'Who here is a bigger terrorist than the police?' Photography as a politics of encounter in Delhi's Batla House (original) (raw)

Though spectacularly televised, the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai were not the only live event of terror in 2008. In September, news channels broadcast a live ‘encounter’ in which police killed two young Muslim men in Batla House, Delhi, sparking a wide-spread local campaign against state violence. This essay explores the publicizing work of photography in the campaign as a political act that disrupts dominant narratives of ‘Islamic terrorism’ generated by the state and news media. Photographs of the dead men worked as forensic, evidentiary documents, oriented to a future moment of judicial redress. I suggest the politics of this anticipated encounter emphasize marginality in two ways, positioning the Muslims of Batla House as inviting the state to fulfill its promises of justice, even as that very state uses the discourse and practice of law to mark the Muslim as national threat and terrorist.