By Ashwin Varghese

Emergent Conversation 19

This essay is part of the series PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation 19 on Racism and Policing in Global Perspective

Racism or racialization has rarely, if ever, been used as a framework to understand contemporary policing practices in India. While discourses around racism are still  overwhelmingly conditioned by the “white/non-white” binary, literature on “new racism  studies” has proposed a focus on “racialization” as being capable of explaining processes of subjugation of people ascribed with racialized meanings (Baber 2022; Rai 2022). Drawing  from these trends in “new racism studies” I note that new racism or critical racism scholarship  may be able to offer theoretical frameworks that address structural inequalities and  discrimination in contemporary India, which manifest in various ways in contemporary policing practices.

“Racism” in public discourse is conventionally evoked when addressing the discrimination against persons from the north-eastern region of India or when addressing African migrants to India. A spate of news reports around harassment and racial profiling of people from the “north-east”—itself a colonial racial categorization of a diverse group of people (Samson 2017; Rai 2022)—and reports of discrimination against African migrants in major cities brought the practices of racism in India to the fore in public discourse (Kikon 2022; Samson 2017).  The conventional idea that “racism” pertains to what happens in the west (perpetuated by westerners) to Indians, or what whites do to non-whites, dominates our understanding of racism (Chakrabarty 1994). Rarely is racism viewed as something that happens within India (Weaver 2022; Baber 2022; Rai 2022). This dominant perception reverberates in academic circles as well, where scholars continue to vociferously deny the theoretical relevance of “racism” and similar systems of social inequality and discrimination to explain practices in India (Weaver 2022; Baber 2022; Rai 2022; Kikon 2022).  This general obfuscation may be partially responsible for the dismissal of “racialization’” as a relevant feature of policing practices in India.

While it may be difficult to link contemporary policing practices with features of “racism” as it is conventionally understood in its association with biological, genetic, or phenotypical factors,  racialization—as a social process of construction of racialized groups and the production and  reproduction of material and symbolic inequalities (Baber 2022)—may still be traced in everyday policing practices in India. To fully understand these processes, however, we must first trace the colonial legacy of racism.

The modern police in India emerged during India’s colonial period. In the aftermath of the sepoy mutiny of 1857, the colonial authority formally shifted from the English East India Company to the British Crown.[[1]] Accompanying this transfer of power the British state ushered in several institutions associated with the “modern state,” including the modern police. Thus, while The Police Act of 1861 introduced the modern police infrastructure it was accompanied by a slew of other juridical-administrative measures, such as the establishment of the Imperial Civil Services  (1858), which established the framework of Indian bureaucracy, and the codification of the Indian Penal  Code  (1860) and Criminal Procedure Code  (1862) (hereafter IPC and CrPC); the establishment of High Courts  (1862); and the first Census (1865-1872). Although established by the colonial regime, these institutions are operational in postcolonial India as well, with few modifications. This modern  state apparatus, established by the British administration, introduced the framework of what Foucault (2007) calls governmentality. The census of colonial India spearheaded by H.H. Risley was a massive exercise in exhaustively distributing the population of India into racial categories which were informed by anthropometry. These categorizations subsumed various castes and  tribes in India into racial categorizations (Weaver 2022).

Colonial policing, as Brogden (1987) has noted, emerged by delegitimizing indigenous customs, imposing centralized social control to incorporate local society as a branch of imperial policing.  The colonial census produced knowledge of the Indian population as composed of racialized identities, which the  modern state and most importantly its professional police was to control, discipline, and  regulate. In its origin, therefore, the objects of policing in India were not just colonial subjects, but also racialized subjects. Colonial policing functioned on the twin principles of supposed racial superiority and disciplinary control.

A “law and order” paradigm was thus introduced in India to maintain a colonial interest of revenue extraction and appropriation by the metropole while securing the dominance of the indigenous propertied classes and the state. The transition towards the modern police was characterized by the growing need for an intrusive civil power, capable of governing the daily lives of colonial racialized subjects. The inability of the Army maintained by the English East India Company to predict the 1857 mutiny made the inadequacy of the existing agencies of surveillance abundantly clear, thereby catalysing the transition towards the modern police (Arnold 1986) to accompany the transfer of power to the British Crown.

For this purpose, the British introduced a modern, specialized military and civil bureaucracy based on colonial iterations of rationality, impartiality, efficiency, and neutrality (Pantham 2012). This was the introduction of a new law and order paradigm in India, which aligned with the modern state apparatus that had existed in the liberal west. However, this introduction was selective and conditioned by a racial logic, whereby as Pantham (2012) notes, the principles of liberty, equality, and rule of law were not universalizable until after the “civilizing” mission of colonial rule, as evidenced from the denial of freedom of opinion and expression to colonized subjects. In this context, one may ask whether the introduction of the western state apparatus was ever capable of ushering in a modern form of governance premised on fundamental liberties of equality and rule of law for citizens rather than control of raciald subjects?

