Between 1871 & 1947 millions of people were officially classified as "criminal tribes" under the Criminal Tribes Acts in South Asia. Entire families & communities were surveilled & policed. Their descendants still experience discrimination.This thread is an intro to the CTA. 1/ 
I'm @HinchyJessica and this week I'm tweeting for @detsolnet. I'm a historian of colonialism in north India. I'll be tweeting about my research on 19th & 20th century historical sources (penned by colonial & elite Indian authors) & other historians' studies. 2/
I come to this history of marginalisation & criminalisation from a position of racial & class privilege & historical distance. 3/
The British believed that some castes had hereditary occupations as criminals/thieves. The "criminal tribe" ("CT") label was generally applied to people who were socially marginalised or nomadic. But criminalised people were diverse in their social practices & mobility patterns.3
Historians have debated whether "CT" was a colonial "invention" or drew on elite South Asian (especially dominant caste Hindu) attitudes & literary traditions. For 2 very different views: Anastasia Piliavsky tiny.cc/5f4egz; & Sanjay Nigam tiny.cc/ih4egz 4/
My conclusion is that the "CT" idea drew on aspects of local prejudices/stereotypes about socially marginalised people, but it was a colonial category that vastly oversimplified & distorted the life ways of criminalised people. 5/
The colonial govt applied the label "CT" very loosely. It is often difficult to determine the identities & social practices of people classified as "CTs." However, records show criminalised groups had often experienced ongoing police harassment *prior* to designation as "CT." 6/
Part 1 of the CTA provided extensive powers to police. The different versions of the CTA (1871, 1897, 1911 & 1924) varied, as did the implementation of the law, between different provinces and populations. Below are some general characteristics of the CTA. 7/
In the next few days I'll get more specific about the experiences of particular criminalised groups. 8/
Registration was the central means of surveillance. After a group was "notified" as a "CT", men, women & children from the criminalised population could be registered by police. 9/
In practice, the degree of female and child registration, and the minimum age of registration, varied between criminalised populations & provinces. 10/
Criminalised people could be either (a) restricted to their village/town of residence or (b) forcibly transported to a penal settlement & subjected to forced labour. 11/
The mobility of criminalised people was restricted through roll calls and head counts, which were sometimes held daily or even multiple times a day. A "pass system" required criminalised people to obtain a license (usually from police) to travel beyond a designated zone. 11/
People's places of residence could be inspected, facilitating domestic surveillance. The 1871 CTA punished people who violated rules under s18 (pertaining to the roll call, pass system and labour in penal settlements) with prison terms of 6-12 months, fines & whipping.11/
Escape (or "absconding") was the most common form of resistance that criminalised people deployed. People who were confined to their own village/town were especially able to exploit weak points in police surveillance and run away. 12/
Escape was more difficult from penal settlements. More on criminalised peoples strategies in the coming days... 13/
From 1897, the CTA also allowed the forcible removal of children from their parents. In fact, the UP government had been illegally removing children since 1890. I will discuss the uneven implementation of "CT" child removal later this week. 13/
Part 2 CTA targeted so-called "eunuchs," a derisive colonial term that was mainly used to describe Hijras. On the colonial project to eliminate Hijras see my book: tiny.cc/lk5egz. Tomorrow I'll tweet about the relationship the criminalisation of Hijras & "CT's". 14/
The CTA has had long-lasting impacts upon formerly criminalised communities, who are today known as Denotified Tribes (DNTs) or as Vimukt Jatis (liberated castes). They continue to experience police harassment, arbitrary arrest & torture. 15/
In the next few weeks @GandeeSarah and the legal team from the NGO Muskaan will be exploring the experiences of DNTs in the post-Independence period in India. 16/
