not disappeared from the public mind. Indeed, as was seen in the previous chapter, as the Khilafat agitation grew, the leaders of the movement weaved into their speeches reference to the ‘Punjab wrongs’. In so doing, they brought non-Muslims into the fold and joined resentment about the nature of British rule inside India with discontent about British policy in other parts of the world. Controversy also remained within government over the ways in which the Punjab disturbances should or should not have been handled. The previous year, the provincial governments in Punjab and Bombay had leapt into sustained, aggressive action at the first scent of disorder. This had been a problem not only because it had drawn public criticism, but also because the government had been eventually compelled to reverse many of its more repressive policies. Instant and overwhelming repression had failed, and a new approach had to be found this time around. The following chapter is made up of four sections. First, it examines governments’ policies with regard to arresting the movement’s leadership. Then, it moves on to analyse what impact the satyagrahi (non-violent protester) had upon the criminal justice system. The penultimate section follows up the debate which was considered in the previous chapter over the use of whipping. Finally, the chapter explores the developing contest over the use of state violence against the public. As a whole middle-class satyagrahis brought considerable change to the coercive network as they were brought into contact with it. As nationalist convicts they turned the political prisoner into a paragon of nationalist self-sacrifice and the jail into a metaphor for British

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rule. As respectable Indians, their presence seemed to demand that they be treated differently from the members of the lower echelons of society. Therefore, class distinctions – both in prison and with regard to corporal punishment – were fortified during this campaign. The nationalist leadership also quickly exploited instances of state violence as they built on the symbolism of Jallianwala Bagh. D.A. Low has argued that the Government of India was ‘not only highly perspicacious but singularly adroit’ in its handling of the noncooperation movement.5 This chapter looks beyond the centre to provincial governments and local officers to argue that, on the contrary, the combined actions of the satyagrahis threw the administration and the institutions of the ordinary criminal justice system off balance. Still reeling from the Punjab disturbances, India’s various levels of government were deeply divided over how to confront political acts which they deemed to be criminal. Thus, although the nation-wide movement called for unified counter-measures, local officers and provincial governments retained their own habits of disobedience. Moreover, the men on the spot and the higher authorities were still squabbling over whether to circumscribe the autonomy of state actors on the ground. In this quarrel, local officers regularly used their own powers to upset the plans of the central government.

Intra-governmental politics and the policy of non-interference D.A. Low has written of the Government of India’s ‘perspicacity’ in not prosecuting the leadership during the early stages of the non-cooperation movement.6 The present section argues that something closer to paralysis, rather than cold calculation, dictated the direction of the Government of India’s strategy in regard to the new agitation. This is because, in the summer of 1920, the penal options available to the authorities were limited. After the ‘unsuccessful’ use of extra-legal measures during the Punjab disturbances, it was agreed between the Secretary of State and the Government of India that, ‘we shall have a much smaller storm of public excitement and opposition to face if we invoke the assistance of the ordinary criminal law’.7 Instead of calling upon extraordinary powers of deportation or detention without trial, governments would have to launch criminal cases against the leadership. So long as they could not guarantee successful prosecutions, they were unwilling to take this step. This did not mean that action against those persons making provocative speeches was absolutely forbidden. Instead, the central government was very keen for provincial governments to bear the burden of prosecution. The provinces were not obliging, however, and the resultant policy was one of inactivity. In the summer of 1920, after Gandhi issued an ultimatum to the Viceroy which promised to resort to non-cooperation if the Treaty of Sèvres were not revised, Montagu came under pressure in Parliament to arrest Gandhi.8 The Government of India consulted its legal officers about the likely success of prosecuting Gandhi and Shaukat Ali under the Indian Penal Code. It was vital that the prosecution be successful because any trial would be seen as a

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confrontation between the British Government of India and the movement. Bengal’s Advocate General and Standing Counsel advised, however, that Gandhi’s conviction could only be guaranteed after the onset of the third stage of the programme, i.e. once he had begun to incite the police and military to disaffection. Shaukat Ali’s case was somewhat different, as he had used more inflammatory language in his speeches, and had ‘definitely talked about contingent loyalty’. Nonetheless, the two counsellors advised, ‘even in this case it would be safer to wait.’9 Unable to deport Gandhi, Shaukat Ali and other leaders, and unwilling to prosecute them, the centre somewhat reluctantly informed local governments that, until they could prosecute the leadership under the criminal law, non-interference was ‘the wisest policy’.10 Publicising its policy of ‘non-interference’, the centre appealed to the ‘sanity of the masses’ and asked Indians to reject non-cooperation as a ‘visionary and chimerical scheme’.11 Before the formal commencement of the programme of non-cooperation, this decision could be justified on more grounds than one. Certain circles in government believed that to act with prudence would hasten the movement’s end.12 Moreover, as the non-cooperation programme included council boycott, the Government of India sought to save the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms by not provoking India’s moderate politicians into rejecting the new constitutional regime. In the greater imperial context, fears that a war with Soviet Russia may be imminent, and worries about the deteriorating situation in British trusteeship territories in the Middle East increased the incentive to keep India on track. Although the general policy was one of forbearance, this did not preclude the provinces from proceeding against the more militant participants in the agitation. Indeed, in the very circular in which they announced their strategy of non-interference, the Government of India also urged the provinces to ‘take vigorous action … in the shape of prosecution’ against non-cooperators who advocated violence or undermined the loyalty of the police or military.13 This Janus-faced policy had benefits as well as perils. After the experience of the Punjab disturbances, it was essential to avoid rumours that would lead to violence, as the rumour of Gandhi’s arrest had done in 1919. To this end, the Government publicly reassured the population of its good intentions. At the same time, they were not willing to let sedition go unpunished. Privately, therefore, the centre endeavoured to pass the burden of repressive measures on to the provinces. In practice, however, this strategy provided space within which responsibility for arrests could be kicked back and forth between central and local authorities. Two examples, one from Punjab and one from Bombay, illustrate this point. When the three leaders, Lala Lajpat Rai, Dr Kitchlew and Rambhaj Dutt Choudhri, made controversial non-cooperation speeches in Gujranwala, Punjab, the opportunity to arrest them arose. During his speech, Rambhaj Dutt Choudhri had described the movement as being, ‘at war with the present bureaucracy, though a bloodless and non-violent war’.14 He had appealed to students, women and factory owners to sacrifice for the movement. He promised that, for those who died during the struggle, ‘eternal glory will be theirs and they will have their abode in heaven.’15 The centre believed

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the speeches to be ‘full of incitements to sedition and revolution’. They warned the Government of Punjab that, ‘unless prosecutions are instituted in the worst cases, the task of coping with the campaign of sedition now in progress will become increasingly difficult.’16 The Punjab Government responded that they found ‘no good ground for prosecution’. But they reported that Kitchlew, and Rambhaj Dutt Choudhri had been restrained from ‘attending or speaking at any public meeting’ by orders issued under the Defence of India Rules.17 If the speeches had warranted action under the Defence of India Rules, observed one Home Department official, then they must certainly have justified a prosecution under the ordinary criminal law.18 To restrict a man from speaking was much simpler, and far less likely to cause a riot, than to arrest and try him for sedition. Still smarting from the spring of 1919, the Punjab Government was keen to act in the least incendiary manner, even if doing so meant disregarding the centre’s orders. The second case, this time involving Gandhi, demonstrates the ways in which provincial governments could not only ignore the centre’s directives, but could also manipulate their responsibilities to compel the central government to bend to their will. By the summer of 1921, the first two stages of the campaign had been completed. As Gandhi concentrated his attention on swadeshi (lit. of one’s own country, indigenous manufactures), volunteer organisations grew more belligerent, picketing shops and staging bonfires of videshi (foreign) cloth.19 In July 1921, at the Karachi session of the All India Khilafat Conference, Mohammed Ali stepped up the pressure on the British by claiming it was, ‘religiously unlawful for the Muslims to continue in the British army’.20 For this he was arrested and sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment. His imprisonment caused a great stir in the public.21 Sensing that they had found the stick with which to prod the Government of India into arresting them, Gandhi and 47 other Congressmen issued a memo in October in which they repeated what Ali had said. The Congress Working Committee and local level Congress Committees passed resolutions to the same effect. The third phase was in full swing. Lord Reading, who had replaced Chelmsford as Viceroy, saw this move for what it was – a ‘challenge’.22 He urged the government to take up this unequivocal opportunity to arrest and prosecute Gandhi. And yet, when this chance presented itself, it was not seized. Responsibility for this decision rested with the Bombay Government. Despite exhortations from the centre, Bombay felt that, by prosecuting the Ali brothers, the government had only ‘rehabilitated’ their prestige, and that Gandhi’s arrest would do the same for him.23 At the time, the decision of the Bombay government was justified by news from the districts, where Gandhi’s plea to the police and military to resign had not had a great impact upon the services.24 Two months later, however, the Government of Bombay and the Government of India had swapped sides. In December 1921, Bombay requested permission to arrest Gandhi after he had made provocative speeches at the AICC meeting in Ahmedabad. The central authorities withheld their consent.

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Having failed to act against Gandhi at the beginning of the third stage of the movement, they felt that they would be open to criticism if they moved against him before the agitation progressed to its next stage. They therefore set their sights on prosecuting Gandhi when and if he should begin a campaign of mass civil disobedience.25 After this rebuff, Bombay used the resources it had to hand to influence the centre indirectly. They did have some leverage: while declining the provincial request to prosecute Gandhi, Reading simultaneously pressed Bombay to bring Hasrat Mohani to court for the Presidential speech he had made at the Muslim League’s conference in Ahmedabad. Bombay’s government answered Reading’s demand by making two excuses for not prosecuting Mohani. First, they claimed to have inadequate evidence against the President of the League because their reporters had been ‘unable to hear and record it in full’ as his speech had been read ‘hurriedly’.26 Second, the Government of Bombay wrote, Mohani’s prosecution ought to be deferred until action was taken against ‘other parties especially or more prominently concerned in the joint movement’.27 The reference was to Gandhi, and it was not lost on the Government of India’s Home Department. When Gandhi announced a plan for civil disobedience in Bardoli, and the centre finally agreed to his arrest, the central government wrote to Bombay, ‘now that these orders regarding Gandhi have been issued, they [the Government of India] can see no possible reason for exempting Hasrat Mohani from prosecution.’28 These episodes were representative of the dynamic between centre and province in the system of devolved government. Often the centre could devise one strategy for itself and another for the provinces. Thus, even though policy on certain subjects was technically for provincial governments to formulate, the centre repeatedly endeavoured to dictate to the provinces through ‘recommendations’. A plan which fell somewhere between maintaining complete control over local authorities and granting complete autonomy to them left ample room for provincial governments to frustrate the centre either by refusing to exercise the powers conferred upon them, or by rejecting the centre’s recommendations. If they complied with the centre’s scheme, it would be for their own reasons. As a result, full responsibility for the different subjects that made up matters of ‘law and order’ never rested in a single body. And when responsibility was accompanied by risk, it was often passed back and forth between centre and province, sometimes creating a policy far different from the one originally envisaged. Thus, the ‘strategy’ of non-interference which the central government pursued in the early stages of non-cooperation movement was really a non-policy of haphazard interference.

The satyagrahi in the prison system Non-interference lasted nearly a year whilst Gandhi constructed the main pillars of the nationalist programme which would stand for the next three decades. He urged Indians to wear khadi and the Gandhi cap, and to spin on

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the charkha (spinning wheel) daily. He asked his followers to help in the uplift of rural India with his constructive programme.29 Gandhi designed the national flag and began to develop a calendar of national days. When, in November 1921, the Government of India announced it would take a more aggressive tack and make more widespread arrests, this gave nationalists the opportunity to champion yet another national symbol – the political prisoner. In their jail diaries, and in press accounts of their confinement, the condition of jails came to be used as a metaphor for British rule in India.30 And the squalor and brutality of prison life quickly came to symbolise the lives of all Indians. Political prisoners used their imprisonment to cultivate a sense of national self-discipline.31 Across the country’s jails, satyagrahis could be found organising their own quotidian routine of spinning, reading and exercise. Once inside, the satyagrahi presented a unique problem for the Indian prison system because he or she was a middle-class person in a system designed for the poorer sections of society. Satyagrahis and their supporters insisted that the non-cooperators’ position in life and the nature of their crimes entitled them to special privileges in jail. These demands threw the administration into disarray. First, political prisoners, and satyagrahis in particular, troubled policy makers because, although they broke the law and challenged the state, their actions were governed by a set of ethics which was acknowledged and occasionally even appreciated by at least some of the men in power in India. Second, the prison system in India already categorised prisoners according to their ‘status in life’. Europeans, and Indians with European lifestyles were entitled to better food, clothing and bedding in jail. In this hierarchy, there was no place for khadi-wearing, middle-class Indians. The administration was divided over whether special arrangements ought to be made for this group. Consequently, policy towards satyagrahis was vacillating and uncertain. The authorities could not decide whether they wanted satyagrahis to be sentenced to rigorous imprisonment or whether a special category was warranted for political prisoners. After nearly a year of restraint, the Government of India announced a more assertive policy in November 1921. The new strategy arose in response to both the increased virulence of the speeches of the movement’s leadership, and the rise in the intensity of confrontations between police and ordinary protesters.32 With this move, nearly all prominent members of the joint movement, except Gandhi, were taken into custody. Many more were arrested for ‘crimes’ such as wearing a Gandhi cap, or shouting a nationalist slogan. Many low-level satyagrahis found it difficult to get into prison, and only earned themselves a jail sentence when they refused to pay the fines which magistrates imposed upon them. Indeed, satyagrahis were exceptional in part because, in contrast to other types of criminals, they actually managed to secure themselves the punishment of individual imprisonment. Upon entering jails satyagrahis criticised nearly everything they encountered, from the poor quality of provisions to the pointless monotony of labour and the routine violence of those in charge. Gandhi used his newspaper,

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Young India, to publish a ten-part series on his jail experiences, commenting on everything from clothing to convict warders. Gandhi’s balanced accounts included praise along with criticism, as well as a programme for reform of the system centred on the charkha.33 The accounts from other jail-going noncooperators were not as judicious and did not economise when pouring scorn on the Indian prison system. Food, often poor-quality grains and simple vegetables, was a routine source of displeasure. The other basic provisions were no less unsavoury. One inmate complained of Delhi Jail’s blankets and uniforms being, ‘microbe-infected, lice-laden, blood-stained tatters, the wornoff relics of common felons.’34 Similarly, Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s loyal secretary, recorded that his drinking water was obtained from a dirty tank, and brought to him in a rusted vessel, which he and the other prisoners were obliged to use for both their drinking water and for washing.35 Monotonous employment inspired protests from some political prisoners, who refused to perform tedious tasks such as grinding flour. Gandhi, who supervised nearly every detail of life in jail for satyagrahis, generally urged prisoners to obey the rules because they had courted imprisonment in order to suffer for their cause. His instructions, however, were vague, and he only encouraged prisoners to do jobs consistent with the maintenance of their self-respect.36 Bande Mataram, the Congress mouthpiece, drew its own conclusions, and wrote, ‘these jobs are repugnant to human self-respect and if the jail officials and the Government do not abolish these labours, the prisoners themselves will have to make efforts to maintain their self-respect.’37 Many satyagrahis did just that and refused to work, or laboured at a deliberately slow pace and were punished for these transgressions with a flogging.38 Indeed, insubordination of any kind was often handled with violence by the authorities. The nationalist press publicised countless stories of unnecessary brutality, from mistreatment of the Qur’an39 to floggings dispensed for minor offences. An incident in Punjab’s Montgomery Jail provides one example of how punishment of an individual could easily become exemplary punishment of an entire group. Bande Mataram narrated the sequence of events as follows: On the 28th April two Muhammadan prisoners had an altercation with a jail official. A prisoner, named Mool Singh, also joined the Muhammadan prisoners against the Jail Babu. To wreak vengeance Bhai Mool Singh was made over to the Pathans, handcuffed with his hands towards the back and fettered and was very severely beaten for full six hours to such an extent that pieces of wood were thrust into his anus and his long hair and beard were pulled without restraint. When other Muslim and Sikh prisoners protested against it, all of them began receiving a beating. On each day, the door of a cell is opened and 5 or 6 Pathans are sent inside who fully satisfy their heart’s craving … (When) the convict-warders (lit Lambardars) and prisoners having concessions went to the Superintendent to make a representation they were deprived of their concessions and remissions and the rest were put at the grinding mill.40

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The Pathans, the article made clear, were also prisoners, but satyagrahis tended to place responsibility for such acts at the feet of the British for allowing ‘such blood-thirstiness’.41 Gandhi, like the nationalist press, quickly equated the wrongs of jail officials with larger injustices. Commenting on the fact that, upon their admittance to Karachi Jail, prison officials had forcibly subjected the Ali brothers to a search involving the removal of all their clothes except a lungi (a cloth wrapped around the waist), Gandhi wrote that political convicts ‘must expect’ discomfort, just as they should expect jail officials to demand respect, but ‘discipline must not take the form of humiliation. Discomfort must not be torture, and respect must not take the form of crawling on one’s belly’.42 By making an analogy with Dyer’s crawling order, Gandhi elevated the ordinary aspects of prison administration into national insults. As one of the most prominent state institutions, the prison symbolised not only the government, but also the responsibilities it had to its subjects. Thus, the conditions of life inside India’s jails were readily transposed into a metaphor for the condition of the whole of India under British rule. Similarly, the suffering of Indian leaders in prison became a symbol of the suffering of the Indian people, as well as a specific source of discontent. Appealing to the government to treat the Ali brothers and Kitchlew as political prisoners by granting them special privileges, The Tribune wrote, ‘You cannot seek to humiliate such men or treat them with unnecessary and unjustifiable harshness without the whole country taking it as deliberate affront’.43 The paper justified its appeal with reference to ‘every canon of civilised jurisprudence and the established practice of England herself.’44 Employing the prison as a metaphor in this way was powerful because it called into question the civilising mission of the British empire. In so doing, satyagrahis and their supporters used the same language as the British had applied to justify their rule – civilisation – but they were now asserting the right to judge these standards themselves. A system in which Europeans who committed crimes against persons and property were awarded greater privileges in jail than Indians who broke the law for a righteous cause was, ‘invidious and irrational … outrageously indefensible’.45 The non-cooperators and their advocates proposed that government could begin to meet these standards of civilization by offering more generous treatment to political prisoners whose offences involved ‘no moral turpitude’.46 The satyagrahi completely inverted the norms of the ordinary criminal justice system. Here it was the subject who demanded punishment, and who imposed his own regime of discipline once inside the jail. It was the satyagrahi who disapproved of certain types of behaviour, and demanded reform. Because of this inversion, the imprisonment of satyagrahis must be seen not as a means by which the state disciplined the population, but as a form of nationalist disciplining. More importantly, like khadi and the charkha, the political prisoner was a political icon deployed for symbolic purposes. It took members of the government apparatus until the Individual Satyagraha of 1940–41, to realise the essentially dramatic nature of the punishment of

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satyagrahis. Once they had appreciated this, they could transform this penal tactic. During the non-cooperation movement, however, various governments in India embroiled in an endless contest over privileges for political prisoners. Divided and confused: government orders regarding the treatment of prisoners Members of the colonial administration were at odds over the question of whether political prisoners ought to be treated exceptionally. Whilst government officers did split along lines of race, the sharpest divisions were between lower and higher levels of government. Even though the new movement necessitated a coherent and coordinated plan orchestrated by the central government and implemented by local officers, this goal was not achieved in this period because of the on-going dispute over local officers’ powers. As they were entitled to do under the new constitution, the various provinces drew up provincial rules for the treatment of prisoners. Whilst Bombay, Madras and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) did not create a class for political convicts or offer them special treatment, Assam, Bihar and Orissa, Bengal, Delhi, Central Provinces (CP), United Provinces (UP) and Punjab did.47 When one or more provinces decided on a more liberal policy, this created problems for those provinces in which penal practices were not as generous. Non-cooperators and the nationalist press detected the more lenient policy and used it as a precedent to pressure the central government into bringing all prison regulations into line.48 In light of this, the Viceroy concluded that a single policy was essential: ‘I do not see how one Government can refuse this special treatment when another has announced it.’49 The imperative of designing a uniform policy combined with fears that the November repression had been too severe to put the Government of India in a more generous mood. By the end of December 1921, Reading complained of being ‘flooded’ with objections to the more repressive policy.50 Overzealous local officers had arrested people wearing the Gandhi gap, selling khaddar, or shouting ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’ (long live Mahatma Gandhi).51 Orders were issued to discontinue arrests for such trivial matters, but a larger concession would be required in order to ease the situation. Even though jails were a provincial subject under the new constitutional arrangement,52 the Viceroy and his Council ‘suggested’ that local governments provide ‘special treatment’ to those prisoners convicted in connection with the non-cooperation movement by considerably alleviating the rigours of the prison regime. They also directed judicial officers not to sentence non-cooperators to rigorous imprisonment.53 This failed to provide a solution, however, because some local officers revolted against these orders when they came from provincial governments, and the suggestion had to be withdrawn.54 After the Chauri Chaura incident and Gandhi’s decision to call off the movement in February 1922,55 the debate within government over privileges for the new brand of inmate intensified. Less panicked at this time, the

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Government of India appointed its Home Member, Sir William Vincent, and its Law Member, the Liberal politician, Tej Bahadur Sapru, to investigate the question of the political prisoner and to make recommendations to the Government. On the basis of their report new orders were issued, but these too provoked a row from the lower ranks.56 As a result, a conference with provincial governments was convened in July 1922. Out of this meeting arose yet another set of instructions drawn up by the centre for the provinces. The new rules did not create a separate class for political prisoners, but a ‘Special Class’. This category created space within which government could place troublesome middle-class, non-violent offenders without taking into account their political objectives, and without calling them political prisoners. In order to avoid creating a specific class only for political prisoners, Vincent and Sapru included in the new category other moral offenders, whose offences were not connected to political movements. They excluded from the class anyone who had committed murder, dacoity or arson with a political motive.57 Convicts in the new class would be housed separately from other inmates, and allowed to associate freely with others of the same class during the day. They could eat additional food, at their own expense, and use their own clothing and bedding, chairs, table and writing materials. They were permitted to write and receive one letter per week, and to have family visits at ‘reasonable’ intervals. Finally, following the suggestion of Vincent and Sapru, ‘such a prisoner should not be called on to perform menial duties if he is willing to pay for the services of one other prisoner to serve him’.58 The Government of India forbade newspapers and prohibited prisoners from wearing political symbols such as the Gandhi cap.59 Of course, special exception would be made for the more eminent members of the leadership. Sapru and Vincent’s new regulations would not apply to ‘men, such as Gandhi, C.R. Das, Moti Lal Nehru, severe treatment of whom in jail injures the credit of Government in the eyes of the public.’60 The new guidelines were more stringent than those previously in force in the UP, where both newspapers and the Gandhi cap had been permitted. Surmising that they would encounter serious obstruction from political prisoners if they withdrew newspaper privileges, the UP government decided not to enforce this rule until after 15 November 1922, by which time most satyagrahis would have been released.61 They also feared that the new regulation on the Gandhi cap would give prisoners an opportunity to revive their agitation. To avoid such a possibility, the Government of UP ordered that no political prisoner should be punished for wearing a Gandhi cap ‘under any circumstances’, without previous sanction from the Governor.62 The experience of the UP demonstrates that, no matter how inclusive the policy-making process, the most carefully constructed orders could simply be ignored. In so doing, provincial administrators could undermine the entire strategy, dependent as it was on unanimous participation from the provinces. Satyagrahis clearly inverted the norms of the criminal justice system and disrupted its everyday functioning, forcing both the penal system and the

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state to change. As they entered jails, the role of class in punishment became more prominent. The existing system had taken class into account, but the nationalist movement’s middle-class base forced the authorities to consider offering concessions to accommodate this new group. Second, in the face of a nation-wide, anti-government agitation, a single policy for the whole country was imperative. Therefore, even while India was adjusting to the devolved structure of the new constitution, there was a tendency towards centralisation in policy-making. In spite of the trend of homogenisation on the level of design, however, implementation of these centrally conceived plans was often patchy at the local level and even at the provincial level. It was practically impossible to devise a policy to which all members of the administration could be reconciled and with which all officers would comply. A similar lack of consensus was evident in the debate over corporal punishments.

Class, race and the recurring problem of whipping The previous chapter highlighted the controversy which arose when it became clear that local officers had used their powers to inflict bodily punishments in a collective and arbitrary manner during the Punjab disturbances. In 1919, the debate around the use of whipping had centred, therefore, on the question of whether or not the discretion of the man on the spot ought to be curtailed. The issue arose again during the non-cooperation movement because flogging was also a vital part of maintaining authority inside jails. When the practice of corporal punishment came to be contested a second time, the discussion centred on questions of race and class. This section surveys the main outlines of this debate to reveal just how widely the various members of the government differed on the subject. Because there was no consensus within the administration on what course to take, the centre tried to restrict informally the use of whipping against persons from the respectable classes. This refocused the debate sharply on the powers of subordinate officers, who, once again, asserted their independence and sunk the centre’s plans. Jail superintendents had wide powers to flog prisoners for a number of offences against the prison regulations, from mutiny to working too slowly. Many of the satyagrahis who took their non-cooperation methods into jail met with a flogging. Urmila Shastri, a female volunteer, recounted the tale of 13 volunteers in Meerut jail who were each given between 30 and 80 lashes of the cane, after a trivial disagreement over the evening roll call mounted into a confrontation with the warders. In her graphic account, entitled ‘Tears of Blood’, all were given a ‘wicked beating’. Those who did not lose consciousness kept ‘the pure and peaceful name of Great India’ on their lips.63 Recounting several tales of flogging for small prison offences like failing to salaam a jail official, Gandhi condemned the ‘state of lawlessness’ as worse than the rule of martial law during the Punjab disturbances.64 Several Indian organisations called for this ‘brutal and cruel punishment’ to be abolished.65

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The public controversy dovetailed with a renewed appetite for review within government. After the non-cooperation movement had ended, a Racial Distinctions Committee was appointed to examine the whole of the criminal justice system with the aim of exposing any racial inequalities and making recommendations for their remedy. The Committee had called for ‘public opinion’ to be consulted on the subject of corporal punishment.66 In the interim, the Liberal Edwin Montagu had lost his post as Secretary of State, and by 1924 the job was occupied by the Conservative Earl of Birkenhead.67 Following the Committee’s recommendations, a second review of the practice of whipping, both as a judicial sanction and as a form of prison discipline was ordered. The opinions which were solicited from central and provincial administrators and local officers as part of this review were so diverse that to collate and categorise them risks masking their sheer variety. Within the larger discussion, however, one can see three broad debates: there was general disagreement over the practice of whipping per se; amongst those who wished to retain the punishment there was debate over whether bodily punishment was suitable only for certain types of crime or only for certain classes of person; there was also division over whether both Europeans and Indians should be liable to this sanction. Although the most prominent opponents of all forms of whipping tended to be Indian, members of the administration did not divide neatly along racial lines. Some Europeans could be found calling for abolition just as a few Indians defended whipping on the grounds that it was ‘best suited to the circumstances and conditions existing in India’.68 There were a few, mostly Indian, officers who wished to expurgate whipping from the statute books. One was Muhammad Ali Muhammad Khan, a civil servant in the UP’s Judicial Department, who sensed a change in public opinion since 1919: … the horrors of flogging inflicted on respectable Indians in the Punjab in public streets during the martial law regime are still fresh in the memory of Indians as a national insult. The whipping of political prisoners in the jails has given rise to a wave of indignation amongst the Indian public on several occasions.69 He was of the opinion that whipping was ‘inhuman and barbarous’ and that it failed to serve any useful purpose in the struggle to maintain law and order: ‘Far from providing any deterrent effect, whipping to my mind is provocative, demoralizing and brutalizing in the extreme’.70 There is some evidence that this view was shared by some officers on the ground: the Government of Bombay complained that, amongst its magistrates, there was ‘a reluctance amounting almost to a dereliction of duty’ to flog persons for violent offences.71 On the other side, opinion had moderated considerably since the first review in 1920, when a significant minority of officers had argued that the practice of whipping ought to be expanded.72 Now, the most conservative position was that held by many senior legal officers who, like J.F. Graham,

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the District Judge of Dacca, were ‘not in favour of any modification of the law’.73 The Deputy Commissioner of Gurgaon, F.L. Brayne, for example, advised that it would be ‘premature’ for the government to give up any weapon which helped it to ‘maintain law and order’.74 Occupying the middle ground were the many officers who preferred to limit the sanction to certain types of offence and certain classes of offenders. In 1919, Montagu had declared himself in favour of limiting the use of whipping to ‘crimes of violence’, whether as a jail punishment or as a judicial sentence.75 The Governments of Bengal and Assam had both expressed approval for this kind of restriction the following year.76 Some local officers echoed this view. Rai Bahadur Lal Kahan Chand, the Deputy Commissioner of Karnal, Punjab, believed that whipping should be retained, but only for ‘heinous crimes entailing moral turpitude of the worst kind … such as unnatural offences, outrages on women and dacoities and burglaries accompanied with violence’. Behind many of these statements is an implicit assumption about the social status of violent criminals. Whilst suggesting that flogging suited violent offenders, Lal Kahan Chand also suggested that persons of high social standing should as a rule, ‘be spared the indignity of corporal punishment’.77 In UP, too, the Commissioner of Meerut also argued that ‘high classes of people’ should be fined instead of whipped.78 Tensions of race complicated this discussion. At the time, Europeans could only be sentenced to whipping by senior judicial officers, known as Presidency Magistrates, who presided over the most serious cases. In contrast, any class of magistrate could impose the punishment on an Indian. The majority of the Racial Distinctions Committee proposed that, if whipping were retained, ‘it should apply to Europeans and Indians alike’.79 Many local officers agreed. Except for the Commissioner of Lahore, all local officers in Punjab agreed that, whether abolished or retained, ‘no distinction should be made between Europeans and Indians in the matter of whipping’.80 Lal Kahan Chand argued that, if a European ‘of a lower order’ were convicted of a violent offence, ‘there is no reason why he should not be treated equally with Indians’.81 There was a curious unanimity on this point in India.82 Even the European Association, which opposed ‘any curtailment of the existing law’, nonetheless was of the opinion that ‘no differentiation between races should exist’. The Association added, however, that the punishment ‘should be carried out by a man of the same race as the offender’.83 The Viceroy, now Lord Reading, suggested to Birkenhead that they ‘must be prepared … to empower courts to impose sentences of whipping upon European British subjects to the same extent as on Indians’.84 This put the Secretary of State in a difficult position. In essence, the enquiry had been intended to dampen any political controversy surrounding the infliction of bodily sanctions. If erasing racial discrimination meant extending the jurisdiction of low-ranking (Indian) magistrates to flog Europeans, Birkenhead warned, the proposal ‘would evoke considerable opposition in Parliament and might cause serious bitter feeling amongst Europeans

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in India’, notwithstanding the European Association’s apparent equanimity.85 Such a move was, therefore, out of the question. Given that members of the administration had failed to agree on how to alter the practice, and that the many proposals at hand differed significantly from those put forward by non-official Indians, there was no hope that legislation to change the law of whipping would be passed peaceably by the assemblies. Instead, it was decided to issue instructions to the High Courts of each province that they should inform magistrates that flogging should only be administered in cases in which the ‘nature of the offence’ and ‘the status of the offender’ made such a sanction ‘suitable’.86 This did not solve the problem, however, as judicial bodies refused to abide by the new recommendations. The First Judicial Commissioner of Oudh, L. Stuart, declined to pass the orders on the grounds that, ‘there are no circumstances in my opinion in which the court should issue directions to judicial officers as to the nature of the sentences which they should pass’.87 The High Court took the same position. The centre responded by assuring the provinces that the original communication had merely been ‘advice’, rather than an order. The judicial officers were not convinced, and continued to refuse to issue any communication, whether in the form of orders or advice, to magistrates.88 At issue was not the penalty of flogging per se, but the relative power of the different levels of government to carry out their tasks without interference. By refusing to do as the centre had requested, the High Court was insisting that the executive either go through the proper process to change the law, or leave officers to exercise their own discretion. Neither of these courses was ideal for the central government. They would meet with resistance from district officers if the law were changed, but would also face public discontent if officers continued to flog whomever they wished. The centre’s ‘advice’ was not ignored everywhere, but this was no gradual march towards more disciplinary forms of punishment for everyone. In some places the sanction of whipping was limited in the case of the respectable classes. This marks a distinction from the practice in Africa, where racial difference remained important in the use of the punishment.89 The manifold differences of opinion on the matter ensured that any reductions made were limited in scale. Moreover, it was not easy to reform a practice which had never had any settled and coherent ideological basis, but instead had been deployed most often for reasons of financial and practical expediency. The following section examines how satyagrahis were also able to exploit the combination of ideological weakness and factual uncertainty which often surrounded the use of firing on crowds.

Kisans, Congress and state violence: the Rae Bareli firing, January 1921 The discretionary power of local-level state intermediaries once again came under pressure when controversy arose over an occasion on which forces fired

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upon kisan (peasant) protesters in the Rae Bareli district of UP. In this section, various accounts of the firing are laid before the reader to demonstrate the problems and opportunities which such occurrences presented to the police, the government and the opposition groups of the time. Irrefutable and trustworthy accounts of the clash were very difficult to come by first of all because a police firing tended to occur in the midst of general confusion. Moreover, those directly involved had an interest in presenting biased accounts of events in order to avoid prosecution, vilification, or both. These problems were often compounded by the involvement of provincial governments and provincial or national politicians. An important feature of the controversy over the firing in Rae Bareli was its public nature. The nationalist press and the Anglo-Indian papers each published accounts from their own correspondents. They also published the government’s frequent communiqués which conveyed the official version of events. This section scrutinises these post-firing discourses to determine what such disputes about the facts reveal about the nature of the state and of the nationalist movement during the noncooperation movement. To this end, it begins with the various conflicting accounts of two occasions on which the police fired on crowds, on 6 and 7 January 1921. The key controversy was over the question of who fired on 7 January and why. In the end, this question was left unanswered, but the final part of this section examines how an unresolved dispute could nonetheless change government policy. In late 1920 and early 1921, peasant disturbances, connected to the Kisan Sabha (Peasant Association) Movement, spread in Awadh, UP.90 At the time, peasants were expressing their anger and frustration at inflated rents, arbitrary evictions, fines and landlord violence.91 Following a week in which peasants had attacked and looted landlords’ estates, the confrontation between kisans and the authorities came to a head.92 Detailed accounts of the disturbances hit the press on 11 January. Under the heading ‘Rai Bareli Tragedy’, The Independent (Allahbad) published a full-page spread with various accounts of the occurrences, including one issued in an official communiqué. It emerged that the police had fired twice upon large gatherings of peasants in the district, first on 6 January in the bazaar at Fursatganj, and then on the following day near the jail at Munshiganj. On the first occasion, both official and unofficial accounts agreed that shots were fired upon a group gathered at the bazaar when its members began looting the shops there.93 There was, however, no such agreement over the second firing. According to the official version of events, on the morning of 7 January, 650 kisans marched to the jail, to protest against the arrest of three kisan leaders. These 650 men were themselves arrested on the assumption that they had come to the jail to intimidate the police into releasing their leaders. Later in the afternoon, around 3,000 kisans assembled at Munshiganj in protest against the morning’s events. They were persuaded to turn around, but were joined by a group of 7,000 peasants, who were marching to Munshiganj to voice their grievances to the Deputy Commissioner. The crowd of 10,000 refused to

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disperse when requested, and when mounted police attempted to force them to leave the area, the official versions state, the police were met with stones and lathis (sticks), and were therefore ‘compelled to fire’.94 According to the nationalist press, when the kisans at Munshiganj had refused to disperse, they had nonetheless ‘expressed their readiness’ to follow the advice of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was making his way to Rae Bareli, but the District Magistrate had declined to afford them this opportunity. The kisans maintained that ‘no violence or aggression of any kind was attempted’ on their part, but they had been fired upon by Sardar Birpal Singh, the local taluqdar (large land holder), who, the kisans stated ‘was no friend of theirs’.95 Most of the controversy centred around the issue of who fired upon the kisans and under what authority. The question could be raised because the police were not the only source of authority on the scene. When the situation in the district had become tense, the Deputy Commissioner had called upon members of a labour corps, which happened to be working nearby, to help bolster government forces. This added fifty men with bludgeons and one subedar (captain) with a revolver, to the twenty-four mounted police, and ten men from the 2nd Rajput Guard already at the disposal of the authorities.96 In addition to these men, a taluqdar, Sirdar Birpal Singh, was also present to hold the line against the peasants on 7 January. The taluqdar was said to have the District Magistrate under his sway. The Independent described Sirdar Birpal Singh as, ‘the friend, philosopher and guide of Mr Sheriff, the D[istrict] M[agistrate].’ The paper reported that the kisans resented the taluqdar for his tyrannical rule.97 The role of Sirdar Birpal Singh in the second firing was a key point of dispute. The nationalist press, Jawaharlal Nehru and the kisans all accused Sirdar Birpal Singh of being the first to fire.98 This allegation was apparently substantiated when, four days after the event, Sir Harcourt Butler, the Governor of UP, telegrammed to congratulate Sirdar Birpal Singh for his role in restoring order in Rae Bareli.99 The taluqdar denied the charge.100 Two days after Sir Harcourt Butler’s telegram, the Government of UP backed Sirdar Birpal Singh’s plea of innocence in a statement declaring that he had not led the shooting and had only fired once in self-defence.101 Two weeks after the event, Lucknow’s Commissioner, J.C. Faunthorpe, claimed that Congressmen had coached the kisans to blame the taluqdar.102 The Government of UP was unable, however, to determine who in fact had initiated the shooting. In their first official statement on the subject, they pinned the responsibility for the firing on mounted police sowars.103 In their final statement on the question, however, they changed their minds and decided that ‘the most probable version’ of events was that the subedar of the labour corps had been the first to fire.104 In each of its communiqués and in a Gazette Extraordinary published after the event the government reiterated with confidence that no officer had issued an order to fire. In the absence of concrete facts, the press demanded that the government ‘solve the mystery’ of who fired at Munshiganj.105 Whilst the Congress party’s relationship to the kisan movement was tenuous and ambivalent, they were able to exploit the faux pas of the government to

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the detriment of the authorities. The connection between the two was tenuous because the kisans had their own programme and a separate leadership.106 The association was ambivalent because Congressmen were keen to feed local grievances (including allegations of police excesses) into their larger movement, but they were also quick to distance themselves from violent forms of protest.107 Nonetheless, the relationship between the Congress and the kisans could be mutually beneficial. In this case, the Congress used the controversy to stir up anti-government feeling as part of the non-cooperation movement, and the kisans used it to settle local scores against Sardar Birpal Singh. The bumbling and inconsistent response of the government created space within which Congressmen could pursue this strategy and direct the public response to the firings. Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya, and Gaurishanker Misra all visited the site of the shootings, the hospitals nearby, and the District Superintendent of Police in order to record the statements of all those involved, and to enquire into the grievances of the peasants. The Congress and kisans’ version of events diverged significantly from that of the government. A police firing, publicly praised by high-ranking officials, but condemned as unjustified by Indian politicians – the analogy with Jallianwala Bagh was easy enough to make. The Congress and the nationalist press seized the opportunity.108 The victims of the two bouts of firing (whether they amounted to seven, as the Government had announced, or fourteen, as maintained by the nationalist paper, The Democrat), were said to have ‘died the death of martyrs’.109 What had begun in uncertainty and ambivalence, ended as a clear defeat for the UP Government because even though the facts remained under dispute, the arguments over them triggered a change in policy. Although the Government of UP maintained that the police had not mishandled the kisan gatherings, they nonetheless made two significant changes to their instructions to the police regarding the use of firearms against the public. The first order was a defensive one, intended to reduce the number of occasions on which such supervision would have to be exercised at all. To this end, they instructed District Magistrates that their forces could use firearms without orders only if they were isolated and had to act in self-defence. Otherwise, men were ‘not to open fire until they get definite orders from their officers’.110 In circumscribing the police in this way, the Government of UP hoped to eschew this type of dispute altogether. Because it referred only to forces which were under the command of officers, however, this instruction did nothing to restrict the powers of sub-contractors of police power such as the labour corps or taluqdars. Thus, it did little to correct any mistakes made at Munshiganj, whichever version of the story one accepts. So long as they were employed in this way, these agents continued to be an additional layer of authority the effective control of which was outside the reach of the Government of India. The second strategy was designed to boost the defences of the authorities in the event that a similar controversy should arise in future. The Government of UP refused to hold an investigation into the Rae Bareli firing on the grounds

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that it had been established that the non-cooperators had been at the origin of the unrest, and that an enquiry would produce ‘tutored evidence’ rather than new facts.111 They also ordered that, whenever a firing occurred, an enquiry ought to be made ‘at once on the spot’ by the officer in charge ‘with a view to eliciting complete facts and justifying the use of firearms.’112 The wording of this stipulation signalled a move towards deliberate subjectivity in the way its officers would report on their own use of force. This was the lesson both of the Hunter Committee into the firing at Jallianwala Bagh and of the firing at Rae Bareli: avoid public enquiries at all costs. It is clear that grassroots organisations which took up the task of criticising government forces had much to gain from doing so. Kisans used this occurrence of state violence to settle local scores. In the following chapters we will see the many ways in which Indian political organisations – not just the Congress – could adjust their critique of state violence to suit their own objectives. In 1921, the government began to modify its reporting procedures as it assumed a defensive posture against those accusing its forces of firing without justification. Over the next three decades, governments in India would come to rely exclusively on their officers’ own version of events. And this type of contest over the interpretation of the conduct of the police would assume increasing importance over the last decades of British rule.

Conclusion Over the course of the previous three years, nationalists had developed an array of techniques by which they were able symbolically to challenge colonial rule. They transformed trials into festivals and prisons into temples, weaving their punishments into their own political choreography. Those convicted of crimes during the movement were lionised as martyrs. Imprisonment, whipping and firing on crowds were no longer conceived as necessary measures for the maintenance of law and order, but were re-interpreted as sites at which the colonial government’s claim to be civilised could be exposed as mere pretence. In this process India’s nationalists successfully bent the ordinary criminal justice system to accommodate the special status of this new brand of convict. Middle-class, educated, non-violent persons carved out a special category for themselves in prison. They also convinced governments to reduce the imposition of corporal punishment on respectable persons, increasing class distinctions even as governments sought to reduce racial ones. Non-cooperators were able to achieve this in part because the official response to the non-cooperation movement was neither insightful nor prudent. Rather, it was the result of internal stalemate over both penal tactics and local officers’ discretionary powers. Central and provincial governments were able to coordinate neither the arrests of the campaign’s leadership nor the treatment of these men and women once in prison. Members of the administration differed so widely over the question of corporal punishment that the centre was unable formally to curtail this punishment in any way.

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Nevertheless, governments had absorbed some key lessons. They had learned from the experience of the Hunter Committee that public enquiries in police firings were best avoided, for example. Over the last twenty-five years of British rule, the Government of India would develop more creative means to deal with middle-class, non-violent disobedience. The following chapter charts the ways in which the lessons of the non-cooperation movement produced new policies a decade later during the civil disobedience movement.

4

Extra-judicial punishments and the civil disobedience movement, 1930–34

After the non-cooperation movement showed the Congress to be adept at turning the mechanisms of the justice system to their advantage, there were several distinct moves away from the formal legal system in the early 1930s. This chapter and the next one focus on the ways in which provincial governments in India sought to avoid using ordinary courts and prisons first when confronting non-violent protesters and then when searching for measures to end communal rioting. During the civil disobedience movement, local-level state forces developed new approaches in an effort to prevent Indians from participating in anti-colonial activities. This chapter examines two of the many alternatives to imprisonment used during this period. One of the most prominent methods adopted was to physically remove satyagrahis from the scene of protests, using force if necessary, but formally arresting as few as possible. As a result, the number and the severity of physical clashes which took place between police and protesters rose dramatically during the movement. These conflicts were transformed into a form of political drama as various political organisations used non-official enquiries into local level confrontations to try to further their own agendas. The Congress high command was unable to ensure that all nationalist groups shared the same message, however. The first section argues, therefore, that the task of interpreting state violence may have been as likely to divide Indians as to unite them. As non-official enquiry committees proliferated, governments in India became increasingly reluctant to investigate, let alone to discipline, members of the police and bureaucracy for misconduct in their encounters with the population. The second purpose of this chapter is to analyse the programme developed by the Education Department in the United Provinces which endeavoured to use schools to penalise students and teachers for their participation in the civil disobedience movement. The plans were disrupted, however, by a combination of intra-governmental disobedience and popular resistance. These two very different types of contest brought individual state agents and civil intermediaries into the domain of confrontational politics, where their actions were drawn into larger partisan struggles.

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Introduction Less than a decade after the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms had devolved some executive powers to Indians in provincial councils, the British government appointed a commission to undertake a review of India’s constitutional arrangements. The Indian National Congress took the opportunity presented by the review to demand that the British grant the country dominion status before the end of 1929, and threatened to resort to mass civil disobedience if this request was not granted. When the British offered only vague promises of dominion status at an indeterminate date, the Congress entrusted Gandhi with the task of drawing up a scheme for civil disobedience with the aim of obtaining purna swaraj (complete self-rule) for India. The movement, which formally stretched from 1930 to 1934, waxed and waned over this period. Following Gandhi’s Salt March, a flurry of activity was witnessed in April, May and June of 1930, but, after the arrest of the Congress leadership, the autumn of 1930 was much quieter. Under an agreement reached between Gandhi and the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, on 5 March 1931, Congress halted most of its activities, whilst provincial governments released prisoners, withdrew punitive police and returned confiscated property.1 When the peace failed to blossom into a constitutional compromise, a second round of confrontation began in December 1931. By mid-1932 the enthusiasm for civil disobedience activity again had been spent. Congressmen tried to revive the movement several times over the next two years, but attentions began to turn elsewhere, and in April 1934 Gandhi formally ended the agitation.2 During the movement, the Congress Working Committee authorised provincial and local Congress committees to design their own programmes of mass civil disobedience. Whilst non-cooperation had relied on the activism of middle-class students and professionals, civil disobedience was designed for a larger audience, and it drew larger support in rural areas. By this time, the Congress Party had lost the support of many of the Muslim political organisations, but their own party was better organised than it had been a decade before. Every province, town and district had its own Congress committee, and even some villages and city neighbourhoods had committees.3 Although Gandhi had been charged with leading the movement, local committees took over much of the organisation on the ground. They instituted programmes ranging from salt-making to no-tax campaigns, picketing of videshi goods and liquor shops to street protests and bonfires of videshi cloth. Across India a calendar of ritualised anti-colonial days was established, as Indians marked Independence Day, Jallianwala Bagh Day, Political Prisoners’ Day, and other national days. These public performances emphasised the responsibility of British imperialism for Indian poverty, the desire for Indians to reform themselves, and the injustice of the way the ‘guardians of law and order’ treated both political prisoners and ordinary citizens. Just as Congress’ activities diversified, so did the response of the authorities. At both central and provincial levels, governments directed their

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attention away from ordinary, formal methods of crime control. A series of ordinances provided new extraordinary powers to punish everyday activities like picketing and press reporting, and to attack nationalist organisations by confiscating their property.4 Several provinces, aware of the often self-defeating effects of putting satyagrahis on trial or in jail, resolved to arrest as few as possible. The Government of Bombay decided in the summer of 1930 that, except in the case of serious offences, the ‘activities of women should be overlooked’.5 In February 1932, as the second wave of anti-government activity swelled, Madras instructed its local officers that ‘leaders should be arrested’, but ‘arrests of the rank and file should as far as possible be avoided’.6 Instead, governments employed a variety of techniques to counter the movement including the forcible dispersal of crowds, dismissal from government employment, disqualification from the bar, confiscation of property, and expulsion from educational institutions. The existing scholarship on the civil disobedience movement is concerned primarily with the question of mobilisation, and thus with the relationship between the Congress and women,7 the peasantry and the urban poor,8 and Muslims in India.9 But, of course, the nationalist campaign had two faces, one turned towards the Indian people, and the other towards the colonial state. The exclusive focus on mobilisation fails to assess the extent to which the anti-colonial campaigns, and the official counter-measures which attended them, transformed both Indian politics and the everyday functioning of the state. Whilst nationalist groups developed khadi, Mother India and the political prisoner as symbols of the nation, they also conducted an increasingly vociferous campaign against ‘police atrocities’. They introduced students to the calendar of nationalist holidays and enjoined them to participate in the performance of national rituals such as saluting the flag and singing national songs. In recent years scholars have underlined the many ways in which several of these tactics could foster divisions within the Indian population. Hindu imagery could alienate Muslims;10 middle-class symbolism did not always appeal to the urban poor.11 The interpretation of the state’s coercive measures was no different. Because most coercive measures were perpetrated by Indian members of the police, and because the Congress leadership did not have a monopoly on the interpretation of state violence, these publicity drives did not always succeed in their drive to unify Indians against the imperial power. As it responded to these campaigns, there were several significant changes in the state during this period. First, the punishment of collective action was moved out of the ordinary criminal justice system. As this happened, individual state actors gained more independence and more prominence on the political stage. In elected bodies such as district and Municipal Boards, many Indians pursued their pro- or anti-imperial agendas through their office. Elsewhere partisanship was explicitly encouraged: public campaigns increasingly focused on local authority figures, from policemen to headmasters of schools. Nationalist organisations not only criticised the actions of these authorities, but demanded that they act in the ‘national’ interest. In the face

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of these pressures governments in India used monetary and disciplinary incentives to attempt to retain the loyalty of their forces and to try to induce elected bodies and other civil intermediaries to act in the interests of the imperial government. Forced by circumstances and often by their own convictions, the conduct of individual officers took on a more overtly political character, as they were encouraged to take sides in the contest between nationalists and the imperial power.

State violence, civil disobedience and political drama Although the local level campaigns which made up the civil disobedience movement varied, there was one common factor across much of India: from the inception of the mass campaign, there were violent clashes between police and protesters. In April 1930, Karachi, Calcutta and Peshawar witnessed fierce and deadly collisions between state forces and protesters. After Gandhi’s detention on 5 May 1930, crowds and police confronted one other with force in Delhi, Sholapur and elsewhere. Throughout the campaign, in innumerable locations around the country, lower-level confrontations occurred on a daily basis: policemen blocked processions and used lathi charges or gunfire to force satyagrahis to disperse; they dispelled picketers, and prevented groups from raising the national flag; and they forcibly confiscated property when villagers refused to remit land revenue or pay collective fines. Tear gas had been invented the previous decade, but in the aftermath of the First World War the imperial government had ruled out the use of any kind of gas as a ‘Prussian’ tactic not appropriate for use on civilians.12 Thus, when police approached protesters, they did so armed with lathis or firearms. These confrontations, large and small, quickly became a focal point in the anti-colonial campaign. Although a handful of historians have recorded some of these events, analysis of them has tended to be thin. Most have made a general assertion that state violence helped Congress gain sympathy from the general public,13 or that it served to erode British ‘authority’ in India.14 These scholars have not, however, examined the content of the many messages which were disseminated through stories of police brutality. Nor have they recognised the complexities introduced into the campaign by the fact that in most cases this violence involved Indian police clashing with Indian protesters. Mainstream nationalist organisations publicised accounts of these everyday struggles to provide examples of model satyagrahi behaviour. They also, once again, used individual incidents of violence to represent British rule more generally. A further aim was to foster a sense that all Indians were part of the same national family. But because policemen were predominantly Indian, this goal often conflicted with the campaign to vilify the police. Moreover, the Congress high command and the small group of like-minded organisations at the top of Indian politics did not control the ways in which other organisations interpreted state violence. The lower echelons of the nationalist movement – from provincial Congress committees to local level

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associations – did not always criticise government servants in the same tenor as the country’s most prominent politicians. As a whole, therefore, the different organisations of the nationalist movement pursued two courses: the first was to emphasise the cruelty of the police and the bravery of the satyagrahi; the second was to appeal to government servants to join the movement, or to at least not commit ‘excesses’ on their brothers and sisters. It is argued below that the multitude of conflicting messages in these campaigns helps to explain their somewhat limited success. Although the campaign largely failed to bring police officers over to Congress, it nonetheless made the imperial power go into defensive mode on two fronts. Publicly, central and provincial governments sought to counter the stories told in the press by either denying their veracity or laying the blame for violence on the Congress. These public claims were backed by defensive internal procedures, which reduced the accountability of local-level state actors. Thus, public enquiries were eschewed and, instead, local officers and policemen were asked to report on their own conduct. Provincial governments also oversaw a decline in internal punishments, and a proliferation of rewards for service. These changes widened the fissure between the imperial power’s rhetorical commitment to minimise the use of force and its tacit tolerance of everyday state violence. News of violent clashes between the public and the police was produced in several formats. There were petitions of complaint to local officials, published reports of non-official enquiries which had been appointed by the Servants of India Society, local Bar Associations, Congress Committees, or committees of management from local religious sites. Many of these appeared in the press, as did official communiqués which were designed to counter the anti-colonial accounts. From the nationalist perspective, these reports served several purposes. First, they established these societies’ and committees’ credentials as more reliable arbiters of truth by emphasising the objective and detailed nature of the non-official committee’s investigation. One typical report was produced by the Tehsil Congress Committee at Ranikhet. After a no-tax campaign in Shalt in the Almora District of western UP, police were accused of beating up villagers as they forcibly attached their property for the nonpayment of tax. The committee emphasised the forensic aptitude of its investigation as it recounted that it ‘took accounts from 21 witnesses, which the enquiry committee recorded on 47 foolscap size pages. Apart from this, written testimonies, an inventory of seized property, maps of the site of the incidents, and 12 exhibits’ were before the committee. In order to corroborate the written accounts, the report continued, the head of the committee, ‘interrogated the circumstances of each and every person orally’.15 In staking this claim to be uncovering every detail of the truth, the committee aimed to undermine official accounts of events which tended to be less specific. Revealingly, the Shalt enquiry committee made no demands to the government. Instead, the Tehsil Congress Committee had five hundred copies of their report printed, to be sold at 4 annas each. The second, more explicit,

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purpose of these reports, therefore, was to ensure, ‘that the story of the patriotism … patience and non-violence of the residents of Shalt will earn a proper place in the history of all India’.16 Literally thousands of accounts of police violence were produced, not only in newspapers, but in vernacular poetry and proscribed pamphlets, and also in government archives. From amongst this superabundance of material, a few themes slowly emerge. The following example illuminates a number of these themes. In Muttra (Mathura), UP, an altercation took place in late April of 1930, when a group of protesters had gathered at a courtroom to hear the case of a local satyagraha dictator, Akshaya Kumar Karan, who had been arrested the previous day. According to newspaper reports, as the crowd left the court to go home, the Joint Magistrate, Mr J. Johnstone, snatched a Congress flag from a ten-year-old boy. A group of satyagrahis then gathered at the District Magistrate’s quarters to demand the return of the flag, and refused to disperse when ordered to do so. The kotwal (Deputy Superintendent of Police) ordered a lathi charge, during which five volunteers were seriously injured. The Leader, an English-language newspaper reported that, in spite of the beating, the satyagrahis ‘remained calmly seated’, and began singing their national anthem, while ‘none of the volunteers raised his finger’.17 This type of account was clearly used to provide examples of model satyagrahi behaviour. Congress had devolved significant organisational power to its local bodies for this agitation, and it was impossible to control the conduct of its followers in such a situation. By praising the satyagrahi who did not raise a finger against his attackers, the reports underlined the ideal method of non-violent protest. Moreover, these volunteers, who were willing to be beaten to protect their flag, and who strived to continue their work even whilst under assault, were exemplars of the bravery and self-sacrifice which Congress was asking of every Indian. The mistreatment of women, and women’s bravery in the face of ill-treatment were a key focus of several reports, as illustrated by the following example. On the day after the Bombay Government finally detained Gandhi in May 1930, the Congress organised hartals (strikes) and processions throughout the country. In Delhi, the encounter between demonstrators and the police took the form of a physical confrontation. At the law courts, around one thousand women separated from the 50–60,000 strong demonstration in order to surround the building and obstruct the courts’ business. While the Additional District Magistrate left to obtain an order for the courts to close, and the women awaited his return, three lorries of police came to disperse the volunteers. According to the account endorsed by the Congress, ‘European police officers’, accompanied by Indian police, rushed to the courts, and ‘showered’ lathi blows on the women. During the course of the encounter, ‘the ladies remained standing shouting to the police men to beat them and kill them.’18 The Delhi Bar Association found that the police had not only ‘chased people while they were running away’, but had ‘continued to beat people even when they had fallen to the ground’. At least ten satyagrahis were injured, including

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a ten-year-old girl. The Bar Association characterised the police charge as ‘unjustifiable, unwarranted and uncalled for’.19 Another incident of this kind was reported in the Hindi-language newspaper Aaj on 14 March 1932 under the headline ‘Outrage on women – complaints of clothing removed and beatings’. This article recounted the case of a group of women volunteers who had been mishandled by police in Benares. After a day of picketing several women had been arrested. They were released at around 9pm, and were walking home in Dasaswamedh shouting nationalist slogans when six or seven constables ‘grabbed twelve volunteers and took them into the thana’. Once there, according Aaj, the police ‘hit them with kicks and punches’. Six women complained that their chadors and saris ‘were snatched from them’ and they were left in their undergarments, ‘only shorts and blouses’. The paper reported that ‘no clothes were left on Shrimati Bagladevi’.20 The story was recounted by others, and in the repetition, its facts became hazy. Two weeks after the event, The Daily Herald reported that, according to Sarojini Naidu, Acting President of Congress, ‘six girl volunteers were seized by the police, stripped naked in the prison cells and flogged. The girls, who came from respectable families, were all under 20.’21 As the story was repeated by those outside of the highest levels of Congress politics, it acquired details which made it yet more inflammatory. In one Hindi-language appeal to government servants, the police became ‘base whites’ who stripped the women and ‘kicked them in their breasts’.22 Nationalist publications gave special prominence to violence against women and young girls. There were undoubtedly more women participating in the civil disobedience movement, and they were often on the front lines of protests.23 But this alone does not explain the extra attention given to confrontations involving women. Women not only played a larger role in these activities in the 1930s, their presence had special significance. In much nationalist discourse women were the embodiment of the Indian nation.24 As such, the image of an agent of the imperial power beating an Indian woman could be translated readily into a symbol of the oppression of India under British imperialism. Not every Indian woman had the same symbolic significance, however. Her benefit to the nationalist cause depended upon her respectability.25 Thus, Sarojini Naidu was quick to identify the victims in Benares as young girls from respectable families.26 The innocent young woman was seen not only as the most vulnerable in society, but also as the quintessence of the Indian nation and its future. Police violence against them, therefore, in the words of Gandhi, was particularly ‘cruel, uncalled for and unchivalrous’.27 Indeed, these separate eye-witness testimonials, government denials and second-hand exaggerations became tesserae in the larger mosaic of British injustice being pieced together by the nationalist cause. Repeatedly, the actions of the police were deemed ‘unworthy of a civilized government’.28 One nationalist, addressing government servants in Hindi and citing a list of ‘atrocities’, from lathi charges to the confiscation of property, the banning of

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literature and the mistreatment of political prisoners, asked ‘Is this justice … Is this Europe’s civilisation?’29 The question needed no answer. The allegations of violence attempted to hollow out the imperial claim that the empire was somehow necessary to bring civilisation to India. They were also used to appeal to Indians to join the independence movement. A typical hand-written, cyclostyled Hindi newspaper, Yuddhvir, recorded a raft of stories giving bare accounts of police firings and lathi charges. It followed with an editorial in which it made this call to ‘Indian youth’: ‘Right in front of you your meek and unarmed brother is killed by bullets day after day. Your mother is being beaten pitilessly’.30 The editorial drew on the motif of the nation as a family to transform the unknown victims of government aggression into the mothers and brothers of all Indians. Just as the figure of the mother was deployed to elicit sentiments of loyalty, devotion and sacrifice from the general population,31 the outrage of violence against ordinary respectable women was also used to motivate Indians to sacrifice themselves for Mother India. Yuddhvir thus urged its readers to act: ‘Today, every youth should be struck by bullets and killed’.32 Using such emotive imagery, the political campaign waged over the conduct of the police had some notable successes, especially amongst moderate politicians. For example, Pandit Hirday Nath Kunzru resigned from the Legislative Assembly in May 1930, citing a number of grievances, including the Press Ordinance, and what he termed police ‘brutalities’. In particular, he mentioned the case of ‘unoffending young boys’ in Mathura who had been beaten ‘mercilessly’ by police.33 In Punjab, Sheikh Mohammed Sadiq, Member of the Legislative Council (MLC), offered his resignation after the police had beat volunteers outside the Hallgate on 2 May 1930.34 However, not all aspects of the campaign served to unify the Indian public. The assault on the police could easily merge with anti-Muslim agendas. In one such instance, residents of South Kanara alleged that, Laxminarayana Ballal, a teacher at the Perdoor National School was picketing the village toddy and arak (distilled liquor) shops when the police superintendent, Mr Amiruddin, along with four constables, approached him and asked him to leave. When he refused, ‘a severe beating was administered to him’. In the course of this beating, his shirt was ripped and ‘His sacred thread was torn away’.35 Here the population accused a Muslim Superintendent of Police (the names of his subordinates were not given) of ritually humiliating a Brahman. When the Madras government investigated the incidents, however, they found the main perpetrator not to be Amiruddin, but the Deputy Superintendent of Police, M.R. Ry.V.K. Rajagopala Thamban Avargal.36 It is clear that the antiBritish campaign to expose the ‘excesses’ of the colonial police, could readily be infused with anti-Muslim sentiment, either deliberately or unintentionally. Express anti-Muslim feeling was not a common theme in the accounts of state violence which I have read, but often it must have been difficult to disentangle the vilification of the police from Hindu nationalist chauvinism because Muslims made up a significant proportion of many police forces.

