Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T11:06:39.924Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beatings, Beacons, and Big Men: Police Disempowerment and Delegitimation in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Beatrice Jauregui
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is a truism that police in India generally lack legitimate authority and public trust. This lack is widely understood by scholars, policy analysts, and police practitioners as being rooted in the institution's colonial development as a means of oppression, and its alleged corruption and criminalization in the postcolonial period. The social facts of situational hyper-empowerment and the widespread decadence of police do much to explain their poor image and performance, but these explanations do not account for the fact that police in India are also structurally disempowered by cultural-political and legal-institutional claims to multiple and conflicting forms of authority that challenge and often overwhelm the authority of police. This structural disempowerment and its performances in everyday interactions between the police and the public constitute an ongoing social process of delegitimation of police authority in contemporary India. Following ethnographic analysis of this process of delegitimation, I explore the implications of focusing on police disempowerment for theorizations of the sources and capabilities of state legal authority more generally.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , Summer 2013 , pp. 643 - 669
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Arnold, David. 1985. Bureaucratic Recruitment and Subordinate in Colonial India: The Madras Constabulary, 1859–1947. In Subaltern Studies IV, ed. Guha, Ranajit, 1–53. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Arnold, David. 1986. Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras 1859–1947. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Avant, Deborah. 2005. The Market for Force: Consequences of Privatizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baxi, Upendra. 1982. The Crisis of the Indian Legal System. Alternatives in Development Series: Law. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.Google Scholar
Bayley, David. 1969. The Police and Political Development in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bayley, David. 2006. Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Police Abroad. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1978. Critique of Violence. In Reflections, ed. Demetz, Peter. New York: Schocken.Google Scholar
Berti, Daniela. 2010. Courts of Law and Legal Practice. In A Companion to the Anthropology of India, ed. Clark‐Deces, Isabelle, 355–370. Oxford, UK: Wiley‐Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bittner, Egon. 1970. The Functions of the Police in Modern Society: A Review of Background Factors, Current Practices, and Possible Role Models. Rockville, MD: Center for Studies of Crime and Delinquency, National Institute of Mental Health.Google Scholar
Bittner, Egon. 1974. Florence Nightingale in Pursuit of Willie Sutton: A Theory of the Police. In The Potential for Reform of Criminal Justice, ed. Jacob, Herbert, 17–44. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Bottoms, Anthony, and Tankebe, Justice. 2012. Beyond Procedural Justice: A Dialogic Approach to Legitimacy in Criminal Justice. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 102 (1): 101–152.Google Scholar
Brass, Paul. 1997. Theft of an Idol. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brogden, Michael. 1987. The Emergence of the Police—The Colonial Dimension. British Journal of Criminology 27 (1): 4–14.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Teresa P. R. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Campion, David. 2003. Authority, Accountability, and Representation: The United Provinces Police and Dilemmas of the Colonial Policeman in British India, 1902–1939. Historical Research 76 (192): 217–237.Google Scholar
Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. 2000. “The Making of the Working Class”: E. P. Thompson and Indian History. In Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, ed. Chaturvedi, Vinayak, 50–71. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). 2005. Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh: Eastern Book Company.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard. 1971. India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization. Anthropology of Modern Societies Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‐Hall.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard. [1956] 1987. Some Notes on Law and Change in North India. In An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, 554–574. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard. [1965] 1987. Anthropological Notes on Law and Disputes in North India. In An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, 575–631. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John L. 2006. Criminal Obsessions, After Foucault: Postcoloniality, Policing, and the Metaphysics of Disorder. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, eds. Comaroff, Jean and John L., 273–298. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dangwal, Parmesh. 2004. “I Dare!” Kiran Bedi, A Biography. New Delhi: UBS Publishers.Google Scholar
