‘The Materiality of Politics’ uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying ‘materiality’ of political processes. Volume 1, subtitled ‘The Technologies of Rule’ discusses the techniques of modern rule which form the basis of the post-colonial Indian state. Beginning with the rule of law, the volume analyses the nature and manifestations of constitutional rule, the relation between law and terror and the construction of ‘extraordinary’ sovereign power. The author also investigates the methods of care, protection, segregation and stabilization by which rule proceeds. In the processes, the material core of the ‘cultural’ and the ‘aesthetic’ is exposed. This book deals with the immediacy and 'physicality' of contemporary politics. The author insists that an investigation of contentious political actions is essential for understanding the nature and interrelations of power structures. He suggests new ways of studying power that recognize both the transformation in the notion of sovereignty and current governmental realities. The universal immediacy of conflict drives home the futility of vague philosophical speculations and generalizations. Instead, it prompts a rigorous study of control and rebellion, statecraft and autonomy, law and lawlessness. History, claims the author, must be studied in a new way. Through a series of historical illustrations, the author investigates violence, law, terror, protection, justice and post-colonial governance. His reading of the materiality of politics is disturbingly 'physical'. Unlike the 'philosophical subject' (a purely theoretical construct), the author's 'political subject' is the real product of particular conflicts and circumstances, violence and bloodshed. Ranabir Samaddar is the Director of the Calcutta Research Group and was earlier the Founder-Director of the Peace Studies Programme at the South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu. The Materiality of Politics Volume 1 The Technologies of Rule By Ranabir Samaddar Wimbledon Publishing Company Copyright © 2007 Ranabir Samaddar All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-84331-251-2 Contents PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, xi, INTRODUCTION: The Materiality of Politics, 1, CHAPTER ONE: Colonial Constitutionalism, 19, CHAPTER TWO: Law, Terror and the Colonial State, 59, CHAPTER THREE: Governing Territory with the Right Size, 107, CHAPTER FOUR: Care, Protection and Power, 133, CHAPTER FIVE: Stable Rule and Unstable Population, 189, INDEX OF NAMES, 249, SUBJECT INDEX, 252, CHAPTER 1 COLONIAL CONSTITUTIONALISM 'I must see with my own eyes, touch with my own hands, not only the fixed, but the momentary circumstances, before I would venture to suggest any political project whatsoever, I must know the power and disposition to accept, to execute, to persevere ... I must see the means of correcting the plan, where correctives would be wanted. I must see the things; I must see the men ... The eastern politicians never do anything without the opinion of the astrologers on the fortunate moment ... Statesmen of a judicious prescience look for the fortunate moment too; but they seek it, not in the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets, but in the conjunctions and oppositions of men and things. These form their almanac.' — Edmund Burke, cited in Alexander M Bickel, The Morality of Consent (Yale: Yale University Press, 1975), pp.15-6. I To understand how India is ruled today, we must begin with one of the most decisive features of colonial rule in India — the colonial constitutional designs and colonial constitutional culture. Colonial constitutionalism was designed to reinforce the material aspects of colonial rule; it was in fact one of the most physical aspects of the process of rule. If colonialism could not survive without its constitutional pillars, constitutionalism had to be colonial in order to culminate in the text that constituted power. This was one of the most fundamental lessons of our colonial history, a lesson still relevant today. One of the most insightful comments on British constitutional design in India came not from a nationalist political leader, but from Tagore in his last essay, 'The Crisis of Civilization' (1941). The Second World War had broken out, and the large-scale slaughter of humanity was well under way. India was still under subjugation, and protests were being drowned by ruthless demonstrations of power, law and order. Tagore, a knight of the British empire who had returned his knighthood, and who considered himself to have been brought up in the 'ethos of enlightenment', now saw as he was nearing his death only the aridity of rule and ruins of a civilization all around. To him, 'law and order' were central to the misery of India, which was now in a shambles because of the way the notions of law and order had been played out. 'Law and order' were the fruits of the poisoned tree of colonialism; they represented the destiny