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This undoubtedly contributed to the sense of alienation from the Congress that was growing amongst Muslims in the 1930s.37 Chapter eight charts the ways in which organisations with an explicitly anti-Muslim agenda began to criticise Muslim police more systematically. The agglomerate message not only failed to accommodate Muslim sensibilities, it had little success with Indians serving on the police force more generally. Indeed, the messages to the police were often inconsistent. At the highest level, many nationalist organisations made direct appeals to government servants to join the movement. Here, the message was often rather conciliatory. From Calcutta, the Rashtriya Mahila Samiti (National Women’s Committee) appealed to their ‘brothers’ in government service thus: ‘Please leave this satanic government – or if you should not leave it then at least bear witness to god and promise that “we will not raise a hand to our brothers and sisters”’.38 A similar message came from Congress President, Vallabhbhai Patel, who told government servants they need not give up their jobs: ‘if you are there for your stomachs, then you may stay’. Nonetheless, he told them, ‘it is everyone’s duty to help Mother India’, and he suggested that they ought to inform their superiors that they would refuse to ‘to act with an oppressive motive or in an excessive manner’.39 These appeals were not requesting government servants simply to vacate their posts. They were demanding much more: they entreated them to fulfil their everyday duties in accordance with their political beliefs. Below the highest echelons of the national leadership, however, the message was often less sympathetic. In many cases, allegations of brutality were simply used to underline the ‘baseness’ of the policeman who, it was said, ‘to obtain money cannot hesitate in sending his blood brother to the scaffold and in raping his blood sister’.40 Sometimes government servants were threatened with reprisals when the British left.41 Clearly, the police were being showered with often conflicting messages from a multitude of nationalist organisations. Every appeal condemned government atrocities. Some addressed government servants as members of the same national family, others did not. If the plea to join the movement was not well-received, perhaps this was because it was neither as unambiguous nor as coordinated as was the programme to disgrace the government’s forces. Even if these appeals failed to bring government servants into the nationalist fold, they did bring about a change in the everyday conduct of the state. The sheer number of allegations of state violence in the public domain put governments across India on the defensive. Punjab instructed its local officers that whenever a non-official enquiry committee was established, district officers should ‘make careful but discreet enquiries’ of their own, with the view to countering any claims that non-official committees might make.42 The Government of India recommended that all provincial governments do the same.43 Provincial governments issued regular communiqués which claimed to offer the ‘true facts’ in the face of specific allegations of police excesses. In some instances, the government tried to discredit witnesses. For example, as it

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attempted to dispel the ‘rumour’ of the mistreatment of the women at Dasaswamedh, the Government of UP informed the public that the women involved had all been widows, unattached, or of ‘doubtful character’.44 In other cases the government did not deny that force had been used, or even that death or injury had resulted, but simply asserted that the use of force was ‘regretted’, but nonetheless ‘fully justified’.45 If the state’s forces had had to employ their guns or their lathis, then, in the view of the authorities, the responsibility for the consequences of the violence lay at the feet of those who were disobeying the law.46 The larger narrative of these communiqués was that, in the words of the Government of Madras, ‘Some of the alleged incidents are pure inventions without any foundation of fact, others are gross exaggerations and in almost all the remaining cases the truth has been distorted.’47 Governments in India were disposed to see their police as men who had shown ‘discipline’ and ‘restraint often in the face of grave provocation’.48 Indeed, behind the press defensive was a new sort of procedural defensive. Having learned from the experience of the Hunter Committee that public investigations into the conduct of government forces provide easy material for anti-colonial propaganda, governments spurned the idea of public enquiries.49 Instead, the men accused of wrong-doing were simply asked to provide the ‘true facts’ of the case, with the aim of enabling the charges to be ‘categorically denied’.50 Some reports were surprisingly candid,51 but many who were questioned lied, as did the policemen at Dasaswamedh in Benares, and most simply denied the charges without explanation. In only a few instances did cases against police come before magistrates, and few of these resulted in convictions. In accordance with Congress policy, the women who accused the police in Benares of removing their clothes and beating them did not file a complaint. Upon hearing of the allegations, however, the District Magistrate, L. Owen, suspended four policemen and launched an investigation himself. He eventually acquitted the four, finding ‘the story of the detention at the outpost is false, the story of the stripping of the women is false, and the details of the alleged beating are false’. He believed the entire event to have been concocted by Aaj for political purposes, and that the women had been ‘mere pawns’ in the hands of the assistant manager of the Aaj newspaper.52 Elsewhere, cases did not even progress to judgment: of the 36 cases instituted against police officers in Madras, the government stopped or threw out all but one.53 Evidence of departmental punishment for behaviour is also scarce. The Inspector General of Police of Madras did inquire into the alleged violence against picketers in South Kanara in April 1932 cited above. He found that the Deputy Superintendent of Police, M.R.Ry.V.K. Rajagopala Thamban Avargal, had repeatedly beaten picketers ‘far beyond what could be justified by the needs of the case’. The Inspector General concluded, however, that ‘Mr Thamban was undoubtedly animated by the conviction that his course of action was strongly advisable if authority was to be effectively asserted in his district’. He recommended that Thamban ‘should be let off with a censure’. The Government of

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Madras decided that this was too lenient, and so had him reduced three places in the gradation list of superintendents in Madras.54 This was a relatively light punishment considering the gravity of the wrongs proved against Thamban. Indeed, governments doled out rewards more generously than punishments. Across India policemen received gifts of cash and special allowances. Madras’ Chief Commissioner of Police granted all officers rewards of up to one month’s wages in 1930.55 In Bombay, 1700 more officers received grants from the government in 1931 than did in 1929.56 In Punjab, the number of officers and men rewarded for their service rose by 60% in 1930 alone.57 UP increased the amount of cash it doled out to its police from Rs1,19,611 in 1929 to Rs1,67,679 in 1930.58 Between 1929 and 1933 expenditure on monetary awards to officers and men nearly doubled in Bengal.59 The system of reduced punishments and greater rewards sent a straightforward message to government servants and it appears to have succeeded in securing the loyalty of the police. During the campaign resignations plummeted: whereas 489 officers and men had resigned from the police in Punjab in 1928, only 124 resigned their posts in 1932.60 Resignations in Bombay and UP between 1928 and 1933 fell by more than one-half and two-thirds respectively.61 Certainly, the global economic collapse contributed to the success of government efforts to retain their employees, but the fact that governments sent an uncomplicated message and offered immediate benefits to their officers undoubtedly helped their cause. Central and provincial governments fought a wiser and more coherent campaign against the civil disobedience movement than they had a decade before. As they sought to eschew the mistakes of the past, they moved the confrontation with non-violent protesters out of the system of courts and prisons and onto the streets. In so doing, they reshaped their internal reporting mechanisms so as to reduce accountability of members of their forces; they publicly praised police and rewarded them with money and honours. As a result, the period witnessed a fissure open up between the governments’ rhetorical promises to uphold ‘the rule of law’ and ensure the minimum use of force, and the tacit permission which seems to have been granted to individuals of all ranks to use force to fulfil their duties. As the government reduced its scrutiny of its forces, non-official parties took up the task of criticising the police, military and bureaucracy. This brought the political persuasions of individual state actors to the centre stage of Indian politics. To be sure, recruitment to state forces had always been conducted under the assumption that certain ethnic groups were more loyal supporters of the Raj. The Congress campaign, therefore, did not so much politicise police, as demand that they change their political allegiances. In so doing, they brought the loyalties of policemen and officers to the forefront of the battle for independence. These campaigns against police excesses placed India’s rising political elite in an ambivalent relationship with the ‘guardians of law and order’. It was difficult both to criticise the police as cruel and

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barbaric tools of the imperial government, and invite them to join the national family at the same time. Whilst nationalist appeals to government servants were largely unsuccessful, the violence of the state did prove incredibly useful in other ways. Several different organisations were able to place themselves in positions of authority by investigating what they deemed to be police atrocities. The Congress Party was able to use the violence of the state to inculcate its followers in the practices of Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa. They were also able to paint the crimes of individual policemen as the crimes of the empire more generally, for non-violence was never more powerful than when viewed alongside state violence. Provincial governments would eventually come to recognise this in the 1940s, and when they did, this realisation changed the ways in which the state handled non-violent protest.

School discipline and civil disobedience Local-level government servants and civil intermediaries also gained more prominence in other capacities during the movement. When countering nonviolent protest in schools and universities, government departments began to pass on tasks which would have been the police’s responsibility to alternative, local-level authorities, who – it was hoped – could act more effectively to counter political unrest. To this end, the UP’s Education Department tried to burden schools and education committees of District Boards with the duty to detect and punish the unacceptable political activities of students and teachers, and they threatened to withhold education grants, known as grants-inaid, from committees or schools that did not discharge their newly imposed responsibilities.62 Headmasters and education committees fulfilled their new obligations by employing quasi-judicial procedures and practices, from courtroom jargon to police information, trial-like hearings, apologies and repentance, and, of course, punishments. The Education Department’s foray into counterrevolutionary endeavours did achieve some successes. But the implementation of these rules relied on two sets of local-level authorities, and the Indians in control of these District Boards and universities and schools, often resisted the measures of the Education Department. Thus, when the British devolved power to Indians in local government boards, they inadvertently relinquished some of their control over matters of law and order because members of these boards could pull the state in conflicting directions. At the same time, the loyalty of headmasters and university boards proved to be uneven and unpredictable.63 As a result, the scheme failed to abolish political agitation in educational institutions. In the summer of 1930, as the agitation grew, many students took to civil disobedience with alacrity. In organising student activity, Congress tried to use civil disobedience to create its own culture of national discipline and a sense of civil society.64 Students picketed liquor and foreign cloth shops, joined hartals on the occasion of the arrest of prominent people, held flagraising ceremonies and disrupted classes with nationalist songs. The Congress

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campaign also encouraged students to boycott government schools and private institutions which received government funding. As part of this drive, picketers surrounded schools and prevented pupils and staff from entering. These demonstrations spread easily from one educational institution to another.65 In addition, there were teachers who supported the movement, either publicly or surreptitiously. The professors of the BNSD Intermediate College in Kanpur, for example, were said to produce ‘seditious books’, and according to the Director of Public Instruction, the staff were ‘evidently permeated with Congress ideals’.66 During the first round of civil disobedience, principals were largely left to their own devices to negotiate with parents or with the Congress. In the summer of 1930, the Education Department had advised government-aided institutions to seek written assurances from students to the effect that they would ‘abstain from political activities’ while at school.67 But as soon as the policy was announced, the Congress promised to boycott those schools that complied with it. In Benares, school masters themselves banded together to oppose the circular. Political processions and other activities, the school masters believed, provided an outlet for the ‘inherent energy and enthusiasm’ of boys. It would be imprudent to forbid these pursuits, and to expel students from schools would only leave them free to do as they pleased. As they urged caution and patience, the school masters also asked to be allowed to do their duties ‘unfettered’, without the interference of the Education Department.68 The Education Department retreated from the policy, and schools were left to deal with the movement on their own.69 The Youth League and Students Association, under the leadership of Uma Nehru and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, picketed one school after another in Allahabad, and negotiated individual agreements with headmasters. Under these accords, heads promised to allow students to wear khadi clothes, Gandhi caps and miniature tricolour flags. They agreed to tolerate flag raising ceremonies, and the singing of national songs.70 When principals refused to concede to these demands, the young picketers often forced the school to close.71 The volunteers even came to blows with students on occasion.72 As the Gandhi-Irwin pact of March 1931 began to break down and it became clear that the truce was coming to an end, the Department of Education began to consider its options. Fearing a recurrence of the previous round’s activities, the UP’s Education Department concluded that, ‘participation by students in political activities diverts their time and energies from their studies and from those educational activities which are intended to develop mind, body and character’.73 Framed in this way, the regulation of political life fell within the responsibility of the department. This enabled the department to take substantial steps to halt the movement by amending the department’s Education Code Rules. The primary focus would be to instil in headmasters the idea that it was their duty to prevent students and teachers from taking part in the revived movement. To this end, the UP’s Minister of Education hosted an ‘informal tea party’ in August 1931 to which he invited

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the headmasters and principals of troublesome schools and colleges in Allahabad and Lucknow to discuss their responsibilities. At this meeting he drew attention to ‘the ack of discipline and the spirit of defiance of authority’ rising amongst students. He informed the headmasters that it was the ‘duty’ of schools to do ‘everything in their power to nip the evil in the bud’. He also acquired the agreement of the headmasters to the principle that it was their duty not only to punish students who had broken the law, or who had engaged in political activities, but also to acquaint themselves with the activities of the various student societies and to determine which societies were not ‘working in the best interests’ of pupils and to prevent students from joining them.74 Acquiring the agreement of headmasters to these principles was one thing; eliciting action from them was another. While some headmasters may have sympathised with the Congress, others simply may have been unwilling to take on the difficult work of calming the political ambitions of their school’s population. In either case, some external impetus was necessary in order to prompt heads of schools, colleges and universities as well as the education committees of District Boards to act as proxy to direct action under the criminal law. To do this, the Education Department used its powers over educational funds. Money for education came from government in the form of scholarships to individual students, and grants-in-aid either to education committees of District Boards or directly to the institutions concerned. Conditions could be attached to any of these funds by changing the Education Code Rules. The Department felt that the threat of the withdrawal of funding was an important means of prompting indifferent teachers and headmasters to toe the government line. The Director of Public Instruction noted in February 1931 that, ‘As long as teachers get their pay regularly they do not make much of a stand against hartals or picketing.’75 With this in mind, the Department resolved to withhold grants from schools where pupils participated in the national movement, and it threatened to withhold education grants from District Boards in areas where political agitation continued in schools. In addition, it was decided that individual scholarships would only be awarded after the pupil’s headmaster produced a certificate, ‘to the effect that the boys concerned have not taken part in political activities’.76 When the Education Department wished to exercise more control over students and teachers, they set about doing so without using the police or courts. Instead, they sought civil intermediaries amongst indigenous authority figures, such as parents and headmasters. However, they competed with the leaders of the civil disobedience movement for the loyalty of these people. It was necessary to find some way to persuade them to cooperate with the government. The British may have ruled through networks of local civil intermediaries, but cooperation could be complemented by a system of coercion. To this end, the department pulled the only strings available to it – the purse strings.

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Quasi-judicial procedures for quasi-crimes As the Department attempted to bring errant schools into line, they expanded the responsibilities of educators in positions of authority to induce them to punish offending students and teachers. Principals were vested with collective responsibility for the actions of their students, teachers, and sometimes even their family members. The new measures extended well beyond the prevention of political crime within schools: they restricted even legal political activity, including sympathy for the nationalist movement. Moreover, they expanded the population for which schools were to be held accountable to persons outside their ordinary remit. The proceedings against students and teachers were quasi-judicial in nature, which underscored the fact that educational institutions were used to replace the ordinary mechanisms of coercion. School headmasters and education committees were expected to implement the new rules and to punish those who threatened school discipline. Inspectors of Schools had the duty of overseeing this process and ensuring that school authorities were acting as the Department desired. After a visit to an unruly place of learning, an Inspector of Schools could impose an array of conditions which had to be met in order for a school to receive its grant. Perhaps the most striking example of these conditions was the case of the headmaster of the JAS High School in Khurja. He was said to be, ‘on close terms of friendship with well-known Congress agitators’, one of whom was his brother. As such, the Director of Public Instruction (DPI) compelled the headmaster to fulfil the following requirements in order to receive the grantin-aid for his school: he had to give a written undertaking to take no part in political activities; he was to have no association with any persons active in the agitation outside school hours; the DPI ordered, ‘that he will be responsible that none of his relatives in Khurja take any active part in the movement’; he was instructed to see that all political symbols be removed from the school. Further, he was to condemn civil disobedience, ‘as being harmful to the country and to education’. He was to threaten to expel any boy who showed ‘any active sympathy’ with the movement, and to refuse to send participants to the High School Examination.77 These conditions burdened the headmaster with collective responsibility for the activities of a wide range of individuals, some of whom had little to do with his official duties. Teachers were not spared. In April 1930, the Department of Education amended the Education Code Rules to provide that teachers should not take part in or encourage students to participate in ‘political agitation directed against the authority of Government’.78 When an instructor transgressed this rule, the entire grant could be denied to his institution unless the teacher was removed from his post. The schools-based penal process was infused with characteristics reminiscent of the regular criminal justice system. Police reported to the Education Department on the activities of students and teachers.79 Those suspected of political activities were accorded a summary hearing, either before the board

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of the school or before the District Board’s education committee. In one ‘case’, three teachers from Juda, in Benares District, stood accused of taking part in the civil disobedience movement, but denied that they had participated. They did admit to having been spectators at a procession, and begged forgiveness for this. The District Magistrate, however, determined that the teachers were, ‘telling a lie’: It is notorious that the District Board teachers in many places are taking a prominent part in spreading the movement, and immediate action is required. If an example is made in one or two cases it will have a most beneficial effect.80 The Inspector of Schools felt this communication from the District Magistrate left ‘ … no doubt about the participation of the Juda teachers in the movement.’81 The three teachers received an opportunity to explain themselves in front of the chairman of the education committee, after which the committee transferred two teachers and dismissed the third.82 They received this punishment on the word of one man, the District Magistrate, who reported not on the specific activities of these particular teachers, but on the notoriety of District Board teachers in general. Thus, the government was able to punish three teachers, for deeds which they denied having done, without any of the challenges posed by the courtroom. The department’s plan not only avoided the ordinary criminal justice system, it replaced it with its own quasi-judicial process. This bore many of the features of the formal coercive network, including police informants, trial-like hearings and the imposition of collective responsibility. It also expanded the area over which the state attempted to govern the population by taking cognisance of political activities which did not amount to crimes. In order for the scheme to work it was dependent upon both the cooperation of its civil intermediaries and also upon the assistance of various institutions of local government. Resistance from state and society: the politics of implementation There were a number of weaknesses in the new scheme which prevented officials from enforcing discipline to the extent envisaged by those in the Education Department, however. First, the grant-in-aid was not a flexible tool to employ against students, teachers and headmasters. When the idea was initially conceived, inspectors could only withhold the entire grant from an undisciplined school.83 Withdrawing funding from an institution was a severe penalty visited upon guilty and innocent alike. Parents protested at such moves, which made inspectors reluctant to use their powers to deny the grant. After civil disobedience re-started in 1931 a remedy was found when it was decided to empower the government to withhold the salary of single teachers. This enabled the Education Department to punish select members of a school, without ‘annihilating’ an educational institutional altogether.84

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Even so, those upon whom the Department tried to devolve power and authority were often unwilling to act according to the dicta of the Department. School officials themselves resisted the scheme in a number of ways. Motivated by a desire to keep the grant, or by more patriotic sentiments, teachers and headmasters fiddled with attendance records in order to make it appear as if students had not been absent during the movement.85 At Benares Hindu University (BHU) there was overt defiance of government orders. The Government of UP felt that During all these days of acute agitation the main interest of the University was political instead of educational and if any check was in fact exercised by any body it certainly remained altogether imperceptible and ineffective.86 Indeed, Congressmen filled the ranks of the University. At least one teacher, Parmatama Saran, urged students at BHU and at Meerut College to join the movement and to picket their places of learning. Several pupils joined Gandhi’s march to Dandi in the spring of 1930, and the students held multiple demonstrations, especially after the arrest of the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Madan Mohan Malaviya, who joined the movement in the summer of 1930. In response, the UP’s Education Department asked the administrators at BHU to deny places to teachers and students who had already been convicted of offences related to the civil disobedience movement. When the Education Department called upon the university’s Pro-Vice Chancellor, A.B. Dhruva, to demonstrate that he was taking action against teachers and students who had engaged in the civil disobedience movement, this request was met with a mix of denial and defiance. First, members of the University’s Council refused to accept responsibility for regulating the political lives of students and staff. They insisted that they ‘could not possibly control’ the political activities of those studying at the University.87 Second, the Council argued, ‘Having regard to the fact that a number of the most highly esteemed Indians have been leading the present national movement, it was hardly to be expected that the teachers and the students of the University should remain altogether unaffected by it.’ Thus, they declined to discourage students from joining the Youth League, because, in their view, the Youth League and similar organisations were ‘not of an objectionable character’ because their social and educational activities included work on sanitation, and other aspects of social uplift. The Council did make one concession: they promised to ‘advise’ students not to join ‘any association which advocates resort to violence or to revolutionary crime.’88 The Education Department also asked BHU to deny places at the University to teachers and students who had already been convicted of offences related to the agitation. The University baulked at the idea. The Council of the University had power to remove staff if they were convicted of an offence involving ‘moral delinquency’, but, they objected, a conviction earned for

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participating in civil disobedience, ‘cannot by any means be considered to involve any moral delinquency.’89 For this reason, they concluded, they would ‘not be justified’ in passing a rule that staff could lose their job for participating in the agitation. Moreover, the University declined to mete out ‘a second and far more severe punishment’ to people already penalised through ordinary channels. They also refused to dismiss any teacher on the grounds that to do so would be ‘a very severe punishment which might expose him and his family to life-long suffering.’90 According to the Government of UP, the police kept no formal records and made no official investigations against individual students or teachers during the movement.91 Unable to prosecute members of the University because the police had not conducted sufficient investigations for this purpose, the Government could only exert pressure on BHU by threatening to withdraw the University’s grants, even though this course of action risked alienating the government’s conservative supporters. The grant-in-aid at University level was not as flexible as that for secondary education, however. These funds were dispensed by the Government of India as well as by provincial governments, and were distributed annually, rather than quarterly. Any chance of influencing the behaviour of BHU members was lost when, contrary to the advice of the Government of UP, the centre dispensed its grant to the main University. They did this in part because the Medical Department of the Government of UP, which was responsible for grants to the Aryuvedic College at BHU and which was apparently oblivious to the recommendations of the Education Department, had paid their grant to the College. Because of the need for a uniform policy, the Government of India would not impose conditions that had not been applied to the other colleges of the University.92 Thus, after all their efforts, bureaucratic procedure ultimately trumped political demands. In the Education Department’s scheme, it also proved difficult to ensure the compliance of its fellow members of the government apparatus. First, the programme was implemented by Inspectors of Schools, who could not be relied upon to enforce the rules in a uniform manner. In the autumn of 1930, for example, no grants were withheld in Benares, which witnessed a good deal of political agitation. The DPI, Mr. Harrop, had to order the Inspector of Schools in Benares, H.N. Wanchoo, to withhold grants from schools and colleges in the district.93 At the opposite end of the scale stood the Allahabad District where eleven schools had conditions imposed upon their grant-inaid.94 Where penal measures were not evenly applied, they were opposed more readily. Those resisting could argue that they were being treated unfairly, and thereby could undermine the claim of the authorities to be simply upholding ‘the rule of law’ in a mechanical manner. The Education Department also had trouble with the education committees of District Boards. Since 1923, District Boards in UP had been composed entirely of elected members.95 As a result, Congressmen or Congress sympathizers held many seats on these bodies. Some boards were active

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promoters of the civil disobedience movement. The members of the Kanpur District Board had passed an order that all schools were to fly the Congress flag and to sing national songs. These symbols remained present in Kanpur’s schools for months. A school teacher at the DAV School, Kanpur, Pandit Daya Shanker Pandey, also a member of the education committee, tried to end these practices by proposing a resolution calling for the removal of the flags. The other members of the education committee threatened Pandit Pandey, warning that he would be voted off the committee unless he withdrew his resolution.96 Later, when the Department changed the Education Code Rules to prohibit teachers from participating in political agitation, the Chairman of the Kanpur District Board deemed the change ‘unnecessary’ because the Government had ‘ample powers under the Indian Penal Code’ to punish those who broke the law. His District Board resolved that it was ‘not fair’ to make education committees responsible for the activities of teachers ‘outside the scope of their ordinary duties’.97 The Allahabad District Board, whose chairman, Thakur Roshan Singh, according to the Collector, was, ‘a Congress man out and out’, frankly refused to enforce the new rule, which they deemed ‘insulting and uncalled for’.98 Because the education committees of the District Boards conducted dismissal proceedings for teachers, the Education Department depended upon their collaboration for the success of the scheme to curtail teachers’ participation in the movement. When these boards defied the Department, this new lever for the maintenance of ‘law and order’ snapped in the hands of those pulling it. The attempt to use schools to control the political activities of students, teachers, and occasionally of people only tangentially related to the education system reveals a number of things about the colonial state and its practices of punishment. First, it is important that the police were actively involved in these schemes. Although they did not formally prosecute many students or teachers, they passed information to school authorities which could be used to punish offenders outside of the ordinary criminal justice system. This suited the police who were unwilling and unable to gather the evidence necessary to convict such large numbers of people. When they chose to channel political offenders away from the criminal justice system, however, the officials in the colonial state had to find new civil intermediaries to implement their scheme. This was not an easy task. They often had to resort to coercing their new subordinates into acting in the interests of the imperial government. Even with the added element of coercion, the Education Department did not succeed in every instance. When they circumvented the criminal justice system, the authorities found that there were few institutions which they could use to exercise control over the population. District Soldiers’ Boards were used to to organise counter-propaganda;99 landlords were encouraged to form aman sabhas (peace councils) for the same purposes;100 government employees with Congress sympathies lost their jobs; and Congress property was confiscated.101 These measures, however, touched only a small percentage of the movement’s participants.

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Conclusion The civil disobedience movement had been a decentralised campaign. From bar associations to Congress committees, different local-level organisations advanced the national semiotic pantheon in their own way by promoting khadi, producing their own posters of Bharat Mata, boycotting schools, conducting no-rent campaigns or interpreting acts of state violence. No single group had centralised control over the often conflicting messages which were born of these ventures. Though they were separately intended to unite Indians, when combined they did not always have this effect. The movement was unable to persuade police officers to join their brothers and sisters in their fight against the British. Moreover, anti-police invective may have served Hindu nationalist agendas and may have contributed to the alienation of some of India’s Muslims. These interpretive strategies certainly transformed India’s political landscape, but over the next two decades they would continue to contribute to the creation of an increasingly fractious political atmosphere amongst Indians. The diverse means by which the colonial authorities confronted the civil disobedience movement were not indicative of the variety and strength of the state’s power in the 1930s. Rather, the alternative punishments developed during this period demonstrated the extent to which the existing institutions were flawed and ineffectual. Because the weaknesses in the criminal justice system had been exposed a decade before, provincial governments in India began to eschew the use of formal imprisonment for ordinary participants in the agitation and began to transfer penal responsibility to new intermediaries in the areas of education and employment. In theory, these methods could avoid the pitfalls of the existing coercive network, but they were not without their own shortcomings in practice. First, governments found it difficult to recruit new civil intermediaries to implement the new programmes. Second, because responsibility had been devolved to Indians in Municipal and District Boards, provincial governments found that they were unable to retain control over matters of ‘law and order’ as they expanded their coercive network into Indian-run arenas of public life. Moreover, resistance to the schemes was fierce, and the new punishments were swiftly adopted to become part of nationalist political choreography. In sum, these moves served to further weaken the state because they shifted state power away from the established institutions of the criminal justice system onto individuals and institutions which were neither equipped for nor receptive to their new duties. This significantly curtailed the role of the police without finding a suitable alternative. Increasingly, the primary task of the police would be to confront the population with force. But this quickly dragged the police further into the realm of political drama when the nationalist movement used these confrontations to criticise vociferously both the police and the government they represented. After this experience, the police seemed less willing to act against unrest of any kind, including

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communal violence, as the next chapter will demonstrate. While chapter eight takes up the question of how far the lessons of the non-cooperation movement and civil disobedience movement influenced government policy when nationalists initiated another round of agitations during the Second World War, the next chapter explores the ways in which governments in India were compelled to circumvent ordinary judicial and penal mechanisms when tackling communal violence.

5

Legislating against communal violence: the United Provinces Goonda Act, and the Bombay Whipping Act, 1929–38

This chapter moves away from nationalist politics to expose the unique difficulties which communal1 unrest presented for India’s coercive network. Through an examination of critical events in Bombay and UP, it becomes clear that institutions not only seized up under the pressure of new cases brought in during communal rioting, but the conduct of Indian members of the services became grounds for conflict as well. Whilst the previous two chapters have demonstrated the ways in which the punishment of many middle-class, non-violent protesters was moved completely outside of the ordinary criminal justice system, the following pages find that Indians accused of participating in violent ethnic unrest were not moved entirely outside of the formal mechanisms of the law. Instead, provincial legislatures developed ‘extraordinary’ measures designed to enable quick punishment of those involved in this type of violence. The new measures introduced yet more diversity into the coercive network as they penalised members of the subaltern classes with externment and corporal punishment. They did not, however, provide any real possibility of empowering the coercive network to tackle communal violence, for the new measures played to the pre-existing shortcomings of the police and courts.

Introduction The growth of exclusivist identities, and the consequent spread of antagonism and violence between different religious groups has become a rich site of research. Communalism has been examined as a question of modernity and as a matter of identity.2 Its spread has been analysed from the political perspective and from the economic.3 Its meaning has been deconstructed and its memories recollected.4 Most of these works, however, have concentrated on the causes of enmity between Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs, in various permutations. With the exception of a few volumes on post-partition memories of violence, most scholars do more to trace the history of growing antagonism than the history of attempts to check communal sentiment. This chapter concentrates on one type5 of communalist expression – violence – and examines one aspect of the cycle of communal violence: the responses of the state and the public to

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riots. These post-violence activities were just as important as the preparation and enactment of the violence itself. The post-riot discourses emerging out of these sources had an impact on the formation of exclusivist identities, and they had the potential to enable further violence.6 Thus, although it is important to study the ways in which state discourses and structures have fostered sectarian identities,7 it is equally vital to interrogate the steps which the state did or did not take to try to quell communal enmity. When one examines the demands made of the authorities, and the roles which the police, military and courts played during and after a riot, it becomes clear that the response of the state and the public to communal violence could be just as ‘routine’ as the violence itself.8 In the first of three sections, this chapter illuminates the ways in which this kind of violence presented both familiar and unique problems for the coercive network. As they did during any type of large-scale unrest, criminal justice institutions jammed up as they were inundated with new cases. Those cases which were heard in court tended to become mere extensions of the larger fight, for each party in the case tended to bring evidence against entire religious communities. Moreover, ethnic violence challenged the ordinary functioning of the police and magistracy because the everyday conduct of Indians working in these services was readily woven into the larger communal conflict as individual officers were accused of bias in favour of their own community. The second and third sections analyse the antecedents of two pieces of legislation designed to meet the law and order challenges posed by communal violence in the early 1930s. Two instances of large-scale unrest in Bombay in 1929 and 1932, and one in Kanpur in 1931 have been chosen as a basis for analysis, not because they were representative in any way, but because it is almost impossible to choose a ‘typical’ occurrence of this kind of unrest. They do, however, provide more ready material for analysis because after the Kanpur riot, and after the first set of disturbances in Bombay, official and non-official enquiry committees investigated the causes and consequences of these events and provided a general picture of the difficulties which such occurrences presented for the coercive network. These events were also significant because in their wake the legislatures in each of the provinces concerned came under pressure to pass legislation to prevent further communal violence. Interestingly, an analysis of the post-riot discourses reveals that, as members of the state’s forces became marked by their religious identity, the identity of the rioters themselves was deliberately obscured. Whilst it was no secret that political parties were often responsible, whether deliberately or negligently, for the spread of communal enmity, the post-riot discourses quickly shifted to focus on the culpability of certain members of the ‘turbulent lower orders’ of society. As a result, legislators who wished to expand the coercive network to cope with communal violence chose to target ‘goondas’ in UP, and ‘hooligans’ in Bombay.9 For the purposes of punishment, therefore, communal rioters came to be constructed as criminal actors who had a low

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social status but no religious affiliation.10 Some have argued that these terms were mere constructs which represented convenient, all-encompassing ‘others’.11 The hooligan and the goonda were not simply constructed ‘others’, however. These terms were abstractions which represented other/both/neither because those at whom the new legislation was aimed were both Hindu and Muslim. This enabled the legislators to try to avoid the pitfalls of the ordinary criminal justice system, at least in the abstract. Financial and administrative limitations constrained the response of the legislatures to the demand that these participants in communal violence be punished, however. In consequence, the new measures which they designed played to the weaknesses of the police and magistracy by creating penal shortcuts. In order to punish goondas, the UP Legislature truncated the ordinary criminal procedure, and resorted to externing them from the city of Kanpur. In Bombay, by contrast, where funds were not sufficient to use incarceration to discipline and rehabilitate ‘hooligans’, the Legislature expanded the use of corporal punishment. Penal practices in India, therefore, became yet more varied as specific techniques of punishment targeted particular types of criminal. This diversity tended to reflect class differences, as punishments like banishment and whipping were restricted to criminals from the ‘unrespectable’ classes.

Communal violence and the criminal justice system Contemporary analyses of the unrest in Kanpur and Bombay revealed two general difficulties which tended to arise whenever and wherever communal violence occurred. First, the institutions and procedures which made up the coercive network were often either inappropriate or inadequate to punish the crimes involved. Second, the broader political situation could discourage the people and the authorities from employing the mechanisms of state power to counter this kind of disturbance. Because of these obstacles, the police tended to respond in routine ways to communal violence. There were a number of flaws inherent to the institutions of the criminal justice system which militated against their use in times of communal unrest. First, as we have seen, the courts in British India were incapable of disposing quickly of the large influx of cases which arose whenever large-scale unrest occurred. This was as true for communal violence as it was for anti-government protest. For example, when, less than a month after the Kanpur riot, 2000 cases had been filed the Inspector-General of Police was forced to admit that, ‘It is obvious that it will be impossible to run all these cases.’12 When cases could not be pushed through the ordinary system, many of those detained were simply let out after a short time in prison. Second, even when accused were brought to trial, the adversarial nature of the common law could actually exacerbate communal antagonism. The aim of the traditional civil and criminal court procedures is to diffuse tension by providing a forum where parties to a dispute could confront one another through a third, objective, party (the judge). But in post-riot cases, defendant

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(Hindu or Muslim) and plaintiff (Muslim or Hindu), gathered witnesses and evidence to support his claim against the other, and against his associated religious community. In such circumstances, bitterness between the groups involved only increased as the courtroom itself became a site of conflict.13 Third, because members of the law-enforcement authorities tended to be Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs, their decisions were subject to accusations of bias. All parties accused the police and magistracy of favouritism towards the other side. For example, after the Kanpur riot, a gathering of Muslims from the city lamented, ‘the local authorities and the Police neglected to take effective steps to protect the life and property of the Muslims during the riot. The meeting proceeded to accuse Hindu magistrates of showing ‘partiality towards their Hindu brethren’.14 Some officials took solace in this type of accusation, remarking that since both sides voiced such concerns, the police and magistracy must have been neutral,15 but it is hard to determine which – if any – view is correct. In fact, it does not matter whether members of the services favoured one group or another. The mere fact that such accusations frequently arose indicated that the ordinary mechanisms for resolving disputes failed to earn the public’s confidence. In spite of these institutional shortcomings, members of the public often did wish to use the criminal justice system to seek redress for their grievances, but they often requested that the officers in charge of their case be changed. After the Kanpur riot, for example, the Hindu residents of Coolie Bazaar complained to the Superintendent of Police that, during the riots, their houses had been looted and burnt and their relations killed. Yet, the petitioners claimed, ‘ … even the accused who have been mentioned in several reports have not been arrested so far and it is curious that they are all moving at large with impunity.’16 The petitioners blamed the one Sikh and four Muslim police officers in charge of the investigation, and requested the European Superintendent of Police to personally see through the investigation of the cases. Similarly, some Muslim groups called on the government ‘to take drastic measures to bring the aggressors to book and to punish them adequately’.17 They too demanded that European officers conduct the investigations and try the cases that arose. The pattern in these appeals was uniform: whilst the public did not approve of the way the police were working at the time, they nonetheless sought justice through the legal system. Although the Government of India and provincial governments professed a desire to use the courts to combat communal crime, a number of political factors discouraged the public and the government from resorting to the courts.18 For one, community leaders could come to a compromise in the aftermath of violence, which frequently included a stipulation that court cases filed by individuals be withdrawn. Whereas separate assemblies of Hindus or Muslims tended to favour prosecution, unity boards and joint meetings often called for the withdrawal of cases from the justice system in order to foster an ‘atmosphere [of] communal peace’.19 Prosecution, the argument went, was a ‘serious source of estrangement’ between Hindus and Muslims because

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evidence produced in court was ‘not likely to be wholly true or impartial’.20 Whilst this type of compromise would have been welcome, its provisions may have covered cases of murder and other grievous crimes which both the population and the government may have been keen to see punished. At the same time it was recognised that, ‘If such individual cases were taken up the general “compromise” might be jeopardised.’ In light of such opinion, provincial governors often ordered police not to take up cases, but to leave individual claimants to pursue cases on their own.21 Broader political circumstances could have a similar effect. Congress’ attack on the police and magistracy during the civil disobedience movement had an impact on the ways in which the authorities reacted to communal violence. First, tensions between the government and the Congress over the civil disobedience movement permeated the post-violence discourse, and further discouraged the use of the courts after communal unrest. After the riot in Kanpur, for example, the government established an official committee of enquiry, but the Congress set up their own. Government officers declined to submit statements to the Congress’ enquiry board, while members of the Congress refused to participate in the official investigation.22 Members of the Congress also discouraged the public from seeking redress for their grievances in the courts. Babu Sunder Lal, Secretary of the Congress Enquiry Committee in Kanpur, argued that, ‘the whole country knows from long and sad past experience that many more innocents will be prosecuted and harassed than actual criminals punished. Thus there is no hope of peace even if punishment is meted out to those deserving it.’23 Non-official enquiry committees served not only to move the process of resolving grievances out of the formal criminal justice system, they also imbued the analysis of communal violence with new and potentially dangerous political significance. If the police and courts were at best incompetent, and at worst biased, then the only idea upon which everyone could agree was that the authorities should round up ‘bad characters’ at the first sign of communal unrest.24 This was, in fact, the routine response which the police and magistracy tended to produce. This tactic had a number of advantages. First, it required no imaginative work on the part of the police. The police kept (disorganised) lists of ‘bad characters’ and their addresses; they did not have to gather new intelligence or fresh evidence against these men before rounding them up. Because they were detained in the early stages of unrest, and held without evidence, these ‘bad characters’ could not be prosecuted. When the storm had passed, the police released their captives, and life went on as before, for both the police and the ‘bad characters’. The procedure allowed the forces to appear as if they were doing something, and yet required the bare minimum of work from the police. It also did little to disrupt the networks of information and influence which constables may have established in the localities.25 The targeting of these groups, which included goondas and hooligans, also proved to be one of the few areas of consensus in Indian politics as communal sentiments polarised the population in many areas of public life. Indeed, the

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practice dovetailed neatly with both imperial and middle-class Indian assumptions that the subaltern classes were inherently violent.26 The following two sections follow the post-riot analyses in Kanpur and Bombay to examine how this consensus manifested itself in legislation aimed at these ‘bad characters’.

Extraordinary measure or routine response? The UP Goonda Act of 1932 Having underscored the general and common difficulties which this type of large-scale unrest presented, this section turns to analyse the contemporary debates about the causes of and remedies for the violence which occurred in Kanpur. It traces how the many complexities of a communal riot were simplified to a point where blame could be directed at one specific group – the goondas. The goondas may have been an abstraction, but they were a particular kind of abstraction: one designed to divorce the criminal from his religious identity. This was the only way to avoid falling into the same traps which endlessly sabotaged the ordinary criminal justice system. Once the goondas had been singled out, penalties were devised. The capacity to act against those identified, however, was constrained by financial stringency and by the inadequacies of the criminal justice system. Because the new punishments indulged these shortcomings, they did little to curb the activities of the goondas. The riot in Kanpur began on 24 March 1931, when, shortly after the Gandhi-Irwin pact had brought a temporary halt to the civil disobedience movement, the Congress party proclaimed a hartal to mark the execution on the previous day of the three revolutionary terrorist patriots, Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and Shivram Rajguru.27 Though the strike began in an anti-imperial mode, during the hartal Hindus and Muslims came to blows. By some accounts, communal tensions in Kanpur had been rising since the 1920s: religious revivalist organisations had blossomed after the break-up of the Khilafat movement. They had been accompanied by increasing disagreements over issues such as music before mosques. During the course of the civil disobedience movement, Muslim businesses had suffered at the hands of Congress picketers. In response to this, some Muslims had formed the Tanzeem Movement, which organised counter-processions to oppose the Congress programme.28 When the Congress party called a hartal on 24 March, this provided the spark which ignited the tinder of embitterment which had accumulated over these issues. Rioting lasted three days, and, according to the official committee of enquiry, was of ‘unprecedented violence and peculiar atrocity’ causing ‘probably between four and five hundred’ deaths.29 After the event, a multi-layered and nebulous picture of responsibility began to emerge. Most of those who analysed the violence agreed that at least two groups of people had contributed to it. First, there were the political parties. Because the Congress had called the hartal, Congress volunteers were implicated in the rioting. According to the emerging discourse, the Congress Party had at least two tiers of participants: the leadership (represented by the

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national leadership as well as by the local Congress Committee) and the masses, including the Youth League, Youth Guard and the Vanar Sena (lit. monkey army, a youth group). By contrast, the Congress’ political opponents in Kanpur, the Tanzeem Movement, were not said to have had a class of prominent leadership. The second category of persons blamed for the violence were the goondas, who were said to have prolonged the unrest. This category, too, had at least two analytical strata: the bosses, and the vulnerable members of the working classes whom, it was believed, the bosses used to carry out their work. In the course of the post-riot discourse, however, this complex, even indeterminate allocation of blame for the violence was reduced to a single category: the goonda. The official enquiry committee in Kanpur blamed the civil disobedience movement for engendering resentment between the two communities, but absolved the political leadership of blame for the violence during the riot.30 Even though it was the Congress Committee that had called the hartal, during which rioting began, the commission absolved the Kanpur Congress Committee of responsibility for the outbreak of violence on the grounds that, ‘There was nothing that could have been so hurtful to the cause they had at heart than communal trouble at that time.’31 Similarly, the Commission noted the ‘remarkable’ fact that, ‘no leading Muslim belonged at any time’ to the Tanzeem Movement.32 Whilst it did not ignore the political leadership entirely, this analysis served to reduce the number of culpable members of the public to those not involved in the higher ranks of party politics. If the political leadership were not to blame, then who was? While the clash between lower ranks of the political movements was indubitably the primary cause of the fighting, the Commission recognised the secondary role of so-called badmash (lit. wicked) elements of the population. There is no evidence too that the ‘badmash’ element was noticeable in the early stages. The existence of the turbulent elements contributed more to the spread, continuance and intensity of the trouble than to its outbreak.33 As will be shown below, the secondary role of the badmashes and the goondas – two terms that were used interchangeably in the post-riot discourse – was transformed into the foremost cause of unrest in the city. While accusing the British of a policy of divide-and-rule, and the Muslims of the Tanzeem Movement of brazenly carrying arms, the Congress’ own enquiry committee also faulted Congressmen for their conduct in the civil disobedience movement in Kanpur. In accordance with the party’s civil disobedience policy of not engaging with the law-enforcement agencies of the imperial government, the Congress did not partake in the official enquiry. Instead, Congressmen conducted their own investigation. In their report, they acknowledged the role that subaltern members of the party had had in the rioting. They found that ‘violence was used by Congress sympathisers on Moslem shopkeepers and others … ’.34 By labelling these men ‘Congress

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sympathisers’ rather than ‘Congressmen’ or even ‘Congress volunteers’, the leadership distanced themselves from them. Thus, while they offered a limited mea culpa on behalf of their ‘sympathisers’, the leadership of the Congress focused on the badmashes/goondas. Their report held that, ‘goondas of both communities’ were culpable because they not only ‘acted the part of soldiers’, but ransacked the city, often in joint gangs of Hindus and Muslims which looted ‘in perfect harmony’.35 The Congress Enquiry Committee reported that, ‘We could not ascertain the exact proportion of Hindus and Muslims amongst these goondas. But we are told that their numbers are fairly equal.’36 Notably, the goondas were either from both religious communities or from unnamed communities. Apportioning blame to figures whose religious identity was obscured seems to have been the only ‘neutral’ way to accuse individuals of rioting. In this way, an activity, the existential roots of which lay in religious fervour, become abstracted from religion. Although the term goonda was an abstraction, to label a person a goonda was to identify him with very real underworld activities. When considering exactly what it meant to be a goonda, however, the contemporary discourse tended to distinguish between the men who ran the show from the top, and their working-class minions. The goondas’ activities in Kanpur extended from cocaine smuggling and gambling to racketeering and electioneering. They were said to be divided into rival factions, whose mutual animosity manifested itself in violence. It was widely believed that they used the vulnerable population of mill hands to carry out their work.37 The Superintendent of Police ventured to guess that there were around 107 leaders, and around another 400 ‘lesser’ goondas in Kanpur in 1932. He compared the goondas to organised criminal ‘gangs not only in Chicago at the present day, but in the East-End of London’.38 These men presented a particularly acute problem for the UP’s criminal justice system. They were reputed to be able to bribe or intimidate witnesses, as well as prominent members of the legal system, in order to avoid censure for their involvement in illegal exploits.39 According to D.S. Barron, Additional District Magistrate of Kanpur, it was ‘virtually impossible’ to gather the evidence necessary to prosecute a goonda for any of his crimes. Potential witnesses of no social or economic standing could be intimidated into silence. Wealthy and influential men were patrons of the badmashes, ‘assisting them in time of need with money and influence, and in return availing themselves of their services for elections and private feuds.’ Barron testified that, in one post-riot case, an Honorary Magistrate had posted ‘a very large sum’ in bail ‘for a well known Badmash’.40 Thus, men of position could not be induced to act as witnesses against them, either because they were bribed or because they, too, were implicated in the goondas’ activities. Anyone labelled a goonda did not have to stretch his imagination to circumvent the more routine response of the police. As Barron reported, these men were ‘fully aware’ that the police would come to round them up, and left their houses before the authorities arrived.41

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In this state of affairs, the UP Legislative Council concluded that, ‘The existing law has proved inadequate to control these men.’42 When presented with a law and order problem it was not able to resolve using the resources at hand, the authorities in India had a number of choices. In the economic conditions of the early 1930s, it was financially unpalatable to build up criminal justice institutions to the extent necessary to secure adequate evidence, protect witnesses, or prosecute and reform larger numbers of persons. Thus, when pressed to act against goondas, the UP Legislature responded by diluting the ordinary criminal procedure. Because the goondas easily negotiated the weaknesses of the ordinary criminal justice system, the Legislative Council established a quasi-judicial mechanism to bring these people into the coercive network. According to the UP Goondas Act of 1932, proceedings against a goonda could be instituted by a magistrate, who issued a report to the local government. This circumvented the police. The rules of evidence were relaxed and the Act provided for in camera trials before two judges rather than public trials before a jury. There was no right of appeal and neither side was to be represented by a lawyer. Indeed, the quasi-judicial nature of the entire procedure was evident in that, throughout the Act, the goonda was not referred to as ‘the accused’, but rather as, ‘the person against whom report has been made’. Finally, the standard of proof was lowered so that, rather than requiring proof of guilt ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt’, the judge need only be ‘satisfied that the person against whom the report has been made should be removed elsewhere’.43 The punishment awarded reflected the quasi-judicial nature of the legislation: the Act provided that goondas simply would be externed from the city of Kanpur. These new tactics, however, had their own vulnerabilities. A similar act had been passed in Calcutta (1923), and one would follow in Bombay (1938), although these two acts did not necessarily spawn from concerns about communal rioting. One of the most significant problems with the Goonda Acts in Bengal, Kanpur and Bombay was that they did not provide any kind of permanent or comprehensive solution to the problem. In Kanpur, the Assistant to the Inspector-General of Police was aware that ‘a lot of goondas came to Cawnpore from Bombay and Calcutta’.44 Indeed, by 1938, many of those externed from Kanpur had simply set up shop across the Ganges in Unao, from where they continued their work. It was admitted that, though the ‘goonda menace’ had been eradicated from Kanpur city, ‘it appears to have raised its head in other cities in the province.’45 The Legislative Council may have tried to produce a novel response to communal violence, but the new tactics were little more than an extension of the existing routine measures which had been used against goondas in the past: suspects were pre-identified on the basis of their reputation; they were processed through the coercive system without reference to courts; their punishment was minimal and temporary. It is clear that the continued existence and indeed the extension of non-carceral penal measures was tied to the financial and administrative weaknesses of the coercive network, rather than

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to any overarching imperial ideology. Moreover, there was nothing premodern about externment here. Kanpur was an industrial city, not a medieval hamlet. Rather, the sanction was simply designed to rid the area of a problem which the government did not have the money to resolve by other means.

Class, imperial finance and the Bombay Whipping Act of 1933 In Bombay, a similar consensus produced a different, though no more creative alternative. In this city, there had been not just one riot, but two, with very different causes, which combined to create the incentive to pass the Bombay Whipping Act of 1933. Just as in Kanpur, however, the post-riot analyses began as nuanced assessments of the multiple layers of responsibility, but ended up focusing on one single element: the hooligan. Again, the category which was chosen was an abstraction which enabled legislators to ignore the religious identity of those being blamed for communal rioting. This section follows the progress of this discourse, and then examines the debates about whether this category of criminal merited the punishment of whipping. The two ‘riots’ in Bombay had different roots, and followed different patterns. The first began on 3 February 1929, just after a strike of oil installation workers. The main parties were said to have been primarily Hindu strikers and Muslim Pathan strike-breakers. This unrest took the form of individual murders by small groups. According to the official enquiry, over ten days of violence 149 people were killed. There was a recrudescence in April and May of the same year in which another 35 murders were recorded.46 The second occurrence of violence began in mid-May 1932, during the civil disobedience movement. These disturbances lasted until mid-July, and again took the form of isolated murders, this time leaving over 200 dead.47 Bombay’s official Riots Enquiry Committee concluded in 1929 that primary responsibility for the unrest lay with communist leaders for their incendiary attacks on Pathan strike-breakers which had roused striking millworkers to violence. Having gained a prominent position in workers’ politics during the general strikes in 1928 and 1929, the communists in Bombay, established in the Girni Kamgar Union, had threatened the interests of mill owners and heightened British fears of the USSR. It is therefore no surprise that communists were the object of government repression in the 1930s. Through the Meerut Conspiracy Case or the Bombay Special Emergency Powers Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act, the authorities sought to incapacitate the communist movement.48 All of these measures, however, targeted communists qua communists. They did little to address the alleged involvement of the communists in exciting communal tensions. When it came to finding ways to punish communal violence per se, hooligans became the target of legislative action. The 1929 Bombay Riots Enquiry Committee determined that ‘next to the communist menace’, the ‘hooligan menace’ was the second most influential aspect of the riot. ‘[T]hough these disturbances were not begun by the hooligans,’ the enquiry committee found,

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‘the riots would not have been continued but for them’.49 The committee defined the hooligans thus: ‘the hooligans and the old offenders are not all identical but many of the hooligans are old offenders.50 The tautology serves to underline a number of things about the term. First, it was pejorative. To be a hooligan was to be a criminal, and not just any criminal, but a habitual one.51 Yet, while the category ‘habitual offender’ was a recognised term in the criminal law, defined simply by the number of crimes for which the offender had been convicted, the term hooligan had no such objective determinants. Indeed, the need for legislation directed specifically at this group was an indication that, while hooligans were assumed to lead a life of crime, they had also succeeded in avoiding arrest and conviction for their activities. Second, the tautology highlights the fact that it was difficult to determine who exactly the hooligans were. Just as in Kanpur, these ‘turbulent members of the lower classes’ were assumed to be mill-hands who were not indigenous to the city.52 Finally, and crucially, the term is devoid of religious connotation. Though Muslims were said to term Hindu rioters hooligans, and vice versa, to be a hooligan did not identify one as belonging to any specific religious group. Although the 1932 disturbances had very different causes, and were conducted in a manner distinct from those in 1929, the two sets of riots shared the fact that, in both blame was divided between the political leadership and the hooligans. Sir P.A. Kelly, Bombay’s Commissioner of Police, concluded that the immediate cause of the 1932 riots may have been a series of trivial incidents, but, ‘in particular the civil disobedience movement has served to estrange the two communities.’53 As they had in Kanpur, Congress activities tended to have a disproportionate impact on the business interests of Muslims in the city, engendering bitterness amongst Muslim merchants. And yet, the wrath of the newspapers and of the legislators converged on the hooligan. The prominent Congressman and editor of The Bombay Chronicle, B.G. Horniman, published an article entitled ‘Why were they not ready?’ shortly after the outbreak of the 1932 riots. In it, he reproached the police for not taking action designed to restrain the lower-class residents of the city, including closing liquor shops, prohibiting assemblies of crowds, and rounding up the ‘bad characters’.54 Speaking in the Bombay Legislative Council, R. D. Bell, the Home Member also trivialised the role of the political leadership. these outbursts of communal passion have their origin amongst the hooligans and turbulent members of the lower orders whose passions are most easily stirred and who, once stirred, break all moral restraints and defy the utmost efforts of the police … They spread terror, destruction, bodily maiming and death throughout large areas and the passions aroused affect, even infect, classes of society who are normally free from them and indeed in normal circumstances ashamed of them.55 While recognising that such persons were ‘stirred’ into action by unnamed others, Bell found the hooligans to be responsible. Indeed, as his argument

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progressed, the hooligan was transformed from an almost-passive receptacle for communal vitriol into an agent of communal hatred who infects the respectable members of society with his disease. As a result, those leaders who aroused communal antagonism, whether by offensive speeches or by provocative action, faded into the background, while ‘the hooligans and turbulent members of the lower orders’ were identified as the driving force behind the disturbances. The hooligan problem, it was believed, could not be solved using the ordinary law. Indeed, during the Bombay riots, the resources of the state had been ‘set at defiance … not merely for days but for weeks, and in one instance for months on end’.56 It followed that something exceptional would have to be done to meet this extraordinary challenge. In 1929, the enquiry committee had mooted the idea of externing hooligans to a settlement outside Bombay city where they could be detained indefinitely and given ‘an opportunity of doing some useful work’.57 In the early years of the Depression, however, the Bombay Government could not afford to build new facilities for this purpose. The provincial government, therefore, requested the central government to take up the cause, and the expenditure.58 In the midst of the civil disobedience movement, bombarded by allegations of excess on the part of the police and magistracy, and beset by its own financial difficulties, the Government of India declined the invitation.59 With limited options, and even fewer resources to hand the idea of whipping hooligans took hold.60 The Bombay Government drew up a bill to extend the use of corporal punishment ‘to deal with the hooligan class of Bombay City’, and introduced it into the Provincial Legislative Council in February 1933.61 There were two important aspects in the discourse which justified the extension of the punishment of flogging. First, it was designed for those who had committed crimes that ran contrary to the contemporary sense of propriety. For example, The Times of India reasoned that, because in the past, ‘there has been some observance of the convention that women and children should be free from the risk of attack’, those who now had begun to assault women and children ought to be flogged.62 In addition, whipping was to be used against those for whom imprisonment was no deterrent. To those who supported the bill, it was clear that the legislation was targeting, ‘jail-birds … who have returned from jail, not once or twice, but many times, to whom the punishment of sending them to jail is nothing but amusement.’63 The discourse of medical supervision was used to try to dispel any doubts about the ‘barbaric’ nature of flogging. For example, when C.N. Patel cautioned the Legislative Council that the punishment would be ‘dehumanising and demoralising in the extreme’,64 the Home Member, assured the Council that, on the contrary, each whipping would be administered in the presence of a medical officer, who would monitor the state of the offender in order to ensure that he would not be subject to more pain than he could tolerate.65 Corporal punishments, therefore, could be coupled with the trappings of contemporary medical technologies and up-to-date knowledge of the human

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body to calculate the subject’s tolerance for pain and to calibrate the ‘correct’ amount of force to be applied. ‘Modern’ whippings were conducted out of public view, and with the precision and care of a medical operation, at least in theory. By extending this type of punishment, Bombay’s legislators could adapt the coercive network to new challenges without placing any further burden on public revenues. In the Legislative Council, objections were raised on a number of grounds, but the Act was passed nonetheless. Some of the Members of the Legislative Council who opposed the bill tended to underscore the economic causes of communal rioting, and to advocate liberal measures to ameliorate the socioeconomic conditions of those whom the bill was designed to punish.66 Some did not trust the magistracy and the police with greater powers, especially because a whipping could not be repealed once dispensed.67 Others feared that the administration of the new penalty would only bolster communal enmity. J.B. Petit of the Bombay Millowners Association worried that, ‘the whipping of Hindu rioters and hooligans (real or imaginary) by Mahomedan policemen, and of Mahomedan rioters and hooligans (real or imaginary) by Hindu policemen, will have the almost certain effect of widening the breach now existing between the two communities’.68 Where the police and magistracy could be used for partisan ends, or where they could be accused of bias in their work, it was hard to find any new penalties which, in practice, would not be subject to such allegations. The Bombay Legislative Council, like their counterparts in UP, passed legislation which pandered to the weaknesses of the system, and which, therefore, could not provide a solution to the problem of communal violence. After the riot, in the politically fragile circumstances of the early 1930s, consensus could only be built around the idea that the ‘hooligan’ ought to be punished. However, there was no scope for expanding the institutional capabilities of the penal system in the middle of the economic crisis of the time. As lower-class members of the population, hooligans could be targeted with whipping while the middle-classes could not. The Whipping Act, therefore, was able to extend corporal punishments because it was intended for a class of people who were not necessarily as influential as the middleclasses in India, and who would therefore be less likely to organise themselves to oppose this penalty. In the 1920s the practice of whipping had been restricted to members of the ‘unrespectable’ classes. A decade later, the use of corporal punishments against members of subaltern classes was actually extended because extraordinary crimes justified harsher punishments. Fiscal concerns ensured that the new tactics did not cost the state any more money. This confounds the idea that industrialising, or ‘modernising’ states always tended to eliminate corporal punishments in favour of imprisonment. Rather, in India, specific punishments were directed towards particular sections of society or towards particular types of crime. This created a highly differentiated, and highly varied (though not necessarily effective) coercive network.

