University of Cambridge

Graduate Student, History

Peterhouse

Thesis Title: Torture and Revenue Extraction in Company Administered India, c. 1800-1855

About

My research examines how torture and violence in general were utilized by the British authorities as a method of revenue extraction and social control in 19th century India. Crucially, I want to look at how Indians themselves fit into these processes and how the influence of the global humanitarian movements influenced subcontinent politics. Two questions will guide my research. First, to what extent did systemic agrarian violence determine the political makeup of the colonial state and the evolution of later Indian nationalism as it underwent various forms throughout the 19th century? Second, how was it that the East India Company, and later British government, which believed themselves to be not only superior to, but also to be liberating Indians from the oppression of ‘Oriental Despotism’, simultaneously administer a by all accounts brutal colonial government known for its corporeal punishment? It is this Foucauldian dichotomy of the power of the colonial state that needs to be addressed in order to better understand the nature of colonial regimes and how they fit into the wider contexts of liberal political thought.

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