Abstract

Keywords

۱٫ Research methods

۲٫ Death-worlds

۳٫ Silent and encroaching

۴٫ Overt and punitive

۵٫ Dismissive and deflective

۶٫ A world of in/visibles

Declaration of competing intrest

References

Further reading

Abstract

The article concentrates on the ways people’s claim to life, citizenry and democratic dissent were revoked the more they dared to defy and mobilise against a nuclear power plant at Kudankulam in southern India. Building on the literature on biopower and necropower, it is argued that the Indian state is exercising nuclear necropower through the creation of death conditions for subaltern populations as well as their political supporters. These ‘death worlds’ go beyond physical demise to encompass ecological, social and political conditions by which a person’s life is diminished. Victims, suspects, and/or targets are geographically, socially and politically created as a consequence of sliding and syncretic subjugations to do with ‘let die’ and ‘make die’. These variegated perspectives might be delineated by way of three overlapping modalities that embed necropower in the politics of the nuclear industries, environment, social hierarchies and state-backed operations to undermine subaltern populations, anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists. The first modality encompasses ecological factors by way of a silent and encroaching death where nuclear industries subject marginalised communities and casual labourers to a life of environmental uncertainty, exploitation and health hazards. The second is the more overt and punitive violence exacted on- and offline in order to contain and extinguish dissent against nuclear power. The third is by way of producing a culture of vilification in terms of strategies designed to malign and outcaste anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists.

On October 23, 2012, thousands of south Indians who supported the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), languished in a coastal village, Idinthakarai, that had become an ‘open-air jail’. ۱ As arterial roads to it had been cordoned off by police and paramilitaries from March of that year, a group of women made a poignant appeal.2 They wrote in a digital letter:

Do we exist? Do we live within the exclusivity or sterilisation zone? …. We understand that none of our representations or appeals have been considered … We do not want to be relocated or rehabilitated. We want to be here by the seashore in our own birthplace. We want to pursue our livelihoods linked to the sea and its bounties. We want good food, water and access to resources here in these villages. We do not want money that is so ephemeral. We are willing to work hard, earn and live well … We have no complaints other than dissent about the way in which the concerned authorities are unwilling to come to us and allay our fears and doubts. We want them to assure us that the KKNPP [Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant] will not be allowed to attain criticality at the cost of our lives and dreams. We want our sisters and brothers languishing in the jails to be released. We want our peaceful resistance to be dealt with decently and humanely.3

For exercising their right to peaceful dissent, fishing and farming communities who opposed the nuclear power plant were delivered dire blows. In the hands of a punitive state, they were forced to either live in prison or in a ‘sterilisation zone’, a designated 5 kilometer zone around the nuclear reactors as stipulated by India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.4 Both places were empty of their life-potentials to do with their future health, livelihood, and generations (see Abraham, 2012, pp.