Daruwala, Maja, and Doube, Clare. 2005. Police Accountability: Too Important to Neglect, Too Urgent to Delay. New Delhi: Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/chogm/chogm_2005/chogm_2005_full_report.pdf (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Deutsch, Eliot, and Dalvi, Rohit. 2004. The Essential Vedānta: A New Source Book of Advaita Vedānta. Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom.Google Scholar
Dhillon, Kirpal. 1998. Defenders of the Establishment: Ruler‐Supportive Police Forces of South Asia. New Delhi: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, in Association with Aryan Books International.Google Scholar
Dhillon, Kirpal. 2005. Police and Politics in India: Colonial Concepts, Democratic Compulsions. New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Dirks, Nicholas. 2001. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Doniger O'Flaherty, Wendy. 1986. Dreams, Illusions, and Other Realities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dumont, Louis. 1980. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Julia. 2005. The Trimurti of the State: State Violence and the Promises of Order and Destruction. Sociologus 55 (2): 181–217.Google Scholar
Engineer, Asghar Ali, and Narang, Amarjit. 2006. Minorities and Police in India. New Delhi: Manohar Press.Google Scholar
Forst, Brian, and Manning, Peter K. 1999. The Privatization of Policing: Two Views. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1976. History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 2000. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Ghosh, S. K. 1981. Police in Ferment. New Delhi: Light and Life Publishers.Google Scholar
Gupta, Anandswarup. 1974. Crime and Police in India up to 1861. New Delhi: Sahitya Bhawan.Google Scholar
Gupta, Anandswarup. 1979. The Police in British India: 1861–1947. New Delhi: Concept Publishing.Google Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2001. Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hinton, Mercedes, and Newburn, Tim. 2009. Policing Developing Democracies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hornberger, Julia. 2013. From General to Commissioner to General: On the Popular State of Policing in South Africa. Law & Social Inquiry 38 (3): 598–614.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch (HRW). 2002. India: Gujarat Officials Took Part in Anti‐Muslim Violence. News Release, May 1. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2002/04/30/india3885.htm (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch (HRW). 2009. Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse, and Impunity in the Indian Police. Special Report, 1‐56432‐518‐0. http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/india0809web.pdf (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Jauregui, Beatrice. 2010. Shadows of the State, Subalterns of the State: Police and “Law and Order” in Postcolonial India. PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Jauregui, Beatrice. 2013. Dirty Anthropology: Epistemologies of Violence and Ethical Entanglements in Police Ethnography. In Policing and Contemporary Governance: The Anthropology of Police in Practice. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Kabir, Ali. 2005. Commentaries on UP Police Regulations with Allied Laws. Revised by Ram Nath Mishra. Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh: Hind Publishing House.Google Scholar
Kapur, V. P. 2003. The Crumbling Edifice: Experiences and Thoughts of a Police Officer. New Delhi: Rupa.Google Scholar
Khalidi, Omar. 2003. Khaki and the Ethnic Violence in India. New Delhi: Three Essays Collective.Google Scholar
Kumar, Sumit, Daruwala, Maja, Sharma, Shobha, and Patil, Sanjay. 2008. Civil Lines Police Station, Raipur, Chhattisgarh. … Pages from a Diary. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/police/chhattisgarh_pages_from_a_diary.pdf (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Manning, Peter. 1997. Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Manning, Peter. 2003. Policing Contingencies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Jeffrey. 2013. Legitimate Force in a Particularistic Democracy: Street Police and Outlaw Legislators in the Republic of China on Taiwan. Law & Social Inquiry 38 (3): 615–642.Google Scholar
Michelutti, Lucia. 2009. The Vernacularisation of Democracy: Politics, Caste, and Religion in India. New Delhi: Routledge India.Google Scholar
Muir, William Ker. 1977. Police: Streetcorner Politicians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms (NEW and ADR). 2010. Lok Sabha Election Watch 2009. http://adrindia.org/sites/default/files/0.10%20full%20report%2020‐05‐2010.pdf (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
National Police Commission (NPC). 1979. First Report. February. New Delhi: Government of India.Google Scholar
Olivier de Sardan, Jean‐Pierre. 1999. A Moral Economy of Corruption in Africa? Journal of Modern African Studies 37 (1): 25–52.Google Scholar
Owen, Oliver. 2013. An Institutional Ethnography of the Nigerian Police. PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.Google Scholar
Parry, Jonathan. 2000. The “Crisis of Corruption” and “The Idea of India”: A Worm's Eye View. In Morals of Legitimacy: Between Agency and System, ed. Pardo, Italo, 27–56. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Paternoster, Raymond, Brame, Robert, Bachman, Ronet, and Sherman, Lawrence. 1997. Do Fair Procedures Matter? The Effects of Procedural Justice on Spousal Assault. Law & Society Review 31:163–204.Google Scholar
