State and Criminal Tribes in Colonial Punjab: Surveillance, Control and Reclamation of the 'Dangerous Classes' Author(s): Andrew

J. Major Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul., 1999), pp. 657-688 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/313080 . Accessed: 26/07/2011 02:04
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern Asian Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

ModernAsian Studies 33, 3 (1999), pp. 657-688.

Printed in the United Kingdom

? 1999 Cambridge University Press

State and Criminal Tribesin Colonial Punjab: Surveillance,Controland Reclamationof the 'DangerousClasses'
ANDREW J. MAJOR
National University of Singapore It is not always remembered that under British rule some 150,000 Punjabis were notified under the Criminal Tribes Act as belonging to tribes and castes whose hereditary occupation was deemed to be crime. More than any other class these criminal tribes felt the harsh impact of the colonial state, which sought to control, punish and reform them. This paper traces the evolution of a Punjab criminal tribes policy and argues that the British-assisted by the indigenous elite-achieved only partial success in assimilating these people into the wider community by
1947.

I To be a Harnee, a Sansee, a Booriah,-men whose ostensible livelihood is procured by hunting and bird-catching, who have no generally fixed abode, yet who nevertheless are often chosen as watchmen, to be one of theseis to be known for many miles round as a born thief and vagabond.' When India gained her independence in 1947 a curious legacy of the colonial period was the existence of some 128 tribes or castes, totalling nearly 3.5 million individuals (roughly 1%of the total population), who were officially designated the 'criminal tribes' of the country. Scattered throughout the subcontinent, yet concentrated in the north, these people formed an unmistakable underworld of local rural society. They were differentiated from other criminal elements in a number of ways: (1) being mostly vagrant, and low-caste or outcaste, they were held in particular abhorrence by the rest of society; (2) their criminal behaviour was passed down from one generation to the next,
' General Reporton the Administration the Punjaband its Dependencies 1858-59 of for (Lahore, 1859), para. 14 (original emphasis). I am grateful to the National University of Singapore for a grant which made the research for this paper possible.

1o oo0026-749X/99/$7.-50+$0. 657

658

ANDREW

J. MAJOR

and this frequently involved the transmission of particular skills, so that particular criminal tribes were often associated with particular types of crime; (3) since they generally accepted criminal activity as their traditional means of sustenance, they refused to acknowledge any codes of morality and law outside those of the tribe itself; and (4) the British colonial state accordingly saw tribal crime as a group phenomenon, to be combated on a group basis.2 British colonial officers first encountered these people in northern India in the early decades of the nineteenth century, a time when the British were endeavouring to establish their control over the vast and war-torn countryside. In the mistaken belief that these tribes were directly linked to the infamous confederacies of the Pindaris (marauder remnants of the Maratha armies) and the Thugs (dacoits, or highway robbers, who, the British believed, combined robbery with ritual murder in honour of the goddess Kali), the British quickly labelled them as the 'notorious tribes' and 'dangerous classes' whose threat to colonial authority had to be countered. For several decades the British applied a variety of ad hoc measures designed to break up, control, punish and reform the criminal tribes: these included registration of tribesmen with the local police, confinement to a specified village, small fines and jail sentences for movement without an authorized ticket of leave and relocation in special settlements on waste land where forced agricultural labour was carried out under police supervision and a system of roll call. Such measures were formalized with the passing of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Subsequent amendments to this Act introduced further and more draconian controls such as compulsory finger-printing of notified tribesmen and separation of children from parents incarcerated in reformatories and agricultural settlements. One criminal tribe was even resettled en masse in the Andaman Islands. The little success that was achieved in reforming the criminal tribes was, however, counterbalanced by the fact that the Criminal Tribes Act came to be applied to more and more groups-some of whom were only temporarily given to crime, or were dacoit gangs rather than tribes-so that progressively more, not fewer, people came to be stigmatized as 'criminals by birth' and hence denied elementary human rights. In the 1930os prominent Indian jurists as well as nationalist leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru criticized the Act and
2

Journal of Social Work, 34 (1973),

Y. C. Simhadri, 'Ex-Criminal Tribes and Criminological Theories', in Indian

107-12.

659 called for its repeal. In 1952 the Act was finally repealed, on the grounds that it was repugnant to the spirit of free India's new constitution, and was replaced with the Habitual Offenders Act. The excriminal tribes were reclassified as the Denotified Tribes or Vimukta Jatis (liberated communities) and a variety of schemes were launched with the aim of integrating them into society. However, while the legal stigma previously attached to them was removed, the social stigma has persisted until today.3 In recent years the themes of tribal criminality and state response in British India have attracted increasing scholarly attention.4 If, as Anand Yang wryly observes, 'Crime pays handsomely' to the social historian who seeks to reconstruct the historical lives of often quite ordinary people,5 then obviously the study of a people so marginal as the Indian criminal tribes and of the operation of a piece of penal legislation so unusual as the Criminal Tribes Act offers the historian rich insights into the intersection of the worlds of the paternalistic and aristocratic colonial state and the defiant and despised subaltern classes. In the case of British Punjab, it is here suggested, such a study also presents the opportunity of challenging two elitist images that have long dominated the modern history of this important province. The first is that Punjabi society is an especially virile and dynamic one, represented in the main by 'yeomanly' and 'martial' peasant tribes like the Jats and Rajputs and 'enterprising' and 'shrewd' mercantile castes like the Khatris and Aroras. The persistence of this image of hegemonic rural and urban elites has only reinforced the historic marginalization of groups like the criminal tribes. An exploration of the history of the latter, which includes their relations with the indigenous elites, and not merely their treatment at the hands of the colonial state, might thus contribute to a fuller and more critical understanding of modern Punjabi society. The second elitist image is the self-image projected so successfully by the colonial regime itself. The 'Punjab School', as this powerful and talented cadre of administrators came to be called, prided itself on its supposed ability to provide better, fairer and cheaper govern3 Clarence H. Patrick, 'The Criminal Tribes of India with Special Emphasis on the Mang Garudi: a Preliminary Report', in Man in India, 48, 3 (1968), 250-1. ' For example, Sanjay Nigam, 'Disciplining and policing the "criminals by and birth"', Parts i and 2, in TheIndianEconomic Social HistoryReview,27, 2 (1990), 131-64 and 27, 3 (1990), 259-87; Anand A. Yang (ed.), Crimeand Criminality in BritishIndia (Tucson, Univ. of Arizona Press, 1985). and Criminality,1. 5 Yang, Crime

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

660

ANDREW

J. MAJOR

ment than other provinces in the Indian empire. While there is some truth to this self-image, the Punjab School's mastery of paternalistic government was not always as complete as was claimed (as the anticolonial disturbances of 1907 and 1919 clearly demonstrated). An exploration of the Punjab School's response to the apparent threat of the province's criminal tribes-its understanding of who these were and how they had to come to be what they were, its people moral attitudes to crime and punishment generally, and to the 'deviancy' of the life of the vagrant in particular, and its solutions (whether original or borrowed) for reclaiming these people and converting them into settled law-abiding peasants and factory workersmight add to a better appraisal of its claims to special historical significance.

II A genuinely revisionist product of scholarship on modern Indian history in the past decade has been the demonstration that many social categories previously regarded as axiomatic, such as 'Pindari' and 'Thug', or even 'Hindu' and 'Muslim', are in fact largely colonialist constructs that were fashioned in the nineteenth century.6 Clearly, the category of criminal tribes arose in this manner, too. Noting how elementary dacoity could all too easily lead to the official stigma of tribal criminality which in turn made continued crime the only means left for livelihood, Ranajit Guha has written: 'There are regions of chronic poverty-where for hundreds of years peasant youths have been slipping out of desolate villages and starvation and bonded labour in order to take to dacoity as a profession'.7 More pointedly, David Arnold has observed that the Criminal Tribes Act was used against 'wandering groups, nomadic petty traders and pastoralists, gypsy types, hill- and forest-dwelling tribals, in short, against a wide variety of marginals who did not conform to the colonial pattern of settled agricultural and wage labor'.8 Similarly, Sanjay Nigam has contended that the category
6 Cynthia Ann Humes, 'Rajas, Thugs, and Mafiosos: Religion and Politics in the Worship of Vindhyavasini', in Sabrina Petra Ramet and Donald W. Treadgold (eds), RenderUnto Caesar: ReligiousSpherein World the Politics (Washington, DC, The American University Press, 1995), 228.

in Aspectsof Peasant Insurgency ColonialIndia (Delhi, 7 Ranajit Guha, Elementary OUP, 1983), 84. 8 David Arnold, 'Crime and Crime Control in Madras, 1858-1947', in Yang, Crimeand Criminality, 85.

