A Petition Like Aplication - Rhetoric PDF

A petition-like application?
Rhetoric and
rationing documents in wartime Delhi,
1941–451
Tarangini Sriraman
Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi
This article looks at rhetorical devices employed by certain classes of claimants in applica-
tions for rationed commodities in wartime Delhi in the last decade of colonial rule. In the
face of a war-driven colonial frenzy to regulate and constrict all essential and non-essential
commodities, rhetoric in application-writing flourished. The covering letters accompanying
application forms for rations resembled petitions in their appeals to sovereignty, their affinity
to rhetorical parlance, the scope they extended to applicants to exploit colonial structures of
bureaucratic authority and their role in shaping the formation of cultural subjectivities. This
turn to rhetoric was equally implicit in colonial responses to requests for supplementary rations
which were phrased in turgid and caustic prose that drew out the various rationalities of the
war and colonial rule while taking cognizance of the encumbrances and cultural imperatives
of the everyday. Rhetorical thrusts were not confined to the written requests accompanying the
application form. The forms for rationed commodities like motor spirit, electricity, tyres and
tubes were themselves peppered with persuasive graphic signs and artifacts that enacted certain
relationships between the document and the rule, between intermediate and higher authorities,
between applicants and rationed commodities.
Keywords: Rationing, rhetoric, war, empire, identification documents
The salience of bureaucratic documentation to colonial governance can hardly be

overstated. It has been widely argued that documents conjured up ‘ethical compe-
tence to rule’,2 security for good government’,3 moral and political accountability.4
At the same time, it was the ‘presumptive written truth’ of documents or the
rhetorical basis they provided to legitimate bureaucratic control that both instituted
and concealed their non-correspondence to or their departure from what they
were legally supposed to represent.5 If the legitimacy of documentation in terms
of validating and interrogating colonial acts of government and governance was
1
I would like to thank Ravi Sundaram, Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Radhika Singha, Vikramaditya Sahai
and an anonymous reviewer of IESHR for their invaluable suggestions.
2
Osborne, ‘Bureaucracy as a Vocation’, p. 290; Riles, ‘Introduction: In Response’, p. 5.
3
Mill as cited in Moir, ‘Kaghazi Raj’, p. 185.
4
Hull, Government of Paper; Ogborn, Indian Ink.
5
Das, Life and Words, p. 162; Hull, Government of Paper, p. 246.
The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 51, 3 (2014): 353–382
SAGE Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/0019464614536017
Downloaded from ier.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on August 25, 2015
354 / Tarangini Sriraman
irrefutable in multiple narrative senses, there has been less sustained reflection
on identification documents, application forms and their link to bureaucratic
credibility and good government. One of the purported functions of official
documents in the tradition of Kaghazi Raj or ‘government by paper’ as theorised
by Martin Moir was to limit the sphere of discretionary rule where officials
failed to report their actions, be they decisions, utterances in meetings or consul-
tations in writing.6 On the face of it, the need to scrutinise and review decisions
and selections to ensure fair and transparent process lay in principle behind
the genre of identification documents as well. However, just as the recent
efflorescence of scholarship on documents has demonstrated the notoriously
diverse discourse of bureaucracy they stem from,7 the multiple narratives of
identity documents too belie any singular reading of colonialism and its invest-
ment in writing and proof. This genre of official writing threw up documentary
forms during the Second World War which were far from being legally settled
in a Weberian sense. Identification documents were permeable to different kinds
of bureaucratic rhetoric of transparency, of curbing corruption, of war, everyday
necessity, imperial trade, local commerce and cultural context. This article is a
meditation on the various rhetorical possibilities both within and of one such class
of documents, namely rationing documents in India’s colonial capital, especially
between 1940 and 1945.
The article looks at rhetorical devices employed by certain classes of claimants
in applications for rationed commodities in wartime Delhi in the last decade of
colonial rule. In the face of a war-driven colonial frenzy to regulate and constrict all
essential and non-essential commodities, rhetoric in application-writing flourished.
