Afterlives: Postcolonial Laws and Their Colonial Anteccdents in South Asia

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Three papers—two by historians and one by a sociologist –explore the postcolonial consequences of and reverberations of laws enacted by the British colonial state. They share in common an interest in examining the persistence of laws and institutions inherited from the British colonial state and their effects on the workings of present-day politics and society in India and Pakistan.

Yang’s presentation focuses on the changes and implications of rebranding certain groups classified as “criminal tribes” in the colonial period to “denotified tribes” in postindependent India to show that the new designation of those castes and tribes continue to marginalize and stigmatize them today. The second paper, by Mawani, shifts attention to other pieces of legislation that also endowed British colonial officials with extraordinary powers to monitor and seize certain colonial subjects, in her case people suspected of committing seditious and anticolonial acts overseas. Nair investigates the colonial workings of Section 295A, an amendment to the Indian Penal Code that criminalized words and deeds deemed injurious to religious traditions, to highlight its contemporary (mis)use in fostering a culture of “competitive intolerance” between religious communities in India and Pakistan.

Area of Study

• South Asia

Session Organizer

• Anand Yang, University of Washington

Chair

• Christopher Hill, University of Colorado

Individual Presentations

• Still "Criminal" after All These Years: From Notified to Denotified Tribes in Postindependent India - Anand Yang, University of Washington

• Turning Nationals into Foreigners: The Ingress into India Ordinance (1914) and its (Post)Colonial Lives - Renisa Mawani, University of British Columbia

• Section 295A: The Unexpected Afterlives of a Colonial Piece of Legislation - Neeti Nair, University of Virginia