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

661

of criminal tribes was a 'colonial stereotype' fashioned to justify the punitive 'disciplining and policing' of sections of the population that were unwilling to accept the new moral order that the British sought to impose on rural society." And yet the stereotype of the wandering hereditary criminal was not entirely constructed out of thin air. Besides peasants and pastoralists who could be driven to dacoity and cattle-theft by poverty, oppression or occasional opportunism, there did exist in pre-colonial and British Punjab a class of people who were essentially vagrant and criminal. Local society generally grouped them-as it still does-under several loose terms: Chuhra (the scavanger, the lowest in village society), Khanabadosh (the wanderer, with 'his home on his shoulder'), Bazigar (also Nat: the itinerant acrobat and juggler) or Pakhiwara (the dweller in a temporary shelter of reeds). This suggests that the particular tribes or castes who came to be declared the Baurias, by the British to be hereditarily criminal-principally Harnis and Sansis--were, at the local level, virtually indistinguishable from the dozens of menial castes, both wandering and settled, who had a recognized (albeit low) place in rural Punjabi society as bards, genealogists, entertainers and hawkers to the landed castes and tribes.'? When such people supplemented their regular income with begging, burglary and theft they were not infrequently protected by the local officials like the chowkidar (village watchman), lambardar (village headman) and thanadar (police chief)-who of course took a share of the booty as the price of their protection. If their depredation was such as might attract the attention of a higher level of authority they were simply driven into an adjacent district to become somebody else's problem. But if the authority of the overarching state itself became seriously weakened these people could combine and become a law unto themselves: the first step in successor state formation. During the Great Rebellion of 1857, for instance, the 'hereditary thieving races' like the Harnis and Sansis came together under able adventurer leaders to engage in violent crime on a wide scale in the eastern portion of the province."
" Nigam, 'Disciplining and policing the "criminals by birth"'. 10 I am aware of the theoretical problems asociated with the concepts of 'caste' and 'tribe'. Basically, I follow Ibbetson (see n. 12) in treating caste as occupationbased and ranked within a status hierarchy on the basis of ritual purity, and tribe as a corporate group whose identity is based on community of blood, customs, language, etc. " General Reporton theAdministration the Punjab Territories of from 1856-57 to 1857-58 inclusive(Calcutta, 1859), 5Punjab GovernmentRecords, 8, Mutiny Records:Reports (London, 1911), pt 1, o18;

662

ANDREW J. MAJOR

When they came to view these people as the 'dangerous classes' (later to be legally confirmed as the criminal tribes) the British were well aware that many of the Punjab's traditionally wandering groups were law-abiding and productive visitors to village society: for example, the Changars, an outcaste community of seasonal field labourers, were recognized as being 'exceedingly industrious, and not at all given to crime'." It therefore became necessary to suggest that the hereditary criminals were a race apart: that they shared some common and special ancestry that made them different from the other vagrant groups. The search for this special origin probably began with William Sleeman, the officer appointed by Lord Bentinck to hunt down and eradicate the Thugs of northern India. In 1835 Sleeman reached the conclusion that the Thugs and the criminal tribes were one and the same people; in 1852 H. Brereton, the Superintendent, Thuggee Investigations, Punjab, reaffirmed this linkage, observing that Thugs in the Punjab, although mostly Mazhabis (the Chuhra section within the Sikh community), were also recruited from the general criminal class: 'Choora thieves, Sainsee burglars, and Child Stealers, and Jat dacoits'.'3 But the linkage, in terms of a common origin, was erroneous for the simple reason that the Thugs were a professional organization of individuals, recruited from the whole spectrum of society, not a tribe or community. As Clarence Patrick correctly observed: 'It may have been the attention and work that was directed against the Thugs which brought into sharper focus the widespread thievery of certain tribes, later to be labelled as "criminal tribes"'.4 Other theories advanced as to the origins of the criminal tribes included a connection with the Gypsies of Europe and descent from the primitive hunting and gathering 'aboriginals' of the Punjab. For example, the authors of the Punjab Administration Report of 186263 referred to the criminal Gypsy tribes of the Punjab 'who under the name of Sansees, Pukeewaras, Gitanos, and other appellations, are to found in all parts of the world, presenting the same features,
" Denzil Charles on Jelf Ibbetson, PanjabCastes: Being a reprint the chapter 'The of in Races,Castesand Tribes thePeople'in theReporton the Census thePunjab of of published K. 1883 bythelate Sir DenzilIbbetson C. S. L (Patiala, Languages Department, Punjab, in on the 13 H. Brereton, Report Thuggee thePunjab,in Selectionsfrom PublicCorrespondenceof theAdministration, theAffairsof the Punjab,vol. III, 4 (Lahore, 1952), 237, for
255. 14 Patrick, 'Criminal Tribes of India', 245reprint 1970), 275-

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

663

and even to some extent possessing the same dialect'.'" Although the European Gypsies are known to have originated in northwestern India, being apparently descended from a lowly caste of genealogists and minstrels called the Mirasi or Dom (from the latter are derived the terms Rom and Romany), there is no evidence to link the criminal tribes with this particular caste. Similarly, the idea that the criminal tribes were 'probably aboriginal' in their 'ultimate origin'16 is problematic: some of northern India's criminal tribes undoubtedly were of primitive aboriginal stock, but modern anthropometric data suggest that the major criminal tribes of the Punjab were ethnically little different from the landowningJats and Rajputs,'7 which tallies with the ancestral claims of criminal tribes like the Sansis, Harnis, Baurias, Pakhiwaras, Minas and Mahtams themselves.'8 A more plausible hypothesis about the origin of the criminal tribes-and one that suggests how these tribes became criminalwould therefore be that they originally belonged to predatory nomadic tribes from central Asia, like the Rajputs andJats. Having settled in northern and western India as petty cultivators and mercenary soldiers, these tribes were later uprooted and scattered by the defeat of the Rajput kingdoms by the Delhi Sultanate at the end of the thirteenth century. Unable to earn a living by cultivation or soldiering, these tribes 'reverted' to a life of vagrancy and crime. Some of the clans eventually settled down again, while others remained permanently or temporarily vagrant. The latter, though they continued to observe aspects of Rajput custom and clan organization, and sometimes maintained an intimate functional relationship with the landowning tribes (the Sansis, for example, were the hereditary genealogists to manyJat families), nevertheless fell into a vicious circle: branded as vagrant criminals, they had little opportunity of breaking out of a lifestyle that conventional society regarded as turbulent, depraved and degraded."9 Consequently, they came to harbour a strong sense of injustice done to them in the past
of for '15Annual Reporton the Administration the Punjab Territories theyear 1862-63 (Lahore, 1863) para. 47; Brereton, Reporton Thuggee, 256.
Ibbetson, Panjab Castes, 271. Tribes and of "7 Sher Singh 'Sher', 'Origin of Sansis', in Report theFifth Conferencefor Tribal (Scheduled) Areas (Delhi, 1959), 154-60; Stephen Fuchs, The Aboriginal Tribes of India (London, Macmillan, 1973), 125, 131-2.
16

'8 For the claims of these tribes to a Rajput ancestry, see H. A. Rose, A Glossary and Frontier Province of the Tribes Castes thePunjabandNorth-West of (Patiala, Languages
Department, Punjab, reprint 1970), vols 1-2. '9 Fuchs, Aboriginal Tribes, 122-3.

664

ANDREWJ.

