Face-lifting Colonial Policing Institutions in Newly Independent India

Abstract

Chowkidari was a primary institution of colonial local policing that served as the eyes and ears of the colonial state in the villages where colonial administration had limited direct access to the people and their lives. After the transfer of power in 1947, the provincial government in United Provinces felt uncomfortable with the institution due to varied reasons. To divest the new political order of colonial references, the government sought administrative opinion on the continued relevance of such institutions. After much discussion, the institution was finally abolished only to be reincarnated in a ‘new’ form without disturbing the established colonial apparatus of power, surveillance, and local policing. The article argues that the postcolonial administration in India exhibited limited creativity when it had to craft a new legal and political order immediately after 1947.