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Conclusion Clearly, the coercive network was equipped neither to stop communal violence nor to diffuse communal tensions. In the first place, its institutions were overwhelmed by instances of large scale unrest. This fact served to justify measures which did not strengthen criminal justice institutions, but instead normalised the use of ‘extraordinary’ methods to combat unrest. Not only did the coercive network fail in the face of violence, its courts and police were pulled into larger communal struggles. Given the inability of the police to gather enough evidence to secure a conviction in many cases, and the paucity of the funds available for reforming state institutions, any new measure would have to bend the ordinary rules and mould the new penalties around the preexisting inadequacies of the coercive network. The legislation of the 1930s which aimed to do this was designed not to target criminals as Hindus or Muslims, but to obscure their religious identity whilst using their low social status – as goondas and hooligans – to justify the extraordinary measures used against them. This enabled the legislatures to appear to be acting to prevent communal violence, while avoiding the potentially explosive act of targeting communalist organisations or political figures. It was easier to use quasi-judicial methods when not acting against educated members of the respectable classes, who tended to have the knowledge of the law and the networks of influence to organise strong resistance to the more creative penal measures. As a result, rather than tending towards the uniform punishment of all subjects through the penitentiary, the penal system in India was developing an increasing variety of tools which it could use to punish different classes of the population. The following chapter examines the ways in which one group of prisoners used hunger-strikes to try to introduce a further distinction – that of political prisoner – into the system. The changes introduced to grapple with the successive crises posed by the civil disobedience movement and communal violence thus helped naturalise exceptionalism within India’s legal system. That is, governments began routinely to rely on legislative and judicial shortcuts such as Ordinances and abbreviated criminal proceedings. They commonly justified these tactics on the grounds that they were necessary in exceptional circumstances. But the increased integration of these ‘extraordinary’ measures into the ‘ordinary’ law effaced the distinction between the two. Moreover, because they pandered to the weaknesses of the coercive network, the penal tactics developed in the 1930s did little to resolve the tensions inherent in the system. Indian government servants continued to be accused of bias and their actions were increasingly woven into India’s larger political divisions as independence and partition neared. Chapter eight examines how this affected the state’s ability to confront the violence of partition.

6

The hunger strikes of the Lahore Conspiracy Case prisoners, 1929–39

The previous two chapters have demonstrated the ways in which the punishment of certain groups came to take place outside of the prison system. This chapter returns to the jail to investigate a series of hunger strikes undertaken by Indian revolutionaries in the 1930s who demanded better treatment for political prisoners.1 Political fasts put the government in an impossible position: if the prisoner were to be allowed to die, his death might incite unrest outside the jail; if government were to give in to his demands, this would encourage insubordination in the jail; to force-feed the hunger striker would only prolong the whole ordeal, and increase the importance of the strike. On the everyday level, however, the strikes presented quite a different issue. Both political necessity and government instructions dictated that all hunger strikers were to be treated the same. They were to be segregated from other prisoners and force-fed. This opened up a daily battle in which prison officers improvised tactics to cajole, intimidate and compel prisoners to take in some nourishment. Paradoxically, this makeshift state violence was both outside the purview of existing regulations and within the remit of prison officers’ responsibilities because their primary duty was to end the strike. Unsurprisingly, the image of Indian patriots being force-fed made for highly fissile political material. On one level, the politics of representation during these hunger strikes were straightforward. In spite of the fact that, as revolutionaries, the strikers did not adhere to the Congress creed, the mainstream nationalist party aligned itself with these martyrs’ demands for equality with Europeans. And yet, in this period we begin to see the complications which could arise out of these strategies, for the Congress could not easily contain the symbols it had fostered. When the prisoners went on strike again after Congress had taken control of provincial ministries in the latter half of the 1930s, they created a crisis for both Congress and the new constitutional system.

Introduction The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) was a small cadre of men from North India who formed a revolutionary organisation with the aim of securing freedom for India through individual acts of violence. In

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colonial India they were known as revolutionaries or terrorists. They secured funds through robberies such as the large dacoity (armed robbery) in Kakori, UP, on 9 August 1925, for which 11 members had been sentenced to death. Their subsequent attacks were even more sensational: on 17 December 1928 Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Jai Gopal murdered the Assistant Superintendent of Police in the Punjab, John Poyantz Saunders. A few months later, on 8 April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batu Keshwar Dutt threw a bomb into the Central Legislative Assembly. Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt were caught on the scene, and sentenced to transportation for life in the Delhi Assembly Bomb Case. The organisation was unravelled after their capture, as the police arrested or killed members of the group, one after another. The Punjab police put together the Lahore Conspiracy Case in 1929 to charge twenty-five members of the HSRA with conspiracy against the government.2 During the case, the accused began a hunger strike in order to demand privileges as political prisoners. Their strikes continued on and off for nearly a decade. The following analysis of these strikes has three aims. It is concerned, first of all, with the everyday practices of the state and with the quotidian experiences of hunger strikers in colonial India. Although the British may have tried to formulate a unified legal response to political fasts throughout the empire,3 prison administrators on the ground in India were given a high degree of autonomy. Guided by the imperative of ending the strike rather than by devotion to any abstract conception of discipline, they used their wide powers of discretion to try to induce prisoners to take food by causing them physical distress. Not only were the actions of prison officers highly improvised, the responses of individual inmates to these encounters were also very diverse. This chapter, therefore, also builds upon previous research on the personal experiences of prisoners by exploring the tensions which arose between hunger strikers as they were force-fed.4 The second assertion made below concerns politics within India’s nationalist movement. The popularity of the accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case, including Bhagat Singh, and Jatindranath Das, has been a mystery to many scholars.5 This work argues that the hunger strike which the accused undertook during their trial was instrumental in establishing the place of these men in the nationalist pantheon for three reasons. The hunger strike and the trial provided the HSRA with a stage from which they could display their charismatic defiance of British authority to a larger public. Moreover, the case was prosecuted at a time when the Indian National Congress was preparing for the civil disobedience movement, and many Congressmen (some with reluctance, some with alacrity) were drawn to support the hunger strikers in order to tap into the independent public support which they had roused. Finally, when Jatin Das succumbed during the strike, and Bhagat Singh, Shivram Rajguru, and Sukh Dev were executed after the trial, they provided the nationalist cause with martyrs to Mother India. In a nationalist movement in which few prominent figures gave their lives, the symbolic value of the martyrdom of these four men was incalculable. In sum, the

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hunger strike was woven into the larger political choreography of the nationalist movement. The second half of the chapter explores what happened to this ambivalent alliance after the Congress took control of provincial ministries in 1937. The symbol of the political prisoner had been a potent weapon to use against the imperial power, but it did not go away when the Congress took office. When, in 1938, the members of the HSRA refused to eat until they were released from prison, this put the Congress in a quandary: as the new guardians of ‘law and order’ they could not release the prisoners, but as a party fighting a national movement they could hardly countenance the death in jail of the heroes of their own making. Gandhi cleverly manoeuvred the Congress out of this dilemma, and in so doing forced the imperial government to align itself more firmly with the Congress party.

The Lahore Conspiracy Case Proceedings for the Lahore Conspiracy Case began on 10 July 1929. By the time of their transfer to Lahore Central Jail to stand trial, the two men convicted in the Delhi Assembly Bomb Case, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt, had been on hunger strike for 29 days. Shortly after the proceedings for the new case opened, they were joined in their fast by the majority of their co-conspirators, who were housed separately in the Borstal Jail.6 Together the accused demanded that the government create a separate class for all ‘political prisoners’ in India.7 Though the term ‘political prisoner’ was widely used in government and amongst the population at this time, the government had refused to create a separate class in prisons specifically to house political convicts.8 Practice differed across the provinces, but for the most part, the changes introduced after the non-cooperation movement ensured there were two categories of prisoner in India: ordinary and European or Special Class. In effect, this division amounted to a separate category for Europeans to which a few affluent Indians were admitted.9 Those who committed offences involving violence were excluded from the Special Class, however.10 Thus, the law prioritised race and class, and did not recognise motive as a determining factor in differentiating the treatment which prisoners received in jail. When they asked to be treated as political prisoners the accused did not compare themselves to ordinary Indian criminals and insist upon their superiority.11 Instead, they contrasted their position with that of Europeans and asserted their equality. To this end, the accused produced a long list of areas in which ordinary European criminals received better treatment than Indian political convicts: Indian living quarters were ‘unventilated, small and narrow cells’, with no special kitchen arrangements, no fans and only earthenware beds, covered in rough blankets; Indian inmates were not given shoes, and the clothes provided for warm weather did not cover their limbs, while those supplied during winter were ‘ugly ones which deform him and make

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him look like a bear’. By contrast, according to the hunger strikers, the prison authorities provided European convicts with rice, meat and high-quality vegetables for dinner, good shoes and clothes, plus personal items such as soap. They built ‘special European wards well comparable to bungalows’ with electric light and fans. Adding injustice to inconvenience was the fact that these special privileges were provided to ordinary Europeans who were, ‘surely of a lower type and actuated by mean selfish motives and convicted of theft, fraud, pick-pocketing, rape, adultery, desertion and (or) murder’.12 In their campaign, the hunger strikers imputed the worst crimes – murder, rape, even disloyalty – to the European convict, and reserved those crimes of high morals for political prisoners. The power of this comparison was in the way that it denied the racial superiority of Europeans, and underlined the injustice of their materially superior position in India, wherever they were found. Framed in this way, the demands of the hunger strikers did not represent the selfish whims of individual prisoners, but chimed with the larger anti-imperial struggle. As a result, the hunger strike earned independent public sympathy, and dovetailed unexpectedly with the Congress party’s own programme. Ambition and ambivalence: the public, the Congress and the strike From the start of the trial, there had been a fair amount of independent popular support for the hunger strikers.13 Crowds gathered at the court each morning to greet the accused with cries of ‘Long live Revolution’ and ‘Down with Imperialism’.14 In addition, some newspaper editors expressed sympathy with the struggle to secure equality between Europeans and Indians. The nationalist, Hindi-language newspaper Aaj, for example, condemned racial distinctions in jail as, ‘improper, unjust and insulting’.15 The fast and the demands of the HSRA were well-publicised because the accused voiced their demands in open court, and newspapers were able to publish detailed accounts of each day’s proceedings. Thus, Aaj issued daily reports on the physical condition of the prisoners as they entered the courtroom and recounted the grievances which the strikers voiced to the magistrate. Readers could track the weight of each prisoner, his pulse rate, his temperature and his state of mind, as well as nearly every attempt to persuade the accused to take medicine, food or water, and nearly every act of refusal or acceptance.16 Through the nationalist press, Indians came to know of the games the authorities played with the feeding process,17 and the physical violence which force-feeding entailed, as the case was reported beneath headlines like, ‘Wound marks because of force feeding’.18 The trial thus became a showcase for the defiance and bravery of the accused. Newspapers conveyed the many ways in which the revolutionaries, though weakened by their fast, were able to undermine the authority of the magistrate. When Dutt first arrived in court on a stretcher, for example, Aaj reported that, at the sight of the ill patriot one woman in the courtroom began shouting, ‘Dutt ki jai! Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ (Long live Dutt! Long

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live Mahatma Gandhi!). When the magistrate had her removed, Bhagat Singh and his co-accused persuaded the magistrate to let her return.19 On another occasion, the accused refused to leave the courtroom until the magistrate granted them permission to see their relatives. Even though proceedings had finished for the day, the magistrate conceded to their demands.20 By selecting events which emphasised the courage and cunning of the strikers, these vernacular accounts helped ‘generate public perceptions’ of the nature of the colonial state and of the hunger strikers.21 They helped publicise the HSRA’s programme to a larger audience, and they aided the flow of information to already sympathetic sections of the population. The Congress party would seem to have had every reason to distance itself from this hunger strike. Not only were the members of the HSRA accused of involvement in crimes of violence, but they had denounced the Congress creed of non-violence as ‘Utopian’.22 However, members of the Congress Party could not ignore the groundswell of sentiment in support of the strikers, especially when they were preparing to bring the public onto the streets for the civil disobedience campaign. And any new campaign against the British would need foot soldiers. Whilst it was vital not to alienate the public at this time, Congressmen could not agree on what course to take with respect to the strike. Left-leaning members of the party tended to support the strike. In Bengal, Congressman and radical leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, led a campaign in active support of the strikers. Others took a more pragmatic view. ‘In order to prepare for the big war’, Acharya Narendra Dev, the socialist Congressman, reasoned, ‘we will have to fight the little battles’.23 Members from the right of the party were more reticent. Gandhi, for one, stood aloof. Privately, he disapproved not only of the hunger strike but of any Congressman associating himself with it.24 Nonetheless, he was unwilling to subdue public sentiment at such a pivotal time, and he remained silent. His silence, he explained, ‘was observed entirely in the national interest’.25 In the end, most Congressmen did not unite behind the hunger strikers, but behind the call for better treatment for political prisoners which the strikers had made. This narrow formulation of the issue allowed the party to support the demands of the patriots on hunger strike without condoning their crimes. Thus, Congressmen across the country tried to praise the idea of sacrificing one’s life for a principle, while urging non-violence.26 Accordingly, when Congress celebrated Political Sufferers’ Day in the United Provinces on 4 August, Congressman Pandit Krishnachandra Sharma addressed a crowd gathered at the Benares Town Hall, saying, ‘we do not accept the path of violence, but everyone will have to accept that the Lahore accused are suffering hardship not for their own advantage but for the betterment of their country.’27 In Allahabad, Congress President Motilal Nehru presided over a meeting which passed a resolution which did not mention the hunger strike, but called for government to grant privileges to political prisoners.28 The subtle nature of the Party’s support for the strikers was ignored by members

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of the public, who greeted these carefully worded texts with cries of ‘Bhagat Singh-Dutt ki jai’ and ‘Long live Revolution’.29 Equally, the Congress turned a deaf ear to the slogans as it used the meetings to enlist new members.30 The dilemma of the hunger strike As the hunger strike wore on some of the accused became too weak to attend the trial, which could not continue in their absence. This prolonged the ordeal of hunger strikers, administrators, officials and politicians alike. If the government were only able to secure a conviction in the case, then the daily commotion in front of reporters in the courtroom could end. This would hearten the police who were ‘particularly resentful’ that, even though they had put together an ‘investigation which required unusual qualities of skill and courage’, and captured men responsible for the deaths of two police officers, the culprits had not been convicted. It would also assert the strength of government over the resurgent revolutionary movements.31 The priority of the Government of India, therefore, was to find a way to end the hunger strike without the death of any of the prisoners. The centre weighed its options. To release unconditionally those prisoners who were dangerously weak was unconscionable. Because the group had been implicated in previous political dacoities, and some had connections to other terrorist parties in Bengal, they were too dangerous to release.32 Moreover, at a time when the government was also pursuing other high profile cases against communists, including the Meerut Conspiracy Case,33 the Viceroy was confident that, should he release those hunger strikers whose health was in danger, ‘the tactics employed in this case will be adopted by others’, communists and ordinary criminals alike.34 To surrender to the demands of the hunger strikers could elicit a similar response. Equally, the death of one or more fasting patriots could not only seriously disturb ‘public opinion’, but could also provide an ‘increase of funds and volunteers’ to the Congress.35 Therefore, the administration was convinced that to allow the strikers to die would only exacerbate the government’s difficulties. Thus, the last remaining option – force-feeding – became the only path for the authorities to follow. The law and the practice of force-feeding While the decision to force-feed the hunger strikers suited the political situation, it was also believed that prison officers were legally obligated to do all in their power to preserve the lives of inmates. In the case of Leigh v Gladstone (1909), the English courts had explicitly imposed upon jail officials the legal duty to care for citizens who went on hunger strike in jail. Marie Leigh was a suffragette who had been artificially fed by prison officials when she went on hunger strike. She sued the warden of her prison, the medical officer, and Herbert Gladstone, the Home Secretary, arguing that the medical officer had no right to assault her physically in order to feed her. The courts held that the

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prison authorities were under a legal duty to keep alive those in their charge. This obligation included force-feeding, if necessary. Though English law acted as non-binding precedent in India, the Government of India devised its own policy on hunger strikes that modified this understanding. The duty to force-feed was complicated by the fact that the practice was also considered to be a right which prison warders or medical officers could exercise over inmates who disobeyed orders by refusing to eat. Home Department officials believed that ‘in certain circumstances a master may beat a pupil or the master of a ship may put a seaman in irons or a prison medical officer may cause a prisoner to be forcibly fed’.36 In the minds of the legal advisors, the right to force-feed and the duty to do so existed on a continuum. India’s Home Department and the British Home Office fretted over the question of when the right to force-feed became the duty to do so. Rather than perplex local officers with such legal niceties, however, the Home Department preferred to base its advice to prison officers on the ‘undoubted fact that the Jail Superintendent has the right forcibly to feed a prisoner if this provides the only means of keeping him alive’. Superintendents, according to government orders, ought to exercise their right and force-feed prisoners, ‘on the grounds both of humanity and of policy’. Government instructions, therefore, stated that each strike in colonial India was to be handled in exactly the same way: strikers were to be punished according to prison regulations, separated from their fellow prisoners, and force-fed using standard medical procedures. Officers were not to offer concessions to hunger strikers.37 In everyday practice, however, the exercise of this ‘right’ took a variety of forms as officers adapted to the resistance of those on strike. A single session of standard force-feeding could require half a dozen assistants to hold the head and limbs of the prisoner while a tube was forced through his nose or mouth and down to his stomach.38 Hunger strikers resisted by thrashing their limbs, ‘dashing their heads against hard objects’, or vomiting all that had been passed into their stomachs.39 Resistance, however, was not confined to the narrow act of refusing to be force-fed. Some prisoners jumped in and out of the strike, eating when not on strike. At other times, strikers were persuaded by their relatives or political supporters to have juice or medicine in order to stay alive to continue fighting for their cause.40 Although more often than not, the medical reports recorded that prisoners struggled against forcefeeding, hunger strikers did not resist every day, nor did they resist with the same fervour every time. For example, the report for the 18 July 1929 stated that, though Bhagat Singh was force-fed, he ‘did not offer resistance’.41 All of these tactics prolonged the strike by preserving the lives of the strikers. In response, prison officials developed novel techniques for thwarting these new forms of resistance. On one occasion, for example, they replaced the water in prisoners’ cells with milk, in an effort to induce the thirsty prisoners to take some nourishment.42 Medical officers often resorted to subterfuge to administer some nutrition to the strikers who were too weak to be force-fed. The officers in charge of these hunger strikers surreptitiously dropped ‘1oz of

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glucose and half of brandy’ into vimto which Jatin Das’ brother had brought him.43 They also added glucose and soda bicarbonate to enemas administered to prisoners.44 None of these practices had been contemplated in the government’s instructions for ending hunger strikes. The actual practice of feeding prisoners, therefore, tended to develop into a battle of wits between inmates and officers which often seemed to have little to do with legal duties, penal rights or official instructions. Though allowing themselves to be force-fed, or conceding to take medicine or juice, could be construed as means of continuing their struggle, these quotidian battles did not always produce unambiguous victories. For instance, the rapport amongst the accused was damaged when Jatin Das fell ill, but Bhagat Singh did not. Das lost consciousness and then contracted a high fever after a botched force-feeding session in which food was pumped into his lungs. As Das’ health deteriorated, Bhagat Singh was brought in by officials to persuade Das to take some form of nourishment on three occasions. Reluctantly, Das agreed twice, but the third time he refused. Bitterly, he accused Bhagat Singh of allowing himself to be force-fed, and told him, ‘Mr Bhagat Singh, you have broken my heart, you should not have come.’45 Small triumphs over prison officials, or petty concessions to them, therefore, could have ambiguous outcomes for the strike as a whole when they adversely affected group solidarity. That a medical procedure could become a legal duty, and then be reinterpreted as a penal right, only to be used as a means of (sometimes ambivalent) resistance by the very people it was intended to protect/oppress is testament to the rich and complex nature of on-the-ground power relations during a hunger strike. These daily encounters reveal the ways in which a hunger strike was just as likely to alienate participants from one another as to strengthen group solidarity. While the position of the strikers was not straightforward, neither was that of the state. The body of the hunger striker may have been the object of the state’s medical, legal and penal attention, but the actual exercise of these powers was open to interpretation by officers on the ground, whose choices reflected a high degree of improvisation with little reference to abstract rights or duties. The Government position: private concessions, public announcements As the strike continued, these subtleties tended to be obscured and support for the accused grew as crowds gathered in ever greater numbers outside the courtroom each morning.46 Whilst the ambivalence of the Congress Party gave them some room to manoeuvre, the Government of India felt vulnerable because of the public following the strikers had earned.47 Thus, while they chose to force-feed the hunger strikers, the authorities also tried to end the strike by negotiating with the prisoners. From the inception of the strike, prison officials had privately offered concessions to Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt. The two convicts, however, declined the privileges, which were not publicly offered to all political prisoners, and refused to break their fast.48

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By the end of July, five prisoners were unfit to attend court, and Jatin Das had taken a bad turn. Medical experts warned on 4 August that two prisoners would die in only ten days if nothing were done.49 At the end of those ten days, four more men had become so weak that their condition made it too dangerous for them to be artificially fed. In mid-August the Government of India announced to the public that they had ordered provinces to conduct a full review of the rules of classification.50 Whilst it held out the prospect of change, this made no immediate concessions to the hunger strikers. The strike continued. With the prisoners too weak to attend court, the trial did not. By the end of August 1929 it was clear that Jatin Das was dying.51 At the insistence of the Legislative Assembly, an emergency Sub-Committee of the Punjab Jails Enquiry Committee was constituted to meet with the prisoners in Lahore. The Sub-Committee suggested that the government offer Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt many of the same concessions normally provided to undertrial prisoners. They also recommended that Jatin Das be released. With these concessions, the Sub-Committee succeeded in persuading all of the accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case, except Jatin Das, to break their fast.52 The Punjab Government, however, declined to grant Das unconditional freedom, and he refused conditional release, and on the 13 September 1929, Jatin Das passed away. Martyrdom ‘JATIN LAYS DOWN LIFE AT ALTAR OF MOTHERLAND – Glorious Martyrdom Crowns a Youthful Career of Service & Sacrifice’ ran the headline in The Bombay Chronicle.53 On the day of Das’ cremation, processions were organised throughout the country. In Calcutta, an ‘enormous’ crowd, estimated by Congressmen to be half a million people, joined Das’ funeral procession.54 Municipal corporations, Congress Committees, and Youth Leagues were among the many organisations to praise Das’ sacrifice as ‘a deed worthy of a true patriot.’55 Das, his fellow strikers and their cause had been embraced by large numbers of the public. In a country where the dominant political creed was supposedly non-violence, how can one explain the status of Das and his fellow hunger strikers? For one, it is clear that, while many Indians followed the Congress’ programmes, they were more attached to the idea of expelling the British from India than to Gandhi’s non-violent means of doing so. Second, many Congressmen agreed with the hunger strikers that the motive which inspired their crimes set these men apart from ‘ordinary criminals’. In the Legislative Assembly session on the day after Das’ death, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya extolled the virtues of those who unselfishly joined the nationalist movement, They are not ordinary criminals. They are persons who – however much one may condemn any act of violence of which they might be proved guilty – they are persons who are not prompted by any sordid or selfish motive.

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In a conflict in which the battlefield was not the primary site of struggle, to go to prison was to go to war. To lay one’s life down in jail, therefore, was the height of patriotic commitment. Das’ martyrdom epitomised the self-discipline and self-sacrifice which the nationalist leadership were asking of every person in the country. His cause – equality with Europeans – was in essence what was demanded when Congress called for India’s freedom. The fact that Das and the other HSRA members had been involved in crimes of violence could be glossed over. In the words of Motilal Nehru, ‘misguided they may be but patriots they are all the same!’57 The lionisation of the accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case did not end with Das’ death. Throughout the public trial, high-ranking Congressmen, including Subhas Chandra Bose, Dr Satyapal and Motilal Nehru, visited the courtroom to support the accused.58 The men were eventually convicted,59 and thirteen were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Three members, Bhagat Singh, Shivram Rajguru and Sukh Dev were sentenced to death, and, in March 1931, hanged. The Congress party marked their passing with strikes and processions. Jatin Das became a ‘shaheed-e-watan’ (martyr to the motherland), and his place in the nationalist pantheon, along with that of the other accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case, was secured.60 And still the hunger strikes did not end. After the review of the rules for the categorisation of prisoners had been completed as promised, the Government of India announced a new scheme of classification for prisoners.61 This did nothing to satisfy the demands of the accused because it made no provision for a separate category for political prisoners, and the group began fasting again.62 Even after the trial had ended, after Bhagat Singh, Shivram Rajguru and Sukh Dev had been executed, and the others had been sent to serve their life sentences, the hunger strikes continued. The strikers caused the authorities in Punjab so much grief that the government there decided to divide the group and send some to Madras. From Madras, they were sent on to Port Blair’s Cellular Jail. In each new prison they found fresh cause to hunger strike. After the end of the civil disobedience movement and after the subsidence of the terrorist movement in Bengal, the political situation changed with the introduction of a new constitution under the 1935 Government of India Act. The Lahore Conspiracy Case prisoners joined with other revolutionary prisoners and seized the opportunity to demand their freedom. Their appeal once again took the form of a hunger strike.

The 1938 hunger strike and the constitutional crisis This time, the hunger strikers petitioned for release on the basis that political circumstances in the country had materially changed since their imprisonment. Given the symbolic potency of the political prisoner in the independence

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movement, the Congress governments were unwilling to engage in a standoff with the very same prisoners with whom they had aligned only a few years before. A constitutional crisis ensued. Congress Ministries in UP and Bihar reacted to the hunger strike by ordering a general release of their political prisoners and resigning when the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, vetoed this decision. This move has been regarded by historians as a half-hearted gesture designed to appease the Congress left.63 This section disputes this contention on two fronts. First, it argues that the Congress freed the revolutionary terrorists because the political prisoner was such a central symbol in the nationalist myth. Congressmen – and especially Gandhi – were ambivalent about the crimes of their violent comrades, but they were willing to employ the symbol of these political prisoners to keep the more confrontational strand of the nationalist project alive, even as the mainstream Congress party moved to the right as it entered government. In addition, the section challenges the historiographical argument that the crisis ended in an unqualified defeat for the Congress.64 It demonstrates that, on the contrary, when the Congress Ministries of UP and Bihar resigned, this forced the British to align themselves with the Congress in order to bring them back into provincial governments. The 1935 Government of India Act had established a constitutional framework based on provincial governments with nearly autonomous powers. These provincial ministries were to be run by Indians, but supervised by British provincial governors, and the British Viceroy, each of whom had veto power over the decisions of elected ministries. After the inauguration of the 1935 Act, elections for positions in provincial legislatures were held. During the election campaigns of 1936, the Congress party was split over how best to manage labour strife, over relations with kisan sanghs (peasant associations), over land reform, as well as over whether to participate in the new constitutional regime at all. But all agreed that the Congress manifesto should include a demand for the release of political prisoners.65 After the party won 711 out of 1585 seats in the provincial assemblies, Congressmen took office in seven provinces.66 Having failed to win an outright majority in Bengal, the Congress entered into negotiations with Fazlul Huq’s Krishak Praja Party (KPP) on the formation of a coalition ministry. The two parties had joined forces during the election campaign: Congress agreed not to contest any Muslim seats, and the KPP included in its manifesto a pledge to release political prisoners, but coalition talks collapsed over the question of whether to prioritise agrarian uplift, as the KPP preferred, or the release of political prisoners, which the Congress prioritised.67 After the negotiations fell through, the Congress used the issue of political prisoners to unify its own followers in opposition to the KPP-Muslim League ministry which was eventually formed.68 With Congress in power in many provinces, the time appeared ripe for the revolutionary convicts to ask that Congressmen fulfil their election promises and release all political prisoners. Thus, in July, prisoners in Port Blair’s

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Cellular Jail began a fast to demand their freedom. Having promised to release all political prisoners, Congress supported the strikers in Port Blair and Gandhi worked to convince the Government of India to repatriate the men to mainland India, review their cases, and end the strike.69 The appeal worked, and the prisoners were returned to jails in their home provinces. Preparing for a fight with provincial ministries over the issue of whether to release India’s political prisoners, the Government of India issued guidelines in August 1937. The ‘political prisoners’ included not only the terrorist convicts on hunger strike, but also detenus from various parts of north India. The centre drew its red lines and prepared to defend them. Governors were reminded that their responsibility for ‘peace and good order’ of their provinces required co-ordination with ‘supporters of all parties and not merely Congress’. The centre urged governors to put pressure on ministers to avoid reducing the sentences of men convicted of violent crimes.70 There was to be no general release of political prisoners: cases were to be considered individually, and releases spread over time. Above all, Governors were told that, ‘it would be undesirable to press matters to a break’, except when Governors were satisfied that release of an individual would present a grave menace to security. One exception was made: if violent political offenders accepted the ‘Congress creed of non-violence’, then they could be released.71 Congress ministries, the KPP-Muslim League coalition in Bengal, and the Unionists in Punjab all oversaw piecemeal releases of detenus and political convicts. There was no general gaol delivery, but thousands were freed.72 In Bengal, some three thousand detenus and political convicts were released. In early 1938, however, the Bengal ministry concluded that the remaining 387 political prisoners were too dangerous to be set at liberty. The Punjab ministry was responsible for fewer political prisoners, but also drew a line against releasing those involved in high-profile conspiracy cases. Even in Congress-run provinces, these releases were not without controversy. In UP, the Kakori prisoners, members of the HSRA convicted in connection with a dacoity in Kakori in 1925, were released on 20 August 1937. The inflammatory speeches these men made after their release alarmed the Congress Premier in the UP, Govind Ballabh Pant. After local Congress committees had hosted grand receptions for released prisoners where ‘rabid speeches’ had been made inciting people to violence, Pant wrote to Vallabhbhai Patel, ‘I am not sure if all this is quite consistent with our creed of non-violence’.73 Pant entreated the Congress Parliamentary Committee to visit the province to discourage these occurrences. In turn, Gandhi chastised the crowds who had glorified the Kakori prisoners. He deemed their demonstrations a ‘mistake’, made by those who ‘have evidently not understood the Congress method’.74 Further, Gandhi spoke against all receptions for released political prisoners. He argued that they drew attention to the time these men had spent in prison and prevented them from returning to normal life.75 The UP ministry’s release programme was suspended.76

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By January 1938, few provinces were still releasing prisoners. Those prisoners considered to be most dangerous, including the convicts from the Lahore Conspiracy Case, remained incarcerated. At this point, these men, together with revolutionary prisoners in Punjab, Bengal, Bihar and UP, threatened to hunger strike. The demands of the hunger strikers were not uniform. In Bengal, they asked not only for their release, but also demanded better treatment for any future political prisoners through the creation of a separate class for them.77 In Punjab, many of those striking had been repatriated after the strike in the Andamans. They charged that the Government had not fulfilled its promise to review their cases. They demanded release, announcing that, during their hunger strike, ‘the responsibility for any loss of life will be that of the Government’.78 This statement was not particularly novel, but in 1938 ‘government’ had a different meaning. While previous strikes had clearly put responsibility on the British, the new constitutional regime meant that Indians in provincial government would bear the blame if these patriots died. Initial responses to the hunger strike While in opposition to the British government in India, during the build-up to the civil disobedience movement, Congressmen could use their ambivalence about their violent compatriots to their own ends. By voicing their support for the demands of the Lahore Conspiracy Case strikers in 1929, and neglecting to mention their qualms about the accused, Congressmen had managed to circumvent their own doubts and follow the crowds. When they came to form provincial governments, however, ending hunger strikes became their responsibility, and strategic silence was no longer an option. The Congress party had evoked the symbol of the political prisoner too many times to fail to realise the potential implications of a hunger strike. Congress ministries could not be responsible for the death of one of their comrades because the political prisoner had such a central place in the nationalist imagination. The Congress Working Committee admitted that hunger strikes ‘embarrass the Congress in the pursuit of its policy of securing the release of political prisoners’.79 In order to create space within which to settle the strike, it was imperative to avoid arousing public sympathy for the strikers. Thus, the Working Committee issued a statement in which they expressed their disapproval of prisoners who resorted to hunger strike to obtain their release. They warned that, ‘such a step, on the contrary, stands in their way.’80 For the same reason, Jawaharlal Nehru was sent to Lahore to dissuade students from protesting over the issue. Nehru cautioned one crowd that any civil disobedience over the issue ‘might hamper the release of political prisoners’.81 The non-Congress governments in Punjab and Bengal opposed the release of the remaining political prisoners. In so doing, they reversed the rhetoric which had been employed by the strikers, and denied that the patriotism of these men distinguished them from ordinary convicts. In Bengal, Fazlul Haq’s

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ministry insisted, ‘The Government are not prepared to treat persons convicted of offences such as murder, dacoity and illicit possession or traffic in arms … as distinct from other offenders.’82 Similarly, Punjab’s Premier, Sikander Hyat Khan, declared that, because the persons fasting in Punjab had committed violent crimes, they ‘were no better than other criminals’.83 The Governments of Punjab and Bengal faced public agitation over their refusal to countenance release, but they stood fast.84 Nazimuddin, Home Minister in the KPP-League Ministry in Bengal, condemned the strike, and insisted that the death of one striker should be a ‘lesson to all those who went on hunger strike’.85 Governors were not in agreement about how to respond to the hunger strike. The Governors of UP and Bihar were in favour of quietly giving in to the strike, and releasing their political prisoners.86 The situation in Bengal was different, however. Governor Brabourne warned of the near apocalyptic consequences of releasing prisoners in his province: A general release, though unlikely to have immediate violent consequences, would have a deplorable effect on the police, the services, Europeans and loyal Indians … such release would greatly discourage, and thereby weaken, our Intelligence service which is of such primary importance … The indiscriminate release of these prisoners would unquestionably lead to jubilation and hero-worship and would be regarded here as a vindication of terrorist movements in Bengal.87 The Bengal situation necessitated an all-India policy because, Brabourne warned, ‘I think it is probable that my ministry would feel bound to ask for [a] general release of terrorist prisoners if this were permitted in Bihar’.88 Initially, their sympathies for Bengal and Punjab guided the response of the Government of India.89 There were three reasons for this. On an abstract level, the Secretary of State, the Marquess of Zetland, put a premium on the principle that the Government of India would not give in to hunger strikes.90 In addition Zetland wished to alleviate the pressure on the non-Congress Ministries in Bengal and Punjab.91 Punjab provided the bulk of men for the Indian Army, while Bengal had been one of the first provinces to witness widespread nationalist unrest, and had always demanded special attention. Moreover, Muslims and landowners in both provinces tended to support the imperial power. It was believed they were under constant threat, and in need of steadfast support. Finally, and crucially, the Government of India was confident that ‘it would … seem difficult for Congress Ministries to resign on the hunger strike issue’ after the statement issued by Congress which deplored the use of hunger strikes.92 With this comforting assumption, Linlithgow felt it was safe to declare that the ‘position of non-Congress Governments cannot be compromised for the sake of Congress Ministries’.93 This was a miscalculation. The Congress Working Committee had to toe a fine line between easing the pressure on the Congress ministries in Bihar and

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UP and satisfying the demands for release being led by Gandhi and the Bose brothers in Bengal. The hunger strike was indeed embarrassing to Congress ministries, but if the threat to Congress ministries could be reduced, the issue was too valuable to avoid capitalising upon in Bengal and Punjab. By way of compromise, the Congress Working Committee telegrammed all striking prisoners to request them to end their fast. Those striking in Lahore refused, but Congress secured the end of the hunger strike in Bengal’s Dacca Jail and, most importantly, in Bihar’s Hazaribagh jail. The Congress then pressed for the prisoners to be freed. Under instructions from the Congress high command, Krishna Sinha in Bihar and Pant in UP issued orders for the immediate release of all political prisoners in their provinces. This amounted to 41 persons in total, 15 in UP and 26 in Bihar. Linlithgow intervened to prevent this, and Pant and Sinha offered their resignations. The Government of India suspected that the resignation was designed to ‘compromise the position of Government of Bengal’.94 It succeeded. It seems odd for a political party whose central tenet was non-violence to order its members to resign from government over the release of violent political criminals, especially when Congressmen in power were not keen on discharging these men. Why did Congress throw down the gauntlet on this issue? Sumit Sarkar explains the resignation threat as a temporary concession to the left of the Congress party. In his view, the move was a gesture designed to placate the Congress Socialist Party.95 To be sure, the way to resignation was smoothed by the fact that the left of the party was eager to see violent convicts freed. The need to appease the Left did not dictate other areas of Congress policy, however.96 Indeed, one significant fact serves to undermine Sarkar’s thesis: this was Gandhi’s crusade. The ailing Mahatma had promised prisoners that, ‘I want to see you discharged before I die’.97 The idea that the crisis resulted from the short-term desire to pander to left-leaning factions within the party ignores the prominent role which Gandhi played in it. Instead, the Congress move can be explained by two factors. First, the presence of political prisoners in Congress-controlled jails belied the Congress’ promise to deliver the nation’s freedom. The sheer symbolism of a Congress government allowing an Indian patriot to die, or to suffer the ignominy of being force-fed, could not be countenanced, because these images had come to epitomise the injustices of British rule. Second, the Congress Working Committee made it clear that the real issue was the power of the British Governors and the British Viceroy to overrule decisions by responsible Indian governments.98 While collaborating in constitutional government, the Congress could only sustain the confrontational strand of the nationalist project by developing the symbolic importance of the political prisoner. Through the campaign for an amnesty of political prisoners Congress kept the demand for purna swaraj fresh in everyone’s mind. In this connection, it is significant that the main thrust of the campaign was in Bengal, where the Congress was in opposition to a Ministry which was perceived to be partial to British interests. In order to bolster their cause, Congress tapped into support for terrorist revolutionaries.

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Another Bengali compromise The fear of a domestic crisis at a time of international instability convinced the British to relent to the demands of the hunger strikers and of the Congress. The Secretary of State calculated that, if the Congress ministries in Bihar and UP resigned, then the resignation of the remaining five congress governments was inevitable. With Congress out of government, a return to civil disobedience was very likely. On top of this, the leader of the Muslim League in UP, Khaliquzzaman, had warned that if the Congress revived civil disobedience, then the League would be ‘actively hostile to such movement’.99 The threat of multiple forms of internal unrest came at a time of uncertainty internationally: in Europe Hitler was looking increasingly belligerent, while the Japanese invasion of Manchuria was destabilising Asia. In this situation, the Secretary of State concluded that the price of protecting Bengal and Punjab was too high. A ‘face-saving gesture’ was needed to bring Congress back into Government, and this was to come from Bengal. Linlithgow telegrammed Brabourne to suggest that the Ministry adopt, as progressive a policy and at as early a date as practicable in regard to … enlargement of terrorists and political convicts or of state prisoners, who can in your judgment without undue risk be released now … I would too prefer if possible to aid the enlargement of prisoners convicted of violent crime and, if practicable to secure some undertaking of good behaviour.100 The Government of India then issued orders to governors that, when releasing political prisoners, there must be ‘at least, an appearance of individual examination’ but that in any oral discussions with ministers, ‘Governors might take the line that they are very ready to expedite examination of individual cases with a view to early release.’101 The Viceroy attempted to play down the significance of this retreat by suggesting that the policy would, ‘strengthen’ the hand of Fazlul Huq, the Premier in Bengal, because ‘he and not Gandhi … will have had the credit’ for the release of the political prisoners in the province.102 In truth it was a complete reversal of the position which had been articulated the previous August. Linlithgow was forced to conclude that ‘peace and good order’ required cooperation with the Congress Party above all others, especially when the alternative was a return to civil disobedience and communal violence. The concession worked, and Pant and Sinha withdrew their resignations. Pant’s resignation had demanded the immediate release of all political prisoners, but the joint statement he and the Governor, Sir Harry Haig, issued upon the former’s return to office stressed that the cases of prisoners about to be released had been ‘individually examined’, making it appear as if the imperial power had won the battle. This may have even suited Congressmen, who, increasingly, were more concerned with running a government than with resisting one.

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In Bengal, the face-saving gesture took the form of negotiations between Gandhi and Khwaja Nizamuddin, the Home Member in the KPP-Muslim League ministry in Bengal. Nizamuddin offered to release some prisoners and review the cases of others, and in exchange he proposed that, ‘the matter shall cease to be a political issue’. Should they accept the proposition, Gandhi, Subhas Bose (President-elect of Congress) and Sarat Bose (leader of the Congress opposition in the Bengal Assembly) were to ‘actively discourage’ agitation for releases, receptions of released prisoners and press statements attacking Government policy, and, in particular, to ‘take every step possible to create and maintain public opinion against hunger striking and … publicly condemn such a course if adopted’.103 In other words, the ‘deal’ amounted to eliminating the symbolic importance of the political prisoner. To Gandhi, the only way to abolish the symbolic importance of the political prisoner was to ensure that none existed. Under the scheme proposed, only around one-third of political prisoners would be eligible for unconditional release. The remaining 260, who had been held for offences involving ‘murder and serious violence’, would have to wait to have their cases reviewed by an advisory committee of members from the Bengal Legislative Assembly.104 For this reason, he broke off the dialogue with Nizamuddin, declaring, ‘It would be a breach of promise on my part if I submitted without demur to anything less than almost immediate unconditional discharge.’105 The Bengal ministry therefore adopted their original proposals without Gandhi’s agreement. In July 1938, the Governor of Bengal approved the gradual release of the roughly three hundred detenus still in Government custody.106 The advisory committee began to consider cases, and by the following July had released 146 out of 242 convicts.107 Unsurprisingly, periodic hunger strikes continued to plague the government in Bengal.

Conclusion The crisis and its resolution reveal much about the changes in Indian power relations at the national level. Because the public statements issued by Congressmen after the emergency had contained assurances that prisoners had only been released after their cases had been reviewed, the British did emerge from the crisis in relatively good form. Thus, at first glance, the episode looks like an exception to the general trend by which the British and the Congress were moving closer together. In reality, it strengthened ties between the right of the Congress Party and the British. Linlithgow explained that the crisis revealed a change in the Congress attitude to governors and to the new constitution. He wrote to the Secretary of State that, ‘despite the acerbity of their criticisms of provincial autonomy, seven months experience of it has left them in no doubt that the wise course is to remain in office.’108 For this reward, the British exchanged their traditional supporters in Bengal and Punjab. Thus, while Congress may have been ‘becoming the Raj’ during this period, the British, too, were coming to realise that their power was increasingly tied to

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the Congress party, long before independence was on the cards. Looking at the picture at the national level, however, can obscure complexities below. It is clear that the actions of officers on the ground were characterised by a high degree of both improvisation and violence. State practice was not predetermined by an abstract will to discipline prisoners, but was highly contingent both on the choices of individual officers, and on the political circumstances of the day. Although Gandhi and the Congress had won this battle, the victory was not unambiguous. Congressmen were profoundly ambivalent about these revolutionaries: many disapproved of their methods, and even feared their influence on the public. Moreover, the party was quick to learn that the political prisoner, as the embodiment of the Indian nation suffering at the hands of a cruel oppressor, posed problems for governments regardless of whether the government was British or Indian. Political prisoners were capable of disrupting ordinary jail life, obstructing the criminal procedure, and challenging the political status quo. The next chapter discusses the cumulative impact which the increasing fame of the political prisoner had upon penal practices in India during the Second World War. It charts, inter alia, the reluctance of the authorities to use prison to punish non-violent political offenders, and their corresponding disinclination to employ the ordinary criminal procedure against violent political offenders.

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The Second World War and India’s coercive network, 1939–46

The previous chapter explored the important but ambiguous place of the political prisoner in the nationalist movement and the first part of this chapter continues that analysis through a discussion of the next nationalist agitation, the individual satyagraha. It was not until this campaign in the early 1940s that governments in India realised that the significance of the political prisoner was essentially dramatic. When this dawned upon them, officials were able to defeat the individual satyagraha by refusing to send satyagrahis to jail. This epiphany was largely down to the ingenuity of local officers. Whilst they creatively exercised restraint during the individual satyagraha, their powers reached new heights during the quit India movement. Local officers were endowed with extensive coercive powers, and promised that their superiors would not second guess their actions. As the state’s full repertoire of coercive measures was once again deployed, its measures were adapted according to the lessons learned from past campaigns. At the same time, the strategies of Indian political parties evolved, as new political organisations learned to use government repression in their own political choreography. In some ways the colonial state of the Second World War was at the height of its powers. It was able to wage a global conflict whilst fending off serious internal unrest in India. But its field of strength, i.e. the ability to call upon overwhelming coercive measures outside of the ordinary law, was precisely the arena in which its subjects were able to deploy the politics of representation to challenge the imperial power with most success.

Introduction On 3 September 1939, two days after Hitler’s army invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. On the same day, the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared war on India’s behalf, and thereby sparked a constitutional crisis in India. As in previous crises, the Congress party was divided about how to respond, but they agreed that the Viceroy’s request that India stand with Britain on the side of freedom and democracy ignored India’s position as a colonised nation. The Congress Working Committee asked Britain to declare its war aims, and, in particular, to state whether these included, ‘the

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elimination of imperialism and the treatment of India as a free nation’. A free India, the Working Committee promised, would gladly cooperate in the defence of the Allies.1 The British failed to offer a suitably novel response to this proposal. They simply reiterated that, whilst dominion status would be granted to India eventually, there was no room for immediate constitutional change. Their official position was that, ‘communal bitterness … at present stands chiefly in the way of constitutional advance’.2 The Congress Working Committee dismissed this explanation and Congress ministries resigned on 10 November 1939. While declaring that ministerial resignations were the first step in a move towards civil disobedience, the Working Committee at the same time exhorted their membership, ‘to show restraint of word and deed’, and cautioned them against taking ‘any hasty action in the shape of civil disobedience, political strikes and the like’.3 They declared that they would spare no effort to reach an agreement with the British. For the majority of Congressmen, this stance was a necessary outcome of their desire to remain open to the possibility of making a settlement with the imperial power.4 They wished to startle their opponents in to a compromise, not to scare them away from the bargaining table. Negotiations continued throughout 1940. Linlithgow repeatedly offered to expand his Executive Council to include more Indians whilst Congress repeatedly demanded full independence after the war, and insisted that interim arrangements be drawn up which adhered to this spirit ‘to the utmost extent possible’.5 As negotiations failed to yield any acceptable compromise, the Congress inclined towards a return to civil disobedience. Once again they left the planning of the movement to Gandhi, who quickly designed his campaign of individual satyagraha to begin in October 1940.6

Individual satyagraha: performance and punishment With the war raging in Europe and intensifying in Asia, Gandhi sought to maintain a tight hold on the reins of both the constructive and confrontational elements of this campaign. In this pursuit, satyagrahis courted imprisonment in order to evoke the metaphor of the jail as a site of British oppression. At the same time, they also sought to elevate the political prisoner as an exemplar of the ideal citizen of the Indian nation. Gandhi therefore insisted that each participant be a paragon of discipline. Because of its restrained nature, the individual satyagraha has been seen as something of an interregnum in the struggle for independence. After the cooperative bustle of the ministry period, but before the confrontational chaos of quit India, this civil resistance movement has been regarded as a holding operation.7 In this section, it is argued that the individual satyagraha was not an interregnum. It was a failure. The campaign did not fail because the state successfully disciplined satyagrahis through punishment, but because members of the administration had finally come to grasp the importance of punishment as political theatre. Indians in non-Congress provincial governments finally understood the symbolic

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importance of the political prisoner, and responded ingeniously to Gandhi’s offensive by refusing to imprison his volunteers. The campaign, therefore, marked the final transition in the punishment of non-violent political offenders as the punishment of satyagrahis evolved into a site of political affect. While the campaign was an imperfect middle ground for Congress as a whole, it represented the apotheosis of Gandhian ahimsa.8 In contrast to the civil disobedience movement, where local Congress committees designed and fought their own campaigns, Gandhi personally planned and oversaw the entirety of this movement; he determined its start date, participants and conduct. For Gandhi, the crucial issue was how to avoid violence during the campaign: he worried not only about the failure of Congressmen to observe non-violence, but also about Congress volunteers and Muslim Leaguers coming to blows. Because he feared Hindu-Muslim violence, Gandhi reduced civil disobedience ‘to the lowest term consistent with national self-respect.’9 For this reason, Gandhi insisted that the movement maintain absolute obedience to him.10 In order to minimise the scope of the agitation, Gandhi chose to fight on the issue of freedom of speech. Like every one of his campaigns, the individual satyagraha began with an ultimatum: he demanded that the British grant Indians the freedom to speak against the war for pacifist reasons. When this demand was not met, individuals began to court imprisonment by shouting anti-war slogans. The campaign was conducted in four stages. In the first stage, beginning in October 1940, only Vinoba Bhave and others who were loyal to Gandhi offered satyagraha.11 Next, members of the Congress Working Committee, the AICC, and Provincial Congress Committees were authorised to court imprisonment. From January 1941, individuals who had been approved by Provincial Congress Committees were permitted to join, and finally ordinary four-anna (1/16th of a rupee) members of Congress were allowed to participate. The aim was to suffer for the nation by courting arrest and imprisonment.12 As they had done during the campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s, the Congress again employed the prison as a metaphor for the tyranny of British rule. At the same time, and with equal passion, Gandhi sought to use the prison as a symbol of the ability of the self-disciplined nationalist to prevail over British oppression by embodying the spirit of the new nation. To this end, Gandhi sought to ensure that only the most disciplined and committed Congress members participated. He insisted that volunteers ‘earn the right’ to offer satyagraha by regularly spinning on the charka.13 As the campaign entered its later stages, Gandhi widened the eligibility for offering satyagraha, and harijans (untouchables) were permitted to participate in civil disobedience for the first time.14 Simultaneously, he ratcheted up the criteria for acceptance: satyagrahis had to have worked on the constructive programme in villages,15 and they had to prove that they were able to spin fifty yards per day.16 Left-leaning nationalists were ambivalent at best about the individual satyagraha. In January, Congress Socialist Party (CSP) leader Jayaprakash

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Narayan publicly condemned the campaign on several occasions. The President of the UP’s Provincial Congress Committee, Acharya Narendra Deva, excused prominent CSP members from participation.17 Though he wanted to start a mass movement to see the Holwell Monument in Calcutta dismantled, Subhas Chandra Bose wrote to Gandhi to volunteer – with express reservations – to offer satyagraha.18 Bose wrote to Gandhi that, ‘despite its restricted scope and form’ he and his followers would like to participate.19 Gandhi rejected Bose’s application. Shortly thereafter Bose disappeared from India, and surreptitiously made his way to Germany. The individual satyagraha struck a near equal balance between the constructive and confrontational elements of the nationalist programme. Because of the desire not to alienate the British, and not to antagonise the Muslim League, Gandhi’s penultimate satyagraha epitomised his desire to both mobilise and discipline the Indian nation by retaining tight control over all the elements of the nationalist coalition. It perfected the technique of using the prison as a theatre for political posturing and a symbol around which to unite in the struggle for independence. Reaction and overreaction in the British response As a compromise that would bring Congress back into office eluded it, the Government of India frantically drew up an uncompromising plan to counter Congress’ new campaign. Although the War Cabinet in London did not object to the plans made in Delhi, they greeted this campaign with more equanimity, and the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, was ordered to reserve his repressive operations for a more appropriate occasion. Linlithgow was convinced that the only way to avoid discouraging the imperial power’s ‘would-be supporters’, was to take bold and uncompromising action against the Congress.20 He argued that the launch of civil disobedience in wartime ought to be countered ‘with utmost decision and speed’. He entreated the imperial power to omit ‘no possible step’ in its programme to retain control. To this end, he suggested that, on the very day the decision to begin civil resistance was announced, police should seize Congress’ headquarters, impound the organisation’s monies, and arrest the leadership. Newspapers which promoted agitation were to be gagged. Local officers were to make ‘further and more stringent use’ of orders for confinement without trial. In order to prepare the police, Linlithgow suggested that provincial and local governments draw up a list of people and places to be targeted.21 London found the extent of these arrangements, ‘something of a shock’, and feared that the Viceroy had ‘allowed the militancy of his Home Department to outrun what is tolerable in the way of “repressive action”.’22 The new Secretary of State, Leo Amery, feared that if such measures were used against small-scale individual civil disobedience, then ‘public opinion at home and abroad’ would be alienated.23 Clearly, the European aspect of the war was germane to this decision. To begin with, pre-emptive detentions in Britain

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had not been well received. Moreover, during April and May the Low Countries had fallen, and on 18 June 1940 France had surrendered to Germany. London did not wish to exacerbate its problems by provoking those Indians who, if not entirely loyal, were at least willing to stay quiet during the war. That the US had not entered the war at this point was probably a factor in the more indulgent treatment accorded to prominent Congressmen because the Americans tended to be sympathetic to Indian nationalists. This time, the moderation of the government in London prevailed. When, in the midst of the Battle of Britain, it appeared certain that Gandhi would launch a campaign of civil resistance, the War Cabinet instructed Linlithgow that he could only act to prohibit anti-war meetings and speeches. Linlithgow had asked permission to act without reference back to London, but Amery insisted that power to declare Congress an illegal organisation and to take the action suggested by the Home Department could be exercised only after approval had been obtained from London.24 He urged restraint because he was convinced that the British could not rule out the possibility of Congress returning to power in the provinces ‘in a better frame of mind’ after the individual satyagraha finished.25 Churchill agreed. He cautioned that to make membership of the Congress party a criminal offence would give rise to ‘an infinity of trouble’.26 Churchill did not spend the entire war looking for an opportunity to crush the Congress, as some scholars have argued.27 On the contrary, the discussions which preceded the individual satyagraha demonstrated the extent to which the British, including Churchill, were coming to accept that the Congress party would remain an inextricable part of India’s political future. The British matched the discipline of the Congress programme, measure for measure. Just as Gandhi personally selected satyagrahis, the arrests of Nehru, Azad and Patel were authorised at the Government of India level, and, in the case of Nehru, referred to London for approval.28 In order to leave room for Congress to re-enter the political scene, the Government of India kept its servants at all levels on a short leash. Performance and non-imprisonment Ostensibly, the satyagraha went to plan. By June 1941, over twenty thousand arrests had been made. Large-scale violence had been avoided, in part because Gandhi suspended satyagraha where communal tensions broke out.29 Yet the movement was not a success for two reasons. To begin with, government officials refused to collude with the Congress programme. Acting on their own initiative, local officers and provincial governments recognised the symbolic importance of imprisonment, and found that they could easily combat this type of small-scale, non-violent protest with their own form of passive resistance: they refused to imprison satyagrahis. When these ad hoc measures were adopted on an all-India scale, they contributed towards the defeat of the movement. Second, when volunteers were sent to jail, their

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purpose was to suffer for the nation, but satyagrahis in this campaign did not suffer difficult conditions in jail; their performance was overshadowed by that of the violent and left-wing political prisoners who did. It had taken over two decades, but by the time of the individual satyagraha, many local government officers had grown wise. They had realised that the imprisonment of political protesters tended to inflame rather than to dampen any mass movement. Thus, when the individual satyagraha was launched, many local officers, and some provincial governments, declined to play into the hands of the Congress. For example, in Chittoor, Mr W.O. Newsam, District and Sessions Judge, took the opportunity to spoil the agitation by fining volunteers instead of imprisoning them, saying, ‘offenders against the law cannot be permitted to choose the form of punishment which they prefer’.30 When a crowd gathered at the other end of the country in Gudur, Madras, in early February 1941 to watch Narasa Reddi offer satyagraha, Mr R. Galletti, the local Magistrate, took the podium himself. Galletti requested the people of India to listen to both sides of the argument about the war, and suggested that Indians who professed non-violence should follow the example of the Quakers in Britain and offer the allies non-violent assistance. Finally, he announced that he would not arrest Mr Reddi for shouting anti-war slogans. The satyagrahi was upstaged.31 A particularly effective tactic for dealing with these protesters evolved out of the disdain shown to the prodigal satyagrahi, Sardar Sampurnan Singh, leader of the Congress party in the Punjab, where they were in opposition to Sikander Hyat Khan’s government. Sampurnan Singh was arrested for offering satyagraha in early December 1940, but at his trial, he informed the Magistrate that he had only shouted anti-war slogans out of a sense of duty to the Congress. The Magistrate, D.C. Henderson, declared, ‘I find that Sardar Sampurnan Singh’s position in the satyagraha is ridiculous’ and sentenced him to imprisonment ‘till the rising of the court’.32 He also fined Sampurnan Singh one anna, which Henderson paid out of his own pocket.33 The story made headlines and proved a great embarrassment to Gandhi and the Congress.34 In NWFP, the provincial government refused to arrest Badshah Khan and the Red Shirts.35 In Calcutta, satyagrahis were left to shout slogans without being arrested. Bombay began similar experiments in the spring of 1941.36 Linlithgow was delighted at these novel developments. He proclaimed the treatment of Sampurnan Singh a ‘great success’, and suggested the government might ‘keep an open mind’ about the best way to handle the movement.37 By the end of the year, the centre was advising provinces to either ‘ignore satyagrahis entirely’ or exploit short terms of imprisonment or small fines ‘in suitable cases’.38 Gandhian civil disobedience captured the moral high ground by relying on official intemperance. Administrators in the colonial state made the serendipitous discovery that they did not have to jail everyone who peaceably courted imprisonment. Indeed, because the movement was so disciplined itself, it could not be defeated by employing penal discipline. Because satyagrahis used

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the prison as a stage on which to play out their political programme their movement could be thwarted only if the state recognised the essentially theatrical nature of the agitation, and took on a new role for itself. The other martyrs Those volunteers who did manage to get themselves into jail emerged after their sentences as somewhat lacklustre martyrs because they did not suffer the notorious conditions endured by communist, socialist and terrorist inmates. Throughout the fourteen months of the campaign, the grievances of convicts in Bengal and detenus in Deoli and Agra detention camps outclassed those of satyagrahis. The contrast between the privileges granted to satyagrahis and the hardships reputedly heaped upon other political prisoners proved to be quite damaging to Gandhi’s campaign. Most provinces took care to provide special treatment to satyagrahis, who were allocated to ‘A’ class in jail. This meant that they were given the most generous privileges in comparison to both ‘ordinary’ criminals and violent political offenders. The top echelons of the Congress received the most deferential treatment. Asaf Ali wrote to his wife that Nehru had his own bed, table, chairs, and a ‘scheme of blue curtains’ in his living quarters. Even though Nehru was in prison, Ali wrote, his room looked, ‘awfully like a private little bungalow’.39 This letter may not have reached a large audience, but the Secretary of State ensured Parliament was aware of the relative comfort in which Nehru was imprisoned: he is allowed books, his own quarters, the company of others, frequent letters, personal interviews and a great many compensations which deprive him of little except the liberty to go about repeating the speeches he has recently made.40 Ordinary satyagrahis also enjoyed better conditions inside. It was reported that Hazaribagh jail ‘had been made a paradise’ for rank and file satyagrahi convicts.41 When Sarojini Naidu was released in December 1940 before the completion of her sentence, she confessed that she would have ‘happily undergone a prolonged term of imprisonment’, because the diet and enforced seclusion of jail life would have benefited her failing health.42 By contrast, detenus repeatedly went on hunger strike in protest against the conditions in which they were being held. These detenus included communists, pro-Axis Forward Bloc activists, and members of the CSP, whom the government had detained without trial because they supposedly threatened the war effort. In Bengal, detenus in Alipore jail undertook repeated hunger strikes between December 1940 and November 1941. They were joined by political prisoners in the Presidency Jail, and the Hijli Special Jail. The hunger strikers in Deoli deplored the fact that they were held in a remote location, which they believed was malarial, and where it was difficult for inmates to take

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advantage of the interviews they were allowed under the regulations for State Prisoners. They complained that their families suffered because they were not given subsistence allowances by government,43 and that their own food, clothing, medical and recreational facilities were inadequate. Finally, they disliked the fact that they were not allowed to freely associate with other detenus.44 The Congress attitude to these prisoners was ambivalent. During the 1938 hunger strikes, the Congress had confronted the British by calling for and securing the release of political prisoners. But when Congressmen courted imprisonment to challenge imperial power, they could hardly continue to argue that all political prisoners should be released. There is scant evidence that Gandhi, who had spent the previous two years working to free political prisoners, took any interest in the early stages of the hunger strikes of 1940.45 As 1941 wore on, however, and the individual satyagraha seemed to be failing, Gandhi changed tack, and began to try to merge the cause of the satyagrahis with that of the detenus in order to keep his own movement alive. Thus, when governments were contemplating the release of satyagrahis, Gandhi argued that both non-violent and violent prisoners should be kept in jail because, ‘there would be great resentment if distinction is made between satyagrahis and those who are detained without trial’.46 So, we arrive at the rather absurd position in which Gandhi, who had spent previous years campaigning for the release of violent political prisoners to the detriment of Congress governments, came to insist that they should be kept in jail because it was convenient to conflate their predicament with that of his satyagrahis. When his own, most perfectly non-violent movement was breathing its last, Gandhi tried to use those political prisoners who espoused violence to revive his beleaguered campaign. His use of these men would seem to be out of step with his own non-violent creed, but it was consistent with his past actions: Gandhi was willing to employ strategically the nationalist movement’s more violent elements in a non-violent way, in order to win the upper hand against the British. This time it did not work. By the autumn of 1941, whatever enthusiasm for the campaign that had existed amongst Congressmen at its inception had petered out. Even Gandhi’s most loyal followers were anxious for Congress to return to more engaging political activities.47 One intelligence report suggested that a group of political prisoners in Naini Central Jail, UP, where Congress President Abdul Kalam Azad was housed, had petitioned Gandhi to end the failed satyagraha.48 In September 1941, together with Bhulabhai Desai and Rajagopalachari, Satyamurti entreated Gandhi to re-start the parliamentary programme. From the British perspective, there were a number of reasons to discharge satyagrahis in late 1941. First, Linlithgow’s proposals to expand his Executive Council had been implemented, and the new Council had begun to meet in October of that year. The Council surprised the Viceroy with its unanimous sentiment in favour of release, and Linlithgow put aside his reservations in order to bolster the authority of his new council.49 Second, the Secretary of State felt that the release of satyagrahis could at best split the Congress and

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embarrass Gandhi, or at least offer Gandhi a way out of the campaign while saving whatever face he could. And so they were freed.50 Meanwhile, ‘revolutionaries, violent anti-war propagandists [and] communists’ remained in jail.51 The individual satyagraha was not an interregnum, it was a campaign of civil resistance in its own right. It was not ‘permitted to die out’ after having ‘run its natural course’.52 It failed. This is because the campaign witnessed the final evolution of the punishment of non-violent protesters from disciplining to political posturing. When governments in India finally realised the dramatic importance of imprisonment, they suddenly acquired a new tool: non-imprisonment. The major debate over Gandhian civil resistance has been over whether it could succeed against a brutal, authoritarian state.53 The defeat of the individual satyagraha raises the question, can a perfectly non-violent movement succeed against an utterly phlegmatic state? The answer in 1941 was in the negative. The failure of the individual satyagraha has led historians to suggest that Gandhi turned to violence afterward. The contention here is that, on the contrary, although the Congress, and Gandhi in particular, were obsessed with discipline, when pressed for viable options, they found use for the miscreants in their midst, qua miscreants. Gandhi never ‘turned’ to violence, but he occasionally found non-violent ways in which to use those who had.

