City of ‘Red Assassins’? Crime, Control, and Resistance in Colonial Lahore

Abstract

This article documents an overlooked aspect of ‘crime as resistance to colonialism’ challenging colonial authorities in Lahore: the activities of Lahore’s little-known Society of Red Assassins, who led an anti-colonial ‘Car Burning Movement’ in the interwar period. Such so-called ‘socialist criminals’ engaged in innovative spectral violence by targeting capitalists and colonial institutions and were proclaimed ‘Public Enemy number 1’ by the colonial state. Drawing on previously unexplored archival sources, this investigation illuminates the world of revolutionary politics in colonial Lahore, part of a global history of anti-colonial resistance.