Nandini Sundar

The rule of law and citizenship in central India: post-colonial dilemmas

This article argues that the ‘rule of law’ has become a central goal in popular struggles the world over, and it is citizenship struggles which infuse the rule of law with substantive, as against a thin procedural, meaning. This is especially true in post-colonial societies like India, with a tradition of inherited colonial law designed for subject-hood rather than citizenship, growing inequality which affects both the enactment and interpretation of law, and the violation of law by those who are meant to protect it. Demanding implementation of existing laws, breaking laws that are patently unjust whether through armed struggle or non-violent social movements, or seeking to change laws in favour of new and more democratic laws, are all major avenues by means of which people express their aspirations as citizens. However, laws mutually constitutive relation with social practice means that people enter into political and legal negotiations already constituted as certain kinds of legal subjects, which constrains their imagination in certain ways.

Vigilantism, Culpability and Moral Dilemmas

■ The recent resurgence of vigilantism in India connects both to the neo-liberal project of outsourcing security, as well as to a longer history of porous boundaries between states and powerful elements in society. When practiced by subaltern groups, it also reflects the failure of the judicial system. This article explores the moral plurality evoked by different forms of vigilantism and their relationship to the state, as well as the different types of culpability they imply.

Mimetic sovereignties, precarious citizenship: state effects in a looking-glass world

This contribution explores the way in which the Indian state and the incipient Maoist state in central India mimic while repudiating each other. As against theories of sovereignty which see it either as authored from below (contract theory) or scripted from above (domination), or irrelevant to the extent that subject and state are co-constituted by regimes of power (cf. Foucault), I argue that in civil war, the display and practical exercise of statehood and sovereignty is critical. However, this is primarily aimed not at putative citizens but at the enemy. I look at the way in which the Indian state impersonates guerilla tactics in order to fight the Maoists, and the way in which the Maoists mimic state practices of governmentality. Each side identifies its own ‘citizens’ through uniforms and lists of people killed, and inscribes its ‘territory’ with memorials to its martyrs. For the presumed citizens of these mimetic states, however, it is precisely these markers of identity and legibility which make them more vulnerable. Membership of parallel regimes holds out both promise and precarity.

In times of civil war: On being a schizophrenic (public) sociologist

This article addresses some of the dilemmas that sociologists in the Global South face – how does one choose between the demands of the public moment, the university as a space of work and struggle, and our duty to our ‘disciplines’? How do we engage in practically extending the democracy and equality that we routinely learn and teach about and yet seize the time and space required for reflecting and producing research that is valued to the extent that it is seen to be ‘disinterested’? And how do those of us who live and work in the global academic periphery validate our sociology in a world where the standards are often set by scholars abroad?

‘Winning Hearts and Minds’: emotional wars and the construction of difference

Abstract Exploring an ongoing civil war between Maoist guerrillas and the Indian government, this article looks at how emotions are mobilised, conscripted and engendered by both sides. The focus is, however, on the states performance of emotion, including outrage, hurt and fear-inducing domination, as part of its battle for legitimacy. Intrinsic to this is the privileging of certain kinds of emotions—fear, anger, grief—and the emotions of certain kinds of people over others. Subject populations are distinguished from citizens by the differential public acknowledgement of their emotional claims.

Snakes and ladders: rethinking social mobility in post-reform India

The question of social mobility in a terrain of increasing inequality has gained particular urgency in post-reform India. We approach social mobility not as a one-way ascent toward the top, rather as a risk-laden enterprise prone to fluctuations that include both incremental gains and the possibility of sliding downwards. We argue that to ‘move up the ladder’ is not merely a matter of individual choice or hard work in the face of odds as free-market believers have long held. It is as much an outcome of collective political bargaining, privileges that dominant class and caste status affords, access to resources and, indeed, occasional luck. Two propositions follow. First, we suggest that the state remains albeit as a reluctant enabler of social mobility in the age of markets. Second, the participation in the new economy hinges also upon one’s ability to ‘dress up’ for the part, to be able to craft one’s look as if one belonged to spaces – work or leisure – that one desires to inhabit. The work of appearances, we suggest, does not operate at individual levels alone, it also encompasses the nation’s spectacular projection of itself in the global political economy.

