POLITICAL VIOLENCE & POLICE IN INDIA
by K. S. SUBRAMANIAN/
Review by
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN PART i
_
A NUMBER of former senior officers, who held important positions in India’s
security and police systems, have written books on the basis of their
experiences “
"The memoirs of B.N. Mullick, Director of the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.)
under India’s was one such early work that brought out a senior security
official’s perspective on issues relating to governance, politics and the
management of the law-and-order machinery. Recently ,more and more retired
senior officers have recorded their experiences.and have got noticed for their
sensational disclosures about some phase in the nation’s history or about
well-known personalities in the country’s social and political life . Some
have generated controversies arising from allegations that the writers had
violated the Official Secrets Act
(OSA).---------------------------------------------------
like former I.B. Joint Director Maloy Krishna Dhar’s Open Secrets,
India’s Intelligence Unveiled (2005) and
Major-General (retired) V.K. Singh’s India’s External Intelligence:
Secrets of RAW (2007).
But former senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer K.S. Subramanian’s
Political Violence and the Police in India (2007, Sage Publications),
does not fall into this category of controversial books . There are no
sensational disclosures to generate a shock but offers a methodical and
near-comprehensive analysis of issues that confront the security of institutions
which are referred to as “Indian police system”.
His analytical tools are manifold but inter-related.
Socio-economic problems such as terrorism, communal violence and naxalite
extremism, which the state is compelled to tackles on a day-to-day basis, are
discussed in detail. and also, the multi-dimensional structure of the system is
examined with specific parameters.
Thus we have an unique historical perspective that brings together academic
evaluation of the macro issues on the security front and a distinctive
perspective that encapsulates an understanding of even organisational matters at
the micro level.
This could have been developed only by a person who knows the system from
inside and also has adequate academic credentials to advance a sociological
discourse.
The author has been associated for more than three decades , in various
capacities, starting as an I.B. officer in the ‘B’ group (B for Bolshevik) (that
kept an eye on the activities of the Communist parties) and later as Director
of the Civil Rights Cell in the Ministry of Home Affairs. He displayed a
penchant for academic pursuits, doing stints in organisations such as the Indian
Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and the Institute of Development Studies,
Sussex, England. and
the narrative and analytic components of the BOOK ireflect his
exposure to the academic and organisational streams as well as his deep concern
for human rights.
EIGHT CORE ISSUES
The core issues confronted by the police system. are narrated in detail
1. Starting with a broad analysis of political violence and
2. State’s response which leads to a discussion of the crisis in the
system and expose concrete issues such as
3 Communal violence, (especially state-sponsored violence against the
minority Muslim community)
, 4 Violence against Dalits and Adivasis,
5 Political violence in the north-eastern States,
6 Growth of Maoist-naxalite violence in different parts of the country,
7 Rise of the central paramilitary forces (CPMF) as a parallel police
force
and
8 Use of I.B. as an instrument of partisan politics by those in power.
Subramanian, points out that political violence “refers to violence that
calls for a political response” and “implies that in a situation of large-scale
institutional malfunctioning, politics acquires an appetite for all spaces, both
public and private. Thus all violence becomes political, in a sense”.
Quoting earlier studies, including that of human rights lawyer K.G.
Kannabiran, the author says terms as “law and order”, “public order” or
“security of state” are often (mis)used to unleash state violence with
impunity.
His “subaltern perspective”, which views the nationalist movement as
'elitist ' and hence seen as having betrayed the interests of the popular
movements, thus paves the way for political violence and violent political
movements.
The “subaltern school” holds that activities such as the naxalite violence
are expressions of this “ontological divide”.
Subramanian’s exposition of the idea of political violence in a double sense
also underscores the view that this kind of violence calls for a political
response.
However, successive Indian governments have relied on the police machinery
not only for gathering information on social conflict and violence but also for
analysing and interpreting the phenomena. Hence he says " that the Indian
police system essentially reflects a process of continuity in the working of the
police since the colonial period, with its emphasis on control, coercion and
surveillance
rather than crime prevention and public order management.
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