‘Who is a bigger terrorist than the police?’ Photography as a politics of encounter in Delhi's Batla House

Abstract

Though spectacularly televised, the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai were not the only live event of terror in 2008. In September, news channels broadcast a live encounter in which police killed two young Muslim men in Batla House, Delhi, sparking a widespread local campaign against state violence. This essay explores the publicizing work of photography in the campaign as a political act that disrupts dominant narratives of Islamic terrorism generated by the state and news media. Photographs of the dead men worked as forensic, evidentiary documents, oriented to a future moment of judicial redress. I suggest the politics of encounter in Batla House emphasize marginality in two ways, positioning the Muslims of Batla House as inviting the state to fulfil its promises of justice, even as that very state uses the discourse and practice of law to mark the Muslim as terrorist.

Acknowledgements

In memory of my father, Rasheed Ibrahim.

My deepest thanks to Vaibhav Saria, Don Selby, and Sameena Mulla for their comments on previous incarnations of this paper; the two anonymous reviewers for their generous and detailed comments; and the editors of the special issue for their support.

Notes

 1. The news broke on all national news channels, which are frequently criticized for their spectacular and sensational reporting. This paper is based on interviews I conducted with journalists from Star News, Aaj Tak, India TV, CNN-IBN, and NDTV 24/7 during my fieldwork.

 2. Recent media cases of Muslim victims are that of Ishrat Jahan and three others (2004) and Sorabuddin Sheikh (2005) both in Gujarat. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have identified these as ‘fake’ (‘Gujarat cops killed Ishrat Jahan in cold blood: SIT’, Hindustan Times, 21 November 2011; Ghoge and Das 2007) with the Supreme Court ordering further investigations as of January 2012. There are 22 other such encounters in Gujarat alone between 2002 and 2006 (Venkatesan 2012).

 3. Faisal Devji (‘Attacking Mumbai’) has posited that acts of terror attributed to the Indian Mujahideen and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) should in fact be considered ‘the closest thing to political speech outside Kashmir’ since their motivations and demands are concerned with the welfare (or lack thereof) of Indian Muslims, not a global war against liberal states. In this context, the refusal of the Batla Muslims to retaliate against the state after the encounter might be seen as the exercise of a civil and law-abiding politics and the rejection of radicalization.

 4. It is beyond the scope of this paper to comment on the use of POTA and UAPA to terrorize other marginal communities, such as Dalits and adivasis, which the reports cited here dwell on in detail.

 5. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government (1998–2004) has always been hawkish vis-à-vis terror laws; the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government (2004-present) usually more measured. Yet the latter's refusal to categorize Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) violence as acts of terror belies their stated commitment to democracy and secularism.

 6. The jury included the Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Group (JTSG), formed by teachers from Jamia Millia Islamia University; People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), PUCL, Jan Hastakshep, Forum for Democratic Initiatives, Association for the Protection of Civil Liberties, Anhad, and the Delhi Union of Journalists.

 7. My interviews with the Batla community took place between six and 18 months after the encounter, yet the intensity of the event was continually felt. I use my conversation with Waleed here as exemplary, rather than exceptional, of my interactions with residents, given limits of space. I attend to other voices later in the paper.

 8. While Mulla (2011) considers forensic photographs of sexual violence in the US justice system, where the photographs are taken with the court and jury in mind, here I argue that the photographs were oriented to a general public outside the courtroom, but with the court as the horizon of the photographic address.

 9. Mamdani (2004, 17–62) discusses how ‘culture talk’ in the US media after 9/11 attempted to identify ‘authentic’ Islam that abjures violence (good) from that which embraces it (bad). Such a distinction confines Muslim identity as traditional where the slippage into the Muslim as non-modern or non-liberal imperceptibly prevents them from being seen as political subjects.

10. A local butcher and kabab stall owner said the encounter was a political tactic to give Jamia a bad name (badnam karne ki koshish), particularly because people here are doing well and making progress (tarakki). Burney (2008) also described the encounter as a means of demoralizing and terrorizing educated Muslims.

11. In 2000, 40 students of Jamia Millia Islamia were injured in a violent confrontation with the police (‘Jamia tense after violent clash’, Times of India, 11 April 2000). In 2000, a suspected Islamic militant was killed in an encounter in Batla House under suspicious circumstances (‘Red Fort breach – police kill “Lashkar Militant”’, Indian Express, 27 December 2000). In 2007 two police check posts (chowki) were set alight by youth protesting the alleged desecration of the Quran by a policeman (‘Jamia Nagar: Mob torches police post, 4 cops serious’, Indian Express, 23 September 2007). Following this, a permanent police presence was established in the area in the form of a fully-equipped police station (thana).