Settle, Mobilize, Verify: Identification Practices in Colonial India

Studies in History

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 151-198

  Singha, Radhika ^a  

^a ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY   (India)

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EID: 0347585440     PISSN: 02576430     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/025764300001600201     Document Type: Article

References (275)

1. W. Tennant, Thoughts on the Effects of the British Government on the State of India, Edinburgh, 1807, pp. 141–42;
2. J. Mill, History of British India, Vol. II, London, 1858.
3. Bayly points out that the ideological and social dominance of caste Hindu society and sedentary specialist agriculture emerged decisively only in the early nineteenth century. Colonial pacification speeded the defeat of alternative lifestyles dependent on forest, pastoralism and the pack-trade: C.A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 144, 157–58.
4. Thomas Munro cited in D. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in India, 1819–1835, London, 1995, pp. 56–57.
5. However, Bayly argues that though the sociology of frontier zones may have been fluid, borders were policed and could be activated more formally. C.A. Bayly, ‘Patriotism and political ethics in Indian history’, in idem, Origins of Nationality in South Asia, Delhi, 1998, pp. 19, 33, n. 54.
6. Sleeman, publicist for the thuggee campaign in the 1830s, complained that the bullock-transported pack-trade brought insecurity to life and property. W.H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of a Indian official, Vol. I, 1844, reprint, Karachi, 1975, p. 83, and ch. 4.
7. J. Malcolm, Memoir of Central India, Vol. I, London, 1823, p. 580;
8. J.L. Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire c. 1710–1780, Leiden, 1995, p. 179.
9. Military clout at the Sikh court set an ominous precedent for the Company's Indian troops. ‘The example of a mutinous army at Lahore extorting higher pay, by menaces, from its nominal Government is more dangerous to us than its force in the field.’ Governor General (GG) Ellenborough, to Wellington, 20 March 1844: H. Colchester, History of the Indian administration of Lord Ellenborough, reprint, Jaipur, 1998, p. 430.
10. In 1857 the Commissioner of Ludhiana complained that peripatetic groups such as the Harnis, Sansis and Baurias, were difficult to control ‘when men of influence…entertain them as private messengers’. Mutiny Reports from Punjab and N.W.F.P., Punjab Government Records, Vol. III, 1911, p. 108. Yet British cantonments also succumbed to the ‘blackmail’ system, employing ‘predatory communities’ as watchmen, and the colonial police tapped the skills of hunters and pastoralists as trackers.
11. ‘Report on the Boureah gang of robbers’. Selections from Records of the North Western Provinces Government (SRGNWP), Vol. I, 1864, no. 5;
12. E. Cox, Police and Crime in India, London, 1910, pp. 48–49, 67; Boards Collection (BC) F/4/2233, 147–48, No. 111702, India Office Library and Records (IOL).
13. The Pindaris, mercenary troops gathering strength on the banks of the Narmada in the early nineteenth century, were described as a destabilizing criminal formation rather than a political entity because of their ‘indiscriminate’ recruitment. Even lowly camp followers could aspire to military command. The grandson of Nusru, a bildar (navvy) serving the Maratha chief Shahji in 1633, rose to be a commander of horses. In 1816 some washermen and grass-cutters swooping about on horses in mock imitation of the Pindaris threw the Europeans of Madras into a panic. B.K. Sinha, The Pindaris (1798–1818), Calcutta, 1971, pp. 44, 59;
14. R.G. Burton, The Mahratta and Pindari War, 1910, reprint, Delhi, 1975, p. 4;
15. Malcolm, Memoir, Vol. I, pp. 427–29.
16. For one such episode, see A. Farooqi, ‘Towards Dussehra 1831: The revolt of Lallaji Patel’, Indian Economic and Social History Review (henceforth IESHR) Vol. 35:2, 1998, pp. 147–77.
17. W.H. Macnaghten, Reports of Cases Determined in the Nizamut Adawlut, Vol. II, 1820–26, Calcutta, 1827, pp. 128–29; P/254, Bengal Judl progs, July 1873, No. 505–64, IOL. A regulation of 1821 directed the surveillance of ‘persons being subjects of foreign states assuming fictitious characters of rajahs, natives of rank, pilgrims, entering and assembling for robbery’ (Reg 3, s7, c11, 1821).
18. W.H. Sleeman, Report on Budhak Alias Bagree Decoits, Calcutta, 1849;
19. F.J. Shore, Notes on Indian Affairs, Vol. II, London, 1837, pp. 411–12.
20. J.W. Kaye, A History of the Sepoy War in India, Vol. I, Bombay, 1897, p. 154.
21. Religious mendicancy was blamed for draining revenues from the labouring population and encouraging a parasitic way of life. Tennant, Thoughts, p. 144;
22. H. Murray et al., Historical and Descriptive Account of British India, Vol. II, 5th edition, Edinburgh, 1844, p. 254.
23. For a critique of disorderly pilgrimage and a suggestion that famine mobility could be channelled into colonizing wasteland, see J. Peggs, Cries of Agony, A Historical Account of Suttee, Infanticide, Ghat Murders and Slavery in India, 1830, reprint, Delhi, 1984, p. 280.
24. Travel created contexts in which foods such as raw sugar and temple offerings, and drink, tobacco and sex were consumed from strangers and the poorer orders were held to be specially credulous and easily tempted. M. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Professional Poisoners, Madras, 1912, pp. 3, 21–22.
25. W.H. Sleeman, Report on the System of Megpunnaism, reprint, 1839, pp. 4–5, 14–15.
26. W.H. Sleeman to J.P. Grant, Secy Legislative (Leg) Dept. 18 February 1840, in Leg Progs, 2 December 1843, No. 92, p. 1046, National Archives of India, Delhi (NAI). All manuscript references are from the NAI unless otherwise stated.
27. Large areas of executive discretion were admitted in criminal law to deal with the fallout of pacification, notably in legislation dealing with the so-called thugs and criminal tribes. Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law, Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India, Delhi, 1998, ch. 5.
28. Malcolm, Memoir, Vol. II, p. 106.
29. Famine in Gurgaon and central India left its track on discussions over the Criminal Tribes Act XXVII of 1871. Leg Dept, A, November 1871, No. 62, 91, pp. 31, 122. For the 1898 famine, see E. Henry, Classification and Uses of Fingerprints, London, 1900, p. 68.
30. The lowly Barwars when arrested away from home, upped their caste to Kurmi, a status they traditionally aspired to. Home Judl B, September 1900, No. 233–34.
31. The Palwar Dosadhs of Ballia, fingerprinted for surveillance, protested against being branded as ‘lawless and vagrant’, and hampered in their migrations to Bengal. The government did not deign to reply, but it decided not to proclaim them a criminal tribe because their labour was important to mills and enterprises in Calcutta. Home Judl, A, February 1900, No. 153-54. The author Gaikwad gives a moving account in his biography of how members of such suspect tribes, despite their ‘denotification’, are still dogged by the necessity of disguising their identity. Laxman Gaikwad, Uchalya, The Branded, Delhi, 1998.