Though identification documents were not new to colonised subjects,8 the 1940s
were special both in the scale of documentation produced and the enumeration
attempted, owing to the imposition of different models of rationing across urban
centres and rural areas in India. Applications for rationing documents resembled
petitions in their appeals to sovereignty, their affinity to rhetorical parlance, the scope
they extended to applicants to exploit colonial structures of bureaucratic authority
and their role in shaping the formation of cultural subjectivities. If petition-writing
was highly evolved in Mughal India, it had sunk its teeth quite tenaciously into
colonial rule in the nineteenth century.9 Scholarship on petitions has reflected on
6
Moir, ‘Kaghazi Raj’.
7
Crais, ‘Chiefs and Bureaucrats in the Making of Empire’; Fawaz, ‘The State and the Production
of Illegal Housing’; Gupta, Red Tape; Hull, Government of Paper; Smith, ‘Rule-by-Records’; Tarlo,
Unsettling Memories.
8
The pilgrim’s passport, plague passport, detention, inoculation and exemption certificates, descriptive
rolls of convicts, passports and aliens’ passes were some of the identification documents recorded in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth colonial India. Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify’, Singha,
‘Passport, Ticket, and India-Rubber Stamp’, Sriraman, ‘Assault and Assuage’.
9
The modes of address and the linguistic registers employed in letter-writing were rather distinct
in Mughal India where they were inserted into a discourse of ‘epistolary arts’ and ‘courtly decorum’,
Rhetoric and Rationing Documents in Wartime Delhi, 1941–45 / 355
the practices of formally addressing colonial authorities across wide cross-sections

of lower castes, trading classes, middle classes and even tribal groups over mat-
ters of land appropriation, labour exploitation, inter-caste disputes, taxation and
intrusive medical interventions.10
This article explores, however, a peculiar form of sociality that emerged, the
writing of petitions in the guise of applications. Far from fixing objective, rational
ways to read application forms, colonial officials remained open to an interpretive
approach in requesting rationed commodities by Indian and European claimants
some of whom were officials themselves. Such an approach cut both ways in that
the war entailed ever-complex ways of thinking about the everyday as well as
who deserved wartime priority: this core of uncertainty sometimes worked to the
advantage of applicants and at others to the convenience of the official. The turn to
rhetoric was not merely present in these applications—colonial responses to requests
for supplementary rations were phrased in turgid and caustic prose that drew out
the various rationalities of the war and colonial rule while taking cognizance of
cultural imperatives of the everyday. The smuggling of petition-like features into
applications for commodities had tremendous implications for the materiality of the
rationing document which became a staple in India post-independence. Rhetorical
thrusts were not confined to the written requests accompanying the application
form. The form itself was peppered with persuasive graphic signs and artifacts
that enacted certain relationships between the document and the rule, between
intermediate and higher authorities, between applicants and rationed commodities.
As corruption was never a distant concern, micro-practices of sealing, attaching
and detaching counterfoils, inserting serial numbers, issuing receipts were replete
with narrative significance. This article remarks on the rhetorical potential of both
the graphic signs within the formal application form and the petition-like exposi-
tions of the covering letters.
The Colonial Wartime Basis of Rationing
I take into consideration the rationing applications made in the provincial city and
the colonial capital of Delhi for essential and non-essential commodities. This
classification is something that I did not always find in various archives but one
that I decided to go with anyway because the difference in approach to rationing
classes of commodities like rice, cloth, wheat and sugar, and those like motor spirit,
electricity, tyres and tubes was palpable in many senses. For one, the rationing
of the latter preceded that of the former. In Delhi, the rationing of motor spirit,
writes Bhavani Raman. Company officials had to subsequently reckon with habits of fealty and ritual
performances of praise in petitions addressed to them, Raman, Document Raj, pp. 165–66; Siddiqi,
The British Historical Context and Petitioning in Colonial India.
