The Goonda Returns: How a Category Became a Statute (Again!)
The Goonda Returns: How a Category Became a Statute (Again!) Posted on 23rd September, 2026 (GMT 02:25 hrs) Colonial Archive, Preventive Detention, and the International Law of Impunity in the West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Act, 2026 A statute that cages the file’s name, not the person’s act, is not law. It is the police state reading its own archive aloud, and calling the reading a “legislation”. ABSTRACT On 13 July 2026 West Bengal’s new BJP government announced that the Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Act (gunḍā-damana) and the Maintenance of Public Order (Amendment) Act were in force. The first allows twelve months’ charge-free detention of anyone a magistrate or commissioner deems a reputational “goonda,” criminalises harbouring the externed, and permits year-long district banishment. The second lets a Claims Commission attach and auction the property of alleged rioters and of protest organisers, financiers, instigators an...