Colonizing and transforming the criminal tribesman: the Salvation Army in British India

Under colonial rule, the constitution of the notion of a criminal caste drew on prevailing discourses about crime, class, and work, as well as on British notions about the nature of Indian society. Transforming Indian communities into criminal castes involved the construction of a body of knowledge defining the nature, habits, and characteristics of criminal castes. Through the inculcation of habits of discipline, Salvation Army reformatories sought to reform criminal tribespeople into subjected and productive bodies. Processes of reform were linked to the spatiotemporal expansion of the British Empire and the constitution of new forms of productive relations.