ABSTRACT
The previous chapter explored the important but ambiguous place of the political prisoner in the nationalist movement and the first part of this chapter continues that analysis through a discussion of the next nationalist agitation, the individual satyagraha. It was not until this campaign in the early 1940s that governments in India realised that the significance of the political prisoner was essentially dramatic. When this dawned upon them, officials were able to defeat the individual satyagraha by refusing to send satyagrahis to jail. This epiphany was largely down to the ingenuity of local officers. Whilst they creatively exercised restraint during the individual satyagraha, their powers reached new heights during the quit India movement. Local officers were endowed with extensive coercive powers, and promised that their superiors would not second guess their actions. As the state’s full repertoire of coercive measures was once again deployed, its measures were adapted according to the lessons learned from past campaigns. At the same time, the strategies of Indian political parties evolved, as new political organisations learned to use government repression in their own political choreography. In some ways the colonial state of the Second World War was at the height of its powers. It was able to wage a global conflict whilst fending off serious internal unrest in India. But its field of strength, i.e. the ability to call upon overwhelming coercive measures outside of the ordinary law, was precisely the arena in which its subjects were able to deploy the politics of representation to challenge the imperial power with most success.