Patil, Sanjay. 2008. Feudal Forces: Reform Delayed. Moving from Force to Service in South Asian Policing. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/police/feudal_forces_reform_delayed_moving_from_force_to_service_in_south_asian_policing.pdf (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Paul, Dheeraj. 2009. Police Constable “Most Abused” Part of Force: Chidambaram. Agence India Press, October 5. http://www.agenceindiapress.com/2009/10/police‐constable‐most‐abused‐part‐of‐force‐chidambaram (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Pereira, Maxell. 2008. The Other Side of Policing. New Delhi: Vitasta Publishing.Google Scholar
Pino, Nathan, and Waitrowski, Michael D. 2006. Democratic Policing in Transitional and Developing Countries. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Police Reforms: India. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87&Itemid=98 (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Pradhan, Sharat. 2008. Mayawati's Security Apparatus Has 350 Cops, 34 Vehicles. Hindustan Times, November 24. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3‐1601364001.html (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
PRLog. 2007. Criminals in U.P. Politics. Press Release, May 9. http://www.prlog.org/10016318‐criminals‐in‐politics.html (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Rai, Vibhuti Narain. 1998. Combating Communal Conflicts: Perception of Police Neutrality During Hindu‐Muslim Riots in India. Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh: Anamika Prakashan.Google Scholar
Reiner, Robert. 2010. The Politics of the Police, 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Robb Larkins, Erika. 2013. The Men in Black: Performances of Police Legitimacy in Rio's Hyper‐Favela. Law & Social Inquiry 38 (3): 553–575.Google Scholar
Rotberg, Robert. 2004. When States Fail: Causes and Consequences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rotimi, Emmanuel Olukemi. 2013. The Malformation of the Nigerian Policeman and the Impediments to His Being an Agent of Reform. Unpublished paper presented at conference on “Reconsidering Policing in Africa.” Oxford University. May 18.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1976. Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sharma, S. P. N. Rai. 1991. Refurbishing the Police Image. Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh: Police Prakashan.Google Scholar
Siegel, James T. 1998. A New Criminal Type in Jakarta: Counter‐Revolution Today. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Singh, Prakash. 2000. All‐India Services: Dilemmas of Change. In The Changing Role of the All‐India Services, ed. Arora, Balveer and Radin, Beryl, 121–138. Philadelphia, PA: Center for the Advanced Study of India and Centre for Policy Research.Google Scholar
Smith, Daniel Jordan. 2007. A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Srinivas, M. N. 1959. The Dominant Caste in Rampura. American Anthropologist 61 (1): 1–16.Google Scholar
Subramanian, K. S. 1988. Police Unrest in India: Notes Towards an Understanding. Occasional Papers on History and Society Second Series, No. X, November. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library (Microfiche).Google Scholar
Subramanian, K. S. 2007. Political Violence and the Police in India. New Delhi: Sage.Google Scholar
Sunshine, Jason, and Tyler, Tom R. 2003. The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing. Law & Society Review 37:513–547.Google Scholar
Tankebe, Justice. 2008. Colonialism, Legitimation and Policing in Ghana. International Journal of Law, Crime, and Justice 36:67–84.Google Scholar
Tankebe, Justice. 2009. Public Cooperation with the Police in Ghana: Does Procedural Fairness Matter? Criminology 47:1265–1293.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. 1971. The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century. Past and Present 50 (1): 76–136.Google Scholar
Times of India. 2006a. Cops Are Unsafe in State Capital. Times of India, Lucknow Edition, April 24.Google Scholar
Times of India. 2006b. Goons Run Amuck, Cops Run for Cover (Cop Given a Life‐Threatening Ride. Is Anybody Safe?). Times of India, Lucknow Edition, July 19.Google Scholar
Times of India. 2009. Murder, Rape, Loot: We're Talking MPs. Times of India, Lucknow Edition, March 10.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R., and Huo, Juen. 2002. Trust in the Law: Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and Courts. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Uttar Pradesh Election Watch (UPEW). 2009. PHASE 3 Analysis for UP Lok Sabha Contestants. April 25. http://www.adrindia.org/files/UP+EW+Phase+3+report1.pdf (accessed August 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Verma, Arvind. 2005. The Indian Police: A Critical Evaluation. New Delhi: Regency Publications.Google Scholar
Visvanathan, Shiv, and Sethi, Harsh. 1998. Foul Play: Chronicles of Corruption, 1947–97. New Delhi: Banyan Books.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. The Types of Legitimate Domination. In Economy and Society. Ed. and trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 212–88. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Witsoe, Jeffrey. 2011. Corruption as Power: Caste and the Political Imagination of the Postcolonial State. American Ethnologist 38 (1): 73–85.Google Scholar