10
Raman, Document Raj and Sriraman, ‘Assault and Assuage’; Siddiqi, ‘The British Historical
Context and Petitioning’; Skaria, ‘Writing, Orality and Power’.
for instance, occurred in August 1941 while that of foodgrains occurred only as
late as May 1944. Coupons and permits were sanctioned for motor spirit and tyres
and tubes only if applicants fell under certain nomenclatures while ration cards
were issued universally. Charcoal, coal, firewood and kerosene fell into gray
areas of rationing. While commodities like coal and charcoal were made available
informally, on food ration cards, their consumption had to be closely monitored
because they were critically linked to the generation of electricity and alternative
fuels for transport. The focus in this article is largely on non-essential commodities
as these applications engendered elaborate written requests and voluminous
correspondence on the ambiguous question of supplementary coupons. While
these coupons were issued even in the case of essential commodities, they were
not systematically made available. The issue of supplementary coupons for cloth
and food was often undertaken subsequent to protests against stringent rationing.
This was not the case with non-essential commodities where the measure of supple-
mentary coupons had its genesis in the original formulation of various Rationing
Orders. In other words, the provision for such coupons existed side by side with
ordinary coupons in the legislation.
While rationing was introduced in India as a wartime measure, it was also
intended to address monsoon and crop failures in Madras Presidency, Bombay
and Bengal, the sudden interruption in the imports from a regular supplier of
rice and oil, Burma, which had come under Japanese occupation and a harsh
famine in Bengal in the year 1943.11 Rationing was needed to regulate prices
just as much as it was needed to assure a steady supply of resources for the
Army. The rationing of food, cloth, petrol and other articles were bolstered by
the Defence of India Act, 1915 and ordinances passed in its name. Rationing
was needed to regulate prices just as much as it was to assure a steady supply of
resources for the Army. The Indian Army had to be fed and fed well at all costs as
much as other priority sections like heavy manual workers, industrial labourers,
mill, plantation and mine workers, and policemen.12 By ignoring the economic
crisis, authorities risked unnecessarily strengthening the Quit India movement
which was disruptive of essential services such as the post, telegraph wires and
railway lines.13 Food rations in small quantities had to be distributed as widely
as possible because a hungry population could participate enthusiastically in
civil disobedience.14 The provision of rations was cast in paternal terms of
caring for the colony consisting of deficit provinces which needed more atten-
tion and surplus provinces who could be asked to export food when necessary.
The Rationing Adviser to the Government of India, Kirby went so far as to say,
11
Sriraman, ‘Revisiting Welfare’, p. 53.
12
Bhattacharya, Propaganda and Information in Eastern India, pp. 84–87; Knight, Food
Administration in India, p. 197.
13
Srimanjari, Through War and Famine, p. 106.
14
Ibid., p. 106; The Hindustan Times (HT henceforth), 8 March 1942.
‘The government of India is in the position of a father of a family and the provinces
are all the members in it’.15
Three models of rationing were imposed across India under which colonial
subjects were issued food ration cards entitling them to strictly state-controlled
commodities in urban areas (statutory rationing), to state-provided rations which
co-existed with private imports in rural areas (non-statutory rationing) and rations
issued by private traders in licensed shops in rural and semi-urban areas.16 All
classes of urban residents were covered by food rationing. The rationing scheme
was on occasion criticised for being thoughtlessly uniform as some classes like
homeless persons would either have had to ‘starve or migrate to a place where
rationing is not introduced’.17 On the question of non-essential commodities like
petrol and electricity, it was established early that casual consumption could result
in dire shortages for war work. This was because industrial production of various
commodities remained low throughout the war with imports being difficult to ship
during the war to the Indian colony. Though in some parts of the country, money
poured into the war effort as in the case of the Bengal War Purposes Fund, Punjab
Provincial War Purposes Fund and the Mysore War Fund, the war could not be
financed simply by loans from and taxes on the middle class or the affluent sections.18
It was the money-printing business unabated by industrial production that financed
the war or it was, in the words of V.K.R.V. Rao, inflation that financed the war
economy.19 Regulating middle class consumption of commodities was paramount
in this context of unforthcoming and strained finances for the war.
Applying for Non-essential Rationed Commodities
Non-essential commodities like motor spirit, electricity, tyres and tubes were
reserved for certain elite or diplomatic classes, government employees and owners
of public transport vehicles in the city. These commodities were exclusive owing
to the expense involved in purchasing diesel or petrol and maintaining cars, trucks,
vans and installing electric connections. It was common for establishments like
hostels, clubs and associations to own vehicles and pay for electric connections and
less so for individuals unless they were European, bourgeois middle-class, high-
ranking government employees or on a diplomatic mission. There were untiring
efforts to manage the circulation of commodities in Delhi, which was a nerve-centre
of war preparations and the diplomatic heart of India privy to the frequent comings
and goings of colonial and foreign representatives.
