'Delinquent subjects': Dacoity and the creation of a surveillance society in Hyderabad state

dc.contributor.author Bhukya, Bhangya
dc.date.accessioned 2022-03-27T01:54:33Z
dc.date.available 2022-03-27T01:54:33Z
dc.date.issued 2007-04-01
dc.description.abstract This article examines how dacoities in colonial India began largely during famines, and how they were perpetuated by the state's cruel practices of detention and surveillance. When dacoity was seen to be a threat to civil society and the state, the authorities deployed a variety of methods to put down, control, punish and reform the dacoits, many of who were considered to belong to 'criminal tribes/communities'. The creation of a body of anthropological knowledge about the 'criminal' communities was important in this respect, as it helped the state to separate supposedly 'delinquent' from 'honest' subjects. It also conferred a specific social identity upon such groups, thereby socially stigmatising them. The creation of a surveillance society served colonial ends. The Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 provided for those designated as criminal tribes to be registered with local police stations, to be confined to specific villages, fined, punished, and put in reformatories. Groups that suffered such a fate thereafter found it so difficult to earn an honest livelihood that they became even more likely to commit dacoities. The itinerant Lambadas of Hyderabad state who were so incarcerated were particularly hard hit.
dc.identifier.citation Indian Economic and Social History Review. v.44(2)
dc.identifier.issn 00194646
dc.identifier.uri 10.1177/001946460704400203
dc.identifier.uri http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001946460704400203
dc.identifier.uri https://dspace.uohyd.ac.in/handle/1/4313
dc.title 'Delinquent subjects': Dacoity and the creation of a surveillance society in Hyderabad state
dc.type Journal. Article
dspace.entity.type
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