Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:36:20.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Settling the Citizen, Settling the Nomad: ‘Habitual offenders’, rebellion, and civic consciousness in western India, 1938–1952

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2019

DAKXINKUMAR BAJRANGE ,
SARAH GANDEE  and
WILLIAM GOULD
DAKXINKUMAR BAJRANGE
Affiliation:
Email: [email protected]
SARAH GANDEE
Affiliation:
University of Leeds Email: [email protected]
WILLIAM GOULD
Affiliation:
University of Leeds Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the politics of civic engagement during India's long decolonization between 1938 and 1952 for communities—the erstwhile ‘criminal tribes’—whose lifestyles were complicated by controls on their movement before and shortly following India's independence. It argues that their varied and contingent strategies of mobilization increasingly identified community particularities—notably, their marking as ‘criminals’ and a history of movement—as a basis for negotiating their problematic inclusion within the evolving citizenship frameworks of the late colonial, then post-colonial, state. These early forms of civic consciousness set the parameters for later strategies that sought to mobilize communities by engaging with ‘universal’, ‘differentiated’, and indigenized conceptions of civic responsibility and rights. The most surprising finding of this research is that these strategies (via anti-colonialism) often embraced and celebrated forms of illegality and criminality. The romanticism of the dacoit (bandit)-cum-freedom fighter charged Dhaku Sultan-like figures with political heroism. In the context of independence and the founding of the Constitution, strategies turned to the (un)realized promises of freedom and citizenship rights. The final part of the article turns to the implications of ‘denotification’ for the so-called criminal tribes in the early 1950s, which provided both obstacles and avenues to strategies of mobilization after independence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , March 2020 , pp. 337 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The term ‘ex-criminal tribe’ is rarely used as it invokes prejudice and discrimination. Vimukta jati (liberated community) or ‘denotified tribe’ is preferred. Interview with Ravaliyaji Sansi, 15 March 2013, Bishala. This term denotes the approximately 200 communities who were notified under the Criminal Tribes Act (1871, 1924).

2 Kolff, Dirk H. A., Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 18Google Scholar; Kasturi, Malavika, Rajput Lineages and the Colonial State in Nineteenth Century North India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

3 Piliavsky, Anastasia, ‘The Moghia Menace, or the Watch over Watchmen in British India’, Modern Asian Studies, 47.3 (2013), pp. 751–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 The Criminal Tribes Act gave provincial governments the power to declare communities, or parts thereof, as ‘criminal tribes’ through notification in the local gazette.

5 Piliavsky, Anastasia, ‘The “Criminal Tribe” in India before the British’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 57.2 (2015), pp. 323–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Cooper, Frederick, Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 4Google Scholar.

7 Chatterji, Joya, ‘South Asian Histories of Citizenship 1946–1970’, The Historical Journal, 55.4 (2012), pp. 1049–1071CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

8 Chatterji, ‘South Asian Histories’.

9 Kabir, Ananya, ‘Cartographic Irresolution and Line of Control’, Social Text, 27.4 (2009), pp. 45–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Piliavksy, Anastasia, ‘Borders without Borderlands: On the Social Reproduction of State Demarcation in Rajasthan’, in Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia, Gellner, David N. (ed.) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 24–46Google Scholar.

10 Ibid. Piliavksy argues that the thief-Kanjars were typically restricted in their movements by involvement with the police administration. In contrast, the bard-Kanjars (not treated as hereditary ‘criminals’) moved effortlessly across vast spaces. The latter were never brought under the CTA's measures, which suggests that movement itself was not necessarily treated as deviant.

11 Holston, James, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 3–35Google Scholar.

12 Sumi Madhok, ‘Five Notions of Haq: Exploring Vernacular Rights Cultures in South Asia’, London School of Economics Gender Institute, New Working Papers Series, Issue 25 (November 2009), pp. 1–52.

13 See Jayal, Niraja Gopal, ‘A False Dichotomy? The Unresolved Tension between Universal and Differentiated Citizenship in India’, Oxford Development Studies, 39.2 (2011), pp. 185–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Although related to a very different context, these ideas of independence and citizenship rights represent a form of political proliferation of rights comparable to what scholars have described in phases of digital globalization; see Isin, Engin F., Citizens without Frontiers (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012)Google Scholar.