15
HT, 4 February 1944.
16
Knight, Food Administration in India.
17
18
Kamtekar, ‘A Different War Dance’, pp. 199–200; Srimanjari, Through War and Famine, p. 49;
HT, 16 January 1941; HT, 17 January 1941.
19
Rao as cited in Kamtekar, ‘A Different War Dance’, p. 201.
Colonial authorities used applications for rationing documents (permits, coupons,

ration cards) as ordering devices to preserve Delhi’s supplies for the war, manage
scarcity and curtail consumption. There was no room for negotiation over applica-
tions for ordinary coupons, permits and ration cards which made available a regular
quota of motor spirit, electricity, food and cloth supplies. It was the applications
for the supplementary coupons that supplied the context for verbal agility, lengthy
expositions of human predicaments and ideological validations. Applications
for supplementary rations of non-essential commodities like electricity, motor
spirit, tyres and tubes contained, apart from the form itself, a letter stating the
case of the applicant (why she or he needed the commodity). While it is entirely
possible that applicants used the services of writers or what Bhavani Raman terms
the ‘scribal bazaar’20 to compose these letters, I did not come across evidence
to this effect. But it is my guess that the applicants for this class of commodities,
who were government employees, school principals, theatre group managers,
contractors, engineers, club owners and hostel authorities, were lettered in the
legalese of writing applications. Their rise to opportunity and stature in colonial
conditions must have also involved a certain finesse with words that could now
be put to fruitful effect.
The discretion in allocating coupons in non-essential commodities must
be understood in terms of how power relations operated in late colonial Delhi.
It was particularly interesting that the Chairman of the Delhi Improvement
Trust, a body associated with the amelioration of housing was appointed the
first Provincial Rationing Authority (PRA) and the Motor Registration Officer
was made the first Area Rationing Authority (ARA) who occupied a rank lower
than the PRA. So, positions of power in wartime Delhi were incestuous where
various urban departments intersected and folded into each other. At the same
time, jurisdictions were different for different rationing authorities. In matters of
food and cloth rationing, discretion lay with the Controller of Rationing—a post
created during the war—while final decisions in motor spirit rationing vested
with the Chief Commissioner of Delhi. Though it was understood that authorities,
government employees, visiting dignitaries and citizens must be treated alike,
it was important to make tentative concessions and word rejections gently with
princes, visiting Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and diplomats. But
for the most part, the PRA, who enjoyed wide-ranging powers, subject only to
the Chief Commissioner of Delhi, scrutinised applications for this class of
commodities—motor spirit, electricity, tyres and tubes—with personal atten-
tion, reprimanding, condoning and admonishing even the few applicants he
deigned to entertain. Applications were sometimes addressed directly to the Chief
Commissioner, citing unkind rejection by the PRA. This practice of applying
to higher authorities while implicitly criticising intermediate officials has its
20
Raman, Document Raj, p. 41.
resonances in histories of petition-writing where too it was common to exploit

‘fissures within ruling classes’.21
While applicants behaved like petitioners and applications resembled peti-
tions in their willingness to exploit bureaucratic differences, some subtle but very
important distinctions must be made. It may be true that just as petitions underlined
sometimes cloyingly, the subservience of petitioners and defendants,22 applications
for motor spirit or electricity too reinforced the sovereign authority of the colonial
state in their exhortations for compassion and statements of loyalty. However, this
could not be done in obsequious terms because war considerations left little room
for colonial pride. So, while applicants tried to appeal to the sense of justice of a
superior official by surreptitiously invoking his authority over his subordinates, they
were rarely able to win through bureaucratic hierarchy. The second related point of
difference was that though applicants, like petitioners tried to exploit fissures in the
bureaucracy, they almost never succeeded because officials vied with each other
to demonstrate caution in dispensing coupons. Fissures, if they existed, were not
out in the open. The Chief Commissioner reserved a special measure of scepticism
for those applications which cited unfair treatment by a subordinate official even
while he fussed over the ones the PRA was inclined to grant.
