Modern Asian Studies Volume 45 Part 1 January 2011

226 Pages·2010·1.79 MB·English

by  Editor: Joya Chatterji Guest Editors: Taylor C. Sherman

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M VOLUME 45 PART 1 JANUARY 2011 M M VOLUME 45 PART 1 JANUARY 2011
o
CONTENTS d ISSN 0026-749X
o e o
TAYLOR C. SHERMAN, WILLIAM GOULD r
n
d AND SARAH ANSARI: From Subjects to Citizens:

Society and the Everyday State in India and Pakistan, A d
1947–1970 1 s
e
ELEANOR NEWBIGIN: Personal Law and Citizenship in i
a
India’s Transition to Independence 7 e
r WILLIAM GOULD: From Subjects to Citizens? Rationing, n
n refugees and the publicity of corruption S
r
over Independence in UP 33 t
u
YASMIN KHAN: Performing Peace: Gandhi’s d n
assassination as a critical moment in the
A i
consolidation of the Nehruvian state 57 e
s
TAYLOR C. SHERMAN: Migration, Citizenship and
s Belonging in Hyderabad (Deccan), 1946–1956 81 A
IAN TALBOT: Punjabi Refugees’ Rehabilitation and the
i Indian State: Discourses, Denials and Dissonances 109
a MARKUS DAECHSEL: Sovereignty, Governmentality V
O s
and Development in Ayub’s Pakistan: the Case
L
n of Korangi Township 131 U
SARAH ANSARI: Everyday expectations of the state M i
E
during Pakistan’s early years: Letters to the Editor,
4 a
Dawn (Karachi), 1950–1953 159
5
S DANIEL HAINES: Concrete ‘progress’: irrigation,
From Subjects to Citizens:
development and modernity in mid-twentieth P n
t century Sind 179 AR Society and the Everyday
u CATHERINE COOMBS: Partition Narratives: Displaced T
trauma and culpability among British civil servants 1 State in India and Pakistan,
in 1940s Punjab 201 S
d 1947–1970
J
A
N
i U t
A
e R Guest Editors
Y u
2
s 0 Taylor C. Sherman, William Gould
1
1 d
and Sarah Ansari

i
e
s
Cambridge Journals Online
For further information about this journal
please go to the journal website at:
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notes to contributors
Modern Asian Studies
Modern Asian Studies promotes original, innovative and rigorous research on the history, sociology, anthropol-
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ModernAsianStudies45,1(2011)pp. 1–6.(cid:2)C CambridgeUniversityPress2010
doi:10.1017/S0026749X10000235 Firstpublishedonline3November2010
From Subjects to Citizens: Society and the
Everyday State in India and Pakistan,
∗
1947–1970
TAYLOR C. SHERMAN
DepartmentofInternationalHistory,LondonSchoolofEconomics,
LondonWC2A2AE,UK
Email:[email protected]
WILLIAM GOULD
SchoolofHistory,UniversityofLeeds,Leeds,LS29JT,UK
Email:[email protected]
SARAH ANSARI
DepartmentofHistory,RoyalHolloway,UniversityofLondon,Egham,
TW200PX,UK
Email:[email protected]
Introduction
This special issue of Modern Asian Studies explores the shift from
colonial rule to independence in India and Pakistan, with the aim
of unravelling the explicit meanings and relevance of ‘independence’
for the new citizens of India and Pakistan during the two decades
after1947.WhilethestudyofpostcolonialSouthAsiahasblossomed
inrecentyears,thisvolumeaddressesanumberofimbalancesinthis
∗ The papers in this volume were originally presented at a workshop, held on 4
September2008,aspartofaprojectfundedbytheArtsandHumanitiesResearch
Council(AHRC)entitled, FromSubjectstoCitizens:SocietyandtheEverydayStateinIndia
and Pakistan. The editors would like to thank the participants at that seminar for
theirlivelydiscussionofthesepapers,andtheAHRCforitsgeneroussupportforthis
project.