Exploring this question requires us to take a closer look at the nature of these state institutions,  revealing their racial and colonial logic, which are embedded with  structural inequalities that aid colonial control and exploitation.  I will show that even in its contemporary adaptation, the racial character of colonial policing has today changed into a caste-class configuration conditioned by structural inequalities of the racialized-colonial  power structure.

With respect to the policing system for India, the British in the 1850s had two models of policing systems to choose from: the London Metropolitan Police and the Irish Constabulary. Despite London police’s success in checking crime and containing civil disturbances, it was felt that a police system designed for the imperial metropolis would not meet colonial requirements and a centralized, paramilitary model of policing for the colony of India was seen to be more suitable. While the London model was premised on English constitutional  principles of liberty, the Irish model was premised on principles of colonial exploitation. The  Irish Constabulary therefore offered a model that was ideal for serving the class interests of the  British colonial administration and the indigenous ruling classes in India. This is not to suggest  that the metropolitan police in London and the Royal Irish Constabulary were two completely disparate models of policing with no continuities. As Brogden (1987) suggests, they may  rather be seen as types of policing ranging on a continuum. The dominant logic of both was the regulation of the nascent working class—seen as a potentially dangerous class—under the  dominant ideology of industrial capitalism. Policing in the colonies heavily relied on achieving this objective by devising mechanisms for the governance of racialized subjects.

Racialization and Structural Inequality

The economic base of colonial exploitation was further legitimized by the cultural logic that the people of the colony were inferior and therefore “colonizable” to the “enlightened” and  “rational” west (Pantham 2012). While in the London Metropolitan Police model, to allay fears of it being a repressive force, there was emphasis on the integration of the police personnel and the local community; in the Irish paramilitary model implemented in India, we see the opposite.  As Arnold (1986) notes, the British found a “pragmatic utility” in police excesses in the form of extortion, violence, and intimidation of local population. In this way a fear of the police among local communities was harbored and promoted. Here, maintaining the idea of police as corrupt and intimidating served to alienate the people from the police and served  to prevent any dangerous collusions between them. Furthermore, Arnold (1986) argues that corruption in police tended to favor men of wealth and authority, so even the unofficial use of police power did not detract from the colonial interest.

Since the modern civil police was the primary institution of the state tasked with the responsibility of securing the interests of the British and indigenous ruling classes, the racial rationale was embedded in its structural features. While on the one hand, the police functioned as a force meant primarily to control the local population, on the other hand it was internally structured along racial lines as well, embedding the institution with characteristics of structural inequality and distrust of the subordinate ranks. Owing to their familiarity with the social  environment, knowledge of the vernacular language and terrain, Indians  were recruited to the subordinate ranks in the police hierarchy. In order to discipline, control, and train this force, however, supervisory positions were retained for European officers with military backgrounds. Arnold (1976) notes that in Madras Police, they were exclusively recruited in a rank known as European Head Constable, and thereafter as sergeant.[[2]] European sergeants were employed to  train and discipline the Indian recruits, owing to their supposed racial superiority, and because of a belief that Indians could not be relied upon to perform these tasks.

As Europeans they enjoyed better working conditions, and higher pay, than their Indian  counterparts. To add to this structural inequality, the racial rationale was overdetermined by class configuration of the policing hierarchy. The upper echelons of police hierarchy were exclusively European police officers and civil servants who despised the European sergeants for their “lack of education, indebtedness, drunkenness, and marriages to Anglo-Indian women” (Arnold 1976, 13). In 1930s it became increasingly difficult to recruit European sergeants, which led to the subsequent Indianization of these ranks in the subordinate  police. A new rank of “Sub-Inspector” was created for educated Indians, from which the station  level supervisory ranks were to be promoted. There was however, Arnold (1976) notes, enormous European prejudice against this “for not only did Europeans consider Indians corrupt and inefficient, but it was also part of the racist rationale for colonial rule that only Europeans, because they were outsiders, could act impartially in disputes between one community and another” (Arnold 1976, 13). Even when Indian officers were  recruited, there was a marked preference for recruiting officers from what the British  administration had identified to be “martial” races in India (Arnold 1986). Racism and  racialization were thus the dominant logic of colonial practices of policing.

