104 – Political Trials and the making of ‘India’

This panel examines three sets of trials spread out over different time periods and contexts but ones with larger historiographical connections. The first paper by William Pinch is on the infamous parliamentary impeachment trial of Warren Hastings (1788-1795) which scrutinized the actions taken by him as Governor General in India in the 1770s and ‘80s that were deemed not only criminal but tyrannical and immoral—and, hence, unbefitting a Briton—by his Whig accusers, especially the philosophically inclined Edmund Burke. The second paper by Aparna Vaidik examines the history of the revolutionary conspiracy case trial - the Lahore Conspiracy Case (1929-1931). Set in British India the trial lit up the nationalist night sky for three years and continued to reverberate in the public memory thereafter. The third paper by Shalini Sharma examines the caste-discrimination case in California, USA 2000 of Lakireddy Bali Reddy, the wealthiest individual landlord in the city of California who was sentenced to 97 years in jail (he served 7) for trafficking 99 Indian nationals into the United States using false visas and sexually abusing minors. These three trials are very different in their function and affect. They are separated by 300 years, center around three contrasting sets of historical actors and presided in three different jurisdictions. Yet they all are remembered, not for the complex legal issues that arise in the trials but for how they contribute to conventional narratives of what was deemed to be quintessentially ‘Indian’ or ‘Oriental’- the political asceticism embodied in Gita, the caste system or the idea of a mendacious native.

Convenor

Aparna Vaidik -