32. A. Barat, The Bengal Native Infantry, Calcutta, 1962, pp. 123–24, 128;
33. A.H. Bingley, Caste Handbooks for the Indian Army: Rajputs., 1899.
34. Higher castes would pass themselves off as the ‘truly agricultural castes’ favoured by planters in Mauritius. M.Carter, Servants. Sirdars and Settlers, Indians in Mauritius 1834–1874, Delhi, 1995, p. 100.
35. Nair offers an interesting discussion on how miners on the Kolar gold fields used aliases and anonymity to escape disciplinary action and register protest. They resisted an attempt by the state and management in 1930 to penetrate this defence by fingerprint identification. However her argument that the object of colonial surveillance was rarely the individual but the collectivity, could be modified. Close monitoring of a specific collectivity required a regime of individual identification as well, especially if mobility could not be completely closed off. J. Nair, ‘Dangerous labour: Crime, work and punishment in Kolar gold fields, 1890–1946’, Studies in History, (henceforth SIH), Vol. 13:1, 1997, pp. 19–62.
36. A rebel proclamation of 1857 reminded zamindars and merchants of the burden of stamp papers and court fees under British rule. S.N. Sen, 1857, Delhi, 1957, p. 36;
37. H. Malik and M. Dembo, trs. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan's History of the Bijnor Rebellion, Michigan, 1973, p. 133.
38. M.G. Ranade, A Revenue Manual of the British Empire in India, Poona, 1877, p. 238.
39. S. Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital, Rural Bengal since 1770, Cambridge, 1993, p. 80;
40. N. Nakazata, Agrarian System in Eastern Bengal, 1870–1910, Calcutta, 1994. Equally important, the registration department provided the government with data to monitor certain paternalist modifications it had introduced to the principle of contract to contain social unrest, and to assess the effect of bad seasons and price fluctuations.
41. Bramley recommended a special course in Provincial Ethnography at the Bengal police training schools because of the ignorance of younger officers and their dependence on subordinates. P.B. Bramley, Report on River Crime and River Police Re-organisation Scheme, Vol. I Appendix II-B, Calcutta, 1907.
42. I.G.J. Hamilton, An Outline of Postal History and Practice, Calcutta, 1910.
43. In 1880 the business of money orders was transferred from 321 treasuries to the 5,090 post offices in India. In 1884 and 1887 standardized money order forms for paying revenue and rent were introduced. In the Punjab, military pensioners began to be paid through the post office from 1889, and reservists were called up by post. I.G.J. Hamilton, An Outline of Postal History and Practice, p. 175.
44. See also Hunter's engaging description of the process, official and popular, by which the orthography of towns and villages began to become more uniform. W.W. Hunter, Guide to the Orthography of Indian Proper Names, with a List showing the True Spelling of all Post Towns and Villages in India, Calcutta, 1871.
45. G. Clarke, The Post Office of India and its Story, London, 1921, p. 99. The thumbprint began to be taken on receipts for money orders from 1895.
46. Supdt, Thuggee and Dacoity, to J.P. Grant, 18 July 1840, Leg Progs, 2 December 1842, part III, No. 92, p. 1046; R. Temple, Men and Events of my Time in India, 1882, reprint, Delhi, 1985, pp. 247, 469–71.
47. R.V. Russell and Hira Lal, The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Vol. II, 1916, reprint, Delhi, 1997, p. 183.
48. Cox, Police and Crime in India, pp. 48–49, 66–67;
49. J.C. Curry, The Indian Police, London, 1932, pp. 108–9.
50. Communities that offered services such as the curing of piles and fistulas, or peddled cheap goods, fanned out as migrant labour at worksites, followed the opening of a railway line, frequented stations and choultries and penetrated remote rural areas. In the ‘welter of mixed humanity’ on the worksite of the railway line extending across the Jhelum to Rawalpindi in 1876, Afghans labourers collected raw materials and carried them up the line. Here four Pakhiwars, categorised as a criminal tribe, were discovered thieving from railway stations, carts, and halting places. One represented himself as a munshi (accountant), another as a railway contractor and two as dealers in piece goods and general wares. James Thomas Christie, ‘The story of the Punjab police’, in Mss Eur D1065/1, IOL.
51. The credulity with which Indians accepted the antecedents of newcomers and confided in strangers on a journey was said to have made it particularly easy for swindlers to collect telegraphic money orders. Hamilton, An Outline of Postal History, p. 37.
52. Criticizing the civilizational benefits of colonialism in Hind Swaraj, Gandhi expressed similar anxieties about the criminal fallout of railways: ‘Bad men fulfill their designs with greater rapidity. The holy places of India have become unholy …. rogues visit them to practice their roguery’. Collected Works of Mahatama Gandhi (henceforth CWMG), Vol. X, 1909–11, p. 26.
53. M. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Korawars, Erukulas or Kaikaries, Madras, 1905, p. 47;
54. and M. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Railway Thieves, With Illustrations and Hints on Detection (4th edition), Madras, 1915, pp. 21, 28;
55. G.W. Gayer, Lectures on Some Criminal Tribes of India and Religious Mendicants (2nd edition) 1910, pp. 25–26. Plebian access to such modern infrastructures was a source of concern to government.
56. See Matsuda's fascinating account: M.K. Matsuda, ‘Doctor, judge, vagabond: Identity, identification, and other memories of the state’. History and Memory, Vol. 6:1, 1994, 73–94.
57. This concern is very evident in late nineteenth century proposals to extend the Criminal Tribes Act XXVII of 1871 to other ‘habitual offenders’. ‘Papers relating to a bill to provide for the more effectual surveillance and control of habitual offenders…’, 1889, in Selections from the Records of the Government of India (henceforth SRGOI), Home Dept, No. 12.
58. See also Ian Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850–1900, Delhi, 1995, pp. 104–10, for a skilful and absorbing evaluation.
59. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Railway Thieves, p. 120. In the same breath Hervey described the Waddars as useful and as thieves and a low race. C. Hervey to Secy Judl Dept, Bombay, 23 November 1848, Selections from the Records of the Bombay Govt in the Police Branch, No. 1. Ibbetson's description of the Ods, earth diggers who took up small contracts on roads, canal and railways, displays a similar ambiguity. He said they were, ‘for a vagrant tribe, singularly free from all imputation of crime’.
60. Denzil Ibbetson, Panjab Castes, 1916, reprint, Delhi, 1981, p. 275.
61. Merchants did not call in the police, pleading that ‘they and their goods were at the mercy of unscrupulous boatmen’. They made up by low wages instead. Bramley, Report on River Crime, Vol. I, pp. 16–61.
62. A police enquiry into river banditry stated that the rate of pay for boat crews from the United Provinces was lower than what they could earn by labouring at home in lac factories, cotton mills, stone mines and ferries. It attributed their better standard of living after trips to eastern Bengal and Assam and ability to buy their own boats to criminal activity. Note, 22 October 1894, in Bramley, Report on River Crime, Vol. III, pp. 42–45.
63. SP Peshawar to Dy Commr, 26 July 1898, Home Public, February 1899, No. 196-203, Cox, Police and Crime in India, p. 135;
64. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Korawars, p. 45.
65. Joint Magt to Magt, Gorakhpur, 2 October 1873, ‘Papers relating to the crime of cattle poisoning’, SRGOI, Home, revenue and agriculture, clxxx, x.
