The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India

by Jinee Lokaneeta

Using case studies and the results of extensive fieldwork, this book considers the nature of state power and legal violence in liberal democracies by focusing on the interaction between law, science, and policing in India. The postcolonial Indian police have often been accused of using torture in both routine and exceptional criminal cases, but they, and forensic psychologists, have claimed that lie detectors, brain scans, and narcoanalysis (the use of “truth serum,” Sodium Pentothal) represent a paradigm shift away from physical torture; most state high courts in India have upheld this rationale. The Truth Machines examines the emergence and use of these three scientific techniques to analyze two primary themes. First, the book questions whether existing theoretical frameworks for understanding state power and legal violence are adequate to explain constant innovations of the state. Second, it explores the workings of law, science, and policing in the everyday context to generate a theory of state power and legal violence, challenging the monolithic frameworks about this relationship, based on a study of both state and non-state actors.

Jinee Lokaneeta argues that the attempt to replace physical torture with truth machines in India fails because it relies on a confessional paradigm that is contiguous with torture. Her work also provides insights into a police institution that is founded and refounded in its everyday interactions between state and non-state actors. Theorizing a concept of Contingent State, this book demonstrates the disaggregated, and decentered nature of state power and legal violence, creating possible sites of critique and intervention.

Genres: India

264 pages, Hardcover

Published March 10, 2020

Reviews

[Sreedharan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Truth Machines, Jinee Lokaneeta argues against brain scanning, polygraph tests and narcoanalysis. The most compelling arguments against these methods are towards the end of the book and only really require a few paragraphs: (1) polygraph tests are inaccurate, (2) narcoanalysis is dangerous, and (3) brain scanning is inconsistent. Moreover, all three tests can easily be tampered with. A frightening account narrates how the police repeatedly drill inculpatory sentences at the accused right before testing, so as to get a reaction out of them at the time of brain scanning and narcoanalysis. Narcoanalysis videos are also blatantly edited to make it seem as if the suspect was confessing.

But Lokaneeta deals with these instances only at the very end. Instead, coming from a pol-sci background, she comprehensively traces the histories of these methods separately and situates torture within the Indian post-colonial context (admittedly, most of Weber and Foucault went over my head).

A disturbing read on India’s Guantanamos and Abu Ghraibs (particularly the Mecca Masjid and Mumbai Train Blasts episodes), Lokaneeta deals with the grim ground reality. So I’m left with a hypothetical question: If there really existed a perfect truth machine that can’t be tampered with, would its usage still be torture?