Nabhojeet Sen

Punishment and Labor Regime: The Indian Subcontinent, 1750s–1870s

My Research looks the multiple entanglements between punishment and labour in early modern and colonial India. My project looks at this along three interrelated axis: (1) punishment of labourers, (2) labour as punishment and punitive pluralism and simultaneously looks at (3) multiple relations that emerged because of this: convict transportation, corporal and capital punishment, incarceration (penal reform), forced labour on public works and their connection with other forms of coerced labour.

By locating these at the time when the Indian subcontinent was undergoing wide range economic and social transformations and dislocations caused by the advent of colonial rule, my research questions twin liberal paradigms of labour and punishment: that multiple labour relations were replaced by wage labour and incarceration came to replace the different punitive experiences along with the march to capitalism and modernity.

since 2019
Ph.D. in History, University of Bonn, Germany

2014–2017
M.Phil. in History, Ambedkar University Delhi, India

2009–2014
B.A. and M.A. in History, University of Delhi, India 

since 2019
Research Associate in Research Group Punishment, Labor and Dependency, University of Bonn, Germany

2017–2018
Research Associate in the book project Hindu Nationalism in India: The 20th Century Journey, Vinay Sitapati, Ashoka University (Sonepat)

2014–2015
Research Associate in the Oral History Division (OHD), Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, India