Imphal | June 30 : To commemorate the death anniversary of Dr Thingnam Kishan the 2nd Dr Kishan Memorial Lecture was organized in Imphal under the auspices of Dr Thingnam Kishan Foundation. The annual lecture was delivered by Kumar Sanjay Singh of Delhi University’s Swami Shardhananda College on the topic “Politics of Internal Security Acts 1947-2001.”
The main argument in Mr Singh’s paper was an attempt at refuting the “episodic understanding of internal security legislations forwarded by the state and its apologists.” He started his argument by positing against the general understanding of how the state explains the relationship between episodes of internal and external threats and the promulgation of internal security legislations on the pretext that the existing criminal laws are incapable of tackling such threats. He said that such explanation for the promulgation of extra-ordinary law is insufficient on three counts. First, there is absolutely no one to one correspondence between the promulgation of internal security legislations and the episodes of internal threats.
Second, even though the state claims that the acts are specific laws in response to specific threats, their applications betray such specificity. He said, contrary to what is believed, acts promulgated to deal threats in specific areas or specific type are soon applied in different areas and on events not even remotely connected to the purported causes behind the act.
Third, this episodic explanation fails to take into account the texture of promulgation of the internal security legislations in the country. In other words, it does not even attempt to explain the reason behind the fact that while all the acts prior to 1975 were central acts, from 1978, especially 1980, there was a spurt of promulgation of internal security acts from the state legislatures.
He argued in the paper that the internal security legislations are not responses to episodes of internal threats but are a result of deep-seated structural crisis of the state after Independence which was faced with a peculiar problem of the difficulty of finding a viable and legitimate social base.
According to Mr Singh, the first phase was based on the petty-bourgeoisie and lasted from 1947-75 and the second phase was based on the lower castes initiated in 1978 — both phases seeking multi-party alliance with inherent contradictions. These two phases entailed a certain mutation in the form of politics where the first phase resulted in the centralization of the form of politics the second phase resulted in the form of politics becoming regional and the rise of cast and community based politics.
In the first phase when the form of politics was central the texture of internal security legislation was central, with the form of politics becoming regional in the second phase, promulgation of these legislations by the state legislature gained momentum, he argued convincingly. He said that the contour of the politics of India after Independence was basically marked by the making and unmaking of multi-class alliance based, in the first phase on middle class and bourgeoisie, and in the later phase on lower castes especially OBC. But the concerted attempts at harnessing these castes resulted in galvanizing the castes as a political force which, he explained, is the phase when promulgations by state legislatures gained momentum.
He concluded by saying that the vicissitudes of the multi-class alliance and the promulgation of internal security legislations exhibit a greater correspondence than that between the acts and the instances of terrorism. Meanwhile, earlier large number of people paid floral tribute to late Dr Kishan, former bureaucrat who was killed by NSCN-IM cadres in the year 2009.
The main argument in Mr Singh’s paper was an attempt at refuting the “episodic understanding of internal security legislations forwarded by the state and its apologists.” He started his argument by positing against the general understanding of how the state explains the relationship between episodes of internal and external threats and the promulgation of internal security legislations on the pretext that the existing criminal laws are incapable of tackling such threats. He said that such explanation for the promulgation of extra-ordinary law is insufficient on three counts. First, there is absolutely no one to one correspondence between the promulgation of internal security legislations and the episodes of internal threats.
Second, even though the state claims that the acts are specific laws in response to specific threats, their applications betray such specificity. He said, contrary to what is believed, acts promulgated to deal threats in specific areas or specific type are soon applied in different areas and on events not even remotely connected to the purported causes behind the act.
Third, this episodic explanation fails to take into account the texture of promulgation of the internal security legislations in the country. In other words, it does not even attempt to explain the reason behind the fact that while all the acts prior to 1975 were central acts, from 1978, especially 1980, there was a spurt of promulgation of internal security acts from the state legislatures.
He argued in the paper that the internal security legislations are not responses to episodes of internal threats but are a result of deep-seated structural crisis of the state after Independence which was faced with a peculiar problem of the difficulty of finding a viable and legitimate social base.
According to Mr Singh, the first phase was based on the petty-bourgeoisie and lasted from 1947-75 and the second phase was based on the lower castes initiated in 1978 — both phases seeking multi-party alliance with inherent contradictions. These two phases entailed a certain mutation in the form of politics where the first phase resulted in the centralization of the form of politics the second phase resulted in the form of politics becoming regional and the rise of cast and community based politics.
In the first phase when the form of politics was central the texture of internal security legislation was central, with the form of politics becoming regional in the second phase, promulgation of these legislations by the state legislature gained momentum, he argued convincingly. He said that the contour of the politics of India after Independence was basically marked by the making and unmaking of multi-class alliance based, in the first phase on middle class and bourgeoisie, and in the later phase on lower castes especially OBC. But the concerted attempts at harnessing these castes resulted in galvanizing the castes as a political force which, he explained, is the phase when promulgations by state legislatures gained momentum.
He concluded by saying that the vicissitudes of the multi-class alliance and the promulgation of internal security legislations exhibit a greater correspondence than that between the acts and the instances of terrorism. Meanwhile, earlier large number of people paid floral tribute to late Dr Kishan, former bureaucrat who was killed by NSCN-IM cadres in the year 2009.
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