15 Mayaram, Shail, Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

16 See Brown, Mark, ‘Postcolonial Penality: Liberty and Repression in the Shadow of Independence, India c. 1947’, Theoretical Criminology, 21.2 (2017), pp. 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Radhakrishna, Meena, Dishonoured by History: Criminal Tribes and British Colonial Policy (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2008; rev. edn)Google Scholar; D'Souza, Dilip, Branded by Law: Looking at India's Denotified Tribes (New Delhi: Penguin, 2001)Google Scholar; Schwarz, Henry, Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India: Acting like a Thief (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Devy, Ganesh, A Nomad Called Thief: Reflections on Adivasi Silence (New Delhi: Orient-Longman, 2006)Google Scholar.

17 Uditi Sen, ‘Developing Terra Nullis: Colonialism, Nationalism and Indigeneity in the Andaman Islands’, conference paper delivered at the University of Nottingham, 2013.

18 Shani, Ornit, ‘Conceptions of Citizenship in India and the “Muslim Question”’, Modern Asian Studies, 44.1 (2010), pp. 145–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See Rodrigues, Valerian, ‘Citizenship and the Indian Constitution’, in Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution, Bhargava, Rajeev (ed.) (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 164–88Google Scholar.

20 Jayal, ‘A False Dichotomy?’.

21 Wilkinson, Steven, ‘India, Consociational Theory and Ethnic Violence’, Asian Survey, 40.5 (2000), pp. 767–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Gould, William, Bureaucracy, Community and Influence: Society and the State in India, c. 1930–1960s (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 48–76Google Scholar.

23 Dirks, Nicholas, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

24 Piliavsky, ‘The “Criminal Tribe” in India before the British’.

25 Census of India, 1931, Report, Vol. XVII: The United Provinces (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1933) p. 533. It was noted by A. C. Turner, author of the United Provinces Census Report, that ‘… the caste return has been impugned by some who contend that it is likely to perpetuate by official action what they consider to be undesirable, viz, caste differentiation, and by others who think the returns are vitiated for demographic purposes by the attempts of the lower castes to return themselves as belonging to groups of higher status’.

26 Ibid., Appendix B, pp. 545–50. The Census remarked with macabre interest, that Bhantu, Sansia, and Dom communities, for example, had derived systematic fines for ‘misconduct with a young girl’ and it was noted that Bhantus would claim Rs 30 from another party for the loss of a tooth.

27 Report of the Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee, 1939 (Bombay: Government of India Press, 1939), p. 3.

28 Ibid., pp. 1–2.

29 Piliavsky, ‘The Moghia Menace’.

30 Annual Administration Report on the Working of the Criminal Tribes Act in the Province of Bombay. For the Year Ending 31st March 1946 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1947).

31 Working of the Criminal Tribes Act in the Bombay Presidency, Part 1, for the Year 1924 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1924).

32 Annual Administration Report on the Working of the Criminal Tribes Act in the Bombay Presidency, Part 1 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1934).

33 Annual Administration Report. For the Year Ending 31st March 1946.

34 Annual Administration Report on the Working of the Criminal Tribes Act in the Bombay Presidency, Part I.

35 Piliavsky, ‘The Moghia Menace’.

36 Sarah Gandee, ‘Contesting Categories: Caste, Tribe and “Criminal/Denotified Tribes” in Punjab, 1910s–1982’, conference paper delivered at the University of Leeds, 2017.

37 Report of the Indian Franchise Committee (Calcutta: Government of India, 1932), pp. 108–09.

38 The three categories agreed upon during deliberations in the Indian Legislative Council in 1916 were ‘untouchables’, ‘aboriginal tribes’, and ‘criminal and wandering tribes’. Similar denominations of ‘aboriginal and hill tribes’, ‘depressed classes’, and ‘criminal tribes’ were used in 1917 by Henry Sharp, educational commissioner for the Government of India. For a longer discussion of the various uses of these terms by the government, see the Report of the Indian Franchise Committee, pp. 108–09.

39 Imperial Legislative Council Debates, April 1916, Proceedings 40–43, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC).

40 Report of the Indian Franchise Committee, p. 109.

41 Rao, Anupama, The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

42 Ambedkar also excluded ‘aborigines’ from his definition of the depressed classes. Later, he reluctantly conceded that adult suffrage could be extended to aborigines but not to criminal tribes.

43 ‘Evidence of Dr. Ambedkar before the Indian Statutory Commission on 23rd October 1928’, in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, 17 vols, Hari Narke (ed.) (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014; 2nd edn), Vol. II, pp. 459–90.

44 Ibid., p. 463.

45 ‘Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill’, in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, 17 vols, Vasant Moon (ed.) (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014; 2nd edn), Vol. XV, pp. 483–84.

