Conclusion

If the state in democracies like India engages in violence, then is this state still accepted by the people? The conception of legitimacy in this study is about observable behaviour, about if and why people accept power holders as authority, and not about whether it is the ideal way to engage with violent power holders within the discourses of normative political theory. And what we see in both the field-sites of this study, is acceptance, though it may be slow and appear flickering or contextual at time. The specific vision that the nation-state is, marked by geographical boundaries and internal sovereignty often needs to use violence to legitimize its existence. Such use of violence does not appear to be leading to a dis-illusionment with the form or the institutions of the state.

Bearing Witness

This chapter discusses conflict and violence in Lakhipathar, over a period of two decades, drawing on oral histories from the people of Lakhipathar. Listening to the narratives of past sufferings here has worked not merely a tool to know what happened to the narrators in the past but it also gives a key to analyse why and how they live in the present. Apart from offering evidence towards the larger argument of the work, this part of the book has also aimed towards opening a conversation on some buried and forgotten moments in the history of the Indian state that resemble what could be called an Agambenian ‘state of exception’. The dense narratives give a picture of the collaboration and deceit, revenge and violence, suspicion and fear in war-torn Lakhipathar and how the common people negotiated their ways through these.

(Mis)Use, Agency, and Acceptance

The chapter examines how those who are often targets of police violence relate to the institution, and in the process raises questions about agential location of those in the margins in their interactions with the state. The attempt is to uncover the ideas of people in the margins, about what the state should be, and what role it is expected to play, for them to accept it as legitimate. It is argued that the interactions of marginal sections with the state despite its violence, is marked either by selective appropriation or by resigned participation, which often create some spaces for people, but at the same time also help in letting the state further reach the locales. The chapter draws on observation of policing practices, conversations with families of people who died in custody, post-mortem reports, FIRs, and other government records etc.

Everyday Policing and Legality

How does a police force in the capital city of a democracy operate at an everyday level? Ethnographic fieldwork of policing practices inside police stations and outside in the policed territories and interpreting them in the light of police manuals and laws, help develop in this chapter a background to understand the place of the police as an institution and the police personnel as performers of the state, in the self-imaginations of police personnel as well as in the imaginations of those in the margins. Looking at methods of crime investigation and categories such as ‘Bad Character’, the chapter further comments on constructions of crime and criminality. The chapter also briefly engages with the question of the positionality of the researcher and how the identity of an intersectional ‘outsider’ in the space of a police station evokes complex responses.

The Making of an Authority

This chapter examines how the everyday social life of contemporary Lakhipathar is shaped and influenced by its extraordinary past of violence. Examining the place of the army in the present, it analyses what ‘peace’ and ‘normalcy’ mean in contemporary Lakhipathar and how notions of community and belongingness, right and wrong are conceptualized in the shadow of an armed force. The chapter brings up parallels between the period when ULFA was uncontested and was seen as the authority in Lakhipathar, and the contemporary period, when the army’s existence in Lakhipathar has come to be accepted as part of the regular, and as contributory to the civic life the people, by using examples from sport, culture and community life. The chapter draws on ethnographic field material, both in the form of narratives and field observations.

Of Blessings and Banes

Lakhipathar in Assam is defined as a margin due to both its lack of ‘order’ or ‘normalcy’ and its precarious physical location at the edges of the proclaimed territories of India. It is this unruly margin where the rebel organization ULFA fighting for Assam’s secession had its central head quarters. With the intention to introduce the field-site to the readers, here I discuss the socio-historical and geographical cultural background of the ULFA camp in Lakhipathar and go on to discuss how the media reported the first moment of conflict between the state and ULFA in Lakhipathar. I also discuss briefly the field-work anxieties of a researcher. The chapter draws on memory based oral narratives and personal observations in the field, archival sources, literary works, and newspapers of the time.

Spaces of Abjection and a ‘Civic-Disciplining’ Model of Policing

This chapter examines the discursive production of some spaces as ‘filthy’ and ‘criminal’ places, and thus requiring a specific form of policing. By attaching meanings to geographical spaces and people therein, such constructions create a division between a ‘self’ to be protected and an ‘other’ to be policed, and in the context of a postcolonial society ridden by hierarchies of various nature makes for easy accommodation and tolerance of violence. The chapter draws on texts of laws and court judgments, reports of state bodies and rights advocacy organizations, and personal interactions and ethnographic observations in the field. Focusing on everyday policing practices in contemporary Delhi, and conceptualizing categorizations of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘civilized’ and ‘criminal’, ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ and ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, the chapter looks for their implications in the acceptance and understanding of the role of the state in society.

Introduction

How is it that nation-states running on democratic procedures like elections engage simultaneously in extreme forms of violence towards its own citizens? While introducing this question in this chapter, I discuss the institutional, conceptual, and temporal-spatial aspects of the modern state and how it can be studied ethnographically. As a study of the violent dimension of the state, questions of legality, routinesness and the targets of violence are also addressed. The chapter also outlines how the notion of legitimacy is conceived in the work, by examining various competing theorizations, and also by showing how a distinction between the terms hegemony and legitimacy are sustained in the work. At the end, the chapter gives an outline of the rest of the book and how various chapters engage with the issue of state violence in two field-contexts.

Torture, Notions of ‘Justice’, and Petty Sovereigns

This chapter asks the questions of why and how police personnel engage in torture and how such practices impact and shape the self-understanding of those who enact the violence of the state. Drawing on ethnographic field-material including long conversations with police personnel, the chapter argues that illegal violence is not always carried out by hiding it or by renaming it as legal force. Violence is often sustained due to its glorification as a way of delivering ‘justice’ beyond the liberal-constitutional model. By deciding to torture and kill beyond the limits of law, police personnel display operation of a sovereign power at the locales. Torture in police stations is so routine, that they are often used merely for impressing spectators. At another level the chapter also discusses how the practices of torture are produced as ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ at the same time.

ULFA in Lakhipathar

Studying the ULFA movement at its peak during late 1980s, as it was experienced in Assam and in and around Lakhipathar more specifically, this chapter marks out different perspectives from which ULFA was looked at and understood. The chapter also offers an analysis of the implications this divergence in perspectives has for the emergence and strength of an alternative source of authority. The primary material that I work with in this chapter is mostly drawn from the field, complemented by a few interviews with movement leaders. The chapter enables us to understand the specific legitimate space of authority that the ULFA had occupied in Lakhipathar in the pre-operation Bajrang years. The chapter provides the ground work for the larger argument of the work, about acceptance of power structures and wielders of violence, however fractured that may be.