Reflections on civil liberties, citizenship, Adivasi agency and Maoism: A response to Alpa Shah:

If Alpa Shah had her way (Shah, 2013), civil liberties and democratic rights platforms in India, currently speaking in the name of citizenship or ‘the people’ (e.g. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Concerned Citizens Committee (CCC); People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Independent People’s Tribunal for Environmental and Human Rights (IPT)) would abandon their pretensions and instead give themselves names such as ‘‘Committee for the Recognition of Maoist Love and Marriage’’ (CRMLR) or ‘‘Union for the Promotion of the Sacral Parha Polity’’ (UPSPP), and be in a much better position to advance the cause of the adivasis, in conjunction, of course, with suitably re-educated Maoists. In her article (CofA 33:1:2013), Shah covers three broad themes: The first pertains to the civil liberties movement in India; the second concerns villager support for Maoists, and the third bears on the way Maoists create political consciousness and citizenship in their own areas. The first two are not original, though poor citation gives this impression, while her comments on the third border on the incoherent. With respect to the civil liberties movement, Shah argues, first, that public understanding of adivasi involvement with Maoists is too dependent on the writings of ‘‘left leaning’’ civil liberties activists and scholars. Second, these liberal activists reduce villagers to helpless victims ‘‘sandwiched’’ between the Maoists and the State; third, their writings portray adivasi support for the Maoists as born out of state deficit; fourth, she asserts that the concept of citizenship that civil liberties activists rely on is alien to the adivasis of central and eastern India, and that this perspective is both limiting and may actually be inimical to adivasi interests because it reduces the space for the Maoist political project.

For a Sociology of India: Satish Saberwal in conversation with Nandini Sundar and Amita Baviskar

As part of an ongoing engagement with the sociology of India, CIS will profile the life and work of senior sociologists. This interview was conducted over three sessions at Professor Saberwals home, on 6, 11 and 26 August 2008. We also requested Mrs. Edith Saberwal to contribute to the discussion regarding their personal life. The interviews were laced throughout with Professor Saberwals characteristic humour—which unfortunately, we cannot fully reproduce here. We thank Professor Saberwal for answering all our questions patiently. We are very grateful to him and his daughter Gayatri Saberwal for carefully correcting the transcript.

Book reviews and notices : RITU MENON and KAMLA BHASIN, Borders and boundaries: Women in India's par tition. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998. xiii + 274 pp. Notes, appendices, index. Rs. 300 (hardback)

Similarly, Grewal does not go into the issue of the well-known symbols of male Sikh identity, namely the five k’s, perhaps because historically, and even symbolically, they are not of the same significance. He mentions only kes (unshorn hair) and kirpan (sword) (p. 77). Nor does he go into the controversy about the authorship of the defiant Persian epistle called ’Zafarnama’, which is believed to have been sent by Guru Gobind to the emperor Aurangzeb (p. 79). He accepts the general view that the Guru composed it himself but others, including W.H. McLeod (for whose work on Sikh history Grewal obviously has high admiration), do not agree. One wishes Grewal had been more forthcoming with his views on these and other controversies, for who is better qualified than he to settle them?

Book reviews and notices : RICHARD SAUMAREZ SMITH, Rule by records: Land registration and village custom in early British Panjab. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. 451 pp. Glossary, bibliography. Rs. 695 (hardback)

As every greenhorn administrator is told, the key to understanding India is to understand its land records. In this incredibly complicated, obtuse and arcane business, patwaris are the undisputed kings, with individual landholders permitted to glimpse such documents as concern them. In his book, Richard Smith has taken on the entire paraphernalia of village revenue records-e.g., misl-i-bandobast (village settlement proceedings), and wajib-ul-arz (village record of rights)-to produce an account of how British landholding categories were framed and instituted in mid19th century Punjab. The product of four-and-a-half years’ rigorous labour at the Sadr-Kanungo’s office in Ludhiana, this is a detailed ethnography of the 1853 settlement with a view to understanding the wider process of imperial governance. It draws upon a ’maximum’ sample of eighty-four villages, with a core sample of twenty villages for finer detail. While there have been subsequent settlements in Ludhiana, this first settlement still provides the basis for present-day land rights. Since it was the first settlement, it also sheds light on agrarian relations before British rule, and the manner in which notions of property transformed these relations, even while ostensibly retaining village customs. This book points to a period when the discourse about Indian society as a collection of castes and tribes was not yet prominent, and administration was sought to be based on a perceived contract between government and villagers (acting corporately). Even when ’recognising’ the corporate basis of the village in the form of ’bhaiachara’ tenures, however, the settlement tinkered with the basic idioms of landholding, transforming shares held on the basis of ploughs or productive capacity to fixed shares based on descent.