Making of a Primitive Bandit Criminal: Trial of Jadonang in the British Colonial Court

Abstract

In the game of the ‘have and have nots’ of the texts, the illiterate communities remain the victims. Who produced whose text and ‘interest’ are similarly important in order to understand the reliability of text sources. Jadonang, a highlander messiah cum non-violence freedom fighter was caught, tried, and hanged. This article delves into Jadonang’s trial from an alternative historical perspective, rather than simply accepting Jadonang as the murderer. The testimony of 23 defendants at the trial indicated possibilities of incorporating entire colonial state mechanisms into the construction of facts in order to crush the Zeliangrong movement forever.