Book review: Santana Khanikar,State,Violence,and Legitimacy in India

Publius Tacitus, historian of the Roman Empire, had following to say about the brutality of Rome’s military expansion into Britain

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

Variations of these prescient lines have been repeated many times over by the reviewer and his colleagues between 2000 and 2007, during fact-finding missions to Lakhipathar (Assam). Santana Khanikar grapples with similar questions in her research work and comes up with very interesting observations for the reader. Her book is an attempt to ask how people in two different settings—Delhi and Lakhipathar—experience state violence and the presence of the police and military state in their lives.

The book is divided into two parts that evolve from the author’s fieldwork. Her ethnographic study of practices of policing in Delhi’s working class areas, combined with the social history of counter-insurgency in Lakhipathar, forms the basis of arguments that are made in the book. There are two significant threads of inquiry that emerge from the author’s study of the state. The first is about the repercussions of the decisions that are made by those authorized to act violently on behalf of the state. The second looks at the manner in which dense social and political spaces create different conditions in both Delhi and Lakhipathar. She then sets out the task of looking for alternative ‘ideas or imaginations of the state’ and examine ‘how the experiences of violence from the state-institutions affect the imaginations of acceptable and possible political communities’ (p. 13).

Following the introductory chapter that addresses methodological issues and sets up a familiar, but much-needed theoretical framework, the author moves to the first section comprising four chapters about policing in Delhi. The strength of this section lies in Khanikar’s creative use of fact-finding material emerging from civil rights groups such as the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights, as well as her detailed ethnographic descriptions of what goes on inside (and outside) the police station. She pores over particulars that would otherwise be missed in research work on policing:

The curiously ineffective manual that determines what police do, while routinely being ignored during enactments of violence; the rough registers that account for possible discrepancies; frustrated officers who look to displace their anger at subordinates and the devious manner in which certain police personnel torture detainees without leaving marks on the body. (pp. 73–77)

These particulars force the reader to reflect on the mundane, often banal manner in which power operates within institutional settings like the local police thana. These details add to a dense, cogently presented view of the manner in which documents and procedure mark the relationship between the police and those they are meant to serve and conduct surveillance upon in equal measure. However, what stands out in the section—and could have been utilized further as a heuristic tool to connect to her other settings—is the use of torture as a means of obtaining information from people who may (or may not) be accused of crimes.

The second section of the book in which Khanikar visits Lakhipathar in eastern Assam’s Tinsukia district is less creative with the use of fact-finding material from local human rights organizations and students groups. Such material could have supplemented the existing data gleaned from personal interviews, news reports and the occasional souvenir from a cultural event. For the United Liberation Front of Assam, conditions in Lakhipathar epitomized their political thesis on internal colonialism, thereby allowing the organization to mobilize indigenous communities against exploitation of peasants by tea and oil companies from outside the region (pp. 133–141). Its proximity to towns such as Duliajan and Digboi, as well as to several tea plantations, put it firmly within a spatial sphere of modern capitalist development of Assam. However, the oil towns and plantations have a very different demographic: The towns and plantations are multi-ethnic, whereas the paddy-growing villages are marked off ethnically. Much of Khanikar’s data comes from interviews and insights that were assembled in Moran and Ahom villages, while she acknowledges the existence of Nepali- and Hindi-speaking villages in the vicinity. Their accounts, however, are missing from the analysis of violence perpetrated by the state and non-state actors in the area.

Two decades of counter-insurgency have resulted in the hardening of ethnic divisions among the various communities in the area. Hindi- and Nepali-speaking communities were considered to be less threatening for Indian army personnel, who routinely used violence and humiliation to subjugate the Assamese-speaking population of the area during Operation Bajrang (1990), Operation Rhino (1991), and following the violence against Hindi-speaking people in 2003–2004. Khanikar falls short of explaining why the relationship of antagonism between the army and Assamese villagers of Lakhipathar has turned to one of accommodation, since army personnel are now welcomed as chief guests to cultural and athletic events in the area (pp. 216–225). The author opines that this could be a continuation of acceptance of authority and legitimacy (of both state and non-state power) in the area, an argument that needs more evidence than what has been offered.

Where the book falters slightly is in its assessment of political possibilities that arise from impunity that is offered to army personnel under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958. It is not quite clear if the author is willing to extend the political implications of the culture of impunity to policing in Delhi. If so, it would be fascinating to know whether it is possible to talk about alternative ideas and imaginations of the state by acceptable and possible political communities, as envisaged early on by the author. These minor shortcomings aside, Khanikar’s book is a welcome addition to the growing work on ethnographic inquiries into postcolonial state building and governance through the use of extra-economic coercion in India.