ABOUT THE BOOK:

Enacted by the British in the shadows of the unprecedented defeats in numerous battles at the hands of Indian bravehearts, the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 declared entire tribes, castes, and communities as “Born Criminals” without any logical procedure or explanation—with the aim to annihilate every existing gene of valour and heroism which had brought upon them heavy losses during the First War of Independence in 1857.

This book dwells upon the insidious nature of this Act and how long-lasting its effects have been. The various mechanisms used to prevent these effects from fading away, such as dehumanization and de-individualization, have been explored and an attempt has been made to bring out the main motive behind enacting the Act. This book also brings to light the heroic deeds of individuals of five of the communities mentioned under this Act, which cost them so dearly.

The book draws from original sources like Gazetteer notifications of Amritsar, Province of Oudh and South India, from 1877 to 1959, Government of India documents and reports, Parliamentary Debates, Original Report of the Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee (1949-50), NCDNST Report, first-hand accounts recorded by the contemporary British officials such as Colonel James Welsh (1775–1861) and Robert Caldwell (1881), academic literature, research articles and books examining dehumanization, and studies on de-notified tribes.

Contents

Part I

Nature of the Law—The Criminal Tribes Act

1. The Repealed Act

The Criminal Tribes Act (CTA): at a glance

Enacting the Criminal Tribes Act

Other oppressive British legislations

Criminal Tribes Act and the British: the jurisprudential principle

Why talk about an Act which was repealed in 1952?

Repeal of The Criminal Tribes Act could not deactivate the Act

2. Keeping the Knife Sharp

How did the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) destroy the communities?

Declaring a community 'Criminal'

Destroying the community declared 'Criminal'

The Parliamentary debate to repeal the Criminal Tribes Act

Parliamentary debate, 28 February 1952—repeal of Criminal Tribes
Act

Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava (Punjab)

Inhuman treatment even during drought, by the Administration

Conversion to Islam to move out of CTA list

To reduce the time from eight months for the operation of the Act

Dr. Pattabhi (Madras)

Made to sleep in police station compound

Night visits and bribes/extortion by the police

Forced into human scavenging by the police

Slavery, bonded labour, in the homes of police

Shri Naziruddin Ahmad (West Bengal)

Replacement of Criminal Tribes Act with Habitual Offender’s Act: old wine in new bottle

Why did the lawmakers not give a clean slate?

Why is the system deaf? Dehumanisation is the name of the game

Criminal Tribes Act: a weapon to dehumanise

Concept of Dehumanisation

Unleashing the weapon

Dehumanisation continues

3. “Et tu, Brute?”

Post independence: institutional indifference

Nail in the coffin—by independent India

Colonial stand endorsed

Intellectual class and academia sang the colonial narrative

CTA Enquiry Committee—endorsed the colonial narrative

Part II

The Criminal Tribes were not Criminals, but Heroes

4. Motives behind enacting the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871

Why was the Criminal Tribes Act 1871 enacted by the British?

Tracing the amendments in Criminal Tribes Acts and the historical events taking place around the time

North-Western Provinces and the Panjab

Oudh

5. Criminals or Warriors?

‘Criminal Tribes’ under the Criminal Tribes Act

Analysing the data in the above table

The Warriors

‘Fighting Race’ as identified by the British Military Department

People of the forest—the forest-dwellers

Vulnerable communities

Part III

Heroes Turned into ‘Born Criminals’

6. The Bhils: Warriors Who the British Feared

The Bhils

The Bhil war of 1818 against the British

The First War of Independence 1857 and the Bhils

Tantya Bhil—Freedom Fighter of 1857

Govind Guru and the Mangarh Massacre 1913

7. The Gujjars: Warriors who Defeated Timur

The Gujjars

The Khatana Gujjar kings of Kabul

The brave Gujjar warrior, Daive Yan

Gujjar forces besieged Delhi

Jograj Singh Gujjar, Rampyari Gujjar and the Mahapanchayat
army

Gujjar warriors in the First War of Independence

Pratap Rao Gujjar—the Maratha commander-in-chief

Choudhri Kadam Singh

8. The Pasis: A strong Wall Against Invaders for two hundred Years

The Pasi Warriors

Maharaja Suhel Dev

Maharaja Bijli Pasi

Uda Devi

Madari Pasi

9. The Poligars: The Invincible and Righteous Warriors

The wars which struck the British with fear

The righteous and magnanimous warriors

The invincible

The braves

Puli Tevar

Veerapandiya Kattabomman

Oomathurai

The Maruthu (Murdoos) brothers—rulers of Sivagangai—Periya Maruthu, and Chinna Maruthu

The fantastic Poligars

10. The Sansis: Founders of the Sikh Empire

The Sansis

Maharaja Ranjit Singh

Preface

While reading about the First War of Independence in India in 1857, I felt that there was a need to understand the events that followed the war in detail. As I read about the events that ensued after, I could not help but notice a number of Acts introduced by the British. The backgrounds of each of these Acts made me look at them as vindictive responses of the British to the various endeavours of the Indian people to regain complete freedom.