The quit India movement and the weakness of overwhelming force In the hope of reaching a political agreement on the future of India, and on the Indian war effort, both sides had held back during the individual satyagraha. After the movement was defeated, the British sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India to negotiate just such a settlement. The Cripps Mission, too, failed in this respect, and by April 1942 Indian politics were again stalemated.54 The Congress party, which had agreed reluctantly to Gandhi’s limited satyagraha, was eager to ratchet up the pressure on the British. As spring turned to summer, the Congress drew up plans for another movement – this one called for mass civil disobedience, and it aimed not to bring the British to the negotiating table, but to force them to quit India. In response, Linlithgow retrieved the Home Department’s plans which had been shelved two years earlier. In the conflict which ensued, both sides lost control of their lower ranks. The following pages detail the various tactics employed by the state in India to quell the largest uprising the subcontinent had seen in nearly a century. One important development during the movement was the extensive use of detention without trial for nearly every variety of criminal, from Congressmen to revolutionaries, refugees and members of the Indian National Army. Ordinary imprisonment following a criminal trial and based on disciplinary objectives was eschewed. Building on patterns of policing developed during the civil disobedience movement, the central government devolved penal powers to local officers, and promised to turn a blind eye to abuses of power. Once again, grass roots organisations, this time with the added input of parties organised on communalist principals, took up the task of criticising

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the conduct of the police and military. As these political parties came to the fore, communal politics also encroached upon various penal practices, including the collective fine. In the historiography, it is assumed that Churchill’s intransigence precluded any changes in imperial policy during this period.55 In fact, the mood in British circles was most virulent in early 1943. From mid-1943, and particularly after Wavell replaced Linlithgow as Viceroy, there was a perceptible shift in the British position. Government of India preparations for the quit India movement On 8 August 1942 the All-India Congress Committee approved a resolution which authorised Gandhi to lead a campaign to evict the British from India, and urged its members to ‘karo ya maro’ (do or die). The official reaction to the demand that the British quit India was far less temperate than had been their response to the individual satyagraha for two reasons. First, the fall of Singapore in February and the occupation of Burma in March 1942, had brought Japan to India’s frontiers. After Gandhi suggested that the Congress might make a separate peace with Japan, and evidence surfaced that the mass movement would target infrastructure vital to the war effort,56 the British felt as if the military situation left them no choice but to take strong action.57 Second, the British had affected to offer compromise with the Cripps Mission, and its failure justified those who felt Congress should be ‘crushed’ forever as an organisation. In the face of a large-scale movement, which appeared to have plans to engage in sabotage, Linlithgow and his advisors obtained permission from London to implement the plans which had been drawn up before the launch of the individual satyagraha. The Home Department’s scheme provided for the simultaneous arrest of all members of the Working Committee and Provincial Congress Committees as soon as the quit India resolution was passed by the AICC. In this way, the Viceroy hoped to prevent any mass movement from launching. If this goal were to be achieved, the leaders would not only have to be arrested, but would have to be denied all contact with the outside world. Even if enough evidence existed to put the leadership on trial, this would be undesirable because a trial ‘would eventually create world-wide interest and might well stir popular feeling in this country to a dangerous pitch’.58 Therefore, for the duration of the war, the Working Committee was detained without trial in Ahmednagar Fort. Gandhi and a handful of his close associates were held separately, in the Aga Khan’s Palace in Poona. Provincial authorities detained provincial leaders. The Secretary of State and the Viceroy could only hope that internment on such a large scale, and for such a long time would not make the Congressmen into ‘national heroes when they emerge at the end of the war.’59 They would have to wait three years to know if this plan worked. It was immediately apparent, however, that they had failed to avert a mass movement by detaining the Congress leadership. The arrest of Congressmen prompted violent uprisings on a scale which India had not witnessed for ninety years.

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The quit India uprising and the police and military response A multi-faceted and extensive conflict took place between the military and police forces and those who rose against them. The nature of the state’s response to the quit India movement was shaped by the fact that repressive powers were delegated to local officers who had little supervision. Having been ‘unleashed’ in this way, local officers appear to have acted with excessive force. In spite of a deluge of accusations that this was the case, central and provincial governments repeatedly declined to open enquiries into alleged excesses. When the authorities failed to investigate the abuses of the police and military, non-official bodies, including the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha, took the initiative. With most prominent Congressmen in detention a new leadership took the reins of the quit India movement.60 The Congress Socialist Party led the uprising in many parts of the country. Peasants were active, as were communists, and in a few isolated cases, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteers took part.61 The first phase of the movement included public meetings and distribution of leaflets, as well as strikes and picketing in the major cities of north India. In Bihar, the police were attacked in the early stages of the campaign, and, as August wore on, there were violent assaults on railways, telegraphs, thanas (district police stations) and jails throughout North India. By the end of September 1942, the Law Member, Sir Sultan Ahmed, reported to the Legislative Assembly that the rising had witnessed 250 railway stations destroyed, 550 post offices attacked with fifty completely burnt, and two hundred seriously damaged, 3,500 instances of wire-cutting, 80 government buildings plus 70 police stations and outposts attacked. Thirty-one policemen and eleven members of the military had been killed. In some instances, these murders were particularly brutal: in the Central Provinces, Bengal and Bihar several policemen and District Officers were burnt to death.62 The police and military had to rely on every tool in their repertoire to extinguish what Linlithgow characterised as, ‘by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857’.63 Powers provided under the Defence of India Rules to detain people without trial, to impose collective fines, and to use force to compel a crowd to disperse were bestowed upon local level officers. In the face of a large uprising, which disrupted communications in many areas, the delegation of authority was unavoidable. Before the movement had begun, provincial governments had asked that police, military and local officers be given a carte blanche to put down the uprising. Sir Andrew Clow, the Governor of Assam, told the Viceroy that ‘if the police could feel that they had complete insurance against any subsequent victimization … their morale would be considerably higher’.64 In Bombay, Lumley was of the opinion that, police morale would remain high, ‘so long as they are supported and not let down by enquiries for political reasons’.65 Offering precisely the assurances which they had asked for, the Viceroy promised governors that ‘there are to be no enquiries’ into the action taken to

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repress the uprising.66 Military officers received similar protection. Whilst they were instructed that, the force employed against crowds ought to be ‘justifiable and not indiscriminate’, they were also assured that, ‘provided they maintain that such force was the minimum required to restore the particular situation they need have no fear that they will not receive full support for their actions.’67 In other words, military forces were coached to justify their actions using the language of ‘necessity’, in order to fend off accusations of excess. These promises were based on official axioms developed after the Hunter Committee and the information war of the civil disobedience movement: to keep morale high, avoid enquiries at all cost. Some members of the services seem to have used their powers and the protection promised to them without reserve. Government forces fired on crowds hundreds of times. Sir Sultan Ahmed told the Legislative Assembly that the police and military had fired 239 times outside of Bihar and Assam, where the worst disturbances had occurred.68 In Delhi alone, on 11 and 12 August, the police opened fire twenty times, while the military fired on twenty-seven occasions.69 The government was unable to provide exact numbers, but they estimated that the police and military had killed between 650 and two thousand members of the public.70 In Bihar, the military famously resorted to bombing from the air to overcome the rising. Allegations immediately emerged that the police and military had acted with unnecessary cruelty in putting down the movement. Complaints came from every province which took part in the movement, and from sources as diverse as Civil Liberties Unions, schoolmasters, and company executives.71 In the Legislative Assembly, K.C. Neogy, an MLA from Dacca, sketched the broad outlines of these allegations. He accused the police and military of ‘general pillage and arson and wanton damage to property’ in UP and Bihar. He charged that the police and military in Delhi and Calcutta, when unable to apprehend the real culprits of the violence, had shot at residents in neighbourhoods not affected by the movement, or in areas where the rioters had already left, ‘just for the purpose of creating an impression’. According to Neogy, the police were guilty of using excessive force to disperse crowds, and of shooting at them without warning. Finally, he charged the police with ‘merciless assaults, particularly whipping, insults and indignities on all and sundry on the same principles that actuate the collective fine.’72 Whilst the government of India avoided admitting excesses, there are hints that this schematic picture could be substantiated with material from around the country. One officer, Lawrence Walter Russell, proudly recalled the strong action he had taken after a crowd, by his estimation, had threatened violence in Kodaram. He and his officers had captured 28 out of around four hundred men, and had brought them to the police station. At the thana a ‘large and threatening crowd’ had gathered. Russell recollected that he had feared that ‘without strong action of some kind’ the police would either be overwhelmed by the crowd, or would have had to resort to firing. To avoid this, Russell summarily inflicted ten lashes with a dog whip on each of the 28 men. Russell

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assessed his own actions: ‘Illegal without a doubt. Cruel? Perhaps. But there was no further trouble throughout the district.’ He was awarded the Indian Police Medal.73 Governments showed slightly more anxiety, but no more remorse, in a case involving a death in police custody in Bihar. On this occasion, Mounted Military Police arrested four Congress volunteers for ‘distributing subversive leaflets’, and shouting revolutionary slogans. Shortly after the police ‘investigation’ into where the volunteers had obtained the literature, one of the prisoners collapsed and died. By his own admission, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Mr T.M. Ainsworth, had ordered the accused to be beaten ‘on the buttocks with thin sticks’, during the investigation. A post mortem examination, however, showed the deceased to have bruising not only on his buttocks, but on his ‘back and sides’, as well as three fractured ribs and two broken fingers. Ainsworth conceded he had gone ‘beyond the bounds of propriety in beating the demonstrators in order to obtain information’.74 Although it was impossible to prove a case for murder or manslaughter, the Government of Bihar’s legal advisors counselled that, if Ainsworth were prosecuted under s.303 of the Indian Penal Code for ‘voluntary causing hurt for the purpose of extorting information’, the case would ‘almost certainly end in conviction’.75 But the Governor of Bihar, Sir Thomas Stewart, was loath to launch a case against the young officer, writing to the Viceroy expressing his anxieties, ‘I grant he has been foolish, criminally foolish perhaps; but he has had a very difficult row to hoe’. The Governor did not wish to see Ainsworth singled out for, Stewart admitted, ‘he was by no means the only officer in Bihar or elsewhere who employed extra-legal methods during the trouble’.76 More to the point, he warned, a prosecution against Ainsworth would have ‘a disastrous effect on morale’ not only in the police, but across government.77 To avoid this, Stewart simply held a secret internal enquiry after which he formally censured Ainsworth. Fearing that the Deputy Superintendent would ‘be a marked man’ whenever Congress might come back into the provincial ministry, the Governor also ensured that Ainsworth was transferred to NWFP.78 It is clear that Stewart had a sense that the will to sustain high morale in the police had to be balanced against the government’s responsibility to punish police excesses. But Ainsworth’s case reveals just how far the balance could be weighed in favour of the former in what were regarded as exceptional circumstances. As they had in the past, non-official enquiry committees weighed in on the other side. They helped paint a grisly picture of the crimes of those in revolt and of the brutal revenge which the police and military exacted upon villages where such offences had been committed. In three villages in CP, for example, police and government property were the targets of violent attacks in the days after 8 August. In Ramtak, a group of around five hundred, said to be composed of ‘Hindus and Muslims with an admixture of coolies’, burnt a railway station and a train before besieging the jail, freeing its prisoners, and then moved on to burn the post office and loot the treasury. In Ashti, five

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policemen were killed when their thana was set alight.79 Finally, crowds in Chimur, composed of both Congress and RSS volunteers, destroyed a post office and, and killed one Circle Inspector and two constables, as well as two Magistrates.80 The military was summoned. At least three different non-official committees enquired into what happened at Chimur after the arrival of the military on 19 August. These deputations included one of Congressmen, one from the Women’s Association of Nagpur, and one from the Hindu Mahasabha. The Women’s Association claimed that after the military entered Chimur, they arrested the men, ‘took complete possession of all the houses, looted everything they could lay their hands on and outraged women to their heart’s content’.81 One woman from the Congress delegation which visited Chimur, Dr Wazalwar, coaxed several women out of silence, and even examined some. She recorded the testimonies of eleven women who said they had been raped or molested.82 The Hindu Mahasabha leader, B.S. Moonje, counted thirteen rape victims.83 As ever, these enquiries could be used to serve the interests of those who instituted them. By this time, however, new players had mounted the stage. In 1941, the Hindu Mahasabha had taken on the task of documenting cases of abuse against Hindus, ‘particularly under Muslim administration and Muslim states’.84 In Chimur, the Hindu Mahasabha’s account was careful to point out whenever participants or government actors were Muslim. These non-officials called for an impartial official enquiry to be made into their accusations, but the Government of CP refused. When the military and civilian officers who had been present in Chimur were asked to report, they belittled the allegations and maligned those who made them. K.N. Subramanian, Deputy Commissioner of Chanda, dismissed the claims of rape by saying, ‘Of the women who complained of rape, only one came from a respectable family’.85 Rather than inquiring further into the claims, the authorities made the counter accusation that that, ‘there are strong reasons for supposing that the allegations have been put out in order to divert attention from the heinous crimes committed at Chimur’.86 The Government of CP announced it would not hold an enquiry not only because the allegations were ‘largely untrustworthy’, but because to do so would ‘invite vilification of the Police and Military’.87 The Government of India supported this decision.88 When central and provincial governments delegated extensive repressive powers to local-level authorities, including the police and military, they also resolved to turn a blind eye to the means by which these services carried out their orders. In the corridors of government, many were convinced that to criticise the police or military would be counter-productive. Governments eschewed disciplining their own forces in order to avoid provoking discontent in them. As a result, amongst the many narratives of violence during the quit India movement, the government voice is the quietest. The Government of India responded to criticism of the military with accounts of the activities of Congress; the inference was that violent uprisings justified a violent military response. Beyond this insinuation, however, the government made little

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attempt to justify the actions of its forces. When the government refused to discipline its forces, the task of criticism was appropriated by public groups, who then asserted their authority for their own ends. As governments neglected their duties, other punishments, including the collective fine, were also appropriated by segments of the population. Official extension and non-official appropriation in the use of collective fines Collective fines formed an integral part of the government’s response to the crisis. Precise figures are not available for every province, but, at the end of November 1942, the Government of Bihar estimated that collective fines in the province amounted to twenty-three lakh; in Madras they totalled nine lakh; Bombay only recorded three lakh; but in Ballia district of UP alone, ten lakh worth of fines were levied.89 The idea of collective responsibility had not waned since the Punjab disturbances. In the face of an uprising as large and violent as the quit India movement, the police and military were still unable to single out suspects for prosecution. Thus, the collective fine continued to act as an alternative means of seeking justice. Given the extent to which it was employed, it is no surprise that this measure came to be used in a number of new ways during the suppression of the movement. The power to impose collective fines, which existed in the Police Acts of various provinces, was turned into a wartime power by Ordinance XX of 1942. In the autumn and winter of 1942, this ordinance was amended several times. The combined effect of the collective fines ordinances was to extend the power of local officers to impose fines and collect revenue without the constraints provided under the Police Acts. First, the ordinances allowed provincial governments to devolve power to impose fines to any local officer.90 In Bihar and Assam, at least, local officers did not always act with prudence.91 Bihar’s Governor reported to the centre how the delegation of these powers had landed them in a quandary: the District Magistrate in Darbhanga had imposed four lakh worth of fines on villages there. The Provincial Government felt that the fines were too severe in light of the ‘economic capacity’ of the villagers. Notwithstanding this appraisal, the provincial authorities did not want to ‘let down’ the District Magistrate, and so they confirmed the fines, even though they knew the villagers could not afford to bear the burden. At the same time, they instructed the District Magistrate to inform villagers that fines would be remitted for ‘those villages which gave prompt and tangible evidence of co-operating with the authorities in the restoration and maintenance of law and order and in apprehension of principal offenders.’ In total Rs93,000 was remitted.92 Delegating powers to local officers was always a risk. During a crisis the higher echelons of government felt impelled to avoid undermining local officers by correcting their excesses. This often meant that unduly harsh penalties remained in place in spite of the silent reservations of those in government. The ordinances also permitted provincial governments to draw up their own procedures for the collection of revenue after a fine had been awarded.93

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This amendment came at the request of the Bombay government, which had had trouble collecting fines in Bardoli. There, the villagers refused to pay collective fines, and the government had to resort to confiscating property in order to recover the funds. However, the procedure for distraining movable property in the Criminal Procedure Code provided that fifteen days’ notice be given before property could be confiscated. When the notice was posted in Bardoli, ‘the people removed their cash and other valuables to the adjoining State territory. We were left only with pots and pans and bedding, and these are impossible to sell.’94 With the new ordinance, provincial governments could avoid the restrictions of the ordinary criminal procedure. In this way, a penal shortcut became even shorter. As collective fines proliferated this punishment also became embroiled in communal politics. Muslim politicians in some provinces asked that Muslims be granted blanket exemptions from fines.95 Provision had always been made for specific ‘classes’ in any area to be excluded from liability for a fine. Notwithstanding this precedent, this request was unique because it was made at the provincial and national level. It therefore asked the government to recognise that all Muslims acted in concert. And, the petitioners asserted, they did not participate in the quit India uprising. Muslims were not the only ones to use the fines in this way. When he reported on events in Ramtak, Ashti and Chimur, the Hindu Mahasabha’s B.S. Moonje noted that certain Muslims in the area had been exempted from collective fines. He accused the British of being partial to Muslim interests, and demanded that, ‘if the Moslems of the Muslim League are to be exempted, why should not then the Hindus of the Hindu Mahasabha be given the same concession?’96 Whilst the government of UP declined to accede to the Muslims’ appeal, and the CP government refused Moonje’s request, the simple fact that this type of demand was made exemplified the ways in which collective fines, like other parts of the criminal justice machinery, were being drawn upon by partisans in communal conflicts. Perhaps the most extensive changes to the collective fine came in Bihar. There, the provincial government passed the Bihar Village Collective Responsibility Act of 1943. By this Act, District Magistrates were empowered to order villagers to form patrols with the aim of ‘protecting communications and government property’ in the area.97 The patrols, in turn, were authorised to make arrests, and to use force to do so. If the patrol failed to prevent an act of sabotage, the village could be fined up to one thousand rupees. The Act was remarkable for a number of reasons. First, it further delegated powers to make arrests to ordinary members of the public who, needless to say, had no police training. As the villagers were not paid for their efforts, the system amounted to begar or forced unpaid labour.98 Where villagers were not available to make such patrols, colliery owners and workers were handed the responsibility.99 This was a significant extension of the concept of collective responsibility as villagers were no longer simply obliged to pay for crimes committed in their village but also were burdened with the responsibility for crime prevention.

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The new practices also expanded the idea of the collective, from the village or neighbourhood to the workplace. As industrialisation spread collective responsibility migrated from spaces of inhabitation to places of work. Whilst governments found new uses for collective fines, so did the population. Whereas this sanction had been a site of contest between the government and members of the population during the Punjab disturbances, by the 1940s, members of the public were seeking to appropriate this punishment for their own ends. As antagonism between members of religious communities spread in the subcontinent, the collective fine was drawn into the fray. Thus, the collective fine came to serve many masters, of which the government was but one. Far from losing relevance as the century wore on, the idea of collective punishment gained ground, especially as governments found ways to extend collective responsibility and political groups discovered that they too could manipulate this sanction. The rise and fall of detention without trial Between 1942 and 1945 government officers in India resorted to detention without trial on a scale hitherto unknown in the subcontinent. According to the plan drawn up in Delhi, central, provincial and local governments detained pre-identified Congressmen at the start of the movement. In addition, the Defence of India rules empowered provincial governments to detain indefinitely persons who threatened the war effort. In turn, many provincial governments chose to delegate this power to local officers, who, unsurprisingly, used it with zeal. Because the British placed extraordinary reliance on imprisonment during this phase of the war, this section argues that transformations in the British attitude to India can be identified by scrutinising prison policy. In the historiography, it is assumed that Churchill’s intransigence precluded any changes in imperial policy during this period.100 In fact, the mood in British circles was most virulent in early 1943. But from mid-1943, and particularly after Wavell replaced Linlithgow as Viceroy, there was a perceptible shift in the British position. As the power to order detention without trial under the Defence of India Rules had been delegated to deputy commissioners or district magistrates in many provinces, the use of this punishment expanded to unprecedented levels. Where power was delegated in this way detentions were more numerous, e.g. in Bombay, the provincial authorities had a pre-prepared list of 738 people to be taken into custody, but had detained around 3200, ‘many of little importance’ without prosecuting them.101 Amery told Parliament that between 9 August and 1 December 1942, there had been 60,229 arrests.102 At the end of 1943, the tally was at 91,836.103 Apart from the high-ranking Congressmen who had been pre-emptively detained on the morning of 9 August, those in jails included more than ten thousand who were awaiting trial or serving sentences.104 Pro-Axis Forward Bloc members, people with enemy contacts, revolutionary terrorists and even goondas and tribesmen were all detained

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without trial during the war.105 The profligate use of detention orders exacerbated conditions in jails, and contributed to the perception that government action was brutal and excessive. Just as they had spent their previous jail terms, Congressmen continued to use the jail compound as a site for the construction of the Indian nation. As in the past, there were two aspects of this: education and exercise for selfdiscipline, and the celebration of national holidays in order to tie this self to a larger community which was free, at least in spirit. Members of the Congress Working Committee, The Hindustan Times reported, worked up to twelve hours a day, ‘studying harder than college students’, and ‘after a strenuous day’s reading, never failed to ply the spinning wheel’.106 Acharya Narendra Deva translated French classics, and began to write a book about Buddhism.107 Nehru gardened.108 By adhering to such a strict regimen, Congressmen were using the prison for self-improvement and as a symbol of national reform. They celebrated nationalist holidays such as Independence Day even whilst imprisoned, for group activities were a vital part of nationalist identity formation in jails. Just as they did outside, they hoisted flags, sang songs and took a pledge every 26 January to mark independence day.109 Although the highest echelons of the Congress Party lived in relative comfort in jails during the war, the unprecedented numbers of detainees meant that most inmates lived in particularly dire conditions. There were innumerable accounts of poor health, intolerant superintendents, and abusive authorities.110 When detained Congressmen attempted to celebrate independence day, in 1943 and 1944, there were reports of lathi charges in Bihar’s jails.111 The Government of India refused to take cognisance of this type of allegation on the grounds that jails were a provincial matter.112 Privately, however, excesses were excused. In conditions of high stress and over-crowdedness, wrote the Governor of Bombay, abuse had to be expected: the police are not only faced with an enormous increase in the number of crimes to investigate, coupled with increased difficulty in obtaining evidence, but they are also in the position of being themselves the targets of popular agitation and even violence. In such circumstances it would be a miracle if prisoners were on all occasions handled as gently as the law and the rules prescribe.113 As prison conditions were used as a metaphor for the tyranny of British rule, the metaphor was strengthened immeasurably by coercive action during the second half of the war. After the largest internment in Indian history, policy shifted somewhat when the military took a more prominent role in policy-making in 1943. The high point of government intransigence was reached when Linlithgow determined to let Gandhi starve himself to death whilst on hunger strike in the Aga Khan’s palace in February 1943.114 British losses in Burma and Malaya in 1942–43 included not only casualties, but mass defections to the Indian National Army.

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When the military took a more active role in the government of India, they promulgated policies that were intended to engender support from Indians.115 When Lord Wavell replaced Linlithgow as Viceroy, he also brought to Delhi a more conciliatory stance towards the Congress party. So long as Churchill refused to bend, nothing could be done to release those who were being held under direct orders from London. The majority of those in jail, however, were imprisoned by deputy commissioners and district magistrates, to whom the power to detain had been delegated in many provinces. The Government of India recognised that ‘the powers to detain without trial have been used against a wider circle’ than had been intended. Without wishing to censure provincial governments, the Home Department requested them to review the cases of those in detention.116 By the time the authorities in Delhi contemplated this move, provincial authorities had already undertaken similar initiatives. In the Punjab, 111 persons who posed ‘no undue risk’ had been released.117 Bengal released ‘the great majority’ of those who had taken part in the quit India movement in February 1943.118 The Government of Orissa felt that its jails were overcrowded with persons who ‘played a very minor part in the disturbances’ and instructed its district magistrates that if such bit players expressed genuine regret for their activities, they could be released.119 Bihar released a number of political convicts including those who were very young or very old or in poor health; those who had apologised or had furnished security; and those who had been convicted in cases of a ‘trivial nature’, or when the sentencing court had made an ‘obvious’ mistake.120 District Magistrates in Bombay and Commissioners in UP were reluctant to release those they had detained, but they eventually did so under pressure from their provincial governments.121 Thus, whilst most of the Congress leadership remained behind bars, the Home Department and provincial governors succeeded in circumventing the British Prime Minister by releasing many Congress workers. The shift marked a change in the attitude of the colonial government: they realised that whilst the exceptional circumstances of the war may have been used to justify the extraordinary use of detention, they could not keep India’s political leaders behind bars forever, nor could they keep Indian constitutional negotiations in cold storage much longer. Thus, as the threat from Japan receded towards the end of 1944, Wavell urged London to take some initiative to release prisoners and strike a constitutional deal before the war ended. The result was the Simla Conference, held in June–July 1945. Even though no settlement was reached, the government liberated most members of the CWC and the AICC after the Simla negotiations were pronounced dead in July 1945. As soon as they were released, the Congress leadership began to press Wavell to release all detenus unconditionally.122 This demand got a surprisingly sympathetic hearing from Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the new Secretary of State for India. He anticipated that the Congress Party would win elections in the same provinces it had won in 1937, and pursue the same policies it had

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enacted in 1937, especially in respect to the release of political prisoners. With this in mind, Pethick-Lawrence persuaded a reluctant Wavell to spoil Congress’ plans and release prisoners before Congressmen took office.123 Thus, the number of political prisoners fell from a peak of 23,000 in March 1943, to around three thousand at the beginning of February 1946. In May 1946 the last remaining 63 detenus (58 from Bengal) were released.124 As the detenus from the war began to leave jails, a new type of prisoner was arriving from the battlefields of Europe and Asia. As Allied forces regained control of territories in Europe and Asia which had fallen to the Axis, civilian Indians present in these territories were often repatriated to India and held in detention there.125 As the British regained control of Singapore, Burma and Malaya, they encountered a much bigger problem: the Indian National Army (INA).126 These erstwhile members of the British forces had fought against the British in the war after they had been captured by the Japanese. Subhas Chandra Bose had led this contingent which included at least twenty thousand INA members, and another twenty-three thousand civilian sympathisers. After their capture by Allied forces, thousands were kept in detention with the expectation that they would be put on trial after the war had ended. The Government of India and the War Staff in London felt that there were good reasons for imprisoning these men and women as long as possible. To begin with, there were reports that the INA were claiming that their ‘march to Delhi’ was not over. If the Government did not at least detain these men, it was feared they would combine with other anti-imperialist movements ‘for subversive purposes’ once they returned to India.127 Above all, it was believed that to prosecute these turncoats would bolster the morale of loyal members of the police and the army.128 Given the turmoil of the quit India movement, the release of many political prisoners from jails, and the de-mobilisation of large segments of the population, the loyalty of police and military men had to be shored up as much as possible. In spite of these considerations, the authorities quickly relinquished the idea of putting on trial each and every person who opposed them in the war. Simple logistics were a major consideration in this policy: up to forty-three thousand persons would have to be put before tribunals, but the Secretary of State wanted court cases to be completed within a year. There were simply not enough qualified officers to complete the job in time.129 Moreover, the Home Department rightly feared that ‘those convicted would become ‘heroes’ giving them ‘fictitious importance’.130 Indeed, there were indications that many in India did hold the INA in high regard. Newspapers quickly turned to glorifying the men and women as ‘national heroes who made great sacrifices for the sake of India’s freedom’.131 Congressmen adopted the army’s slogans as their own: during the 1945 election campaigns Nehru was reported to have shouted ‘Dilli chalo!’ (march to Delhi!).132 Considering all of these factors, Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, was persuaded that the government should only prosecute INA men suspected of

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the worst offences, and they should do so only when conviction was virtually guaranteed.133 In the end the total number of trials did not exceed twenty.134 The trials were all either completed or dropped by May 1946.135 And by early 1947, there were barely a dozen INA men still in custody.136 The use of detention without trial on such a large scale had been inevitably short-sighted. Only the exceptional circumstances of the Second World War could justify such unparalleled use of imprisonment. Although the mass imprisonment of the war did temporarily ease the immediate pressure for political change, it ultimately served to magnify the significance of the political prisoner as a symbol of imperial oppression. The great number of longterm detentions then created an equally great impetus for release. As a result, by the end of the war, governments were unable to detain even the most dangerous persons in jails.

Conclusion: continuities and change, 1919–47 India experienced three distinct periods during the six years of the Second World War. In the first, both the British and the Congress sought to retain the possibility of compromise by keeping a tight rein on their followers. Thus, the individual satyagraha was a muted agitation. Although this strategy kept the way clear for further negotiation, it failed to produce a compromise. After the disappointment of the Cripps mission, both sides threw off their reserve. The British devolved repressive power to local officers. The nationalist movement, with senior Congressmen in jail, fell into the hands of various locallevel organisations, from peasants to armed revolutionaries. Whilst the quit India uprising was eventually quelled, it was clear that the government’s repressive strategy could not be sustained long after the end of the war. In the immediate aftermath of the global conflict, the British were forced to release nearly every detenu and political prisoner in their jails. The sheer variety of the war period enables us to examine continuity and change in the practices of punishment and state violence between 1919 and 1947. The first transformation was in the punishment of satyagrahis. Somewhat belatedly, the government had come to realise the essentially dramatic nature of the imprisonment of non-violent protesters from the respectable classes. Whether they were not imprisoned, or simply detained without trial, the punishment of satyagrahis was always part of a larger political choreography which had little to do with any effort to discipline the population. While the government had realised the paradox inherent in the punishment of satyagrahis, it had become equally convinced of the perils of disciplining its own forces. Whereas, in 1919, the superior levels of government had surveyed the actions of local officers and sought to discipline some (however moderately), by 1942, members of the higher echelons of government were unwilling to undertake this task because they feared that to do so would undermine the morale of the state’s forces. When the state refused to exercise its monopoly to determine the legitimacy of the use of force, Indian political organisations

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took up this task for their own ends. These non-official groups also had come to demand a larger role in the allocation of collective fines, thereby appropriating for their own uses yet another of the government’s penal tactics. The next chapter highlights the ways in which the unsettled conditions of partition opened up yet more opportunities for non-official, sectarian parties to turn the institutions and practices of the coercive network into sites of communal contestation. Thus, the experience of the war demonstrated just how weak the imperial power was in India: it was able to counter non-violent protest, but only by not acting; the use of excessive force by undisciplined officers remained the modus operandi of the government when called upon to subdue large scale unrest. Colonial administrators had not developed any strategy that struck a balance between these two extremes. This was because the bureaucracy, police and military had not developed the discipline necessary to defeat a mass movement with finesse. The following chapter examines the implications which this had for the transitional state as it tried to cope with the violence of partition, and the final chapter explores the ways in which the early postcolonial state coped with its inheritance.

8

Partition and the transitional state in India, 1947–48

Having documented the manifold difficulties which the colonial state ran up against when confronting large-scale unrest, this chapter examines the ways in which the shortcomings of the coercive network shaped the transitional state’s response to the violence of partition in Punjab and Delhi. Although the scholarship on the partition of the subcontinent is expanding, most historians have assumed that the state’s coercive network either had little impact on the violence, or did not have an existence separate from the warring parties. The first half of this chapter investigates the problems which the coercive network encountered during this long period of unrest. Most of the difficulties faced were not new: swamped by waves of crime, the police, courts and prisons failed to stem the violence; members of the public and of political parties accused government servants of communal bias in the execution of their duties. Although the coercive network appeared to have virtually seized up during the summer of 1947, it was in fact being remoulded in crucial ways. The second half of the chapter examines the efforts made on the ground to use the police and military whilst taking into account the allegations made against them. In this process, police and military men became, like the ordinary population, marked as ‘Muslims’ and ‘non-Muslims’, not just as they were recruited, but also as they were deployed. It was believed that the coercive forces’ everyday duties ought to be reconfigured in accordance with the communal affiliation of the men serving in them. This did not result in a completely new understanding of the role of the services. Rather, two distinct and competing conceptions of the role of the coercive forces emerged during partition. The two visions were not debated at the policy level, but were left to compete with one another on the level of everyday operations.

Introduction In the spring of 1947, it was clear that the British would leave India, but the subcontinent’s political future remained unsettled. With its military overstretched by obligations arising out of the Second World War and the emergence of the Cold War, and its economy facing a ‘financial Dunkirk’, Britain could no longer afford to stay in the subcontinent, especially if its presence

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had to be guaranteed by force. The previous year, the Cabinet Mission had secured the agreement of the Congress and the League to the broad outlines of a scheme for a united, independent India, but shortly after the accord was struck both sides had repudiated the deal. Notwithstanding the CongressLeague stalemate, the political programme designed to bring India to independence was implemented. From the autumn of 1946, an interim central government was established, with Nehru as Prime Minister, Patel as Home Member, and Baldev Singh as Defence Member. In February 1947, the Constituent Assembly was due to begin drafting the constitution. The Muslim League, though nominally participating in the interim government, had refused to sit in the Constituent Assembly. In the provinces, elections had been held in 1946, and provincial ministries took office under the 1935 Act. With rising uncertainty about the future of the subcontinent and violence in eastern India, private military organisations blossomed after the war. These groups included the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Muslim League National Guards (MLNG), the Khaksars, the Akal Sena and the two Congress aligned bodies, the Rashtra Seva Dal and the Azad Hind Volunteer Corps. Their members trained in military drill and the use of lathis, swords, daggers and even hand grenades. As such, they were viewed not only as a threat to the peace, but also as an overt challenge to the authority of government. Worried about the rise of these bodies, Punjab’s Unionist Premier, Khizar Hayat Khan banned the RSS and MLNG in late January 1947.1 In response, the Muslim League launched a ‘non-violent, disciplined’ agitation against the provincial government, which continued even after the ban was lifted.2 Shortly after the British announced on 20 February 1947 that they intended to leave India, Khizar’s government resigned, citing their unwillingness to move against the League’s demonstrators in the changed circumstances.3 Punjab’s Governor, Sir Evan Jenkins, summoned the League leader, the Nawab of Mamdot, to form a ministry. Unhappy with this development, provincial Congress and Sikh leaders addressed a large public meeting on 3 March at which the leader of the Sikh party, the Shiromani Akali Dal, Master Tara Singh, told the crowd, ‘Our motherland is calling for blood and we shall satiate the thirst of our mother with blood’.4 The next morning, student demonstrators clashed with police and rioting began in Lahore. Two days later Jenkins reported that Amritsar ‘was completely out of control’, as arson attacks scorched the city.5 Violence lasted nearly three weeks. It was worst in rural areas, especially around Rawalpindi, where the Deputy Commissioner reported that ‘there may be 5,000 casualties including killed, injured and missing’.6 There were only a few weeks of what Jenkins termed ‘classic’ rioting, but bloodshed continued into the summer in the form of sporadic stabbings on side streets and covert arson attacks. Events in Punjab were watched closely in Delhi. Political and administrative life in the capital was connected to that in the Punjab not only by geographical proximity, but by the fact that many of Delhi’s servicemen were

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recruited from Punjab. The capital’s Chief Commissioner, William Christie, reported that the disturbances in Punjab, ‘gravely agitated people of all classes and communities, and communal feelings in Delhi … have again deteriorated seriously’.7 Even though Delhi’s Muslim League was split and neither faction took a direct part in the Punjab civil disobedience campaign, the more general tensions from Punjab spread to Delhi.8 Thus, three weeks after mass fighting began in Lahore, Delhi witnessed violence after a small group of Sikhs and Muslims came to blows on Pakistan Day, 23 March. In the capital, encounters began with sporadic attacks on individuals or small groups. After a brief lull, the summer of 1947 then witnessed what the Governor of Punjab described as a ‘communal war of succession’ characterised by highly organised attacks in parts of Punjab.9 As refugees flooded into Delhi, the capital was again the scene of violence in September 1947. This brief sketch is not intended to stand as a conclusive account of events. Given that so many individuals and organisations participated with such divergent objectives, such a narrative would obscure more than it illuminates. Instead, the following research begins to chart several of the intricate, intertwined narratives which give a sense of the state’s role in partition. Studies of partition have expanded enormously in the past decade. Historians have begun to bridge the longstanding divide between accounts of the high political negotiations over the future of the subcontinent10 and personal histories of the experience of partition on the ground.11 The lower levels of the state, including its programmes for the rehabilitation of refugees and its attempts to control the movement of people have proven to be valuable in closing this gap.12 However, most studies tend to ignore the coercive network altogether. Indeed, there is a widespread consensus that authority in British India completely broke down, and that the coercive forces of the state disintegrated, at least in riot-torn Punjab.13 The key to this assumption is the idea that the state’s forces were partisan in the conflict and therefore simply part of the larger story of the unrest. Summarising this view, Brass argues that ‘what authority did exist often acted to make matters worse’.14 Even historians who have examined the role of ex-army men or the forces of the princely states during the violence see these groups as taking part in the general communal conflagration.15 No work has examined the ways in which the governments of the time attempted to use the forces they had to hand even as the actions of their servants raised allegations of bias. The current chapter begins to close this gap by examining the everyday functioning of the coercive network in Punjab and Delhi between March 1947 and March 1948. In this study, it becomes instantly apparent that the state cannot be discounted from the story of partition. First, from its inception, the violence had a more anti-authority character than has previously been acknowledged. From the first incident in March, police and military were directly engaged in these disturbances. According to one Hindi-language press report, the first day of unrest in Punjab was marked by physical aggression between police and protesters: according to Vartman, during the student protest which

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sparked unrest in Lahore, ‘police lathi charged to disperse them and students answered with bricks and stones’. Police then opened fire, injuring ‘about twenty’ students.16 This clash between police and Hindu and Sikh students was transformed into a ‘communal’ riot as antagonism mounted towards the police in Punjab for firing on the students. First in Lahore, then in Multan and elsewhere around Punjab, Hindu and Sikh merchants closed shop ‘in opposition to the firing by police on Hindu and Sikh students’.17 State forces certainly had a role in constituting the violence from the beginning, but they did not blend seamlessly into the population. To be sure, certain parts of the state ceased to function in the normal way. Courts and prisons, once again, ground to a halt. In addition, the men on the ground were accused of partisanship, which, in turn, had an impact not only on their effectiveness, but on the central government’s willingness to deploy them. Rather than crumbling, however, the state’s coercive forces were reconfigured to respond to these crises. As the working practices of the police and military were being reconsidered, two competing conceptions of the state begin to emerge. In one view, Muslims were excluded as far as possible from work in the services. In the second view, Muslims were to remain in India’s services, but the police and military were to be deployed in ways which circumvented the allegations of bias. In the frenetic activity which defined the months surrounding partition, there was little real debate over these different visions of the state. As a result, the competition between these conceptions of the Indian state manifested itself in the localities.

The services and the routine response to unrest In the months before August 1947, the services encountered three main problems. First, their numbers were simply inadequate to the task at hand. Magistrates found their cases piled up as their duty to attend meetings and processions in order to be able to issue orders to fire, took them away from their judicial work. Many police and military troops were deployed for days on end without relief and became exhausted. Many others deserted, were effectively dismissed, or were transferred in the weeks surrounding 15 August. In order to try to overcome these shortcomings the government recruited more staff and gave its forces ‘extraordinary’ powers, but the positive impact of these measures was negligible. Second, state forces were accused of widespread bias. Finally, because of these allegations, the central government became unwilling to strike against the private armies which had formed for the ‘self-defence’ of religious communities. The police, army and magistracy were unable to cope with disorders on this scale for two reasons. First, as has been shown in previous chapters, the institutions of the ordinary criminal justice system simply did not have the facilities to manage during periods of unrest. Even before large-scale violence had begun, Christie reported that the shortage of jail accommodation in Delhi and, ‘the extremely heavy pending files of Magistrates’ which had built

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up were ‘causing much anxiety’.18 Second, after the violence had begun, it was agreed that these disturbances were unlike ‘ordinary’ communal riots. In the past, communal unrest had usually been connected to religious festivals which had a fixed duration, and it tended to be connected to local power struggles and therefore restricted to a relatively narrow area.19 Governments could, therefore, rely on violence being contained, not by the police and military, but by spatial and temporal limitations. This was no longer the case, partly because the unrest was spurred by the uncertainty of national politics, and partly because the violence spread with the refugees it displaced. Given that little had changed in the structures of the coercive network, it is unsurprising that the initial response to unrest was as unoriginal as it was ineffective. Large-scale arrests formed the first line of defence. In Delhi, a ‘systematic round up of Goondas’ was made in early April.20 By early May, six weeks after the start of the violence, 1343 people had been arrested and detained under various sections of the penal code.21 However, Christie had little hope that many of these would be convicted. He lamented, ‘it is very likely that eventually their cases will end in acquittal for want of legal evidence which will perhaps not be forthcoming due to the non-cooperation of the local people’.22 Similarly, Jenkins fretted that ‘the investigation of offences and their trial will be an enormous problem’.23 Even if they were convicted, there was no room to imprison them. Indeed, both Punjab and Delhi were compelled to arrange for amnesties simply to free up jail space.24 The shortage of men on the ground affected more than the running of ordinary trials. Collective fines were deemed impractical because sufficient manpower was not available to enforce their collection. Punitive police could not be imposed for the same reason.25 To bolster the services in the face of these difficulties, the governments of Punjab and Delhi invested themselves with ‘extraordinary’ powers. In Punjab, Jenkins enacted three pieces of legislation on 19 and 20 March, the Punjab Public Safety Act and the Punjab Disturbed Areas Act, and the Punjab Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance. The first gave wide powers to local officers to detain persons without trial for up to one month, to exclude a person from a given area, to close schools, adjust the membership of their governing bodies, or withhold grants from them. It also provided extended periods of imprisonment for those whose speeches or writings caused ‘fear or alarm to the public’, for those who participated in ‘quasi-military organisations’, or in mock funerals, and for anyone who attempted to persuade a public servant ‘to disregard or fail in his duties’. Incorporating the lessons of the Lahore Conspiracy Case, the Act also provided that it would countenance no delay to procedures if the defendant rendered himself unfit to attend.26 The Punjab Disturbed Areas Act permitted ‘any police officer not below the rank of Assistant Sub-Inspector’ to order his police to fire ‘or otherwise use force’, even without warning, and ‘even to the causing of death’ upon ‘any person’ found acting in contravention of orders prohibiting the carrying of weapons or the assembly of five or more persons

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in disturbed areas.27 The final act gave similar powers to troops acting in aid of the civil power. All three pieces of legislation attempted to oust the jurisdiction of the courts, and protect government servants from prosecution. Similar measures were passed across the country.28 In addition, most provincial governments endeavoured to recruit new members to the services. Many Government services had been left severely understaffed after neglect during the war.29 In the spring and summer of 1947 Punjab tried to recruit as many as 55 new magistrates,30 and 6000 new police.31 Delhi, too, recruited special police constables in September 1947.32 Finally, the colonial government and its successors all agreed to confront the violence with greater military force. Indians were at the forefront of initiatives demanding that more force be used. The Sikh leader Giani Kartar Singh insisted that ‘to drop bombs on the riot areas is the only means of stopping this kind of language, bloodshed, loot and arson’.33 Master Tara Singh, the Defence Member, Sardar Baldev Singh, and Giani Kartar Singh called on Mountbatten to impose martial law in Punjab.34 Nehru and Patel told Jenkins that the only way to stop the unrest was to ‘hand over to the Military Commanders’.35 Neither Jenkins, Mountbatten, nor Lieutenant-General Messervy, the GOCin-C of the Northern Division, were willing to countenance the idea of martial law, however. Many in the high ranks of the military believed the army had been invested with sufficient legal powers, but the real problem was that ‘trained and efficient’ officers were simply ‘not available’.36 Instead, the principle of the minimum use of force was again re-construed. As early as March, troops had been ‘told to interpret the principle of “minimum force” in a sensible way’.37 In mid-June Messervy wrote to his officers to inform them that, whilst the law on the minimum use of force had not changed, ‘I wish to impress on all that the official attitude to the interpretation of the law is now definitely less rigid’. The new reading provided for the more ready use of firing without warning against those caught looting or committing arson.38 These orders appear to have been taken to heart. Major General Thomas Wynford Rees, the officer in charge of the Punjab Boundary Force, an organisation of mixed composition designed to be neutral in the conflict, admitted in August that the use of force by his troops had been ‘in fact out of all proportion to what would have been considered suitable ten years ago’.39 In these measures, we see the accumulated habits of governance of the past three decades. When the government was presented with an extraordinary challenge, the police and military were invested with greater legal powers to cope with the crisis. In the extraordinary legislation the lessons had been learnt from the targeting of educational institutions during the civil disobedience movement, and from the hunger strikes of the Lahore Conspiracy Case; the provisions of the Goonda acts had been incorporated as well. Police and military forces were informally urged to use greater force. Whilst in the special legislation the risk of questioning government servants who did use force

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was minimised, it is clear that the extraordinary powers which the colonial state took for itself in its final days were little more than a reiteration of a combination of past measures. Although these standard responses had had some measure of success in the past, this time the routine use of collective punishments and indiscriminate state violence served to worsen the situation. This is because these solutions combined uneasily with the second problem encountered by the services: that they were accused of bias. From all sides, nearly every action was criticised by everyone from the leaders of major political parties to ordinary victims of both the violence and of the state’s response to it. Once again, political parties and the press transposed individual acts into universal narratives. In this process, single instances of partisanship were translated into evidence of the universal bias of the police. The interplay of these allegations with the special powers given to police, troops and magistracy was an important aspect of the state’s role in the violence. Allegations flew from all sides that the police, military and magistracy were biased. In Delhi, one Sikh Assistant Sub-Inspector was found to have said ‘openly’ that Sikh police officers in Delhi had plans for ‘retaliating’ for the actions of Muslim police officers in Punjab who were said to have ‘shown communal feelings’ during the spring unrest.40 In another case, the leader of the Muslim League in Punjab, Mamdot, gathered a list of all non-Muslim magistrates and senior policemen in the province who, he believed, were working against Muslim interests. He accused the District Commissioner of Hoshiarpur of issuing ‘a very large number of gun-licences to non-Muslims’ in April and May. Of 130 licences issued, he alleged, only about eight had been given to Muslims. In Kangra District, the District Officer, the Superintendent of Police, the Additional District Magistrate and the Senior Sub-Judge were, in Mamdot’s words, ‘all non-Muslims and … all prejudiced’. They were, he said, ‘openly helping’ the RSS ‘with men and materials’.41 Although Jenkins and Christie tended to dismiss these allegations in their meetings with politicians, Jenkins admitted that there had ‘no doubt been cases … of apathy and indiscipline’ amongst forces in Lahore and Amritsar.42 These specific cases were then woven into a general discourse about the partiality of the services. Delhi’s Muslim League protested that, ‘the police have raided and are carrying out intensive searches in Muslim Mohallas, and have arrested a number of Muslims’, including the Sirdar of the Muslim League National Guards, while ‘Hindus and Sikhs who were responsible for starting the trouble’ had not been subjected to similar treatment.43 A deputation of Sikh leaders complained to Christie of ‘indiscriminate arrests of leading Sikhs … including some of the office bearers of the various Sikh organisations in Delhi’, but that ‘similar action has not been taken against any Muslim leaders.’44 Identical accusations were made in Punjab. Nehru claimed that reports which he had received indicated an ‘extreme partiality on the part of the police.’45 Newspapers contributed to the generalisation of particular allegations. In one case, the Hindi daily Vartman ran the headline, ‘Punjab’s police also sharing in Pakistani dream’. Below the large front-page

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print one can read a report in which Master Tara Singh accused the Punjab police of being ‘divided in the communal wrestling ring’. In support of his argument Tara Singh cited one specific instance of police shouting ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ in Rawalpindi.46 Several days later, the same paper ran a story under the title ‘Police excess – non-Muslims distressed’. The paper had got hold of a copy of a letter from the Sikh relief committee to the DIG Police complaining of an incident in Sultanabad in which a thanedar ‘searched men … insulted women and took property from houses’. In light of this case, and ‘from the large scale arrests of non-Muslims’, the paper concluded, ‘it is clearly revealed that Punjab Police are misusing [their] powers’.47 Jenkins confided in the Viceroy that he believed that some Indian members of the services were ‘trying to please new masters’. These representations of state violence – whether true or not – contributed to the sense that the colonial administration was, in Jenkins’ words, ‘rapidly falling to pieces’ in the summer of 1947.48 In turn, the charges which had been levelled against the police shaped the ways in which the Home Department in Delhi prepared for further unrest. Even as murders and physical assaults declined in April, it was clear to most colonial officials that all sides were preparing for a second offensive. In May and June incendiary attacks and bombings rose.49 During the summer, Gurgaon district witnessed raids and counter-raids between the population of Muslim Meos and the Hindu and Sikh population of nearby Bharatpur.50 As the summer wore on, parties often composed of ex-military men accompanied by villagers attacked rural areas. In the summer of 1947, as old power structures shifted uncertainly,51 there was large-scale preparation for what Jenkins called the coming ‘communal war of succession’.52 After the first round of violence, membership of the volunteer organisations expanded substantially. In the early round of unrest in the spring, the volunteer organisations, especially the RSS, were quieter than had been anticipated.53 But the expectation of further unrest seemed to provide a fillip to the membership of these organisations. By the end of April 1947, the intelligence bureau noted with alarm that the volunteer organisations, especially the RSS, MLNG and Akal Sena had undergone a ‘rapid expansion’ in the previous months.54 The RSS was estimated to have 188,571 members, with 50,400 of these in Punjab alone, and another 3650 in Delhi. Similarly, the MLNG was reported to have 139,057 members, with 22, 813 in Punjab, and another 2000 in Delhi. The Akal Sena was said to have 8600 members, with 2000 in Delhi alone.55 Simultaneously, ‘members of all communities are very active in applying for licences and collecting arms from wherever they can get them’.56 The numbers had risen so high that the IB ventured to declare that, these organisations were ‘being built up into nothing short of private communal armies’.57 The widespread perception that the police were partisan affected the Home Department’s response to the rise of these organisations. Though prompted to act by the Viceroy58 the Home Department was unwilling to take action

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against volunteer armies. Their argument had a number of aspects. First, in Patel’s Home Department, there was great sympathy for people whom the state had failed to protect. R.N. Banerjee, Secretary to the Home Department, drew up a memo which argued that, after the ‘failure on the part of the State to provide adequate protection against lawlessness of anti-social elements it is no wonder that the instinct of self-preservation has spurred people to take their own measures for self-defence.’ Second, the memo observed, the activities of these groups had not been directed against the state, but rather the primary targets of each group were citizens. Each army, the memo reasoned, acted ‘as a powerful deterrent on aggressive elements on either side’.59 Finally, in the light of the agitation in Punjab at the start of the year, it would be difficult to act against the MLNG. Given the supposed role of these private armies in defending communities and the government’s worries about appearing biased, Patel’s private secretary, V. Shankar concluded that, ‘It is obvious that action must be taken against all or none.’60 He counselled that it would be wisest to await the ‘result of the present political changes’. In other words, he suggested that the Home Department wait for the new state of Pakistan to control the MLNG. ‘Once this issue is settled,’ he suggested, ‘there would be no difficulty in dealing with the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh here.’61 In essence, we can see the transitional state grappling with many of the same issues which the colonial state had faced. It was unable to act against ‘communal’ violence because its actions would be subject to allegations of bias. It was therefore doubly unable to use the police and military to stop this type of large-scale unrest: first it failed to put down unrest, and then it was unwilling to strike against the build up of organisations preparing for further violence. In sum, the state appears to have been immobilised from three directions. Its ordinary mechanisms for combating large-scale unrest were as ineffective as they had been for the previous three decades. Because the violence which constituted partition lasted the duration of the summer, magistrates, courts and prisons were never able to make a dent in the cases before them. Prisons were repeatedly filled and then emptied, with little effect on the unrest. The ‘extraordinary’ powers to detain people en masse, and to fire on collectives without warning which were passed to compensate for this first failure, must have contributed to the widespread belief that the state’s forces were biased. This in turn limited the government’s willingness to deploy force against the private armies because the Home Department was convinced these organisations had a role to play in defence.

