Orality, State Power, and the Labour of Policing in Colonial Bengal, c.1850–1947

Abstract

In colonial Bengal, the average police constable was largely unlettered. Nevertheless, constables were at the frontline in the enforcement of colonial law. This paradox of an unlettered constabulary enforcing the letter of law defies the familiar logic in the historical scholarship on British India that associates the written word with histories of state power and orality with histories of subaltern classes. In a departure from the existing literature on the significance of writing and documentary power for modern state-making, this article uncovers a world of orality at the heart of state power. To do this, the article deploys a labour history method to the vast archive of the colonial police and explores the play of orality in the labouring lives of police constables in colonial Bengal. In the nineteenth century, colonial officials responded to the illiteracy of their constabulary workforce by organizing oral instruction in law at police stations. The constable heard the law as speech rather than grasping it as text. In this aural space, his consciousness became a site for the reinterpretation of the law, refracted through the operation of the security labour market, his conditions of work, and the modes of constabulary training. Moreover, oral modalities structured how the police worked on the streets, and police officials, despite complaining about the illiteracy of constables, exploited this illiteracy to consolidate the violent power of the colonial police.