The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 caught my attention—it is shocking how a completely unreasonable, illogical and unjustifiable a legislation operated on such a large scale. It was even more surprising that the Act remained untouched for nearly five years after India became an independent country. When it did get repealed, it was ‘replaced’ by the Habitual Offenders Act. The social stigma that has been created due to these legislations against communities that were innocent and fought for our independence, has largely contributed to the ostracisation of these communities.

This book explains the mechanism by which the Criminal Tribes Act destroyed these communities, subjecting them to easy exploitation. The book also recounts the history of five of these communities, the Sansis, the Gujjars, the Bhils, the Pasis and the Poligars, and talks of the value and high sense of honour displayed by the legendary leaders from these communities.

—Nitya Tripathy

ONE

The Repealed Act
Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.
—Edmund Burke

Prometheus is still waiting for Heracles to shoot the eagle…
The Criminal Tribes Act (CTA): at a glance
After the First Indian War of Independence in 1857, the British Government took over the ‘governance’ of India from the hands of the British East India Company. However, as one would expect, a change in government only led to an increase in the list of vindictive laws. The British Company and the British Government were cut from the same cloth; they were both British and cared only about usurping the resources and tightening their rule over India, which they had acquired through deceit and cruelty.
Deceit alone could not have helped them in their designs. Their plans would have crumbled against the intent of many brave Indians—they needed something more, something long-lasting and lethal, which would keep even the progeny of their opponents crushed in spirit and so traumatised, that they would be unable to stand up against them. The British found an appropriate weapon in the legal system. They put in place laws that not only alienated, diced, and shredded Indian society, but also left a virus so vicious that with time, it triggered a malfunction of the autoimmune system of Indian society, turning it against their own.
The most insidious of such legislations was the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871, which under Part I, Section 2, stated:
If the Local Government has reason to believe that any tribe, gang, or class of persons is addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offenses, it may report the case to the [President] in Council and may request his permission to declare such tribe, gang or class to be a criminal tribe.
The Act enabled the local government to declare an entire tribe, gang, and class of persons as Criminal Tribes if the local government had ‘reason to believe’. They did not need any evidence to prove that the group was ‘addicted’ to crime. The Act did not define the term ‘addiction’ objectively either. The declaration would label the entire community in question, and the future generations born to them as 'criminals’, as if they carried a criminal gene and were criminals by birth.
The Act was not the first of its kind or a maiden attempt at such an atrocity on Indians by the British. In fact, such legislations were encouraged by the success of the experiments started by Warren Hastings’s implementation of Article 35 of 1772, which extended punishment for dacoity beyond the offender, to his kin and community. This principle of jurisprudence was further consolidated by The Thugee Act XXX 1836, which was passed during the tenure of Thomas B. Macaulay as the Law Member, implicating a person for even belonging to a group which is found to be involved in ‘thugee’. The Act did not outline or explain what exactly a thug was or what the crime of thugee constituted. The Thugee Act was applied retrospectively and extended the jurisdiction of the company court for the offense to territories beyond the dominion of the company.
The Thugee Act of 1836 had set a legal precedent, convicting individuals for not the act committed, but for the perceived association with a group declared criminal. Darren Reid mentioned in On the Origin of Thuggee: Determining the Existence of Thugs in Pre-British India (2017), that “although thuggee existed prior to British arrival, it was manipulated into a distinctly Hindu crime to reinforce ideas of racial superiority”. He also mentions that in the recent past few decades, historians have felt that the narrative of the colonial British administration regarding thugee, could have been crafted with the design to enable the colonisers to usurp more judicial powers. The Thugee Act of 1836 was the ground; the demon was unleashed in the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871—the former was the precedent for the latter.
Enacting the Criminal Tribes Act
What possible justification could have been provided to enact an Act as atrocious as the Criminal Tribes Act, would certainly evoke curiosity. Reading the excerpts of the debate is as baffling as the Act itself.
Mr. T.V. Stephens, the then Member for Law and Order, put forth the argument in the council at the time of the debate on the Criminal Tribes Act 1871, with the following justifications, to keep the movement and activities of the Mina and similar tribes in control.
