ABSTRACT
Having documented the manifold difficulties which the colonial state ran up against when confronting large-scale unrest, this chapter examines the ways in which the shortcomings of the coercive network shaped the transitional state’s response to the violence of partition in Punjab and Delhi. Although the scholarship on the partition of the subcontinent is expanding, most historians have assumed that the state’s coercive network either had little impact on the violence, or did not have an existence separate from the warring parties. The first half of this chapter investigates the problems which the coercive network encountered during this long period of unrest. Most of the difficulties faced were not new: swamped by waves of crime, the police, courts and prisons failed to stem the violence; members of the public and of political parties accused government servants of communal bias in the execution of their duties. Although the coercive network appeared to have virtually seized up during the summer of 1947, it was in fact being remoulded in crucial ways. The second half of the chapter examines the efforts made on the ground to use the police and military whilst taking into account the allegations made against them. In this process, police and military men became, like the ordinary population, marked as ‘Muslims’ and ‘non-Muslims’, not just as they were recruited, but also as they were deployed. It was believed that the coercive forces’ everyday duties ought to be reconfigured in accordance with the communal affiliation of the men serving in them. This did not result in a completely new understanding of the role of the services. Rather, two distinct and competing conceptions of the role of the coercive forces emerged during partition. The two visions were not debated at the policy level, but were left to compete with one another on the level of everyday operations.