While food commodities were formally rationed in 1943, the rationing of motor
spirit preceded this with the passing of the Motor Spirit Rationing Order in the year
1941 effective throughout British India. This Order rendered any acquisition or
purchase or sale of motor spirit without relevant documents like special receipts,
a license or coupons (ordinary, special and supplementary) illegal and punishable
by law. The material properties and nomenclature of documents varied in cor-
respondence to the hierarchical order of colonial subjects and the proximity of
the applicant to imperial war work. Motor spirit, which was essential for aircraft,
vehicles or machinery employed by the central government or a provincial govern-
ment, was authorised only against special receipts.23 Another class of vehicles was
used for administrative purposes where central, provincial government and local
authorities could not draw petrol without applying for special coupons valid for
three months. Strangely enough, ambulances, travelling dispensaries and school
buses were lumped together in this category. Stage carriages fell under a different
nomenclature: owners of these vehicles had to fill out separate application forms
to acquire petrol and against these, ordinary coupons which were valid usually
for three months were issued. A form for ordinary coupons (though different)
was also applicable for dealers or distributors engaged in the distribution and
sale of motor vehicles. Meant as a concession to those who were already in pos-
session of special or ordinary coupons but who needed more motor spirit to meet
21
Ibid., pp.168–70; Heerma van Voss, Petitions in Social History, p. 6.
22
Heerma van Voss, Petitions in Social History, p. 2; Raman, Document Raj, pp. 165–66.
23
No. P.R.-8/41, Motor Spirit Rationing Order, Gazette of India, Extraordinary, 1941, 3.
contingencies, supplementary coupons were issued, usually for a month—if the

request was found to be bona fide and if it was deserving of consideration on
grounds of war priority or compassion (see Figure 1).24 It was these supplementary
coupons that invited desperate applications and the applicant applied either because
he had exhausted his coupons or because he anticipated contingencies which would
require extra motor spirit.
The Motor Spirit Order set the tone, in a manner of speaking, for the rationing
scheme of the late colonial regime in India. The Order urged rationing authorities to
entertain applications only after exercising the greatest possible economy.25 States
and provinces often vied with each other to draw up an impressive report card of
savings in the consumption of motor spirit. Sorted into various zones, provinces
and states had to submit quarterly reports showing the provincial or state quota
and the actual consumption in gallons. So heavy was the rationing across India’s
provinces and states that taxi drivers clamoured for more petrol in Bombay and
excessive regulation was feared to harm the health of Calcutta which was so prone
to epidemics.26 The Delhi administration was especially infused with a visceral
enthusiasm to justify but more often, reject every claim, petty or significant. At one
point, rationing authorities strove ambitiously to reduce consumption of petrol in
Delhi from 4 ½ gallons to 3–3 ¾ gallons in two and a half months.27 Delhi authori-
ties were highly sensitive to charges of immoderation and often protested against
even the slightest imputation of arbitrariness by producing lengthy explanations.28
One such explanation the rationing authorities gave was that Delhi’s heavy fuel
consumption was partially owing to its liberal policy vis-à-vis sales tax which it
did not levy unlike neighbouring provinces like Punjab and United Provinces,
thus encouraging inter-state vehicles to stop at Delhi to buy petrol.29 The PRA
or the next in command, the ARA, granted every coupon after utmost vigilance,
having cautioned the applicant against future extravagance or whim. One newspaper
reports the drastic change in the visual landscape of Delhi’s roads no more than
24
Ibid., 11(1), 11(2).
25
Ibid., 20(4) and 25.
26
HT, 13 August 1944; HT, 21 August 1941.
27
HT, 19 August 1941.
