Indians live, “fanatically at odds, with their different diets and their incompatible gods”, between frontiers delineated by ragged lines on a map: the Line of Control, the Radcliffe Line, the Line of Actual Control, the Durand Line, the Actual Ground Position Line in Siachen. To speak of the Indian state is to legitimize an authority which can use force on all persons that live between the glacier and the ocean. It means to accept, in practice if not in theory, an authority that has executed guerillas, held cities hostage, crushed rebellions. The existence of a state indicates the existence of “a military power resting on force, so centralized, so necessarily heedless of the individual.”
Authority
Authority
Authority
Indians live, “fanatically at odds, with their different diets and their incompatible gods”, between frontiers delineated by ragged lines on a map: the Line of Control, the Radcliffe Line, the Line of Actual Control, the Durand Line, the Actual Ground Position Line in Siachen. To speak of the Indian state is to legitimize an authority which can use force on all persons that live between the glacier and the ocean. It means to accept, in practice if not in theory, an authority that has executed guerillas, held cities hostage, crushed rebellions. The existence of a state indicates the existence of “a military power resting on force, so centralized, so necessarily heedless of the individual.”