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ABSTRACT
Within British India, the police were used to suppress challenges to colonial authority. Yet, police actions in fulfilling this role varied by region. Within the provinces, the police were a coercive force to enforce internal security, augmenting military efforts. On the frontier, the aim of the police was to integrate locals into the local security framework and weld their interests to government control, rather than the direct application of force. Relying on Indian archival records, this comparative analysis demonstrates the importance of considering this variation for a more complete understanding of the strategic logic of colonial policing.
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Notes
1. Lobban, Imperial Incarceration, 2021, 2.
2. Hussain, The Jurisprudence of Emergency, 2003; Kostal, A Jurisprudence of Power, 2008; Lobban, Imperial Incarceration, 2021, 7–8.
3. Young, “The Colonial State and Post-Colonial Crisis,” 1988, 7.
4. “Extracts from the reports of the Army in India Committee, regarding the armament of the Civil Police,” 1914, 10.
5. Mesok, “Counterinsurgency, community participation, and the preventing and countering violent extremism agenda in Kenya,” 2022; Schrader, “Global counterinsurgency and the police-military continuum: introduction to the special issue,” 2022.
6. Paulson-Smith, ““Police fire on rioters”: everyday counterinsurgency in a colonial capital,” 2022, 635.
7. Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule, 1986; Campion, “Authority, accountability and representation: the United Provinces police and the dilemmas of the colonial policeman in British India, 1902–39,” 2003; Giuliani, “Strangers in the Village? Colonial policing in rural Bengal, 1861 to 1892,” 2015.
8. Naseemullah and Staniland, “Indirect Rule and Varieties of Governance,” 2016.
9. Waller, “Towards a contextualisation of policing in colonial Kenya,” 2010, 526.
10. Killingray, “The Maintenance of Law and Order in British Colonial Africa,” 1986, 413.
11. “Proposals for deposition of Mir of Hunza on grounds of Kashmir misrule in favour of his and capable heir Mirzada Jamal Khan,” 1945, 8.
12. Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule, 1986, 2.
13. Ahmed, Resistance and Control in Pakistan, 1991; Akins, “Mashar versus Kashar in Pakistan”s FATA: Intra-tribal Conflict and the Obstacles to Reform,” 2018; Eck, “The origins of policing institutions: Legacies of colonial insurgency,” 2018; Keith and Ogundele, “Legal systems and constitutionalism in sub-Saharan Africa: An empirical examination of colonial influences on human rights,” 2007; Pepinsky, “Colonial migration and the origins of governance theory and evidence from Java,” 2016.
14. Acemoglu and Johnson, “Unbundling institutions,” 2005; Grier, “Colonial legacies and economic growth,” 1999; Huillery, “History matters: The long-term impact of colonial public investments in French West Africa,” 2009.
15. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 1985; Schwartz, “Empire, capital and a legacy of endogenous multiculturalism,” 2015.
16. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 2001; Wucherpfenning, Hunziker and -Erik Cederman, “Who inherits the state? Colonial rule and postcolonial conflict,” 2016; Verghese, The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India, 2016.
17. Campion, “Authority, accountability and representation: the United Provinces police and the dilemmas of the colonial policeman in British India, 1902–39,” 2003, 237.
18. Verghese and Teitelbaum, “Conquest and Conflict: The Colonial Roots of Maoist Violence in India,” 2019.
19. Selth, “Myanmar”s Police Forces: Coercion, Continuity and Change,” 2012.
20. Eck, “The origins of policing institutions: Legacies of colonial insurgency,” 2018.
21. Chatterjee, A Study in the Police Administration of West Bengal, 1973, iii–iv.
22. Wagner, Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India, 2007.
23. Lees, Bureaucratic Culture in Early Colonial India, 2020, 6.
24. Piliavsky, “The Moghia Menace, or the Watch Over Watchmen In British India,” 2013.
25. “Review of the Police Administration in the Delhi Province for the year 1935,” 1936, 2–8.
26. Robb, “The Ordering of Rural India,” 1991, 129.
27. “Report on the Police Administration of the town of Calcutta and its suburbs for 1931,” 1932, 52.
28. “Review of the Police administration in the Delhi Province for 1932,” 1933, 7, 17.
29. Innes and Steele, “Gender and Everyday Violence,” 2019, 151.
30. Paulson-Smith, ““Police fire on rioters”: everyday counterinsurgency in a colonial capital,” 2022, 635–6.
31. Sherman, State Violence and Punishment in India, 2010, 1.
32. Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence, 1960, 27.
33. “Weekly Report of the Director, Intelligence Bureau, 10 July 1930,” 1930, 13.
34. Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics, 1998, 212.