“They [Mina of Shajanpur] maintain fleet (sic.) Camels, some of which may be found secreted in their premises in readiness for an expedition, or but now arrived from some unknown raid. Cows, buffaloes, and goats are among their possessions; they live amid abundance and they want for nothing…
….Plenty they have, plenty they spend, and plenty they bestow, and there is no end to their charity.”
The justification for declaring the Mina as ‘born criminal’ or as belonging to a Criminal Tribe is based on the assumption that Mina are affluent and comfortable. The ‘guilt of loot’ is derived from the fact that that there must have been unknown raids and that camels might have been used. No recovery of loot or evidence of such looting were mentioned. They conveniently forgot to mention that the Mina had always enjoyed this affluence, as Sir Denzil Ibbetson in his book on Punjab Castes states:
“Minas were formerly the rulers of much of the country now held by the Jaipur Chief…”
Therefore, the justification was as atrocious and lame, as the Act was vicious and gruesome.
Other oppressive British legislations
The Mina were the first of the communities that the British wanted to victimise with the CTA. However, the CTA was surely not the only weapon they held. The British have a history of legislating many such atrocious Acts, and most of them were enacted after the First War of Independence in 1857.
They enacted Murderous Outrage Regulation, 1877, which empowered the British to exterminate anyone whom they declared a ‘fanatic’. The Dramatic Performances Act, of 1876
served to curtail the rights of Indians to exhibit plays or theatre without British approval. After plays like Nil Darpan highlighted the plight of poor Indian Indigo cultivators at the hands of British planters, the Act effectively gagged Indians from expressing themselves via theatre. The Indian Treasure Trove Act, 1878, made all treasures found in India the property of ‘Her Majesty’. The Arms Act, 1878, disarmed Indians, converting them into game.
Criminal Tribes Act and the British: the jurisprudential principle
The jurisprudential principle evolved by the British in India from Article 35 of 1772, to the Thugee Act of 1836, and finally to the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, can be decoded as having the following ingredients:
Crimes like dacoity, stealing of property or children, or murder, etc., if committed by any member of a community, caste, or tribe at some recurring frequency, the entire community can be identified as being habitually criminal and declared as ‘criminal’. Their future progeny too can be considered criminals, and by that logic, their ancestors too were assumed to have been criminals. This implies that the ‘criminal’ trait is transferred at birth and is in their genes.
Let us apply this jurisprudential principle to the British.
Mass murders committed not by a few members of the British community, but formally sanctioned by the British Government in India and in other colonies they occupied, were regular and frequent occurrences, frequent enough to be deemed habitual. The massacre of about 1,500 Bhils in Mangadh in 1913, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 in which around 1,100 Indians lost their lives, and the killing of 1,200 tribals at Palchitaria in 1922. India has been no exception for such mass murders carried out by British administration. These very same tendencies and actions can be seen in the other British colonies as well. For example, the death of about 10,000 people in Ceylon in 1818, the Myall Creek Massacre of indigenous Australians in 1838, or the Qissa Khwani massacre in 1930.
The tendencies to torture and kill, which were not limited to mass massacres as mentioned above, but British rule saw an unprecedented trend of famines in its colonies. The article Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, by Senjuti Mallik mentions that there were 25 major famines in India from 1858 to 1947. They were direct outcomes of British exploitative policies in India. The loot, dacoity and embezzlement were systematic and State-sanctioned. The British disrupted symbiotic relations between various layers in society, and played havoc in rural areas with revenue settlement policies.
It can be concluded that the British killed indigenous people and stole their wealth. The loot, dacoity and embezzlement were systematic and State-sanctioned. It was British looting which was singularly responsible for the downsliding of the Indian economy, to barely 3% of the world’s economy when the British left the country. In the early nineteenth century, India had 23% share of the world’s economy. This was equivalent to what all of Europe put together was contributing to the world’s economy. The loot was not only State-sanctioned, but also socially applauded in British society.
The British officers who committed these crimes in India and elsewhere, received social elevation and respect back at home. As was the case of General Reginald Dyer, who was responsible for the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, it was reported that, “On his return to Britain, he was presented with £26,000 from a collection made on his behalf by the conservative newspaper the Morning Post who named him ‘the Saviour of the Punjab’ and ‘The Man Who Saved India’.” Shashi Tharoor, in his book says, “… ‘loot’ being a Hindustani word they took into their dictionaries as well as their habits…”

