Abstract

‘Public interest’, ‘Public purpose’ and ‘Public
authority’ have been a part of our common sense in
socio-political life. Being part of the common sense, they have been put into bracket and accepted
unconditionally as unproblematic categories. However, in India as in other countries, the vocabulary of ‘the
public’ is often accompanied by a co- related
vocabulary of land expropriation, urban illegality, slum demolitions and material suffering of the
subaltern classes. This paper explores the manner in
which the language of ‘the public’ have been utilized
by the Indian judiciary to render the slum dwellers
and pavement dwellers as illegal occupants of public
lands/spaces- thus reifying ‘the public’ as an
unproblematic reference point. The paper attempts to liberate ‘the public’ from its transcendental enclosure and subject it to critical
analysis. It is an attempt to excavate the layered historical sediments that constituted ‘the public’. By
tracing the path of its historical constitution, the paper opens the possibility of making ‘the public’ a
contestable/ debatable category rather than being accepted as a matter of course in our socio-political
life. This journey in history will also shed light upon the original instances of violence through which
the category emerged and became a part of our common sense.

Keywords