The Frontier Crimes Regulation in Colonial India: Local Critiques and Persistent Effects

Abstract

In their pursuit of self-serving goals, sometimes governments create and use various instruments as the means to relatively short-term ends. Such instruments, however, can be tenacious, and have perverse, long-lasting impacts. This paper focuses on one such instrument created during the British Raj: the Frontier Crimes Regulation. Often, the literature on the Regulation focuses on the rationale for its creation from the perspective of the colonisers and refers to the long-term consequences in hindsight, thereby ignoring local voices. However, I show that in 1901, at the time of the drafting of the Regulation, the local colonised population foresaw the potentially lasting pernicious effects stemming from it and voiced their concerns. I demonstrate that these local voices can help us understand the roots of the problems in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan today.

Keywords:

• British Raj
• colonial India
• FATA
• Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR)
• institutions
• Jirga
• Pakistan

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous South Asia readers for their extremely helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

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3. Magnus Marsden and Benjamin D. Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 70.

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5. For example, the FCR was removed entirely from the NWFP in 1963 and from Baluchistan in 1977.

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16. Ibid., p. 355.

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19. Ibid., p. 22.

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22. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Royal Commission upon Decentralization in Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and the Punjab (Command Paper 4368), p. 11.

23. Herbert H. Risley, The People of India (London: W. Thacker & Co., 1915), p. 144.

24. Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898).

25. Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

26. East India (Police): Report of the Indian Police Commission and Resolution of the Government of India (Command Paper 2478) (1905), p. 27; and Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Royal Commission upon Decentralization in Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and the Punjab (Command Paper 4368), pp. 12, 17, 32.

27. India Office, East India (Progress and Condition): Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India during the Year 1910–11, 47th number (1912–13) (London: HMSO, 1913), p. 123 [https://parlipapers.proquest.com/parlipapers, accessed 10 June 2017].

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31. Royal Commission on the Public Services in India, Appendix to the Report of the Commissioners: Minutes of Evidence Relating to the Indian and Provincial Civil Services taken in Madras from the 8th to the 17th January 1913 (Command Paper 7293, 7578, 7294, 7295, 7579, 7580, 7296, 7581, 7582, 7583), Vol. 2 (1914) (London: HMSO, 1914) (Dickson-Poynder Report), p. 261 [https://parlipapers.proquest.com/parlipapers, accessed 10 June 2017].

32. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Royal Commission upon Decentralization in Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and the Punjab (Command Paper 4368), p. 44.

33. East India (Progress and Condition): Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India during the Year 1916–1917 (Command Paper 9162), p. 73.

34. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Royal Commission upon Decentralization in Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and the Punjab (Command Paper 4368), p. 29.

35. Erland Jansson, India, Pakistan or Pakhtunistan (Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 1981); and Stephen A. Rittenberg, Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Pakhtuns: The Independence Movement in India’s North-West Frontier Province (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1988).

36. Sayed W.A. Shah, Ethnicity, Islam, and Nationalism: Muslim Politics in the North-West Frontier Province 1937–1947 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

37. ‘Administration of Police in the Punjab’, The Tribune (20 Sept. 1914), p. 3 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

38. ‘Police Administration Report Punjab’, The Tribune (21 Sept. 1911), p. 2 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

39. For example, see Shinwari, ‘Understanding FATA’.

40. ‘Letters to the Editor: Provincial Conference’, The Tribune (25 Sept. 1906), p. 3 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

41. ‘Jirgah Trial’, The Tribune (23 April 1913), p. 1 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. ‘Lahore Municipal Committee: Proposed Extension of Frontier Crime Regulations Provisions’, The Tribune (27 May 1917), p. 5 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

45. ‘New Punjab Crimes Bill’, The Tribune (27 May 1917), p. 2 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

46. ‘Punjab Legislative Council The Frontier Crimes Regulation: Mr. Shah Nawaz’s Speech’, The Tribune (6 Aug. 1921), p. 7 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

47. Ibid.

48. ‘Refugees’ Viewpoint: Rejected Terms’, The Times of India (24 Dec. 1924), p. 12 [http://search.proquest.com/, accessed 10 June 2017].

49. ‘North West Frontier Province Problem’, The Tribune (20 May 1922), p. 4 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

50. Ibid.

51. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Royal Commission upon Decentralization in Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and the Punjab (Command Paper 4368), p. 12.

52. ‘NWFP Province: Sir Sivaswami Ayer’s Speech’, The Tribune (29 Sept. 1921), p. 7 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

53. Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Royal Commission upon Decentralization in Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and the Punjab (Command Paper 4368), p. 148.

54. Ibid., p. 64.

55. Ibid.

56. ‘NWFP Province: Sir Sivaswami Ayer’s Speech’.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. ‘Administration of the Frontier’, The Times of India (22 Nov. 1928), p. 14 [https://search.proquest.com/, accessed 10 June 2017].

