Crisis Governance and Communal Violence in Colonial Kanpur, 1913–1931 A Comparative Study of Administrative Capacity, Spatial Control and State Response

DOI- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22824350

Abstract

This article re-examines three episodes of collective violence in colonial Kanpur—1913, 1927 and 1931—through the narrower problem of crisis governance rather than treating communal hostility as a sufficient explanation for differences in outcome. The central comparative question is why episodes occurring within the same urban environment could produce radically different levels of mortality, duration and administrative disruption. The analysis uses the surviving India Office Records for the 1913 mosque dispute, the evidence submitted before the Cawnpore Riots Enquiry Committee in 1931, retrospective testimony concerning the 1927 riot, contemporary press material, and selected secondary scholarship. The comparison identifies four administrative variables: the physical presence of senior officials, speed of decision-making, spatial organization of police and military resources, and the timing of preventive intervention. The evidence suggests that communal antagonism created a field of risk, but administrative choices substantially shaped how quickly that risk became a prolonged urban crisis. The argument is deliberately limited to Kanpur and does not claim that administrative capacity alone caused or prevented communal violence. Instead, the article proposes a historically grounded model in which state response functions as an intervening variable between social tension and the scale of disorder.

Keywords- Kanpur; Cawnpore; communal violence; colonial administration; crisis governance; police; district magistrate; 1913; 1927; 1931