[Reader-list] SARAI posting

[Kamal Kumar Mishra]

 Â Dear ANDREW,
    Thousands apologies for not answering to your mail for soooo long,today when i was clearing my mail account i noticed this blunder i have done,i am extremely sorry!!!
       True as you say the relationship between crime and detective is closely related to biometrics and fingerprinting in most of the cases...but you might find it surprising that in  Hindi detective ficttions this link is mostly absent.

Hindi deteective fictions have a few peculiar characteristics par example-1) there might not be a single detective and this function might be performed by many people or 2) detective need not use modern or rational techniques to solve a mystry, role of chance is often crucial in solving a case.
 Thus one hardly finds this clue and puzzle type in hindi detective fictions.
  I have not come across  a single piece translated ,adapted,or original where (here i am talking about the  early hindi detective fictons from 1900-1940's) a detective solves a case with the help of fingerprints.Though, one may find  examples of foot prints, as a clue, but not so elaborate either.

THEN what we have are discourse of criminality  mostly based on jati(caste)n lakchana (physical attributes n morality) where colonial state is often absent in these popular fictions.
hope you find it interesting enough...with apologies again 
warm regards!!!
kamal


On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 Andrew MacDonald wrote :
>Hi Kamal..
>
>   Nice to see your posting on SARAI and your research..I'm a post-grad history student based at Duban, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. I just thought, tangentially, since I have just finished reading it myself, The book Imprint of the Raj - how fingerprinting was born in Colonial India. Maybe you have seen it already, but the relationship between crime and detectives is closely related to biometrics and fingerprinting (which was only then becoming the kind of embryonic, precocious state project we now take for granted). I wonder if their is much in the Hindi literature on this topic? It would be quite interesting...
>   I have worked/am working on aspects of biopower (to sound foucauldian, though i have some real problems with his arguments), concerned less with literature but more with labour and immigration in colonial South Africa)..
>
>   Anway, thought I would put my two cents worth in..
>
>   Andrew
>
>
>---------------------------------
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