The 'Criminal Tribe' in India before the British
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2108903 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Piliavsky (0000-0002-4885-2558, Girls Incorporated, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 323-354 |
| Publication date | 2015-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0010417515000055 |
| OpenAlex | W2027013809 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 33 |
| References cited | 117 |
This paper challenges the broad consensus in current historiography that holds the Indian stereotype of criminal tribe to be a myth of colonial making. Drawing on a selection of precolonial descriptions of robber castes-ancient legal texts and folktales; Jain, Buddhist and Brahmanic narratives; Mughal sources; and Early Modern European travel accounts-I show that the idea of castes of congenital robbers was not a British import, but instead a label of much older vintage on the subcontinent. Enjoying pride of place in the postcolonial critics' pageant of 'colonial stereotypes,' the case of criminal tribes is representative and it bears on broader questions about colonial knowledge and its relation to power. The study contributes to the literature that challenges the still widespread tendency to view colonial social categories, and indeed the bulk of colonial knowledge, as the imaginative residue of imperial politics. I argue that while colonialusesof the idea of a criminal tribe comprises a lurid history of violence against communities branded as born criminals in British law, the stereotype itself has indigenous roots. The case is representative and it bears on larger problems of method and analysis in 'post-Orientalist' historiography
Archaeology · Colonialism · Ethnology · Genealogy · Historiography · Indigenous · Power (physics · Sociology · Tribe · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History
Nomads, “Gypsies,” and Criminals in England and India from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century
Adivasi ‘Bandit’ Hero as Political Other
The Value of Disorder
Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India
Poles apart? From Wrestling and Mallkhāmb to Pole Yoga
Redefining Justice
Social disintegration and ethnic conflict
From Sarkivasi (nomadic) to Gaonvasi (villager)
‘It’s a Matter of Land’
The nineteenth-century thugs of india
Visualizing Vigilance in the Generalized Representation of the Nomad
‘Ostracized by law’
Remoteness is power
Eating heritage
Guilty Until Proven Guilty
Crisis of Identity of an Excluded, Riparian Dalit Community
Caste, Dacoity and Countryside in the Nineteenth-century Bengal
What Can Hijras Teach Us about Governance, Gender, and Wealth
Rituals of Belonging
Rajput Vocabulary of Violence
Violence and the Marginalized
Imperial legacies and southern penal spaces
Dalits and the Raj
Fragmented Sovereignty, Ḍakaitī (Banditry), and ‘Criminal Tribe’ in a ‘Minor’ State of Late Colonial India
People are Trapped in History and History is Trapped Inside Them’
Networks of Power in the Nineteenth Century
Provincializing Exception
Patronage and community in a society of thieves
Settling the Citizen, Settling the Nomad
Gender, Family, and the Policing of the 'Criminal Tribes' in Nineteenth-Century North India
They throw us in the drain and beat us
Construction of identity among the Nats of Bihar
Where do we go when we follow the money? The political-economic construction of Antimafia investigators in Western Sicily
Crime and criminality in British India
Storia do Mogor
Thuggee
Representations of India, 1740–1840
The History of India, as Told by its Own Historians
The History of India, as Told by its Own Historians
King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India
Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia
After Orientalism
The Postcolonial Unconscious
Marvelous Possessions
Dialogue and History
Manu’s Code Of Law
The Illusion of Permanence
Languages and Nations
Colonialism's culture
A despotism of law
Castes of Mind
The Hollow Crown
Reconstructing Identity and Situating Themselves in History
Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge
Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital
Beyond Postcolonial Theory
Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200–1991
Representations of Indian Muslims in British Colonial Discourse
Kin Clan Raja and Rule
Postcolonial Studies
Crime, Gender, and Sexuality in Criminal Prosecutions
Masks of Conquest
Travels in the Mogul Empire, A. D. 1656-1668
Colonialism and Culture
Colonial masculinity
Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge
Beyond Postcolonialism … and Postpositivism
Art. IX.—Report on some of the Rights, Privileges, and Usages of the Hill Population in Meywar
Kings versus Bandits
Crime, Liberalism and Empire
Violence and Truth
The Kallars
Perverted Dharma Ethics Of Thievery In The Dharmacauryarasāyana
Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India
Engaging Colonial Knowledge
Postcolonialism
The Mughal State and tribes in seventeenth century Sind
Scarf and Sword
Disciplining and policing the 'criminals by birth', Part 1
Disciplining and policing the 'criminals by birth', Part 2
Surveillance and settlements under the Criminal Tribes Act in Madras
On South Indian Bandits and Kings
Further thoughts on an enigma
The Criminal Tribes Act in Madras Presidency
Banditry in Mughal India
Crime, Governance and the Company Raj. The Discovery of Thuggee
Same Difference in Indiaand Europe
Genealogy of Colonial Discourse
Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon
Thuggee, marginality and the state effect in colonial India, circa 1770–1840
The Invention of Invention
Hullabaloo About Telugu
Apologies to Thucydides
Some Jain References to the Thags and the Saṃsāramocaka
Criminality or Community? Alternative Constructions of the Mev Narrative of Darya Khan
Confessions of a Skull
The jungle and the aroma of meats
Tradition and Reflection
The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry
State and Criminal Tribes in Colonial Punjab
Orientalist Constructions of India
Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India
Imperial Solution of a Colonial Problem
Providential' Circumstances
The Men who Would be King? The Politics of Expansion in Early Seventeenth-Century Northern Tamilnadu
The Pre-history of ';Communalism'? Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860
The Moghia Menace, or the Watch Over Watchmen In British India
Castes of Mind
Tradition and Reflection
The 'King' and the 'Clown' in South Indian Myth and Poetry
Along the Archival Grain
The Predicament of Culture
Icons and Identity
Contradiction and Change
Kin, Clan, Raja and Rule
Colonizing and transforming the criminal tribesman
A Secret in the Oxford Sense
Precolonial Intellectuals and the Production of Colonial Knowledge
Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self
After Orientalism
Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World
The Image of the Barbarian in Early India
| Unique citing works | 33 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 32 |