66. Annals of Indian Administration in the Year 1869–70, Serampur, 1871, p. 39.
67. Note, Junior member, Board of Revenue, NWP, 11 September 1890, in ‘Papers relating to a bill…for the more effectual surveillance and control of habitual offenders…’, SRGOI, No. 12.
68. Home Police, A, September 1899, No. 17-18; J.C. Curry, The Indian Police, London, 1932, p. 268.
69. However, Pauparao Naidu refers to counterfeit coins of a superior variety, made profitable by a decrease in the value of silver around the turn of the century. These were passed off at railway booking offices and in the huge commercial transactions associated with cotton markets: Pauparao Naidu, The History of Korawars, pp. 85–112.
70. R. Montgomery, Magt Kanpur, and Major Graham, Asst Genl Supdt, Thuggee Dept, ‘Report on Tusma baz thugs’ in SRGNWP, Vol. 1, No. 3, Allahabad, 1864, pp. 312–28. In the apocryphal story, one Creagh, a private in the King's regiment at Kanpur cantonment initiated an Indian artillery man, a cook and camp follower into a game involving a leather strap and a stick.
71. R. Reid, Knavery Unmasked or the Confessions of a Celebrated Dacoit, Calcutta, 1891, Preface and pp. 277–87.
72. Poisoning with dhatura seeds in Bihar originated with labourers returning from Mauritius, wrote police officer M. Pauparao Naidu. Such men, he observed, like prisoners in jail, learnt things ‘in conversation’ of which they would have remained in ignorance if they had stayed at home. M. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Professional Poisoners and Coiners of India, Madras, 1912, p. 31.
73. Police Gazetteer, NWP, 1868, in Pauparao Naidu, The History of Professional Poisoners. ch. 8.
74. On first arrival, wrote Risley, the European could not distinguish one native from another. He then began to demarcate the Hindu from the Muslim and learnt ‘that upper caste Hindus had fairer and finer features than the lower’. ‘But the general impressions thus formed … are wanting in scientific precision. They cannot be recorded or analysed; no description can convey their effect; they melt away in the attempt to fix them and leave nothing behind,’ Risley expected that the categorization of physical type through anthropometry would provide that precision. H.H. Risley, People of India, 1915, reprint, Delhi, 1969, pp. 5–6.
75. See H.H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Vol. I, Calcutta, 1892, pp. vi–ix.
76. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Professional Poisoners, pp. 24, 41. Gayer warned that the tactics of the criminal tribes were changing, but a record of their religious practices and beliefs, being more fixed, would provide ways to track them. The other way was fingerprinting. Gayer, Lectures.
77. By “efficient” I mean men drawn from the best fighting races’, wrote Lord Roberts, warning that the Indian army had to be re-oriented to the Russian threat. Note, 25 September 1886, and Roberts to Arbuthnot, 6 April 1889 in B. Robson, ed., Roberts in India: The Military Papers of Field Marshall Lord Roberts, 1876–1893 (Army records society), 1993, pp. 352, 392.
78. Fox describes how the British Indian Army tried to exclude those who had assumed a Sikh identity only for military employment, thereby fostering a more orthodox and separate identity. Richard Fox, Lions of the Punjab, Culture in the Making, Delhi, 1987, pp. 10, 141–47.
79. G.F. Macmunn, The Armies of India, London, 1911, p. 141.
80. The advance of ethnological knowledge, he reported, had resulted in the Gharwalis ‘very properly’ being separated from the Gurkhas: The Armies of India, 1911 pp. 119, 127, 165.
81. 5 October 1893, in Mily Dept Progs, B, February 1894, No. 2339-4. The army handbook for recruiting Rajputs warned of ‘spurious clans among the Jadon and Jadubansis’. Recruits had to be questioned about their district, clan, gotra, marriage links, and rules of commensality and their replies checked against official information. Bingley, Rajputs, pp. 177–78.
82. Mily Dept Progs, B, February 1894, No. 2339-43. Manual for Bengal and Punjab Cavalry, 1893, reprint, Delhi, 1985, p. 101, s 549, s 563.
83. Report of the Committee Appointed by Government to Enquire into Certain Questions Connected with the Police Administration of the North Western Provinces and Oudh, Allahabad, 1891, para 200.
84. Barat, The Bengal Native Infantry, pp. 123–24, 128;
85. Bingley, Rajputs.
86. Caste and ethnic stereotypes shaped the market for indentured labour. P. Mahapatra, ‘Coolies and colliers: A study of the agrarian context of labour migration from Chota Nagpur, 1880–1920’, SIH, Vol. 1:2, 1985, pp. 247–98;
87. M. Carter, Voices from Indenture, London and New York, 1996, pp. 42, 100.
88. Record-keeping for individual recruits was improved to prevent desertion during the Burmese War of 1852. Barat, The Bengal Native Infantry, pp. 123–24, 128.
89. When a Pathan soldier was dismissed for misconduct, or a known ‘bad-character’ discharged, his descriptive roll, ‘giving where possible indelible marks’, was to be circulated to prevent re-enlistment. Manual for Bengal and Punjab Cavalry, p. 101, s 559.
90. ‘Courts of law, educational establishments and Government officers are every day teaching all races alike the importance of having clear proof of age’, wrote the Legal Remembrancer to Government in a discussion on how to give evidential value to records of birth, marriage and death. Note, G.E. Knox, 1 April 1885 in Leg Dept, March 1886, No. 44-213. By the 1870s the registration of births and deaths was compulsory under various municipal Acts for larger towns, though penalties were not enforced.
91. In the Hyderabad Assigned Districts, the fixing of a maximum age for admission to high schools sent parents scrambling to ask masters to alter ages in school registers. Leg Dept, B, April 1896, No. 14–16. The Sanjivini of 20 March 1897 reported that a falsification of age had been discovered among some schoolboys and that this prevailed among many Indians. The same paper reported that many kept two horoscopes—one true and the other false. Reports from Native Newspapers, Bengal, No. 13 of 1897.
92. See chitha barda firoshi, 8 January 1751, in R.K. Perti, ed., Calendar of Acquired Documents, Vol. III, NAI, p. 147, No. 310.
93. See Reg 9 of 1774 (Civil); Q. Ahmed, ‘A mid-nineteenth century case of a long term lease, not sale, of human beings’, Indian Historical Review (henceforth IHR), Vol. 15:1–2, 1988–89, pp. 276–80;
94. A.K. Chattopadhyay, Slavery in India, Calcutta, 1959, p. 53;
95. J.C. Marshman, The Darogah's Manual, Serampur, 1850, pp. 177–78.
96. The indentured coolie had to carry a pass and the time-expired labourer a ticket as identification for his own policing. The labour of the former had to be immobilized and wage bargaining restricted for the latter. J. Geoghegan, Note on Emigration from India, Vol. II, Calcutta, 1873, pp. 94–99, 119;
97. Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, pp. 193, 199–200, 206.
98. Singha, A Despotism of Law.
99. Circular order (CO) of the Sadar Faujdari Adalat, 21 October 1830, in J.B. Pharoah, The Circular Orders of the Court of Foujdari Udalut, Madras, 1847, p. 141.
