Predatory Care: The Imperial Hunt in Mughal and British India

In: Journal of historical sociology, Volume 14, Issue 1, p. 79-107

Abstract

Taking the hunt as both metaphor of rule and political practice, this paper compares the predatory exercises of two imperial formations in India: the late British Raj and the sixteenth‐century Mughal empire. The British pursuit of man‐eaters confronted feline terror with sovereign might, securing the bodies and hearts of resistant subjects through spectacles of responsible force. The Mughal hunt, on the other hand, took unruly nobles and chieftains as the objects of its fearful care, winning their obedient submission through the exercise of a predatory sovereignty. Both instances of 'predatory care' shed light on the troubling intimacy of biopolitical cultivation and sovereign violence.