Tracing Biometric Assemblages in India’s Surveillance State: Reproducing Colonial Logics, Reifying Caste Purity, and Quelling Dissent Through Aadhaar
traces the historical conditions that rendered the nation-state of India as having the world’s largest biometric surveillance system: Aadhaar. Surveillance practices used by the British Raj mirrors the current social order of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as they use surveillance to similar ends in today’s political economy, through the intersecting forces of neoliberalism and ethno-nationalism. This thesis is an exploration into how India’s current surveillance regimes cultivate biometric surveillant assemblages through Aadhaar. Contrary to claims that Aadhaar was created to empower the poor, I argue that these surveillance regimes are actually fundamentally oppressive. On one hand, Aadhaar champions biopolitical control used to uphold caste purity, control and coerce marginalized bodies, and anticipate, suppress, and punish dissent against the Indian nation-state. On the other hand, Aadhaar is also used as a means to achieve necropolitical control over those who fail to assimilate into the system and become disposable to the nation-state. These processes are informed by values of Brahmanical hegemony, capitalism, Hindu supremacy, and patriarchy. In order to move towards a praxis of anti-surveillance, we must make political demands for dominationless societies where care, solidarity, and trust substitute surveillance.
Dekh Rahe: An Interactive Timeline of India’s Surveillance State from Colonialism to Hindutva
is an interactive digital archival timeline that traces the evolution, lineage, history, and current state of the state of surveillance in the changing nation-state of India and the multifaceted ways that it deeply harms the lives of the most marginalized. Through various forms of multimedia, such as articles, videos, photos, podcasts, news articles, and testimonies, users will explore various points in history that show that surveillance is not a one-time phenomenon, but rather, a growing process. Surveillance regimes, instituted by the brutal colonialist regime, are being continued by the current ethno-nationalist rule — the surveillance state aids, expands, and bolsters Hindutva and upholds caste purity. Dekh Rahe seeks to contribute to a growing underground cultural, artistic, and philosophical digital movement that fights back against capitalist media consumption. Dekh Rahe is meant to be a reflexive tool of popular education on the web to elucidate how our rights, privacy, and autonomy are being eroded by surveillance regimes, informed by growing neoliberal and ethno-nationalist conditions.
video presentation
Recommended Resolution Viewing: 13 inch (2560 x 1600 px)
