In 2019, a young man in Bhopal belonging to the Pardhi community – a semi-nomadic group with livelihoods linked to forest produce – was ordered by the local district magistrate “to remove himself” from six districts in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh for a period of six months. The externment order was passed under the Madhya Pradesh Rajyasuraksha Adhiniyam, or State Security Act, of 1990 on the basis of a report submitted by the police. The police had initiated proceedings against the man at their own discretion and deemed him a Habitual Offender. The evidence they presented to the magistrate included cases in which he had already been acquitted, some that were still pending in court, and charges he had faces as a minor – which, according to the principle of a fresh start enshrined in the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, cannot be included as part of an individual’s criminal record as an adult. All the offences he had been charged with were petty in nature. Despite the lack of a conviction in any case, the man was still externed from the six districts.
Across India, everyday policing is largely about pursuing petty offences. This approach follows a theory known as “broken-windows policing”, which holds that the prevention of serious crimes is contingent upon the maintenance of order by policing low-level offences. There is little evidence to suggest that broken-windows policing deters serious crime. However, this approach to policing has a long history of both colonial and casteist law enforcement behind it, and it very often targets vulnerable communities that belong to the oppressed castes or are considered to be outside of the traditional caste hierarchy.
Brahminism, with the practice of casteism at its core as propounded by texts like the Manusmriti, contains the origins of the present approach to carcerality in India. At the same time, caste is rarely mentioned in the discourse on carcerality as it is practised through policing, leading to distortions in the understanding of India’s criminal-law regimes and making it seem as though they operate in a casteless void. Laws like the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 were the result of a combination of racist European anthropology and the Indian caste system, portraying criminality as a hereditary characteristic.
Mythology attributes the origin of the Manusmriti to Brahma, the god of creation, who passed it on to the first human, Manu. The Manusmriti was long considered the foremost dharma-shastra, or book of laws, overshadowing all other mythological tenets. The text begins with the origin of the world and the origin of the four human communities, or varnas, according to Hinduism. It contains laws for these four communities, arranged in a strict hierarchy, and also norms for managing disputes and transgressions. The Manusmriti ends by pontificating on two great conclusions about human life: that people obtain the fruits of this life’s actions in their next birth, and that the goal of each soul is liberating oneself from the cycle of birth and death. As Disha Wadekar has written, the “Manusmriti refers to ‘Non-Aryans’ and ‘excluded-Aryans’, who dwell ‘outside the village’, ‘on burial grounds, mountains and in groves’, wearing ‘garments of the dead’, and wandering ‘from place to place’ as criminal communities. It is clear that the reference is to Avarna communities like Dalits, Adivasis and nomadic and wandering tribes.”