46 Ibid.

47 The Tribune, 25 June 1933.

48 Bombay Backward Class Department: First Administration Report, 1931–33 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1934).

49 See Jaffrelot, Christophe, India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

50 Jayal, Niraja Gopal, Citizenship and its Discontents: An Indian History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 3Google Scholar.

51 In 1897 the CTA was amended to allow for the separation of children from parents and placement within ‘reformatory’ institutions. The 1911 amendment formally established the setting up of ‘settlements’ or open prisons, and the 1924 amendment introduced new severe penalties, including transportation for life of repeat offenders.

52 Piliavksy, ‘The Moghia Menace’.

53 This was the case with other forms of penal legislation. See Sherman, Taylor, State Violence and Punishment in India (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010), pp. 22–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for treatment of the failed implementation of collective fines and punishments.

54 Report on the Working of the Criminal Tribes Act in the Bombay Presidency (including Sind) for the Year 1918 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1919), V/24/630, OIOC, p. 21.

55 Ibid.

56 ‘Letter from Deputy Superintendent of Police, Satara to the District Magistrate, Satara, 9 Nov 1924’, Home Dept. Resolution No. 7003, 6 February 1925, Bombay Home Proceedings 1925, P/11466, OIOC, pp. 253–54.

57 ‘J. Ghosal, District Magistrate, Satara to the Commissioner, 28 January 1919’, Serial no. 38, Bombay Judicial and Home Proceedings, P/10542–10543, OIOC, p. 101.

58 ‘Letter from Inspector General of Police, Bombay Presidency, no. 2538, 20 August 1925’, Home Dept. Resolution 8579, 23 October 1925, Bombay Home Proceedings 1925, P/11466, OIOC, pp. 1755–57.

59 Ibid.

60 ‘Criminal Tribes Settlement Officer, Bijapur to the Commissioner, SD, 11 July 1918, Serial No. 55’, P/10547—Political Proceedings, Bombay Province, 1919, P/1057, OIOC, pp. 217–21. For this situation in relation to Scindia, see Piliavsky, ‘The Moghia Menace’.

61 See P/10547—Political Proceedings, Bombay Province, 1919, P/1057, OIOC.

62 Report of the Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee, 1939, pp. 3–23.

63 Ibid., p. 51.

64 ‘Report of a Labour Meeting, 18 January 1938 and 2 February 1938’, Home Department (SPL), No. 543 (82), pt. 1, Maharashtra State Archives (hereafter MSA).

65 Report of the Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee, 1939, p. 58.

66 ‘Criminal Tribes Settlement Sholapur—Attempts to stir up trouble among the members of’, Home Department (SPL), No. 543 (82), pt. 1, MSA.

67 Cutting from The Bombay Sentinel, 19 January 1939, contained in ‘Criminal Tribes Settlement Sholapur’, Home Department (SPL), No. 543 (82), pt. 2, MSA.

68 See Zavos, John, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Gould, William, ‘The U.P. Congress and “Hindu Unity”: Untouchables and the Minority Question in the 1930s’, Modern Asian Studies, 39.4 (2005), pp. 845–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 ‘Speech at Kirloskar Theatre’, Kesari, 25 June 1918, p. 2. We would like to thank Dr Robert Upton for drawing our attention to this reference.

70 See the work of Tommaso Bobbio on Congress leaders’ responses to municipal and civic reform in the 1930s. Bobbio, Tommaso, ‘Migrants, Slums and the Construction of Citizenship in Gandhi's Ahmedabad (1915–1930)’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 25.1 (2015), pp. 99–115Google Scholar.

71 ‘Note, 22 April 1938’, in Munshi Collection, Reel 27, Bombay Ministry, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

72 ‘On the Bombay Police Act Amendment Bill: 1’, in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. II, pp. 140–41.

73 ‘Objection from P. A. Kelly, Commissioner of Police, Bombay to Secretary to Govt., Letter no. 8370/95-A, 5th August 1929’, in Establishment of a Settlement and a Free Colony in Bombay City (Worli Chawls), Government of Bombay Home Department Proceedings 1928, P/11838, OIOC.

74 ‘Criminal Tribes Act: Working of—Note prepared by Mr O. H. B. Starte for budget discussion’, Home Dept, File 5651, 1924, MSA.

75 Ibid.

76 ‘Criminal Tribes; certain proposals of General Booth of the Salvation Army for the reclamation of Criminal Tribes in India’, Judicial Department, Vol. 102, no. 457, 1911, MSA.

