Left turn to legalism: fact-finding inquiries as political critique in 1970s India

A defining feature of governmental abuse of power is that it is rendered invisible; official records conceal the suffering of the victim. To claim justice, activists have to first establish and document those acts of abuse. This article looks at the practice of voluntary and independent fact-finding investigations undertaken by first-generation civil rights activists in India. Such fact-finding exercises multiplied in the aftermath of the Naxalite movement (1967–1972) and the imposition of the Internal Emergency (1975–1977). The article examines the practice of fact-finding in the 1970s as a mode of activism, and what it reveals about the variegated nature of left political praxis in India. It examines the narratives I collected by conducting interviews with activists and analysing some of the earliest fact-finding reports from the period. The most distinguishing characteristic, I argue, of the practice of fact-finding in this period was that it was a hybrid of liberal legalism and left politics. This practice was a unique strategy that was liberal legalist in its form while retaining an affinity with movements on the far left that denounced ‘bourgeois’ state and law.