ABSTRACT

The communalization of the police, which resulted from the embittered political situation among the rival communities, was a prominent feature of the Partition violence in 1947. Instead of safeguarding minority communities under attack, the police largely condoned and contributed to the violence, not because of sympathies with their coreligionists, but because they could act with impunity in an environment of insubordination and administrative breakdown in the process of the transition of power of the outgoing British colonial state. This article will show that the absence of a restraining authority, impunity from the law at the point of transitional state-created conditions of violence and the participation of law enforcement agencies led to the widespread violence. This documentation is done by accessing previously unexplored police First Information Reports (FIRs) lodged at local police stations at the time, and the reports of the Punjab Special Branch Intelligence Police from the Roberts Club Archives (RCA), Lahore. The analysis not only contributes to recent scholarship that focuses on the ‘new history’ of Partition studies but also provides an intriguing insight into the role of law enforcement agencies in mass violence.

摘要

由敌对社区之间痛苦的政治局势导致的警察社区化是 1947 年分区暴力的一个突出特征。同情他们的同教主义者，但因为他们可以在即将离任的英国殖民国家权力过渡过程中不服从和行政崩溃的环境中逍遥法外。本文将表明，在过渡时期国家创造的暴力条件和执法机构的参与导致了暴力行为的普遍存在，缺乏限制性权威、法律不受惩罚。该文档是通过访问当时在当地警察局提交的以前未开发的警察第一信息报告 (FIR) 以及来自拉合尔罗伯茨俱乐部档案馆 (RCA) 的旁遮普特别部门情报警察的报告来完成的。该分析不仅有助于最近关注分区研究“新历史”的学术研究，而且还提供了对执法机构在大规模暴力中的作用的有趣见解。