77 Interview with Dr Ketananand, 9 February 2013, Chharanagar, Ahmedabad.

78 See DNT Rights Action Group (RAG) accounts, for example in the Budhan newsletter in the period from 1998.

79 See Banjara Times, 14 September 2009, for the 2009 celebration of Vimukta Divas in Mumbai.

80 See Rawat, Ramnarayan S., Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), pp. 120–54Google Scholar.

81 Kapila, Kriti, ‘The Measure of a Tribe: The Cultural Politics of Constitutional Reclassification in North India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14.1 (2008), pp. 117–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 We carried out the interviews principally in the cities of Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, Sholapur, and Baramati in the first six months of 2013. Some additional interviews were carried out in Punjab and Delhi in April–May 2016.

83 See Annual Administration Report on the Working of the Criminal Tribes Act in the Bombay Presidency (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1928); see also Bombay: Accountant General, Departmental Audit Manual (Jails and Convict Settlements and Criminal Tribes Settlement Departments) of the Office of the Accountant General, Bombay (Calcutta: Government of India Press, 1928), V/27/301/260, 1928, OIOC.

84 ‘Criminal Tribes Settlement Kalyanpur (Sholapur)—Removal to Umedpur, construction of additional buildings’, Home Department, File 4411–I, 1923–24, MSA.

85 Annual Administration Report on the Working of the Criminal Tribes Act in the Province of Bombay for the Year Ending 31 March 1939 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1939).

86 See, for example, ‘Criminal Tribes Settlement: Nira Projects—Providing Employment for Settlers at the’, Home Department, File 9528-I, 1926, MSA.

87 ‘Report at Degaon Naka, 17 January 1938, Criminal Tribes Settlement Sholapur—Attempts to stir up trouble among the members of’, Home Department (SPL), No. 543 (82), pt. 1, MSA.

88 ‘Hieb to Devadhar, 8 February 1938’, ibid.

89 ‘Legislative Assembly Debate on 8 October 1947’, in ‘Habitual Offenders’, Law and Judiciary Department, B. 41–52, Vol. 63, MSA.

90 The Tribune, 31 December 1927, 27 May 1928.

91 ‘Petition sent to Superintendent of Police, Karnal, dated 6 September 1946’, in ‘Request by members of the Sansi community for the exemption of their tribe from the operation of the Criminal Tribes Act, 1924’, Home/Judicial Dept., B Proceedings, Punjab Government Civil Secretariat, 1947, File no. 202, Punjab State Archives, Chandigarh.

92 The Tribune, 22 February 1947.

93 Interview with Bhimrao Jadav, Sholapur, 9 February 2013.

94 Ibid.

95 See Beth, Sarah, ‘Taking to the Streets: Dalit Mela and the Public Performance of Dalit Cultural Identity’, Contemporary South Asia, 14.4 (2005), pp. 397–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 This was a common occurrence in interwar United Provinces too: see Gould, William, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 35–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 See the account of the Salvation Army leader William Bramwell Baird, ‘The Call of the Jackals’, unpublished manuscript, available in the Salvation Army's William Booth College, London: ‘the “traditional skills” of tribes people were useless in the “civilized world”’, p. 291.

98 Interview with Bhimrao Jadav, 9 February 2013, Sholapur. For contemporary notions of community honour around criminality, see Piliavsky, ‘The “Criminal Tribe” in India before the British’.

99 Interview with Bhimrao Jadav, 9 February 2013, Sholapur.

100 Ibid.

101 For example, interviews with Avinash Gaikwad, 10 February 2013, Baramati; Girish Prabhune, 11 February 2013, Chinchwadgaon, Pune.

102 ‘F. S. Young, United Provinces: Report on Operations of 1922–24, against the Bhantu dacoity gang, dated 1923–24’, MSS Eur F.161/128 (1922–24), OIOC. Frederick Young's account of Dhaku reads not unlike a Boys Own Annual adventure story, with the story of a long duel over 1921 and 1923 between Young and Sultana.

103 According to another account by a Salvation Army officer, Mrs Brigadier Smith, Dhaku's gang communicated with female family members staying in the settlement via a secret ‘code’ which made it impossible for them to decipher postcards sent to the settlement. Smith claimed that her son had learned the code and as a result was threatened with kidnap. ‘The Inside Story of the Long Duel’, by Mrs. Brigadier Smith (retd. Missionary officer), William Booth College, London.

104 Interview with Avinash Gaikwad, 10 February 2013, Baramati.

105 ‘Dacoities in Gujarat’, MSS Eur F.161/56, OIOC.