Reorganising the state – competing visions Far from disintegrating under these pressures, the services were in fact radically reconceived and re-ordered in the years 1947–48. Allegations of bias could not be investigated and punished when there was danger of a recrudescence, as every last man was needed on the ground.62 If the services were

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no longer neutral, but were still indispensable, then they would have to be modified. And accusations of bias became central to the way in which the tasks of the police and military were re-imagined. Just as the population was, at this critical juncture, imagined in such a way as to define individuals exclusively by their religious affiliation,63 so too were the members of the population employed in the service of the state. In the rush to reorganise the men on the ground, two very different conceptions of the state emerged. The first position was exemplified by the Home Member, Vallabhbhai Patel. It derived from his opinion on the place of Muslims in India. Patel’s views on Muslims fluctuated markedly in the last years of his life.64 In the height of the partition violence, Patel addressed a gathering in Amritsa, saying that ‘bitterness’ between Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs in Punjab ‘has gone too deep to allow any Muslim to remain in the East Punjab and any Hindu or Sikh to live in West Punjab’. ‘I am quite certain’ he continued, ‘that India’s interest lies in getting all of her men and women across the border and sending out all Muslims from East Punjab’.65 To be clear, Patel was no advocate of violence against Muslims: the speech was an appeal for calm. But his appeal was for a peace that would allow the evacuation of Muslims from Western India to occur smoothly. Whereas Gandhi, Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad66 were urging Muslims to stay in India, Patel suggested that those Muslims who were disloyal to India ought to leave, adding that he suspected the majority of disloyalty.67 Even though he did moderate his tone somewhat after the violence subsided, he remained sceptical of the loyalty of Muslims who remained in India.68 It followed that any persons whose loyalty was in doubt could not be trusted with employment in government services. The Home Member claimed that, during his experience in office, he had noticed that ‘the Muslim personnel of the services are thoroughly disloyal to Government’.69 Patel was not alone in holding these opinions. His anxieties were shared with members of parliament like Govind Malaviya70 and some personnel in the lower ranks of government, like Delhi’s Deputy Commissioner, Mohinder Singh Randhawa.71 Soon after Sardar Patel took over the Home Department, he began work on his radical re-conception of the role of the services. Police were, of course, a provincial subject, so there was little he could do in most of British India. Delhi, however, was a Chief Commissioner’s province, which meant that the Government of India had more control over its policing. Thus, shortly after taking up his position as Home Member, Patel’s secretary wrote to Christie expressing concern about the ‘preponderance of European and Muslim elements in the Delhi police’.72 This fact, the letter continued, had ‘given cause for complaint against the local Police, particularly in times of communal trouble when its impartiality has been called into question’. In order to be able to counter this type of criticism, he advised Christie to try ‘to secure a better admixture of communities in the composition of higher officers of the police force’.73 Though Christie worried that a large number of transfers would risk ‘dislocating the police administration’, he agreed to make the

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changes, but to spread them over the following six to eight months.74 Basing his calculations very loosely on the 1941 census figures, the Chief Commissioner estimated that Muslims comprised around 40 per cent of Delhi’s population. Therefore, he concluded, the 23 senior police posts ought to be allocated to 14 Hindus and Sikhs, and 9 Muslims.75 The Chief Commissioner, therefore, asked his Senior Superintendent of Police, W.D. Robinson to produce a list of Muslim police officers at or above the rank of Inspector, indicating ‘which ones might be changed with the least likelihood of interruption of work’.76 Robinson returned a list of seven Muslim officers, but also warned that, ‘there will be serious disruption of work if all the above Muslim officers are transferred before the end of this year.’77 As it happened, the first vacancy to arise was Robinson’s own post, as he was due to retire. Christie therefore sought to replace him with a Hindu or Sikh officer. But Christie, along with Delhi’s Inspector General of Police, worried that there were ‘very few’ Hindu or Sikh officers ‘senior enough for consideration and few of them really suited to the job’.78 Robinson was eventually replaced by D.C. Lal as Senior Superintendent of Police. Four transfers had been carried out by the end of March, but when the disturbances – complete with allegations against the police – hit Delhi, Christie came under pressure to speed up the transition. The Congress party demanded that four senior Muslim police officers be transferred from Delhi, saying the ‘bias of these gentlemen is well known’.79 In mid-April, the Home Department expressed its impatience, writing to Christie that progress had been ‘disappointing’, and suggesting that he recruit Hindu and Sikh officers from UP.80 Both the Chief Commissioner and his new Senior Superintendent of Police strongly opposed such a scheme on the grounds that these new recruits would be unfamiliar with the ‘customs of the large majority of the men’ in the Delhi police, many of whom were from Punjab.81 Notwithstanding these objections, the Home Department proceeded with this proposal, so that, whereas, at the end of May there were nine Anglo-Indians, 13 Muslims, six Hindus and five Sikhs,82 by the end of August, there were seven AngloIndians, seven Muslims, 14 Hindus and six Sikhs in the force.83 A month later there no senior Muslim police officers left in Delhi.84 Although the forces were expanded in the following months, by the end of the year, there were five Anglo-Indians, 31 Hindus, and seven Sikhs, but not a single senior Muslim serving in the Delhi police.85 Patel’s direct influence was not felt everywhere, but this type of change was not unique to Delhi. Similar demands were made in Punjab. For example, Mamdot accused police in Lahore of either failing to prevent members of their own community from committing crimes, or of aiding their community in finding arms and ammunition. Mamdot named two Inspectors, Janak Raj and Mr Dogra, and asked for their ‘immediate transfer’ from Lahore on the grounds that they were helping the Sikhs to collect arms.86 Jenkins balked at the idea, but Mountbatten urged him to transfer some officers. The Viceroy argued that, while some ‘may resent the injustice of the allegations against

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them I expect few of them will be sorry to have a rest.’87 At the same time, as Jenkins recruited another 6000 new police in the spring and summer of 1947, the Sikh leader Giani Kartar Singh urged him to see that ‘non-Muslims were hired’.88 In UP, a general policy of non-recruitment of Muslims prevailed after independence, while Madras passed an order banning new Muslims from joining the police between 1947 and 1952.89 When it came to the men still in the forces, Patel explained, ‘I am trying to have the Muslim element rendered as innocuous as possible’.90 This often meant stripping them of their weapons. Thus, Punjabi Muslims serving in the rural police had been disarmed.91 Later, in Simla, Muslim police were stripped of their weapons.92 This contributed greatly to the depletion of Muslims in the police force, for many of those who were relieved of their weapons simply deserted.93 This attitude towards Muslim police was not unanimously held, however. Under the second, competing set of views Muslims were allowed and even encouraged to stay in India. In many ways this was a reasoned response to exigencies on the ground. The transfer of population agreements between India and Pakistan, concluded in the midst of the partition violence, only provided for the transfer of population in divided Punjab, and the Pakistani government quickly moved to restrict the ability of Muslims to come to Pakistan.94 Nehru, who exemplified this position, thus approached the question of the Muslim population in India from a practical angle. ‘We have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers’, he argued, ‘that they cannot, even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India. That is a basic fact about which there can be no argument.’ As such, the government had a duty to make minority communities feel secure. India had to treat its minorities well, the Prime Minister held, in order to maintain international goodwill, upon which India was dependent.95 According to this line of reasoning, it followed that Muslims ought to be allowed to stay in the services. However, given the widespread allegations of bias, the police and military could not be run as before. Rather, those who adhered to this notion sought to reorganise the services so that Muslims policed Muslims, and Hindus and Sikhs protected and punished non-Muslims. This was consistent with Nehru’s concept of the nation and his brand of secularism. In Nehru’s conception Indians had multiple, layered identities, and were defined by their interconnected differences. He made no attempt to impose uniformity on the whole of India, and forestalled the attempts of others to do so by, for example, installing Hindi as India’s sole national language. Similarly, Nehru did not try to impose a secular point of view on all Indians, but rather, he attempted to prevent the use of religion for political ends. He accomplished this not by staying out of questions of religious identity, but by ‘balancing favours to various religious communities’.96 Given the political capital to be gained from the allegations of bias in the services, this explains the use of Hindu and Sikh servicemen to police Hindus and Sikhs, and the use of Muslims for the local management of the Muslim population in the early months of independent government. Again, this type of opinion

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was not limited to the highest echelons of politics. It was shared by the first Chief Commissioner of independent India’s capital, Sahibzada Khurshid, and by its first Indian Superintendent of Police, D.C. Lal. The contest between the two views manifested itself in battles over the ways in which state forces ought to be deployed in everyday operations. One can see this in the move against the Khaksars in July and August 1947. The Khaksars were a volunteer organisation, with a largely Muslim membership, which had opposed the partition of the subcontinent.97 As their supporters deserted them for the League in the summer of 1947, their former invective against both Congress and League leaders shifted, and they focused their ire on the Congress. In July 1947, as many as eight hundred Khaksars, armed with knives and firearms, took refuge in mosques around Delhi. According to the capital’s new Senior Superintendent of Police, D.C. Lal, the Khaksars had ‘declared that they will resist with their blood any attempt to hoist the Congress flag on the Red Fort on the 15th [of] August’.98 The Government of India, therefore, decided to strike against the Khaksars. As he oversaw planning for the operation, Patel suggested that, should the military be required, Gurkha or ‘non-Muslim troops’ ought to be used against these Muslims.99 This was consistent with the idea that Muslims in the forces could not be trusted, especially when policing their own community. When the operations to oust Khaksars from Delhi Mosques were organised by the Delhi authorities, however, it was the alternative view – that Muslims ought to police Muslims – which prevailed. When the police raided Fatehpuri mosque in the early hours of 25 July, and then again on 9 August, D.C. Lal, reported that ‘barring 4 Gazetted Officers all others who entered the mosque were Muslims’. Further, each member of the raiding team ‘had taken off their shoes outside the mosque’.100 Combined, the raids netted nearly one hundred Khaksars, who were then either imprisoned or externed from Delhi.101 Notwithstanding the fact that the operation had not been conducted in accordance with his wishes, Patel wrote personally to Khurshid to tell the Chief Commissioner how much he appreciated ‘the firmness, zeal and promptness’ with which he had handled the Khaksars.102 Prima facie, these changes appear to have radically altered the form and functions of the Indian state. But on a more abstract level this is just what the colonial state had been doing for the past three decades: it had consistently remoulded its services and rewritten its laws in order to meet extraordinary challenges to law and order. As the Congress took control of the apparatus of government, it too responded to challenges by reordering the state. Given the long-standing tensions within the nationalist movement between those committed to Hindu revivalism, and those with a secular vision of the Indian nation, it is perhaps unsurprising that these competing views should manifest themselves in the state as the Congress party took over the machinery of government.103 Those in government used their authority over police recruitment or over the organisation of specific police and military missions to implement their ideals on the ground. In the confusion of the summer of

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1947, the two models existed side by side. As summer turned to autumn, the struggle between the two manifested itself in a clash over penal tactics in the aftermath of the partition violence. The RSS and the September disturbances in Delhi In August, large-scale violence engulfed Amritsar and then Lahore. As refugees began to move, they became easy targets as they sat on trains or walked slowly across a border that would only be announced on 16 August 1947.104 In an effort to halt the bloodshed, the new governments began organising the transfer of population by foot, by train and by air in late-August.105 In spite of the impediments to movement, an estimated 130,000 refugees had arrived in Delhi by the end of August, 7000 of whom were Muslim.106 The influx of such a large number of impoverished and often traumatised persons into the new nation’s capital worried the authorities. In order to avert the spread of unrest in Delhi, they tried to prevent the refugees from carrying arms and banned the sale of weapons and gunpowder.107 Gandhi’s fast unto death at the end of August encouraged a brief period of quiet, but on 4 September a group of workers attacked refugees in the Subzimandi area of the city, and assaults, looting and arson spread across Karolbagh, Devanagar, Lodhi colony and then Connaught Circus.108 Within a day, 19 people were reported dead, and dozens more injured.109 Some of the activity, especially the looting, was simply opportunistic.110 But at times, there was a distinct anti-authority aspect to this fighting. Near Turkmen Gate, for instance, police and military were engaged in street-to-street fighting, as ‘rioters sat on the roofs of houses and fired on the police and army … [and] soldiers concealed themselves in narrow lanes and returned fire’.111 Calm did not return for nearly a week. Because the transitional state was struggling to cope with the burden of refugees and pre-occupied with the problems of the princely states, it seems unlikely that it would expend its meagre resources punishing the population. In spite of this, in the autumn of 1947, there was a push to punish those who had organised the violence. This drive came from two angles. The first, from the Home Department, was motivated by the desire to find a practical solution to the difficulties which each government was experiencing in finding funding for refugees. The second, from Nehru, was a political push against the ‘well-organised bands’ behind the disturbances, especially the RSS.112 At the end of September, the Government of India was promising both refugees and victims compensation for their suffering, and the most obvious way to realise the necessary funds was through a collective fine. Patel was keen to impose ‘very heavy collective fines … in localities where trouble has occurred in Delhi City.’113 Having received orders from the Home Department, Khurshid ordered his Deputy, Mohinder Singh Randhawa, to assess the damage caused. Delhi’s Chief Commissioner saw the fines as having two objectives: to award ‘reasonable compensation’ to victims, and ‘so that people in whose neighbourhood the heinous crimes of murder, loot and arson have

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been committed may be made to realise that it was their duty to range themselves on the side of the authorities in quelling the disturbances.’ He speculated that fines would have to be imposed ‘in a number of localities both in the City and in some of the rural areas’.114 Randhawa and Khurshid had a tense relationship, which seemed to mirror the larger divisions within the administration, and the Deputy Commissioner was reluctant to do as his superior instructed.115 In Karolbagh, Paharganj and Subzimandi, where the population was a mix of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, Randhawa felt ‘the major communities were more or less equally matched and are equally to be blamed’. In any case, little could be collected from ‘penniless refugees from the West Punjab and the mill hands’ who were ‘most to blame’ for the violence. In predominantly Muslim localities, where Muslims had fired on police and troops, Randhawa insisted that a collective fine would only ‘arouse bitterness among the Muslims, who already feel that they are a persecuted community, and who have already suffered heavy casualties during these riots’.116 Here Randhawa used the same reasoning that was used in the summer with regard to private armies: the government had failed to punish transgressors. Therefore, if in mixed localities all sides were to blame and all had suffered, and, if in Muslim localities Muslims had also suffered, then justice (albeit private justice) had been served. The rural area of Bardawa was the only place where Randhawa was willing to impose a fine. There, according to him, ‘Hindu Jats assisted by some outsiders murdered about some three hundred Muslim villagers’.117 The Deputy Commissioner therefore stamped a Rs7000 fine on Bardawa. Khurshid was unhappy with Randhawa’s decision to avoid fines in the city, and raised the Bardawa fine to Rs50,000. When the Ministry of Home Affairs heard of this, however, Khurshid was rebuked, and ordered to cancel the fine. The Ministry reasoned that because ‘large numbers of Muslims’ had fled either to refugee camps or to Pakistan, any fine imposed would ‘involve the punishment of only two of the three communities which may be said to be generally responsible for the disturbances in Delhi’. If the Muslims assumed to have taken part in the violence were to escape the fine, ‘This will be neither just nor proper’.118 The Home Department did not rule out the use of collective fines in the future, but it resolved not to impose them in the aftermath of the September violence. Here one can see the ways in which an ordinary policy – to compensate refugees – could become embroiled in the tug-of-war between the two different understandings of the state. Officials on the ground used what powers they had to pursue their own competing agendas. And when Patel’s Home Department found that Khurshid’s implementation of its plans did not match its own vision, it reversed its own policy. It seems that Randhawa also managed to nullify attempts to punish members of the RSS for their part in the violence. The RSS was reported to have had a hand in the organised violence which racked Delhi in September. In late September, Nehru wrote to Patel that he had information that the disturbances in Delhi had been caused by ‘well-organised bands’ of Hindus and

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Sikhs, and that ‘the Hindu bands seemed to owe allegiance to the RSS’. The Prime Minister fretted that, even though the police in Delhi had had information against the RSS and Sikh bands before the disturbances began, they had failed to act. Nehru pointed the finger at Randhawa, writing, ‘From his talk it would appear that his sympathies lay in a certain direction, and this perhaps prevented strong action’.119 Nehru wrote to Patel to ask that Randhawa, who had been responsible for the ‘slackness and delay’ in punishing the disturbances, be removed.120 Patel refused to countenance allegations which he deemed ‘unfair’. He cited the Deputy Commissioner’s conduct on several occasions where he had acted against Hindus, and argued that ‘Muslims hold a very good opinion of Randhawa’. Moreover, the Home Member warned, it would be difficult to find a better alternative, as Randhawa would have to be replaced by an officer from Punjab, and, he wrote, ‘I doubt if any one from that cadre in these days would be a more suitable substitute’.121 Randhawa stayed in his post. Khurshid, too, had found Randhawa lacking in initiative. Shortly after Nehru petitioned Patel, Khurshid requested Randhawa to act against the RSS while there was a lull in the fighting. He wrote to his Deputy that it was ‘almost certain that members of the Rashtriya Sewak Sangh [sic] assisted by the lawless elements both amongst the refugees as well as in the city, were responsible for the disturbances.’ Further, they were likely to be ‘preparing for a fresh orgy of loot, murder and arson’. Khurshid requested Randhawa to ‘draw up a plan of attack’, including simultaneous arrests in order to avert a fresh bout of violence.122 Randhawa, however, flatly refused to act. He wrote to Khurshid that, after consultation with senior police officers, he was convinced that ‘there is no likelihood of recrudescence of trouble on a large scale.’123 No such assault was made, therefore, in the autumn. Three months later, the Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse assassinated Mahatma Gandhi on 30 January 1948. Suddenly, the RSS, with whom Godse shared many of his opinions, no longer looked like a defensive body acting where police could not. The Government of India abruptly reversed its summer-time tolerance of them and declared the RSS to be an unlawful organisation. The Congress Working Committee quickly called for ‘all private armies and their associated organisations to be prohibited’.124 Around a week after the ban on the RSS, the government also declared unlawful the Muslim League National Guards and the Khaksars. The declaration was welcomed by the press, which demanded that the government declare all ‘communal organisations unlawful’, especially private armies.125 Although the threat posed by the RSS was undoubtedly taken seriously by government, the police response was distinguished by its routine nature. Randhawa report that, within a matter of days of the assassination, ‘More than 200 active workers and organisers of RSS have been arrested.’126 Around the country similar arrests were made, with 300 detained in Bombay alone.127 In Delhi, between 30 and 138 RSS members were detained without trial under the Punjab Public Safety Act each week throughout March.128 But these

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detentions appear to have been undertaken with as much blindness as those of previous police campaigns. Even Nehru, who suspected the RSS of involvement in Gandhi’s murder, worried that many of those arrested were ‘more or less innocent’, whilst the ‘key men’ remained free.129 Unsurprisingly, therefore, almost as soon as detentions had begun, releases followed. Six persons were released in early March after the cases of ‘RSS detenus were reviewed in a meeting represented by the officers of Delhi Administration and the Secretary, Delhi Provincial Congress Committee’.130 The following week, 24 RSS detenus were released after they ‘tendered unqualified apologies.’131 Over the following two months, while around 30 RSS workers were detained each week in Delhi, the same number of Sangh detenus was released. Gandhi’s assassination, oddly, seemed to mark a return to normal for India’s coercive institutions. After months of frantic paralysis, the routine cycle of arrests and releases was back in motion. Indeed, by April 1948, the coercive network seemed to have settled into old patterns as the police returned to duties like detaining ‘professional gamblers cheats and other bad characters’, and enforcing traffic rules.132 The opposition parties of independent India, too, quickly settled into the old mould set in the previous three decades. Shortly after the ban was imposed, the RSS launched its own satyagraha. At one meeting, Surinder Sharma advised RSS workers ‘to court imprisonment in large numbers, as … the jails provided a good place for training of the Sangh ideology.’133 Two months later, in early April, the state struck against communists, and hundreds of men recently freed during the war, returned to jail.134 RSS members and communists alike could be found on hunger strike soon after they had entered the jails.135

Conclusion In the immediate aftermath of partition, the violence of these two years was often declared exceptional precisely in order to avoid examining it. It is clear, however, that some aspects of the violence can be traced to developments of the previous three decades. Opposition groups had become accustomed to weaving separate instances of violence into larger narratives of widespread brutality. Whilst the Congress party had perfected this tactic after the Punjab disturbances, other political organisations, including those with a sectarian agenda, had become well-versed in these strategies of representation. The interpretation of the actions of government servants had become a familiar part of these political choreographies. Therefore, many had become accustomed to assuming that the political loyalties of the police, military and bureaucracy would be integrated into the everyday execution of their duties. Certainly, the unravelling and re-stitching of local power structures did provide a unique context for these battles, but the political strategies used to negotiate this difficult period were tactics honed over the previous thirty years. The transitional state in India faced immense difficulties during the violence of partition, but the types of difficulties which the governments of South

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Asia faced were also not new in this period. It was common for mass disturbances to cause the courts and prisons to seize up. Allegations of bias against the members of the police and military were regular features of previous instances of ethnic unrest. In 1947, the state faced a new scale of challenge: it had to contend with several continuous months of violence, much of which was aimed at state services, without the aid of the imperial army. The coercive network, arguably, experienced a crisis during this period. But neither it nor the state dissolved entirely into the general melee of public violence. The irony was that, as the governments of the emerging Indian state sought to maintain their police and military as forces distinct from the larger society, they chose to mark the individual members of these services with the very religious identities which underpinned the violence that they were combating. Policemen became ‘Muslims’ and ‘non-Muslims’ not just for the purpose of recruiting but for the purpose of carrying out their duties. In the crisis atmosphere, the state was remoulded in ground-level operations, rather than through cabinet-level policy-making procedures. As a result, several distinct visions of the state’s coercive network came into being, and the competition between the different visions not only remained, but spread beyond the use of the police and military into the way in which the state handled the refugees created by the violence.136 Indeed, the two views continued to fight for prominence in the aftermath of the invasion of Hyderabad.

9

The police action in Hyderabad and the making of the postcolonial state in India, 1947–56

The previous chapter found that the moment of transition from the colonial to the postcolonial was marked by a struggle over the soul of the state. This final chapter uses research on the ‘police action’ in Hyderabad to understand the contests which marked the early years of independent rule. To this end, it begins by situating the princely state of Hyderabad at the geographic, economic and cultural heart of the sub-continent, and locates the territory in the vision of India imagined by the new government of independent India. Second, it analyses the ways in which the Indian authorities addressed the question of relations between Hindus and Muslims after the fall of the Muslim-led government of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Finally, it turns to the ways in which the Indian army, and then the civilian authorities, confronted the communist Telangana movement in the eastern part of the state. The picture of the postcolonial state which emerges from this analysis challenges the current scholarship on the nature of the state in independent India, which tends to assume that the postcolonial state inherited strength and stability from the colonial state and its coercive institutions. On the contrary, the coercive network was subject to many of the same old inadequacies in the first decade after 1947: its institutions remained weak and subject to political pressures; ideological battles over the nature of the state continued to be fought out on the ground; and state agents remained unpredictable and at times unreliable. This chapter examines the ways in which the new government coped with its inheritance. It argues that these early years must be seen as a time of great dynamism, rather than as a period of stability inherited from the colonial state.

Introduction There is near consensus amongst scholars of postcolonial India that, at least in retrospect, the Nehruvian period was one of relative calm and stability. The police, military and bureaucracy inherited from the colonial regime, it is agreed, enabled the Congress-led government to ‘enforce central authority’, and to ensure stability in a unified Indian state.1 One cannot maintain this generous view of the colonial state in light of the research in this volume. As such,

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there is a pressing need to explore the nature of the state in early postcolonial India. The existing literature on Hyderabad has not undertaken this task. Hitherto, the story of the integration of the princely state of Hyderabad into the Indian Union has been told from a number of relatively parochial perspectives. There have been personal stories of hardship and bravery during the conflict;2 detailed analyses of the tortured negotiations between the Indian government, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the British;3 clinical accounts of the military operations;4 and histories of the communist Telangana movement in the territory.5 None of these accounts, however, have examined the impact of the integration of Hyderabad on the formation of the state in newly independent India. The absorption of Hyderabad provides an excellent study of the nature of the postcolonial Indian state for several reasons. First, Hyderabad had been part of the calculations of all-India political parties at least since the 1930s.6 The territory was therefore a vital part of the self-image of newly independent India. Second, as Hyderabad was brought into the Union, the Ministry of States, part of the central government in Delhi, assumed responsibility for policy in the state while police, military and members of the bureaucracy were drafted in from the rest of India to take over local administration. Finally, when they assumed power in Hyderabad, the new Indian government faced an array of questions the answers to which would impact the shape and character of the new nation-state as a whole. These included: how to deal with the limitations of the military, police, and bureaucracy which they had inherited; how to frame the new constitution to protect the integrity of the country; how to manage relations between Hindus and Muslims; and how to fight communism and ensure the loyalty of their new citizens. It is argued below that, in the years shortly after independence, India’s internal character had yet to be set in stone, and the experience of the integration of Hyderabad reflects the vibrancy and uncertainty of the early Nehruvian period.

Hyderabad and the Indian Union The history of the awkward place of the princely states in the transfer of power negotiations is well known.7 At independence, Hyderabad, like Kashmir and a handful of smaller states, had declined to join either India or Pakistan. Each state presented its own unique problems, but the Government of independent India viewed the accession of Hyderabad to the Indian Union as ineluctable. Many, including Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s Home Member and Minister for States, believed Hyderabad could not be independent except in name, given its geographical position ‘in India’s belly’.8 In the months surrounding independence, Hyderabad’s seventh Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur, attempted to manoeuvre his state towards independence, from where he could negotiate an alliance with India, rather than amalgamation into India.9 To avoid accession, the Nizam’s government had signed a Standstill Agreement with the Government of India. The accord

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provided that relations between the state and the Indian Union would remain for one year as they had been prior to independence. India would handle Hyderabad’s foreign affairs, but Indian Army troops stationed in Secunderabad would be removed. Soon after the agreement had been struck, however, each side began to accuse the other of violating its terms. The Nizam alleged that the Indian government was imposing an informal embargo by using its control over railways leading into the state to deny the territory vital goods, especially arms and medical supplies.10 India claimed that the government of Hyderabad was edging towards independence by divesting itself of its Indian securities, banning the Indian currency, halting the export of ground nuts, organising illegal gun-running from Pakistan, and inviting new recruits to its army and to its irregular forces, the Razakars. These moves were regarded in Delhi as part of a ‘comprehensive plan to break up the economic cohesion of India’.11 The situation in Hyderabad in 1948 While the Nizam attempted to manoeuvre himself towards independence, the internal situation in the territory was deteriorating. The state had been crippled by communist insurgents on the one hand, and forces loyal to the Nizam of Hyderabad on the other. To a limited extent, volunteers from the Hyderabad State Congress had contributed to the internal disorder by disrupting courts, filling jails, and engaging in sabotage with the aim of convincing the Nizam to join the Indian Union. As stories of the conflict in the state spread in India, and refugees fled into the surrounding Indian provinces, the Government of India concluded that the unrest threatened to undermine peace in the whole of India. When, in 1947, the authorities in Hyderabad refused to accede to either dominion, several popular parties in the state called for the Nizam to join the Indian Union. The Hyderabad State Congress launched a satyagraha, and encouraged students to leave schools, and lawyers to boycott courts. More radical members of the party planned acts of sabotage, organised raids against government property and communications from just outside the state’s borders. According to an Indian government note in March 1948, ‘the educational institutions function no more, the law courts are barren and the commercial life is shattered.’12 As many as 21,000 congressmen were said to have been arrested.13 However, the Hyderabad State Congress Party was divided organisationally along regional lines, and ideologically between socialists and liberals; its impact on the internal situation in the state, therefore, was more limited than that of the communists.14 The fight between the communists and forces loyal to the Nizam, by contrast, was characterised in the spring of 1948 as ‘a people’s revolt on the one side and fascist orgy and anarchy on the other’.15 Its roots were in the communist insurgency begun in 1944–45 in the Nalgonda and Warangal districts, known as the Telangana area, in the east of the territory. To repress this movement, the Nizam’s government called upon the police, military and

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Razakars. Headed by Kasim Razvi, the Razakars were a paramilitary organisation comprised of volunteers who were said to be as enthusiastic as they were undisciplined.16 Razvi and his volunteers were associated with the Majlis-i-Ittehad-ul-Muslimein, a political party with considerable influence over the Nizam and dedicated to maintaining Muslim rule in Hyderabad.17 Both communists and forces loyal to the Nizam employed brutal measures to strike against their enemy and intimidate villagers into collaboration.18 During the summer of 1948, the Nizam’s forces and the Razakars continued to pursue the enemies of the regime, including not only Communists and Nationalists, but Muslims whose loyalty was in doubt.19 These battles threatened to spill into Union territory in more than one way. First, refugees fleeing the disorders escaped into Indian territory to form large camps in the surrounding provinces. One estimate put the number of refugees at 40,000 in CP alone.20 Second, although the fault lines in the conflict did not run neatly along religious lines, the perceived ‘communal’ nature of the fighting threatened to revive Hindu-Muslim tensions in India. The Nizam’s government tended to privilege a few thousand Muslims, leaving an underclass of poor Muslims. Nationalist Muslims in the State tended to oppose the Nizam, while, as far away as Delhi, the Socialist Party enrolled Muslim volunteers to agitate against the Nizam.21 At the same time, the Depressed Classes Association and Depressed Classes Conference in Hyderabad had joined hands with the Nizam in June 1947 to fight against incorporation into the Indian Union, because they believed accession would entail domination by caste Hindus.22 The structure of rule in the state, however, where a predominantly Muslim government held power over large numbers of disadvantaged, many of whom were Muslim, but the majority of whom were Hindus, appeared to divide the population along religious lines. And Hindu nationalist political parties in India incorporated Hyderabad into their anti-Muslim agenda. As the violence of the Nizam’s forces increased in Hyderabad, Hindu nationalists called on Muslims throughout India ‘to give proof of their loyalty to the Indian Union’, by opposing the Nizam’s regime.23 Clearly, the subtleties and complexities of the Hyderabad situation were being folded into all-India communal politics. The Government of India, therefore, concluded that the unrest in Hyderabad threatened to destabilise ‘the communal situation in the whole of India’.24 In the volatile international situation in South Asia in the year following independence, Nehru had been reluctant to use force to bring Hyderabad into the Indian Union.25 The Indian economy was suffering a crisis of inflation, accompanied by a panic in the gold market, which impelled the government to re-impose controls on textiles and other essential commodities. In addition, the autumn of 1948 was a tense time for the militaries on the subcontinent. Pakistan had admitted that its troops were present in Kashmir, and Nehru was writing of being at war with its neighbour, albeit an undeclared one.26 India feared that any move against Hyderabad would prompt a military response from Pakistan. Although Pakistan had no plans to protect Hyderabad with

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arms, India did not know this.27 Moreover, the new government in India was trying to calm tensions after the violence of partition, and struggling to provide for millions of refugees. The situation in Hyderabad, they concluded, must be resolved before it adversely affected India’s internal and international security. On 13 September 1948, therefore, the Government of India declared a state of emergency, and sent its troops into Hyderabad State. During the ‘police action’, the Indian Army entered Hyderabad with the objective of forcing the Nizam to re-install Indian troops in Secunderabad to allow them to restore order in the state. The Nizam surrendered in four days, and the Government of India appointed Major-General J.N. Chaudhuri as Military Governor. Delhi decided that the Nizam could retain his position as Rajpramukh, while law-making and enforcement powers were vested in the Military Governor.

Hindu-Muslim relations and the character of the new Hyderabad State Once they had seized control of the territory, Chaudhuri along with his Chief Civil Administrator, D.S. Bakhle, and the Government in Delhi had to ask themselves what character and composition they wished the new Hyderabad state to have. This question had a number of facets. First, to what extent would those who took part in violence before and during the police action be punished for their activities? Second, what role would the Congress Party have in the new state? Given that each of these questions affected Hindu-Muslim relations, Nehru felt that the decisions which they made in Hyderabad would be seen as the touchstone of the Indian government’s minority policy.28 Before the invasion of Hyderabad, Nehru’s primary concern was to normalise Hindu-Muslim relations there and in the rest of the country. He wrote to Patel that, after the problem of the Razakars, all other issues were ‘relatively secondary’.29 Before the first Indian troop set foot in Hyderabad, there was much uncertainty over whether the invasion would provoke an adverse reaction amongst Muslims in India. In the state’s surrounding provinces, therefore, provincial governments detained dozens of Muslims, including Members of the Legislative Assembly, for ‘security reasons’, on the grounds that their sympathies with Hyderabad might spur them into inciting unrest.30 As troops marched into the state, many Muslims in India lent their support to the offensive, belying this fear.31 Prominent Muslims in Delhi publicly welcomed the Government of India’s choice to come to the aid of the ‘innocent masses’ threatened by the Razakars, and appealed for calm.32 In the event, there was no trouble in India during the five days of military operations. Indeed, before reports emerged of violence within the state, Nehru ventured to declare that Hyderabad had ‘suddenly opened out a new picture of communal peace and harmony in India’.33 Quickly, however, stories began to seep out of large-scale violence within the territory in the immediate aftermath of the police action. There was widespread bloodshed as the population took the opportunity to commit acts of violence against the Razakars and the Muslim population in general. Two

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prominent nationalists, Pandit Sunderlal and Qazi Abdulghaffar prepared a report on the situation after Nehru appointed them to tour the state and assess the extent of the destruction, but the original was suppressed and only scraps of it remain.34 They recorded that after 13 September, there had been a widespread anti-Muslim purge, which had occurred primarily in the Marathwada and Telangana areas. What evidence is available suggests that Hindu residents as well as at least some members of the Army attacked persons and property in the weeks after the police action began.35 Conservative estimates suggest that between twenty-seven and forty thousand Muslims were killed.36 Others claim several hundred thousand died.37 Indian troops in some places remained aloof from these activities, in others, they were implicated in them.38 In one of the available versions of their report, Sunderlal and Abdulghaffar concluded that, ‘In general the attitude of the military officers was good but the soldiers showed bigotry and hatred.’39 The invasion of Hyderabad had not heralded a new era of communal harmony in the territory. Rather, individuals on the ground were still using everyday operations to pursue their vision of how the state’s coercive network ought to operate. The main task of the new authorities in the state was to cope with the aftermath of the turmoil. In order to depose the existing regime and to contain the unrest, the Government of India’s police and military authorities had detained suspected Razakars, Hindu militants, communists and many others more loosely connected with the general upheaval. According to their own figures, the military and police detained over 13,000 Muslims, plus several hundred Arabs and Pathans, who were associated with the Razakars and the Nizam’s irregular forces. Another several thousand Hindus were jailed after having been implicated in the post-police action violence against Muslims. Many communists were also detained. But it is clear that, with their limited knowledge of the local situation, the invading forces simply jailed thousands of suspects without real knowledge of their activities. The police and military were captive to local informants, who took advantage of the situation to have their political enemies imprisoned.40 Indeed, many of the difficulties which the colonial regime had faced when confronting large-scale communal unrest also affected the early postcolonial government: the police and military were disposed to make mass arrests in order to restore order and to think about prosecution only after the event. Having imprisoned an estimated 17,550 people as they entered the territory, the Government of India was left with the questions of what to do with all the prisoners rounded up in the upheaval, and how to relieve the problem of overcrowded jails.41 In Hyderabad, the Government of India inherited a criminal justice system which had been paralysed by the conflict, and could not process any significant number of cases. This meant that, just as in British India, politics came to determine who was subjected to formal punishment and who escaped. Of course, many of the political aims of the Nehru government were different from those of the British: India’s new rulers were concerned not to spend money on expensive legal proceedings which could otherwise be used

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for development projects; and they were sensitive to the importance of political parties in a democratic age. For their part, many members of the public remained constant in their insistence that, when the government punished participants in communal violence, this only worsened relations between those communities who were perceived to be at loggerheads with one another. For these reasons, though thousands were originally detained, only a few exemplary persons remained in jail by 1953. Given the volume of cases, the military regime decided to prosecute only those ‘who indulged in the worst kind of atrocities’.42 In the six months following the Nizam’s defeat, therefore, the government released over 11,000 Muslims without trial because no incriminating evidence against them existed. Chaudhuri and his administration planned to prosecute the remainder of those detained, and they established Special Courts to dispense with the large numbers of persons in jail. In a word, the courts were designed to process cases speedily. To this end, the Special Courts Order relaxed the standards of written evidence by requiring only summaries of the evidence rather than full accounts; it made it impossible for an accused to deliberately delay proceedings, e.g. by hunger striking; and, at first, it provided for no right to appeal to higher courts, though this latter provision was amended in October 1949. The ordinance strongly resembled those which had been passed by the colonial government during the twentieth century. For example, it incorporated the lessons which the British had learnt by making it impossible for a defendant to delay a case by hunger striking.43 In reality, the Special Tribunals were anything but speedy. In each of the courts sat a three-member panel, all of whom had to be present for a case to proceed; when one member was sick or on leave, the tribunal did not meet. Further, the Military Government had made English (rather than Urdu) the working language of the tribunals, but there were few advocates in Hyderabad who were able to conduct a prosecution in English.44 As the trials made halting progress, thousands languished in jails waiting for the police to finish investigating their cases or for the courts to begin their trials.45 Unsurprisingly, appeals for an amnesty gained volume. In April 1949, thirteen Urdu newspapers jointly asked the government to free Muslims who had been imprisoned ‘on mere suspicion’ and had yet to stand trial. The editors suggested that these men had suffered in jail long enough and that their continued detention would serve no good purpose. To release them would help create a ‘harmonious atmosphere’ in the state, and it would foster the minority community’s confidence in the government.46 Similarly, Swami Ramandanda Tirtha, leader of the Hyderabad State Congress, agreed that the institution of cases for events which had occurred nine months before was ‘causing great discontent’.47 The constraints of governance in a democratic state had an impact in several rather contradictory ways on the decisions which the government made about these prisoners. First, as these men had been detained for several months without trial, the International Committee for the Red Cross was

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pressing Nehru to see that those detained were either prosecuted or released.48 Nehru had long since realised that the eyes of the world were on Hyderabad and wished to prove that the new Indian Government could be balanced in its approach to both Hindus and Muslims.49 Second, Hyderabad’s new rulers believed that the communist and ‘communalist’ parties in the state remained popular because the State Congress party was weak. Chaudhuri, therefore, hoped that the release of prisoners would ‘rehabilitate the prestige of the Hyderabad State Congress’ in the eyes of the public in Hyderabad, and improve relations between the state and national sections of the party. Even so, there could be no general amnesty because the Military Governor still wished to prosecute prominent Razakars such as Kasim Razvi.50 When the government of Hyderabad, in consultation with the centre, weighed these arguments, they knew that any policy adopted could not be seen to favour either Hindus or Muslims. The new government, therefore, convinced itself that equal blame did attach to each community. In Chaudhuri’s words, ‘in political physics, Razakar action and Hindu reaction have been almost equal and opposite’.51 Thus, when it was decided to free all Hindus and to institute a programme for the review of Muslim cases with an aim to gradually letting many out of jail, the government preferred that the policy be given no publicity.52 Releases were staggered and former prisoners made to report periodically to the police.53 Because prosecutions of either Hindus or Muslims in cases of ‘communal’ violence tended to elicit allegations of bias, any cases which were brought to court had to be designed to minimise ethnic tensions. Thus, Kasim Razvi and four of his associates were prosecuted for the alleged murder of a fellow Muslim, Shoebullah Khan. The victim, a nationalist journalist who had opposed the Razakars, was killed on 22 August 1948. The Bombay Chronicle described the journalist as ‘a brave young man’ for refusing to bow to the will of the Ittehad-ul-Muslimein. The paper went on to declare Shoebullah ‘a martyr in the cause of the people.’54 Though a Special Tribunal found Razvi and his cohorts guilty, they were acquitted in the High Court. The same men stood accused in the Bibinaga Dacoity Case, which ran simultaneously with the Shoebullah Khan case. In the former, it was alleged that, when passing through Bibinaga station in a train, the accused had shouted ‘Shah-e-Osman zindabad’, but the people in the station had replied with the nationalist slogan ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’. The accused then disembarked, and proceeded to burn down a house, and beat and rob those in the vicinity of the station.55 In this case, the High Court upheld the Special Tribunal’s guilty verdict, and the men were sentenced to imprisonment. The type of case chosen clearly shows the new government’s desire to use court cases to inspire in the public feelings of pure abhorrence or deep nationalism, and this meant avoiding prosecution for communal crimes. As news of the convictions of Razvi and his men reached the public, prominent politicians again pressed Nehru to show generosity to the Muslims of Hyderabad, for the sake of reconciliation and security.56 The Prime Minister

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was sympathetic. Hyderabadi Muslims, he wrote to Patel, exemplified a unique ‘and rather attractive culture’, and were ‘very much above the average’. Their behaviour in the summer and autumn of 1948 was analogous to the ‘madness’ that had seized ‘decent people’ in the country during partition. Many of those guilty of partition violence remained free in India and lived ‘as respected citizens.’ By this logic, if the crimes of partition could be buried, so could those of Hyderabad’s accession. Nehru also warned that if a gesture of ‘friendliness’ were not offered ‘to those who are down and out and full of fear’ these disenfranchised Muslims could join forces with the communists. Finally, the Prime Minister argued, in a developing state the money spent on prosecution could have ‘brought rich results if spent on constructive activities in Hyderabad.’57 When Nehru first voiced these arguments, Patel demurred. He was convinced that the promise of penal action against criminals had helped restore law and order, and that if that promise were not fulfilled, it would signal the government’s partiality for Muslims and would endanger the peace in the state.58 By the time the cases of Kasim Razvi and of the ex-ministers of the Nizam’s regime had wound their way through the judicial system, however, Patel had passed away and elections were about to be held under a much improved political atmosphere in the state. In January 1952, all ex-Ministers were released; only a few members of the Nizam’s regime who had been involved in the most notorious cases remained in prison.59 In the end, only a handful of symbolic Razakars were punished with formal imprisonment. Just like its colonial predecessor, the Indian government faced administrative constraints which precluded the use of the ordinary judicial system to dispose of most cases arising out of large-scale violence. The police and military, lacking real intelligence, jailed thousands without obvious cause, and without labouring to find one. Courts, even Special Tribunals, were unable to work through the cases at a reasonable speed. Pleas for amnesty inevitably arose in circumstances in which the members of the public believed that people were being detained unfairly for protracted periods. Political considerations, therefore, determined the futures of those who found themselves in jail. The second question facing the new authorities in Hyderabad was what the role of the Congress party in the state ought to be. Initially, the answer seemed relatively straightforward to the government in Delhi. Congressmen at the head of the Government of India wished the Hyderabad State Congress to guide the future of the state. To some extent this decision can be explained by the supposed ideological affinity between the local and the national party. Technically, the Hyderabad State Congress had not been part of the all-India party because affiliations with outside organisations had been banned under the Nizam. Hyderabad’s Swami Ramananda Tirtha, however, had participated in the non-cooperation movement in Sholapur, and later made frequent visits to Gandhi. Tirtha often consulted him on matters of policy, though the two did not always agree.60 Moreover, the Hyderabad State Congress was also

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one of the few political organisations which was not confined to a single linguistic group, and which at least attempted to span the entire state. At the time, however, the Hyderabad State Congress had been in existence for little more than a decade – and had operated as little more than a token institution before 1946. It suffered from organisational shallowness and internal divisions.61 If it were to take power successfully, the Hyderabad State Congress would need all the help it could get from the national Congress party. To this end, when they took over the governance of the state, the Indian authorities ordered the release of all Congressmen who had landed in Hyderabad’s jails during their campaign of satyagraha and sabotage before September 1948. Before the release, there was some debate as to whether those who had committed crimes of violence should be freed. In the event, Congressmen accused of violent crimes were let out, while communists were kept in jail, whether their crimes involved violence or not.62 Under these orders, the Government of India released 1222 out of 1736 detenus, and 7893 out of 9218 political prisoners.63 The situation was far more fluid than had been anticipated, however. As the military and police attempted to restore order by arranging prosecutions against those who had partaken in the violence, many Congressmen ended up back in jail. The Military Governor reported that one faction in the party, ‘has given information against the members of the other groups for having been concerned in the commission of atrocities’ after the police action.64 It became clear that the fissures within the Hyderabad State Congress would not be easy to repair. Nehru met with Congressmen in the state to persuade them to bury their differences in the interests of their country.65 V.P. Menon and Sardar Patel, repeatedly pressed the divergent blocs in the party to adopt a ‘united approach’, but their ‘bickering’ and ‘mud flinging’ continued unabated.66 Thus, although the Government of India originally had intended to establish a constituent assembly in Hyderabad and to transfer power to a civilian government composed of Hyderabadis within a few months of the police action, both objectives were soon shelved. The government in Delhi refused to hand power to democratically elected representatives when the Hyderabad State Congress remained in ideological and organisational disarray.67 It therefore orchestrated a more gradual transfer of power, and did not sanction state-wide elections until the general elections of 1951–52. Policy coming from the Government of India level was clearly concerned to appear even-handed in its punishment of participants in the violence which surrounded the deposal of the Nizam’s regime. While this was a noble aim, it served to continue the old imperial habit of using collective detention without trial to quell violence rather than using the formal procedures of the criminal justice system to punish violent offenders. The introduction of a fully democratic framework in India also affected policy. The centre’s decisions were designed to improve the stature of the Congress party and were timed to appeal to certain constituencies before elections. But there were others who were not so easily pleased, and it is to the communists that we now turn.

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The communist insurgency and the making of the new state When they arrived in Hyderabad, the Indian military found that the communists had done great damage to the structures of government in the Telangana region, but that they had also introduced reforms on an impressive scale. The government, therefore, both fought the communists and learned from them. Or rather, they fought them first, and then they learned from them. Their various encounters with the communists affected the future of India as a whole in many ways. This section will highlight two. First, some of the oppressive measures used against the movement came to be incorporated into the new nation’s constitution. Second, the work of the communists towards the betterment of the peasantry encouraged the government to adopt its own programme of uplift for the people. While the Government of India justified its entry into Hyderabad on the grounds that it had to end the ‘communal’ violence, they soon found that the problems in the state were intimately related to the communist uprising which was flourishing in the Telangana region of the state. The violent struggle against the Nizam was centred in Telangana and led by communists. The communists drew adherents from a number of fronts. Urban communists and wealthier peasants had initially fought their own battles under the communist banner, but by 1948, the coalition between poor and middling peasants had fallen apart.68 The core of the movement was amongst the poor peasantry and landless labourers, where there was great resentment against large landholders and local revenue officers. These deshmukhs (local headmen) were infamous for the high rate of forced labour they extracted from peasants who held little land, were given paltry access to water and manure, and were subjected to high rates by (often absentee) landlords.69 Moreover, during the Second World War, the burden of a compulsory levy fell heavily on the peasants who were experiencing similar agrarian troubles to those which plagued the rest of India. Rural areas also lacked facilities for medical care and education. These factors combined with a system in which customary class distinctions were often reinforced with brutal violence to leave a large number of peasants alienated from the landed elites.70 In rural areas, the communist cause, led by Ravi Narayan Reddi and organised under the aegis of the Andhra Mahasabha, sought to alleviate the grievances of the poor peasants in the Telangana area. At the outset, they only targeted large landholders, but the police and military were pulled into the conflict at the request of local magnates, and by December 1945, the communists had launched a full-scale insurrection against the state. They assaulted government officials, especially the police. They then progressed to boycotting local revenue collectors and judicial officials, and then to establishing their own panchayats (village councils) and courts. Between July and November 1946, encounters between the communists and the Nizam’s forces grew increasingly violent, and in the last two months of that year, the Nizam’s police and military, with the occasional aid of local Razakars, undertook

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coordinated action against the communists. The Nizam’s forces’ tactics were varied. They cordoned off villages and captured suspected communists en masse, shot into crowds, burnt villages and engaged in widespread loot in a manner that was described by one Congressman as ‘absolutely indiscriminate and organised’.71 Habeeb Mohammed, the subedar of Warangal, was later tried for crimes which included murder, and the burning of two hundred houses in the village of Gurtur. The taluqdar of Nalgonda, Moazzam Hussain, was said to have ordered the death of twenty ‘innocent Hindus’ after a group of several hundred communists had attacked and killed several dozen Razakars.72 The communists responded with ‘punishment’ against government officials and suspected collaborators. Their measures were said to be more targeted but equally brutal.73 Accounts of the action taken by both sides were documented by the Government of India,74 by politicians such as Sarojini Naidu’s daughter, Padmaja Naidu,75 and they also appeared in the press.76 When it became clear that the communists had not laid down their arms when the Indian Army had arrived, the Military Governor adopted a policy of rooting out communists wherever they were found. Rhetoric was found to match. Nehru instructed Chaudhuri that the fighters in Telangana should not be referred to as communists, but as terrorists. The Prime Minister wrote, ‘too much talk of communists confuses the issue because communists in other countries function differently’.77 He made a distinction between communists in the Soviet Union and Indonesia who opposed imperialism, and those fighting the free government of independent India. To add factual support to this discourse, the Government of Hyderabad drew up a pamphlet entitled ‘Communist terrorism in Hyderabad’. The pamphlet’s message was simple: the Communist hooligans of Hyderabad have carried forward their campaign of crime to an extent that assures it a prominent place in any anthology of destruction.78 Government forces, it was implied, had the right to use force to restore order, and to remove these outlaws from the territory. The tools adopted to dislodge the communists were also rather blunt. By December 1949, the police and military had jailed over 6000 persons without trial, and yet the ranks of the communists seemed to be growing.79 Fundamental Rights in the Indian Constitution and the situation in Hyderabad These detentions did not have much effect on the communist movement, but they did have a profound impact on the shape of the Indian Constitution, which was finalised during this crucial period in the country’s history. As the document was being drawn up by the Constituent Assembly, the sub-committee on Fundamental Rights was given the task of articulating the legal, political and social rights of the new citizens of the Republic of India.80 B.R. Ambedkar drew up a set of rules for arrest and detention which would suit

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India’s unique needs. After many revisions, the substance of Ambedkar’s final, multi-part article provided for very little protection against long-term detention without trial. It laid down rights for those arrested or detained, but then stated that these rights would not apply when legislatures passed their own preventive detention legislation. Ordinary detentions were to be authorised by an Advisory Board, but a person could be held for up to three months without reference to this body. Beyond this, the article authorised Parliament to pass laws to provide for certain classes of persons to be detained without reference to an Advisory Board for longer than three months.81 Ambedkar justified the text on two grounds. First, India was in great turmoil: refugees, economic crisis, uncertainty over princely states and the rise of communism throughout the country justified the use of preventive detention. Second, it was not a ‘practical possibility’ to expect the current executive, judicial and administrative system to process and review large numbers of detentions, given the current political situation in the country.82 The infrastructure they had inherited was simply inadequate for the work at hand. If the constitution were to endow citizens with the right to have their cases reviewed in less than three months, as critics of the clause had suggested, then thousands would have to be released because courts and review boards would fail to meet the deadline. It would be easy to conclude that these measures signalled the willingness of the Government of India’s new leadership to anchor their power in the country by any means necessary. However, the articles adopted in the constitution must be seen in the context of the recent past in India. That most Congressmen had been detained without trial for several years during the recent war affected the way that detention was viewed in the country. Imprisonment without trial was seen as a measure necessary in the face of grave danger. But the inveterate legalism of the leadership of the nationalist movement encouraged them to try to articulate in law the precise terms on which that power could be exercised. And yet, with knowledge of the weakness of the institutions which they had inherited, the constitution makers were unwilling to be tied down. In incorporating this ‘extraordinary’ power into the ‘ordinary’ law of the constitution India’s new rulers, like their predecessors had done during the successive crises of the previous two decades, continued the process of normalising penal practices which previously had been regarded as exceptional. This further whittled away the prominence of ordinary judicial proceedings in the Indian coercive network. The clause, which became part of the constitution inaugurated on 26 January 1950, was the uneasy result of a compromise between legalism and pragmatism. The difficulty of balancing legalistic inclinations with political pragmatism manifested itself in other areas of penal system, as in the case of the Telangana twelve. The Telangana Twelve The high-level considerations concerning the imposition of the death penalty were one area in which a tension arose between legal processes and political

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imperatives. In 1949, twelve communist leaders in the Telangana area of Hyderabad state were sentenced to death by a Special Tribunal at Nalgonda. Over the following two years, their cases crawled through the judicial process, and in 1951 their attempt to secure a final appeal to the Supreme Court was dismissed on technical grounds. The focus then shifted to the executive, and the prerogative of the President of the Republic to commute the sentences of convicts. This section examines the arguments, legal and political, which influenced the Government of India’s decision to grant reprieve to the Telangana Twelve. The twelve men were sentenced in three different cases for murders committed between September 1948 and May 1949. In the first case, the accused went to village Akkinapalli, on 21 September 1948, and demanded subscriptions for the Communist Party. When some of the villagers refused to give the amount demanded of them, the communists took six men, tied them to a tree and, according to the government, ‘killed four of them with swords and axe by cutting their throats’. The second case accused ten members of the movement of opening fire on villagers in Rogatta, killing one person on 6 April 1949. In the final case, several communists were said to have visited Astala village on 15 May 1949. It was alleged that, in order to seek retribution against the villagers who they believed had assisted the police in apprehending communists, the accused, ‘dragged … Rama Reddy from his house where he was sleeping, and shot him dead.’83 Several of the men were accused in more than one of the cases. Not all were sentenced to death, some were given terms of imprisonment, but the Special Tribunal at Nalgonda ordered that the twelve leaders be executed.84 The Supreme Court had dismissed the appeal of the twelve on the grounds that they had been convicted before the introduction of the Indian Constitution, and therefore, the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over their case. Yet, when the constitution came into force, the prisoners’ appeal to Hyderabad’s Judicial Counsel became defunct as the Judicial Counsel no longer played a role in the legal system. Given that the men had been tried in a Special Tribunal, with truncated rules of procedure, and there were allegations that the Tribunal had not afforded the accused full access to lawyers, the right to a final appeal was critical in the case.85 When their appeal to the Supreme Court was dismissed on technical grounds, the domestic and international gaze focused on the executive in Delhi. Nehru tried to characterise the trial of the Telangana Twelve as so ordinary as to have ‘no political significance’,86 but the growth of public attention and political concern over the matter ensured that, whatever course was taken, it would have political implications. The Government of India received innumerable appeals on behalf of the convicts. They came from sources as diverse as European socialist organisations, and the India League in London, the Ranchi Railway Workers Union in Hyderabad, and the Telangana Defence Committee. In Hyderabad, leftist groups of many varieties collected signatures to ask the government to remit the death sentences. Civil liberties unions pursued the same purpose.87 These

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organisations distributed leaflets targeting Marathi and Urdu speakers as well as Telugu speakers.88 In the eyes of the Ranchi Railway Workers Union, the men were ‘brave leaders’ who had protected the people of the region from the ‘hated Razakars’.89 They warned that the execution of their heroes would turn the ‘majority of this country’, the workers and peasants, against the government.90 When it came to considering the cases of these men, the leadership in India were heavily influenced by legal arguments. Both Nehru and Shri Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Patel’s successor as Minister for States, were uncomfortable with the idea of denying these men their final right of appeal on technical grounds.91 Ayyangar pithily summarised the legal inconsistency which would have enabled the execution of the men: It is hardly comforting for the petitioners to be told that, while the High Court’s judgement of December 1949 could not be appealed against after the coming into force of the Constitution, the sentences confirmed by that judgement could be executed now.92 In Delhi, they were also concerned that the men were relatively young, and that up to three years had passed since their crimes had been committed.93 ‘Politically speaking, it seems unwise to allow a sentence of death to be carried out’,94 Nehru decided. With this conclusion, President Rajendra Prasad duly signed an order commuting the sentences to life imprisonment on 3 May 1951.95 The combination of legal propriety and political expediency was a defining attribute of the upper strata of the government of independent India. This is not to suggest that legalism was a pervasive characteristic of government from the Prime Minister to the local police constable. Indeed, reports on the behaviour of the police and military in Hyderabad suggest that this is far from the case. Few legal cases made their way so far up the ladder of the legal process as to reach the Prime Minister’s desk. And not every case achieved the political significance which warranted the executive’s attention. The legalism of the top levels of government, therefore, only came into play after political factors had called upon these men to involve themselves in the legal process. Civilian administration and the victory of the generous Just as the constitution came into force, the political situation in Hyderabad began to take a new direction. In December 1949, the Military Governor’s administration ended, and M.K. Vellodi replaced Major-General Chaudhuri at the head of the new civilian administration in Hyderabad. Vellodi toured the Telangana districts and found that the authorities stationed in the area had not dealt with the communist cause ‘with any understanding’. He testified that, ‘the villagers who had been alternately beaten up by the Military and the Police and the communists had a haunted look.’96 Vellodi was able to turn the war around and ensure that his civilian administration defeated the

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insurrection with a combination of more responsive policing, and more aggressive programmes of development. Even though the communists were branded ‘terrorists’ in public, the government quietly learned lessons from them. It was clear that the communists had earned the support of the people because they had tapped into grievances which the government in the state had not begun to address. Assessing the achievements of the communists in the field of social and economic uplift, the Intelligence Bureau’s Deputy Director deemed them ‘positive and in some cases great.’97 The communists had redistributed land and livestock, reduced rates, ended forced labour and increased wages by one hundred percent. They inoculated the population and built public latrines; they encouraged women’s organisations, discouraged sectarian sentiment and sought to abolish untouchability. ‘Thus’, concluded the Deputy Director, ‘the Communist regime was one of relief and uplift to the isolated villager and improved his selfrespect.’98 Members of the government in India were not ignorant of the significant influence of agrarian uplift on the political situation. Indeed, Nehru encouraged the Ministry of States to view the problems of the peasantry in Hyderabad in the context of the ‘great agrarian revolution … taking place over these vast areas of Asia’.99 In light of the communist uprisings in Burma, Malaya and Indonesia in 1948, it was obvious to the more discerning members of India’s governing class that the communist movement appealed to those in Telangana who suffered under conditions of socio-economic distress.100 Indeed, soon after the police action, Swami Ramananda Tirtha and his group in the State Congress cautioned Nehru that the use of force against communists would have to be supplemented with agrarian reforms in order to strike at the ‘root cause’ of the movement.101 As the state’s first civilian Chief Minister, Vellodi initiated a number of more nuanced military measures designed to disrupt the communist movement. He replaced the Brigadier in charge of the Telangana area, who spoke no Telugu, with Captain Nanjappa of the Indian Civil Service, who acted as Special Commissioner in the region.102 Review committees were constituted to consider the cases of prisoners who were elderly, infirm, or were no threat to security.103 Within a year over 5000 detenus were freed.104 Nanjappa substituted the sweeping and heavy-handed operations of the military with small police parties which worked on the basis of intelligence.105 Home guards and village patrols were organised to assist the police.106 In the beginning of 1951, Nanjappa gave secret instructions to start a ‘whispering campaign’ to let it be known that those who laid down their arms voluntarily would have their cases ‘favourably considered’.107 The authorities also began to build or repair infrastructure from roads and wells to dispensaries and schools. They passed a Tenancy Act, which was designed to improve the rights of tenants by capping landholdings, opening the market to cultivators, and protecting tenants from ejection.108 Although land reforms were not implemented in a uniform manner, and they did not go

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far enough in many areas, the Act went some way to recognising peasant grievances.109 A Tribal Reclamation Scheme was introduced in Warangal, under which two teams of Social Service Officers were constituted to ‘redress grievances and create contentment’ amongst the inhabitants of the area. To this end, these officers saw that vacant government land was allotted, tenants’ rights confirmed, disputes with absentee landlords settled, land taken by moneylenders restored and debts reconciled. Having been allotted a lump sum of two lakhs, and an annual budget of Rs1.38 lakh, they arranged for the supply of essential commodities such as cloth, kerosene and iron at subsidised prices.110 Police and Revenue officials who visited tribal people distributed medicines, sold cheap cloth, and handed out free dhotis, saris, soap, slates and books. As a result, noted the Deputy Central Intelligence officer with a hint of surprise, ‘their cooperation with the forces of law and order in this division is most spontaneous’.111 The people were even helping to capture communists.112 There are indications in the available documents, however, that these schemes were not without elements of coercion. The hill tribes in the area, the Koyas, Chenchus and Lambadas, were said to aid the communists by acting as couriers and lending their settlements as hide-outs.113 In order to disrupt the association between the two, the tribes ‘were uprooted from their villages inside the forests and made to live nearer to human habitation’.114 By February 1951, 7000 out of 30,000 Koyas in the Warangal area had been settled in villages under this scheme.115 It was widely reported that, because re-located tribes people lacked basic facilities such as drinking water, they and their livestock fell victim to hunger and disease.116 Measures for the uplift or simple relocation of tribesmen and of the peasantry, whether forced or voluntary, seemed to have drawn many away from communist influence. As a result, the communists had difficulty securing food, water and ammunition from the population.117 As their movement struggled, the Communist Party of India (CPI) divided over whether to continue the violent struggle in Telangana, or to participate in the general elections due the following year.118 In Hyderabad, the movement split along the same lines. Raj Bahadur Gour, and Maqdoom Mohiuddin, members of the City Communist Party, as well as Ravi Narayan Reddi, a prominent leader of the Andhra Mahasabha, came out of hiding to disassociate themselves from the violent movement. They were promptly arrested.119 After seeking guidance from Moscow and Beijing, the CPI and the Andhra Mahasabha called off the armed struggle in the state in mid-October 1951.120 Top-ranking communists visited the state to support the call for a turn to electioneering. The change in policy did not satisfy all members of the movement, but it brought about a formal end to the Telangana struggle.121 In 1952, the various parties of the left in the state united to form the People’s Democratic Front to contest the forthcoming general elections. The fight against the communists can be divided into two phases, the first executed by the military, the next orchestrated by the civilian administration.

