ABSTRACT
To render plausible the atrocious conditions of life under martial rule in the Naga hills for decades, one does well to remember that summary arrests, detention without trial, encounter deaths, torture and random killings of the powerless and poor by the police and other state agencies are normal features of everyday life in mainland India1 and not, and this has to be stressed, a peculiar and exclusive feature of the periphery. To the contrary, existing – and at the same time denied – violent state politics mutually depend and reinforce each other. Thus, the periphery may as well be in the centre of the Indian capital New Delhi: the peripheral in India is the powerless and she gets targeted with traditional brutality that, the longer it is tolerated and denied at the same time, will increase in brutality.
