Lathi Blows as Analgesic: A Sensory Deconstruction of Gandhian Mobilisation

My ongoing research approaches the first agitational phase of the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930) in Malabar through sensory history. Shifting from conventional narratives of political mobilisation, it frames Gandhian mobilization as a dynamic “sensory siege” designed to dismantle the colonial state’s policy of strategic restraint. By analysing a diverse assemblage—ranging from the “analgesic” chanting of slogans during lathi charges to the multisensory approaches of defying colonial authority—the study demonstrates how sound (in conjunction with other senses) and somatic discipline were deployed as political technologies to goad the state into performative brutality.
 

The research brings into light a stratified “economy of pain,” where the elite, upper-caste leadership outsourced physical risks on to the bodies of younger recruited volunteers to enact the specific performative sequence of: Protest—Arrest—Imprisonment—Martyrdom. I argue that Gandhian nationalism’s reliance on a “rhizomatic” network of upper caste (Brahmin and Nair) kinship created a political sensory environment reflective of the semi-feudal social structure that excluded participation of lower caste and Muslim (Moplah and Tiyya) communities, whose resistance manifested as polemical “counter-noise” at nationalist events.