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The military phase of the campaign bore remarkable resemblance to military action during the British period. Hampered by a dearth of intelligence, and blinkered by the over-riding imperative to restore order, their over-bearing acts of oppression and indiscriminate punishments produced either bitter quiescence or unending antagonism in the subject population. The Indian government in Hyderabad came into its own when Vellodi took power at the head of a civilian administration. Vellodi and Nanjappa ‘discovered’ that if they could slake the population’s thirst for basic goods, the government could win their loyalty as well. And, marking a crucial departure from the British period, they found the funds necessary to achieve this end. This can be seen as part of a larger, global shift both in the nature of governance more generally and in counter-insurgency tactics in particular. After the Second World War, the nature of citizenship changed as the responsibility of the state for the social and economic welfare of its population was greatly expanded. At around the same time, the British, too, began combating the communist insurgency in Malaya with measures designed to ameliorate the economic hardship in the countryside.122 The leadership of the new Indian nation quickly grasped the notion that if they were to earn and retain the loyalty of the people of India, they would have to fulfil the promises of the nationalist movement and provide uplift for the common people.

Conclusion Hyderabad’s fate, in the final account, was connected with that of South India as a whole. Since independence, significant sections of the population had urged the centre to re-divide India’s provinces along linguistic lines. Hyderabad, situated in the middle of peninsular India, and populated by four distinct linguistic groups, was elemental to this vision of India. Indeed, as the existence of Hyderabad kept Marathi, Telugu and Kannada speakers from being unified with their linguistic brethren, the state was seen by some as the ‘centre of gravity of the British Empire in India.’123 The disintegration of Hyderabad, in this view, was essential to the establishment of real swaraj in India. Politics in the state had long moved along linguistic lines, and the major players, including the faction of the Congress Party led by Swami Ramananda Tirtha and the parties of the left, called for the disintegration of the state.124 Though he cautioned against repeating the sins of partition, Nehru eventually conceded that if there was ‘strong and widespread’ support for the re-drawing of India’s internal borders, then ‘a democratic government must ultimately submit to it’.125 This concession, combined with public agitation for linguistic states, tipped the balance against the continued existence of Hyderabad. In 1953, the state of Andhra Pradesh was carved out of Madras. In 1956, the Telugu-speaking regions of Hyderabad, including Telangana, were joined with the new province, whilst Hyderabad’s Kannada-speaking regions were incorporated into Mysore State (later Karnataka). Its Marathi speakers were eventually amalgamated into the state of Maharashtra.

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In light of the experience of Hyderabad, how can one characterise the state in independent India? It is clear that, while there were some continuities, there were also sharp differences between the colonial and postcolonial state. When the members of the new government took over the institutions left behind by the British, they inherited many of the constraints of the colonial system. Courts were easily overwhelmed by unrest; prisons continued to be used as holding cells, rather than as disciplinary institutions; the police and the military were often clumsy and heavy handed, especially in the first phase of the occupation; and local officers could not always be relied upon to implement the centre’s policies as directed. Indeed, the implementation of policy remained an ideological battleground. The colonial coercive network simply did not provide the stability and coherence which many scholars have presumed. As a result, Nehru’s government was no more inclined to use the ordinary criminal justice system than the imperial government had been. India’s postcolonial rulers may have justified this on the grounds that they wanted to avoid allowing formal legal proceedings to consume money better spent on development, or with reference to their desire to see communal enmity dampened down, but the result was the same: a tendency to bend the rules of the justice system in ‘extraordinary’ circumstances, and a desire to seek solutions outside the courts and prisons. The new Government of India was able to integrate Hyderabad into the Indian Union because it was resourceful. Its innovations were inspired as much by pragmatism as by democratic concerns and ideological change. Because the Congress party was concerned to assert its influence over the voting population, members of the government tended to formulate policies to serve this end. Intimately connected with the democratic imperative was the new socialist ethos which influenced government policy. Whether inspired by the communists of Telangana, contemporary practices of counter-insurgency, or Nehruvian socialism, the postcolonial state was more directed towards the uplift of Indian villagers. It quickly learned that development programmes could be more effective than coercion in certain circumstances. In Hyderabad, new styles of governance had to be developed precisely because postcolonial India did not possess the institutional framework necessary to fight communists using the oppressive powers of the colonial police, military and bureaucracy. The final chapter examines the further implications of this conclusion.

10 Conclusion: rethinking colonial punishment, reassessing postcolonial India

This work has argued that India’s coercive network was both more expansive and more vulnerable than has previously been acknowledged. This final chapter draws together the conclusions of this work by tracing the changes which occurred in the coercive network over the years between 1919 and 1956. These conclusions, it is proposed, have ramifications in two areas of scholarship. First, they call for a significant expansion of the study of punishment and state violence not just in the British empire, but across the colonial world. Second, this work casts a new light on the difficulties faced by India’s twenty-first century coercive network. In turn, this final conclusion suggests that the nature of the postcolonial state more generally deserves careful reevaluation. At the beginning of the period under consideration, the mechanisms designed to shepherd individuals impartially and systematically through criminal justice institutions regularly seized up under the pressures generated by large-scale unrest. As a result, incarceration coupled with a quotidian jail regime aimed at instilling discipline in individuals was not the predominant form of punishment in India. For the satyagrahis who did manage to get into jails the disciplinary regimes which they followed were often of their own design. For the majority of the population involved in large-scale unrest, penal tactics tended to be spectacular and collective. Police used prisons to house people whom they had rounded up en masse without evidence. Even the punishments of those convicted and sentenced to death or long terms of imprisonment were calculated as part of a larger equation of justice which had little to do with the crimes allegedly committed. When this type of justice eluded the authorities, collective fines proved a ready substitute. Bodily humiliations were inflicted indiscriminately under the assumption that such spectacular sanctions would restore ‘law and order’. The use of firepower and airpower was considered appropriate punishment for collectives whose members threatened persons or property. Over the next forty years punishment remained collective to a surprising degree. Fines imposing joint liability on residents were adapted to the industrial era, and, with the rise of identity politics, co-opted by political parties. Firepower remained a common punishment for large-scale violence.

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Because collective action proved to be such a problem for the everyday functioning of police, courts and prisons, the coercive network became increasingly reliant on ‘extraordinary’ measures designed to cope with specific challenges. Each measure was designed with a specific class of ‘criminal’ or type of crime in mind. As a result, penal tactics tended to become more varied over the course of the following four decades. One line along which the practices of punishment diversified was class. Middle-class, non-violent protesters were moved out of the ordinary criminal justice system over time. After the noncooperation movement the extent to which such persons could be punished with whipping was also reduced. During the civil disobedience movement governments experimented with striking at satyagrahis through educational institutions. When governments felt they had no choice but to use coercive measures against middle-class political dissenters, as during the Second World War, they resorted to detention without trial rather than formal imprisonment. For groups outside of this narrow echelon of society, the picture was rather different. Corporal punishments were actually extended for the subaltern class of ‘hooligans’ deemed to be responsible for communal violence in Bombay, whilst the punishment of externment was instituted for goondas in Kanpur. In the early postcolonial period, the presence of communist and communalist forces justified the continued use of special coercive powers. Over time, therefore, the regular resort to exceptional measures designed for particular classes was normalised within India’s coercive network. State violence was a prominent part of this network, but it was not a heavily bureaucratised coercive practice. Rather, officers on the ground tended to employ force under the wide powers of discretion afforded to them. The extensive use of spectacular and arbitrary violence was a routine way in which state power was exercised. The state violence of 1919, with which this book began, was subjected to scrutiny from above, and men who broke the rules, like General Dyer, were labelled rogues and censured. Given the exceptional circumstances of 1919, in which the Liberal Edwin Montagu sat as Secretary of State, and the imperial power was on the verge of inaugurating a new constitutional arrangement, the Hunter Committee was more likely to have been the apotheosis of a brief flash of imperial liberalism, rather than the last example in a longer line of self-criticism. Over the following four decades, the formal rules on the power of local officers to use force changed remarkably little: the standing principle remained the ‘minimum use of force’. Nonetheless, governments’ unspoken tolerance of greater levels of violence seemed to rise, while their willingness to discipline members of the police and military declined. State violence, therefore, increasingly took the form of tacitly permitted transgressions of the rule on the minimum use of force. This was complemented by more assertive media campaigns and less intensive internal monitoring, both of which were designed to shield the state’s forces from criticism. Thus, during the noncooperation campaign local officers were empowered to gather their own evidence to back up their actions in the face of nationalist accusations that they

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had acted excessively. A decade later in the next nationalist agitation, the mechanisms for probing the conduct of the police had been significantly curtailed. And by the Second World War external scrutiny had virtually ceased to function in times of emergency. This trend ensured that official tolerance of state violence was at its peak during the upheaval of partition. The more indiscriminate use of force seems to have been curtailed somewhat during the second stage of the fight against communists in Hyderabad, but only after the insurgency had proved to be immune from the persuasive powers of overwhelming force. Physical force remained a routine part of the state’s response to large-scale unrest throughout the mid-twentieth century. As a discrepancy grew between official rhetoric and practice, so too did a division of labour arise between officials who formulated the rules on the use of force and non-official parties who monitored them. State violence was, in some ways, very useful for India’s political parties. Control over the depiction of state violence enabled Indian nationalists to portray moments of violence as symptomatic of British rule. By interpreting these acts for ordinary Indians Congress hoped to draw them into the national movement. The Congress high command did not have a monopoly over these representational strategies, however. Because a multitude of participants produced different messages, the campaign to publicise police atrocities during the civil disobedience movement was rife with ambiguities over whether or not policemen (who were overwhelmingly Indian) were welcome members of the Indian national family. Even before the end of British rule, the Hindu Mahasabha began using public criticism of Muslim police across the country to further its larger Hindu nationalist agenda. The lionisation of political prisoners was a vital component of larger strategies of representation. But the symbolic utility of the political prisoner was double-edged. A patriot suffering in jail for his country was a potent metaphor for both the injustices of colonialism and the sacrifices India’s nationalist leadership was asking of all Indians. Yet, the symbol was only useful to India’s main nationalist party so long as it was Congressmen who were imprisoned. Once Congress took office, either at the inauguration of provincial ministries in 1937, or at independence, opposition parties – from revolutionaries and communists to the RSS – readily adapted the symbol of the political prisoner to their own ends. These contests left a troubled legacy for both the Congress party and for the state as a whole. What can these conclusions reveal about the state in colonial and postcolonial India? At the beginning of the period under review, the imperial power was intent on devolving powers to elected bodies at the provincial and local level. Over the ensuing decades further constitutional responsibilities were distributed away from the centre. This kind of transfer required that lower level officials act as predictable components of a unified bureaucracy, however. And from 1919 through to 1956 local officers, whether in provincial administrations or in the districts, resisted the idea that their conduct ought to be determined by the centre. As they tried to assert control over the lower ranks of the administration, central authorities tended informally to

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accumulate policy-making power at the centre. But this did not give them control over the lower echelons of government servants, who remained fiercely independent. By the end of this period, every facet of state action had become a site of political contest. Of course, government service was never apolitical, especially in the colonial context. But in this period the everyday conduct of individual officers, especially the police, became intertwined with all-India politics to a new extent. As Indian political organisations demanded that government servants re-evaluate their loyalties, these allegiances were made into a legitimate site of political contest. Government forces were cajoled, compelled and bribed into taking sides not only in the anti-imperial struggle, but in the contest over the communal character of the state which dominated the transition to independence. To be sure, the men serving in the police, military and bureaucracy were not always passive in this struggle; they were often active participants. When Indians disagreed over the shape of their new nation as they took power in 1947, the battle over the shape of the state tended to be waged as much by local officers implementing government policy as by senior members of the Prime Minister’s cabinet.

Reassessing colonial punishment Given that scholars of colonial prisons have demonstrated that penal regimes in the different European empires shared many characteristics, this reassessment of the Indian coercive network calls for renewed research into punishment and state violence across the colonial and postcolonial world. In the European empires, life inside jails rarely resembled the ideal laid out in prison regulations. First, imperial powers repeatedly struggled to strike a balance between providing sanitary and healthy living conditions to prisoners, and avoiding the perception that prison conditions were better than life outside amongst the colonised population. Jails around the world, therefore, remained damp, dark and dirty places, and imprisonment often was tantamount to a sentence of death, or at least ill-health, for the rest of a convict’s life. Second, although nearly all colonial governments elaborated detailed rules on the classification and segregation of different types of inmate, many colonial prison systems failed to implement these regulations. Those that made a partial effort often served not to separate women, undertrials, juveniles and condemned prisoners, but rather to underscore racial differences between the colonisers and the colonised, and to bolster social divisions amongst inmates from the local population. Third, in most places of confinement labour regimes were more concerned with securing financial self-sufficiency than with the reform of inmates. Where convicts were not found repairing jails and roads, or performing everyday duties like cooking and washing clothes for inmates, their labour was often contracted out to private families, mining companies and farmers. Finally, warders were notorious for extortion and corruption, for smuggling, and for routine violence in jails.1 Across the

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colonial world prisons tended to conform more to the customary order established between inmates and warders than to any disciplinary ideal. If colonial prisons rarely served disciplinary purposes in practice, colonial governments did regularly use collective confinement to confront political action. During the conquest of Africa, it was common for African leaders to be imprisoned until they submitted to colonial rule.2 Caroline Elkins has revealed the collective incarceration which the British resorted to in their battle against the Mau Mau rebellion in 1950’s Kenya.3 Large scale detention without trial was also a feature of the fight against communists in British Malaya and French Indochina.4 Similarly, French Government forces swept thousands into jails and detention camps in their attempt to regain control of Algeria during the French-Algerian war.5 The colonial state was unable to keep a monopoly on the use of the prison for political purposes, however. The experience of imprisonment could help create a sense of nationhood in the face of the imperial power.6 As everyday life in jails was woven into larger political choreographies the prison took a more prominent part in larger political calculations in the colonies than in the metropole. These systems of incarceration shared much with India’s twentieth-century prison regime. It would be but a small step to suggest that, contrary to what the scholarly consensus holds, a disciplinary system of imprisonment was not becoming the dominant form of punishment in the twentieth-century colonial world.7 Indeed, there are hints that bodily punishments, collective sanctions and state violence remained integral to colonial coercive methods in Africa, Asia and Latin America. As in India, these sanctions often operated completely outside of or simply without being constrained by the rules of the formal criminal justice system.8 Many accounts of violent, improvised and collective sanctions, where they do exist, are infused with a sense of scandal at the ways in which these other measures violated the ‘rule of law’.9 We must move beyond the idea that some colonial penal tactics violated a legal order which was otherwise just. We must recognise that they constituted specifically colonial systems of law which had little to do with the clichéd and idealised sense in which the term ‘rule of law’ was often used.10 An approach which employs the model of the coercive network will enable scholars to sketch out the extent of colonial violence and gain a more thorough understanding of the nature of the colonial state.

Re-examining postcolonial India In addition, the conclusions of the present study also shine new light on the coercive network of today’s India. Since the 1970s a sense has arisen that there are serious flaws in postcolonial India’s criminal justice system, and perhaps even in the state more generally. Writing after the end of Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency, the eminent legal scholar Upendra Baxi lamented that the Indian state, with its corruption, discriminatory treatment of the poor and failure to implement its own laws showed ‘a weak commitment to the rule of

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law’.11 A decade later, Atul Kohli complained that India’s state was ‘omnipresent but feeble’, and that its civil and police services had been ‘politicised’.12 Notwithstanding India’s brilliant economic performance in the past decade or more, much remains to be desired in the Indian coercive network. At the turn of the twenty-first century courts remain undermanned and prisons overcrowded. By some estimates the backlog of cases in all subordinate and appellate courts stood at nearly thirty million in 2007.13 In the Supreme Court alone nearly 46,926 cases were pending at the end of 2007.14 This has repercussions in the prison system, where thousands of accused persons are held on remand and wait for months or years in jail while their trials are completed. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available, 66.2 percent of the prison population were undertrial inmates.15 Notwithstanding the fact that India’s jails are bulging with inmates, it is clear that incarceration after conviction is still not a common form of punishment in India. With a convict population of 108,572 inmates in 2005, India has one of the lowest post-trial imprisonment rates in the world.16 With the courts groaning under the pressure of pending cases, detention without trial has remained a prominent feature of the postcolonial coercive network. A series of legislative measures have sustained this trend: from the Preventive Detention Act of 1950 to the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2002, lawmakers have provided governments with intermittent but extensive powers of detention without trial. The number of detenus peaked during the Emergency years of the 1970s, but at the end of 2005 there still over 2500 persons being detained without trial in Indian jails.17 Whilst legislators have shown an incredible willingness to bend to the needs of the coercive network, there is still a strong impetus to move the most challenging forms of activity entirely outside of the formal law. Since the late 1950s extra-judicial executions or ‘encounter killings’ have become an important tool in the police repertoire. In these cases, persons whom the police suspect of involvement in serious criminal activity are captured and executed in secret locations. After the murder, the authorities announce that the suspect had been resisting arrest, or fleeing police custody, and concoct evidence to support their claim. The state’s forces have been very creative in this respect: they have put guns in the deceased’s hand and pulled the trigger to make it appear as if the police acted in self-defence; they have shot unarmed suspects in the back in order to prove the deceased were trying to escape, etc.18 Accusations of this kind first arose in respect to a campaign against dacoits in UP in the late 1950s.19 After the Naxalite insurgency began in the late 1960s, allegations of encounter killings arose in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. The ‘encounter’ has been used to ‘clean up’ the mafia in Bombay after the riots and bomb blasts of 1992–93.20 More recently, Human Rights Watch has spoken of an ‘epidemic of fake “encounter killings”’ in Indian Kashmir.21 It appears that police transgressions of this kind are tacitly permitted: formal enquiries are rarely held, and, when they have been

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conducted, their proceedings have been obstructed and their recommendations simply ignored.22 Whilst the effort to combat some classes of suspect has been overzealous, to put it mildly, in other respects, the state’s forces have been found lacking. Surveying the police response during communal rioting from the 1960s to 1980s, Vibhuti Narain Rai, a serving Superintendent of Police in North India, found that police ‘did not act as a neutral law enforcement agency but more as a “Hindu” force’.23 Rai found that there was systematic discrimination against Muslims in every police activity from the use of force, to the treatment of those detained.24 His conclusions appeared prescient after the rioting in Gujarat in 2002.25 There, as many as two thousand Muslims were killed in rioting that some scholars have termed a ‘pogrom’.26 Several parties have claimed that, ‘the police smoothed the path for the rioters in every way they could’.27 Human Rights Watch alleged that police ‘crimes’ ranged from ‘inaction to direct participation’, and that senior police officers who did try to intervene were transferred or upbraided by their superiors.28 This catalogue of defects is not intended to imply that India is completely lawless. Rather, India’s governments seem to have honed the ability to create conceptual ‘frontiers’ beyond which the laws of domestic governance do not apply. Many of these frontiers are, indeed, on the geographical margins of India: as successive governments have tried to bring the northeast and northwest fully into the Union they have done so, ironically, by construing these territories as ‘disturbed areas’ – frontier zones outside of the jurisdiction of the ‘ordinary’ rules which apply in the rest of the country. Other frontiers have been forged around types of activity which are deemed criminal but which seem to slip through the security forces’ net. Thus, conceptual fences have been erected around suspected dacoits, mafia members and political dissidents, and the police have been allowed to combat these dangers in any manner necessary. The resort to these strategies has become routine so that the ‘extraordinary’ laws created to do battle in these hinterlands have become permanent and normalised, and the boundaries between normal and exceptional laws are far from clear. It is common to trace the origins of India’s problems of ‘ungovernability’ to the 1960s. In the first seventeen years of independence, this argument runs, India enjoyed relative stability. According to this line of thought, independence did introduce change in India, including the introduction of democracy with universal suffrage and a constitution with a charter of fundamental rights, but the trauma of partition, the war over Kashmir, and the integration of the princely states, ‘ensured that precisely those traits of the Raj which Indian nationalists had struggled against were now reinforced.’29 The police, military and bureaucracy inherited from the colonial regime, scholars agree, enabled the Congress-led government to ensure stability and unity in India. After Nehru’s death, according to this line of reasoning, authority gradually slipped away from the Congress party and it lost its direction. As she grappled for electoral success, Indira Gandhi ‘shattered’ the existing patterns of Congress politics,

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and transformed the party into an ‘unaudited company for winning elections’.30 In turn, the state has undergone a crisis of legitimacy both ideologically and organisationally, and its services have become ‘politicised’.31 Without belittling more recent trends, the conclusions of the present work suggest that the coercive network’s inadequacies have a longer history than the scholarly consensus suggests. Certainly, the low number of judges, the poor pay of policemen and the overcrowding of prisons today can be traced directly to the colonial period. The late imperial government was unwilling to pour money into a colony which was already witnessing decreasing returns on investment. For its part, India’s early postcolonial rulers were more concerned with investing in economic development and political democracy than with sinking money into police, courts and prisons. Underinvestment is a significant factor in the continued underperformance of these institutions. Second, the intense ‘politicisation’ of the services today can clearly be traced to the colonial origins of the police. The contests over the loyalty of these men in the early twentieth century had brought their political allegiances to the forefront of all-India politics long before Nehru passed away. Third, the apparent communal bias of the police force which has figured so prominently in critiques of the police in the last two decades is also not without precedent. As this work has shown, allegations of partisanship have long been an element in communal clashes. Moreover, when the forces of India’s new state were reorganised during the transition to independence, this task was undertaken with the explicit expectation that servicemen would act in the interests of the religious groups to which they belonged. If the services have continued to be run on this basis, then bias would have become institutionalised over the past sixty years. Finally, although this research has not found evidence of police ‘encounter’ killings during the colonial period, the combination of sequestering certain classes of person for extraordinary sanctions and a low willingness to investigate allegations of police ‘excesses’ provided fertile ground in which such practices could take root. Certainly, the government of independent India did not relinquish the repressive powers of the colonial state, but equally India’s state has not remained unchanged since 1947. Indeed, the military has been remoulded structurally and doctrinally, and the ranks of the police and bureaucracy have expanded remarkably in the last sixty years.32 The introduction of democracy and the pursuit of development have provided new arenas for negotiation and confrontation between governments and ordinary Indians. To understand India’s present condition, scholars must now re-examine the early postcolonial state in light of the evidence now available about its colonial inheritance. Historians, therefore, must begin to see the Nehruvian era as a time of uncertainty, dynamism and contest. Indeed, a re-assessment of the larger postcolonial project may now be in order. The postcolonial critique has been most persuasive when evoking the brutality of the colonial condition. Violence, in Achille Mbembe’s understanding, is omnipresent in the colony, it ‘does more than penetrate every

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space: it pursues the colonised even in sleep and dream’.33 For Mbembe, ‘the colony is primarily a place where an experience of violence and upheaval is lived, where violence is built into structures and institutions’.34 Given the findings of the research presented above, it is impossible to deny that violence was a significant aspect of the colonial condition. But the postcolonial understanding essentialises the colonial state by attributing to it a strength and coherence which it simply did not posseses. Colonial governments were often characterised more by their inability to discipline the ranks of their own administrations than by their ambition to discipline colonial societies. Colonial violence often eluded institutions and escaped bureaucratisation. The colonial state was fractured, vulnerable and negotiated. The postcolonial states of the world inherited the fluid, frequently irrational and often selflimiting power of their colonial predecessors.

Glossary

ahimsa: non-violence aman sabha: lit. peace council, loyalty league anna: one-sixteenth of a rupee aparigraha: non-possessiveness ashram: refuge, religious retreat badmash: lit. wicked, bad character begar: unpaid labour (often forcefully exacted from labourers) chador: woman’s shawl chalo: march charkha: spinning wheel coolie: porter, labourer dacoit: robber who uses violence and operates in gangs dacoity: armed robbery deshmukh: local headman dhoti: piece of cloth wrapped around the lower body goonda: lit. lout or bully, underworld figure, see chapter six harijan: lit. devotee of the god Hari, untouchable hartal: strike inquilab: revolution khaddar/khadi: home-spun cloth ki jai: long-live kisan: peasant, farmer kotwal: officer in charge of a police station, deputy superintendent of police kotwali: police station lakh: one hundred thousand lathi: stick, bludgeon lungi: a cloth wrapped around the waist panchayat: village council purna: complete sangh: association sabha: society, assembly sarvodaya: commitment to public welfare satyagraha: lit. zeal for truth, non-violent civil resistance

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satyagrahi: non-violent protester sowar: mounted police subedar: captain swaraj: self-rule swadeshi: lit. of one’s own country, national manufactures talabdar: convict taluqdar: large land holder tehsildar: sub-collector of revenue thana: district subdivision; also refers to district police station Vanar Sena: lit. monkey army, a youth group videshi: foreign zamindar: landowner zillah: district zindabad: long-live Note on geographical names: I have not used diacritical marks, nor spellings presently in use in the territories studied. Where it is now common practice to transliterate names differently even in works of history, as in the case of Kanpur or Awadh, I have followed this practice, but in the endnotes I have strictly copied the spellings employed in the records themselves, in order to facilitate reference to these documents.

Notes

Chapter 1 Introduction 1 C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Also, Susan Bayly, The New Cambridge History of India, Vol IV.3: Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 2 David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 3 Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. 4 Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’ in Bernard S. Cohn (ed.), An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987. 5 Manu Goswami, Producing India: from Colonial Economy to National Space, Chicago: University of Chicago ress, 2004. 6 K. Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 7 Anil Seal, ‘Imperialism and Nationalism in India’ in John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal (eds.), Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870–1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp.1–27. 8 Ranajit Guha, ‘The Prose of Counter-insurgency’ in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies II: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983, pp.1–42; Upendra Baxi, ‘“The State’s Emissary”: the Place of Law in Subaltern Studies’ in Partha Chatterjee, and Gyan Pandey (eds.), Subaltern Studies VII: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp.247–64; Vivek Dhareshwar, and R. Srivatsan, ‘“Rowdy-sheeters”: an Essay on Subalternity and Politics’ in Shahid Amin, and Dipesh Chakrabarty (eds.), Subaltern Studies IX: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.201–31. 9 Stephen Legg, Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. 10 Paul R. Brass, The New Cambridge History of India, Volume IV.1: The Politics of India Since Independence, 2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Partha Chatterjee, ‘Development Planning and the Indian State’ in Partha Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp.271–97; Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India, London: Penguin Books, 1997;

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14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

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27 28

Notes Zoya Hasan, (ed.), Politics and the State in India, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000; Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: the History of the World’s Largest Democracy, London: Macmillan, 2007. Economists have tended to lead the way, Pranab Bardhan, Poverty, Agrarian Structure and Political Economy in India: Selected Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, ‘Customs of Governance: Colonialism and Democracy in Twentieth Century India’, Modern Asian Studies, 2007, vol.41, pp.441–70. Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Propaganda and Information in Eastern India, 1939–45: a Necessary Weapon of War, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001; Indivar Kamtekar, ‘A Different War Dance: State and Class in India, 1939–45’, Past and Present, 2002, vol.176, pp.187–221. On the Bengal famine see, Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981; Paul R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: the Famine of 1943–1944, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982; Bikramjit De, ‘Imperial Governance and the Challenges of War’, Studies in History, 2006, vol.22, pp.1–43. Akhil Gupta, ‘Blurred Boundaries: the Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State’, American Ethnologist, 1995, vol.22, pp.375–402. Timothy Mitchell, ‘Society, Economy and the State Effect’ in George Steinmetz (ed.), State/Culture: State-formation After the Cultural Turn, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, pp.76–97. Thomas Blom Hansen, and Finn Stepputat, (eds.), States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. The most recent study of the careers of ICS men is David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, London: John Murray, 2005. David C. Potter, India’s Political Administrators, 1919–1983, Oxford: Clarendon, 1968, pp.127–28. B.B. Misra, The Bureaucracy in India: an Historical Analysis of Development up to 1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977, p.283. Potter, India’s Political Administrators, p.21. David Arnold, ‘Police Power and the Demise of British Rule in India, 1930–47’ in David M. Killingray and David Anderson (eds.), Police Power and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917–1965, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992, pp.42–61, pp.56–57. David Arnold, ‘Bureaucratic Recruitment and Subordination in Colonial India: the Madras Constabulary’ in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies IV: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985. David Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras 1859–1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986, p.29 Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India c.1850–1950, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. See also Lata Singh, ‘Locating the Bihar Constabulary, 1920–22: an Exploration into the Margins of Resistance’, Social Scientist, 2002, vol.30, pp.47–71. Cf. Laura Bear, ‘An Economy of Suffering: Addressing the Violence of Discipline in Railway Workers’ Petitions to the Agent of the East Indian Railway’ in Steven Pierce and Anupama Rao (eds.), Discipline and the Other Body: Correction, Corporeality, Colonialism, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Arnold, Police Power; David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: the Indian Army, 1860–1940, Houndmills: Macmillan, 1994. Anand A. Yang, ‘Disciplining “Natives”: Prisons and Prisoners in Early Nineteenth Century India’, South Asia, 1987, vol.X, pp.29–47; David Arnold, ‘The

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30

31

32

33

34

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Colonial Prison: Power, Knowledge and Penology in Nineteenth-century India’ in David Arnold and D. Hardiman (eds.), Subaltern Studies VIII: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp.148–87; Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Political Prisoners in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998; Sen, Disciplining Punishment; Anand A. Yang, ‘The Lotah Emeutes of 1855: Caste, Religion and Prisons in North India in the Early Nineteenth Century’ in James H. Mills, and Satadru Sen (eds.), Confronting the Body: the Politics of Physicality in Colonial and Post-Colonial India, London: Anthem Press, 2004, pp.102–17. Anand A. Yang, ‘Dangerous Castes and Tribes: the Criminal Tribes Act and the Magahiya Doms of Northeast India’ in Anand A. Yang (ed.), Crime and Criminality in British India, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985, pp.108–39; Sanjay Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing “Criminals by Birth” part 1’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 1990, vol.27, pp. 131–64, Sanjay Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing “Criminals by Birth” part 2’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 1990, vol.27, pp. 259–87, Sandria Freitag, ‘Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India’, Modern Asian Studies, 1991, vol.25, pp.227–61. Fisch considers bodily punishments during early Company Rule, but he does so on the assumption that the various punishments of the pre-modern state were eventually replaced by imprisonment. J. Fisch, Cheap Lives and Dear Limbs: the British Transformation of the Bengal Criminal Law, Weisbaden: F. Steiner, 1983. See also, Kaushik Roy, ‘Coercion Through Leniency: British Manipulation of the Courts-Martial System in the Post-Mutiny Indian Army, 1859–1913’, Journal of Military History, 2001, vol.65, pp.937–64. Indeed, the rate of formal imprisonment remained extremely low. In 1936, a relatively average year in the Bombay Presidency, Magistrates heard 166,826 criminal cases. While the conviction rate was around eighty percent, only 5273 people were sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and only thirty-nine of these were sentenced to serve between six months and two years in jail. Report on the Administration of Civil and Criminal Justice in the Bombay Presidency (1936). This understanding of networks is influenced by Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power Volume II: the Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919–1960, London: Macmillan, 1990; Susan L. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-Insurgency 1944–1960, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1995; John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002; Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Gautam Chakravarty, The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Daniel J. Rycroft, Representing Rebellion: Visual Aspects of Counter-Insurgency in Colonial India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006; Christopher Herbert, War of No Pity: the Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008; Yumna Siddiqi, Anxieties of Empire and the Fiction of Intrigue, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Foucault’s concept of ‘medicalisation’ is useful in understanding these developments. Doctors were put in charge of whipping and force-feeding convicts. But, the term ‘medicalisation’ implies extensive change over a sustained period, and it would be over-stating the case to use it with regard to penal practices in India. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings, 1972– 1977 (Edited by Colin Gordon), New York: Prentice Hall, 1980.

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36 Tapan Raychaudhuri, ‘Indian Nationalism as Animal Politics’, Historical Journal, 1979, vol.22, pp.747–63; David Hardiman, ‘The Indian “Faction”: a Political Theory Examined’ in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies I: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, pp.198–231. 37 Richard Sisson, and Stanley Wolpert, (eds.), Congress and Indian Nationalism: the Pre-Independence Phase, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988; Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh: Class, Community and Nation in Northern India, 1920–1940, 2nd edn. London: Anthem Press, 2002; D.A. Low, (ed.), Congress and the Raj: Facets of the Indian Struggle 1917–1947, 2nd edn., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004. 38 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. 39 For an earlier statement of this position, Judith M. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915–1922, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972; Judith M. Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience: the Mahatma in Indian Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. 40 Ranajit Guha, ‘Discipline and Mobilize’ in Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (eds.), Subaltern Studies VII: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp.69–120. Also Sisson and Wolpert, Congress and Indian Nationalism. 41 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 42 C.A. Bayly, ‘The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian Society, 1700–1930’ in Arjun Appadorai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp.285–321; Emma Tarlo, ‘The Problem of What to Wear: the Politics of Khadi in Late Colonial India’, South Asia Research, 1991, vol.11, pp.134–57; Lisa N. Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. 43 David Arnold, ‘The Self and the Cell: Indian Prison Narratives as Life Histories’ in David Arnold, and Stuart Blackburn (eds.), Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004, pp.29–53. 44 David Hardiman, Gandhi: in his Time and Ours, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003. 45 This point has been noted by historians of khadi, Tarlo, ‘What to Wear’; Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation. 46 Shahid Amin, ‘Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921–22’ in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies III: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984, pp.1–61. 47 Bhattacharya, Propaganda and Information; Indivar Kamtekar, ‘The End of the Colonial State in India, 1942–47’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1988; Gyanesh Kudaisya, Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2006. 48 For the most recent statement of this position see, Frank Dikötter, and Ian Brown, (eds.), Cultures of Confinement: a History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America, London: Hurs & Company, 2007. 49 For a discussion of the ways in which gender and race were negotiated through the body, see Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (eds.), Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. 50 E.g. Yang, ‘Disciplining “Natives”’; Yang, ‘Lotah Emeutes’; Arnold, ‘Colonial Prison’. 51 Frederick Cooper, and Ann Laura Stoler (eds.), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Notes

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52 Bayly, Empire and Information; Thomas Richards, ‘Archive and Utopia’, Representations, 1997, vol.37, pp.104–35, Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance’, Archival Science, 2002, vol.2, pp.87–109. 53 Aided by a boom in political publications, the vernacular ‘public spheres’ expanded greatly from the 1920s. Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920– 1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002, p.78. 54 N. Gerald Barrier, Banned: Controversial Literature and Political Control in British India, 1907–1947, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1974, p.157. 55 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, pp.81–82. 56 Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Mobilization in a Mass Movement: Congress ‘Propaganda’ in the United Provinces (India), 1930–45’, Modern Asian Studies, 1975, vol.9, pp.205–26. Chapter 2 Jallianwala Bagh, the Punjab disturbances of 1919, and the limits of State Power in India, 1919–1920 1 Tan Tai Yong, The Garrison State: the Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab, 1849–1947, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005, p.98. 2 M.S. Leigh, Punjab and the War (Lahore, 1922), Punjab State Archives (hereafter PSA) Jullander Records, no.1141. 3 On the Ghadar party see, Harish K. Puri, Ghadar Movement: Ideology, Organisation and Strategy, Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University Press, 1983. On Bengal’s revolutionaries see Peter Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India, 1900–1910, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. 4 Judith M. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915–1922, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. 5 Calcutta Samachar, 8 April 1919, p.2, translation own. 6 Calcutta Samachar, 11 April 1919, p.2. Private letter from Lord Ronaldshay, Governor of Bengal, to Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, 14 April 1919, India Office Records, British Library (hereafter IOR) Mss Eur/D523/30. 7 The official figures cite 379 dead, while contemporary Indian accounts estimated between 1000 and 1500. A house to house survey indicated that 530 people had lost their lives. Helen Fein, Imperial Crime and Punishment: the Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and British Judgment, 1919–1920, Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1977, p.xiii. 8 Ibid., pp.x–xi. 9 Purmina Bose, Organizing Empire: Individualism, Collective Agency and India, Durham: Duke University Press, 2003, p.8. 10 Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer, London: Hambledon & London, 2005, p.x. 11 Ibid., p.420. 12 Punjab Disturbances 1919–1920, Volume Two, British Perspective: Report of the Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–20, Appointed by the Government of India to Investigate the Disturbances in the Punjab, Delhi and Bombay, Delhi: Deep Publications, 1976 (hereafter, Punjab Disturbances II). 13 Punjab Disturbances 1919–1920, Volume One, Indian Perspective: Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Sub-Committee of Indian National Congress to Look into Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, Delhi: Deep Publications, 1976 (hereafter, Punjab Disturbances I). 14 V.N. Datta, ‘Introduction’ in Gursharan Singh, et al. (eds.), Jallianwala Bagh: Commemoration Volume and Amritsar and Our Duty to India, Patiala: Publications Bureau, Punjabi University, 1994, pp.1–13, Kamlesh Mohan, ‘The Jallianwala Bagh Tragedy and its Impact as a Catalyst of Indian National Consciousness’, International Journal of Punjab Studies, 1996, vol.3, pp.151–80.

186

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15 E.g. PSA, Home Judicial f.5268/64. 16 Punjab Disturbances II, pp.131–34. 17 Detentions in the major cities were as follows: 251 in Lahore, 179 in Gujranwala, 42 in Lyallpur, 23 in Gujrat, and 193 in Amritsar. Detentions lasted up to 79 days in a few cases. Punjab Disturbances II, pp.131–34. 18 Ibid., p.134. 19 Ibid. 20 Confidential District and Miscellaneous Reports on the Punjab Disturbances, April 1919, PSA, f.1763; Reports on the Punjab Disturbances April 1919 presented to Parliament by command of His Majesty (1920). 21 Order by Sir Edward MacLagan, Lieutenant Governor, Punjab, 28 June 1919, PSA, Home Judicial, f.5259/64. 22 Order by MacLagan, 16 June 1919, PSA, Home Judicial, f.5315/65. 23 Ibid. 24 A. Gauba, ‘The Amritsar Conspiracy Case, 1919 and Dr Satyapal’ in Singh, Commemoration Volume, pp.180–89. See also, The Bombay Chronicle, 18 July 1919, pp.9–10. 25 They included Lala Harkishanlal, Pandit Rambhuj Dutt Chaudhury, Mir Allah Dir, S. Motisingh of Lahore, M. Ghulam Mohammed, S. Anubhavanand, Pandit Dinanath, Dr Gurubaksh Rai of Amritsar, Lala Jaganath of Gujranwala, Dr Basatan, Dr Dinanath, S. Lehnasingh, Mishinlal, Mr Bishindas. The Bombay Chronicle, 29 December 1919, supplement page F. 26 Quote from C.F. Andrews, an Anglican Missionary and close associate of Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. The Bombay Chronicle, 19 July 1919, p.13. 27 The Bombay Chronicle, 19 July 1919, p.10. 28 The Bombay Chronicle, 24 July 1919, p.5, and 13 June 1919, p.8. 29 The Bombay Chronicle, 25 July 1919, p.8. 30 Maclagan to Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy, Enclosure C in Chelmsford to Montagu, 7 August 1919, IOR Mss Eur D/523/9. 31 Ibid. 32 Montagu to Chelmsford, 8 August 1919, IOR Mss Eur D/523/3. 33 Chelmsford to Montagu, 4 September 1919, IOR Mss Eur D/523/9. 34 The Bombay Chronicle, 4 August 1919, p.6. 35 Sir Harcourt Butler, Governor of UP, to Chelmsford, Enclosure A in Chelmsford to Montagu, 25 July 1919, IOR Mss Eur D/523/9. 36 Summary of Ronaldshay’s views in Chelmsford to Montagu, 18 December 1919, IOR Mss Eur D/523/9. 37 Montagu to Chelmsford, 1 April 1920, IOR Mss Eur D/523/4. 38 Montagu to Chelmsford, 7 January 1920, IOR Mss Eur D/523/4. 39 Montagu to Chelmsford, 1 April 1920, IOR Mss Eur D/523/4. 40 Maclagan to Chelmsford, Enclosure in Chelmsford to Montagu, 3 January 1920, IOR Mss Eur D/523/10; Lord Reading, Viceroy, to Montagu, 25 August 1921, IOR Mss Eur D/523/14. 41 Collective fines were used in both Ireland and England as well. Government of India, Home (Police) to Local Governments other than Bombay, 5 March 1921, Maharashtra State Archives (hereafter MSA), Home, f.93, 1921–27. See the English Riot Act (1886). 42 Centrally, the measure was found in the Police Act (1860); provincial governments had specifically tailored versions of the measure. 43 Punjab Disturbances II, p.24. 44 ‘Fine on Nadiad and Barejadi’, 7 September 1919, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmedabad and Delhi: Navajivan Trust, 1958–84 (hereafter CWMG) Vol. XVI, p.99. 45 N.J. Wadia, District Magistrate, Kaira to the Commissioner, Northern Division, 14 August 1920, MSA, Home, f.726, 1921.

Notes

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46 S.H. Coverton, District Magistrate, Kaira, to the Commissioner, Northern Division, 12 July 1922, MSA, Home, f.93, 1921–27. 47 J.H. Garrett, District Magistrate, Kaira, to J. Ghosal, Commissioner, Northern Division, 22 February 1921, MSA, Home, f.726, 1921. 48 H.P. Tollinton, Officiating Chief Commissioner, Delhi, to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 18 September 1920, National Archives of India (hereafter NAI) Home Poll, December 1920, 133–35 & K.W., Part A. 49 Ibid.; Ghosal to J. Crerar, Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Home Department, 8 April 1921, MSA, Home, f.726, 1921. 50 Anil Seal, ‘Imperialism and Nationalism in India’ in John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal (ed.), Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870–1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp.1–27. 51 Extract from the Minute Book of the General Meeting of the Nadiad City Municipality for the year 1920–21, [undated], MSA, Home, f.726, 1921. 52 ‘Fine on Nadiad and Barejadi’, 7 September 1919, Vol. XVI, p.99. 53 Garrett to Ghosal, 5 April 1921, MSA, Home, f.726, 1921. 54 Note by the Acting Commissioner, Northern Division, 18 August 1920, MSA, Home, f.726, 1921. 55 Garrett to Ghosal, 5 April 1921, MSA, Home, f.726, 1921. 56 Gokaldas D. Talati, President, City Municipality, Nadiad, to Crerar, 9 June 1921, MSA, Home, f.726, 1921. 57 Extract from fortnightly report for Delhi for the second half of August 1920, NAI Home Poll, December 1920, 133–35 & K.W., Part A. 58 Tollinton to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 18 September 1920, NAI Home Poll, December 1920, 133–35 & K.W., Part A, and Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, to Tollinton, 30 October 1920, NAI Home Poll, December 1920, 133–35 & K.W., Part A. 59 Punjab Legislative Council Debates, volume I, 28 February 1921, p.87. 60 Government of India, Home (Police) to Local Governments other than Bombay, 5 March 1921, MSA, Home, f.93, 1921–27. 61 Ibid. 62 See e.g. J. Wilson-Johnson, Home Secretary to the Government of Punjab to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 22 November 1921, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5506/68. 63 P.R. Cadell, Commissioner, Southern Division, to the Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Home Department, 2 July 1921, MSA, Home, f.93, 1921–27. 64 Government of Bombay, Home Department Resolution, 19 May 1922, MSA, Home, f.93, 1921–27. 65 J.L. Rieur, Commissioner, Sind, to the Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Home Department, 11 October 1921, MSA, Home, f.93, 1921–27. 66 Government of Bombay, Home Department Resolution, 19 May 1922, MSA, Home, f.93, 1921–27. 67 Coverton to the Commissioner, Northern Division, 12 July 1922, MSA, Home f.93, 1921–27. 68 Government of Bombay, Home Department Resolution, 2 February 1923, MSA, Home, f.93, 1921–27. 69 David Killingray, ‘The “Rod of Empire”: the Debate over Corporal Punishments in the British African Colonial Forces, 1888–1946’, Journal of African History, 1994, vol.35, pp.201–16, David Anderson, ‘Master and Servant in Colonial Kenya’, Journal of African History, 2000, vol.41, pp.459–85. 70 C.M. King, Commissioner, Lahore Division to the Revenue Secretary to the Government, Punjab, 21 February 1920, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5319/65. In NWFP, the perceived under-development of society was used to justify whipping, Sir Hamilton Grant, Chief Commissioner of NWFP to the Secretary to the

188

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Notes Government of India, Home Department (Judicial), 19 March 1920, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. A. Montgomerie, Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Judicial Department, to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 14 August 1920, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. C.W. Gwynne, Officiating Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, Home (Judicial) Department to the Home Secretary to the Government, Punjab, 2 May 1923, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. For a full discussion of the condition of jails in India at this time, see Report of the Indian Jails Committee 1919–1920. See e.g. James Penny, ‘Punjab Memoirs: 1910–45’, p.96, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge, Penny Papers. P. Marsden to J.P. Thompson, Chief Secretary to the Government of India, 26 September 1920, NAI Home Poll, December 1920, no.85, Deposit. Ibid. Punjab Disturbances, volume two, p.149. Confidential District and Miscellaneous Reports on the Punjab Disturbances, April 1919, PSA, no.1763. Punjab Disturbances II, p.138. Punjab Disturbances I, p.64. Report of J.A. Richley, Director of Public Instruction, Punjab to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Punjab, 12 July 1929, Confidential District and Miscellaneous Reports on the Punjab Disturbances, April 1919, PSA, book no.1763. Punjab Disturbances I, p.61. Ibid., p.159. Ibid., p.64. India (London), 23 May 1919, NAI, Home Poll, September 1919, no.400–405, Part A. Montagu to Chelmsford, 26 May 1920, Punjab Disturbances II, p.xlviii. Montagu to Chelmsford, 28 April 1919, NAI, Home Poll, May 1919, no.4, Deposit. Montagu to Chelmsford, 28 August 1919, IOR Mss Eur D/523/3. Adjutant General in India to the General Officers Commanding, Lahore and Rawalpindi Divisions, 22 April 1919, NAI, Home Poll, May 1919, no.4, Deposit. Chelmsford to Montagu, forwarding copy of telegram Chelmsford to Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Lieutenant-General, Punjab, 23 April 1919, NAI, Home Poll, May 1919, no.4, Deposit. Demi-Official letter from O’Dwyer to Chelmsford, 23 April 1919, NAI, Home Poll, May 1919, no.4, Deposit. Chelmsford to Montagu, 25 September 1919, IOR Mss Eur D/523/9. Punjab Disturbances II, p.141. H. McPherson, Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department to Thompson, 30 November 1920, NAI Home Poll, December 1920, no.85, Deposit. Instructions relating to Martial Law, 22 February 1921, IOR L/P&J/6/1676, p.1. Ibid., p.9. Montagu to Chelmsford, 2 September 1919, NAI, Home Poll, September 1919, no.400–405, Part A. A similar review took place in Kenya under the Native Punishments Commission. See, Anderson, ‘Master and Servant’. Punjab Disturbances II, p.225. Two of the bombs were unaccounted for, and several failed to explode, see Punjab Disturbances II, pp. 74–75. On the imperial use of air power, see David Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: the Royal Air Force, 1919–1939, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990; Priya Satia, ‘The Defence of Inhumanity: Air Control and the British Idea of Arabia’, The American Historical Review, 2006, vol.111, pp.16–51.

Notes 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124

125 126 127

189

Calcutta Samachar, 13 April 1919, p.2, emphasis added, translation own. Punjab Disturbances I, p.50, emphasis added. Montagu to Chelmsford, 26 May 1920, Punjab Disturbances II, p.xlv. Punjab Disturbances II, p.33. The authors of the minority report agreed, Ibid., p.xix. Ibid., p.224. Ibid., p.225. Ibid., p.77. Ibid., p.78. Ibid., pp.xlix–l. Ibid., pp.189. Ibid., p.47. Fein, Imperial Crime; Bose, Organizing Empire, Montagu to Chelmsford, 26 May 1920, Punjab Disturbances II, p.xlvi. Ibid., p.xlv. Punjab Disturbances II, p.190. Ibid., p.46 Letter from Government of India, Home Department to Montagu, 3 May 1920, Punjab Disturbances II, pp.xxi–ii. Ibid., p.xli. Instructions relating to Martial Law, 22 February 1921, IOR L/P&J/6/1676, p.4. Ibid., p.26. Datta, ‘Introduction’ in Singh, Commemoration Volume, Mohan, ‘Jallianwala Bagh Tragedy’. On magic lantern shows of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre see, Lisa N. Trivedi, ‘Visually Mapping the “Nation”: Swadeshi Politics in Nationalist India, 1920–30’, Journal of Asian Studies, 2003, vol.63, pp.11–41. Raghunandan Prasad Shukla, Jalianwala ka krur katha [The cruel story of Jallianwala], (Benares, 1920), British Library printed materials (hereafter BLUK) PIB 51/18, translation own. Ramsammukh Shukla, Ahimsa Sangram [non-violent struggle] (Benares, 1922), BLUK PIB 56/2, translation own. Jagannath Prasad Gupta (ed.) Jalianwala Bagh ka Mahatmya [The Significance of Jallianwala Bagh] (Benares, 1920), BLUK PIB 37/14. Indeed, ‘mahatmya’ is also ‘a work celebrating any sacred place or object’, McGregor The Oxford HindiEnglish Dictionary, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, p.810. Subhadra Kumari ‘Jalianwala Bagh mem basant [Spring in Jallianwala Bagh]’ in Gupta Jalianwala Bagh, pp.4–5, translation own. Back cover, Gupta, Jalianwala Bagh. Shukla, Ahimsa.

Chapter 3 Disobedience and discord: the non-cooperation movement, 1920–25 1 The Ali brothers had been interned during the war for their pro-Turkish stance. See, Gail Minault, Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India, reprint edn., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. 2 Ibid. 3 Richard Gordon, ‘Non-Cooperation and Council Entry, 1919–20’ in John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal (eds.), Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870–1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, 123–53. 4 H. McPherson, draft of request for Joint Opinion of the Hon’ble the Advocate General of Bengal and the Standing Counsel of Bengal on the legality of the nonco-operation movement and on the question of taking proceedings against the leaders, messrs. Gandhi and Shaukat Ali, 19 June 1920, NAI, Home Poll, September 1920, no.100–103, Part A.

190

Notes

5 D.A. Low, ‘The Government of India and the First Non-Cooperation Movement, 1920–22’, Journal of Asian Studies, 1996, vol.25, 241–59, p.241. 6 Ibid., p.258. 7 Note by H. McPherson on the Joint Opinion of the Attorney General and the Standing Counsel, 26 July 1920, NAI, Home Poll, September 1920, no.100–103, Part A. 8 Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, to Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy, 15 July 1920, IOR Mss Eur D/523/4. 9 Thomas C.P. Gibbons, Advocate General, Bengal, and S.R. Das, Standing Counsel, Bengal, [undated], NAI, Home Poll, September 1920, no.100–103, Part A. 10 Government of India to all Provincial Governments, 4 September 1920, NAI, Home Poll, September 1920, no.100–103, Part A. 11 Government of India, Home Department Resolution, 6 November 1920, NAI, Home Poll. November 1920, 273–74 A. 12 Note by H. McPherson on the Joint Opinion of the Attorney General and the Standing Counsel, 26 July 1920, NAI, Home Poll, September 1920, no.100–103, Part A. 13 Government of India to all Provincial Governments, 4 September 1920, NAI, Home Poll, Sept. 1920, no.100–103, Part A. 14 The Independent, 28 January 1921, p.5. 15 Ibid. 16 Government of India, Home Department, to Government of Punjab, 16 February 1921, NAI, Home Poll, March 1921, no.5, Deposit. 17 Government of Punjab to Government of India, Home Department, 28 February 1921, NAI, Home Poll, March 1921, no.5, Deposit. 18 Note by S.P. O’Donnell, Government of India, Home Department, 2 March 1921, NAI, Home Poll, March 1921, no.5, Deposit. 19 For detailed statistics see, Judith M. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915–1922, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, p.309–15. 20 Quotation from Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, K.N. Panikkar and Sucheta Mahajan, India’s Struggle for Independence, 1855–1947, Delhi: Penguin, 1989, p.188. 21 Sir C. Setalvad, Government of Bombay, Home Department, 15 October 1921, in N.R. Phatak (ed.), Source Material for a History of the Freedom Movement in India, Volume III: Mahatma Gandhi 1915–1922, Bombay: Government Central Press, 1965, p.478 (hereafter Source Material III). 22 Lord Reading, Viceroy, to Montagu, 6 October 1921, IOR Mss Eur D/523/14. 23 Sir C. Setalvad, 15 October 1921, in Source Material III, p.478. 24 F.C. Griffith, Acting Inspector General of Police, Bombay Presidency, 5 November 1921, in Source Material III, pp.482–83. 25 Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department to the Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Special Department, 24 January 1922, in Source Material III, pp.520–21. 26 Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Special Department to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 7 February 1922, in Source Material III, pp.523–24. 27 Ibid. 28 Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 8 February 1922, in Source Material III, p.525. 29 The constructive programme was based on the principles of swadeshi, sarvodaya (commitment to public welfare) and aparigraha (non-possessiveness), and centred around self-sustaining manual work within village organisation, especially on the charkha. David Hardiman, Gandhi: in his Time and Ours, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003, pp.77–78.

Notes

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30 David Arnold, ‘The Self and the Cell: Indian Prison Narratives as Life Histories’ in David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn (eds.), Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004, pp.29–53. 31 Carey Anthony Watt, Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. 32 Government of India to all Provincial Governments, 24 November 1921, Uttar Pradesh State Archives (hereafter UPSA), Police, box 51, f.247/1923. 33 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmedabad and Delhi: Navajivan Trust, 1958–84 (hereafter CWMG), vol. XXIII, pp.446–49, 486–89, 506–9; CWMG, vol. XXIV, pp.1–4, 55–60, 95–99, 193–95, 224–26, 289–92, and 366–70. 34 Young India, 5 January 1922, in CWMG, vol. XXII, p.125. 35 Ibid, pp.127–28. 36 ‘A Model Prisoner’, Young India, 29 December 1921, in CWMG, vol. XXII, pp.108–10. 37 Bande Mataram (Lahore), 18 May 1922, NAI, Home Poll, f. 643/II of 1922. 38 Government of Bombay, Home Department Resolution no. P-24, 30 November 1923, Administration Report on the Bombay Jail Department for the Year 1922. 39 Young India, 16 March 1922, in CWMG, vol. XXII, pp.70–71. 40 Bande Mataram (Lahore), 8 May 1922, NAI, Home Poll, f. 643/II of 1922. 41 Ibid. 42 Young India, 9 February 1922, in CWMG, vol. XXII, p.356. 43 The Tribune, 6 November 1921, NAI, Home Poll, f.201/I of 1922. 44 Ibid. 45 The Tribune, 10 November 1921, NAI, Home Poll, f.201/I of 1922. 46 Ibid. 47 For details of the arrangements in each province, see Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Political Prisoners in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp.87–93. 48 The Tribune, 10 November 1921, NAI, Home Poll, f.201/I of 1922. 49 Reading to Sir William Vincent, Home Member, 27 December 1921, NAI, Home Poll, 201/VI of 1922. 50 Ibid. 51 Reading to Montagu, 15 December 1921, IOR Mss Eur D/523/14. 52 ‘The legal position is that rules under the Prisons Act are made by the Government of India and local Government subject to the control of the Government of India and we have every right to make our control effective.’ Note by Vincent, 25 May 1922, NAI, Home Poll, 201/VI of 1922. 53 Reading to Montagu, 28 December 1921, IOR Mss Eur D/523/14. 54 Chief Secretary to the Government of UP to all Commissioners of Divisions, 11 January 1922, UPSA, Judicial (Criminal) f.1578/1922. 55 Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922–1992, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 56 Order in Council, 9 June 1922, NAI, Home Poll, 201/VI of 1922. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 S.P. O’Donnell, Secretary to the Government of India to the Chief Secretary to the Government of UP, 23 August 1922, UPSA, Judicial (Criminal) f.1578/1922. 60 Note by Vincent, 25 May 1922, NAI, Home Poll, 201/VI of 1922. 61 L.S. White, Deputy Secretary to the Government of UP, Judicial (Criminal) Department to the Inspector-General of Prisons, UP, 26 October 1922, UPSA, Judicial (Criminal) f.1578/1922. 62 Note by J.W.S., member of the UP Government to the Honourable Finance Member, 13 November 1922, UPSA, Judicial (Criminal) f.1578/1922. 63 Urmila Shastri, Karagar [Prison], 2nd edn. Delhi: Atmaram & Sons, 1980, p.60, translation own.