1
2
TAYLOR C. SHERMAN, WILLIAM GOULD AND SARAH ANSARI
dynamic and highly popular field. Firstly, the histories of India and
Pakistanafter1947havecometobeconceivedseparately,withmany
scholarsassumingthatthetwostatesdevelopedalongdivergentpaths
afterindependence.Thus,thedominanthistoricalparadigmhasbeen
to examine either India or Pakistan in relative isolation from one
another. While a handful of very recent books on the partition of
thesubcontinenthavebeguntostudythetwostatessimultaneously,1
veryfewofthesenewhistoriesreachbeyondtheimmediateconcerns
of partition.2 Of course, both countries developed out of much the
samesetofhistoricalexperiences.Viewingthetwostatesinthesame
framenotonlyallowsthecontributorstothisissuetoexplorecommon
themes, it also facilitates an exploration of the powerful continuities
betweenthepre-andpost-independenceperiods.
Secondly,thepapersthatfollowposenewquestionsaboutthenature
ofthestateinearlypostcolonialSouthAsia.Asmallnumberofrecent
historical works concerning India and Pakistan in the immediate
aftermathofindependencehavebeguntobridgethegapbetweenthe
studyof‘high’and‘low’politicsinSouthAsiabyexamininglow-level
state programmes such as refugee rehabilitation and the recovery of
abductedwomen.3 However,therehasbeenverylittlehistoricalwork
onthedevelopmentofpopular,publicculturessurroundingthestate
in South Asia at this time. This special issue seeks to fill this gap
by drawing on recent anthropological work on the ‘everyday state’.4
Thus, whilst remaining sensitive to the ambiguity and complexity
of the boundaries between state and society, many of its papers
focus on the functioning of the state in everyday life where it was
actually experienced by ordinary people, with contributors exploring
the interplay between the rhetorical, ideological platforms set out in
New Delhi and Karachi and the interpretations of these agendas in
1 Tan Tai Yong and Gyanesh Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia
(London:Routledge,2000);VaziraFazila-YacoobaliZamindar,TheLongPartitionand
the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia
UniversityPress,2007).
2 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumdar, and Andrew Sartori, (eds), From the
ColonialtothePostcolonial:IndiaandPakistaninTransition(NewDelhi:OxfordUniversity
Press,2007).
3 Forexample,Zamindar,TheLongPartition,RituMenonandKamlaBhasin,Borders
andBoundaries:WomeninIndia’sPartition(Delhi:KaliforWomen,1998).
4 C.J.Fuller,andVeroniqueBenei,(eds),TheEverydayStateandSocietyinModern
India (New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2000); Thomas Blom Hansen, and Finn
Stepputat, (eds), StatesofImagination:EthnographicExplorationsofthePostcolonialState
(Durham:DukeUniversityPress,2001).
3
FROM SUBJECTS TO CITIZENS
different localities. This framework significantly augments current
understanding of postcolonial South Asia, without replicating the
longstanding divide between histories of ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics in
SouthAsia.
Thisvolumedivergesfromtheexistinghistoriographicaldiscussions
aboutthenatureofthetransitionfromthecolonialtothepostcolonial.
Overthepastdecade,scholarshiponthesubjecthasbecomeensnared
inadebateaboutwhetherornot1947markedadistinctbreakinthe
historyofthesubcontinent.Theprocessoftransition,however,wasfar
too complex to be encapsulated in the dichotomy change/no change.
As the papers here demonstrate, partition and the integration of the
princely states often had a profound effect on the everyday lives of
manyofthenewcitizensofIndiaandPakistan.Moreovertheseevents
notonlyalteredthegeographicalextentofthestatesofSouthAsia,but
alsoexpandedthestates’responsibilitiesandopenedupopportunities
forgovernmentstopursuepoliciesdistinctfromthoseoftheircolonial
predecessors. At the same time, however, the papers indicate that,
whilstthestateinSouthAsiawassubjecttoconsiderableadjustment
in the transition to independence, the rhetorical underpinnings of
the postcolonial states were often not so novel and, in many cases,
the state’s modus operandi did not change during this period. Thus,
discourses originating in development regimes, or the nationalist
movementsofthefirsthalfofthetwentiethcentury,shapednotonly
the policies of independent governments, but also the demands that
postcolonialcitizensmadeofthem.Inaddition,therationing,requis-
ition and recruitment policies introduced during the Second World
Warstretchedstatebureaucraciestotheirwidestextenttodate,and,
simultaneously, revealed new weaknesses and opened up new oppor-
tunitiesforcorruptionthatstretchedintothepostcolonialperiod.