35. Gwynn, Imperial Policing, 1934, 11.
36. “Internal security requirements in India with special reference to the adequacy and numbers of British troops and Police throughout Bengal (Calcutta) up to Bihar,” 1927, 28.
37. “Report and review of the Police administration in the Delhi Province for the year 1941,” 1942, 77–9.
38. “Extracts from the reports of the Army in India Committee, regarding the armament of the Civil Police,” 1914, 7, 9.
39. Campion, “Authority, accountability and representation: the United Provinces police and the dilemmas of the colonial policeman in British India, 1902–39,” 2003, 229–30.
40. “Report and review of the Police administration in the Delhi Province for the year 1941,” 1942, 135.
41. Metcalf, Imperial Connections, 2007, 102–35.
42. “Recruitment of Sikhs for the Bombay City Police,” 1911, 5.
43. See note 34 above 187.
44. “North West Frontier Provincial Situation Part I (B) During April and May 1930,” 1930, 88, 98.
45. “Reorganization of Armed Police reserves in British India,” 1904, 35.
46. “Organization of the armed police in India,” 1905, 3.
47. “Notes on the rules for mobilizing Police Headquarter Reserves,” 1911, 5.
48. “Extracts from the reports of the Army in India Committee, regarding the armament of the Civil Police,” 1914, 1.
49. Lord Curzon in India: Being a Selection From His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India, 1898–1905 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1906), 37.
50. “Memorandum on the General Asian Question and Our Future Policy,” 1892, 1.
51. “Disturbances on the North-Western Frontier,” 1897.
52. “Summary of the Administration of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy and Governor General of India, January 1899-November 1905,” 1906, 9.
53. See note 8 above 2016.
54. Akins, “Mashar versus Kashar in Pakistan”s FATA: Intra-tribal Conflict and the Obstacles to Reform,” 2018, 1143.
55. Lord Curzon in India, 1906, 422–3.
56. Ibid.3.
57. Tripodi, “Power and Patronage: A comparison of Tribal Service in Waziristan and South-West Arabia 1919–45,” 2014, 172–93.
58. “Proposed Formation of a North-West Frontier Agency: Minute by His Excellency the Viceroy on the Administration of the North-West Frontier,” 1900, 17, 25.
59. “Report of the Frontier Regulation Enquiry Committee,” 1931, 22, 26.
60. “Measures for the Defence of the Gilgit Agency,” 1935, 2.
61. Ahmed, Pukhtun Economy and Society, 1980, 366.
62. “Report of the Frontier Regulation Enquiry Committee,” 1931, 80.
63. Tripodi, “Power and Patronage: A comparison of Tribal Service in Waziristan and South-West Arabia 1919–45,” 2014, 183.
64. “Khyber Administration Report for 1899–1900,” 1900, 6.
65. Report on Waziristan and Its Tribes, 1901, 24.
66. Ahmed, Pukhtun Economy and Society, 1980, 376, n. 2.
67. “Khyber and Kohat tragedies, murder of Major F. Anderson and Major N.C. Orr, of the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders,” 1923, 55.
68. Hopkins, Ruling the Savage Periphery, 2020, 21–2.
69. “Raids on Bannu and Air Operations Against the Ahmadzai Waziris,” 1938, 32.
70. Mason, The Men Who Ruled India, 1985, 312.
71. Woodruff, The Men Who Ruled India, 1954, 201.
72. Ingall, The Last of the Bengal Lancers, 1988, 34.
73. Leeson, Frontier Legion, 2003, 12.
74. Tripodi, Edge of Empire, 2011, 151
75. “Control of Waziristan, General Staff Note on Waziristan,” 1924, 2.
76. Ibid., 3.
77. Akins, “Tribal militias and political legitimacy in British India and Pakistan,” 2020.
78. Ibid.
79. “Control of Waziristan, General Staff Note on Waziristan,” 1924, 2–3.
80. Ibid., 3–4, 6, 10.
81. Franke, War and Nationalism in South Asia, 2009; Nasasra, “The Frontiers of Empire: Colonial Policing in Southern Palestine, Sinai, Transjordan and Saudi Arabia,” 2021; Nettelbeck and Ryna, “Salutary Lessons: Native Police and the “Civilising” Role of Legalised Violence in Colonial Australia,” 2018; Tripodi, “Power and Patronage: A comparison of Tribal Service in Waziristan and South-West Arabia 1919–45,” 2014.
82. For more information about the influence of frontier governance within India across the British Empire, see Hopkins, Ruling the Savage Periphery, 2020, 63–90.
83. Thomas, Violence and Colonial Order, 2012.
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Notes on contributors
Harrison Akins
Harrison Akins is a political scientist and writer based in Washington, DC, who earned a PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. For over a decade, he has been researching, writing, and advising on security, South Asian politics, and U.S. foreign policy from several positions within both academia and the U.S. government.