Interrogating Deviance and ‘Crime’ in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

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While deviance violates social norms, crime violates the formal legal order. Yet both are social constructs based on ethical norms. The proposed panel analyses the construction of deviance by the civil society and the state in South Asia, both in the colonial and post-colonial contexts. Long Abstract While deviance violates social norms, crime violates the formal legal order. Yet both are social constructs based on ethical norms. The proposed panel analyses the construction of deviance by the civil society and the state in South Asia, both in the colonial and post-colonial contexts. It seeks to trace the processes whereby ‘deviance’ is translated to ‘crime’ and to explore the changing conceptions of crime in different spaces and times. Under the new legal order of the colonial state certain existent socio-economic practices had come to be seen as ‘crime’. Following Independence and decolonization, many such issues acquired new classifications and reinterpretations while others became ‘normalized’. The mechanisms through which such constructs occur offer a window into complex processes of legalization as well as political and social change, implicating a series of actors and institutions. Numerous fault lines may exist (and thus, come to collide) between state-induced ethical order and societal, community or individual ethical ideal. The proposed panel will examine the institutions, practices and discourses of colonial and post-colonial conceptions of deviance and crime in the context of prevailing notions of justice, order and morality. The panel invites paper proposals across disciplinary boundaries engaging with any aspect of this process across the South Asian subcontinent in colonial and postcolonial times. Presentations Still “Criminal” After All These Years: Criminal and Denotified Tribes in Colonial and Postcolonial India Yang Anand - University of Washington, History, Seattle, United States Criminalizing ‘Peoples Raj’: Workers’ militancy and deviance in postcolonial India, 1964-65 Wani Javed Iqbal - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), New Delhi, School of Law, Governance & Citizenship, New Delhi, India Making of Industrial ‘Peace’ in Post Colonial India Sharma Megha - Jawaharlal Nehru University, School of Social Sciences, Delhi, India ‘Campaign Against Illicit Distillation by Aboriginal Population’ in Central Province, India (1905-1938) and the Continuing Legal Consequences Sharma Kriti - OP Jindal University, Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, India Environment and Development amongst Adivasis as Deviance in Liberal Discourse Prakash Amit - Jawaharlal Nehru University, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, New Delhi, India Class, Crime and Fear: The Goondas and Respectable Fears in Colonial Calcutta, 1920-1947 NANDI SUGATA - WEST BENGAL STATE UNIVERSITY, HISTORY, KOLKATA, India “Unruly”Women,Transgressive Spaces and Social Disorder:Crime and Punishment in Fiction from Northeast India Moral Dr Rakhee Kalita - Cotton University, English and Women's Studies, GUWAHATI, India Criminal Lunacy and Colonial Discourse of Deviance and Disorder: The Case of Mappila Rebels of Malabar Jasmin Shareena Jasmin. P K - MES Kalladi College, Mannarkkad, History, Mannarkkad, India Land rights and crime: Adivasi women in colonial and post-colonial eastern India Das Gupta Sanjukta - Department of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy Politics in a Time of Radical Change: Reconsidering Controversial Actors of the Naxalbari Movement in Postcolonial Calcutta (1967-1975) Corrado Vanessa - Independent, International PhD in 2022 (University of Pisa), Italy The Gentleman, the kulata, chotolok and the crimes that Calcutta provoked: A Study of colonial Calcutta urbanity Chakrabarty Debjani - State University of New York- Stonybrook The Not So Noble “Savage”: Unpacking the Co-constitution of Sexual Deviance and Criminality in Colonial India Bhattacharya Arnav - University of Pennsylvania, History and Sociology of Science, Philadelphia, United States Courts and ‘Najayaz’ clerks: Roles and relations within the formal judicial system of Bihar Anushka - Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Public Policy and Management, Kolkata, India Encapsulating Betrayal: Partition (1947) Avarna Ojha - Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom

Peter Birkelund Andersen - Organizer

Sanjukta Dasgupta - Organizer

Amit Prakash - Organizer

26 Jul 2023 → 29 Jul 2023

Conference

Conference	Interrogating Deviance and ‘Crime’ in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia
Number	27
Location	University of Turin
Country	Italy
City	Turin / Torino
Period	26/07/2023 → 29/07/2023
Internet address	https://ecsas2023turin.eu/

Research areas

deviance, crime, de notified caste, criminal caste, India, South Asia

ID: 366930525