This is day 3 of my curation for @detsolnet on the history of the Criminal Tribes Act across independence – tweets by @GandeeSarah Today I’ll talk about the repeal of the CTA and its replacement (in India) with laws for “habitual offenders” 1/ 
@GandeeSarah Earlier this week I gave a background to the development of the CTA in the 20C tinyurl.com/up77nqw and the effects of the emerging nationalist movement & end of empire, for both the law and the communities criminalised under it tinyurl.com/ubzfvsh 2/
@GandeeSarah But what happened on 14/15 August 1947 when India & Pakistan became independent nations? Did the “criminal tribes” (“CTs”) also gain their freedom from this brutal “colonial” law? The short answer is no. Today & tomorrow’s threads will explain why 3/
@GandeeSarah When colonial rule ended, there was no immediate change to the CTA. While other people celebrated independence in Aug 1947 (acknowledging also the trauma & violence of this time), “CTs” remained under the same restrictions as before & many incarcerated in settlements 4/
@GandeeSarah But now, there was a clear contradiction between a free & independent India (with principles of liberty & equality to be enshrined within the constitution of 1950) and the unfreedoms & inequalities of the CTA 5/
@GandeeSarah Many criminalised communities highlighted this in petitions to govt demanding their freedom. “Under the New Constitution to consider a person as a Criminal by birth is an anomaly” wrote Uttam Singh in 1951 6/
@GandeeSarah Others used the courts to legally contest their criminalised status. Wazira of the Bawaria community in Ferozepore filed a writ petition in Punjab High Court arguing the CTA contravened Art. 14 (right to equality before the law) of the constitution 7/
@GandeeSarah The Indian govt, too, realised this contradiction. In 1949, it acknowledged there was a “persistent demand” by politicians to repeal the CTA as “its provisions which seek to classify certain classes of people as Criminal Tribes, are inconsistent with the dignity of free India” 8/
@GandeeSarah As a result, in 1949 the Govt of India established a committee to examine the CTA and recommend its reform or repeal. A good account of the committee’s findings is Mark Brown’s “Postcolonial Penality” tinyurl.com/re3yvmk 9/
@GandeeSarah The committee judged the CTA “unconstitutional” as it contravened Art. 14 on equality & Art. 23 on forced labour, thus recommended repeal. Govt of India consequently repealed CTA across India on 31 August 1952 – a day celebrated as vimukti diwas (liberation day) by DNTs today 10/
@GandeeSarah I’ve written a couple of articles on vimukti diwas as an alternative independence day for the now “denotified” communities (DNTs), also known as vimukta jatis) for @ConversationUK tinyurl.com/zo8leuo & @HistoryWO tinyurl.com/ugxhxl2 11/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO It’s important to note that some state govts had earlier repealed the CTA: Madras in 1947 and Bombay in 1949. The CTA’s repeal culminated in 1952, but the process was a far longer one which links back to the efforts mentioned yesterday to reform/repeal it during the 1930s 12/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO A key point though: These government hadn’t just repealed the CTA, they also *replaced* it with new laws that would target “habitual offenders” – these were repeat offenders who, at least in theory, belonged to any community 13/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO Laws for repeat offenders in India went back to 1860s – see Radhika Singha’s excellent article on development of these laws tinyurl.com/scse53s But, there was also a clear link between the CTA and the new “habitual offender” laws of the 1940s/50s 14/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO New laws were influenced by the Restriction of Habitual Offenders (Punjab) Act, 1918 – a law passed by the Punjab govt which replicated much of the CTA (registration, roll call, resettlement) but could be used against any individual rather just those belonging to “CTs” 15/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO This laid the foundations for later HO laws: Madras (1943 & 1948), Bombay (1947, 1959), Punjab (1952), Rajasthan (1950, 1953), Kerala (1960), Karnataka (1961), Andhra Pradesh (1962) – some states adopted laws of others (e.g. Delhi uses Madras 1948), or later repealed (UP) 16/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO These laws differed but essentially defined a HO as a person who had been sentenced for repeat (2 or 3) offences. This included sec 110 of CrPC (i.e. “bad livelihood”, incl. the vague “offence” of being “so desperate and dangerous” as to make one “hazardous to the community”) 17/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO In other words, you could be declared a HO even if you had not committed a crime, but you had been deemed a threat to society. Like the CTA, this placed huge discretion in hands of local officials & worked along lines of prejudice 18/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO District magistrates kept a register of HOs, who had to report themselves “at fixed intervals” & request permission to leave their residence. HOs could be restricted or “settled” in an area for up to 3 years. Govt could also est. new settlements, or use those set up under CTA 19/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO The Punjab HO (Control and Reform) Act, 1952, was deemed a “replica” of the CTA. Indeed, 14/25 of its sections were directly copied from CTA, and 4 amended only slightly. These were the sections which gave wide powers of restriction & surveillance to local officials 20/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO HO laws didn’t merely reproduce legal structures, though, but directly targeted same communities. The Govt of India acknowledged both the CTA and HO laws related to Entry 15 of the Concurrent List of the Constitution – i.e. “vagrancy; nomadic and migratory tribes” 21/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO Unsurprisingly, given that they were framed as a replacement, the HO laws were disproportionately used against DNTs. In 1950, out of 5268 persons registered under the Madras HO Act, 4097 belonged to DTs (Gandhi, Denotified Tribes: Dimensions of Change, p20) 22/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO Some laws (e.g. Madras) stated that persons living in “CT” (now HO) settlements would automatically be registered. But many DNTs had lived in these sites for decades & had few other options. Settlements often provided only (if scant) access to land 23/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO In 1950, 3 years after repeal of CTA in Madras, DNTs made up most of settlement population: Aziznagar (1256/1263 persons), Siddhapuram (525/529 persons), Sitangaram (225/257 persons) & Stuartpuram (2365/2380 persons). Many DNTs thus automatically fell within scope of HO law 24/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO Tomorrow I’ll come to the everyday effects of the repeal of the CTA & continued criminalisation (under HO & more widely) in early years after independence. More contemporary angle will be covered by @ameyaetc & @glorious_gluten in coming weeks 25/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO @ameyaetc @glorious_gluten But just to give a sense now of the relevance of this today. In 2016, a member of a DNT said in interview: “Even today, we are labelled with Offenders Act – in case of any dacoity [robbery], offence or illegal act, we are detained and sent behind bars.” 26/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO @ameyaetc @glorious_gluten I’ll just finish by noting that my post-1947 tweets are limited to the Indian perspective. There is v. little information on what happened to DNTs in Pakistan, and later Bangladesh. There was a thread on this last week: tinyurl.com/sjnzfjs 27/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO @ameyaetc @glorious_gluten The CTA was repealed in Pakistan in 1956 but called a “dead letter” by the Harijan Sewak Sangh in 1948. However, in 1950s many Hurs (a notified “CT” during colonial period) still incarcerated in settlements, had restrictions on movements, etc – but under Hur Act 28/
@GandeeSarah @ConversationUK @HistoryWO @ameyaetc @glorious_gluten Other laws linked to CTA had longer legacies, then. As @uttaras informed us (thanks!) the Hur Act may still be active now, though likely not applied, and Frontier Crimes Regulations only ceased to apply last year 29/