192

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64 ‘Worse than Martial Law’, Young India, 19 January 1922, CWMG, vol. XXV, pp.471–73. 65 Secretary to the Bar Association, Gurgaon, 9 June 1923, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69; Moulvi Nuruddin Ahmed, Honourary Secretary, Vakils’ Association, High Court, Calcutta, 13 July 1923, enclosure no.18 in Reading to the Earl of Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India, 9 April 1925, IOR L/P&J/6/1194/ 1925 in vol.1902. 66 Racial Distinctions Committee, 3 February 1923, MSA, Home, f.430 – VI, 1923. 67 Frederick Edwin Smith. 68 Muhammad Arif, Assistant Commissioner, Hoshiarpur to the Deputy Commissioner, Hoshiarpur, 10 June 1923, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. 69 Muhammed Ali Muhammed Khan, Departmental note, 17 November 1923, UPSA, Judicial Criminal, f.803/1920. 70 Ibid. 71 A. Montgomerie, Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Judicial Department, to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 14 August 1920, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. 72 Sir Hamilton Grant, Chief Commissioner of NWFP to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department (Judicial), 19 March 1920; E.R. Abbott, Officiating Commissioner, Multan to the Revenue Secretary to the Government, Punjab, 23 February 1920, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5319/65. See also IOR L/P&J/6/1194/1925/vol.1902. 73 J.F. Graham, District Judge of Dacca to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Judicial Department, 19 July 1923, enclosure no.18 in Reading to Birkenhead, 9 April 1925, IOR L/P&J/6/1194/1925/vol.1902. See also, H. Hancock Prenter, Legal Remembrancer to the Government of Punjab to the Home Secretary to the Government of Punjab, 19 June 1923, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. 74 F.L. Brayne, Deputy Commissioner, Gurgaon to the Commissioner, Ambala Division, 18 June 1923, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. 75 Montagu to Chelmsford, 28 August 1919, IOR Mss Eur D/523/3. 76 G.N. Roy, Officiating Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Judicial Department to the Government of India, Home Department (Judicial), 10 June 1920, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69, A.W. Botham, Chief Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Assam, Judicial Department to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department (Judicial), 12 May 1920, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. 77 Rai Bahadur Lal Kahan Chand, Deputy Commissioner, Karnal, to the Commissioner, Ambala, 23 June 1923, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. 78 S.H. Fremantle, Commissioner, Meerut, 13 May 1920, UPSA, Judicial Criminal, f.803/1920. 79 Racial Distinctions Committee, 3 February 1923, MSA, Home, f.430 – VI, 1923. 80 Note by D.J. Boyd, Home Department, Government of Punjab, 2 August 1923. 81 Lal Kahan Chand to the Commissioner, Ambala, 23 June 1923, PSA, Home (Judicial), serial no.5641/69. 82 See enclosures 15, 18, 23 and 26 in Reading to Birkenhead, 9 April 1925, IOR L/ P&J/6/1194/1925/vol.1902, 83 The General Secretary, European Association, Calcutta, to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Judicial Department, enclosure no.19 in Reading to Birkenhead, 9 April 1925, IOR L/P&J/6/1194/1925 in vol.1902. 84 Reading to Birkenhead, 9 April 1925, IOR L/P&J/6/1194/1925 in vol.1902. 85 Birkenhead to Reading, 3 September 1925, L/P&J/1194/1925 in vol.1902. 86 H. Tomkinson, Joint Secretary to the Government of India to the Secretary to the Government of UP, Judicial Department, 6 October 1925, UPSA, Judicial Criminal, f.803/1920.

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87 L. Stuart, First Additional Judicial Commissioner of Oudh to K.G. Harper, Deputy Secretary to the Government of UP, 25 November 1925. 88 Ibid. 89 David Killingray, ‘The “Rod of Empire”: the Debate over Corporal Punishments in the British African Colonial Forces, 1888–1946’, Journal of African History, 1994, vol.35, pp.201–16; David Anderson, ‘Master and Servant in Colonial Kenya’, Journal of African History, 2000, vol.41, pp.459–85. 90 The UP Kisan Sabha was formed in 1918 as was the Awadh Kisan Sabha. The latter was put together by Gaurishanker Misra and Jawaharlal Nehru in order to unite the many village level Kisan Sabhas in the area. Majid Hayat Siddiqi, Agrarian Unrest in North India: the United Provinces 1918–1922, Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978. 91 Ibid., pp.105–6. 92 The Independent, 9 January 1921, p.1. 93 Report of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Tahsil Salon from Bazar Fursatganj to the Deputy Commissioner of Rae Bareli District, The Independent, 6 February 1921, p.1. 94 Official Statement on the Firing at Rae Bareli, The Bombay Chronicle, 12 January 1921, p.9. See also, Statement by the Deputy Commissioner, Rae Bareli on Munshiganj, The Independent, 6 February 1921, p.1. 95 The Independent, 11 January 1921, p.3. 96 Statement by the Deputy Commissioner, Rae Bareli, The Independent, 23 January 1921, p.2. 97 The Independent, 11 January 1921, p.3. 98 Ibid.; Article in The Independent, 22 January 1921, Gopal, S. (ed.), Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, First Series, Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972 (hereafter SWJN1), vol. I, p. 210. 99 Governor of UP to the Divisional Commissioner, The Independent, 12 January 1921, p.3. 100 The Independent, 14 January 1921, p.4. 101 The Independent, 13 January 1921, p.3. 102 Report of J.C. Faunthorpe, Commissioner, Lucknow Division, dated 18 January 1921, The Independent, 6 February 1921, p.1–2. 103 The Bombay Chronicle, 12 January 1921, p.9. 104 Gazette Extraordinary, published in The Independent, 5 February 1921, p.3. 105 The Bombay Chronicle, 22 January 1921, p.10. 106 ‘“Babas” on the Brain, Facts about the Kisan Crisis’, 21 January 1921, SWJN1, vol. I, p.208. 107 Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: the Peasant Movement in Awadh 1919–22’ in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies I: Writings in South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, pp.143–97, pp.157–59. 108 Article in The Independent, 22 January 1921, SWJN1, vol. I, p. 210; Also The Bombay Chronicle, 5 February 1921, p.8. 109 The Democrat, reprinted in The Independent, 27 January 1921, p.1. 110 G.B. Lambert, Chief Secretary to the Government of UP to All District Magistrates, 2 February 1921, UPSA, Police, box 142, f.57/1921. 111 Gazette Extraordinary of the Government of the United Provinces, reprinted in The Independent, 5 February 1921, p.3. 112 Lambert to All District Magistrates, 2 February 1921, UPSA, Police, box 142, f.57/1921. Chapter 4 Extra-judicial punishments and the civil disobedience movement, 1930–34 1 On the high politics of the civil disobedience movement, see Judith M. Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience: the Mahatma in Indian Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

194

Notes

2 D.A. Low, ‘“Civil Martial Law”: the Government of India and the Civil Disobedience Movements 1930–34’ in D.A. Low (ed.), Congress and the Raj: Facets of the Indian Struggle 1917–1947, London: Heinemann, 1977, pp.165–98. 3 On the organisation of the Congress in the years between the NCM and the CDM, see Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh: Class, Community and Nation in Northern India, 1920–1940, 2nd edn., London: Anthem, 2002. 4 Low, ‘Civil Martial Law’; Gyanesh Kudaisya, Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2006. 5 Government of Bombay, Home Department to all District Magistrates, 25 August 1930, MSA, Home (Special) f.750(26). 6 G.T.H. Bracken, Acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Madras, Public (General) Department, to M.G. Hallett, Government of India, Home Department, 3 September, 1932, IOR L/PJ/7/15771. 7 Suruchi Thapar-Björkert, Women in the Indian National Movement: Unseen Faces and Unheard Voices, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2006. 8 Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of The Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 9 Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience; Pandey, Ascendency; Richard Sisson and Stanley Wolpert (eds.), Congress and Indian Nationalism: the Pre-Independence Phase, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. 10 Christopher Pinney, ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India, London: Reaktion Books, 2004. 11 Gooptu, Politics of the Urban Poor. 12 Note by S.P. O’Donnell, Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 7 April 1922, NAI, Home Poll, File no.742 of 1922. 13 See Jim Masselos, ‘Audiences, Actors and Congress Dramas: Crowd Events in Bombay City in 1930’ in Jim Masselos (ed.), Struggling and Ruling: the Indian National Congress, 1885–1985, London: Oriental University Press, 1987, pp.71– 84, Gooptu, Politics of the Urban Poor, ch.8. 14 Kudaisya, Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’, pp.206–7. 15 Shalt Par Kaisi Biti, Janch Kamaiti ki Riport [What happened at Shalt, Report of the Enquiry Committee], (Almora, 1931), BL, PP Hin B126, translation own. 16 Ibid. 17 The Leader, 9 May 1930, p.12. 18 The Bombay Chronicle, 12 May 1930, p.1 and p.5. 19 The Leader, 10 May 1930, p.13. 20 Aaj, 14 March 1932, p.5, translation own. 21 The Daily Herald, 4 April 1932, IOR L/P&J/7/15772A 22 Kanhaiyaalaal Gautam, [1930] ‘Dhyan se Purhiye: Pulis, Fauj aur Si. Ai. Di ke Hindustani Karamchariyon se Apeel [Read Carefully: Appeal to the Indian Employees of the Police, Army and CID]’ BLUK, PIB 67/8, translation own. 23 Thapar-Björkert, Women. 24 Whether this empowered women or not is a source of historiographical debate: Partha Chatterjee, ‘Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonized Women: the Contest in India’, American Ethnologist, 1989, vol.16, pp.622–33; Richard G. Fox, ‘Gandhi and Feminized Nationalism in India’ in Brackette F. Williams (ed.) Women out of Place: the Gender of Agency and the Race of Nationality, London: Routledge, 1996, pp.37–49. 25 Geraldine Forbes, ‘The Politics of Respectability: Indian Women and the Indian National Congress’ in D.A. Low (ed.), The Indian National Congress: Centenary Highlights, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp.54–97. 26 The Daily Herald, 4 April 1932, in file IOR L/P&J/7/15772A. 27 M.K. Gandhi to Lord Irwin, Viceroy, 1 February 1931, IOR L/PO/1/49. 28 Resolution of the Bombay Insurance Brokers Association, 1 November 1930, MSA, Home (Special) f.750(26) B, 1930.

Notes

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29 Ek Raashhtriyapremi [A nationalist], ‘Atyachari Naukarshaahi se kuchh mahatvapuran prashn [Some important questions for the oppressive bureaucracy]’ (Calcutta, [1932]), BLUK, PIB 9/34, translation own. 30 Yuddhvir, 12 June 1930, p.3 BLUK, PIB 67/14, translation own. 31 Charu Guptu, ‘The Icon of Mother in Late Colonial North India: Bharat Mata, Matri Bhasha, and Gau Mata’ in Crispin Bates (ed.) Beyond Representation: Colonial and Postcolonial Constructions of Indian Identity, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.100–122. 32 Yuddhvir, 12 June 1930, p.3 BLUK, PIB 67/14, translation own. 33 The Leader, 21 May 1930, p.11. 34 The Leader, 14 May 1930, p.15. 35 Memorandum to the District Magistrate, South Kanara, Mangalore, 24 April 1932, IOR L/PJ/7/15771. 36 Government of Madras, Public (General) Department, Order, 26 June 1933, IOR L/PJ/7/15771. 37 William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 38 Indumati Goyanka, Minister, Rashtriya Mahila Samiti, ‘Pulis Karamchariyo se Apeel [Appeal to Police Workers]’, (Calcutta, [1930]) BLUK, PIB 74/9, translation own. 39 Vallabhbhai Patel, [President Patel’s appeal to government servants] (Dehali, [1931]) BLUK PP Hin F 119, translation own. 40 Presidential address to the Mirzapur District Congress Committee (Mirzapur, [1932]) BLUK, PIB 9/16. 41 Gautam, ‘Dhyan se Purhiye’. 42 Government of India to all Provincial Governments, 18 August 1930, MSA, Home (Special), f.750(35), 1930. 43 Ibid. 44 Government of the United Provinces, Police Department, Press Communiqué, 6 May 1932. IOR L/P&J/7/15772A. 45 Government of Madras, Public (General) Department, Press Communiqué No.5, 30 January 1932, IOR L/PJ/7/15771. 46 Ibid. 47 Government of Madras, Public (General) Department, Press Communiqué No.16, 19 March 1932, IOR L/PJ/7/15771. 48 Government of Madras, Public (General) Department, Press Communiqué No.9, IOR L/PJ/7/15771. 49 G. Cunningham to Gandhi, 4 February 1931, IOR L/PO/1/49. 50 R. Peel to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay, 11 March 1932, IOR L/PJ/7/15769. 51 Statement regarding allegations of police ‘excesses’ at Gana, [undated], IOR L/PJ/ 7/15769. 52 Judgment, L. Owen, District Magistrate, 18 May 1932, IOR L/P&J/7/15772A. 53 David Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras 1859–1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp.198–99. 54 Government of Madras, Public (General) Department, Order, 26 June 1933, IOR L/PJ/7/15771. 55 Arnold, Police Power, p.58. 56 The number of officers granted monetary awards rose from 6,397 in 1929 to 8,164 in 1931, Annual Police Report of the Bombay Presidency excluding Sind for the year 1929, p.33, and 1931, p.32, IOR V/24/3148. 57 In 1929, 10,746, officers and men received awards, while in 1930, 16,333 were granted rewards. Report on Police Administration in the Punjab for the year 1930, p.28, IOR V/24/3187.

196

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58 Report on the Administration of the Police of the United Provinces 1929, p.36, and 1930, p.44. IOR V/24/3176. 59 In 1929, the Government spent Rs66,789 on rewards, but this amount had risen to Rs1,28, 427 by 1933. Report on the Police Administration in the Bengal Presidency for the year 1929, p.8, and 1933, p.5, IOR V/24/3206. 60 Report on Police Administration in the Punjab for the year 1928, p.15, and 1932, p. 26, IOR V/24/3187. 61 In Bombay resignations fell from 267 in 1929 to 131 in 1933 Annual Police Report of the Bombay Presidency excluding Sind for the year 1929, p.34, and 1933, p.33. IOR V/24/3148. In UP, whereas 632 had resigned in 1928, only 193 resigned in 1933, Report on the Administration of the Police of the United Provinces 1928, p.46, and 1933, p.29, IOR V/24/3176. 62 This was first considered in Bengal during the First World War, but the scheme did not get far. Note by F.N. Warden, 16 March 1916, West Bengal State Archives (hereafter WBSA), CID (IB) f.655 of 1916. 63 The stability of British rule more generally was dependent upon the cooperation of local elites, Christopher John Baker, The Politics of South India, 1920–1937, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. 64 Carey Anthony Watt, Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. 65 Inspector of Schools, Lucknow Division, to H.R. Harrop, Director of Public Instruction, UP, [undated], UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.919/1930. 66 Note by Harrop, 8 December 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.919/1930. 67 The Leader, 2 July 1930, p.13. 68 The Leader, 13 July 1930, p.5. 69 The Leader, 21 July 1930, p.2. 70 The Leader, 23 July 1930, p.3. 71 Ibid. 72 The Leader, 8 August 1930, p.10. 73 A.H. MacKenzie, Secretary to the Government of UP, Education Department, to all Principals of Degree and Intermediate Colleges and Headmasters of AngloVernacular Schools, 10 September 1931, UPSA, Education Department, box 189, f.544/1931. 74 Note by Minister for Education, 22 August 1931, UPSA, Education Department, box 189, f.544/1931. 75 Note by MacKenzie, 12 February 1931, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.919/1930. 76 Inspector of Schools, Allahabad Division to Harrop, 29 October 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.919/1930. 77 Ibid. 78 V.N. Mehta, Secretary to the Government of UP, to Harrop, 23 April 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 6, f.53/1930. 79 H.N. Wanchoo, Inspector of Schools, Benares Division, to Deputy Inspector of Schools, Benares, 15 May 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 6, f.53/1930. 80 B.E. Dreyfus, District Magistrate, Benares, to Wanchoo, [undated], UPSA, Education Department, box 6, f.53/1930. 81 Wanchoo, to the Chairman of the Education Committee, Benares, [undated], UPSA, Education Department, box 6, f.53/1930. 82 Wanchoo to Harrop, 31 May 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 6, f.53/1930. 83 Note by MacKenzie, 22 November 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.919/1930. 84 Note by MacKenzie, 14 September 1931, UPSA, Education Department, box 189, f.544/1931.

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85 Inspector of Schools, Allahabad Division, to Harrop, 29 October 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.919/1930. 86 Secretary to the Government of UP to the Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Education, Health and Lands, 21 January 1931, UPSA, Education Department, box 247, f.127/1930. 87 Principal A.B. Dhruva, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Benares Hindu University, to Harrop, 23 December 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 247, f.127/1930. 88 Dhruva to the Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Education, Health and Lands, 15 November 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 247, f.127/1930. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Secretary to the Government of UP to the Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Education, Health and Lands, 21 January 1931, UPSA, Education Department, box 247, f.127/1930. 92 Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Education, Health and Lands to the Secretary to the Government of UP, 3 February 1931, UPSA, Education Department, box 247, f.127/1930. 93 Harrop to Wanchoo, 19 November 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.919/1930. 94 Note by MacKenzie, 22 November 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.919/1930. 95 United Provinces District Board Act, 1922. 96 See file, UPSA, Education Department, box 206, f.1231/1930. 97 Resolution of the Municipal Board, Cawnpore, 4 June 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.1012/1930. 98 Resolution of the Municipal Board, Allahabad, 15 May 1930, UPSA, Education Department, box 178, f.1012/1930. 99 Tan Tai Yong, ‘Maintaining the Military Districts: Civil-Military Integration and District Soldiers’ Boards in the Punjab, 1919–39’, Modern Asian Studies, 1994, vol.28, pp.833–74. 100 Kudaisya, Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’, pp.179–82. 101 See file MSA, Home (Special) f.750 (40) B-I,1930. Chapter 5 Legislating against communal violence: the United Provinces Goonda Act, and the Bombay Whipping Act, 1929–38 1 This chapter recognises the difficulties posed by the terms ‘communal’ and ‘communalism’, but seeks to understand the ways in which these words were employed in the 1930s to enable government action of different kinds. 2 On communalism and modernity, see e.g. Richard G. Fox, ‘Communalism and Modernity’ in David Ludden (ed.), Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, pp.235–49. For a longer-term perspective, see C.A. Bayly, ‘“The Prehistory of Communalism”: Religious Conflict in India 1700–1860’, Modern Asian Studies, 1985, vol.19, pp.177–203. 3 For an account of the economic and political factors which contributed to the formation of Muslim identity in India, Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: the Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims 1860–1923, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. On the ties of political parties to communal activities see e.g. Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal 1905–1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991; Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

198

Notes

4 Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990. On memory and partition violence see e.g. Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. 5 Recent works have begun to differentiate between different types of communalism, E.g. Gould, Hindu Nationalism. 6 Paul R. Brass, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. 7 Pandey, Construction of Communalism; Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’ in Bernard S. Cohn (ed.), An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987. 8 On the routine nature of communal violence, see Brass, Production of HinduMuslim Violence; Gyanendra Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 9 The terms ‘goonda’ and ‘hooligan’ are analysed below. 10 In the nineteenth century, British administrators constructed ‘thugs’ as essentially religious groups in order to target them with special criminal measures. Radhika Singha, ‘“Providential Circumstances”: the Thuggee Campaign of the 1830s and Legal Innovation’, Modern Asian Studies, 1993, vol.27, pp.83–146. This type of construction was reversed for twentieth century communal rioters. 11 Chandvarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India c. 1850–1950 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp.174–75. 12 Inspector-General of Police, [UP] to S.J. Hollins, 27 April 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931. 13 Resolution by the Unity Board, Cawnpore, 15 May 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931. NB: whilst the name Kanpur has been used in the text, the archival references retain the contemporary spelling, ‘Cawnpore’ to facilitate reference to these materials. 14 Resolution passed at a meeting of the Mussalmans of Cawnpore, 5 April 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931 (VI). 15 Report of the Bombay Riots Enquiry Committee, 1929, MSA, Home (Special), f.543(10)(E)(13), 1929. 16 Hindu residents of Coolie Bazar [sic] to The Superintendent of Police, Special Investigating Staff, Cawnpore, [undated], UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/ 1931 (VI). 17 Resolution passed at a meeting of the Anjuman Muin-ul-Islam, Lahore, 10 April 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931 (VI). 18 Government of India, Home Department to all Local Governments and Administrations, 13 April 1931, UPSA, Home Judicial (Criminal), Box 190, F.1364/1931. 19 Patkapore Unity Committee resolution, 20 May 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931. 20 Resolution by the Unity Board, Cawnpore, 15 May 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931. 21 Note by Sir William Malcolm Hailey, Governor of UP, 24 June 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931 XXI. 22 Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Communal Outbreak at Cawnpore, 10 April 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931 (VI). 23 The Leader, 24 April 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931 (XXXVI). 24 For the argument in Bombay, see e.g. The Tribune (Lahore), 25 May 1932, NAI, Home Poll 10/5 1932. For Kanpur, see N. Gerald Barrier, (ed.), Roots of Communal Politics, Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann Publishers (India), 1976, p.354. 25 Chandavarkar, Imperial Power, ch.6. 26 Ibid., ch.5.

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27 Bhagat Singh, along with Sukh Dev and Shivram Rajguru, and two dozen coconspirators had gained fame for involvement in revolutionary terrorist acts. See chapter six. 28 Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh: Class, Community and Nation in Northern India, 1920–1940, 2nd edition, London: Anthem, 2002. Also, Chitra Joshi, Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and its Forgotten Histories, London: Anthem, 2003. On the role of the Congress in fostering a sense of Hindu nationalist identity in Kanpur, see Gould, Hindu Nationalism. For the Congress’ own explanation of the rioting, see Barrier, Roots of Communal Politics. 29 Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Communal Outbreak at Cawnpore, 10 April 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931 (VI). 30 Ibid., p.20. 31 Ibid., p.27. 32 Ibid., p.17. 33 Ibid., p.20. 34 The Pioneer (Allahabad), 10 July 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/ 1931 (XXXVI). 35 Barrier, Roots of Communal Politics, pp.297–98. 36 Ibid., p.232. 37 Letter from the Collector in the extracts from the papers filed by Kunwar Maharoy Singh before the Cawnpore Commission of Enquiry, 3 January 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 206, f.412/1931. 38 Superintendent of Police, Cawnpore, to District Magistrate, Cawnpore, [undated], UPSA, Home Police, Box 206, f.412/1931. 39 For a picture of the goondas of Calcutta in a slightly later age, see Suranjan Das, and Jayanta K. Ray, The Goondas: Towards a Reconstruction of the Calcutta Underworld, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1996. 40 Written statement of D.S. Barron, Additional District Magistrate, Cawnpore, 7 May 1931, UPSA, Home Police, Box 211, F.1263/1931 (O), pp.3–4. 41 Ibid. p.24. 42 Statement of Objects and Reasons, The United Provinces Goonda Act, UPSA, Home Police, Box 206, f.412/1931. Because of the all-party boycott in 1930, the UP Legislative Council, which had been elected with only 28% voter turn-out, was composed entirely of independent candidates. William Vanderbok, and Richard Sisson, ‘Parties and Electorates from Raj to Swaraj: An Historical Analysis of Electoral Behaviour in Late Colonial and Early Independent India’, Social Science History, 1998, vol.12, pp.121–42, pp.124–27. 43 The United Provinces Goonda Act, UPSA, Home Police, Box 206, f.412/1931. 44 Oral evidence before the Cawnpore Commission of Enquiry of G.A. Anderson, Assistant to the Inspector-General of Police, [undated], UPSA, Home Police, Box 206, f.412/1931. 45 Inspector-General of Police to Deputy Secretary to the Government of UP, 6 September 1938, UPSA, Home Police, Box 282, f.4(3)/1938. 46 Report of the Bombay Riots Enquiry Committee, 1929, MSA, Home (Special), f.543(10)(E)(13), 1929. 47 Extract from Official Report of the Bombay Legislative Council Debates, 18 February 1933, IOR L/P&J/8/494. 48 On communist organisations and their repression by government, see Chandavarkar, Imperial Power, ch.4. 49 Report of the Bombay Riots Enquiry Committee, 1929, MSA, Home (Special), f.543(10)(E)(13), 1929. 50 Ibid., p.31. 51 The term ‘habitual offender’ was used to aid judges in sentencing, and was defined with reference to s.75 IPC. Any person with one or more previous convictions

200

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Notes could be classed as an habitual offender. For a discussion of the definition, see Report of the Indian Jails Committee 1919–1920, pp.73–79. The authorities seemed convinced that the mill hands had a general propensity for violence. Chandavarkar, Imperial Power, ch.5. Sir P.A. Kelly, Commissioner of Police, Bombay, 29 September 1932, NAI, Home Poll 10/5 1932. B.G. Horniman, Editor, The Bombay Chronicle, 17 May 1932, NAI Home (Political) 5/52, 1932. Extract from Official Report of the Bombay Legislative Council Debates, 18 February 1933, IOR L/P&J/8/494. Ibid. Report of the Bombay Riots Enquiry Committee, 1929, MSA, Home (Special), f.543(10)(E)(13), 1929. C.B.B. Clee, officiating Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Home Department to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 20 September 1932, NAI Home (Jails) F. 143, 1932. C.W. Gwynne, Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, 11 October 1932, NAI Home (Jails) F. 143, 1932. Earlier the Government of Bombay had requested the centre to pass an ordinance giving Magistrates in Bombay city the power to order whipping for offences related to rioting. The Government of India refused, but informed the government of Bombay that they were welcome to pass legislation in their Provincial Legislative Assembly to authorise such punishments. Government of Bombay to Government of India, Home Department, 6 July 1932, IOR L/P&J/8/494, and copy of letter from Government of India to Government of Bombay, Home Department, 19 July 1932, IOR L/P&J/8/494. Extract from Official Report of the Bombay Legislative Council Debates, 18 February 1933, IOR L/P&J/8/494. Because of the all-party boycott of elections in 1930, the Bombay Legislative Council was also filled with independent politicians, who had been elected by only 7% of the voting population. Vanderbok and Sisson, ‘Parties and Electorates’, pp.124–27. The Times of India, 6 May 1929, MSA, Home (Special), f.344, 1929. Extract from Official Report of the Bombay Legislative Council Debates, 18 February 1933, IOR L/P&J/8/494. Ibid. Extract from Official Report of the Bombay Legislative Council Debates, 24 March 1933, IOR L/P&J/8/494. See also R.R. Bakhale’s speech, Extract from Official Report of the Bombay Legislative Council Debates, 2 March 1933, IOR L/P&J/8/494. Extract from Official Report of the Bombay Legislative Council Debates, 18 February 1933, IOR L/P&J/8/494. Ibid.

Chapter 6 The hunger strikes of the Lahore Conspiracy Case prisoners, 1929–38 1 Hunger strikes for political causes proliferated in the early twentieth century. On suffragette hunger strikes see Maud Ellmann, The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing and Imprisonment, London: Virago, 1993. On the Irish nationalist case see George Sweeny, ‘Irish Hunger-Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1993, vol.28, pp.421–37. 2 A.G. Noorani, The Trial of Bhagat Singh: Politics of Justice, Delhi: Konark Publshers, 1996. 3 Kevin Grant, ‘The Transcolonial World of Hunger Strikes and Political Fasts, c.1909–35’ in Durba Ghosh and Dane Kennedy (eds.) Decentring Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World, Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006, pp. 243–69.

Notes

201

4 Begoña Aretxaga, ‘Dirty Protest: Symbolic Overdetermination and Gender in Northern Ireland Ethnic Violence’, Ethos, 1995, vol.23, pp.123–48; Caroline Howlett, ‘Writing on the Body? Representation and Resistance in British Suffragette Accounts of Forcible Feeding’ in Foster, T., et al. (eds.) Genders 23: Bodies of Writing, Bodies in Performance, New York: New York University Press, 1996, pp.3–41. 5 Chris Pinney, ‘Photos of the Gods’: the Printed Image and Political Struggle in India, London: Reaktion Books, 2004, p. 126. 6 Aaj, 15 July 1929, p.4, translations own. Those on hunger strike in the Borstal included: Jatindranath Das, Kanwal Nath Tewari, Kishori Lal, J.N. Sanial, Surendar Nath Pande, Gaya Parshad, Jai Dev Kapur, Mahabir Singh, Ajai Kumar Ghosh, Shiv Varma, Sukh Dev, and Agya Ram. NAI, Home Political, f.36/IV, 1930. 7 The Tribune, 14 July 1929. 8 For an account of the legal history of this term see, Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Political Prisoners in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. 9 Extracts from the Jail Manuals relating to the classification of prisoners as European prisoners, [undated], NAI, Home Political, f.21/57, 1929. 10 Government of Punjab, Press Communiqué, 6 August 1929, NAI, Home Political f.242, 1929. 11 Many lesser-known participants in the nationalist movement could be rather patronising to their fellow prisoners, e.g. Urmila Shastri, Karagar, 2nd edn, Delhi: Atmaram & Sons, 1980. 12 Extract from the Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. IV, No.9, 14 September 1929, NAI, Home Political f.21/63, 1929. 13 Lord Irwin, Viceroy, to William Wedgwood Benn, Secretary of State for India, 28 July 1929, NAI, Home Political, f.60/1, 1930. 14 Aaj, 13 July 1929, p.4. 15 Aaj, 19 August 1929, p.3. 16 E.g. Aaj, 5 August 1929, p.4, and 11 August 1929, p.4. 17 Aaj, 27 July, 1929, p.4. 18 Aaj, 1 August 1929, p.4. 19 Aaj, 15 July 1929, p.4. 20 Aaj, 18 July 1929, p.4. 21 Chandrika Kaul, Reporting the Raj: the British Press and India, c.1880–1992, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003, p.8. 22 Noorani, Trial of Bhagat Singh, p.36. 23 Aaj, 7 August, p.5. 24 M.K. Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru, after 1 July 1929, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmedabad and Delhi: Navajivan Trust, 1958–84 (hereafter CWMG), vol. XLII, pp.152–53. 25 Article in Young India, 17 October 1929, CWMG, vol. XLII, pp.6–7. 26 e.g. Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech at Lahore on 9 August 1929, S. Gopal (ed.) Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru First Series, Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972 (hereafter SWJN1), vol. IV, pp.14–16. 27 Aaj, 7 August 1929, p.5. 28 The Bombay Chronicle, 7 August 1929, p.7. 29 Aaj, 7 August 1929, p.5. 30 Ibid. 31 Government of Punjab to Government of India, 10 February 1930, NAI, Home Political, f.172/30, 1930. 32 C.M.G. Ogilvie, Secretary to the Government of Punjab, to H.W. Emerson, Secretary to the Government of India, 3 September 1929, NAI, Home Political, f.60/1, 1930.

202

Notes

33 Pramita Ghosh, Meerut Conspiracy Case & the Left-Wing in India, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1978. 34 Irwin to Benn, 28 July 1929, NAI, Home Political, f.60/1, 1930. 35 Irwin to Benn, 12 August 1929, NAI, Home Political f.242, 1929. 36 Note by Sir Lancelot Graham, 11 September 1922, NAI, Home Political f.201/20 of 1922. 37 S.P. O’Donnell, Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, to all Local Governments and Administrations, 23 October 1922, NAI, Home Political f.201/20 of 1922. 38 Letter from ‘illegible’ to Lieutenant-Colonel M.A. Rahman, Civil Surgeon, Meerut, 30 September 1929, NAI, Home Poll, f.44/80, 1933. 39 N.D. Puri, Major IMS, Special Medical Officer, Lahore Jails to the InspectorGeneral of Prisons, Punjab, 25 July 1929, NAI Home Political, f.36/IV, 1930. 40 Puri to the Inspector-General of Prisons, Punjab, 30 July 1929, NAI Home Political, f.36/IV, 1930. 41 Puri to the Inspector-General of Prisons, Punjab, 18 July 1929, NAI Home Political, f.36/IV, 1930. 42 Ajoy Kumar Ghosh, Articles and Speeches, Moscow: Publishing House for Oriental Literature, 1962, p.22. 43 Puri to the Inspector-General of Prisons, Punjab, 31 July 1929, NAI Home Political, f.36/IV, 1930. 44 P.D. Chopra, Superintendent, Central Jail, Lahore to Inspector-General of Prisons, Punjab, 14 July 1929, NAI Home Political, f.36/IV, 1930. 45 Copy of a report made by the Deputy Superintendent, Borstal Institution, Lahore, 30 August 1929, NAI Home Political, f.36/IV, 1930. 46 Aaj, 13 July 1929, p.4, 19 July 1929, p.4. 47 Irwin to Benn, 28 July 1929, NAI, Home Political, f.60/1, 1930. 48 Chopra to Inspector-General of Prisons, Punjab, 15 July 1929, NAI Home Political, f.36/IV, 1930. 49 Irwin to Benn, 6 August 1929, NAI, Home Political f.242, 1929. 50 Irwin to Benn, 12 August 1929, NAI, Home Political f.242, 1929. 51 Aaj reported that ‘Das at this time does not have the strength to speak or to look’, 31 August 1929, p.4. 52 Note by Emerson, 7 September 1929, NAI, Home Political, f.244, 1930. 53 The Bombay Chronicle, 14 September 1929, p.1. 54 Irwin to Benn, 17 September 1929, NAI Home Political f.21/63, 1929. 55 Resolution of the Bombay Youth League and the Independence League of India, The Bombay Chronicle, 16 September 1929, p.1. 56 Extract from the Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. IV, No.9, 14 September 1929, NAI Home Political f.21/63, 1929. 57 Ibid. 58 Note by Sir David Petrie, Home Department, Government of India, 24 December 1929, NAI, Home Political, f.172/30, 1930, reporting on articles which appeared in The Tribune on 21 December and 23 December 1929. 59 For an account of the changes made by Ordinance to allow the trial to continue without the presence of the accused, see Noorani, Trial of Bhagat Singh. 60 Shaheed-i-watan Jatindranath Das (Lahore, [1930]) BLUK Urdu B 2337. 61 In A class would be all those who were in the former Special or European Class, plus Indians of similar social status. No person who had committed a crime involving violence could be in A class. With this small change, Indians of high status who did not adopt European ways were entitled to the same treatment as Europeans. The second tier would consist of all those who qualified for A class, but had committed crimes of violence. Those in the Lahore Conspiracy Case who escaped the executioner would fall into this category. Prisoners of lower status were allotted to C class.

Notes

62 63 64 65

66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91

203

Proceedings of a Conference held on the 9th and 10th December 1929 to consider certain questions affecting jail administration, NAI, Home Political, f.137, 1930. Bhagat Singh, Dutta, and Other Undertrials, Lahore Conspiracy Case, 28 January 1930, NAI, Home Political, f.137, 1930. Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1989, p.352. Singh, Political Prisoners, pp.147–48. Congress Working Committee Resolutions on Policy for Legislators’ Observance of Anti-Constitutional Day, etc. (Extract), 1 March 1937, Document 84, Chopra, P.N. (ed), Towards Freedom 1937–1947 Volume I, Experiments with Provincial Autonomy, 1 January 1937–31 December 1937, Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research, 1985. The Congress had an outright majority in the United Provinces, Bihar, Madras, and the Central Provinces. It had a near majority in Bombay, and also formed governments in the North West Frontier Province, and Orissa, Sarkar, Modern India, p.349. Manini Chatterjee, Do and Die: the Chittagong Uprising, 1930–1934, Delhi: Penguin, 1999, pp.42–44. Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.104. Gandhi, Statement to the Press, 15 September 1937, CWMG, vol. LXVI, p.131. Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy, to the Marquess of Zetland, Secretary of State for India, 7 August 1937, IOR L/P&J/8/649. Ibid. Baron Brabourne, Governor of Bengal, to Governors of UP, Assam, Bihar, and Orissa, 14 July 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/695. Govind Ballabh Pant, Premier of UP, to Vallabhbhai Patel, 29 August 1937 in B. R. Nanda, (ed.), Selected Works of Govind Ballah Pant, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, p.346. Gandhi, Statement to the Press, 4 September 1937, CWMG, vol. LXVI pp.101–2. Indian Social Reformer, 4 December 1937. Sir Harry Haig, Governor of UP, to Linlithgow, 30 January 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. Press Officer, Government of Bengal, 3 February 1938, WBSA, Home (Jails) 2P54/38. Also, The Statesman, 3 February 1938, p.5. Tara Singh (Gurdaspur Conspiracy Case) and others to the Prime Minister of the Government of Punjab, 14 January 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. The Statesman, 20 February 1938, p.12. Congress Working Committee, 6 February 1938 [date reported to Secretary of State], IOR L/P&J/8/695. The Statesman, 21 January 1938, p.10. The Statesman, 27 January 1938, p.12. The Statesman, 26 January 1938, p.10. Ibid. The Statesman 3 February 1938, p.5. Linlithgow to Zetland, repeating telegram from Governor of Bihar, 3 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. Linlithgow to Zetland, repeating telegram from Governor of Bengal, 5 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. Ibid. Indeed, the Viceroy’s statement iterating his position mirrored the arguments prepared by Bengal. Compare Linlithgow to Zetland, repeating telegram of Governor of Bengal, 21 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/695, with Linlithgow to Zetland, 21 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/695. Zetland to Linlithgow, 4 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. Zetland to Linlithgow, 19 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649.

204

Notes

92 F.F. Turnbull, Principal, Administrative Division, India Office, Minute Paper on Hunger Strike of Political Prisoners, 7 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. 93 Linlithgow to Zetland, 11 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. 94 Linlithgow to Zetland, 12 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. 95 Sarkar, Modern India, p.352. 96 For example, the persecution of the kisan movement in Bihar incited vehement criticism from the CSP, but was pursued nonetheless. Vinita Damodaran, Broken Promises: Popular Protest, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar, 1935–1946, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp.138–39. 97 Talk with Andamans Prisoners, 30 October 1937, CWMG, vol. LXVI, p.281. 98 Daily Herald, 3 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. 99 Linlithgow to Zetland repeating telegram from Governor of UP, 22 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. 100 Linlithgow to Brabourne, 19 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. 101 Linlithgow to Zetland repeating telegram from Viceroy to all Provincial Governors, 22 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. 102 Linlithgow to Brabourne, 19 February 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. 103 Draft letter from Home Minister, Government of Bengal to Gandhi, [undated], IOR L/P&J/8/695, confirmed as policy in Governor of Bengal to Viceroy, 1 May 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/695. 104 Ibid. 105 Gandhi to Khwaja Nizamuddin, Home Minister, Government of Bengal, 15 May 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/695. 106 Brabourne to Linlithgow, 2 July 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/695. 107 Brabourne to Linlithgow, 7 July 1939, L/P&J/8/492. 108 Linlithgow to Zetland, 5 March 1938, IOR L/P&J/8/649. Chapter 7 The Second World War and India’s coercive network, 1939–46 1 Congress Working Committee, 14 September 1939, in Zaidi, A.M. (ed.) Congress, Nehru and the Second World War, Delhi: Indian Institute of Applied Political Research, 1985 (hereafter CNSWW), pp.29–34. 2 Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Privy Seal, 26 October 1939, Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Series, vol. 352, p.1639. 3 Congress Working Committee, 22 October 1939, CNSWW, pp.81–83. 4 Congress Working Committee, 19–23 November 1939, CNSWW, pp.155–58. 5 M.K. Gandhi, Cable to World Press, 23 October 1939, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmedabad and Delhi: Navajivan Trust, 1958–84 (hereafter CWMG), vol. LXX, p.290. 6 Congress Resolution, 19–20 March 1940, CNSWW, pp.195–96. 7 B.R. Tomlinson, The Indian National Congress and the Raj, 1929–1942: the Penultimate Phase, London: Macmillan, 1976, p.151. 8 Judith M. Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, p.330. 9 Gandhi, 30 October 1939, CNSWW, pp.110–12. 10 Gandhi, 18 March 1940, CNSWW, pp.197–206. 11 Vinobha Bhave was a committed member of Gandhi’s ashram (religious sanctuary), for Gandhi’s description of his merits see, CWMG, vol. LXXIII, pp.102–7. 12 Gandhi, Statement to the Press, 21 October 1940. CWMG, vol. LXXIII, p.118. 13 Gandhi, 18 March 1940, CNSWW, pp.197–206. 14 The Statesman, 19 December 1940. 15 The Statesman, 21 April 1941, p.9. 16 The Statesman, 27 February 1941 p. 9. The spinning requirement was dropped for volunteers from Baluchistan, The Statesman, 15 January 1941, p.10.

Notes

205

17 The Statesman, 30 January 1941, p.9. 18 The Holwell Monument commemorated the ‘Black Hole’ tragedy in mid-eighteenthcentury Calcutta, during which the Nawab of Bengal had sacked the city and had thrown Europeans into a tiny room to die. On Bose’s movement, see Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: a Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose, New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, p.412. 19 The Statesman, 23 February 1941, p.4. 20 Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy, to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, 1 December 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/590. 21 Linlithgow to Governors of Provinces, 17 April 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/590. 22 A. Dibdin, Head of Public & Judicial Department, India Office, 28 May 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/590. 23 Amery to Linlithgow, 2 June 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/590. 24 Amery to Linlithgow, 17 September 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/590. 25 Memorandum by Amery to the War Cabinet, 5 December 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/590. 26 Extract from War Cabinet Conclusions W.M.(40) 294rd, 21 November 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/590. 27 Francis G. Hutchins, India’s Revolution: Gandhi and the Quit India Movement, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973. 28 Government of India, Home Department to Amery, 22 October 1940, IOR L/ P&J/8/590. 29 E.g. The Statesman, 11 January 1941, p.10; The Statesman, 17 February 1941, p.9. 30 The Statesman, 24 February 1941, p.8. 31 The Statesman, 3 February 1941, p.8. 32 The Statesman, 6 December 1940, p.11. 33 The Statesman, 7 December 1940, p.8. 34 He was expelled from the Congress Party. The Statesman, 19 December 1940, p.11. 35 The Statesman, 18 December 1940, p.11. For an account of the Red Shirts and their participation in Gandhi’s non-violent campaigns, see Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier, Oxford: James Currey, 2000. 36 Extract from weekly confidential reports from the District Magistrate, Dharwar, 19 March 1941, MSA, Home (Special), f.1020(19), 1941. 37 Linlithgow to Amery, 16 December 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/590. 38 ‘Views of Provincial Governments Regarding Tactics to be employed Against Civil Disobedience’, [undated], IOR L/P&J/8/590. 39 Asaf Ali to his wife, 9 October 1941, IOR L/P&J/8/670. 40 Amery, response to Parliamentary Questions, 20 November 1940, IOR L/P&J/8/670. 41 CIO Patna daily report, IOR L/P&J/8/670. 42 The Statesman, 19 December 1940, p.6. 43 Detenus had been granted the allowance between 1932–38. 44 The Statesman, 14 December 1940, p.4; N.M. Joshi, Deolo [sic] Detention Camp: Impressions and Suggestions, [undated], IOR L/P&J/8/670. 45 When Jayaprakash Narayan’s wife, Prabhavati, wrote to Gandhi about the conditions in Deoli camp where her husband was being held, he responded, ‘I don’t know what can be done about Jayaprakash. We have got to endure it. Continue to make enquiries from time to time. If I think of anything I will write.’ Gandhi to Prabhavati, 2 May 1941, CWMG, vol. LXXIV, p.23. 46 Gandhi, Statement to the Press, 12 November 1941, CWMG, vol. LXXV, p.92. 47 The Statesman, 14 October 1941, p.10. 48 Intelligence Unit, [undated], IOR L/P&J/8/590. 49 Linlithgow to Amery, 7 November 1941, IOR L/P&J/8/671. 50 Government of India, Home Department to Amery, 15 November 1941, IOR L/ P&J/8/671.

206 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77

Notes Linlithgow to Amery, 6 December 1941, IOR L/P&J/8/671. Hutchins, India’s Revolution, p.188. David Hardiman, Gandhi: in his Time and Ours, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003, p.60. R.J. Moore, Churchill, Cripps and India, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978; Peter Frederick Clarke, The Cripps Version: the Life of Sir Stafford Cripps, 1889–1952, London: Allen Lane, 2002. Hutchins, India’s Revolution, p.163. The smoking gun indicating intention to disrupt communications appears to have been the following telegraph: Linlithgow to Amery, repeating telegram from Andhra Provincial Congress Committee, 4 August 1942, IOR L/P&J/8/597. Amery to Linlithgow, 10 August 1942, in Nicholas Mansergh (ed.), Transfer of Power, 1942–1947, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1970–83, (hereafter ToP), vol. II, Document. 474. P.N. Chopra, (ed.), Quit India Movement: British Secret Report, Faridabad: Thompson Press (India) Ltd., 1976, p.4. Amery to Linlithgow, 10 August 1942, ToP, vol. II, Document. 474. Bidyut Chakrabarty, ‘Political Mobilization in the Localities: the 1942 Quit India Movement in Midnapur’, Modern Asian Studies, 1992, vol.26, pp.791–814, p.792. On the RSS see the discussion of the violence at Chimur below. Communists may have officially supported the allies in the war, but did play a significant part in the Quit India rising. Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Introduction: The Indian Nation in 1942’ in Gyanendra Pandey (ed.), The Indian Nation in 1942, Calcutta: The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 1988, pp.1–18. Extract from the Legislative Assembly Debates, vol. III, no.9, 24 September 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/43/43. Linlithgow to Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, 31 August 1942, ToP, vol. II, Document 662. A.G. Clow, Govenor of Assam, to Linlithgow, 25 July 1942, IOR L/P&J/8/609. Roger Lumley, Governor of Bombay to Linlithgow, 23 August 1942, IOR L/P&J/8/609. Linlithgow to Amery, 9 September 1942, ToP, vol. II, Document 719. Telegram from ARMINDIA to Army Ranchi, Army Murree, Command Agra, Army Bangalore, Army Poona, 11 August 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/17/ 42 (IV), emphasis added. Extract from the Legislative Assembly Debates, vol. III, no.9, 24 September 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/43/43. A.V. Askwith, Chief Commissioner, Delhi, to E. Conran-Smith, Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 5 September 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.8/14/42. Extract from the Legislative Assembly Debates, vol. III, no.9, 24 September 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/43/43. Ibid. Also, President, Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, Managing Committee, Lahore to Sir Jwala Prasad Srivastava, Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, Delhi, 3 October 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/97/42; Askwith to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 22 October 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/47/42. Extract from the Legislative Assembly Debates, vol. III, no.9, 24 September 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/43/43. See Lawrence Walter Russell, Memories of Life in the Indian Police, 1970, IOR Mss Eur D/1041/9. Sir Thomas Stewart, Governor of Bihar, to Linlithgow, 30 October 1942, IOR L/ P&J/8/609. Stewart to Linlithgow, 4 January 1943, IOR L/P&J/8/609. Stewart to Linlithgow, 30 October 1942, IOR L/P&J/8/609. Stewart to Linlithgow, 4 January 1943, IOR L/P&J/8/609.

Notes

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78 Stewart to Linlithgow, 30 October 1942, IOR L/P&J/8/609; T.G. Rutherford to Linlithgow, 20 July 1943, IOR L/P&J/8/609. 79 B.S. Moonje, Provincial Hindu Sabha, Report of our visits to Ramtak, Ashti and Chimur, 21 October 1942, NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/54/42. 80 Report by T.M. Collins, Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Western Range, Central Provinces and Berar, 22 August 1922, IOR L/P&J/8/609. It was believed the collaboration between Congressmen and the RSS was an ‘isolated’ occurrence. Sir H.J. Twynam, Governor of Central Provinces and Berar, to Linlithgow, 5 October 1942, IOR L/P&J/8/609. 81 Vimal Abhyankar and Vimlabai Deshpande, Women’s Association, Nagpur, ‘Our visit to Chimur’ [undated], NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/54/42. 82 True copies of the applications made to the deputation of the Women’s Association and Dr Wazalar, [undated], NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/54/42. 83 Moonje, Report of our visits to Ramtak, Ashti and Chimur, 21 October 1942, NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/54/42. 84 Proceedings of the Working Committee of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, Resolution no.11, 19 January 1941, NMML, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, C-30. 85 K.N. Subramanian, Deputy Commissioner, Chanda, Note on the Visit of the Commissioner, Dr Munje and Mr Ghatate to Chimur, 29 September 1943, IOR L/P&J/8/609. 86 Press Communiqué, enclosure No. 1 in Twynam to Linlithgow, 16 October 1942, IOR L/P&J/8/609. 87 Ibid. 88 See exchange of letters between the Government of India and the Government of CP, NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/54/42. 89 Arthur Hope, Governor of Madras, to Linlithgow, 24 November 1942; Lumley to Linlithgow, 25 November 1942; John Herbert, Governor of Bengal, to Linlithgow, 22 November 1942; Sir B.J. Glancey, Governor of Punjab, to Viceroy, 26 November 1942; Twynam to Linlithgow, 26 November 1942, NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/106/42. 90 Government of India to all Provincial Governments and Chief Commissioners, 12 September 1942, NAI Home Political (I) f. 25/7/42. 91 On Assam, see Secretary to the Governor of Assam to Linlithgow, 3 December 1942, NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/106/42. 92 Stewart to Linlithgow, 12 December 1942, NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/106/42. 93 Ordinance No. LXIII of 1942, 5 December 1942, NAI Home Political (I) f. 25/10/42. 94 H.V.R. Iyengar, Additional Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Home Department, to Tottenham, 20 November 1942, NAI Home Political (I) f. 25/10/42. 95 The Muslims of Tirwa to the Governor of UP, [undated], NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/46/42. 96 Moonje, Report of our visits to Ramtak, Ashti and Chimur, 21 October 1942, NAI, Home Political (I) f.3/54/42. 97 The Bihar Village Collective Responsibility Act, 1943, 20 August 1943, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/77/42. 98 Legislative Department note by Mr. Sundaram, 26 December 1942, NAI, Home Political (I), f.3/77/42. 99 The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 18 January 1943, NAI, Home Political (I), f.21/11/43. 100 Hutchins, India’s Revolution, p.163. 101 Government of Bombay to the Government of India, 1 May 1943, in Partha Sarati Gupta (ed.), Towards Freedom 1943–1944, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997 (hereafter Towards Freedom), Part 1, IB, Document 38. 102 Amery, 11 February 1943, Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Series, vol. 386, p.1432. 103 Chakrabarty, ‘Political Mobilization’, p.797.

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104 Amery, draft reply to Parliamentary questions, 18 January 1945, IOR L/P&J/8/621. 105 Government of India, Home Department to all Provincial Governments, 17 May 1945, IOR L/P&J/8/621. 106 The Hindustan Times, 22 January 1945, IOR L/P&J/8/621. 107 Hari Dev Sharma, (ed.), Selected Works of Acharya Narendra Deva, Volume II, Delhi: Radiant Publishers, 1998, p.35. 108 Lumley to Linlithgow, 27 November 1942, IOR L/P&J/8/621. 109 Deputy Commissioner, Santal Parganas, 18 February 1943, in Towards Freedom, Part 1, IA, Document 27. 110 Central Legislative Assembly Debates 1943, vol. III, 27 July 1943, Towards Freedom, Part 1, IC, Document 17. 111 Superintendent of Police to DIG (S.B.) Patna, 27 January 1943, in Towards Freedom, Part 1, IA, Document 16, The New Statesman and Nation, 16 May 1945, IOR L/P&J/8/670. 112 Central Legislative Assembly Debates 1943, vol. III, 27 July 1943, in Towards Freedom, Part 1, IC, Document 17. 113 John Colville to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India, 27 November 1945, IOR L/P&J/8/670. 114 Linlithgow to Amery, 8 February 1943, ToP, vol. III, Document 426. See also, Tim Pratt, and Vernon James, ‘“Appeal from this fiery bed”: The Colonial Politics of Gandhi’s Fasts and Their Metropolitan Reception’, Journal of British Studies, 2005, vol.44, 92–114. 115 C.A. Bayly, ‘The Nation Within: India at War 1939–45’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 2005, vol.25, pp.265–86. 116 Government of India, Home Department to All Provincial Governments, 3 April 1943, IOR L/P&J/8/621. 117 Glancey to Government of India, 20 April 1943, Towards Freedom, Part 1, IB, Document 34. 118 Herbert to Government of India, 15 April 1943, Towards Freedom, Part 1, IB, Document 31. 119 Chief Secretary to the Government of Orissa to all District Magistrates and the Defence Commissioner and the I.G. of Police, Towards Freedom, Part 1, IB, Document 12. 120 Chief Secretary, Government of Bihar to all Commissioners of Division, Bihar, 25 January 1943, Towards Freedom, Part 1, IC, Document 1. 121 Government of Bombay to the Government of India, 1 May 1943, Towards Freedom, Part 1, IB, Document 38; D.S. Barron, Secretary to the Government of the United Provinces to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 15 May 1943, Towards Freedom, Part 1, IB, Document 45. 122 Maulana Azad to Field Marshal Viscount Wavell, Viceroy, 15 July 1945, ToP, vol. V, Document 614. 123 Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 15 February 1946, IOR L/P&J/8/626. 124 Note by Gibson circulated between Under Secretary of State and Secretary of State, 1 May 1946, IOR L/P&J/8/626. 125 Chief of General Staff to Eastern Command Headquarters, 28 October 1943, NAI, Home Political (I) f.21/30/43. 126 There is a wealth of published material on the INA’s formation, battles and demise. See e.g. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, C.A. Bayly, and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: the Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945; London: Allen Lane, 2004; Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence 1942–1945, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. 127 Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 9 October 1945, ToP, vol. VI, Document 135; Governor General (War Department) to Secretary of State for India, 21 August 1945, IOR L/WS/1/1577.

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128 On the concern over police, see Twynam to Wavell (Extract), 25 October 1945, in ToP, vol. VI, Document 165. On the army, see Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 1 October 1945, IOR L/WS/1/1577. 129 Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 21 August 1945, IOR L/WS/1/1577. 130 Government of India, Home Department to Pethick-Lawrence, 20 October 1945, IOR L/WS/1/1577. 131 Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 30 November 1945, IOR L/WS/1/1577. 132 Fay, The Forgotten Army, p.49. 133 The worst cases included, ‘brutality and murder which cannot be defended on the plea that the accused was carrying out what he believe to be his duty as a member of the INA on the assumption that that was the army of a belligerent power.’ Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 30 November 1945, IOR L/WS/1/1577. 134 Fay, The Forgotten Army; A.G. Noorani, India’s Political Trials, 1775–1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. 135 Press Communiqué, 2 May 1946, IOR L/WS/1/1577. 136 Lord Mountbatten, Viceroy to Pethick-Lawrence, 9 March 1947, IOR L/WS/1/1578. Chapter 8 Partition and the transnational state in India, 1947–48 1 On political developments in the Punjab, see Ian Talbot, Provincial Politics and the Pakistan Movement: the Growth of the Muslim League in North-West and North-East India, 1937–1947, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1988; Ian Talbot, Khizr Tiwana, the Punjab Unionist Party and the Partition of India, Richmond: Curzon, 1996. 2 Sir Evan Jenkins, Governor of Punjab to Field Marshal Viscount Wavell, Viceroy, 3 February 1947, in Nicholas Mansergh (ed.), The Transfer of Power, 1942–1947 (hereafter ToP), London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1970–83, vol. IX, Document 339, FN1. 3 Jenkins to Pethick-Lawrence, 25 February 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 463. 4 Gopal Das Khosla, Stern Reckoning: a Survey of the Events Leading up to and Following the Partition of India, Delhi: Bhavnani & Sons, 1950, p.100. 5 Jenkins to Wavell, 7 March 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 501. 6 Jenkins to Mr Abell, 17 March 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 538. 7 W. Christie, Chief Commissioner, Delhi, to A.E. Porter, Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, 19 March 1947, IOR L/P&J/5/287. 8 Ibid. 9 Jenkins to Lord Mountbatten, Viceroy, enclosure, 4 August 1947, ToP, vol. XII, Document 337, cited by Swarna Aiyar, ‘“August Anarchy”: the Partition Massacres in Punjab, 1947’, South Asia, 1995, vol.XVIII, pp.13–36; Paul R. Brass, ‘The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab, 1946–47: Means, Methods and Purposes’, Journal of Genocide Research, 2003, vol.5, pp.71–101. 10 Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; R.J. Moore, Endgames of Empire: Studies of Britain’s Indian Problem, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. 11 Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, Durham: Duke University Press, 2000; Ian Talbot, with Darshan Singh Tatla, Epicentre of Violence: Partition Voices and Memories from Amritsar, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006. Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal 1905–1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991, bridged this gap before the new wave of literature. For a thorough review of the historiography, see Yasmin Khan, ‘Asking New Questions about the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent’, History Compass, 2004, vol.2, accessed online at estar.bl.uk/pdflinks/080322145709456456 on 22 April 2008.

