Part IV / City Walk
Remember to get off in two stops, at Fetter Lane.
In 1855, the Madras Torture Commission Report was published in the British Parliament, revealing the brutal acts of physical and sexual violence committed by oppressor-caste revenue collectors from against cultivators from oppressed-castes, under the approval of the East India Company. Torture was inflicted to extract revenue and control land transactions on enclosed cultivable land.29 Through the Company, the British empire utilised caste to its own benefit as a means of exerting power and sovereignty over the Madras Presidency. This coloniality was two-fold - perpetrated by caste-oppressors who were aided by the British. At the Parliament, the Company as an entity was absolved of its complicity in the crime, and a renewed body of colonial police that was based on the model of the Irish Constabulary, was eventually introduced into the Presidency.30
It must also be noted that 40 years later, a British District Collector of the Presidency - J.H.A. Tremenheere - took note of the existing caste injustice and assigned about 1.2 million acres of land known as Panchami land to the ‘Depressed Classes’. These non-transferable land assignments were intended as affirmative action for the Dalit community, against the caste hierarchy that ostracises them.31
British rule in the subcontinent was overthrown in 1947 after centuries of resistance32 to the subjugation but not without leaving behind massacres, mass displacements, geopolitical tensions and neo-colonial aspirations.33 While the white supremacists had left the Madras state, dominant-caste supremacists regained their power and began stealing and forcefully occupying panchami lands - an unjust and violent practice that continues even today.34
The Madras state was eventually divided and reorganised into the five southern Indian states that exist today, with the rechristening of Madras into the modern-day metropolis of Chennai. The use of torture in colonial Madras under the rule of the East India Company, introduction of the colonial police and the subsequent introduction of the Criminal Tribes Act by the British Raj formed the basis for the authoritarian policing systems and police brutality in the present-day state of Tamil Nadu.35 Many of these injustices are Brahmanical36 in origin and were fortified by British colonial laws.
For three generations, the Child family administered the activities of the East India Company that directly and indirectly impacted large parts of Asia, of which my hometown of Chennai was merely one example. The Childs may not have directly meted out these horrors but their association with the Company that did proved fruitful and profitable to them. This association sustained both Child & Co and their family seat of Osterley Park and is the reason for their existence through generations.
Play the next part of the tour once you get off at Fetter Lane.
29 Elliott, Derek. 2012. “Hidden narratives of torture”. University of Cambridge. Accessed June 10, 2024. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/hidden-narratives-of-torture#:~:text=The%20allegations%20of%20torture%2C%20publicly,as%20the%20Madras%20Torture%20Report.
30 Dzenisevich, Uladzimir. n.d. “The police we have and where it came from: An Analysis.” Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Accessed October 5, 2024. https://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/blog/the-police-we-have-and-where-it-came-from-an-analysis.
Arnold, David. “The Police and Colonial Control in South India.” Social Scientist 4, no. 12 (1976): 3–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/3516332. Pg. 4-8
31 Malakar, Megha and Sathya, Mathur. 2021. “Understanding the History of the Panchami Land Struggle | by Dalit History Month | Medium.” Dalit History Month, April 3, 2021. https://dalithistorymonth.medium.com/understanding-the-history-of-the-panchami-land-struggle-b56f6b950c7c.
32 Jangam, Chinnaiah. 2017. “Whose Nation? Dalits and the Imagination of the Nation.” Dalits and the Making of Modern India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rao, Anupama. The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/25913. Pg. 81-117.
33 Dalrymple, William. 2015. “The Bloody Legacy of Indian Partition.” The New Yorker, June 22, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-great-divide-books-dalrymple.
Zakaria, Anam. 2022. “The Ongoing Legacies of the Partition of British India.” Asia Society. https://asiasociety.org/magazine/article/ongoing-legacies-partition-british-india.
Zia, Ather. 2020. “The New East India Company”. The Haunting Specter of Hindu Ethnonationalist-Neocolonial Development in the Indian Occupied Kashmir. Development Volume 63. Pg 64-65. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-020-00234-4#Sec5
Mushtaq, Samreen, and Sabahat A. Wani. 2020. “India’s Settler Colonialism In Kashmir Is Not Starting Now, Eliminating The Natives Is A Process Long Underway.” The Polis Project. https://www.thepolisproject.com/read/indias-settler-colonialism-in-kashmir-is-not-starting-now-eliminating-the-natives-is-a-process-long-underway/.
34 Samraj, Jerome C. 2006. “Understanding the Struggle for Panchama Land.” Madras Institute for Development Studies. Accessed 22 September 2024.https://www.mids.ac.in/assets/doc/WP_197.pdf
35 Vijayan, Suchitra and Heath, Deana. “Violence is a legacy of empire that didn’t end when empire ended - Deana Heath.” The Polis Project - Podcast series. Accessed 12 September 2024.https://www.thepolisproject.com/listen/violence-is-a-legacy-of-empire-that-didnt-end-when-when-empire-ended-a-conversation-with-dr-deana-heath/
Mohammad, Noor, and Sion Kongari. 2023. “More than 70 years from liberation, former “Criminal Tribes” continue to endure stigma and discrimination.” ActionAid India, July 31, 2023. https://www.actionaidindia.org/more-than-70-years-from-liberation-former-criminal-tribes-continue-to-endure-stigma-and-discrimination/.
36 Pegu, Sanjana. 2018. “Why Understanding Brahminical Patriarchy Is Of Utmost Importance.” Feminism in India, November 23, 2018. https://feminisminindia.com/2018/11/23/brahminical-patriarchy-understanding/