Untilveryrecentlyitwasalsocommontoviewthedecadesbetween
1947andthepresent(2010)asasingleperiodinthehistoryofSouth
Asia.Whilstlinesofperiodizationarealwaysperiloustodraw,today’s
mostcutting-edgescholarshipsuggeststhatitdoesmakesomesense
toregardtheintervalbetweenthe1930sandthe1960sasadistinct
stageinSouthAsianhistory.Bythethirddecadeafterindependence,
the major tensions extant in the nation-building projects of both
India and Pakistan could no longer be contained. As these tensions
erupted,theybegantodisrupttheordinaryfunctioningofpoliticsand
to tear apart existing social bonds. This is not to suggest, however,
that the time before 1970 was a golden age: quite the contrary.
The propensity to study the first two decades of postcolonial rule
4
TAYLOR C. SHERMAN, WILLIAM GOULD AND SARAH ANSARI
alongsidemorerecentdecadeshastendedtooverstatethecoherence
and stability of the former, especially with respect to India. India’s
much-discussed ‘crisis of secularism’5 in the 1990s elicited many
rose-tinted evaluations of the Nehruvian state’s secular credentials,
but the contributions below by Gould, Newbigin, and Sherman
highlight the extent to which this nostalgic view misjudges the early
years of independence in India. Indeed, looking at this earlier era
from a historical perspective, it becomes clear that the nature of the
state and the content of citizenship were keenly contested at this
time. It is in these contests, therefore, that one finds a distinct set of
issuesandthemesthatcharacterizethisperiod.
Amongsttheseissues,thesignificanceoftheperformativeaspectof
state power on the subcontinent is stressed in many of the papers in
thisvolume.Recentlyresearchershavecometohighlightthewaysin
which both colonial and early postcolonial rule were characterized
by infrequent but spectacular displays of state power. From the
use of exemplary force to maintain ‘law and order’ in the districts,
to the drafting of grand schemes designed to awe or inspire the
population, certain projects or actions of the state were imbued
with extraordinary meaning and designed to send a message to
the population at large. Both postcolonial India and Pakistan used
ceremony to underscore the legitimacy of the state and to chart a
vision of the nation after independence. Khan shows that Gandhi’s
death rituals, including the distribution of his ashes to disparate
locations in India, provided a medium through which the Congress
party could try to unite a nation that had been deeply fractured by
the experience of partition. In postcolonial Pakistan, as Haines and
Daechsel demonstrate, large-scale development projects were often
used to assert (frequently with an eye to impressing international
audiences)thecapacityofthestatetoshapenotonlythelandandthe
builtenvironment,buttodisciplinethepeopleinhabitingthesespaces.
Thattheseprojectswereessentiallyspectacularinnaturewasevident
in governments’ frequent disregard for the practical consequences
of such schemes for the population, and the subsequent failure of
someofthemostprominent ofthem. Coombs’workalsoemphasizes
the performative aspect of power as she traces the ways in which
the disproportionate influence which British ICS officers often had
overeventsintheirdistrictsdissipatedwhenitbecameclearthatthe
5 See Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and Rajeshwary Sundar Rajan (eds), The
CrisisofSecularisminIndia(Durham,NorthCarolina:DukeUniversityPress,2007).
5
FROM SUBJECTS TO CITIZENS
British were leaving the subcontinent. Without the assurance that
suchdisplaysoflimitedbutspectacularpowerwouldbebackedbythe
kind of favours that only the state could provide, the acts of British
officerswereunabletostemtheviolenceofpartition.Thiscontributed
to the popular sense that the state ‘disintegrated’ during partition.
Indeed,thestatehasoftenbeen‘writtenout’ofpersonalnarrativesof
partition,whetherfromICSmenorfromPunjabirefugees,asshown
bybothCoombsandTalbot.