Figure 1: Sepoy Mutiny: Parliamentary Debate. Source—The Sepoy Mutiny (1859). United States: A.H Maltby-online
The worth of British loot was recently estimated to be about $45 trillion in terms of the current value by External Affairs Minister of India.
It was a ‘loot’ in every possible way and of every kind of wealth. Whether it was exploitative exports of material, embezzlement of revenue from India or the plundering of jewels and artefacts from Indian estates, it was all par for course. For example, a minor prince, the ten-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh of India’s Sikh Empire of the Punjab, had to surrender valuable booty which included the Koh-I-Noor diamond, one of the most valuable diamonds in the world, under the pretext of a treaty. The British did not in even one instance exhibit any ethics in their dealings with those they colonised. Thus, British museums are full of the valuable heritage of Indian and other civilisations.
The artwork displayed in the British Museum in London, such as the Benine Bronze and the Elgin Marbles, are but symbols of murder and loot, which were accompanied by the abduction and kidnapping of children, and the human trafficking of indigenous people as slaves and bonded labour. The modus operandi of the British criminals was simple. They terrorised a colony using violence like mass murders, and then stole from the natives their wealth and children, destroyed land, usurped their intellectual property and destroyed the economy. There exists no exception. Every colony or territory they occupied suffered this. The crimes were committed by the British while maligning and derogatory names assigned to the victims, like ‘niggers’, which were equally applied to Hindus. Racism at its peak.

Figure 2: Racism—Hindus were called ‘niggers’ contemptuously. The Sepoy Mutiny (1859). United States: A.H. Maltby
Therefore, the British as a community is not only culturally approving of, but is also an active promoter of a life of crime. In the light of above facts, one can safely conclude that the British are a race that is predatory.
Let us now apply the jurisprudential principles developed by the British in India, which reached its pinnacle in the Criminal Tribes Act 1871, to any community that qualifies as being ‘addicted to crimes’. The British then would be the most deserving of being declared a ‘Criminal Race’. Applying the justice system developed by the British in India, if a human rights violation is actioned by any person of the British race, he is guilty until he proves it otherwise. Restricted enclaves would be created around the world for the person of British ancestry. If they reside in a territory outside Britain, the said nation would take away their children, who would then be placed in reformation schools, so that the next generation can be reformed.
Why talk about an Act which was repealed in 1952?
The Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in 1952. Then why am I writing a book dedicated to a law which was repealed seven decades ago? The Criminal Tribes Act was not a simple piece of legislation. It was a colonial weapon so dangerous, that the repeal of the Act did not deactivate the weapon. The reach and hold of this deadly weapon can be best appreciated through the following five stories.
Case 1
In 1993, police officials engraved the words ‘pickpocket’ on the forehead of a young Sansi tribal woman, Gurdev Kaur, with a machine used to engrave on steel utensils. They did this because she resisted being discriminated for being frisked amongst hundreds of others standing at the Tarn Taran bus stand in Punjab, asking, “Is it written on our forehead that we are pick pockets?” It is reported that, “The etching gun did not initially work due to a power cut, so the police used the battery of a jeep to power it. They forced the women on their knees and held their hands behind while the etching gun ran on their foreheads and blood streamed down their faces.” The cops responsible were sentenced to three years of jail, in a judgement that was delivered 23 years later, in 2016.
Case 2
Unfortunately, the previous case is neither an incident from a bygone era nor a one-off incident, which is evident from the fact that an article on this was published as recently as September 2021. It also carried the following narration regarding the situations that the Sansis face in the region: “When the government wants to project action, its campaign against drugs mostly involves targeting addicts and a few retailers, while the big fish remain at bay. It is the Sansis who bear most of the heat in this drill.”
“During a similar campaign, an 18-year-old girl was picked from her house in Rohti Chhanna village in Patiala. Her widowed mother, Rimmi, said that she had unsuccessfully begged the police officers as well as influential people in the village to arrest her instead of spoiling her daughter’s life by booking her. ‘I spent my life in illicit activities, police stations, and courts, but I did not wish for this kind of life for my daughter—a student of stenography after the 12th grade. Now she is trapped in this world of crime,’ she wailed.”
Case 3
In the Ankush Maruti Shinde vs State of Maharashtra (2019) case, the Supreme Court found all six convicts innocent in a multiple murder and rape that took place at Nasik. The accused belonged to a de-notified community. They had suffered sixteen years of jail. The Supreme Court, while delivering the judgement, spelled out unambiguously that the police had framed the six. The Supreme Court, in the judgement, said in para 14:

Figure 3: Ankush Maruti Shende and others Vs State of Maharashtra para 14 of the judgement
Case 4
“Geeta bai, a senior member of the Pardhi community in Gandhi Nagar basti in Bhopal, spoke of her long and ongoing fight to win justice for her younger sister—Indramal bai. Indramal bai was pushed to set herself on fire by members of the police who had been harassing her and attempting extortion for several days in November 2017. She succumbed to her burns a few days later—and the police immediately set to work to cover up any evidence of wrongdoing on their part, claiming her sari caught fire while she was setting fire to a pile of scraps. After street protests, a case was filed, and after two years, the high court ordered a CBI inquiry to be set up in 2019. Last year, the CBI charged two officers with abetment of suicide and ordered a departmental inquiry into the actions of a third.”
Case 5
“…Tinti Bai, a 14-year-old Pardhi who committed suicide following harassment from the police. According to a report: ‘An investigation by the MP Human Rights Commission also concluded that the accused police personnel should be booked for instigating her suicide and that compensation be paid to the family.’ However, since the commission is only a recommendatory body, these conclusions could only serve as the basis for a police investigation, which was begun, but never concluded. Tinti Bai’s family members and neighbours gave several rounds of testimonies, only to find no resolution or justice at the end of it all.” A later part of the article where this report appears, informs us that the policeman who was held responsible for her death did not face any consequences, and even got promoted.
In all five cases mentioned above, the victims did not suffer because of any act committed by them. They were victimised for belonging to a community that was declared a criminal tribe, under the Criminal Tribes Act, the Act which was repealed about seven decades ago.
The Act was repealed in 1952. The Criminal Tribes Act was a lethal weapon crafted slyly to demolish and destroy the enemy forever. A community may emerge like a phoenix after a Holocaust, reach the White House after the dark ages of slavery, lead a democracy where your forefathers were brought as slaves, or build an advanced nation after facing atomic blasts. But a community has no hope if a legislature declares them as being born criminal, displaces them, steals their children, and imposes on them surveillance, with attendance mandatory for all adults (in some case children also) who are to present themselves at the police station four to five times in a day, as well as at night, every single day of their lives and in the lives of their progeny, from 1871 to 1952.
The notion that these communities are hardcore criminals is etched in the minds of the people and the authorities alike, leaving them vulnerable to being implicated in cases on mere perception. The police find in them, an easy route to ‘solve’ any criminal case, as scapegoats. The community is exploited in all possible ways.
The de-notified communities are fair game for the predatory instincts of miscreants and dishonest police personnel alike. People are drawn from the very same society that taints them, into the judiciary as well. There is a high likelihood then that these people in authority, despite having the best of intentions, succumb to the prejudices of society.
Society makes these communities either guilty or invisible. Post-independence many disadvantaged social groups have been integrated into society seamlessly, and today they are very much a part of the mainstream, with equal rights. However, the plight of the de-notified communities goes unnoticed by everyone, while predators hunt them down every day. It appears that society has lost empathy for them, and believes that they are not one of their own. History has witnessed this situation during the Holocaust, in the Tutsi massacre in Rwanda, and in the inhuman treatment of black slaves in America. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate how in independent India, after seven decades of the Criminal Tribes Act being repealed, the above stories still haunt society.
Repeal of The Criminal Tribes Act could not deactivate the Act
While the administration and judiciary were key players, the de-notified communities were invisible to society as well. The systemic failure happened at various levels. The Act was repealed in 1952 after the recommendation of the Criminal Tribes Act Enquiry Committee Report 1951, chaired by Ayyangar, Ananthasayanam M (The Enquiry Committee). But the Act was so viciously designed that the venom of its provisions poisoned the lifeline of the communities concerned for around 81 years, subjecting them to a systematic destruction of their physical and mental health, and the breakdown of their social structure, reducing them to sub-human creatures.
The case studies presented earlier in this chapter are evidence that these communities are not only invisible to society, but that society itself believes that the treatment given to the communities is justif