MAJOR

and, at the same time, to regard the members of conventional society 'with infinite contempt and scorn as dull and foolish people born to be fleeced by the more clever and intelligent'.20 The mutual abhorrence between them and the rest of society thus confirmed and reinforced their deviant culture and behaviour."2

III
The initial British policy towards the Punjab's criminal tribes must be viewed as an outgrowth of earlier strategies adopted elsewhere in northern India. Not only were many of the district officers posted to the Punjab after 1849 men who had served their administrative apprenticeships in the adjacent North-Western (later United) Provinces where they had come into contact with a large criminal population, but the non-regulation system of administration adopted in the Punjab after annexation, which permitted flexible and even autocratic government in the districts, meant that the Punjab officers were free to borrow, adapt and experiment with ideas of social control that had been tried elsewhere. Prior to the enactment of the Indian Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code in 186o, which provided for a system of registration and roll call, the dacoits and criminal tribes of northern India were dealt with under Regulation XXII of 1793 which gave magistrates summary powers of sentencing proven criminals to periods of hard labour and six months' imprisonment in the event that they absconded. In December 1855, however, the Government of India drew the attention of the Punjab authorities to a report by Major Sleeman that the magistrate of Kanpur had recently charged the landholders of his district with the task of holding under surveillance the 'predatory tribe' of Baurias who were 'infesting the lower Doab and Southern India': if similar measures were adopted in every district 'infested' by such wandering tribes, Sleeman suggested, 'petty crime would soon be considerably diminished'." The Judicial Commissioner of the Punjab then wrote to the seven Division Commissioners
tribes and castes in northernIndia (Lucknow, 1949), 41. 21 Simhadri, 'Ex-Criminal Tribes', 11 1.

20 B. S. a Bhargava, The CriminalTribes: socio-economic of theprincipalcriminal study

22 Report the Criminal on Classes thePunjab,in Selectionsfrom PublicCorrespondence the of vol. of thePunjabTerritories, IV, 5 (Lahore, 1i86o), 40-1.

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

665

to obtain their views. Not surprisingly, the seven were unanimous in agreeing that a system of surveillance, which had since annexation been in operation against the Mazhabi 'Thugs', should be applied to tribes like the Baurias and Sansis: in the words of one Commissioner, 'the existence of a criminal class, living notoriously on robbery, is an outrage on civilized society, and their suppression is urgently called for'."2 Consequently, in 1856 the Judicial Commissioner issued Book Circular No. 18 which provided for the system of surveillance and control that would take effect in the rest of India only after 186o. Under the authority of this Circular all Sansis, Harnis and Baurias were to be registered at the local thanas (police stations), the lambardars of the villages in which these tribes nominally resided were to be answerable for their conduct and movements, registered tribesmen were not to be allowed to sleep away from their villages without a ticket of leave from the thanadar, and any tribesman found absent without leave was to be required to furnish security for good behaviour or, failing that, be sent to jail.24 This system of control was later extended to 'bad characters', or gangs of dacoits, by the establishment of punitive police posts near identified 'bad villages'.25 It soon became apparent, however, that such measures were having 'little perceptible effect' on the habits of the hereditarily wandering tribes; indeed, attempts at registering them were only causing them to disperse. For example, a large body of Baurias who emigrated into eastern Punjab from the North-Western Provinces (probably due to the anti-dacoit activities of Sleeman's department) promptly returned to their homeland when the Judicial Commissioner's Circular began to be implemented;2' and it would later be discovered that many such tribes were adept at changing their identities to avoid registration. Several Punjab district officers therefore proposed reclaiming these tribes by forcibly locating them in settlements on government waste land, under police control, in the expectation of 'inuring them to steady habits of agricultural labor'.27 Such a plan was not new, having been attempted-with indifferent
23 Government of India, Legislative Department Proceedings (hereafter G o I, LDP), Nov. 1871, no. 67 (IOL, London).
24 Ibid.

25 GeneralReporton the Administration the Punjab Territories theyear 1866-67 of for (Lahore, 1867), 30.
26 27

Report CriminalClasses,45. on Report Administration 1858-59, para.14. on for

666

ANDREW

J. MAJOR

results-in other parts of India (and the principles behind it were 'identical with those regulating the third or intermediate stage of imprisonment of habitual criminals in Ireland').2" Edward Prinsep, the first Deputy Commissioner at Sialkot, later recalled how he came to introduce the new system in his district. Nearly half of all crime, he discovered, was committed by wandering tribes like the Sansis and Pakhiwaras, and mere surveillance was no deterrence. He first described the modus operandi of these tribes: On the pretence of hunting and begging, they passed through villages, inspecting premises, marking the ground by day. They came in gangs at night, very often armed with sticks; their rule was never to leave emptyhanded. If it was hot weather, they would creep up to the roofs of houses, and snatch away ear-rings from women when asleep. If it was harvest time, they stole the corn; and if alms were refused, they punished the owners by plundering their granaries at night. The police, finding that 'watching and hunting down' these tribesmen was to little avail, resorted to locking them up within the thanas on dark nights, only releasing them in the morning. But, Prinsep continued: One effect of this was to drive them to break up their encampments. For sake of respectability they lived in detached groups, but within easy reach one of another. Headmen harboured them; village watchmen shared their illegal spoil. When pursued by the Police they were passed on from village to village, till it was discovered that this system of detached residence only led the more to the concealment of thieves; the Police were defeated, and the people harassed on every side. Nor did repeated jail sentences produce any effect: 'Their ways were evil. They knew no better. Theft was a sport'.29 In 1856 Prinsep established two kots or agricultural settlements for nomadic Sansis and Pakhiwaras, and over the next decade a further six settlements were established for these tribes. Several thousand men, women and children were herded into these settlements, to cultivate by day and be guarded by sentries at night, thrice being mustered and counted. The system seemed to be working: in 186o it was reported that the number of burglaries in Sialkot district had fallen from 344 to 284, and of thefts from 560 to 427.30 In 1863 the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab visited the Sialkot kots and
28

Report Administration 1862-63, on for

para.49. (Lahore,

General Reporton theAdministration the Punjab Territories 186o-6i of for 1861), para.4o.

30

29 Ibid., para.47.

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

667

approvingly noted the 'happy and contented' appearance of the inmates, the provision of school-houses for the daily instruction of children, the 'very fair' harvest and the 'sleek and well-fed' look of the cattle.
The Lieutenant-Governor [it was reported] has never witnessed a more satisfactory sight than the reclamation of these lawless tribes. They are gradually being allowed more liberty, and in the course of a few years will be merged into the general population."'

This soon proved to be misplaced optimism, however. The first blow came in November 1867 when the Punjab Chief Court, reviewing the case of two 'bad characters' who had been fined and imprisoned for absenting themselves from their village without tickets of leave, struck down Circular 18 as being an executive order that had no legal basis, and further declared that it had been superseded by the Criminal Procedure Code. This ruling did not immediately overturn the reclamation work already done-for instance, the reformatory kots in Sialkot district continued to function, although without the former strict surveillance exercised over their inhabitants by the police-but it was perceived by the Punjab police and district officers as threatening to replace a 'special mode of dealing with organized crime and organized and habitual criminals', which emphasized pre-emptive control and the systematic preparation of records detailing the criminal history of these groups, with a haphazard system of punishing only those caught in the act of crime.3' For example, the Inspector-General of Police lamented that, under the Criminal Procedure Code, it would be 'useless' to demand security from criminal tribesmen and 'quite impossible' to accommodate them in already over-crowdedjails in default; besides, he argued, a jail sentence was not a 'beneficial punishment' since it 'encourages a man in idleness, for he may not legally be made to work'.33With these sentiments the Punjab Government entirely agreed, and announced its intention to push for legislative action to correct the disabling effects of the Chief Court's ruling.34 The upshot was the passage-after three years of heated debate between the governments of the Punjab and the North-Western Provinces on the one hand, and the Punjab Chief Court and the
on for "' Report Administration 1862-63, para.51. 32 G o I, LDP, Nov. 1871, no.67. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., no. 102.

