Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World by Philip Dwyer & Amanda Nettelbeck

Author:Philip Dwyer & Amanda Nettelbeck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Conclusion

Interventions by the police to defuse societal tension were not always successful, and cases of failure are more easily found in the government archive. For instance, the provincial government’s Fortnightly Report from 1930 mentions that Tiruchuli ‘was the scene of a small riot between caste Hindus and ‘untouchables’ arising out of a private quarrel. The affair was not serious, although the police had to open fire, and order was quickly restored.’ 63 Such reports, which show police intervention once a conflict had erupted, suggest at first glance that the police were distanced from society and unaware of its fault lines. However, a closer reading of the pre-history of such conflicts sometimes reveals scattered references in the governmental archive itself to the disciplining attempts made by the police to contain the dispute. 64 In addition, the evidence from police station records suggests that the police surveillance of villages did in fact happen regularly, and was influential in checking caste conflict, especially in contexts where lower-caste groups were not politicized. I suggest, therefore, that archival records of violent caste conflicts may be read as much as an indication of the heightened political mobilization of the conflicting parties, as of police absence. Lower castes usually entered the government records only when they were strong enough to resist caste authority.

Through a close look at the police beat in the Tamil districts of southern India in the first half of the twentieth century, I have argued in this chapter that the colonial police were not an entity distant from rural society, appearing only at moments of violent protests. Rather, they held a widespread and regular, albeit selective, presence in the Tamil countryside. Contrary to the ideal of a force uniformly spread across the Tamil landscape, the colonial police monitored certain places and certain people more than they did others. Rural police stations covered areas ranging from 75 square miles to 200 square miles. 65 Beats to villages that had registered criminals, however few in number, were prioritized over those that did not. Inhabitants of the colonial countryside were, then, not uniformly objects of coercive state authority. Drawing on colonial knowledge which objectified community, privileged property, and criminalized vagrancy, police practices redirected the constable’s gaze (and stave) towards ‘dangerous’ spaces and ‘criminal’ subjects. The state’s gaze was not a panoptic one, all-seeing and steadfast. Rather, it was moving and rhythmic, directed along the beat, to target specified individuals and discipline specific activities, with coercion . This routinized and well-calibrated violence was directed towards refashioning rural society and maintaining the rhythm of a colonial social order that depended on agriculture and trade.

Notes

1.Charles Benson, Statistical Atlas of the Madras Presidency, 1895, 1. Maps29c28, British Library, London. (Does not include area of princely states within the Presidency’s borders.)

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