FOURTH CRITICAL STUDIES CONFERENCE
“Development, Logistics, and Governance”
(8-10 September 2011)
Name of the Session II: War, Conflicts and War by Other Means
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Abstract
This paper deals with three aspects of the wall – (a) the wall as an instrument of rule, as an apparatus reproduced in history in several ways; (b) the model of the walled city in modern politics; and (c) the post-colonial nature of the re-emergence of the wall as the method of making a distance with others and notifying the world of this act of marking the distance. The paper also argues that because of the abovementioned factors the nature of the act of setting up the wall remains unsure in the domain of law, given the fact that the wall is by itself neither an act of war nor of day to day to rule, and is exceptional that has been made routine, or sought to be routine, or only symbolizes the routine. Therefore what does one do with an institution that is neither one of war nor of peace and politics? By erecting the wall, the state without declaring war against others engages in a war-like exercise. It is a political step that is in the model of war without engaging in actual war. Hence law does not know how to deal with this apparatus. To outlaw the wall is to revise the laws of sovereignty altogether. This is improbable in today’s condition. To approve it is a violation of human rights. Laws cannot approve of it either. It is this void, in which today’s mobile, unruly bodies are shaping up as subjects of a post-colonial world.
Bionote
Dr. Ranabir Samaddar, a founder of the CRG and its journal, Refugee Watch, was earlier a professor of South Asia Studies, and then was the founder-Director of the Peace Studies Programme at the South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu. Known for his critical studies on contemporary issues of justice, human rights, and popular democracy in the context of post-colonial nationalism, trans-border migration, community history, and technological restructuring in South Asia, he has served on various commissions and study groups on issues such as partitions, critical dictionary on globalisation, patterns of forced displacement and the institutional practices of refugee care and protection in India, rights of the minorities and forms of autonomy, technological modernization, and occupational health and safety. He has recently completed a three-volume study of Indian nationalism, the final one titled as, A Biography of the Indian Nation, 1947-1997 (2001). Besides being the editor of three well-known volumes on issues of identity and rights in contemporary politics, Refugees and the State (2003), Space, Territory, and the State (2002), and Reflections on Partition in the East (1997), he is also the editor-in-chief of the South Asian Peace Studies Series. His current work is on theory and practices of dialogue, a question critical to the politics of justice and reconciliation.
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Abstract
One of the signifiers of the transition of medieval state into modern state was the form of punishment it introduced for deviants and nonconformists, who refused to accept the established order of the state and its forms of knowledge and were categorized as criminals. The pre-modern states disciplined such rebels through an elaborate punishment system which hinged on ‘injury’, ‘pain’, and ‘spectacle’. Gradually such forms of discipline and punishment began to prove counterproductive. The modern state shifted its attention from body to mind. It evolved a science of engineering though which mind could be controlled through ‘spatialization’ and minute control of activity and repetitive exercise by which ‘abnormal’ citizens could be turned into ‘normal’, meaning law-abiding. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the Panopticon revolutionized the idea of punishment in the modern state. The idea was that every person would be isolated in a small space so they all might be observed by a single agency from a central tower. The space would be illuminated around the perimeter so that each person could be clearly watched and monitored by the central observer but spatialized persons would neither see each other or the observer. It would not just be applicable to a prison but used for factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, madhouses and so on where non-conformists would be reformed. As modernity unfolds itself, we see such instances in variegated landscapes.
In post-colonial times, Mizo rebels questioned the legitimacy of Indian state to rule over them and decided to subvert the illegitimate regime. It was non-conformism, rebellion. It was an abnormality which required punishing and disciplining. Initially this was done through a ‘causes-and-explanation framework’. In a series of counter-insurgency texts, a theory of deprivation, underdevelopment, neglect, internal colonialism was outlined to ‘regard that insurgency was external’ to the rebels consciousness and ‘cause is made to stand in as a phantom surrogate for reason, the logic of that consciousness’. In other words a discourse was established that the rebels were actually ‘normal’ (read conformist) people but due to certain reasons had turned ‘rebels.’ The cause was deprivation and underdevelopment and hence a development initiative was taken to address the ‘cause’, aimed also at preventing further conversion of people into such rebels. All this happened while counter-insurgency violence and surveillance mechanisms were in place. The entire Mizo Hills was converted into an open prison. People were evicted from their ancestral habitats and coerced into living in this open prison ironically called “Progressive and Protective Villages”. It was a gigantic Panopticon which was sort of a permanent observatory.
Bionote
Sajal Nag is currently Professor of Modern and Contemporary History in Assam Central University, Silhcar. He is the author of Roots of Ethnic Conflict: Nationality Questions in North East India, (Manohar, Delhi, 1990), India and North East India: Mind, Politcs and the Process of Integration 1946-1950 (Regency, Delhi, 1999), Nationalism, Separatism, Secessionism, Rawat, Delhi, 2000, Contesting Marginality: Ethnicity, Insurgency and Subnationalism in North East India, Manohar, Delhi, 2002, Pied Pipers in North East India: Bamboo Flowers, Rat Famine and the Politics of Philanthropy, Manohar, Delhi, 2009, edited, Making of the Union: Merger of Princely States and Excluded Areas, Akansha, Delhi, 2008.
Sajal Nag was a Commonwealth Fellow at Northern Ireland during 2004-05. He was also a Charles Wallace Fellow at Cambridge during 2008. He has been a consultant of Oxfam on North East India for its Human Disaster Report and Violance Mitigation and Amileoration Pragramme and was in the curriculum committee of NCERT handling Comtemporary Politics in India.