668

ANDREW

J. MAJOR

High Courts of the North-Western Provinces on the other--of the Criminal Tribes Act (XXVII) of 1871."5 The main point of contention was the issue of personal liberty: the courts feared that subordinate officials, particularly the 'native' constabulary, would abuse the powers it was proposed to grant them; the Punjab officials countered that it would be better that a few 'doubtful characters' should be inconvenienced by the police than large numbers of 'responsible people' should be inconvenienced by 'bad characters'.36 The courts then questioned the efficiency of reclamation work, which the Punjab officers had constantly claimed was preferable to mere preventive this was the second blow measures, by pointing out correctly-and to the Punjab School's earlier optimism-that the much-lauded with reformatory kots in Sialkot district had largely been experiment a failure, due essentially to the lack of adequate resources, especially fertile land. For example, reference was made to the 1869 annual police report for Sialkot district which stated that the land attached to Kot Adian, which had 862 inhabitants, 'is so bad that a crop can scarcely be raised on it, and it is scarcely a matter of wonder that the Sansies there take to crime whenever they can'.37 Serious problems would continue to bedevil the Punjab's system of kots for the next four decades. Meanwhile, however, the Criminal Tribes Act had been passed. Apart from the fact that it represented, as Nigam has shown, the drawing together and encodement of previous colonial 'knowledge' on hereditary criminality to produce a de-contextualized and ahistorical stereotype of the 'criminal tribe', the Act provided for virtually the same measures of surveillance, control and reform as had the Circular of 1856. It authorized local governments to recommend to the Governor-General in Council the proclamation of any tribe or gang of persons who were 'addicted' to the commission of nonbailable offences. Such reports of recommendation had to detail the criminal history of the tribes or gangs, their normal place of residence and ostensible means of livelihood, and the arrangements proposed to enable them to earn their living if they were to be settled down at any fixed places of residence. If the Governor-General in Council concurred with the recommendations, the tribes or gangs would then be notified under the Act (there could be no appeal
3" For a fuller analysis of the debate, see Nigam, 'Disciplining and policing', pt 1, 134-50. 36 Go I, LDP, Nov. 1871, no.67. 37 Ibid, no. 1oo.

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

669

against notification), and the local governments could then proceed, if they saw fit, to confine such persons to particular places or remove them to reformatory settlements. Once confinement was decided upon, a register would be prepared giving the details of all the members of the tribe or gang notified as 'criminal', and notices of registration would be posted in the appropriate villages and sent to local officials. Upon registration, the members of the tribe or gang would be restricted by a system of daily reporting to the local officials, irregular roll calls, tickets of leave and punishments like fines, whipping and imprisonment for violation of the general code of discipline laid down for them. Finally, there was provision for discharge from the operation of the Act if registered individuals or groups could satisfy the local authorities that they had for some time abandoned crime and taken to earning an 'honest' living.

IV
The Criminal Tribes Act was initially applied exclusively to the territories of the Punjab, the North-Western Provinces and Awadh, which together accounted for about 50% of the entire criminal tribes population of colonial India, and was then gradually applied to the other provinces. And although it was undoubtedly intended to apply to all 'notoriously' criminal tribes, whether wandering or settled, the Act was for a good many years employed against only those criminal tribes who were known to reside, for at least part of the year, in one place. The perpetually wandering tribes-the genuine Khanabadosh, about whom the British as yet confessed to know very little-were largely left alone (being simply arrested and convicted of any offence under the Indian Penal Code) because it was administratively both impossible to keep them under effective surveillance and undesirable to interfere with their seemingly legitimate occupations as travelling labourers, artisans, entertainers and mendicants. It was only after the passage of a new Criminal Tribes Act in 1911 that this class of people was held to include particularly criminal groups that needed also to be declared and registered as criminal tribes. In 1872 the Punjab Government applied to the Government of India for permission to employ the new Act against the three tribes declared to be notorious criminals under the 1856 Circular, viz the Sansis, Harnis and Baurias, and another three minor tribes whose criminal activities had recently caused concern: the Bilochis of

670

ANDREWJ.

MAJOR

Karnal district, the Gurmangs of Rawalpindi district and the Pakhiwaras of Sialkot district. Besides detailing the criminal histories of these settled and semi-settled tribes, the Punjab Government proposed that these people, once registered, should be permitted to move about within a radius of five or six miles of their village or kot, in order to obtain work in neighbouring villages or on public works projects like railways and canals. In 1873 the Government of India selected the Sansis as being the worst of the six tribes and sanctioned their declaration and registration, which the Punjab authorities carried out in the nine districts where Sansis were known to reside. By the same 1875 the Punjab Government was able to report-with had degree of optimism with which the Lieutenant-Governor the working of the Sansi kots in 1863-that reported registration and restriction were producing satisfactory reformation amongst the Sansis; and on the strength of that apparent success, the Government of India then sanctioned the application of the Act to the other five tribes."8 Within a few years the Act was cast still wider to catch the Minas of Gurgaon district and the Tagus of Karnal district. By 1881, according to the provincial Census of that year, there were 16,039 individuals, belonging to seven tribes, registered under the Criminal Tribes Act in the Punjab.39 Thereafter, the registration of the remaining settled criminal tribes proceeded apace. The 1891 Census reported 10,229 men (the names of females and boys below the age of twelve generally having been taken off the registers after 1883), belonging to the eight tribes, registered throughout the province.40 The 1901 Census referred to nine tribes, whose total adult population was 49,061.41 And by 1912 the number of registered males (aged twelve and above), belonging to sixteen tribes, was 21,215; furthermore, on the discovery that males aged twelve and above represented about onethird of the population of criminal tribes residing in villages containing more than 20omales, it was assumed that the total population
on Relatingto theAdminis8 Hari Kishen Kaul and L. L. Tomkins, Report Questions trationof Criminaland Wandering Tribesin the Punjab (Lahore, Government Printing,
Punjab, 1914), 6-7.

Frontier Province, by H. A. Rose (Simla, 1902), 372-3.

9 Ibbetson, PanjabCastes,28o-1. This figure is incomplete, however, in that for some districts women, or children, or children below a certain age were not included. pt 4o Censusof India, 1891, vol. XIX, The Punjab and its Feudatories, 1, Report,by E. D. Maclagan (Calcutta, 1892), 333-4and 41 Census India, IgoI, vol. XVII, ThePunjaband its Feudatories, theNorth-West of

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

671

of the settled tribes which had been notified under the Act was, at that time, 63,645-42 The progressive notification and registration of the settled tribes after 1873 might suggest that, as an instrument of control and reformation, the 1871 legislation had been fully and effectively applied by the Punjab administration, and that the problem of the criminal tribes was fast becoming a thing of the past. That this was not, in fact, the case was clearly conceded by the Revenue Secretary in 1915: It must be admitted [wrote J. Thompson] that in the past there has been no real continuity of policy in dealing with either the settled or the wandering tribes. In some cases the Act has been applied with alternating severity and leniency, in other cases it has not been applied at all, and attempts at reclamation have wavered between the granting of too little and the concession of too much.43 Some idea of what he meant may be gained by looking briefly at the official history of two tribes, the Sansis and the Pakhiwaras, in the four decades after 1871.44 The Sansis were not only the Punjab's largest criminal tribe, with an estimated notified population of 25,8oo in 1912, but were also seen by the British as being its most elemental in that several other tribes like the Baurias and Harnis were believed to be off-shoots of them. And although their claim to be of original Rajput ancestry was generally conceded by the early twentieth century, the British still felt it necessary constantly to emphasize their 'degraded' status through a set of stock images: for example, Sansi men were 'generally dark in complexion with "bright sparkling eyes"', their faces were 'cast in the aboriginal mould and are said to be "very foxy" in expression'; being often eaters of vermin, they could 'always be detected by their smell, which is said to be like a combination of "musk-rat and rancid grease"'; and their religion, mostly a form of Hinduism, was 'of a very primitive, mixed and debased nature'.45 Although some Sansis, notably certain groups in the Amritsar and Lahore districts, had long since settled down to become peasant
42

Kaul and Tomkins, Report Questions, on 2. Punjab (hereafter Pb), Home/Police A Proceedings (hereafter Progs),
nos 3-4 (IOL). 14-19.

Feb.I915,

Tomkins, Report on Questions, 4-11, Government

4

" The following paragraphs are, unless indicated otherwise, based on Kaul and V. P. T. Vivian, A Handbook the CriminalTribesof thePunjab (Lahore, Punjab of
Press,
1912),

22-3,

27.

672

ANDREWJ.

