ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the productive potential of the idea of a colonial governmentality for making sense of a form of rule that, as in the case of the Punjab, could attempt to enfold archaic customs with modern civic ideals. In colonial India strong tendencies towards modernisation in political, administrative and social forms always stood alongside and were continually interwoven with approaches that seemed to provide a countervailing, even regressive, character to British rule. The importance of law in the British mind thus lay in its crucial role as a mediator, standing between the ruler and the ruled. Repeating the analytic tactic devised in Discipline and Punish, he imagined the new investiture of power operating through rather than upon its target. Thus, what allowed the constitution of a field of bio-power was the insight that the population could be understood as a biological entity, governed by natural processes such as birth rates, mortality rates, and types of sickness and so on.