100. Home Judl, A, 30 December 1871, No. 94-98. Convict labourers could not be effaced from Boden Kloss' description of the beauties of the island of Ross for they were ‘rendered conspicuous by their fetters or neck rings, supporting the numbered badges’. C. Boden Kloss, In the Andamans and Nicobars, London, 1903, p. 20.
101. In jail the prisoner stood at attention for a daily verification ritual, with his metal disc around his neck and his history board stating name, caste, education, age, height and weight. C. Rajagopalachari, Jail Diary, Madras, 1922, pp. 7–8.
102. Home Judl, December 1872, No. 222–24, and April 1873, No. 104.
103. New orders had stated that ‘a native soldier shall not mark his face to denote his caste, or wear earrings when dressed in his uniform…. at all parades, and … duties, every soldier….shall be clean shaved on the chin’. His moustache was to be more uniform and his headgear a hat rather than a turban. J.W. Kaye (Col. Malleson, ed.,) History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857–8, Vol. I, Bombay, 1897, pp. 158–61.
104. W. Tennant, Thoughts.
105. For details see Singha, A Despotism of Law
106. ‘[T]he meaning of tattooing in “local” tattooing systems is read not just by itself, but always in conjunction with other technical schemata—other mutilations, other treatments of the body envelope.’ A. Gell, Wrapping in Images, Tattooing in Polynesia, Oxford, 1993, p. 9. The fact that the tattoo was more common to women and lower castes must have added to its stigma for the Brahmin offender.
107. Singha, A Despotism of Law, pp. 245–46.
108. Domestic authority was exhibited in the very nature of the instrument used—a heated ladle, a chillum (pipe), a spitoon. K. McLeod, Medico-legal Experience in the Bengal Presidency, 1875, pp. 75–79.
109. Abbe Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, reprint, Delhi, 1989, p. 67;
110. Singha, A Despotism of Law.
111. Caplan points out that exploration and colonial expansion brought Europeans into contact with cultures of customary body alteration, and the tattooed body became an artefact of their encounter with the Americas and the South Pacific. Ironically Europeans themselves were expanding the infliction of body-marking on non-Europeans via the slave trade. For a scintillating exploration of the documentation of personal identity in Europe, see Jane Caplan ‘“Speaking scars”: The tattoo in popular practice and medico-legal debate in nineteenth century Europe’, History Workshop Journal (henceforth HWJ), No. 44, 1997, pp. 107–42, 116–17.
112. Singha, A Despotism of Law.
113. T.K. Bannerjee, Background to Indian Criminal Law. Calcutta, 1963, pp. 77, 86, n. 145.
114. G.W. Swinton, to Agent to GG, Sagar and Narbada Territories, 4 August 1830, Mss Eur D 1188, IOL. Leopold Von Orlich, Travels in India Including Sinde and the Punjab, Vol, 2, London, 1845, reprint, 1985, p. 163.
115. Reg 17, 1797; Reg 2, 1807. The third judge of Dacca division said that inscription by godna would prevent ‘the testimony of more hardened offenders from being received a second time’, 19 October 1797, in Bannerjee, Background, pp. 76–79, n. 128.
116. Bannerjee, Background, pp. 76–79, n. 128.
117. CO of Nizamat Adalat, 23 April 1795, in K.K. Datta, ed., Selections from the Judicial Records of the Bhagalpur District Office (1792–1805), Patna, 1968, p. 119.
118. See Inspector General (IG) Prisons, Awadh, 28 March 1872, and 14 May 1872, Home Judl, December 1872, No. 223-24. Chief Commr Awadh, 20 March 1873, Home Judl, April 1873, No. 104. IG prisons, NWP, 7 February 1874, and IG prisons, Punjab (PB), 3 January 1874, Home PB, A, June 1874, No. 15-32. Again in the 1890s, discussing ways to discover the wandering habitual, officials wistfully toyed with the convenience of tattooing as a record of conviction. Police Committee Report, NWP and O, 1891, p. 108, para 387, and memorandum, Dy Commr, Lalitpur, 28 February 1891, appendix XII B.
119. Awadh Jail Report. 1871, in Home Judl, November 1872, No. 45-7; Home Judl, December 1872, No. 223-24; Home PB, July 1876, No. 20-25.
120. COs, Chief Court PB to Commrs, and Dy Commis, 17 December 1874 and VII of 1875, in Punjab Reporter, Vol. 9, 1874, and Vol. 10, 1875. In the 1890s when transportation was again abolished for term convicts, it was suggested that s75 Indian Penal Code (IPC), which prescribed heavier sentences for repeat offenders be used to secure life transportation for habituais. Home. B, June 1890, No. 74-8.
121. IG prisons, PB, said the tattoo should inscribe serial number, province and year of conviction. So Ram Singh of Punjab, convicted in 1874 would ‘become’ P 3 74, and this number would correspond with his descriptive roll. 31 January 1874, Home PB, A, June 1874, No. 15-32. In 1858, Man and Walker, overseeing the Andamans settlement had made a similar suggestion for branding the registration number on the convict as the key to all information on him. M.V. Portman, A History of our Relations with the Andamanese, Vol. I, Calcutta, 1899.
122. W. Walker, IG prisons NWP, suggested that if tattooing was objectionable, then vaccine vesicles could be produced on certain parts of the prisoner's body, and recorded on his descriptive roll. 7 February 1874, in Home PB, A June 1874, No. 15–32;
123. Westmacott, I.G. Jails, Bengal, in Home Judl, December 1886, No. 177–219, p. 6.
124. W. Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls, New Delhi, 1962, pp. 45–54.
125. J.N. Sarkar, Mughal Polity, Delhi, 1984, pp. 113, 367.
126. Irvine, Army of Indian Moghuls, p. 47, n. 1.
127. Rules of 30 November 1830 for service and political pensions prescribed a standardized descriptive certificate from the collector or the political resident. Foreign Dept, Political Cons, 21 May 1830, No. 14 and 16 September 1831, No. 65-67. The documentation of personal particulars for military pensions was also used to define the ‘legitimate’ line of descent in the soldier's family, to decide whether his relationship with a woman was one of marriage or concubinage, and who qualified as an heir. The term ‘pension fraud’ conceals a whole range of struggles over such issues. For a reference from early Company rule see, S. Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company, Tradition and Transition in Northern India, 1770–1830, Delhi, 1995.
128. Auckland, Military minutes, British Museum Add Mss 37,714, pp. 51–52.
129. Roberts to Adjt General 22 October 1882: Robson, The Military Papers of Field Marshall Lord Roberts, pp. 268–70. By the end of the decade anthropometric and fingerprint identification were being discussed as the solution to a problem which had fiscal and disciplinary consequences. Also see Col. R. Talbot, British military attache at Paris to Earl of Lytton, 29 January 1890, L/P&J/6/285, No. 1580, IOL.
130. A proposal to tattoo prisoners with numbers for identification surfaced in England as well. See M.A. Bertillon (E.R. Spearman, tr.,), The Identification of the Criminal Classes by the Anthropometrical Method, London, 1889, p. 10.
131. Y.S. Meer, Documents of Indentured Labour, Natal 1851–1917, Durban, 1980.
132. It was noted in some descriptions of ‘criminal tribes’, as in Gayer's account of Baori women, and Naidu's account of the Korawars. Gayer, Lectures, p. 8;
133. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Railway Thieves, p. 46.