MAJOR

proprietors and even biswadars (superior proprietors who received a share of the revenue paid by their tenants), most were still essen5% tially vagrant at the time of their notification in 1873, and this was an early-but not exclusive-factor behind their frustratingly slow conversion to a life of cultivation under the auspices of the Criminal Tribes Act. As mentioned earlier, the general behaviour of the Sansis in the years immediately after their declaration in 1873 was regarded as satisfactory, and the official optimism continued into the 188os, buoyed up by annual police returns showing a steady decline in absenteeism and petty crime. From 1883 there was, therefore, a gradual relaxation of restrictions on registered Sansis: women and children began being taken off the registers and exemptions were granted to men of proven good behaviour. Whereas there had been 4,767 registered Sansi men in 1881, there were slightly fewer, 4,591, in 1901. But by the late 189os an alarming discovery had been made: that many Sansis, along with other settled tribes, had avoided registration by migrating into other districts where the Act was not yet in operation (frequently assuming fictitious identities in the process), while gangs of Sansi men had taken to committing crimes in neighbouring districts where they were not well known. This discovery called for drastic action, so in 1902 the local government ordered that all male Sansis over the age of twelve (and all male Baurias, Pakhiwaras, Harnis, Minas and Tagus, too) be registered throughout the province and have their finger-prints recorded. Although not yet applied to the permanently wandering tribes, whose ranks had been swelled by fleeing Sansis, this stiffening of the mechanism of surveillance and control gradually subdued the Sansis, permitting exemptions for good behaviour to be resumed. By 1913 there were 8,773 male Sansis registered throughout the province, although 3,468 of these had been granted exemptions, leaving 5,305 still subject to the full restrictions of the Act. The story of the kots established for Sansis in Sialkot district is one of almost complete failure. These settlements also came under the Criminal Tribes Act in 1873, whereupon the local government sanctioned the repairing of wells and advances for seed grain. Numerous problems nevertheless arose: police guards had to be appointed in the place of some jamadars (gang foremen) who were found to be acting in collusion with their fellow inmates; walls were built around the kots in an attempt to keep the inmates from
absconding, but proved ineffectual; the system of roll call was frequently a farce; the schools for Sansi boys were closed due to apathy

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

673

(or, in one case, Sansi fears of their children being converted by the American Mission, which was running the school); and basic necessities were mostly unavailable since shop-keepers were reluctant to settle in the area. The major problem, however, remained that of overcrowding. This became even more acute with the 1902 order that all male Sansis be registered, which caused the number of registered and restricted people in the kots to rise from 391 to 550. The then Deputy Commissioner pointed out that this meant that the average quantity of land available to each male Sansi and his family was less than two acres. It appears to me [he continued] that the whole system is radically unsound, and I think that the idea of dumping down a lot of Pariahs on land which they are not habituated to cultivate, and which if cultivated would admittedly be insufficient for their maintenance, and then calling it a reformatory, discloses a misnomer the equal of which it would be difficult to find.46 By 1904, due to exemptions, the number of registered Sansis resident in the Sialkot kots had come down to 401, and this had provided some relief. However, in 1914 it was ruefully concluded that 'the whole history of these settlements since their inception in 1856 is a record of trouble and difficulty'.47 The Pakhiwaras were a medium sized Muslim tribe (with an estimated notified population of 4,323 in 1912), settled in eight districts of the Punjab. Like the Sansi tribe (of which they were believed to be a branch that had long ago converted to Islam), the Pakhiwaras had been placed under surveillance in 1856, with 575 of them being located within or around Kot Mokal, a settlement in Sialkot district. But with the lifting of that surveillance upon the Chief Court's ruling in 1867, they had been quick to resume their old habits, especially theft and dacoity, until being notified and brought under the Criminal Tribes Act in 1875. In 1878 the Pakhiwaras were reported to be 'irreclaimable thieves' and the rules of the Act were applied against them more stringently. In 188o the school at Kot Mahal was closed as being 'a mere waste of money'; the following year, however, the Punjab Government ordered its reopening. Between 1883 and 1885 the Pakhiwaras of Sialkot district were summarily released from all control by Lieutenant-Colonel Birch, the Deputy Commissioner, who interpreted rather too literally the government's view that, wherever possible, district officers ought to strive for flexibility
46 Kaul and Tomkins, Report on Questions, 9.
47

Ibid.

MAJOR ANDREWJ. 674 in their application of the Act. Finally, in 1886, the Pakhiwaras, having been found to have resumed their criminal activities, were again brought under the operations of the Act; and in 1902 it was ordered that male Pakhiwaras should be registered and fingerprinted throughout the province. Meanwhile, conditions at Kot Mokal and at another Pakhiwara settlement, Kot Mohanpur, were as unsatisfactory as those prevailing in the Sansi kots. Despite exemptions from the restrictions of the Act, there remained too many people in these settlements who were expected to survive from cultivating too little land, or from whatever little employment they could obtain in neighbouring villages. Consequently they continued to absent themselves from the kots to commit crime in other parts of the province, particularly those districts where they could expect to be protected by fellow Pakhiwaras. Finally, in 1910, it was decided that the Salvation Army, which had reformatory experience in the North-Western Provinces, would start weaving and other cottage industries at Kot Mokal under a two-year government grant. But, three years later, cultivation was still virtually the only occupation of the Kot Mokal inmates-and that, too, a precarious one, with an average of only one-and-a-half acres of cultivated land available to each adult male. 'Between lack of land and industrial opening on the one hand', it was concluded, 'and rigid restriction of movements on the other, the people have been driven into seeking a means of subsistence by crime'.48

V By the beginning of the twentieth century it had become clear to the British that the 1871 Act had serious procedural limitations that needed to be rectified in order that a new policy towards the criminal tribes could be developed. As early as 1902 the Punjab Government had drawn Calcutta's attention to the urgency of augmenting the existing powers of control over these tribes, but it was not until 19 11 that a new Act (III) was passed. This new legislation represented a triumph of the old Punjab authoritarian tradition over the newlyemerging current of liberalism in India. For one thing, the essentially punitive provisions of the old Act were retained. Punjab officers whose views on the draft bill were considered by the Imperial Legis48 Ibid., 19.

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

675

lative Council were virtually unanimous in opposing, for example, an attempt to have the punishment of whipping eliminated. One Deputy Commissioner spoke for many when he claimed, 'Members of criminal tribes are of a low type and whipping is suited to their understanding'.49 The new Act, furthermore, extended the existing principles of control and reclamation in three important ways. First, local governments could now deal with the problem of wandering tribes (who in the Punjab were reckoned to be responsible for one-third of all crimes committed"5) by declaring, and then registering and fingerprinting, the members of such tribes without requiring their settlement: instead, they would be required to report themselves to the local police at specified intervals. Second, registered members of criminal gangs, as well as of tribes, who showed little sign of reforming themselves could be placed in certain new types of reformatory settlements, some of which could be administered by philanthropic organizations like the Salvation Army (which was by now running five small settlements with government assistance in the Punjab, as well as others in the NorthjWestern Provinces). In 1910 Commissioner F. Booth-Tucker of the Salvation Army had suggested that the incorrigible 'won't-be-goods' be either transported to some island or settled in remote Himalaya valleys, where they would 'soon become absorbed by inter-marriage with hill tribes, many of whom greatly need new blood', while the majority of 'would-be-goods' be placed in agricultural reservations like those which had produced the 'successful and complete pacification' of 300,000 'Red Indians' in the United States of America."5Third, children of criminal tribes could legally be separated from their parents for the purpose of moral and vocational instruction in special institutions. In 1913 the Punjab Government appointed a small committee, consisting of a district officer, Hari Kishan Kaul, and a police officer, Lionel Tomkins, to examine past administrative problems and, in consultation with the Salvation Army, suggest a new criminal tribes policy and set of rules that might be framed on the basis of the 1911 Act. Out of the committee's detailed report came a new scheme, declared in 1916, which provided for: (1) revised rules for the restriction and exemption of settled tribes and gangs, (2) the issuing of
49 50

G o I, LDP, March 1911, no. 53, Appendix A7. Pb Home/Police A Progs, Aug. 1916, no. 7. 51 G o I, LDP, March 1911, no. 53, Appendix A8.