60. ‘Punjab Legislative Council The Frontier Crimes Regulation: Mr. Shah Nawaz’s Speech’.

61. ‘Frontier Enquiry Committee’, The Tribune (27 May 1922), p. 7 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

62. ‘Frontier Committee: Evidence of Hazara Bar’, The Leader (29 May 1922), p. 4 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

63. ‘Frontier Committee’, The Leader (15 May 1922), p. 5 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

64. ‘Frontier Committee’, The Leader (20 May 1922), p. 4 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid.

67. ‘More Trouble Brewing on the Frontier’, The Times of India (15 June 1931), p. 9 [http://search.proquest.com/, accessed 10 June 2017].

68. ‘Police Post Set on Fire: Tribal Outrage on Frontier’, The Times of India (13 Feb. 1940), p. 2 [http://search.proquest.com/, accessed 10 June 2017].

69. Based on existing early twentieth-century social reform movements in the NWFP, the Khudai Khidmatgar was a Pashtun group led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Along with the Indian National Congress, they participated in non-violent resistance against the British.

70. International Crisis Group, ‘Pakistan’s Tribal Areas’, p. 6.

71. ‘Letters to the Editor: The District of Mianwali and its Penal Laws’, The Tribune (1 Dec. 1904), p. 5 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

72. The Leader (14 Aug. 1910), p. 3. [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017]

73. Ibid.

74. ‘N-W.F. Province’, The Leader (8 Mar. 1920), p. 16 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

75. ‘Repressive Measures in Frontier: A Lahore Protest’, The Tribune (12 May 1921) [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

76. Ibid.

77. ‘Punjab Legislative Council The Frontier Crimes Regulation: Mr. Shah Nawaz’s Speech’.

78. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, ‘FCR: A Bad Law Nobody Can Defend’ (2005) [http://hrcp-web.org/hrcpweb/wp-content/pdf/ff/23.pdf, accessed 1 Oct. 2018]; and International Crisis Group, ‘Pakistan’s Tribal Areas’.

79. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, ‘FCR’, p. 64.

80. ‘Punjab Provincial Conference: Punjab Crimes Bill’, The Tribune (30 Oct. 1917), p. 3 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

81. ‘New Punjab Crimes Bill’, The Tribune (27 May 1917), p. 2 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

82. ‘League Movement on Frontier Not to Be Called Off’, The Times of India (8 May 1947), p. 5 [http://search.proquest.com/, accessed 10 June 2017].

83. The Tribune (29 Sept. 1921), p. 7.

84. ‘Frontier Committee’, The Leader (24 May 1922), p. 5 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

85. ‘Frontier Committee’, The Leader (2 June 1922), p. 5 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

86. ‘The Frontier Committee’, The Tribune (16 May 1922), p. 7 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

87. Ibid.

88. ‘The Phenomenal Increase in Crimes in Peshawar’, The Times of India (13 June 1931), p. 7 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

89. The Times of India (15 June 1931).

90. ibid.

91. ‘Civil Disobedience’, The Times of India (27 Mar. 1930), p.13 [http://www.crl.edu/, accessed 10 June 2017].

92. Indian Statutory Commission, Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, 1929–30, Vol. 1 (Command Paper 3568)(1931) (London: HMSE, 1931), p. 321 [https://parlipapers.proquest.com/parlipapers, accessed 10 June 2017].

93. Shinwari, ‘Understanding FATA’.

94. Catherine Boone, Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

95. Michael Callen, Saad Gulzar, Arman Rezaee and Jacob N. Shapiro, ‘Choosing Ungoverned Space: Pakistan’s Frontier Crimes Regulations’ (2015), Working Paper [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.680.9961, accessed 10 June 2017].

96. Ibrahim Shinwari, ‘FCR Reforms: Nothing on the Ground’, Dawn (6 Jan. 2015) [https://www.dawn.com/news/1155237, accessed 10 June 2017].

97. For a good example of this dynamic, see Jacques Bertrand, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

98. Adnan Naseemullah, ‘Shades of Sovereignty: Explaining Political Order and Disorder in Pakistan’s Northwest’, in Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 49 (2014), pp. 501–22.

99. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State–Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

100. Shinwari, ‘Understanding FATA’.

101. James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

102. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Pakistan, ‘Report of the Committee on FATA Reforms’ (Aug. 2016), p. 10 [http://www.safron.gov.pk/safron/userfiles1/file/Report%20of%20the%20Committee%20on%20FATA%20 Reforms%202016%20final.pdf, accessed 10 Sept. 2018].

103. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier.

104. Robert Nichols, ‘The Final Frontier’, The Friday Times (3 Mar. 2017) [http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/the-final-frontier, accessed 10 June 2017].