ABSTRACT
This chapter revolves around scales of justice and their shifts in instances of political violence. Drawing on court records and ethnography of trials involving members of the party Left and Hindu Right in South India, I examine the relationship between democratic legitimacy and the acts of scaling down and scaling up judicial responsibility for political violence. Comparisons with legal proceedings in the wake of the 2002 pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat, the 1984 anti-Sikh violence in Delhi, justifications that the Indian state has offered to promulgate extraordinary laws, and renderings of democracy as majoritarian rule become important here. They help us analyze the stakes underlying judicial individuation and de-individualization of political violence, and the contexts in which the Indian legal system has shifted from one scale of responsibility to another. Each instance gives us the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between violence, law, and the modern democratic order.