Postcolonial Adaptations

India’s independence in 1947 marked its foray into a modern democracy. While this led to an “Indianization” of the state apparatus, i.e., European officers were replaced by Indian officials, much of the administrative apparatus of the colonial state, especially the civil service and the  police, was adopted as it was (Verma 2011). The colonial state apparatus, embedded with structural inequalities to aid class exploitation, which secured the interests of the British ruling classes and the indigenous propertied classes were retained as they were, with only minor alterations. “Police” and “Public Order” were brought under the purview of  the democratically elected state executive. Despite broad opposition to the British bureaucratic  apparatus, the first Home Minister of India ultimately prevailed upon others to continue the civil and police services, harboring a belief that the force would faithfully serve the new government and elected leaders in the same way as they had served the British (Verma 2011).

In postcolonial India thus, while the racial—genetic, biological, phenotypical—basis of the  configuration of police hierarchy may have vanished, racialized processes of structural  inequalities remained. The animosity apparent between the superior and subordinate police in  the colonial era continued into a caste-class configuration informed by racialized imaginations. The organizational structure of the colonial police was governed by two principles: one, racial superiority, whereby Europeans alone could be trusted with positions of responsibility and  command, and Indians were to be necessarily subservient; and two, disciplinary control,  wherein a system of supervisory control was seen to be most effective, in a society where the  Europeans were present in a very small number and had to rule over a far greater number of  the indigenous population.

The organizational structure was and continues to be overdetermined by an ethnoracial make-up. The subsequent Indianization of the police force came more and more to embody the  indigenous patterns of social stratifications along caste lines. By the 1930s and 1940s, the  senior positions in Madras police were mainly drawn from the ethnic/caste groups who  in the colonial imagination of Indian society were “racially superior” and mostly came from  families with landed wealth and professional status. At the bottom, the poor pay conditions and menial nature of the work, saw increased recruitment of the  racialized population of marginalized caste groups and tribes. This ethnoracial make-up is prevalent today as well where, as of 2019, while the marginalized groups, i.e. Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC)  collectively formed almost 71.7 percent  of the total police force in India; as of 2014, they collectively  formed only 26.4 percernt of the total Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, i.e., the upper echelons of  police hierarchy.[3]&[4]In the absence of official figures on religion of enrolled police officers, it is  difficult to ascertain the religious configuration of the total police force in India.

From this we may note that the racial character has today transformed into a caste-class configuration coordinated around structural inequalities introduced by the racialized-colonial  power structure. This caste-class configuration, which becomes apparent through official  figures, may further be conditioned by religion-ethnicity-geographical location etc. In sum, it  represents what the emerging literature on new racism identifies as processes of racialization  which assists in the reproduction of symbolic and material inequalities.

To understand these manifestations, the lens of racialization offers a theoretical framework that is capable of unpacking the sustenance of structural inequalities. Understanding this caste-class configuration is essential in understanding the contemporary everyday practices of policing in India. Thus while “racism” may not be a term that is used in understanding contemporary policing practices in India, “racialization” offers a lens capable of unpacking several structural  inequalities that are embedded in the policing framework of India. To understand racialization  and policing practices in India thus, one has to approach the theme on two fronts, first the  internal ordering, recruitment, configuration, and everyday practices through which a large force of police officers themselves are regulated through discipline conditioned by a racialized  colonial logic. Second, how this force of disciplined officers in turn further regulates and polices  the larger population, relying on data, knowledge and practices generated for the regulation of  racialized subjects by the colonial administration. In this essay, I have addressed the first front  to show that the contemporary configuration and practices of recruitment of personnel in police  forces in India are still overwhelmingly conditioned by its colonial history of governing  racialized subjects. While the racial configuration of supposed European superiority over colonial subjects has changed in post-colonial India, it has now transformed to represent a caste-class configuration which is indicative of racialized practices.

Dr. Ashwin Varghese is a sociologist studying power relations, policing and state development. He is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), India. He has spent nearly seven years studying policing and state formations in India. His broader research interests include political sociology, sociology of law, governance, political economy, theories of everyday and ethnographic methods.

Notes

[1] The 1857 mutiny was an uprising of indigenous sepoys against the English East India Company and is referred to as the first fight for Indian Independence. It evolved into a movement to overthrow the rule of the English East India Company, to reinstate the earlier monarchical rule.

[2]  The Madras Police was a police force functioning in the Madras presidency—an administrative subdivision in  the southern region of British India.

[3] Figures for caste composition calculated using data from 1) Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Personnel, Public  Grievances & Pensions (http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=113621), 2) Bureau of Police Research and Development, Data on  Police Organisations As on January 1 (New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 2019).

[4] SC, ST and OBC are marginalized social groups which in the graded systems of social  stratification and inequality in India are now identified as “socially, politically and economically  backward” by the Constitution of India, and eligible for benefits under the state’s affirmative  action policies

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