134. Caplan, ‘Speaking scars’.
135. Lyon's Medical Jurisprudence for India (10th edition), Calcutta, 1953, p. 125.
136. See Pinney on the colonial yearning for the indexicality of the visual image. Chris Pinney, Camera Indica, a social History of the Indian Photograph, London, 1997.
137. A poisoner poses against a lush studio backdrop of pillars, carpet and palm, in Pauparao Naidu's, The History of Professional Poisoners. The Department of Criminal Intelligence acquired its own photographic capability in 1907.
138. See Pauparao Naidu, The History of Professional Poisoners.
139. Thornhill describes a policeman bringing back a bandit's head to claim the reward and robbers beheading a trapped gang-member to prevent identification. Mark Thornhill, Haunts und Habits of an Indian Official, London, 1899, p. 152.
140. In The History of Professional Poisoners, pp. 2–3, Pauparao Naidu wanted to demonstrate that poisoning and coining had rapidly increased. However his photographs of ‘types of a few poisoners of different places’ show nothing of a type at all.
141. For the case of the Chapekar brothers see Selections from Vernacular Newspapers. (SVN), NWP and Oudh, No. 23 of 1899, p. 279, para 18.
142. The convict assassin of Lord Mayo ‘was childishly vain of being photographed [for police enquiries in Northern India] as the murderer of a Viceroy’. In outrage, Hunter actually withheld the assassin's name, village and tribe from his authoritative biography of the viceroy. W.W. Hunter. A Life of the Earl of Mayo, (2nd edition), Vol. II, London, 1876, p. 366.
143. In Natal, Ordinance 31 of 1867 made it compulsory to attach a photograph to identity passes for indentured labourers and tickets for time-expired ones. But stolen or illegally transferred papers continued to circulate because it was said to be difficult to recognize immigrants from their photographs. Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, pp. 200, 206. For the introduction of photographs to the record of transported convicts, see Home PB, A, March 1875, 49–51
144. IG Jails, Madras to Chief Secy, 31 July 1874, Home PB, December 1874, No. 57–71.
145. The Delhi commissioner suggested a measurement along the extended arms, from fingertip to fingertip, because it was fixed in adults and distinguished individuals. The IG, Jails, Central Provinces (CP), suggested a standard colour guide with numbers. Commr Delhi to Dy Commr Karnal, 26 January 1874, and Offg Secy to Chief Commr CP, to Secy GOI, 28 April 1874, in Home PB, A, June 1874, No. 15–32.
146. The party registering the deed had to impress his first and third finger on the document and on the register of deeds. W.J. Herschel to editor, 13 November 1880, Nature, in G.Lambourne, The Fingerprint Story, London, 1984, p. 193.
147. H.H. Risley, The People of India, 1915, reprint, Delhi, p. 20. Anthropometric identification—through sets of measurements of the bony parts of the body which did not change size after maturity—was introduced on an experimental basis in the central jails of Bengal in 1892.
148. W.J. Herschel, The Origin of Fingerprinting, London, 1916, pp. 7–9.
149. Herschel translated tep as ‘pressure’ and sai as ‘token’.
150. Herschel, Origin, p. 37.
151. The Indigo Commission of 1861 reported that every year the tenant was made to sign on a 2 anna stamped paper which recorded a balance against him to bind him down to growing indigo for the next season. Sometimes tenants were charged for higher-value stamps, so that debt bonds for larger sums could be made out to assist legal action. Report of the Indigo Commission, Calcutta, 1861, pp. 14–15. Peasants were compelled to clear off balances by growing indigo instead of paying cash. For a depiction of this in drama see Neel Darpan, Act 1, scene 2, in Dinabandhu Rachnavali (2nd edition), Calcutta 1981.
152. B. Kling, The Blue Mutiny, The Indigo Disturbances in Bengal 1859–62. Philadelphia, 1966, p. 159. Examination of A.T. Maclean, Asst Magt Nadia, 12 July I860, in Report of the Indigo Commission.
153. Herschel checked the kabuliyats, engagements to grow indigo which planters presented in court, against the books of stamp vendors. He found that of 669 kabuliyats, 42 were written on stamped paper with forged endorsements, and that there were ‘good grounds for believing’ that this applied to one-third of the whole. Herschel to Commr Nadia, 9 January 1861 and Commr Nadia to Offg Secy, Bengal Govt, 14 January 1861, Home Judl, A, 28 March 1861, No. 100–101.
154. Report of the Indigo Commission, p. 48, para 182.
155. Examination of Herschel, Magt Nadia, No. 77, 9 July 1860
156. Herschel, Origin.
157. Herschel. Nor did the Indigo Enquiry Commission mention these forged contracts. Kling, The Blue Mutiny, p. 142.
158. Herschel, Origin, p. 23.
159. Francis Galton, Supplement to Fingerprints, London, 1893, pp. 3–4;
160. F. Galton Mss 172/5 B, University College, London (UCL).
161. Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes; Clues and scientific method’, HWJ, No. 9, spring 1980, pp. 5–36.
162. However once the uniqueness and persistence of fingerprints was confirmed as a scientific fact in the 1880s there was a vehement denial of any ‘Oriental’ practices in India or China which might have directed attention to finger marks. Yet, in a letter of 8 April 1880 to Charles Darwin, Galton had stated that a couple of years ago, ‘having heard of the Chinese plan with criminals’, he had examined several thumb impressions. Lambourne, The Fingerprint Story, p. 190.
163. For an interesting display of pictographic ‘signatures’ representing occupation see Herschel, Origin, p. 36: Dr S. Ali Nadeem Rezavi kindly lent me his intriguing paper, ‘Stonecutters marks in Mughal monuments—with special reference to Fatehpur-Sikri’ (Aligarh Muslim University). He suggests that hereditary craftsmen used a common mark, whereas their supervisors or master craftsmen used individual signatures, often in the Devnagri script.
164. Papers attributed to Hurkishen Singh, a rebel of 1857, carried an entire range of identifying signs. Ramyad Woja, a pardoned soldier, declared he recognized them by ‘the signature, handwriting and hieroglyphic of prisoner… sealed with the impression of a half moon … which seal the prisoner made use of.’ K.K. Datta, History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar, 1857–1928. Vol. I, Patna, 1957, p. 505
165. This diversity probably continued for a time, because the thumbprint was often taken in authentication of a mark or written signature, not only as a substitute for it. Henry, Classification, p. 6.
166. Herschel, Origin, p. 6 and ‘Note on your “proof”, nd (18937)
167. in F. Galton, Mss 172/5 B, UCL. Did this indicate their greater distance from the world of public affairs and writing, whereas a man might more confidently handle a pen to make a cross or draw a symbol? However Herschel's list of pictographs includes a bracelet to indicate a woman and a spindle for the widow: Herschel, Origin, p. 36. The widow and the prostitute were two categories of women who would have to engage with the world of commercial transactions.
168. ‘Persons unable to read or write may be attesting witnesses to a legal instrument, but no great value is attached to their testimony.’ W. Macpherson, The Procedure of the Civil Courts of the East India Company, London, 1850, p. 240.