28
Despite painstaking precautions, Delhi’s excess consumption of petrol every quarter invariably
provoked justifications by the Chief Commissioner. Sometimes he deemed the figures inflated, providing
reasons like increase in private cars, black marketing, the issue of petrol on coupons from other
provinces and states, increase in allocations to contractors of the Central Public Works Department
(CPWD), the debiting to the Delhi province’s account of petrol issued to aircrafts landing at places
that fall outside Delhi’s jurisdiction like Rohtak, etc. At other times, he pleaded the indulgence of the
Centre on grounds of charcoal scarcity (charcoal being an alternative supply of motive power) and the
introduction of new services. All these elaborate explanations were accompanied by a string of notes
and demonstrations of prudent and timely savings through measures like the termination of supplies
to depots and establishments, periodical revision of the coupon system, etc., 28/6/43-C, Confidential,
Chief Commissioner’s Office (CCO henceforth), Delhi State Archives (DSA henceforth), 1943.
29
28/42-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1942.
Figure 1
Sample of the application for supplementary motor spirit coupons
Source: Delhi State Archives.
four days after motor spirit rationing was introduced where push-bikes, tongas
and motorcycles took the place of motorcars and buses. Judges and provincial
authorities were reported to be using these new modes of transport.30
Authorities interrogated the applicant to see if he was applying for the basic
minimum and if he had explored alternative avenues like the use of animal trans-
port and the rearranging of routes to reduce consumption.31 In inquiring into each
applicant’s case, Delhi rationing authorities simply assumed that it was not possible
to grant all applications even when the basic requirements of eligibility were in
place. They also sternly reminded applicants that what they considered average
or ordinary consumption in peacetime was necessarily extravagant and luxurious
in prevalent circumstances. On many occasions, the rationing authorities made
it clear that even a native dignitary, a European official or a member of Indian
royalty would not be bestowed with favour on a point of status alone. In fact, the
PRA once expressed his inability to issue rations to visiting ruling princes who did
not get coupons from their states. In addition, if the state was not officially listed
as one with which Delhi could have a reciprocal arrangement of motor spirit, the
rationing authorities were further disinclined to indulge royal dignitaries.32 If royal
status was no obvious candidate for generosity in coupons, administrative rank
did not cut much ice either. Such was the frenzy of securing motor spirit that even
the application of Sir Theodore Gregory, the Chairman of the Foodgrains Policy
Committee and one of the architects of the scheme of food rationing in India, was
not favoured with eager acquiescence when he once made a request. On the ques-
tion of civilian consumption of motor spirit, the position was vacillating between
curbing and permitting it. The fear of an uproar over a complete ban on civilian
supplies clashed with the precious necessity to sate the voracious military appe-
tite for motor spirit during the war. Though civilian provision of motor spirit was
suspended sporadically, the Delhi administration decided that a complete freeze
on the sale of petrol coupons as well as tyres for civilian consumption should be
avoided.33 Among the many factors preventing authorities from banning civilian
claims entirely was the uneasy colonial admission that civilians comprised ‘the
majority of taxpayers’.34
30
HT, 19 August 1941.
31
Clause 21 (2), Motor Spirit Rationing Order, and ‘Standards for Area Rationing Authorities’,
Second Schedule appended to the Motor Spirit Rationing Order, 1941, Gazette of India, Extraordinary,
Vol. 79(1)/41, 1941.
32
28/5/43-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1943. The ruling Princes of Nawanagar, Panna, Keonjhar,
Barwani, Datia and Mandi were listed for these purposes. However, motor spirit was sanctioned at
times to these princes if only to avoid needless friction. The Jam Sahib of Nawangar was issued the
rations he demanded even though there was no reciprocal arrangement. The Chief Commissioner to
the Secretary to the Crown Representative, 28/42-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1942.
33
28/42-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1942.
34
Provincial Rationing Authority, Delhi to Controller of Rubber Manufactures, New Delhi. Letter No.
797/TR/44, 9/52/1944, Local Self-Government, CCO, DSA. This term was invoked in the context of tyre
Commodities like electricity and tyres and tubes were similarly guarded by
ever-vigilant rationing authorities with a jealous eye. Here too, the burden of
performance weighed heavily on the shoulders of applicants who were asked to
prove that they had exhausted other options like kerosene lamps and ice coolers
(in lieu of electricity-run lights and refrigerators) and re-treadable tyres. If
authorities did not cite war priority as grounds for rejection in matters of electric-
ity rationing, they informed the claimant instead that his application could not
be entertained because a certain power plant was under repair.35 All permissions,
when granted, were qualified by a stipulation of the quantum of electric supply.
