Labour and Penal Control in the Criminal Tribes ‘Industrial’ Settlements in Early Twentieth Century Western India

Abstract

One of the key problems with the official archival sources for India’s so-called ‘Criminal Tribes’ is that there is very little that captures the everyday lives of communities who were subjected to the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA), beyond the penal institution. This article explores how we can tease out new material on the work, politics and movements of erstwhile Criminal Tribes by looking at reformatory ‘industrial’ settlements, established between the 1910s and 1930s in Bombay Presidency, as a means of employing communities notified under the CTA in public works and other large-scale industrial projects. Along with identifying the administrative rationale for these settlements, their locational significance and longevity, this article explores the particular forms of surveillance that were developed around industrial work, and the experiences of labour within them. It argues that definitions of ‘criminality’ were, to some extent, negotiated around cultures of work, which drew in ideas about the family unit, traditions of movement and migration, the relationship between cities and their hinterland, and the requirements of capitalist industrial enterprise.