169. Some publications were designed to guide judicial functionaries and Indian doctors in medical jurisprudence even where professional expertise was not available. C.R. Baynes, Hints on Medical Jurisprudence, Madras, 1854;
170. McLeod, Medico-legal Experience in the Bengal Presidency.
171. In contrast to England, a doctor's evidence was taken in court in India without much questioning, and professional secrecy was not allowed under Indian law. P.N. Ramaswami, Magisterial and Police Guide, Mylapore, 1931, pp. 723, 817.
172. Baynes, Hints on Medical Jurisprudence, p. 48.
173. In rape cases the testimony of a medical expert, usually male, began to be demanded in place of the ‘ignorant’ female dai (mid-wife): N. Chevers, Medical Jurisprudence in India, 1870, p. 684.
174. At the medico-legal session of the 1894 Indian Medical Congress, W.R. Kysey said that in the East medical evidence was often the only evidence to be relied on. The Medical Reporter, Vol. V, 1 January 1895.
175. The Superintendent of Police (SP), Shahabad, said fingerprints on a jail slip should be accepted as proof of a prior conviction so jailors would not have to be tutored to ‘recognize’ the prisoner. The Delhi SP said this document would be less likely to bear false witness than a human being. SP Shahabad to IG, LP, 31 October 1905, and R.C. Plowden to IG Pb, 8 November 1905, Home Police, A, November 1907, 71–79.
176. Leg Dept, February 1899, No. 132-65. Only R.C. Mitra, Sessions Judge of Faridpur, said the judge should make the comparison himself instead of elevating a, perhaps unscrupulous, police employee to the position of expert. Mitra to Chief Secy, Bengal, 28 November 1892, See, Appendix 62, Leg Dept, February 1899, No. 132-65. Under s45 of the Indian Evidence Act 1 of 1872, the court could call for expert evidence to form an opinion upon a point of foreign law, science, art, or the identity of handwriting. Act V 1899 amended this to include expert evidence on fingerprints.
177. In 1894 the Asquith Committee in England decided on a dual system for criminal identification, anthropometry with fingerprints, because of problems with fingerprint classification. In India, on 31 March 1897, an official committee decided to recommend a shift to identification by ten fingerprints alone. Henry, Classification, p. 63.
178. Aziz ul Haq studied at Presidency College, Calcutta and joined the Bihar police as a sub-inspector in 1892. Henry recruited him for the Anthropometry Bureau where Haq worked out a classification which reduced the field of search by fixing the limits under each sub-head of measurement. In 1893 Haq developed a system of primary classification for fingerprints, and assisted in further sub-classification. He accompanied Henry to other provinces, setting up fingerprint bureaus, but reverted to district work after 1899. H.C. Bose (or Basu) had a longer association with this specialized branch. He assisted in the introduction of fingerprints, worked on the classification of single fingerprint impressions and evolved a codification for the telegraphic transmission of fingerprints. Bose's 1916 publication on a telegraphic code may have been the first of the kind, although he acknowledges a 1903 draft drawn up by Inspector N.C. Mukherjee and suggestions from C.S. Collins of the London police. Home, Police, 112/25, 1925, and 14/29, 1929. H.C. Bose, Hints on Finger Prints with a Telegraphic Code for Finger Impressions, Calcutta, 1916.
179. ‘From the British police officer’, recalled Curry, ‘little more was demanded than the …character of an English gentleman.’ Curry, ‘The Indian Police’, p. 54, 55, drawing upon Trollope.
180. The following account is from C.E. Gouldesbury, Life in the Indian Police, London, 1912, pp. 180–94.
181. E.R. Henry (1859–1931). As IG in Bengal, Henry introduced anthropometric roll cards to police identification in March 1892, adding the left thumb impression in 1893. Working with Aziz ul Haq and Bose he evolved a system of fingerprint classification and in 1897 convinced the Indian government to introduce criminal identification by fingerprints alone. Appointed CSI in 1898, he left India the next year to work for the Imperial government in the police department at Johnannesburg during the Boer War. In his preface to The Origin of Fingerprinting. Herschel credits Henry with introducing fingerprints in the Transvaal, but I have not been able to trace this episode. Henry resigned from the ICS to join Scotland Yard as Assistant Commissioner in July 1901, in the Fingerprint Branch. Home Police, September 1892, No. 87-90; Bengal police circular No. 1 of 1893, ‘Anthropometry, instructions for district superintendents’; Home Establishment, A, February 1901, No. 7-11. ‘The Police Collection’, Mss. Eur. F. 161/185, Box 5/19, IOL.
182. Nature, Vol. 3:61, November 1899–April 1900, p. 2.
183. See Shreenivas and S.N. Sinha's scholarly reconstruction of this story in ‘Personal identification by the Dermatoglyphic and the E-V methods’. The Patna Journal of Medicine. Vol. XXXI: 2–6, 1957.
184. Haq received an honorarium of Rs 5,000. ‘Government of India were notoriously parsimonious in these matters’ recalled J.E. Armstrong who had received Haq's petition. Armstrong to Sir Douglas Gordon, 1 June 1960, Mss Eur 161/185, IOL. Spurred on by this, the Bengal Government recommended an honorarium for H.C. Bose. Home, Police 14/29.
185. Henry to Secy, Services and General Dept, India Office, 10 May 1926, Home Police, 112/25, 1925.
186. D. Petrie, supporting an honorarium for Bose, 5 March 1929, Home Police, 14\29, 1929.
187. Also see D. Gordon, former IG, Bengal, letter to The Times, 15 July 1965, Mss Eur 161/185, IOL.
188. Finance and Commerce, Pensions and Gratuities (F&C, P&G), A, August 1896, No. 171-80. Home Public, A, June 1904, 377–78. All non-gazetted officers had to give their thumb and finger impressions in the space for descriptive marks in their service book.
189. See W.H.A. Rich's account of his official career in the Punjab and the North West Frontier Province, Mss Eur D 1065/1, pp. 79, 84, IOL.
190. A photozincograph of their thumb impressions was sent to all working parties. Henry, Classification, pp. 7–8.
191. S.M. Edwardes, Crime in India, London, 1924, p. 148.
192. British officials believed that on the death of a Indian pensioner his relatives and friends tried to personate him. Henry, Classification, p. 6.
193. Also see Cockerell in GG's Council, 24 February 1871, Home Leg, A, 1871, September 1871, No. 59–79.
194. Telang cited the Pension Act of 1871 as an instance of laws which excluded a whole class of cases from the courts: ‘K.T. Telang, The reign of law in Bombay Presidency’, in J.C. Johari, ed., Voices of Indian Freedom Movement, Vol. I, Delhi, 1993, p. 351.
195. Home Public, A, June 1904, No. 377–78.
196. Foreign Progs, Estab, B, January 1909, No. 346.
197. Foreign Political, B, Estab, November 1918.
198. Henry, Classification, p. 73. The body had to be uncovered to note marks and scars for the anthropometric record. Male convicts sent to the Andamans settlement were photographed wearing only a jangeah, loose drawers. IG Jails to Secy, Bengal Govt, 22 July 1874, Home, PB, A, December 1874, No. 57-71, 9.
