Conclusion

Summary

While the exceptional legal measures adopted by the colonial state to suppress ‘terrorist’ attacks in the 1920s and 1930s attracted the sustained criticism of India’s mainstream nationalist politicians, these measures did not disappear when the country gained independence at the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947. To the contrary, the spectre of ‘terrorism’ would haunt the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan – and later Bangladesh – for the next seventy years and beyond. While the postcolonial states of South Asia finally returned sovereignty to the people of the subcontinent, many of the legal and bureaucratic structures that had provided a framework for colonial rule remained in place. These included various extraordinary laws that targeted terrorism, sedition, and armed insurgency. Born out of the brutal violence of partition, in which hundreds of thousands died and millions were displaced in communal clashes between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, both India and Pakistan emerged at a time of bloody crisis.