676

ANDREW J. MAJOR

personal passports to members of wandering tribes, and (3) the establishment of different classes of reformatory settlements, which were to form stages in the reformation of the criminal tribes, with a supervisory role for organizations like the Salvation Army, by which the government would gain 'an exceedingly cheap agency imbued with philanthropic zeal'."5The first step in implementing this new policy came in 1917 when all tribes and gangs found to be addicted to the commission of non-bailable offences were notified and their men registered throughout the province. As a result, 33,000 adult males including 1 1,ooo men from wandering tribes were registered and restricted, out of a total notified population of some 150,000 individuals.5" The next step was to remove the more recalcitrant men and their families to reformatory settlements where they would be taught the virtues of discipline, hard work and cleanliness-initially no easy task, with many arriving at the settlements clad in rags (their women having 'hardly enough clothing to cover their shame'), others assailing visiting inspectors with cries of 'Margae, Margae' (We are and one group vigorously resisting an order to bathe once a dying), week during the summer months of May and June.54 From the start it was decided that the most incorrigible characters would be placed in a central prison-like reformatory, the reasonably well-behaved in industrial settlements, and the best-behaved in new agricultural settlements on canal colony land, a classification of tribesmen which revealed, as Imran Ali notes, 'a distinctive but predictable set of priorities: those who were most compliant and reformed were sent for agricultural work.'55 A central reformatory was established at the Amritsar jail (recently abandoned) in 1917. Set up to receive the worst types of criminal tribesmen from the province's districts and jails, and then to distribute them to other types of settlements after some time, the Amritsar reformatory had the task of 'breaking fresh and obdurate gangs into harness'56 (the image of wild animals was still there). The inmates were subjected to strict discipline (twice-daily roll calls,
Kaul and Tomkins, Report Questions, on "52 56-63, 68-8o. In these settlements compulsory primary education for boys aged six to twelve would be provided. 13 Hari Singh, A Note on theAdministration CriminalTribes of Punjab, I917 to I9I9
(Lahore, Government Printing Punjab, 1920), 54 Ibid., 5. 1.

Imperialism, 1885-1947 (Delhi, OUP, 1989), lo2. 55 Imran Ali, ThePunjabunder 56 Singh, Note on theAdministration, 3.

STATE AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

677

enforced hygiene-with weekly and monthly prizes awarded to the cleanest family-and bans on unwholesome food, intoxicants and gambling), were obliged to take up some craft like basket-making, and were rewarded on Sundays and public holidays with arranged entertainment like wrestling matches and magic lantern shows by the Temperance Association."57 the end of 1919 the Amritsar At reformatory held 86o men, women and children. The industrial settlements, administered in accordance with the same rigorous discipline as the Amritsar reformatory, were initially intended to be places where inmates would be taught various specialized craft skills, such as hand-loom weaving, and paid on a piece-work basis. It soon turned out, however, that such activities were uneconomic, whereas there was-once the reluctance to employ known criminals had subsided-a great demand for wage labour at workshops, mills, military works and tea estates. By the end of 191 9 there were twelve industrial settlements, with a total population of 4,583, and most had become suppliers of unskilled and semi-skilled labour. For example, two settlements at Moghalpura (857 inmates) supplied unskilled labour and young men to be trained as locomotive mechanics to the Lahore Railway Workshop; the settlement at Bhiwani in the Hissar district (641 inmates) supplied labourers and trainee weavers to the Cotton Spinning and Weaving Mills; and the settlement at Dhariwal in the Gurdaspurdistrict (1,817 inmates) supplied workers to the New Egerton Woollen Mills, which during the first World War had a contract for manufacturing army clothing and the yarn from which army blankets were woven in jails. The government claimed that it was concerned that such settlements should not become sweatshops. But some of them did. For example, daily wages for male workers at the Bhiwani and Dhariwal settlements were low (less than one-half a rupee) and families survived only by sending their women and children to the mills for at least part of the day. Apart from low wages, there was a high death rate amongst workers and their children from respiratory and intestinal diseases brought to 12%.5"When the Sanitary Commissioner and Sanitary Engineer visited the Dhariwal settlement in early 1920 they found the site to
5

on by poor living conditions: between 1917 and 1920 the mortality rates at Bhiwani ranged from 12% to 22%, and at Dhariwal from 7%

December 192o

Administration Manual (Lahore, rev. edn, 1927), 60-72. 7 PunjabCriminalTribes Reporton the Administration Criminal Tribesin the Punjabfor theyear ending of
(Lahore, Government Printing, Punjab, 1921), 7. Hereafter each

annual Reportis abbreviated to RACT.

678

ANDREW

J. MAJOR

be 'hopelessly water-logged', the housing provided by the company damp, flood-prone and without bathing facilities, and the food and milk purchased by the inmates out of their wages adulterated by the Later in the year the government ordered the closure shopkeepers.5" of these two settlements. By the end of 1919 there were ten agricultural settlements, with a total population of 3,140o. One of these was a settlement where criminal tribesmen were placed as tenants-at-will under a private landlord who provided accommodation and agricultural implements and took the customary share of the produce as rent; three were old kots whose surplus population had been transferred to other settlements; and the remaining six were new settlements located in the Lower Bari Doab Canal Colony. In the latter, selected tribesmen were-both by way of reward for their good behaviour and as an inducement to others to follow their example-allotted ten acres of canal-irrigated land per family for fifteen years (during which the grant was liable to confiscation for misconduct), and after fifteen years' continuous good behaviour they would be eligible to occupancy rights. It had originally been proposed to have 20 such settlements on 2o,ooo acres in this Colony; but, finding that it had overcommitted itself in the Lower Bari Doab scheme, the government was forced to cut the number back to ten settlements on o10,ooo acres.6oMore than half of the agricultural, as with the industrial, settlements were by late 1919 being administered, with government assistance, by philanthropic organizations. Besides the Salvation Army, which had taken the lead in this respect, local religious organizations like the Arya Samaj, Chief Khalsa Diwan and Anjuman-iIslamia had responded positively to the government's invitation to become involved in the reclamation work."' By 1920 the British had grounds to be pleased with the working of the new policy implemented three years earlier. The stringent controls exercised against the notified tribes had produced a decline in both criminal activity and vagrancy: the percentage of total convictions on the total registered population excluding settlements had fallen from o10.8at the beginning of 1917 to 2.3 in 1920, while the total number of persons who had absented themselves from their areas of restriction without passes had fallen from 777 in 1918 to
" Pb Home/Police A Progs, Oct. Ig2o, no. 58. 6o Ibid., March 1917, no. 258. 6' RACT 1919, statement no. VIII.

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

679

275 in 1920.62 During the War criminal tribesmen had played a part in the Punjab's contribution. They had provided 2,o17 recruits including 1,307 combatants (the Baurias had provided 346 combatants) although it was admitted that 'in some cases this result was achieved only with a great deal of persuasion.'63Besides the Bhiwani and Dhariwal settlements which had supplied much-needed labour to the mills producing military clothing, several small temporary industrial settlements had been established to provide labour for military construction and grooms for the Gujrat Remount Depot.64 And when, in 1919, industrial unrest had swept the province, the Sansis employed in the railway workshops at Moghalpura had been the only workers there to remain at their posts.6" VI In 1920othe general criminal tribes policy of the Punjab Government came under review in connection with an enquiry by an Indian Jails Commission (whose purview included the criminal tribes settlements in the province). Hitherto control by registration and transfer to settlements had been the principal weapon deployed against the criminal tribes and gangs. This now gave way to a greater emphasis on reformation, particularly through education, with a view to the eventual assimilation of the tribesmen into the general community. The classification of registered tribesmen was revised in 1920 to permit the exemption of 8,597 from the provisions of the Act and the marking of many others for more lenient treatment than originally contemplated. Henceforth only men of proven personal criminality were to be sent to the industrial settlements, and before such an individual was committed he would be allowed to appeal against it before a district magistrate. Basic education of children was now to be compulsory, not just within the settlements but also for the children of notified tribesmen residing within a three-mile radius of any village primary school.66 In 1921 it was decided that the age of registration for boys of settled tribesmen would be raised from twelve to
62
63

Ibid.,7; RACT1920,

10-1

1.

Punjab, 1.
64

RACT 1918, statement no. IV; see also attached review by Revenue Secretary,

65

Ibid., appendix A, v-vii. RACT 1919, appendix A, vii.

1-3.

66 RACT 1920,

68o

ANDREW

J. MAJOR

eighteen (provided that no crime was committed).67 All these changes were incorporated into a new Criminal Tribes Act (VI) of
1924.

