By Fariya Yesmin
Much of the writings on authoritarian legality have been about the changes at the top level – be it the amendments to previous laws or introduction of new laws, over criminalisation of dissent by loose imposition of draconian laws, rejection of bail applications on sloppy grounds, etc. While Scheppele (2018) describes this as autocratic legalism and how it begins with the violent takeover and destruction of all political institutions including the law; others have described this phenomenon as democratic authoritarianism and authoritarian constitutionalism.
In our conception of authoritarianism, we look at the relationship between the expansion of state power and law/legal system which targets the quotidian aspects of social and political life of certain populations. Such forms of violence are visible, yet somehow also obscured from our view. It is overwhelming yet diffused. It may make itself visible momentarily and then recede from direct view at other times, making it difficult to locate and then study them. However, this is not to say that it cannot be studied. The ‘effects’ of such power could be studied in many ways - by engaging with different actors in the system, through the workings of organizations and even studying spaces where they have had a continued presence. Authoritarianism is then to be understood in its continuity rather than rupture.
It is with this view that I propose borderlands spaces as authoritarian zones where mundane aspects such as what one can eat, how can one move, where one can live, how can one earn a livelihood are all decided by the security forces stationed at the borders. I draw this observation based on my ethnographic fieldwork in the riverine Indo-Bangladesh borderlands of South Asia. In my encounter with the villagers who lived in the chars (river islands) across the border informed me, ‘The DC (district Commissioner) has no power here. Here, it is the BSF (border security forces) who is the sarkar. Everything must pass through them’. Checkpoints, identity cards, restrictions on movement and food supplies, bodily frisking etc constitutes the everyday of the people living in these zones. The suspicion of ‘illegal’ cross-border migration and illicit trade takes over their everyday, making state security an everyday practice and a communal experience that crafts their social life and shapes their subjectivity – in turn shaping their relationship with the state. Border security has long rationalized state power and justified its monopoly over lawful violence in these spaces (Ochs 2011).
Borders and borderlands have been largely studied as zones of sovereignty, territorial nationalism and as both sensitive and fluid spaces (Cons 2016, Ibrahim 2008, Ghosh 2017, Reeves 2014, Sur 2021, Van Schendel 2004). Borders are also not fixed spaces or lines on the map that are encountered —either in law or practice. Instead, they are materialised, experienced and embodied through bordering practices and are experienced differently by different actors and populations. A ‘citizen’ one day may become an ‘illegal infiltrator’ on another, or vice versa depending on the way in which the state and the law choose to read their attributes of belonging (Ibrahim & Kothiyal 2021). While the focus of borders and bordering practices have widened over the years; the aim in this sub-project is to shift the focus back to the physical space of borderlands to locate people’s experiences of living in such zones of exception. The role of borderland populations is crucial in understanding people’s relationship to the of the so-called centre and the authoritarian tendencies it depicts. They may constitute the physical ‘edge’, but they are central to the business of authoritarian statecraft.
Fariya is a Post-Doctoral Researcher under the project since September 2023. Her doctoral work is based on courtroom ethnography of the Foreigners' Tribunals in the Indian state of Assam. Fariya is interested in the use of ethnographic method to understand issues that lie at interstices of law and society.
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