Abstract
Police violence is cast as a graphic, brutal spectacle of power on the bodies of the poor. This popular understanding is only the most visible form of routinised arbitrary violence perpetrated by the police. In this article, we study the scope and forms of police discretion in ordinary policing tasks informed by Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 to argue that the police frame criminality not through evidence-gathering but through the power of language and distorted narratives that are passed off as discoverable truths derived from the institution of caste. Through a study focused on alcohol policing under the Madhya Pradesh Excise Act, 1915, this article seeks to underscore that police discretion is constructed by caste, resulting in the criminalisation of oppressed caste communities.
Recommended Citation (provided in OSCOLA format)
Nikita Sonavane,
"Deconstructing Police Discretion as Brahminism"
(2023)
19(1)
Socio-Legal Review
https://doi.org/10.55496/PXZR3368
Available at:
https://repository.nls.ac.in/slr/vol19/iss1/6
Custom Citation
Nikita Sonavane, 'Deconstructing Police Discretion as Brahminism' (2023) 19(1) Socio-Legal Review 52.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.55496/PXZR3368
