In November 2019, we hosted guest curators on our Twitter to explore the colonial roots, legacy & current issues regarding legislation that declared socially marginalized & nomadic communities as ‘criminals’: Criminal Tribes Act (CTA). Each of the curators took up the detsolnet handle for a week to explain several aspects of CTA.
Dr. Jessica Hinchy
Dr. Jessica Hinchy is a historian whose research examines gender, sexuality and colonialism in India. She is a professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) and the writer of ‘Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c. 1850-1900‘. Jessica took up the handle to explain the early classification of families and communities under the CTA. She also specifically explored everyday life, children of so-called “criminal tribes” and gender, sexuality, and familial norms as structured by the Act.
Click through Jessica’s curation in the threads below:
Dr. Sarah Gandee
Dr. Sarah Gandee‘s research examines crime, law, and decolonization in India. She is a Past & Present Fellow 2019-21 at the Institute of Historical Research, London. Sarah’s curation focused on CTA towards the end of colonial rule, its entanglements with the project of decolonization, the development Habitual Offenders Act after Independence, and the state’s continued engagements with “denotified tribes”.
Click through Sarah’s curation in the threads below:
Nikita Sonavane & Ameya Bokil
Nikita Sonavane & Ameya Bokil are lawyers and researchers working on police violence and criminalization, especially with people from the Pardhi community, a Denotified Tribal community in Bhopal. They now run the Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project (@CPAProject) in Bhopal. Nikita & Ameya’s curation focused on the contemporary experiences of people from DNT communities in Bhopal. They discussed current laws and police practices which target DNT communities and their impact on individuals and families. They also shared work by young community members who have faced detention and ill-treatment in custody, like that of poet, Tasveer Parmar.
Click through their curation in the threads below: