Colonial Terror

Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule, focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War. It argues that torture was facilitated, systematized, and ultimately sanctioned by first the East India Company and then the Raj because it benefitted the colonial regime.

The book contends that it is only possible to understand the terrorizing nature of the colonial police in India by viewing colonial India as a 'regime of exception'.

Torture was able to flourish in such fertile ground, in which colonial subjects were both included within the domain of colonial law while also being abandoned by it.