Partition’seffectonthestateandtheextraordinarypressuresthat
the violent displacement of people put upon state resources is the
second prominent theme in this period. The state had an ambiguous
placeintheyearsstraddlingpartition:ontheonehand,thestruggles
of partition coupled with the promises made by nationalist leaders
raised expectations to unprecedented heights. Vulnerable refugees
wereoftenextremelyreliantuponthestate,andrehabilitationplans
often brought populations that had had no previous contact with the
state into its orbit. On the other hand, as Ansari’s work reveals,
the early postcolonial period was no golden age for many citizens:
theirkeenexpectationsthateverydaylifewouldimprovedramatically
after independence often met with bitter disappointment. Members
of the population frequently voiced their resentment at the failures
of their new government servants to live up to the expectation
that citizens be given fair access to goods and services. Indeed, as
Gould makes clear, access to services was often secured through
kinship networks rather than through the functioning of impartial
bureaucratic procedures. And the inadequacies of the state from
poor planning to deficient implementation opened up opportunities
for corruption to flourish. Indeed, as Ansari, Talbot and Gould
note, citizens’ often lofty expectations were regularly coupled with
a remarkable willingness on the part of individuals to use their own
guiletomanipulatethoseserviceswhichthestatedidprovidetosecure
personaladvantage.Indeed,theweaknessofthepostcolonialstatein
bothIndiaandPakistanemergesasasurprising,butrecurrenttheme
in this period. Of course, it is common to lament the ineptitude of
the early Pakistani state, especially in comparison with that of India.
But these papers reveal that the Indian state, whilst undoubtedly
endowed with more resources than Pakistan, was often internally
incoherent and its officers seem to have been perpetually subject to
undue influence. Furthermore, as Gould and Sherman underline, it
was often individual state actors who did most to circumvent state
structures for their own ends. This fact, which helps explain the gulf
6
TAYLOR C. SHERMAN, WILLIAM GOULD AND SARAH ANSARI
between official rhetoric and the everyday experience of the state,
suggests that historians ought to do more to problematize the very
natureofthestateduringthisperiod.
Finally, these papers demonstrate that conceptions of citizenship
were far from settled in this period, even in India where the
constitution was drafted and enacted relatively quickly. Although
citizenship was defined using the language of abstract rights, the
situationwasinvariablyfarmorecomplexthanthis.Astheyemerged
out of partition, the religious identities of individuals assumed
extraordinary importance in the new states of South Asia, not least
forthedisplaced,whoseaccesstoprivilegesoftenwastiedtotheway
in which the state identified them. Whilst partition was important,
the ways in which ideas of citizenship were inscribed with religious
and gender norms often had their origins in the colonial period. The
fundamental rights written into the Indian constitution, according
to Newbigin, were demarcated within colonial legal structures which
ensured that these legal conceptions of citizenship were mediated by
religious and gender norms. As a result, the rights contained in the
Indian constitution were often most compatible with the interests of
Hindumen.Citizenshipwasnotonlyshapedattheconstitutionallevel,
quotidianconceptionsofbelongingwereequallyimportant.Locallevel
understandings of who was worthy of citizenship were often coloured
bytheintensesocialpolarisationwhichaccompaniedthepartitionof
the subcontinent. In partition’s long wake, the loyalty of Muslims in
Indiaremainedsuspectlongaftertheviolencehadsubsided.According
to Gould’s research, an individual’s Muslim identity could add force
to allegations of corruption. Likewise, Sherman reveals the ways in
which Muslims of non-Indian origin residing in Hyderabad (Deccan)
wererenderedsuspectintheaftermathoftheinvasionofHyderabad
in1948:manyweredeportedorencouragedtoleavenotbecausetheir
legal rights had changed, but because informal notions of belonging
wouldhavethemexcludedfromIndiaafter1947.
Clearly,thefirsttwodecadesfollowingindependencewitnessedan
intense contest over the meaning and responsibilities of citizenship,
and over the purpose and scope of the postcolonial state. By viewing
India and Pakistan in the same frame, and examining the state in
itsinteractionswiththepopulationattheeverydaylevel,thisspecial
issueoffersafreshlookatthefieldofearlypostcolonialhistory.