199. Also Cox, Police and Crime in India, p. 209. There were traces of friction but these were brushed over. The higher classes in Chittagong objected to dirtying their fingers when registering a deed. At the lower end of the social scale, the Palwar Dosadhs of Ballia complained that collective fingerprinting cast a criminal stigma over them and hampered their livelihood. Leg Dept B, December 1898, No. 102; Home Judl, A, February 1900, No. 153–54.
200. In Madras Presidency a separate identification bureau was set up for juvenile offenders based on fingerprint identification. F&C, P&G, A, November 1898, No. 597-601 In Punjab boys sent to a reformatory could be fingerprinted. Punjab Police Rules, Lahore, 1915, Vol. I, ch. lxii.
201. Colonial law demonstrated its concern for rank and status through special procedures to take the evidence of the pardah woman and exempted them from personal appearance in civil courts. The Census Act XVI of 1890 stated that men were not bound to disclose the names of females of their household and no female was bound to state the name of her husband, or of any other person whose name she was socially prohibited from mentioning. However, in other contexts women were made directly accountable to the law. A judicial circular of 1851 ordered that women who were parties to civil suits would have to record their own names instead of putting themselves down as ‘wife or widow of such a one, or under some other indefinite designation.’ CO No. 155, 21 November 1851 in J. Carrau, The Circular Orders of the Court of Sudder Dewanny Adawlut, 1795–1852, Calcutta, 1853, p. 465.
202. Registrar General, NWP to Offg Secy, NWP, 3 September 1870, complaining that false personation was particularly difficult to check among the pardahnashin. Home Public, A, January 1876, No. 238–59;
203. Home Judl, A, November 1881, No. 167–80.
204. In the same way, fingerprints on service pension books confirmed a certain entitlement from government, even as they also underlined an obligation to mobilise loyalty. Sir E. Blunt, The I.C.S., London, 1937, p. 239.
205. Report of the Indian Police Commission, (Fraser Report), 1902–3, reprint, Karachi, 1965.
206. Such periodicals presented the accommodative visage of the educated classes but also their demand for lowering race barriers. One correspondent said reserving higher police office for Europeans compromised efficiency, another that police reform was possible only if European superiors curbed their arrogance and allowed Indian sub-inspectors to develop their professional capabilities. SVN, NWP and O, No. 36 of 1899, upto 6 September 1899, p. 433. para 15, p. 473. SVN, No. 37 of 1899, upto 13 September 1899, p. 489, para 22.
207. SVN. NWP & O, No. 36 of 1899, upto 6 September 1899, p. 477. para 32.
208. Jasus forwarded two crime novels, to the Saraswati, a monthly magazine—Jasus ki Budhi and Jasus ki Daali. Saraswati, Vol. 17, part 2, no. 5, Prayag, November 1916. Reference from Dr Charu Gupta.
209. M. Pauparao Naidu built his career in the Criminal Intelligence Department, was commended for his investigation into counterfeiting, and published brochures on criminal tribes. He received the King's police medal in 1909 and retired with the title of Rai Bahadur. Gayer, principal of the police training school at Vellore, acknowledged the ethnographic input of three Indian inspectors in his publication: Gayer, Lectures.
210. These were automatic in their working, the pressure being applied by a spring kept constant and a self-registering index. Henry, Classification, p. 70. These improvements are credited to G.W. Gayer.
211. ‘In Bengal…certain weaknesses in the system showed themselves so detrimental to successful working that attention was directed to the feasibility of substituting a system of identification by fingerprints alone’, wrote Henry. Measurers had to undergo a special course of instruction, and understand the decimal scale. If the data was incorrectly recorded it was impossible to rectify later, and margin had to be allowed for errors by the measurer. Henry, Classification, pp. 71–74.
212. Henry to Chief Secy, Bengal, 22 February 1898, Home Police, June 1899, No. 10–16. He said fingerprints secured a higher rate of recognition of old offenders than anthropometry by doing away with ‘the personal equation of the measurer’. They took a fraction of the time of record, the search was more exhaustive and yet quicker.
213. Curry, The Indian Police, pp. 154–56. He points out that for this reason detective agency in India was more decentralized in India than in England or Europe.
214. Badmaash is a term of abuse for someone who, operating outside the terrain of legitimate power, poses a threat to the peaceable and respectable. However, it can be bandied about at various social levels. In the first century of colonial rule the figure of the badmaash in official reports was often of one who had lost his identity in the imposition of colonial order—most typically, the disbanded cavalryman in one of the fortified towns, or the déclassé rentier. In the 1867 census of the North Western Provinces, badmaashes found their way into the list of ‘indefinite and non-productive’ occupations. Census of the North Western Provinces, Vol. II, Allahabad, 1867, Order XVIII, p. 24. Advancing into the twentieth century, the badmaash also emerges in police accounts as a figure able to shift from one identity to another because he had taken birth in a new context which gave him no clear affiliation. Of the criminal underworld in the colonial metropolis J.C. Curry wrote: ‘Some are so depraved that they hardly know whether they are Hindus or Muslims and, passing quite easily as either, have several Hindu and Muslim aliases. Such men are usually children of the gutters.’ See Curry, The Indian Police.
215. In contemporary times, too, an author comments on the neglect of fingerprints at the scene of crime and the small number of references made to the fingerprint bureau at Philaur. B.R. Kalia, A History of the Development of the Police in the Punjab, 1844–1905. p. 87.
216. Report of the Committee on the Improvement of the Mofussil Police in Bengal, 1838.
217. See Police Administration Report for Bengal, 1895. Act XVIII of 1879 admitted mukhtars to criminal courts.
218. D.C. Singh, A Guide to the Administration of Criminal Justice in British India, Allahabad, 1930, p. 126.
219. Home Police, June 1893, No. 129–45.
220. Bengal police circular 1 of 1893 on anthropometry, F. Galton Mss 172/B; Home Police, June 1893, No. 129–45, NAI.
221. Cox, Police and Crime in India, p. 109;
222. Police Report for Bihar and Orissa, 1913, pp. 16–17.
223. Cox said police registers were often in the utmost confusion, and were used to harass ex-convicts and warn employers. The police would shout out publicly to verify the presence of a registered man at home, and use the registration to block a licence to drive a carriage for hire. Cox, Police and Crime in India, pp. 205–6.
224. In 1866 the Allahabad High court observed that the badmaashi register had become a public register, with the entry regarded as a form of punishment in the hands of the magistrate or police. H.T. Prinsep, The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1901, pp. 48–9.
225. Motilal Nehru accused Punjab district magistrates of using s110 CrPC to force the pace of army recruitment in 1917–18. Amritsar Congress, 1919, in R.Kumar and D.N. Panigrahi, ed., Selected Works of Motilal Nehru, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi, 1984, pp. 270–71.
226. Cox, Police and Crime in India, p. 108;
227. J. Halliday, A Special India, London, 1968, pp. 28, 43–44.
228. J.C. Curry, 10 November 1967 in Mss Eur 161/185, IOL.
229. Judl and General Secy, PB Govt to Secy, GOI, Home, 31 October 1902
230. Home, Police, A, November 1903, No. 91. Report of the Indian Police Commission, 1901–2, p. 145.
231. Act II of 1897 had already allowed government to remove children from these ‘criminal communities’, put them in a school or reformatory, and contract out their labour. For the Sansis of Punjab, see Mss Eur D 1065/1, 10L, p. 72–231.
