Approver’s Testimony: Law, Politics, and the Silencing of the People
By Khandaker A. Raquib
In 1922, during the Non-Cooperation Movement, the Chauri Chaura incident in Uttar Pradesh marked a turning point in history. In response to the police firing, an enraged crowd set fire to a police station, killing about 22 policemen on the spot.
The subsequent trial process was later analyzed by Subaltern Studies scholar Shahid Amin in his influential essay “Approver’s Testimony, Judicial Discourse: The Case of Chauri Chaura.” He shows how the court consciously framed a spontaneous rural outburst as a premeditated “criminal conspiracy.”
The state prosecution presented one accused peasant, Mir Shikari, as an “approver” or witness for the Crown. Though he saved himself from the death penalty by turning approver, his testimony was used by the court to transform the crowd’s reaction into a calculated attack. Individual responsibility was brushed aside, and all accused were held equally liable. Amin argues that the idea of hundreds of peasants organizing in advance to storm the police station is unrealistic; rather, the event was an eruption of sudden public anger, which the court deliberately reconstructed as a conspiracy.
Thus, through court records and the approver’s testimony, the peasants were not seen as political actors or participants in the freedom struggle, but merely as “criminals.” Their role in the national movement was erased, reduced instead to a law-and-order violation. A subordinate court initially sentenced about 172 people to death, though public pressure later reduced this to 19 executions and 110 life sentences.
The Question of Approvers Today
The issue of approvers has resurfaced recently in Bangladesh, during trials concerning crimes against humanity committed in the July Movement. Several powerful accused, including a former police chief, have applied to become approvers in an attempt to mitigate their own liability.
This raises a crucial question: Is the approval of approvers within the judicial framework merely a legal tactic, or is it part of a larger political narrative? Especially in the case of the July violence, where eyewitness accounts, video evidence, and individual responsibilities are readily traceable, the reliance on approvers suggests more than just a legal shortcut. It reflects an effort to construct a single, authoritative account of events.
The Boundary Between Law and Politics
The approver mechanism effectively allows the state to impose a dominant narrative, silencing victims’ families, eyewitnesses, and even the accused themselves. Within the court’s framework, a one-dimensional account emerges, where popular resistance is stripped of its political meaning and recast solely as “crime.”
As a result, the state constructs a framework of collective guilt, presenting the entire crowd as part of a criminal conspiracy rather than identifying the responsibility of specific perpetrators. The political character of a movement disappears, reduced to a question of public disorder.
Conclusion
Approver testimony offers the state more than just a legal tool; it redraws the boundary between law and politics. The voices of the people, their aspirations for freedom, their demands for justice, are erased from the court’s discourse. Instead, violence is defined only as law-breaking, while the political struggle and the people’s resistance vanish into the shadow of a singular state-sanctioned narrative.
