ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief history of the goondas of colonial Calcutta and their policing from 1920 to 1947. It argues that the goondas, rather than constituting a self-evident criminal category, were repositories of perceived threats of the colonial police and the Indian respectable classes, and also that they represented different threats at different points in time. An important part of the history of the goondas of Calcutta was the way they were linked to communal riots. In the 1930s the goondas almost disappeared from the list of serious threats to law and order perceived by the police, the politicians and the press. The goondas emerged as a serious urban criminal category in Calcutta at a time when poor migrants from provinces other than Bengal, who had flocked to north Calcutta in search of a living, turned into a mass which played a decisive role in nationalist politics.