The granting of exemptions continued until 1925, by which time the total number of registered males had fallen to io,685-less than one-third of the number recorded in the great reregistration drive of 1917.68 But in 1926 it was realized (just as it had been with regard to the Pakhiwaras of Sialkot four decades earlier) that such 'wholesale' exemptions were disastrous in that large numbers of formerly controllable tribesmen had now disappeared from official view, and the authorities had no idea how they were earning their living."' It was also a matter of concern that the Punjab's growing agricultural prosperity and expansion of railway transportation made a return to crime by these tribesmen ever more tempting. From 1926 onwards, therefore, a policy of caution and reregistration where necessary was constantly emphasized, with the result that the number of registered
males steadily rose to a new peak of 35,710 in 1931 (with the Census

of that year showing a total population of notified tribes and gangs At the same time it was also admitted that more vigilance needed to be exercised over settled tribes living in the villages. Some lambardars and chowkidars, being illiterate or in collusion with the registered tribesmen, were continuing to make the system of roll call and ticket of leave 'a farce', while other 'local notables' still frequently protected tribesmen as 'sleeping partners' in their crimes." For some years Hari Singh, the Deputy Commissioner for Criminal Tribes and head of the small Criminal Tribes Department established in 1917, had in his annual reports been urging the Punjab Government to create a regular district-level agency to monitor the operation of the Act and the economic problems facing tribesmen (he was convinced that reclamation of tribesmen depended largely on the means of livelihood provided for their subsistence), but his suggestion had repeatedly been put off on the grounds of financial stringency. In 1925, however, two Divisional Commissioners were appointed (a further two were appointed in 1931) to ensure closer monitoring of the registration and exemption processes. That year the Information
67 RACT I92I,

in the province of 150,596).70

2.

68 RACT 1925, 1. 69 RACT 193o, 1. 70 RACT1932, 1. 7'

RACT 1925, 5; 1926, 4; 1928, 13.

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

681

Bureau issued a vernacular pamphlet and a cinematic film to emphasize to a mostly apathetic general public the importance of the 'humane and philanthropic work' being done to reform the criminal tribes. And in 1930 the Criminal Tribes Department's preventive and reformatory functions were separated, with the former being taken over by a special police staff under an Assistant InspectorGeneral of Police, thus leaving Singh's department free to concentrate on the task of reformation.7 By 1932 the Criminal Tribes Department was able to claim that almost complete control had been re-established over the notified criminal tribes and that these people had ceased to be an important factor in the provincial crime statistics.73The main problem groups now were vagrant criminal tribes entering the Punjab from the United Provinces and the neighbouring princely states of Bikaner and Bahawalpur, and professional criminal gangs residing in villages. The first group was tackled through a 'surprise round up' conducted by the police in 1933, with the result that 537 men were registered by the district magistrates.74 Since 1917 it had been found that the Criminal Tribes Act was a particularly effective weapon against gangs of professional dacoits, counterfeiters, cattle rustlers and the like. Because many of these gangs lived in remote and inaccessible villages, where there was no regular police presence, they could not always be kept in check by recourse to the ordinary law (the Indian Penal Code, Habitual Offenders Act and Criminal Procedure Code). But they could be 'straightened up under the sledge hammer of the Criminal Tribes Act.'75Notification, registration and the removal of ringleaders to reformatory settlements invariably had a salutary impact on such gangs. By 1938, 87 gangs (5,012 men notified, 3,510 men registered) had been singled out for this special punitory treatment.76 In 1923 the experiment of bringing the very worst of these gang villages under the direct control of the Criminal Tribes Department was begun when the village of Fatehgarh Sabraon, in the Ferozepur district, was placed under the charge of an officer of the Department. Fatehgarh Sabraon, a Gill Jat village situated on the left bank of the
72 7' 74
76

RACT 1925, RACT 1932, RACT 1933, 7P RACT 1934,

RACT 1938,

4, 10; 193, 42.

16--7.

1-2.
2.

682

ANDREWJ.

MAJOR

Sutlej river, had long been infamous for dacoity and 632 of its 961 adult male inhabitants were already registered under the Act. With the village coming under the direct control of the Department, the men were put to work clearing a surrounding dense riverain jungle of reeds, known as the Jhal, which the villagers used to conceal criminals and stolen property. Five years later the village of Sabhra across the river in the Lahore district was also taken over and its inhabitants, related to the Gill Jats of Fatehgarh Sabraon, were directed to assist with the clearing of the Jhal. The incidence of dacoity thereafter rapidly declined as the villagers took to cultivating the cleared land, and in 1938 most of the men in the two villages were released from registration and control.77 Other villages over which direct control was established included those belonging to certain Mahtams of Montgomery district. Also known as Rai Sikhs (low caste Sikhs who accounted for about onefifth of all Mahtams in the province), these people existed at the classic intersection of precarious cultivation and dacoity. Although they were skilled cultivators, their lands were insufficient and without adequate access to irrigation. Hence they had developed into a 'daring people of extremely notorious character',78 specializing in crimes like the illicit distillation of liquor (which, presumably, accounted for the characterization of their men as being 'quarrelsome' and having 'bloodshot eyes'79), cattle rustling, dacoity and murder; consequently they had been registered under the Criminal Tribes Act in 1918.80 During the opening stages of the Lower Bari Doab and Nili Bar Colonies they had found employment as labourers, but with the onset and deepening of the economic depression of the 1930s they increasingly reverted to a life of desperate crime. They and their fellow Mahtams across the Sutlej in Ferozepur district were reckoned to be responsible for about two-thirds of all crimes committed by professional (as opposed to hereditary) criminals in the province by the late 1930s.81

Of the 579 registered Rai Sikh males in Montgomery district in

1937, 501 were concentrated in ten adjacent villages in a riverain

tract of reed thickets interspersed with pockets of cultivation. These villages were especially 'unruly': in 1937 the men of one of them
77 RACT I928, 9-lo; 1929, 11; 78 RACT 1937, 10-11.

1938, 1-2.

Vivian, Handbook CriminalTribes,i 18. of RACT 1918, 7. "8 RACT 1938, 3-47
80

683 violently assaulted the Sub-Divisional Officer of Pakpattan and his party (and would have driven them into the Sutlej were it not for the timely arrival of police reinforcements), while in 1939 it was reported some of the villagers were taking a 'prominent part' in the local Kisan (anti-landlord and anti-moneylender) movement. So in 1940 the worst six of these villages were brought under the Department's direct control.82Thereafter the 'sledge hammer' of the Criminal Tribes Act was forcefully brought down, to the extent that it was alleged in the Punjab Legislative Assembly in 1944 that the local police were harassing the inhabitants of these villages by ordering them to assemble for roll call one day at one village, the next day at another, and so on throughout the week, so preventing them from pursuing any kind of legitimate occupation.83 In the various types of reformatory settlements reclamation work-the declared priority of the Punjab Government-proceeded slowly and erratically in the decades after 192o. Discipline amongst the inmates of the central Amritsar Reformatory was, as might be expected, always a problem given that the 'worst characters' from the criminal tribes and gangs were sent there, and usually arrived 'seething with discontent and averse to all measures of discipline and control.'"84 Escape bids were routine (and sometimes successful), and in 1933 a group of Suppal Darzis, recently transported from Multan, attempted to assassinate the Superintendant, Diwan Brahm Nath.g" The industrial settlements, on the other hand, were an acknowledged organizational failure. Originally established to instil the habits of settled work amongst the wandering criminal tribesmen, these institutions had served the British well during the labourscarce days of the Great War. Thereafter, however, they were gradually abandoned-their number fell from twelve in 1919 to seven in 1928 to just two in 1947--on the grounds that their conditions were detrimental to the health of a people used to roaming free, and that the wandering tribesmen themselves would far rather work for themselves in agricultural settlements than labour for others.86With the
"8 RACT 1937, 10-11;
13

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

The Punjab Minister of Finance, Manohar Lal, denied being aware of this: Debates,vol XXII, no. 14, 16 March 1944, 60o9-o. For PunjabLegislativeAssembly other allegations of harassment of criminal tribesmen, see ibid., vol. XI, no. 1, 8
Jan. 1940, 9; vol. 84 RACT 1927, 85 RACT 1933, 86 RACT 1934, XII, no. 5, 11 March 1940, 266. 11.
11-2.

1938, 3-4-

7, 1; I

1937,

15; Bhargava, The Criminal Tribes, 105-6.