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12 Especially, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007; Ritu Menon, and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition, Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998; Tan Tai Yong and Gyanesh Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia, London: Routledge, 2000; Sarah Ansari, Life After Partition: Migration, Community and Strife in Sindh: 1947–1962, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2005; Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. One detailed study of the administration of the Punjab considerably predates the ‘new’ partition literature, Satya M. Rai, Partition of the Punjab: a Study of its Effects on the Politics and Administration of the Punjab (I), 1947–1956, London: Asia Publishing House, 1965. 13 David Gilmartin, ‘Partition, Pakistan and South Asian History: in Search of a Narrative’, Journal of Asian Studies, 1998 vol.57, pp.1068–95; Brass, ‘Retributive Genocide’. The exception is Aiyar, who relies on the existence of non-coercive activities like refugee rehabilitation to make the case that the state did not break down, Aiyar, ‘August Anarchy’. 14 Brass, ‘Retributive Genocide’ p.92. 15 On the role of ex-soldiers in the violence see, Aiyar, ‘August Anarchy’. On the role of the armed forces of the Princely States of Bharatpur and Alwar in orchestrating violence against Muslim Meos in Rajputana, see Ian Copland, ‘The Further Shores of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan 1947’, Past and Present, 1998, vol.160, pp.203–39. 16 Vartman, 6 March 1947, p.1, translation own. 17 Ibid., also Vartman 7 March, p.1. 18 Christie to Porter, 7 February 1947, IOR L/P&J/5/287. 19 Christie to Porter, 28 April 1947, Delhi State Archives (hereafter DSA) f.36/1947 Confidential part B, and Jenkins to Wavell, 7 March 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 501. 20 Daily Situation Report, 12 April 1947, DSA f.36/1947 Confidential part B. 21 Daily Situation Report, 5 May 1947, DSA f.36/1947 Confidential part B. 22 Rai Bahadur J.P. Ray, Home Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, Delhi, 30 April 1947, NAI Home Political f.5/8/47 Poll (I). 23 Jenkins to Wavell, 17 March 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 540. 24 Nabi Ahmed, Superintendent, District Jail, New Delhi, to Deputy Commissioner, Delhi, 3 August 1947, DSA, Deputy Commissioner’s files (hereafter DC), f.276/1947. 25 Christie to Porter, 28 April 1947, NAI Home Political f.5/8/47 Poll (I). 26 Extraordinary Issue Punjab Gazette, 20 March 1947, IOR Mss Eur F 274/51. 27 Extraordinary Issue Punjab Gazette, 19 March 1947, IOR Mss Eur F 274/51. 28 Bombay passed its own Public Security Measures Act, complete with provisions for detention without trial, imposition of collective fines and whipping. At Christie’s insistence, the centre extended the Bombay Act to cover Delhi, but omitted the section on whipping on the grounds that the use of corporal punishment ‘is likely to attract adverse notice from foreign countries as being barbarous.’ Note by V. Shankar, Private Secretary to the Home Member, 29 May 1947, NAI Home Political f.5/8/47 Poll (I). In September, the capital was declared a disturbed area and the Punjab Acts extended to Delhi. The Gazette of India Extraordinary, 7 September 1947, IOR/R/3/1/173. Though they were requested in Bengal identical powers were not granted in that province, NAI Home Political f.6/4/47 Poll (I). 29 David C. Potter, ‘Manpower Shortage and the End of Colonialism: the Case of the Indian Civil Service’, Modern Asian Studies, 1973, vol.7, pp.47–73. 30 Jenkins to Wavell, 17 March 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 540. 31 Note by Jenkins, 24 March 1947, IOR R/3/1/176.

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32 D.W. Mehra, Deputy Inspector of Police, Delhi, to Inspector General of Police, Delhi, 9 October 1947, DSA, DC, f.238/1947. 33 Vartman, 25 March 1947, p.2. 34 Interview between Mountbatten and Master Tara Singh, Giani Kartar Singh and Sardar Baldev Singh, 18 April 1947, ToP, vol. X, Document 173. 35 Note by Jenkins, 14 March 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 532; Sardar Patel to Sir J. Colville, 21 May 1947, ToP, vol. X Document 501. 36 Major General Thomas Wynford Rees, Report on the Punjab Boundary Force, [undated], IOR L/MIL/17/5/4319, p.29. 37 Note by Jenkins, 14 March 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 532. 38 Memo from Lieutenant-General Messervy, GOC-in-C, Northern Division, to HQ 4 Div, HQ 7 Div, HQ Lahore Area, HQ Rawalpindi Area, HQ Peshawar Area, 2 June 1947, IOR Mss Eur F 274/50. 39 Minutes of the fourth meeting of the Joint Defence Council, 25 August 1947, IOR R/3/1/172. 40 Christie to the District Magistrate and Senior Superintendent of Police, Delhi, 25 March 1947, DSA f.36/1947 Confidential part B. 41 Nawals of Mamdot to Jenkins, [undated, received on 30 May 1947], IOR/R/3/1/177. 42 Jenkins to Mountbatten, 31 May 1947, ToP, vol. XI, Document 12. 43 Liaquat Ali Khan to Christie, 23 March 1947, DSA f.36/1947 Confidential part B. 44 Christie to the District Magistrate and Senior Superintendent of Police, Delhi, 26 March 1947, DSA f.36/1947 Confidential part B. 45 Jawaharlal Nehru to Colville, 23 May 1947, ToP, vol. X, Document 522. 46 Vartman, 23 March 1947, p.1. 47 Vartman, 4 April 1947, p.3. 48 Jenkins to Mountbatten, 15 June 1947, ToP, vol. XI, Document 209. 49 Jenkins to Colville, 21 May 1947, ToP, vol. X, Document 500. 50 Copland, ‘Further Shores’. 51 Jenkins to Wavell, 9 March 1947, ToP, vol. IX, Document 513. See also Gilmartin, ‘Partition, Pakistan’. 52 Jenkins to Mountbatten, enclosure, 4 August 1947, ToP, vol. XII, Document 337. 53 Christie to Porter, 5 April 1947, IOR L/P&J/5/287; Intelligence Bureau report on volunteer organisations in India – III, 14 May 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/5/47 Poll (I). 54 Intelligence Bureau report on volunteer organisations in India – III, 14 May 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/5/47 Poll (I). 55 The RSS was also strong in Bombay (23,943), CP (36,000) and UP (33,051), corresponding numbers for the MLNG are: 20,770 in Assam, 15,010 in Bengal, 7000 in CP, 38,514 in UP. Intelligence Bureau report on volunteer organisations in India – III, Appendix A, 14 May 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/5/47 Poll (I). 56 Christie to Porter, 5 May 1947, IOR L/P&J/5/287. 57 Intelligence Bureau report on volunteer organisations in India – III, 14 May 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/5/47 Poll (I). 58 Note by R.N. Banerjee, Secretary to the Home Department, Government of India, 28 May 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/5/47 Poll (I). 59 Ibid. Patel was ‘in general agreement’ with these views. Note by V. Shankar, Private Secretary to the Home Member, 31 May 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/5/47 Poll (I). 60 Note by V. Shankar, 10 June 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/5/47 Poll (I). 61 Ibid. 62 Christie to the District Magistrate and the Senior Superintendent of Police, Delhi, 25 March 1947, DSA f.36/1947 Confidential Part B. 63 Pandey, Remembering Partition. 64 Rafiq Zakaria, Sardar Patel and Indian Muslims: an Analysis of his Relations with Muslims Before and after India’s Partition, Mumbai: Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, 1996.

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65 Speech at Amritsar, 30 September 1947, Sardar Patel, On Indian Problems, Delhi: Government of India, 1949, p.46. 66 Former Congress President and Education Minister in the interim government. 67 Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel: a Life, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1991, p.431. 68 Speech at Lucknow, 6 January 1948, Patel, On Indian Problems, p.59. 69 Patel to Govind Malaviya, 7 July 1947, in Prabha Chopra (ed.) Thematic Volumes on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel: Muslims and Refugees, Delhi: Konar Publishers, 2004, p.58. 70 Govind was the youngest son of the Hindu Mahasabha leader and Congressman, Pandit Mohan Madan Malaviya. Govind Malaviya to Patel, 4 July 1947, Chopra, Thematic Volumes, p.57. 71 Randhawa later echoed Patel’s words on Muslim loyalty, M.S. Randhawa, Deputy Commissioner and District Magistrate, Delhi, to Chief Commissioner, Delhi, 13 April 1948, DSA f.68/47 Confidential part B. 72 ‘out of 12 officers of and above the rank of Deputy Superintendent of police seven are Europeans, four Muslims and one Hindu, and out of the 21 Inspectors, 10 are Muslims, 4 Europeans or Anglo-Indians and 7 others’. Porter to Christie, 11 December 1946, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 73 Ibid. 74 Porter to Christie, 31 January 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 75 Christie to Porter, 25 April 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 76 Christie to W.D. Robinson, Senior Superintendent of Police, Delhi, 30 January 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 77 Robinson to Christie, 3 February 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 78 Christie to Sir John Bennett, Inspector General of Police, Punjab, 13 December 1946, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 79 The four were Mohd. Shaffi, Additional District Magistrate, Mohd. Ashgar, Deputy Superintendent of Police (HQ), Faquir Mohd., Deputy Superintendent of Police, Lieut Faquir Hussain, Inspector, CID. Report by the Rawalpindi and Mianwali Delegation for the information of Nehru, 4 April 1947, IOR R/3/1/176. 80 Porter to Christie, 17 April 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 81 Christie to Porter, 25 April 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 82 Statement of the strength of the officers of and above the rank of Inspectors and their communal distribution for the month of May 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 83 Statement of strength for the month of August 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 84 Statement of strength for the month of September 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 85 Statement of strength for the month of December 1947, DSA f.27/1947 Confidential part B. 86 Mamdot to Jenkins, [undated, received on 30 May 1947], IOR/R/3/1/177. 87 Mountbatten to Jenkins, 28 June 1947, IOR R/3/1/176. 88 Note by Jenkins, 24 March 1947, IOR R/3/1/176. 89 Omar Khalidi, Khaki and the Ethnic Violence in India, Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2003, p.81. 90 Patel to Rajendra Prasad, 5 September 1947, in Chopra, Thematic Volumes, p.64. 91 Telephone message from Messervy and Rees, 13 August 1947, ToP, vol. XII, Document 460. 92 Note by Banerjee, 10 September 1947, IOR R/3/1/172. 93 Note by Major-General D.C. Hawthorn, 11 August 1947, ToP, vol. XII, Document 432. 94 Zamindar, Long Partition.

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95 Nehru to Premiers of Provinces, 15 October 1947, S. Gopal, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Delhi: Orient Longman, 1984- (hereafter SWJN2), vol. IV, pp.441–43. 96 Achin Vanaik, The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization, London: Verso, 1997, p.67. 97 Shan Muhammad, Khaksar Movement in India, Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1973. 98 D.C. Lal, Senior Superintendent of Police, Delhi, NAI Home Political f.28/7/47 Poll (I). 99 Note by V. Shankar, 14 July 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/7/47 Poll (I). 100 D.C. Lal, special report – arrest of Khaksars, 10 August 1947, DSA f.57/47 Confidential Part B; D.C. Lal, special report concerning raid on Fatehpuri mosque on the night between 24/25-7-47, 25 July 1947, DSA f.57/47 Confidential Part B. 101 Ibid. 102 V.J. Patel to Sahibzada Khurshid, Chief Commissioner, Delhi, 30 July 1947, NAI Home Political f.28/7/47 Poll (I). 103 For a recent view on this tension see, Pandey, Rembering Partition, pp.155–64; Aditya Nigam, The Insurrection of the Little Selves: the Crisis of Secular-Nationalism in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006. 104 On the Border Commission see, Tan Tai Yong, ‘Sir Cyril goes to India: Partition, Boundary-making and Disruptions in the Punjab’, International Journal of Punjab Studies, 1997, vol.4; Joya Chatterji, ‘The Fashioning of a Frontier: the Radcliffe Line and Bengal’s Border Landscape, 1947–52’, Modern Asian Studies, 1999, vol.33, pp.185–242. 105 Vartman, 28 August 1947, p.1; Report on the Punjab Boundary Force, [undated], IOR L/MIL/17/5/4319. 106 Vartman, 28 August 1947, p.1. 107 Vartman, 28 August 1947, p.1. 108 Vartman, 6 September 1947, p.1. 109 Vartman, 7 September 1947, p.1. 110 Vartman, 9 September 1947, p.1. 111 Vartman, 11 September 1947, p.1. 112 Nehru to Patel, 30 September 1947, Chopra, Thematic Volumes, p.82. 113 S. Khurshid, to Randhawa, 24 September 1947, DSA f.73/47 Confidential part B. 114 Ibid. 115 For more on the relationship between Randhawa and Khurshid, see Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom: the Complete Version, Delhi: Orient Longman, 1988, pp.231–32. 116 Randhawa to Khurshid, 25 September 1947, DSA f.73/47 Confidential part B. 117 Ibid. 118 Banerjee to Khurshid, 3 October 1947, DSA f.73/47 Confidential part B. 119 Nehru to Patel, 30 September 1947, in Chopra, Thematic Volumes, p.83. 120 Quotation from ibid. Nehru’s request to have Randhawa transferred was voiced in, Nehru to Patel, 11 October, 1947, Chopra, Thematic Volumes, pp.91–92. 121 Patel to Nehru, 12 October 1947, Chopra, Thematic Volumes, p.93–95. 122 Khurshid to Randhawa, 17 October 1947, DSA f.68/47 Confidential part B. 123 Randhawa to Khurshid, 22 October 1947, DSA f.68/47 Confidential part B. 124 Vartman, 8 February 1948, p.1. 125 Vartman, 12 February 1948, p.2. 126 Randhawa to Khurshid, 9 February 1948, DSA f.68/47 Confidential part B. 127 Vartman, 7 February 1948, p.3. Within days of declaring the RSS an unlawful organisation Vartman reported that 40 had been arrested in Lucknow, 25 in Meerut, 21 in Julundur; Ibid., p.1. 128 See weekly reports in DSA f.68/47 Confidential Part B.

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129 Nehru to Patel, 26 February 1948, Durga Das, (ed.), Sardar Patel’s Correspondence 1945–50 Volume VI, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1973, pp.55–56. 130 Randhawa to Khurshid, 15 March 1948, DSA f.68/47 Confidential part B. 131 Randhawa to Banerjee, 23 March 1948, DSA f.68/47 Confidential part B. 132 Khurshid to Banerjee, 23 April 1948, IOR L/P&J/5/288. 133 Diary of the Superintendent of Police, CID, Delhi 8 May 1948, DSA f.68/47 Confidential part B. 134 Khurshid to Banerjee, 10 April 1948, IOR L/P&J/5/288. 135 On the communist hunger strike, see Khurshid to Banerjee, 10 April 1948, IOR L/ P&J/5/288. 136 Patel objected to plans drawn up to appoint Muslim officials to look after Muslim refugees, and he protested against a scheme designed to provide all-Muslim housing in certain parts of Delhi. Nehru to Patel, 21 November 1947, and Patel to Nehru, 22 November 1947, Chopra, Thematic Volumes, pp.105–6. Randhawa raised objections over the ways in which Muslim refugees were resettled in Delhi. Randhawa to Khurshid, 1 June 1948, DSA f.68/47 Confidential part B. Chapter 9 The police action in Hyderabad and the making of the postcolonial state in India, 1947–56 1 Paul Brass, The New Cambridge History of India, Volume IV.1: The Politics of India Since Independence, 2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Partha Chatterjee, ‘Development Planning and the Indian State’ in Partha Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp.271–97; Zoya Hasan, (ed.), Politics and the State in India, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. The few dissenting voices tend to be those of economists, see e.g. Pranab Bardhan, Poverty, Agrarian Structure and Political Economy in India: Selected Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. 2 See Swami Ramananda Tirtha, Memoirs of Hyderabad Freedom Struggle, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1967; P. Sundarayya, Telangana People’s Struggle and its Lessons, Calcutta: Ganakshi Printers, 1972; Arutla Ramachandrareddi, Telangaanaa Poraata Smrtalu [Telangana Struggle Memoirs], Vijayawada: Visaalandhra Publishing House, 1981, Nalla Narasimhulu, Telangaanaa Saayudha Poraatam: Naa Anubhavaalu [Telangana Armed People’s Struggle: My Experiences], Hyderabad: Visaalandhra Publishing House, 1989; Stree Shakti Sanghatana, ‘We Were Making History … ’ Life Stories of Women in the Telangana People’s Struggle, Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989. 3 K.M. Munshi, The End of an Era: Hyderabad Memoirs, 2nd edn., Bombay: Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, 1990; Ian Copland, ‘Lord Mountbatten and the Integration of the Indian States: A Reappraisal’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 1993, vol.21, pp.385–408; Michael David Witmer, ‘The 1947–48 India-Hyderabad Conflict: Realpolitik and the Formation of the Modern Indian State’, unpublished thesis, Temple University, 1996; V.P. Menon, Integration of the Indian States, 2nd edn, Mumbai: Orient Longman, 1999; Lucien D. Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration: Political Developments in Hyderabad State (1938–1948), Chennai: Orient Longman, 2000. 4 S.N. Prasad, Operation Polo: The Police Action Against Hyderabad, Delhi: Government of India Press, 1972. 5 Barry Pavier, The Telengana Movement, 1944–1951, Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1981. 6 Ian Copland, ‘“Communalism” in Princely India: the Case of Hyderabad, 1930– 40’, Modern Asian Studies, 1988, vol.22, pp.783–814; John Roosa, ‘The Quandary of the Qaum: Indian Nationalism in a Muslim State, Hyderabad 1850–1948’, unpublished thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998.

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7 Copland, ‘Lord Mountbatten’; Witmer, ‘India-Hyderabad Conflict’; Menon, Integration. 8 Vallabhbhai Patel, For a United India: Speeches of Sardar Patel, 1947–1950, Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1967, p.11. See also Nehru’s speech in the Constituent Assembly (Legislative), 7 September 1948, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru Series 2 (hereafter SWJN2), vol. VII, Delhi: Orient Longman, 1988, p.229. 9 Personal Minute from the Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations to Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of Great Britain, 22 September 1947, NAUK, London, PREM 8/568. 10 Nizam of Hyderabad to Attlee, 4 July 1948, NAUK, PREM 8/818. 11 V.P. Menon, Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of States, Note for the Cabinet, May 1948, NAI, Ministry of States (hereafter MoS), f.1(6) H, 1948. 12 A note on Hyderabad submitted to the AISPC [All-India State’s People’s Conference] standing committee meeting, 23–24 March 1948, NAI, MoS, f.337 H, 1948. 13 Tirtha, Memoirs, p.191. 14 Benichou, Autocracy to Integration, p.177. 15 A note on Hyderabad submitted to the AISPC standing committee meeting, 23–24 March 1948, NAI, MoS, f.337 H, 1948. 16 Benichou, Autocracy to Integration, pp.208–11. 17 M.K. Sinha, Deputy Director, Intelligence Bureau, 18 November 1947, NAI, MoS, f.136 PR, 1947. 18 ‘Communist Terrorism in Hyderabad’, 1950, NAI, MoS, f.5(13) H, 1950. 19 E.g. Resolution of the Arabs of Jalsa against the Razakars, 21 February 1945, NAUK, DO 142/441. 20 Ibid., p.38. 21 Fortnightly report from Sahibzada Khurshid, Chief Commissioner, Delhi, to R.N. Banerjee, Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, 22 May 1948, IOR, L/P&J/5/288. 22 Benichou, Autocracy to Integration, pp.179–80. 23 CID report on the speech of Acharya Kripalani, Diary of the Superintendent of Police, CID Delhi, 17 April 1948, DSA, f.68/47 Confidential part B. 24 V.P. Menon, Note for the Cabinet, May 1948, NAI, MoS, f.1(6) H, 1948. 25 Nehru to V.K. Krishna Menon, 15 August 1948, SWJN2, vol. VII, p.207. 26 Letter to Lord Mountbatten, 1 August 1948, SWJN2, vol. VII, p.203. 27 Minute from I.F. Walker, Brigadier, Military Advisor, 13 September 1948, NAUK, DO 134/22. 28 Letter to J.N. Chaudhury [sic], 27 December 1948, SWJN2, vol. IX, pp.275–76. 29 Nehru to Patel, 6 June 1948, in Nandurkar, (ed.), Sardar’s Letters – Mostly Unknown, vol. V, Ahmedabad: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Smarak Bhavan, 1981, p.110. 30 Reports of 50 arrests in CP appeared in The Bombay Chronicle, 15 September 1948, p.4; another 70 people, including M.A. Salaam, MLA, were reported to have been detained in Madras, The Bombay Chronicle, 22 September 1948, p.10. 31 Including the Indian Union Muslim League President, M. Mohamed Ismail, The Bombay Chronicle, 16 September 1948, p.5. 32 The Bombay Chronicle, 14 September 1948, p.7. 33 To H.S. Sahrawardy, 24 September 1948, SWJN2, vol. VII, p.266. 34 Omar Khalidi (ed.), Hyderabad: After the Fall, Wichita: Hyderabad Historical Society, 1988. 35 Pandit Sunderlal, and Qazi Abdulghaffar, ‘A Report on the Post-Operation Polo Massacres, Rape and Destruction or Seizure of Property in Hyderabad State’ in Khalidi, Hyderabad: After the Fall, pp.95–115. 36 ‘From the Sunderlal Report’, Frontline, vol.18(5), 3–16 March 2001, http://www. hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1805/18051140.htm (accessed 27 April 2009).

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37 Qutubuddin Aziz, The Murder of a State: a Graphic Account of India’s Military Invasion of the Muslim-ruled State of Hyderabad in September 1948, the Heated Debates in the British Parliament and the UN Security Council and the Post-Invasion Holocaust in which over 200,000 Muslims Died, Karachi: Islamic Media Corporation, 1993. 38 Note to Ministry of States, 26 November 1948, SWJN2, vol. VIII, p.107. 39 Sunderlal and Abdulghaffar ‘Report’, p.100, emphasis in original. A different version of the report which appeared in Frontline comes to the same conclusion, ‘From the Sunderlal Report’, http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1805/18051140. htm (accessed 27 April 2009) 40 Major-General J.N. Chaudhuri, Military Governor, Hyderabad, to M.K. Vellodi, Secretary to the Ministry of States, 31 May 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1(50) H, 1949. 41 Ibid. 42 Chaudhuri to Vellodi, 31 May 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1(50) H, 1949. 43 Draft Special Courts Order, [undated, October 1948], NAI, MoS, f.100 H, 1948. 44 D.S. Bakhle, Chief Civil Administrator, to Vellodi, 27 October 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1(25) H, 1949. 45 Extract from Fortnightly report from the Governor of Hyderabad, 31 March 1950, NAI, MoS, f.5(23) H/50. 46 Quotation is from the editorial (presumably translated). Chaudhuri to Vellodi, 31 May 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1(50) H, 1949. 47 Ibid., Quoting letter from Tirtha to the Deputy Prime Minister on 10 May 1949. 48 Nehru to Dr Paul Reugger, International Red Cross, 30 July 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1 (15) H, 1949. 49 Nehru to J.N. Chaudhury [sic], 27 December 1948, SWJN2, vol. IX, pp.275–76. 50 Chaudhuri to Vellodi, 31 May 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1(50) H, 1949. 51 Ibid. 52 Extract from letter from the Military Governor, Hyderabad, 17 June 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1(50) H, 1949. 53 Extract from the minutes of a meeting held in the States Ministry, 28 September 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1(25) H, 1949. 54 The Bombay Chronicle, 22 September 1948, p.6. 55 Note by Government of Hyderabad, Home Department, [undated], NAI, MoS, f.6(16) H, 1951. 56 Padmaja Naidu, Sarojini Naidu’s daughter, wrote to Nehru: ‘The time has come for forgiveness for all those who sinned so grievously both before and after the police action. Without that there is no chance of any enduring peace of security for the people of any community here.’ Nehru to Vallabhbhai Patel, 1 October 1950, NAI, Ministry of States, 1(44) H, 1950. 57 Nehru to Patel, 19 October 1950, NAI, MoS, 1(44) H, 1950. 58 Patel to Nehru, 26 October 1950, NAI, MoS, 1(44) H, 1950. 59 Extract from fortnightly report from the Bombay outpost, no.2/52, 29 January, 1952, NAUK, DO 35/3264. 60 Tirtha, Memoirs, p.116. 61 On the struggle to establish a Hyderabad State Congress, Tirtha, Memoirs; G. Gnanaprakasham, ‘The 1938 Satyagraha in the Hyderabad State’, unpublished thesis, Osmania University, 1987. On the party’s divisions in 1948, Benichou, Autocracy to Integration, p.177. 62 V.P. Menon to Bakhle, 8 October 1948, NAI, MoS, f.327 H, 1948. 63 Proceedings of the meeting held at Bolarum Residency, 21 September 1948, NAI, MoS, f.308 H, 1948. 64 Chaudhuri to Vellodi, 31 May 1949, NAI, MoS, f.1(50) H, 1949. 65 The Bombay Chronicle, 25 December 1948, p.1. 66 Vallabhbhai Patel to Janardanrao Desai, Working Committee Member, Hyderabad State Congress, 1 October 1949, in Nandurkar, Sardar’s letters, vol.II, pp.72–73.

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67 The Bombay Chronicle, 1 December 1948, p.5, and 25 December 1948, p.1. 68 Margrit Pernau, The Passing of Patrimonialism: Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad, 1911–1948, Delhi: Manohar, 2000, pp.314–16. On the grievances of the middle-class members, see memorandum submitted by Yeshawantrao Joshi, General Secretary, Hyderabad State Hindu Mandal, to Sardar Hon’ble Jogendra Singh, K.T. Education Member, Government of India, 12 October 1944, NMML, Hindu Mahasabha papers, file P-45. 69 M. Seshadri, Interim Report on Land Revenue Administration and Land Tenure in Hyderabad, 1 December 1948, NAI, MoS, f.1(22)-H/49; Radio Talk by M. Seshadri, 10 June 1950, NAI, MoS, f.10(4)-H/50. 70 Deputy Director, Intelligence Bureau, Note on the Communist Movement in the Telengana [sic] Area of Hyderabad State, December 1948, NAI, MoS, f.11(1) H, 1949. 71 Burgul Ramkrishna Rao, Hyderabad State Congress leader, 29 January 1948, NAI, MoS, f.337 H, 1948. 72 Note by Government of Hyderabad, Home Department, [undated], NAI, MoS, f.6(16) H, 1951. 73 Ramkrishna Rao, 29 January 1948, NAI, MoS, f.337 H, 1948. 74 Report from the Agent-General, Hyderabad, 24 April 1948, NAI, MoS, f.3(19) H, 1948; also NAI, MoS, f.3(19) H, 1948; NAI, MoS, f.19(66) H, 1950. 75 See Padmaja Naidu Papers, NMML. 76 E.g., The Bombay Chronicle, 16 September 1948, p.5. 77 To J.N. Chaudhury [sic], 22 May 1949, SWJN2, vol. XI, pp.180–81. 78 ‘Communist Terrorism in Hyderabad’, 1950, NAI, MoS, f.5(13) H, 1950. 79 M.K. Vellodi, Chief Minister, Hyderabad, 18 December 1950, NAI, MoS, f.1(45) H, 1950. 80 B. Shiva Rao, The Framing of India’s Constitution: A Study, Bombay: N.M. Tripathi, 1968; Leela Simon, and Chiranjivi J. Nirmal, ‘Fundamental Rights: the Constitutional Context of Human Rights’ in Chiranjivi J. Nirmal (ed.), Human Rights in India: Historical, Social and Political Perspectives, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp.40–52. 81 Rao, Framing, pp.231–49. 82 Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, 16 September 1949, Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol.9 (30 July – 18 September 1949), p.1561. 83 Home Secretary’s memorandum on those sentenced to death, [undated], NAI, MoS, f.5(6) H, 1950. 84 The men were: Janardhan Reddy, Chinasetti Reddy, G. Raghupati Reddy, Tangatori Hanumanth, Magi Venkiah, Ghulam Dastagir, Wadla Papiah, Dasi Reddy, Adipu alias Warla Malliah, Kurma Lingiah, Mangala Samuel. Rajendra Prasad, President of India, 3 May 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(1) H, 1951. 85 Sirajuddin Neemuchwala, Advocate, Bombay High Court, to D.N. Pritt, 14 January 1950, NAI, MoS, f.5(6) H, 1950. 86 Nehru to Reginald Sorensen, India League, 21 January 1950, NAI, MoS, f.5(6) H, 1950. 87 Fortnightly report from the Chief Minister of Hyderabad for the first half of January 1951, NAI, MoS, f.17(7) H, 1951. 88 Fortnightly report from the Chief Minister of Hyderabad for the second half of February 1951, NAI, MoS, f.17(7) H, 1951. 89 Appeal of the Telengana [sic] Defence Committee, 21 January 1950, NAI, MoS, f.5(6) H, 1950. 90 Ranchi Railway Workers Union to the Prime Minister, 10 January 1950, NAI, MoS, f.5(6) H, 1950. 91 Nehru to Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Minister for States, Government of India, 18 March 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(1) H, 1951; Ayyangar, 19 April 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(1) H, 1951. 92 Ayyangar, 19 April 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(1) H, 1951.

218 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119 120 121 122

Notes Ibid. Nehru to Ayyangar, 18 March 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(1) H, 1951. Rajendra Prasad, 3 May 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(1) H, 1951. M.K. Vellodi, Chief Minister, Hyderabad, 18 December 1950, NAI, Ministry of States f.1(45) H, 1950. Deputy Director, Intelligence Bureau, Note on the Communist Movement in the Telengana [sic] Area of Hyderabad State, December 1948, NAI, Ministry of States, f.11(1) H, 1949. Ibid., see also, Sundarayya, Telangana, pt.I, ch.4. Note to Ministry of States, 8 April 1949, SWJN2, vol. X, pp. p.340–41. V. Ayyaswami, Superintendent of Police, Special Brach, Criminal Investigation Department, memorandum ‘Communists Activities in Hyderabad State’, 22 September 1948, NAI, MoS, f.100 H, 1948. The Bombay Chronicle, 25 December 1948, p.1. Note by Vellodi, 18 December 1950, NAI, MoS, f.1(45) H, 1950. Note by Vellodi, 18 April 1950, NAI, MoS, f.17(1) H, 1950. Special Commissioner, Warangal, Fortnightly Situation Report on the terrorist activities in the Special Area, 30 April 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(5) H, 1951. Special Commissioner, Warangal, Fortnightly Situation Report, 15 January 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(5) H, 1951. Intelligence Bureau’s Communist Survey No.17, 15 January 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6 (7) H, 1951. Special Commissioner, Warangal, Fortnightly Situation Report, 15 January 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(5) H, 1951. Times, 27 November 1950, NAUK, DO 35/3264. Nehru to Prasad, 9 January 1949, SWJN2, vol. IX, p.279 FN2. Report on the Administration of Hyderabad State, September 1948 – March 1950, pp.115–16, Andhra Pradesh State Archives, Hyderabad. Deputy Central Intelligence Officer’s Tour Note, 25 January 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6 (7) H, 1951. Special Commissioner, Warangal, Fortnightly Situation Report, 15 February 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(5) H, 1951. Intelligence Bureau’s Communist Survey No.17, 15 January 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6 (7) H, 1951. Report on the Administration of Hyderabad State, September 1948 – March 1950, pp.69–70. Deputy Central Intelligence Officer’s Tour Note, 14 February 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(7) H, 1951. Tirtha, Memoirs, pp.213–15, Sundarayya, Telangana. Intelligence Bureau Interrogation Report, 11 January 1951, NAI, Ministry of States f.6(7) H, 1951. Sundarayya, Telangana, pp.423–24. Amongst those who advocated an end to the struggle were Ajoy Ghosh, S.V. Ghate and S.A. Dange. Javeed Alam, ‘Communist Politics in Search of Hegemony’ in Partha Chatterjee (ed.), Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation-State, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp.179–206, p.189. Special Commissioner, Warangal, Fortnightly Situation Report, 15 May 1951, NAI, MoS, f.6(5) H, 1951. Pavier, Telengana Movement, pp.166–68. Fortnightly report from the Chief Minister of Hyderabad for the first half of October 1951, NAI, MoS, f.17(7) H, 1951. On Malaya see e.g. Richard Stubbs, ‘The Malayan Emergency and the Development of the Malaysian State’ in Paul B. Rich, and Richard Stubbs (ed.), The Counter-Insurgent State: Guerrilla Warfare and State Building in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, pp.50–71; Tim Harper, The End of

Notes

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Empire and the Making of Malaya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 123 Tirtha, Memoirs, p.65. 124 Extract from fortnightly report from the Bombay outpost, no.6 (II)/52 for the period 10th to 23rd March 1952, NAUK, DO 35/3264. 125 Draft prepared by Nehru and accepted by the Linguistic Provinces Committee appointed at the Jaipur Congress, 26 March 1949, SWJN2, vol. X, p.132. Chapter 10 Conclusion: rethinking colonial punishment, reassessing postcolonial India 1 For a more detailed analysis of this literature see, Taylor C. Sherman ‘Tensions of colonial punishment: perspectives on recent developments in the study of penal practices in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean’, History Compass, 2009, vol.7, pp.659–77. 2 Florence Bernault, ‘The Shadow of Rule: Colonial Power and Modern Punishment in Africa’ in Frank Dikötter, and Ian Brown (eds.), Cultures of Confinement: a History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America, London: Hurst & Company, 2007, pp.55–94, p.59. 3 Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, London: Jonathan Cape, 2005. 4 Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: a History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. On Malaya see, Susan L. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-Insurgency 1944–1960, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1995; Tim Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 5 Most of the literature is centred not on prisons but on the practises of torture which occurred in them during the Battle of Algiers. Rita Maran, Torture: the Role of Ideology in the French-Algerian War, New York: Praeger, 1989; Jacqueline Guerroud, Des Douars et des Prisons, Bouchene: Les Temps des Cerises, 1993; Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955–57, New York: Enigma Books, 2001. 6 Zinoman, Colonial Bastille. 7 Dikötter, and Brown, Cultures of Confinement, p.2. 8 See especially Diana Paton, No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780–1870, Durham: Duke University Press, 2004; David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. 9 E.g. Steven Pierce and Anupama Rao, (eds.), Discipline and the Other Body: Correction, Corporeality, Colonialism, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 10 David Scott, ‘Colonial Governmentality’, Social Text, 1995, vol.43, pp.191–220. 11 Upendra Baxi, The Crisis of the Indian Legal System, Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1982, p.21. 12 Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p.3. 13 The Hindustan Times, 23 May 2007 accessed online 7 May 2008 at http://www. hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=a17d40c0-fe81–84c21-a38c-7596eb8 33742&ParentID=c9909b9d-e5c0–4333-84d2-aff7f649a5c2&MatchID1=4617&Team ID1=3&TeamID2=4&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1163&PrimaryID=4617&Head line=Nearly+30+million+cases+pending+in+courts. 14 Accessed online 7 May 2008 at http://www.supremecourtofindia.nic.in/new_s/ pendingstat.htm. 15 National Crime Records Bureau, Prison Statistics India 2005, p.iii, accessed online 7 May 2008 at http://ncrb.nic.in/PSI2005/prison2005.htm.

220

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16 National Crime Records Bureau, Prison Statistics India 2005, p.iii, accessed online 7 May 2008 at http://ncrb.nic.in/PSI2005/prison2005.htm. Even if one measures the entire prison population, including remand prisoners, India still has a remarkably low rate of imprisonment. See World Prison Brief 2007, accessed online 7 May 2008 at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php? area=all&category=wb_poprate. 17 National Crime Records Bureau, Prison Statistics India 2005, p.iii, accessed online 7 May 2008 at http://ncrb.nic.in/PSI2005/prison2005.htm. 18 A.R. Desai, (ed.), Violation of Democratic Rights in India Volume I, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986, Part IV, Section II. See also Human Rights Watch / Asia, Human Rights in India: Police Killings and Rural Violence in Andhra Pradesh, New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992, pp.24–31; Amnesty International, India: A Trail of Unlawful Killings in Jammu and Kashmir: Chithisinghpora and its Aftermath, London: Amnesty International, 15 June 2000, ASA 20/024/2000. 19 Desai, Violation of Democratic Rights, p.249. 20 For a colourful account of this campaign see Suketu Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, New York: Vintage, 2004. 21 Human Rights Watch, ‘India: Prosecute Police for Killings in Jammu and Kashmir’, New York: Human Rights Watch, 31 January 2007, accessed online on 7 May 2008 at http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/01/31/india15227.htm. 22 Desai, Violation of Democratic Rights, p.249. 23 Vibhuti Narain Rai, Combating Communal Conflicts: Perception of Police Neutrality During Hindu-Muslim Riots in India, Delhi: Renaissance Publishing House, 1998, p.101. 24 Ibid. 25 On the 1990s see A.G. Noorani, ‘Communal Riots and the Police’ in Iqbal A. Ansar (ed.), Communal Riots: The State and Law in India, Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1997, pp.3–13. 26 Paul R. Brass, ‘The Gujarat Pogrom of 2002’, Social Science Research Council, 2002, vol.4 pp.1–9. 27 Ashish Khetan, ‘Khaki Klan Killers’, Tehelka, 3 November 2007. 28 Human Rights Watch ‘“We Have no Orders to Save You: State Participation and Complicity in Gujarat”’, New York: Human Rights Watch, 2002, p.23. 29 Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India, London: Penguin, 1997, p.32. 30 Khilnani, Idea of India, pp.44–45. See also Kohli, Democracy and Discontent, p.6. 31 Zoya Hasan, (ed.), Politics and the State in India, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000, p.28. 32 David C. Potter, India’s Political Administrators, 1919–1983, Oxford: Clarendon, 1968; Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army: its Contribution to the Development of a Nation, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990. 33 Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, p.175. 34 Ibid., p.174.

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Index

Aaj (newspaper) 64, 67, 96 Abdulghaffar, Qazi 156 Africa 13, 27, 52, 174 Aga Khan 120, 128 Agra 117 ahimsa 8, 69, 113 Ahmedabad 15, 22, 32, 42, 43 Ahmed, Sultan 121, 122 Ainsworth, T.M. 123 airpower 32–34, 122 Akal Sena 134, 140 Algeria 174 Ali, Asaf 117 Ali, Mohammad 38, 42, 46 Ali, Shaukat 38, 39, 40–41 Allahabad 70–71, 75, 76, 97 All-India Khilafat Conference 42 Almora district 62 aman sabhas 76 Ambedkar, B.R. 162 Amery, Leo 114, 115, 127 amnesty 18, 20–22, 107, 157–59 Amritsar 14, 15, 16, 19, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 134, 139, 142, 146 Amritsar Conspiracy Case 18 Amritsar National Bank Case 19–20 Andaman Islands 105 Andhra Mahasabha 161, 167 Andhra Pradesh 168, 175 Anushilan Party 21 Ashti village 123–24, 126 Assam 47, 51, 121, 122, 125 Auchinleck, Claude 130 Awadh 53 Ayyangar, Gopalaswami 165 Azad Hind Volunteer Corps 134 Azad, Abdul Kalam 115, 118, 142

Bakhle, D.S. 155 Ballal, Laxminarayana 65 Bande Mataram (newspaper) 45 Bardawa 147 Bardoli 43, 126 Battle of Britain 115 Baxi, Upendra 174 Beijing 167 Bell, R.D. 89–90 Benares 64, 67, 70, 73, 75, 97 Benares Hindu University 74–75 Bengal 2, 21–22, 47, 51, 68, 87, 97, 98, 102, 103, 104–9, 117, 121, 129, 130 Bengal famine 2 Bharat Mata 77, see also Mother India Bhave, Vinoba 113 Bibinaga Dacoity Case 158 Bihar 47, 103, 105–8, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 128, 129 Bihar Village Collective Responsibility Act 126 Birkenhead, Earl of 50, 51–52 bodily humiliations 5, 14, 29, 170 Bombay 4, 5n31, 12, 15, 22, 24–25, 25–26, 39, 41, 42–43, 47, 50, 60, 63, 68, 80, 81, 84, 87, 88–91, 116, 121, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 148, 171, 175 Bombay Chronicle, The (newspaper) 20, 89, 101, 158 Bombay Millowners’ Association 91 Bombay Special Emergency Powers Act 88 Bombay Riots Enquiry Committee 88 Bombay Whipping Act 88–91 bombing from the air (see airpower) Bose, Purnima 16 Bose, Sarat 107, 109 Bose, Subhas Chandra 97, 102, 107, 109, 114, 130 Brabourne, Baron 106, 108

Index Brass, Paul 135 Burma 120, 128, 130, 166 Butler, Harcourt 54 Cabinet Mission 134 Calcutta 15, 32, 61, 66, 87, 101, 114, 116, 122 Calcutta Samachar (newspaper) 32, 33 caste 2,10, 28, 154 Cellular Jail 102, 104 Central Legislative Assembly 65, 94, 101, 121, 122, 155 Central Provinces 47, 103n66, 121 Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan 2, 4 charkha 44, 45, 46 Chaudhuri, J.N. 155, 157, 158, 162, 165 Chauri Chaura 47 Chelmsford, Lord 15, 30, 42 Cheltenham College 28 Chenchus 167 Chimur village 124, 126 Choudhuri, Rambhaj Dutt 41–42 Christie, William 135, 136–37, 139, 142–43 Churchill, Winston 115, 120, 127, 129 civil disobedience movement 12, 38, 57, 58–78, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 97, 102, 105, 113, 119, 122, 138, 171, 172 class difference and punishment 9–10, 23, 38, 39–40, 44, 48, 49, 50–52, 56, 57, 79, 81, 84, 88–91, 92, 95, 171 coercive network 1, 4–7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 24, 32, 36, 39, 73, 77, 79, 80 81, 87, 91, 92, 132, 133, 135, 137, 149, 150, 151, 156, 163, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 177 collective fine 1, 14, 16, 22–26, 28, 39, 61, 120, 121, 122, 125–27, 132, 137, 146–47, 170 collective punishment 4, 18, 33, see also collective fine Collett, Nigel 16 Communist Party of India 167 communists 13, 88, 98, 117, 119, 121, 121n61, 149, 153, 154, 156, 159, 160, 161–68, 169, 172, 174 commutation of sentences 18–22, 164 Congress Socialist Party 107, 113–14, 117, 121 Constituent Assembly 134, 162 Constitution, Republic of India 134, 152, 161, 162–63, 164, 165, 176 corporal punishment, see bodily humiliations, whipping counter-insurgency 5, 13, 168, 169

241

crawling order 29,46 Criminal Law Amendment Act 88 Criminal Procedure Code 126 Cripps, Stafford 119, 120, 131 dacoity, 48, 51, 94, 98, 104, 106, 158, 175, 176 Daily Herald, The (newspaper) 64 dalits, see harijans Das, C.R. 48 Das, Jatindranath 94, 100, 101–2 Dastagir, Ghulam 164n84 death penalty 19, 20, 94, 102, 163–65 death in police custody 123 Defence of India Act 15 Defence of India Rules 42, 121, 127 Delhi 15, 25, 32, 45, 47, 61, 63, 122, 130, 133, 134–35, 136–37, 138, 139, 140, 142–43, 145, 146–49, 154, 155 Delhi Assembly Bomb Case 94, 95 Delhi Bar Association 63 Democrat, The (newspaper) 55 Deoli camp jail 117 Depressed Classes Association, Hyderabad 154 Depressed Classes Conference, Hyderabad 154 Desai, Bhulabhai 118 Desai, Mahadev 45 detention without trial 5, 10, 18, 40, 117–18, 119, 120, 127–31, 138n28, 148, 160, 163, 171, 174, 175 detenus 104, 109, 117–19, 129–30, 131, 149, 160, 166, 175 Dev, Acharya Narendra 97, 114, 128 Dhruva, A.B. 74 dyarchy 115 Dutt, B.K. 94, 95, 96–97, 98, 100, 101 Dyer, General Reginald 16, 29, 32, 33–34, 35–36, 46, 171 East Punjab 142 elections 86, 87n42, 90n61, 103, 129, 130, 134 159, 160, 167, 177 Elkins, Caroline 174 Emergency 174, 175 encounter killings 175–76, 177 everyday state 1, 3 Executive Council 112, 118 Fatehpuri mosque 145 Fein, Helen 16 firing on crowds 1,5 10, 14, 16, 32–35, 38, 52–56, 57, 65, 122, 136, 138

242

Index

First World War 3, 8, 14, 31, 38, 61, 69n62 force-feeding 93, 96, 98–100, 107 Forward Bloc 117, 127 Foucault, Michel 2–3 France 111, 115 Gladstone, Herbert 98 Gandhi cap 8, 43, 44, 48, 70 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, 43–44, 47, 48, 59, 69, 74, 95, 96–97, 101, 103, 104, 120, 142, 158, 159; arrest 15, 32, 40–41, 42–43, 61, 63; assassination 148–49; on collective fines 24; fast unto death 128, 146; on HSRA hunger strike 97; individual satyagraha 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118–19; Khilafat movement 39, 40; on jail conditions 44–46, 49; on release of political prisoners 104, 107, 108, 109, 110, 118; on violence against women satyagrahis 64 Gandhi, Indira 174, 176–77 Gandhi-Irwin Pact 70, 84 Germany 111, 114, 115 Ghosh, Ajai Kumar 95n6 Girni Kamgar Union 88 Godse, Nathuram 148 Goonda Act 84–88, 138 goondas 80–81, 83, 84–88, 92, 127, 137, 170, def. 86 Gopal, Jai 94 Gour, Raj Bahadur 167 Government of India Act 1935 102, 103 Gujarat riots 176 Gujranwala 29, 32–33, 41 Haig, Harry 108 Hanumanth, Tangatori 164n84 Haq, Fazlul 105 harijans 113 hartal 63, 69, 71, 84, 85 Hazaribagh Jail 107, 117 Hindu Mahasabha 9,121, 124, 126, 172 Hindu-Muslim relations 84, 88, 151, 152, 155–60 Hindustan Socialist Republican Association 92–102, 104 Hindustan Times, The (newspaper) 128 Hitler, Adolf 108, 112 Holwell Monument 114 Home Rule League 20 Horniman, B.G. 89 Human Rights Watch 175–76

hunger strike 9, 12, 92, 93–110, 117–18, 138, 149 Hunter Committee 16, 18, 19, 23, 31, 33–34, 36, 56, 57, 67, 122, 171 Hunter, Lord 39 Hussain, Moazzam 162 Hyderabad State Congress 153, 157, 158, 159–60 imprisonment, see prisons, detention without trial imprisonment rates 5n31 Independent, The (newspaper) 53, 54 India Association 20 Indian Army 16, 27, 30, 42, 106, 130, 136, 138, 146, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 162 Indian Civil Service 3, 31, 166 Indian National Army 119, 128–31 Indian National Congress 7–9, 12, 58, 60, 71, 72, 84, 145, 149, 151, 159, 169, 172, 176–77; and assassination of Gandhi 148; and Benares Hindu University 74; and Cabinet Mission 134; civil disobedience movement 59, 61, 63, 64, 67, 69; and civil service 3, 8; and District Boards 75–76; and elections in 1937; and hunger strikes of the HSRA 93, 94–95, 97–98, 100; and Indian National Army 130; individual satyagraha 112–13, 114–15, 116, 118, 131; and Jatindranath Das’ death 101–2; and Jallianwala Bagh 35; and Kanpur riots 84–85; Kanpur riots enquiry 83, 85–86; and kisans 52–56; and Khaksars 145; and Muslims 66, 84, 89, 143; noncooperation movement 39, 42; and partition violence 143; and political prisoners 38, 102–9, 117, 118–19, 120, 128, 129–30, 172; provincial governments and hunger strikes 102–9, 110; quit India movement 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 129; recruitment of police 66, 68, 83; and schools 69–70; and Second World War 111–12; sub-committee on Punjab disturbances 16, 29, 32, 33, 36; and violence against women satyagrahis 64; volunteer organisations 134 India (newspaper) 29 individual satyagraha 46–47, 111, 112–19, 120, 131

Index Indochina 174 Indonesia 162, 166 Irwin, Lord 59 Jallianwala Bagh 14, 16, 17, 32–36, 40, 55, 56, 59 Japan 108, 120, 129,130 Jenkins, Evan 134, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143–44 Johnstone, J. 63 Jugantar Party 21 Kakori dacoity 94 Kakori prisoners 104 Kanpur 70, 76, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84–88, 89, 171 Kapur, Jai Dev 95n6 Karachi 42, 46, 61 Karan, Akshaya Kumar 63 Karnataka 168 Kashmir 152, 154, 175, 176 Kasur 15, 28, 31 Kenya 174 khadi 8, 39, 43, 44, 46, 47, 60, 70, 77 Khalifah 38–39 Khaliquzzaman, Chaudhry 108 Khan, Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Badshah Khan) 116 Khan, Khizar Hayat 134 Khan, Osman Ali, see Nizam of Hyderabad Khan, Shoebullah 158 Khan, Sikander Hyat 106, 116 Khilafat Movement 23, 35, 38–39, 42, 84, see also non-cooperation movement Khurja 72 Khurshid, Sahibzada 145, 146–47, 148 Kisan Sabha 53 kisans 52–56, 103 Kitchlew, Saifuddin 15, 20 32, 41–42, 46 Kohli, Atul 175 Koyas 167 Krishak Praja Party 103, 104, 106, 109 Kumari, Subhadra 35 Kunzru, Pandit Hirday Nath 65 labour 103 Lahore 15, 29, 30, 32, 51, 105, 107, 134, 135–36, 139, 143–44, 146 Lahore Conspiracy Case of 1919 18, 20 Lahore Conspiracy Case 1929 93–102, 105, 137, 138 Lal, Babu Sunder 83

243

Lal, D.C. 143, 145 Lal, Kishori 95n6 Lambadas 167 lathi charge 61, 63, 64, 65, 128, 136 Latin America 174 Leader, The (newspaper) 63 Lefebvre, Henri 2 Legislative Assembly, of Bengal 109; of Punjab 101 Leigh v. Gladstone 98–99 Lingiah, Kurma 164n84 linguistic states 168 Linlithgow, Lord 103, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 127, 128, 129 local officers, discretionary powers of 4, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16–17, 26–31, 36, 38, 40, 47–49, 52, 56, 93, 94, 99–100, 110, 111, 116, 119, 121–22, 125, 127, 131, 132, 137, 138–39, 169, 171–72, 173 Low, D.A. 40 Lumley, Roger 121 Maclagan, Edwin 19–20 Madras 47, 60, 65, 67–68, 102, 103n66, 116, 125, 144, 168 Maharashtra 168 Majlis-i-Ittehad-ul-Muslimein 154 Malaviya, Govind 142 Malaviya, Madan Mohan 55, 74, 101 Malaya 128, 130, 166, 168, 174 Malliah, Warla (aka Adipu) 164n84 Mamdot, Nawab of 134, 139, 143 Manchuria 108 Marsden, P. 28, 31 martial law 15, 18, 28, 29, 30, 49, 50, 138; manual of 28, 31, 34; prisoners 21 Martial Law Commissions 17, 18–19 Martyrdom 35, 55, 56, 93, 94, 101–2, 117–19, 158 Mathura 63, 65 Mau Mau 174 Mbembe, Achille 177–78 Meerut Conspiracy Case 88, 98 Menon, V.P. 160 mercy, see commutation of sentences Messervy, Frank 138 minimum force rule 10, 32–33, 34, 62, 68, 122, 138, 171–72 Misra, Gaurishanker 55 Mohani, Hasrat 43 Mohiuddin, Maqdoom 167 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms 15, 21, 41, 59

244

Index

Montagu, Edwin 15, 16, 21, 29–30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 40, 50, 51, 171 Moonje, B.S. 124, 126, Moscow 167 Mother India 35, 60, 65, 66, 94 Muddiman, Alexander 3 Muslim League 9, 43, 103, 104, 108, 109, 113, 114, 126, 134, 135, 139, Muslim League National Guards 134, 139, 140, 141, 148 mutiny/rebellion of 1857 121 Mysore 168 Nadiad 15, 22–25 Naidu, Padmaja 162 Naidu, Sarojini 64, 117, 162 Nalgonda district 153, 162, 164 Nanjappa, Captain 166, 168 Narayan, Jayaprakash 113–14, 118n45 National Crime Records Bureau 175 national days 44, 59, 97, 128, 135 national songs 8, 60, 69, 70, 76, 128 Naxalites 175 Nazimuddin, Khwaja 106 Nehru, Jawaharlal 9, 54, 55, 105, 115, 130, 134, 138, 139, 142, 144, 146, 147–48, 149, 154, 155, 156, 158–59, 160, 162, 164, 165, 166, 168, 177; in prison 117, 128 Nehru, Motilal 48, 55, 97, 102 Nehru, Uma 70 Neogy, K.G. 122 Nizam of Hyderabad 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 159, 151 non-cooperation movement 12, 23, 24, 35, 37, 38–57, 58, 59, 78, 95, 159 North West Frontier Province 47, 103n66 no-tax campaign 59, 62 O’Dwyer, Michael 30, 33, 35 Orissa 47, 103n66, 129 Ottoman Empire 38 Pakistan 140–41, 144, 147, 152, 153, 154 Pakistan Day 135 Pande, Surendar Nath 95n6 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi 70 Pant, Govind Ballabh 104, 107, 108 Papiah, Wadla 164n84 Parshad, Gaya 95n6 Patel, Vallabhbhai 66, 104, 115, 134, 138, 142, 144, 145, 147–48, 152, 155, 159, 160

peasants 7, 52–56, 60, 103, 121, 131, 161, 165, 166, 167 see also kisans People’s Democratic Front 167 Peshawar 61 Pethick-Lawrence, Lord 129–30 Petit, J.B. 91 police action in Hyderabad 13, 151, 155, 156, 160, 161, 166 police, and bias 80, 82, 83, 91, 92, 133, 135, 136, 139–44, 150, 158, 177; communal composition of 142–43; and Muslims 65–66; rewards 68 Poona 120 Port Blair 102, 103–4 Prasad, Rajendra 165 preventive detention 162–63, see also detention without trial Prevention of Terrorism Act 175 Preventive Detention Act 175 princely states 135, 146, 152, 163, 176 prisoners, European 44, 46, 93, 95–96, 102; political 8, 9, 20, 21, 38, 39–40, 44–49, 50, 59, 60, 65, 92, 93–110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 117–18, 130, 131, 160, 172; classification 47–48, 95, 101, 102, 105, 117, 173 prisons, conditions 27, 44–46, 116, 117–18, 128, 173; labour 44–45, 173; privileges 44, 46, 47–49, 94, 96, 98, 100, 117–18 private armies 136, 141, 147, 148 Provincial Councils 59 punitive police 23, 24–25, 59 137 Punjab 12, 14–37, 38, 39, 41–42, 45, 47, 50, 51, 65, 66, 68, 94, 101, 102, 104, 105–6, 107, 108, 109, 116, 129, 133, 134–36, 137–38, 139–40, 141, 142, 143, 144 Punjab Boundary Force 138 Punjab disturbances 14–37, 38, 39, 41, 40, 49, 50, 125, 127, 149 Punjab Disturbed Areas Act 137 Punjab Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance 137 Punjab Jails Enquiry Committee, 101 Punjab Public Safety Act 137, 148 quit India movement 12, 111, 112, 119–31 Qur’an 45 race 9, 16, 47, 56; and bodily humiliations 29; and segregation in prison 44, 46, 93, 95–96, 102, 173; and whipping 27, 49–52 Racial Distinctions Committee 50, 51

Index

245

Rae Bareli, 52–56 Rai, Lala Lajpat 41 Rai, Vibhuti Narain 176 Rajagopalachari 118 Rajguru, Shivram 84, 94, 102 Ram, Agya 95n6 Ramtak village 123, 126 Ranchi Railway Workers Union 164, 165 Randhawa, Mohinder Singh 142, 146–48 Ranikhet 62 Rashtriya Mahila Sabha 66 Rashtriya Seva Dal 134 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 121, 124, 134, 139, 140, 141, 146–49, 172 Rawalpindi 30, 134, 140 Razakars 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161–62, 165 Razvi, Kasim 154, 158, 159 Reading, Lord 42, 43, 47, 51 Red Cross, International Committee of the 157–58 Red Fort 145 Red Shirts 116 Reddi, Ravi Narayan 161, 167 Reddy, Chinasetti 164n84 Reddy, Dasi 164n84 Reddy, G. Raghupati 164n84 Reddy, Janardhan 164n84 Rees, Thomas Wynford 138 refugees 119, 135, 137, 146, 147, 148, 150, 153, 154, 155, 163 Robinson, W.D. 143 Ronaldshay, Lord 21–22 Rowlatt Act 15, 20; Anti-Rowlatt Satyagraha 29 Russell, Lawrence Walter 122–23

Saunders, John Poyantz 94 schools 5, 29, 39, 137, 153, 166; during CDM 58, 60, 69–76, 77; and whipping 28, 31 Second World War 2, 12, 78, 110, 111–32, 133, 161, 168, 171, 172 Servants of India Society 62 Sèvres, Treaty of 39, 40 Shankar, V. 141 Sharma, Pandit Krishnachandra 97 Sharma, Surinder 149 Shastri, Urmila 49 Sherwood, Marcella 15, 28, 29 Shiromani Akali Dal 134 Sholapur 61, 159 Simla 129, 144 Simla Conference 128, 129 Singh, Baldev 134, 138 Singh, Bhagat 84, 94, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102 Singh, Birpal 54–55 Singh, Giani Kartar 138, 144 Singh, Mahabir 95n6 Singh, Master Tara 134, 138, 140 Singh, Sardar Sampurnan 116 Sinha, Krishna 107, 108 South Kanara 65, 67 Soviet Union 41, 88, 162 Special Courts Order 157 spinning 43–44, 113, 128, see also khadi Standstill Agreement 152 Stewart, Thomas 123 Students Association 70 Sunderlal, Pandit 156 Supreme Court 164, 175 swadeshi 42 swaraj 59, 107, 168

Sadiq, Sheikh Mohammed 65 Salt March 59 Samuel, Mangala 164n84 Sanial, J.N. 95n6 Sapru, Tej Bahadur 48 Sarkar, Sumit 107 satyagraha 8, see also non-cooperation movement, civil disobedience movement, individual satyagraha, quit India movement satyagrahis 39–40, 58, 111, 118, 131, 170, 171; non-imprisonment of 112–17; and police violence 60–64; in prisons 43–49 Satyamurti 118 Satyapal 15, 20, 32, 102

Tanzeem Movement 84–85 tear gas 61 Telangana Defence Committee 164 Telangana Twelve 163–65 Telangana uprising 151, 152, 153–54, 161–68 Tenancy Act, Hyderabad 166–67 terrorists, revolutionary 7, 9, 12, 15, 21, 84, 94, 98, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 117–19, 127 Tewari, Kanwal Nath 95n6 Thamban Avargal, M.R.Ry.V.K. Rajagopala 65, 67–68 Thapar, Sukh Dev 84, 94, 102 thuggee 81n10 Times of India, The (newspaper) 90

246

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Tirtha, Swami Ramamnanda 158, 159, 166, 168 transportation 19–20, 94 Tribal Reclamation Scheme 167

77, 93, 131, 139, 140, 170, 171–72, 173, 174 volunteer organisations 140, 145, see also private armies

Unionist Party 104, 134 United Provinces 12, 47, 48, 51, 53–56, 58, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69–76, 79, 80, 81, 84–88, 91, 94, 97, 102–9, 118, 122, 125, 126, 129, 143, 144, 175 United States of America 115

waging war against the King 19, 21 Warangal district 153, 162, 167 Wavell, Lord 120, 127, 129–30 West Bengal 175 West Punjab 142, 147 whipping 10, 26–31, 38, 39, 49–52, 56, 79, 81, 88–91, 122–23, 138n28, 171 Whipping Act 31 Women’s Association, Nagpur 124 women satyagrahis 8, 60, 63–65, 67

Varma, Shiv 95n6 Vartman (newspaper) 135–36, 139 Vellodi, M.K. 165–66, 168 Venkiah, Magi 164n84 Vincent, William 48 violence, communal 7, 12, 78, 79–92, 108, 141, 157, 158, 161, 171 violence, state 1, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17, 34, 38, 39, 40, 52, 56, 58, 60, 61–69,

Young India 45 Youth League, 70, 74, 85, 101 Yuddhvir (newspaper) 65 Zetland, Marquess of 106