ABSTRACT
This chapter moves away from nationalist politics to expose the unique difficulties which communal1 unrest presented for India’s coercive network. Through an examination of critical events in Bombay and UP, it becomes clear that institutions not only seized up under the pressure of new cases brought in during communal rioting, but the conduct of Indian members of the services became grounds for conflict as well. Whilst the previous two chapters have demonstrated the ways in which the punishment of many middle-class, non-violent protesters was moved completely outside of the ordinary criminal justice system, the following pages find that Indians accused of participating in violent ethnic unrest were not moved entirely outside of the formal mechanisms of the law. Instead, provincial legislatures developed ‘extraordinary’ measures designed to enable quick punishment of those involved in this type of violence. The new measures introduced yet more diversity into the coercive network as they penalised members of the subaltern classes with externment and corporal punishment. They did not, however, provide any real possibility of empowering the coercive network to tackle communal violence, for the new measures played to the pre-existing shortcomings of the police and courts.
