Respectable Anxiety, Plebeian Criminality : Politics of the Goondas Act (1923) of Colonial Calcutta

Abstract

With the Goondas Act of 1923, Calcutta conferred on its police executive powers of deporting virtually any man from the city without a trial under the pretext that he was a violent criminal of migrant origin. The Act deliberately did not define the goonda, as it was ‘known’ to all in the city who he was. Fear of violence by the migrant poor was felt in Calcutta earlier, but since 1920 the goondas assumed special significance, as a new and commonly accepted social image. From this year, the goonda was invented through : the Marwari traders’ search for higher social status ; the demands by the police for powers to subdue the migrant poor who constituted the mass ; and the Bengali Hindu English-educated gentlefolk’s perceived necessity to retain an honest an idealist political self-image at the time of tumultuous mass politics.