ModernAsianStudies45,1(2011)pp. 7–32.(cid:2)C CambridgeUniversityPress2010
doi:10.1017/S0026749X10000338
Personal Law and Citizenship in India’s
Transition to Independence
ELEANOR NEWBIGIN
SchoolofOrientalandAfricanStudies,ThornhaughStreet,
LondonWC1H0XG,UK
Email:[email protected]
Abstract
Studiesofthepost-colonialstatehaveoftenpresenteditasastructurethathas
fallenunderthecontrolofself-interestedsectionsoftheIndianelite.Intermsof
citizenship,thefailureofthestatetodomoretorealizetheegalitarianpromise
oftheFundamentalRights,setoutintheConstitutionof1950,hasoftenbeen
attributedtointerferencebythesepowerfulelite.Tracingtheinterplaybetween
debates about Hindu property rights and popular support or tolerance for the
notion of individual, liberal citizenship, this paper argues that the principles
espoused in the Fundamental Rights were never neutral abstractions but, long
beforeindependence,werefirmlyembeddedinthematerialworldoflate-colonial
politicalrelations.Thus,incertainkeyregards,thecitizen-subjectoftheIndian
Constitution was not the individual, freed from ascriptive categories of gender
or religious identity, but firmly tied to the power structures of the community
governedbyHindulaw.
Introduction
The inclusion of a list of Fundamental Rights in the Constitution of
1950 seemed to make real a long standing Congress promise: that
independencefromBritishrulewouldbringaboutadramaticchange
in the lives of ordinary Indians. Modelling itself on documents such
as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the American
Bill of Rights, the Indian Fundamental Rights set out a vision of the
individual citizen-subject, unfettered by notions of gender, religion
or caste. The Rights have been seen to mark a profound difference
betweenthenation-stateanditscolonialpredecessor.1 Underpinning
the colonial administration and legal system was an understanding
1 GranvilleAustin,TheIndianConstitution:CornerstoneofaNation(OxfordUniversity
Press,NewDelhi,1999edn,1966),pp.50–61.
7
8
ELEANOR NEWBIGIN
ofIndiansocietyascomprisingnotautonomousindividualsbutsocial
collectives, defined by caste, gender and religious identity.2 Indians’
relationshipwiththecolonialstatewas,inthemain,mediatedthrough
this group identity—access to political office or the law was shaped
by a subject’s sex and the religious or caste community to which he
or she belonged. The passage of the Fundamental Rights suggested
a radical reform of this state-society relationship; whereas colonial
subjecthoodwaspremisedondifferenceandindirectcontactwiththe
state, citizenship suggested a direct relationship between the state
andeachandeveryindividualIndian.
Six decades after independence, it is clear that many Indians do
not enjoy the citizenship rights set out in the constitution. Indians’
access to state influence and resources remains very much mediated
by gender, class and religion. In trying to explain the post-colonial
state’sfailuretosecuresocialequality,academicshaveoftenfocused
on the way in which the state applied citizenship and governance
afterindependence,helpingtoreinforceasensethat15August,1947
marksaclearwatershedintheIndianpopulace’srelationshipwiththe
state.Therehasbeenlittleconsiderationofthehistoricalevolutionof
Indiancitizenshiporofhowthismighthaveinformedthedevelopment
of a state-citizen nexus after independence.3 Rather, political and
social inequality in contemporary India has been attributed to the
dominance of self-interested sections of the Indian elite, who have
captured state structures and resources.4 Supporting a notion that
thecurrentIndianstateisin‘crisis’,thisargumentimpliesthat,were
itnotforthiselitedomination,theIndianstatewouldbeabletosecure
theequalcitizenshipwrittenintoitsconstitutionintheabstract.
The idea of the current crisis of the Indian state rests on the
assumption that there exists a ‘correct’ model of state power and/or
2 D. A. Washbrook, ‘Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India’, Modern
Asian Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, (1981), pp. 653–658; Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Issues of
Widowhood:GenderandResistanceinColonialWesternIndia’inDouglasHaynes
andGyanPrakash(eds),ContestingPower:ResistanceandEverydaySocialRelationsinSouth
Asia(OxfordUniversityPress,NewDelhi,1991),pp.62–108,especiallypp.77–79.
3 Recent exceptions are Mrinalini Sinha, Specters of Mother India: the Global
Restructuring of an Empire (Duke, Durham & London, 2006); and Rajnarayan
Chandavarkar ‘Customs of Governance: Colonialism and Democracy in Twentieth
CenturyIndia’,ModernAsianStudies,vol.41,no.3(2007),pp.441–470.
4 PranapBardhan,ThePoliticalEconomyofDevelopmentinIndia(Blackwell,Oxford,
1984); Achin Vanaik, India’s Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India (Verso,
London,1990);AtulKohli,DemocracyandDiscontent:India’sGrowingCrisisofGovernability
(CambridgeUniversityPress,Cambridge,1991).