106 Laxminarayan Jharwal, ‘Freedom Fighter Laxminarayan Jharwal’ (translation), unpublished memoir. Accessed from Budhan Library, Chharanagar, Ahmedabad.

107 Interview with Dr Ketananand, 9 February 2013, Chharanagar, Ahmedabad.

108 Interview with Balak Ram Sansi, April 2016, Patiala.

109 It is important to note that DNT identity only has purchase among certain sections of the community as a whole.

110 Interview with Ladooben, 14 February 2013, Ahmedabad.

111 Carroll, Lucy, ‘Colonial Perceptions of the Indian Society and the Emergence of Caste(s) Associations’, Journal of Asian Studies, 37.2 (1978), pp. 233–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 Interview with Dr Ketananand, 9 February 2013, Chharanagar, Ahmedabad.

113 The Tribune, 22 February 1947.

114 ‘Letter from Yash Pal and Surinder Singh, village Gumthala Gehru to S. P. Mahna, Ministry of Home Affairs’, in ‘Appointment of a Committee to enquire into the workings of the CTA, 1924, into the Provinces with a view to modifying or repealing it’, Home Dept., Police-I Section, 22/1/49, National Archives of India (hereafter NAI).

115 Interview with Dr Ketananand, 9 February 2013, Chharanagar, Ahmedabad.

116 Indian News Chronicle, 27 October 1951.

117 ‘Representation from Joginder Singh and Bhagwan Singh, 25–11–1954’ in ‘Miscellaneous correspondence relating to ex-Criminal Tribes and Habitual Offenders’, Chief Commissioner's Office, Home Branch, 1954, 8(8)/54, Delhi State Archives (hereafter DSA).

118 Evening Chronicle, 12 November 1951.

119 The Bombay Chronicle, 12 August 1949.

120 Report on the Working of the Criminal Tribes Act in the Bombay Provinces, 1947–8 (Bombay, 1950), available in the Gujarat State Archives, Gandhinagar.

121 See Jaffrelot, India's Silent Revolution.

122 ‘Summary of Recommendations’, in ‘Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee Report’, Ministry of Home Affairs, Police-I Branch, 1950, 19/9/50, NAI.

123 The 1949–50 Committee enumerated 136 separate ‘tribes’ with, for example, populations of 1,668,845 in United Provinces; 623,809 in Bombay; 595,440 in Madras; 201,321 in Mysore; 76,722 in Madhya Pradesh; 76,564 in Punjab; 74,762 in Orissa; 69,601 in Hyderabad; 65,400 in Rajasthan; and 13,311 in Bihar. See Simhadri, Y. C., Denotified Tribes (A Sociological Analysis) (New Delhi: Classical, 1991)Google Scholar.

124 ‘Ghoshal, 31 January 1952, re. letter from Govt. of Punjab, 24 January 1952’, in ‘Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee Report’, NAI.

125 ‘Govt. of Madras, 7 March 1951—Repeal of the Criminal Tribes Act and working of the Restriction of Habitual Offenders Act in Madras’, in ‘Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee Report’, NAI.

126 Ibid.

127 ‘Legislative Assembly Debate on 8 October 1947’, in ‘Habitual Offenders’, Law and Judiciary Department, B. 41–52, Vol. 63, MSA.

128 Ibid.

129 Ibid.

130 ‘Extracts from Parliament of India, dated 28 February 1952, relating to the assurances given by the Hon'ble Minister of State for Home Affairs while speaking on the Criminal Tribe Laws (Repeal) Bill’, in ‘Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee Report’, NAI.

131 See Gupta, Akhil, Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

132 Sherman, State Violence, pp. 4–13.

133 See ‘C. P. S. Menon to Y. N. Varma, Chief Commissioner, New Delhi, 4 January 1952’, in ‘Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee Report’, NAI.

134 ‘Letter from Uttam Singh, son of Dalip Singh Bhedkut, of village Mohamadpur Rohi, tahsil Fatehabad, district Hissar, 12 January 1952’, in ibid.

135 ‘Letter from Lalchand, Ludhiana, dated 15 January 1952 to L. M. Shrikant, Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes’, in ibid.

136 ‘Bombay Habitual Offenders Restriction Rules, 1948: Insertion of certain conditions in form “E”, Home Department, C. No. 1402, 1949, MSA. ‘In accordance with rule 12 of the Bombay Habitual Offenders Restriction Rules, 1948, a person in respect of whom an order of restriction of movement has been made is not to leave or be absent from the limits of the area to which his movements have been restricted without having obtained a pass in form “E”. In accordance with rule 13(1), the police patel of the village where the restriction is based, is to grant such a person this pass, authorizing him to leave the area to which his movements have been restricted, for one day between the hours of sunrise and sunset.’