232. W.B. Jackson, General Report of a Tour of Inspection, Calcutta, 1854, p. 28.
233. Ramaswami, Magisterial and Police Guide, p. 846.
234. Earlier the person serving the summons had to take a written acknowledgement and induce the neighbours or some village official to witness execution of service. W. Macpherson, The Procedure of the Civil Courts, London, 1850, p. 150.
235. Halliday, A Special India, p. 95. W.H.A. Rich's account, Mss Eur D 1065/1, p 84. IOL.
236. Torpey evaluates regimes of identification which have allowed states to establish a monopoly over legitimate means of movement over the past two centuries. This gives governments power to access citizens, draw resources from them, and exclude non-citizens from certain entitlements. John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance. Citizenship and the State, Cambridge, 1999. Galton had suggested that a national directory of fingerprint cards could be assembled, citing the example of another archive which could prise out an individual from a vast population—the London telephone directory. F. Galton, Fingerprint Directories, London, 1895.
237. Faulds to editor, Nature, XXII, 28 October 1880, p. 605.
238. Nature. 25 October 1880, in Lambourne, The Fingerprint Story, p. 193.
239. He calculated that the chance of mistaken identity was one in sixty-four thousand million. Bose, Hints on Finger Prints, p. 3.
240. F.Galton, ‘Identification by finger-tips’. The Nineteenth Century, 1891, p. 303.
241. Risley; People of India, p. 14.
242. Other complaints were that the surnames Indians gave were too recurrent and signatures in the indigenous scripts—Persian or Devanagri—difficult to decipher for verification. R. Heindl, System und Praxis der Daktyloskopie, Berlin and Leipzig, 1922, p. 71
243. Henry, Classification, pp. 7–8.
244. CWMG, Vol. VI, 1906–7.
245. Interview to The Morning Leader, 20 October 1906
246. CWMG, Vol. VI, p. 3, 3. The draft ordinance had called for the registration of Asiatic females as well, but exempted them because of strong protests about the ‘violation of female sanctity’ from the British India Association and the Hamidia Islamic society.
247. CWMG, Vol. VIII. p. 41;
248. Johannesburg letter, 7 September 1908. Some Indian soldiers petitioned that ‘their uniforms and their discharge papers should be a sufficient passport in any part of the British empire and constitute their complete identification…’ CWMG, Vol. IX, September 1908–November 1909.
249. Johannesburg letter, Indian Opinion, 4 January 1908
250. in CWMG, Vol. VII, pp. 461–62.
251. Also CWMG, Vol. VIII, January–August 1908, pp. 10–11.
252. Gandhi said the Asiatic ordinance reduced British Indians ‘to a level lower than the Kaffirs. It sets up a system of passes and identification applicable only to criminals.’ Letter to The Times, 22 October 1906
253. CWMG, Vol. VI, p. 4.
254. ‘His ecumenical egalitarianism emerged slowly’, comments R.A. Huttenback, Gandhi in South Africa, British Imperialism and the Indian Question. 1860–1914, Cornell, 1971.
255. Johannesburg letter, in Indian Opinion, 11 May 1907
256. CWMG, Vol. VI, p. 470.
257. The other analogy which Gandhi used was that Indians were being treated ‘like the youngest housewife in the village’: CWMG, Vol. VI, p. 500. Bhangis: those who removed filth from habitations—treated as a highly polluting social strata in India.
258. CWMG, Vol. VI, p. 54.
259. Memorial to Lord Elgin, 8 November 1906, CWMG, Vol. VI, p. 111.
260. MG to W.T. Stead, 16 November 1906, and Deputation notes, 17 November 1906
261. CWMG, Vol. VI, p. 183.
262. From 1903 every indentured labourer entering Natal was fingerprinted and the record sent to the CID office at Pietermaritzburg. Now if the labourer absconded or disputed his master's claim, his fingerprints could be traced out, instead of having to send him down to the Protector of Immigrants at Durban for verification. H.P. Holt, The Mounted Police of Natal, London, 1913, pp. 259–61.
263. Expelled aliens were fingerprinted. E. Henry, Classification and the Uses of Fingerprints (4th edition), London, 1919, p. 13.
264. Sir Lepel Griffin, a former ICS officer, said the Ordinance and anti-Indian prejudice was prompted, not by English residents but ‘by Russian Jews, by Syrians, by German Jews, by every class of aliens, the very off-scourings of the international sewers of Europe’. ‘Is it to be supposed that…we who have governed this province of India…have been governing degraded creatures who are placed lower than the Zulus and Russian Jews.’ Deputation to Lord Elgin, 8 November 1906, CWMG, Vol. VI, pp. 115–16.
265. Henry, Classification, p. 6.
266. Heindl. System und Praxis, pp. 71–72.
267. H.L. Adam, Oriental Crime, London, 1908, p. 64.
268. Stephen remarked on the elaborate provisions in the Indian Penal Code to uphold the authority of public servants. Under s 179: ‘whoever being legally bound to state the truth on any subject to a public servant refuses to answer any question demanded of him…’ could be sentenced to jail for six months and a fine of Rs 1,000: J.F. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England, Vol. III, New York, 1882. Act XVI of 1890 deemed that census officers were public servants and people were bound to answer their questions.
269. ‘The employer who makes advances to the labourer, or pays them salaries, or enters into contracts with them, now protects himself by taking their fingerprints on the receipt or agreement’: Henry, Classification, p. 7. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the British India Association endorsed Act V of 1899 which allowed expert testimony on the fingerprint to be admitted as a ‘relevant fact’ in court. Leg Dept, February 1899, A-54, A-62
270. The special revenue money order form was introduced in 1884, following representations from landholders. Hamilton, An Outline of Postal History, p. 191.
271. Hamilton said the number and value of rent money orders had doubled between 1900 and 1910. They were useful to tenants living at a distance, and those in conflict with their landlord: An Outline of Postal History, p. 192.
272. G. Clark, The Post Office of India and its Story, London, 1921, pp. 75–76, 79.
273. I am drawing here upon Gerard Noiriel's fascinating work on the ways in which the social construction of individuals was traversed by the restructuring of states from the late nineteenth century. Gerard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot: Immigration. Citizenship and National Identity, Paris, 1988 (G. de Laforcade, tr., 1996).
274. In India the postman delivered the money to the home of the payee, whereas in England it was handed over at the post office. Hamilton said this suited ‘native habits’ because women did not have to attend at the post office. The average value of the money order in India decreased every year, most ranging from Rs 5 to Rs 10, indicating its use by the poorer classes as a means of remittance. In 1895 illiterate persons were required to use their thumbprint as a signature on money orders and postal savings accounts: Hamilton, An Outline of Postal History. pp. 35–37, 179.
275. As when the workers of Jamshedpur in 1932 submitted a petition marked by thousands of thumbprints expressing their support for the jailed president of their labour federation, who had been denounced as an ‘outside agitator’. D. Simeon, ‘The currency of sentiment: An essay on informal accumulation in colonial India’, paper presented to the Davis Centre, Princeton, 1999.