Sometimes, this became the basis for considering a documentary request in the first
place—if an application contained a war-related representation, it was indulged if
the request involved an electric connection of only a minimum load. The directive
to turn off lights was stressed for extraneous reasons as well, namely, to comply
with Air Raid Protection (ARP) rules that necessitated enforced black-outs as a
precaution against enemy attacks in the night.
The Tyre Rationing Order, 1944, classified applicants into fleet-owners
(those owning a fleet of cars), stockists (who stocked tyres for trade or business),
suppliers (manufacturers or re-treaders) and persons owning vehicles for daily
transport.36 All these classes of applicants were required to submit returns in a
form of declaration giving details of the tyres, including the spares, in the cars
they owned to the Area Rationing authorities. Along with these returns, such appli-
cants were also to produce their registration certificates so that authorities could
make appropriate entries on these certificates corresponding to the serial num-
ber assigned by the tyre manufacturer.37 Noting down these serial numbers was
the most laborious work for rationing staff as often the wheels had to be taken
off the vehicles to examine the tyre number. Staff had to be trained to do this,
paid additionally as removing and fitting each wheel needed 15 to 30 minutes.
This perhaps is only one illustration among a thousand others that speaks of the
labour and time that documents appropriated. Often the time in preparing a
document translated into a vicious circle of marking commodities of consump-
tion, scrambling for official representations, enlisting labour and chasing ID
rationing where the Provincial Rationing Authority (PRA) contended that though it was only fair that
taxpayers should get the permits they wished, even these applicants must be very sparingly entertained.
35
The plant in question was usually the New Delhi Central Electric Power Authority’s Plant which
often suffered repairs and disorders, 69/4/44-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1944.
36
Fleet-owners are defined in the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939 and the Tyre Rationing Order, 1944 to
be persons owning or operating six or more transport vehicles excluding motor cabs. ‘Stockists’ meant
those other than fleet-owners who possess tyres or tubes acquired for purposes of trade or business
and include a supplier and a dealer in motor vehicles. A supplier is a person engaged in the business
of supplying tyres or tubes, whether new, old or re-treaded and includes a manufacturer or re-treader
who carries on such business. Tyre Rationing Order, 1944, 2 (iii), (xv), (xvi) as obtained in 9(52)/1944,
Local Self-Government, CCO, DSA.
37
The PRA, Delhi to Chief Commissioner, Delhi, Letter No. 296/TR/44, 9(52)/1944, Local Self-
Government, CCO, DSA.
paper. When a supplier or stockist, fleet-owner or anybody else applied for a

permit to purchase, acquire or replace new, old or re-treaded/re-treadable tyres,
he entered the bureaucratic maze of procedural detail, documentary checks and
paper protocol.38
The narrative of apparent bureaucratic fairness and universal parsimony in
colonial rationing was heavily contested. Delhi’s rationing authorities had to
respond to charges of arbitrariness not simply from the Government of India but
also from consuming publics who pointed out irregularities in electricity supply39
and the priority that was given in sanctioning rationing documents to visiting
MLAs and central government employees. The rationing of commodities like
charcoal, coal and firewood was informally enforced because the import and related
availability of these items as well as the railway wagons to transport them were
not dependable. However, the regulation of these commodities was vital because
of the close relationship of coal supply to electricity generation as pointed out by
the Delhi provincial administration in advertisements to ‘Save Electricity’ that it
repeatedly put out in newspapers. This being the case, the serious charge of pam-
pering visiting MLAs in Delhi by granting them permits for soft coke, firewood,
charcoal, coal and sugar was one that rationing authorities had to answer to.40 While
these representatives also complained about having to stay in unheated rooms in
Delhi’s ebbing winter, it is unclear if they were also sanctioned temporary electric
connections. Similarly, central government employees were reported to be receiv-
ing one-fifth rations of the available coal supplies which was ‘two to three times
of what they are entitled to on a population basis’.41 These privileges have to be
juxtaposed with the treatment of dhobis (washermen), 2000 of whom went on a
strike because they were not given enough starch and coal owing to which they
had to use their own food ration cards to get the requisite supply.42 If provincial
authorities kept up the refrain that priority sections had to be entertained before
anyone else, supplementary food coupons even to the heavy manual labourers
were made available only after much public griping and comparisons with Bombay
quotas for these classes.43
38
A different application form was used for acquiring or purchasing re-treaded or used tyres. Re-
treadable tyres were those that could be mended or re-treaded and re-used, Tyre Rationing Order,
1944, 2 (xiv).