137 Police patel corruption and ‘inefficiency’ was mentioned in the Report of the Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee, 1939, and in early 1930s Home Department discussions on police administration and settlements. See, for example, ‘Letter from F. C. Griffith, Inspector General of Police, Bombay, 13 September 1930’, in Administration Report, Police, Bombay Presidency, excluding Sind, 1929, Home Department, P-132-II, MSA: ‘… the weak point in the present system is in the inefficiency of the police patels, on whom important duties are imposed under section 26 of the CTA … which they are too ignorant to be able to perform satisfactorily’ (pp. 4–5). It was also extensively covered in reports in 1911–12. See ‘G. H. White to District Magistrate, Kaira, 27 June 1911’, in ‘Criminal tribes: revised rules framed under section 3 of Act of 1911’, Judicial Department, File 591, 1912, MSA: ‘Looking at the number of police patels who have been deprived of their “Matas” or punished judicially for misbehaviour, it appears to me impossible to expect the police patels of these villages to enforce the restrictions of the Act honestly and impartially.’

138 Interview with S. R. Arun, 20 April 2013, Lucknow.

139 For example, ‘Question in the Constituent Assembly of India (Leg) by Shri Kasava Rao regarding reclassification of Criminal Tribes and steps taken to make them usual citizens’, Ministry of Home Affairs, Police Branch, 8/35/48, NAI; ‘Question in the Parliament of India by Shri Chandrika Ram regarding a) whether Government have received the report of the CTA Enquiry Committee b) If so what are the main recommendations of the committee and c) how long will the government take in implementing them’, Ministry of Home Affairs, Police-I Branch, 8/66, NAI; ‘House of the People—question by Shri Muniswamy regarding steps taken by the Central Government for the amelioration of the former CTs’, Ministry of Home Affairs, P. I., 8/68/53, NAI; ‘House of the People—Question by Shri Bheeka Bhai regarding the conference held recently under the chairmanship of the Deputy Minister for Home Affairs to discuss the rehabilitation of ex CTs’, Ministry of Home Affairs, P.I., 8/52/53, NAI; ‘Question in the House of the People by Shri R. S. Tiwari regarding the population of CTs in India, the state that has the largest number of people belonging to CTs and the facilities provided by government to them’, Ministry of Home Affairs, P. I., 8/138/53, NAI.

140 ‘Council of States—Question by V. K. Dhage regarding the CT Welfare Board constituted by the Govt. of India’, Ministry of Home Affairs, P. I., 8/7/53, NAI.

141 ‘Representation from Joginder Singh and Bhagwan Singh, 25–11–1954’ in ’Miscellaneous correspondence relating to ex-Criminal Tribes and Habitual Offenders’, Chief Commissioner's Office, Home Branch, 1954, 8(8)/54, DSA.

142 ‘Letter from Shri Kartar Chand and others, representative of Andha Mughal, 22–1–1958’, Education Dept., 9(9)/1958, DSA.

143 ‘Ghoshal to CS of Govt. of Hyderabad, 15 March 1952’, in ‘Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee Report’, NAI.

144 Report of the Criminal Tribes Enquiry Committee, United Provinces 1947 (Allahabad: Government of India, 1948), p. 19.

145 ‘Shankar Prasad, Chief Commissioner, Delhi to R. N. Philips, 30 April 1951’, in ‘Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee Report’, NAI.

146 Ibid.

147 Ibid.

148 ‘Change of definition of “Habitual Criminals”, Home Dept., Box 102, 5388/5, 1948, MSA.

149 All the references in this paragraph refer to: Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol. VII: 2 December 1948, http://loksabhaph.nic.in/Debates/cadebadvsearch.aspx, [accessed on 21 July 2019].

150 Newbigin, Eleanor, ‘Personal Law and Citizenship in India's Transition to Independence’, Modern Asian Studies, 45.1 (2011), pp. 7–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

151 Bombay Depressed Classes and Aboriginal Tribes Committee Report, 1930 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1930), p. 9.

152 Menon, Nivedita, ‘State/Gender/Community: Citizenship in Contemporary India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33.5 (1998), pp. 3–10Google Scholar.

153 Hobsbawm, Eric, Primitive Rebels (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959)Google Scholar.