Colonial Terror

Torture and State Violence in Colonial India

Deana Heath

Broadens and challenges the literature on law in colonial India by examining the ways in which the legal system facilitated forms of colonial violence such as torture
Expands the analysis of colonial violence to look at quotidian, structural forms of violence, of which torture was simply a component
Examines the ways in which exceptional violence was central to the operation of colonial systems of rule
Delves beyond a simple victim/perpetrator binary to explore the ways in which subaltern elements of the police in colonial India served as violence workers for the colonial regime, and the ways in which colonial officials facilitated this

Colonial Terror

Torture and State Violence in Colonial India

Deana Heath

Description

Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule and some of the ways in which extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of colonial states. Although enacted largely by Indians on Indian bodies, particularly by subaltern members of the police, the book argues that torture was facilitated, systematized, and ultimately sanctioned by first the East India Company and then the Raj because it benefitted the colonial regime, since rendering the police a source of terror played a key role in the construction and maitenance of state sovereignty.

Drawing upon the work of both Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, Colonial Terror contends, furthermore, that it is only possible to understand the terrorizing nature of the colonial police in India by viewing colonial India as a 'regime of exception' in which two different forms of exceptionality were in operation - one wrought through the exclusion of particular groups or segments of the Indian population from the law and the other by petty sovereigns in their enactment of illegal violence in the operation of the law. It was in such fertile ground, in which colonial subjects were both included within the domain of colonial law while also being abandoned by it, that torture was able to flourish.

Colonial Terror

Torture and State Violence in Colonial India

Deana Heath

Colonial Terror

Torture and State Violence in Colonial India

Deana Heath

Author Information

Deana Heath, Reader in Indian and Colonial History, University of Liverpool

Deana Heath received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and has since held academic posts in four countries: the United States, Ireland, Canada, and the United Kingdom. she has been the beneficiary of grants from numerous national and international funding bodies, including the Independent Social Research Foundation, The Indian Council for Cultural Relations, The Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Fulbright Scholar Programme. She is currently Reader in Indian and Colonial History at the University of Liverpool.

Colonial Terror

Torture and State Violence in Colonial India

Deana Heath

Reviews and Awards

"This well researched and historically informed book is a novel contribution to the existing literature on state violence and police torture in colonial India as well as Indian colonial history." -- Prashant Maurya, South Asia Research