State Violence and Punishment in India

摘要

State Violence and Punishment in India explores the relationship between punishment, state violence and the state during the period 1919-1956. It argues for an expansion of our understanding of colonial punishment and the state by opening up the idea of the 'coercive network', and exploring institutions, laws and practices in new ways. The 'coercive network' included prisons and corporal punishment, to be sure, but it also encompassed firing into crowds, bombing from the air, dismissal from work, expulsion from school, detention without trial, and collective fining. A range of intermediaries enforced these penal sanctions, and they became sites of negotiation and confrontation. This made the state in India "vulnerable, fluid and replete with tensions" (p. 1). In significant ways, this challenges an historiography which, Taylor C. Sherman argues, has "long taken the strength of the state for granted"