History - Publications

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Browsing History - Publications by Author "Mukhopadhyay, Anindita"
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    Behind the Mask: The Cultural Definition of the Legal Subject in Colonial Bengal (1715-1911)
    ( 2006-11-02) Mukhopadhyay, Anindita
    This book investigates the deeper area of class antagonism between the privileged and underprivileged classes as they faced the colonial state and its different ideas of legality and sovereignty in colonial Bengal. It examines the ambiguity in the bhadralok - the educated middle class - response to courts and jails. The author argues that the discourse of superior 'bhadralok' ethics and morals was juxtaposed against the 'chhotolok' - who were devoid of such ethical values. This enabled the bhadralok to claim for themselves the position of the 'aware' legal subject as a class - a 'good' subject obedient to the dictates of the new rule of law, unlike the recalcitrant and ethically ill-equipped chhotolok. The author underlines the development of a new cultural language of morality that delineated the parameters of bhadralok public behaviour. As the 'rule of law' of the British government slid unobtrusively into the public domain, the criminal courts and the jails turned into public theatres of infamy - spaces that the ethically bound bhadralok dreaded occupying. The volume, thus, documents how the colonial legal and penal institutions streamlined the identities of some sections of the lower castes into 'criminal caste'. It also examines the nature of colonial bureaucracy and highlights the social silence on gender and women's criminality.
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    Caste and power in villages of Colonial Bengal
    ( 2018-02-10) Mukhopadhyay, Anindita
    An exposition of four court cases demonstrates that by the late 1920s, the educated middle classes wielded the colonial state apparatus. Moreover, the colonial state had partially delinked the premodern affiliation of local muscle to the local hubs of power. Therefore, at the village level, local malcontents were isolated and booked for lawbreaking. Villagers/village communities were located within a caste-based social structure, though caste hierarchies in Tamluk seemed more fluid. They also had the option to activate the (ideally) caste-neutral state apparatus, which sharpened their perceptions of legal subjectivity, and increased their stake in the government.
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    Gender, Community and Sexual Violence in a Bengal Village: 1948
    ( 2019-02-01) Mukhopadhyay, Anindita
    This essay explores the inseparability of sexual violence and dominant-caste privileges embedded in structures of local power, which are finally nested within the legal institutions of the State. This essay examines the court transcripts of the trial of a village lynchpin, Gobinda Nandi, on the charge of rape. The individual to bring in the charges was a 20-year-old woman by the name of Genubala. The essay lays out the internal dynamics of the low-caste Bagdi community, as its members confront the rapist who controlled most of the village sources of livelihood. The essay turns on the refusal of the aggrieved Genubala and her husband Pashupati’s refusal to abide by Bagdi community’s unhappy decision to opt for a compromise with Gobinda Nandi. The political economy of the village power structure marks the aggrieved couple’s deliberate choice to approach legal institutions and the judicial process of the state as the crucial moment of departure from the communitarian redistributive justice and its specific life-world. But what does this choice imply for the two highly vulnerable individuals who are reluctant to be part of the Bagdi community, and who are seeking to activate the Indian State’s judicial system in their favour?
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