Introduction

This chapter offers an introduction to the book and familiarises the readers with the topic and its relevance in post-colonial India scholarship. It introduces the two protest movements in Manipur and Nagaland: the anti-tribal bills and anti-corruption as forms of counter-conducts. It also covers the broad theoretical framework for the works of Michel Foucault along with a review of literature on the theme of governmentality and counter-conduct. Here the key theoretical concepts, governmentality, power, conduct, and counter-conduct as conceptualised by Foucault, are elaborated to formulate the analytical framework for the study. This chapter also locates the context of the study and briefly delineates the background of the sites of counter-conducts to be explored in the subsequent chapters. This section also formulates the key research questions of the study on counter-conducts. What are the inner dynamics at play within these protest movements which create new world views through the production of a new knowledge system? What forms of rationalities and technologies of citizenship are advanced in the movements? What forms of governmentality are mimicked, and new subjectivities developed and enforced in the conceptualisation of new governmentality? It then engages with the research methodology of the study which is the ‘analytics of protest.’ This methodology will provide field visibility of the protests directed against the policies of the state institutions, the forms and content of regimes of knowledge advocated by the protest movements, and the new identities and governmentalities that come into being.