Abstract
Beginning with Khudiram Bose's accidental killing of two English women at Muzaffarpur in 1908, this paper follows the evolution of British literary and governmental representations of the figure of ‘the terrorist’ up until the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1925. Both popular novels and government documents from this period shared a common vocabulary, which was used to describe and define anti-colonial revolutionaries in a manner that sought to undermine the political basis of their actions. This vocabulary evolved noticeably throughout the period in question, ultimately transforming revolutionaries and seditionists into ‘terrorists’, who were portrayed in increasingly sinister terms. By situating revolutionary action in Bengal within the context of early twentieth-century British understandings of political violence in Ireland and Russia, this paper argues that the category of ‘terrorism’ was never self-evident, but rather emerged as a tool of the government with which the colonial order could be articulated and protected.
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