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Crime And Criminality in 18th and 19th centuries Rajasthan: State, Family and Tribes
Organizer & Chair: Nirmal Kumar, Delhi University
This panel will focus on the interventionist nature of the eighteenth century Rajasthan to challenge the notion of passiveness and hesitancy of the pre-colonial states in the social realm of their subjects. The state worked closely with the lower levels of village and caste councils to regulate and impose fines or discipline people who did not act according to the state laws and jurisdictions. The class and most importantly, the caste status or the hierarchical position did not matter in Rajasthan. Individuals faced fines, ostracism, and imprisonment irrespective of their caste status in matters of illicit relationships, rape, and sexual misdemeanour, violent or abusive behaviour, inter caste marriages, violating caste norms or state laws.
This analysis re-evaluates the political ambitions of the Rajputs from a different angle- to focus on the pragmatic approach adapted by these states to emerge as important and vibrant political entities. It foregrounds its argument on the premise that the hegemonic colonial perceptions have to be re-worked in order to have a proper understanding about pre colonial states and social groups. consisting of three papers from three different continents. This panel tries to argue for an unfinished but active state system in Rajasthan.
Structure of Punishment in 18th century Rajasthan
Nirmal Kumar, Delhi University
The general perception about crime and punishment in pre British India is that they were unduly harsh and mostly meted out to body. That was because under the Muslim rule in north India, that was the scene for last 400 years or so. Moreover the chivalrous Rajputs ‘should’ have had a very strong and harsh state. And that of course means very harsh punishments. More so because Rajput states of Rajputana (as Rajasthan was called then) were in close contact with the Delhi sultanate rulers and the Mughals and naturally should have been influenced by the Islamic jurisprudence. And indeed, the Rajput states had some of the judicial officers with obviously Muslim nomenclature and had Muslim Qazis too.
But actually the ground reality was much different. The state in pre-British Rajasthan was much different. The rulers of Rajput states were involved with military and administrative matters of the Mughal government from the very beginning. Naturally by 18th century they had been fully integrated in the Mughal administration. They had little or no time for their own states. They ruled by their officers who could not take very harsh decisions. Hence normal punishment for even heinous crimes was fines and in rare cases exile. Corporal punishments and punishments like amputations and death penalty were not given at all. That may also be the case because far from the hard-core Hindu regions (I call that Brahmanical Influence Zone, BIZ) and strictly agricultural economy, Rajasthan did not develop cut and dried segments and notions of a Hindu society.
This paper will explore the content and structure of punishments in largely Hindu Rajputana that owed allegiance to a Muslim state.
Moralizing Rhetoric of Pre colonial States: Position of women in 18th century Rajasthan
Fatima Imam, University of Toronto
Much has been written on the position of women in Rajasthan in histories, genealogies, bards and colonial writings, that have a left an everlasting image of Rajput women being burnt and sacrificed on the funeral pyres of the their husbands. In addition, Rajasthan is also known for its close patriarchal society where the female child was not welcomed in the families. Female infanticides have been reported from all corners of Rajasthan and wherever the Rajputs clans have settled down. Polygamy, purdah (female seclusion), female infanticide, child marriages, and sati (self-immolation) are prominent features of the Rajput society and of course, of the general Indian society as well. On the basis of the abundance of the archival data available from Rajasthan and Maharashtra (Pune), I argue that the pre-colonial society was cognisant of women’s rights and dealt with their issues routinely. The issues arising out of family disputes, marital problems, inter-caste marriages were resolved by the state and most of the time the decisions were made through the village councils. Most importantly I contend that the pre-colonial states were neither distant nor passive, and looked after the social and domestic lives of the subjects very closely. Individuals faced fines, ostracism, and imprisonment irrespective of their caste status in matters of illicit relationships, rape, and sexual misdemeanour, violent or abusive behaviour, inter caste marriages, violating caste norms or state laws. Most impressive of all was that the cases involving women either as victims or perpetrators, both men and women were held responsible and were punished equitably.
Who Will Police the Police? The Criminal Tribe Crisis and the Struggle for Control in North-West India
Anastasia Piliavsky, Wolfson College
As the Thuggee witch hunts in British India waned towards the late 1850s, the administrative anxieties over secret criminal societies adopted a fresh idiom in the newly invented crisis of Criminal Tribes. Beginning with the 1871 Criminal Tribes’ Act and a series of legislative statements that followed the British authorities invested a disproportionate amount of financial and administrative effort into the ‘control and reclamation’ of those made out to be professional criminals. Although attempts to settle, control and reform Criminal Tribesmen failed consistently, ‘reclamation’ attempts carried on well into the mid-20th century. In this article I examine the persistence of the Criminal Tribes reclamation project as a struggle for control over Indian political terrain. Taking into focus the late colonial negotiations with the Rajput Princely States over the question of Criminal Tribes, I argue that the campaign had little to do with crime control, but rather with replacing those who acted as a regulatory force for the local rulers—thieving communities commonly employed as ‘policemen’—with the British police system. Radhika Singha has argued that the Thuggee campaign served as a vehicle for the expansion of legal control over India. I contend that the criminalization of the local policing structures acted as a mechanism of control not only over native territories, but more significantly over local structures of political authority. It is through such changes in mechanisms of its enforcement that the structure of political authority was gradually but dramatically transformed. The conveniently imagined crisis of Criminal Tribes presented a fine occasion for a latent struggle over mechanisms of enforcing political authority, or as Lenin once put it, for the means of ‘policing the police.’