684

ANDREW

J. MAJOR

release of 5,000 acres of land in the Nili Bar Colony for criminal tribes reclamation in 1928, a new type of agricultural colony for wandering tribes, established on a cooperative basis with loans from banks, was introduced. Whereas there had been ten agricultural settlements with a total population of 3,140 in 1919, there were 25 agricultural settlements and colonies with a total population of 12,669 in 1938.87 It was the older agricultural settlements that gave the British the most satisfaction. By the early 1930s these settlements had all acquired a host of ancilliary services to help with the reformation of the inhabitants: cooperative supply shops, cooperative credit societies, primary schools, dispensaries, the services of religious teachers, Red Cross Societies, St John Ambulance classes, Scouting troops, Better-Farming and Better-Living Societies. An annual sports tournament, designed to encourage 'happy companionship, healthy rivalry and sportsmanship' was being attended by nearly 500 criminal tribes youths from all over the province, and-incredibly-four youths had taken part in the Olympic games of 1924.-8 Year after year the steady reformation of the inhabitants was recorded. Old tribal tastes and habits gave way to those of the moral peasant: tribesmen 'whose apparel used to be a narrow loin cloth, now dress like respectable zamindars. The habit of drinking, which in some cases was regarded as a religious necessity, has vanished almost entirely.'"' By 1936 nearly 300 tenants had met the qualifications for the award of occupancy rights, thus becoming 'respectable zamindars' in more than just dress.9" Other signs of reformation included the construction by the inhabitants of their own places of worship (mosques, gurudwaras and mandirs), the frequency with which inhabitants willingly helped with the detection and arrest of absconders, and the steadily declining crime rate: for instance, in 1931, a year when agricultural prices fell drastically, there were only nineteen persons out of a total registered settlement population of 11,628 who were convicted of an offence under the Indian Penal Code.9' Yet there were serious problems, too. One was the tribesmen's lack of enthusiasm for education of their children. Primary education was 'admittedly the most important and effective factor in the
87

90 RACT 1936, 14. "' RACT '93', 3-

RACT 1928, 6; 1938, 1588 RACT 1926, 9; 1931, 15'9 RACT 1929, 9.

STATE AND CRIMINAL TRIBES IN PUNJAB

685

reclamation and up-lift of Criminal Tribes.'"2 Yet the number of boys and girls attending settlement schools rose slowly: from 2,233 in 1928 (when all settlements were provided with primary schools, and the total settlement population was 10,839) to 2,606 in 1938 (when the total agricultural settlement population was 12,669). The same held for attendance of settled tribe youths at village schools: in 1928 (after a system of scholarships had been introduced) 5,567 boys were receiving primary education, while a decade later (after the compulsory education rule had been more rigorously enforced) the total had risen to only 5,682."3 Part of the problem was that the limited number of government posts available to educated youths inclined many parents not to 'make much' of the education of their children.94 Also, with the onset of economic depression in the early 1930s, many settled tribesmen were forced to move in search of work, or pull their boys out of schools to supplement family labour.95 A second problem concerned the cooperative supply shops and credit societies. These institutions, which had been 'established in a state of fever' in 1927, were supposed to give criminal tribesmen a crash course in modern and honest money management. Yet within a few years it was found that virtually no business was being conducted. On the one hand, economic depression prevented many tribesmen from keeping up with their installments; on the other, corrupt officials-who caused 'greater trouble' than any members of the criminal tribes-were found to have been fiddling the books. Even after irrecoverable debts had been written off by the government, it was admitted in 1938 that only five out of fifteen supply shops and four out of seventeen credit societies could be said to be functioning well.96 Finally, there was the problem of 'the absence of public interest' in the work of reclaiming criminal tribesmen. With the exception of zealous and relatively affluent philanthropic organizations like the Salvation Army and the Canadian Mission, the supposedly civicminded elites in Punjabi society paid scant attention to the official
92

RACT 1933, 17.

RACT 1928, 10-11; 1938, 24. 9 RACT i933, 18. In 1934 the Minas of Shahjanahpur, formerly 'amongst the most violent and enterprising dacoits and murderers of India', had 47 men in government service. Other criminal tribes were not so fortunate, however: RACT
9

I9/34, 6.

an economically bad year: RACT 1929, 13; 1933, 17. 96 RACT 1928, 11; 1933, 19; i936, 20-21; 1938, 26.

9 Hence the decline from 6,90o8boys in village schools in 1929 to 5,438 in 1933,

686

ANDREWJ.

MAJOR

pleas for assistance, other than to attempt spiritual reclamation. As the Home Secretary to the Government of Punjab bitterly put it in 1923: Most of the settlements are nominally in the charge of religious or philanthropic societies, but with one or two notable exceptions these bodies show little practical interest except in the matter of the appointment of religious teachers and they are not prepared to spend anything more than the Government grant upon the work. The real management of the settlements is in the great majority of cases in the hands of the official staff.97 By 1936 the Punjab Government had grown tired of this public 'apathy' and in that year philanthropic involvement in the running of criminal tribes settlements was abruptly terminated.98

Conclusion
When the British took over the Punjab in 1849 they inherited from the older provinces an official stereotype of criminal tribesmen as debased and depraved savages who committed crime because it was in their blood to do so. Consequently, for many years the main thrust of their policy was control and punishment, rather than reclamation. The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 was passed essentially to restore the punitory powers which the Punjab Chief Court's 1867 ruling had taken away. Where reclamation efforts were made, as in the Sansi kots at Sialkot, they invariably failed simply because the Punjab School was not prepared to place adequate resources in the hands of tribesmen who were supposed to transform themselves into agriculturalists. Even the preventive and punitive side to policy did not always work as well as expected because harsh controls often only drove tribesmen to more crime. This explains the alternating severity and laxity of the registration mechanism in the periods 18721902 and 1917-26. By about 1920 the old view of tribesmen was giving way to one that acknowledged that social and economic realities-not geneswere the primary determinants of tribal crime: that crime was not a 'sport' but a matter of survival. The main thrust of policy accordingly became reclamation with a view to the ultimate assimilation of the tribesmen into the general community. Compared to other prov9 Pb Home/Judicial A 98 RACT 1936, 23.

Progs, Feb. 1929, no. 18 (IOL).

STATE

AND CRIMINAL

TRIBES

IN PUNJAB

687

inces, the Punjab was fortunate in having vast land resources in the newly-developed canal colonies that could be used for agricultural settlements proved (especially once the industrial settlements to higher priorities, the Punjab School was unsatisfactory). Owing unable to allot as much new canal land to criminal tribes as originally hoped. Nevertheless it is significant that at the end of the colonial period 19.4% of the Punjab's notified criminal tribes population was residing in settlements and reformatories, compared to a paltry 0.24% in the case of the United Provinces."9 There can be no doubt that, despite recurring problems, these agricultural settlements did play an important role in reforming the Punjab's criminal tribes and keeping the province's crime rate relatively low, even during the depression of the 1930s. On the other hand, it has to be pointed out that at the end of the colonial period the notified criminal tribes population of the Punjab was 132,365 (compared to 150,596 in 1931), of whom about 13,000 individuals were registered and therefore still subject to restrictions.100 This suggests that the ultimate objective of post-1920 policy, i.e. assimilation into the wider community, was still far from realization, and would have to be taken up by independent India's rulers.'0' The Punjab School was not wholly responsible for this disappointing state of affairs, however, since the province's indigenous elite had been invited to play a role in reclamation work. It might well be that the Punjab School-ever obsessed with financial stringency-saw in the philanthropic societies a 'cheap agency' for assisting with this work. But the fact that most of these societies were only concerned with making religious converts out of the tribesmen is surely an indictment of their sense of social responsibility. Interestingly, Act VI of 1924 provided for individual provinces to repeal the Criminal Tribes Act within their territories if they wished, but the Punjab Government never took up this option, even after 1937 when a Unionist ministry came to power under the system of responsible government in the provinces. A reading of the Punjab Legislative Assembly Debates for the period 1937-46 is instructive in this respect: during these years no elected Punjabi politician officially questioned the
"9 Bhargava, The Criminal Tribes, 122-3. '00 Ibid. '0' For part of the post-1947 story, see P. C. Biswas, TheEx-Criminal Tribes ofDelhi

State (Delhi, 196o). For a report on criminal tribe refugees from West Punjab being sent as labourers on the Bhakra Dam project in 1948, see The Tribune(Ambala), 19
May 1948.

688

ANDREW

J. MAJOR

need to retain the Act, and while several assemblymen did query the registration of specific criminal tribes in particular districts, an equal number rose to put questions concerning the communal distribution of posts within the Criminal Tribes Department. For the Punjabi elite, there were clearly more important issues at hand than the social salvation of the criminal tribes. For the criminal tribes, on the other hand, there must assuredly have been something faintly suspicious about freedom's ever-louder clarion call.