39
It was pointed out that electric supply was supplied at cheaper rates to industrial concerns while
consumers, especially those who fell within the jurisdiction of the New Delhi Municipal Committee
were being fleeced (Letters to the Editor, HT, 5 February 1944).
40
Some of these Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) complained that they should be given
food rations because their orthodox lifestyles prevented them from taking food from hotels. HT,
6 February 1944; HT, 13 February 1944.
41
42
43
Letters to the Editor, HT, 28 April 1944; HT, 3 June 1944.
The Rhetorical Model of the Application
In the middle years of the Second World War, rationing officials of the Delhi
administration responded to an application for motor spirit44 with barely-concealed
impatience. The applicant in question, Sir Syed Sultan Ahmad, an official of good
standing in the government, had asked for supplementary motor spirit coupons to
compensate for those he had used up in ferrying the body of his private secretary
from Delhi to Lucknow. In his application, Sultan Ahmad gestured at the paternal
sense of loss he experienced thereby justifying his decision to hire a lorry to take
the body all the way to Lucknow. The Chief Commissioner, Askwith, sanctioned
the coupons but added bitterly,
...you will allow me to say that I do not think that the use made of the coupons
previously issued to you was justified. Every transport vehicle has its own
allotment of motor spirit, and if a lorry was to be used at all for the journey to
Lucknow, the owner should have been made to use his own coupons. But apart
from the question of procedure, I do not think it is a reasonable proposition that
in present conditions, motor spirit should be used for such a purpose. After all,
there are burial grounds in Delhi and any of us who may happen to die during
the war must surely be content to be buried here, even though our families may
lie elsewhere. You may have been upset at the time, but I think you will agree
with the consideration on principle.45
Syed Sultan Ahmad’s application for motor spirit was one among many
representations that rationing officials were loath to indulge during the colonial
war effort. This application, like many other applications for one or the other
rationed commodity, appealed to the colonial official’s conscience and compassion,
both of which were under great duress during the war. To the rationing official in
wartime Delhi, Sultan Ahmad was not alone in experiencing an upheaval—he was
enacting the most basic emotions of the human condition, namely, grief, yet one
that he should have gauged carefully in the fraught and imposing context of the
war. Whether the claim was for electricity, cement, motor spirit or tyres and tubes,
all rationed commodities in Delhi during the war, the colonial rationing official
steeled himself against the emotionally charged entreaties of the everyday implicit
in the petition-like applications of native and European residents and visitors.
At the same time, the British Indian state, keen to be responsive to its colonised
population, not desiring them to starve, rebel or disrupt the war effort, sanctioned
food and cloth to as wide a cross-section as possible.
44
Motor spirit is defined in the Motor Spirit Rationing Order as ‘any liquid hydro-carbon or admixture
of liquid hydrocarbon with any other liquid, having a flash point below 76° F and capable of providing
motive power to any form of internal combustion engine’. For the most part, motor spirit meant petrol.
45
Chief Commissioner, Delhi to Sir Syed Sultan Ahmad. 28/2/42, Confidential, CCO, DSA.
Carlo Ginzburg and Natalie Zemon Davis both comment on the ‘rhetorical
dimension’ of documents and texts where legal performances of speaking the truth
invariably involve narrative skills of story-telling.46 In the words of Annelise Riles,
it is possible to ‘treat realism as a rhetorical stance, a matter of presentation
rather than simple fact’.47 In the context of late colonialism, the applications for
rationed commodities invoked affects of kinship through rhetorical devices. Some
of these applications were written by officials in some other department to ration-
ing officials—even government functionaries and colonial representatives had to
employ written forms of oratory to justify their claims. Among other things, the
rationalities of rule (civilising mission, moral reform, imperial trade), personal
accounts of conjugal or filial obligation, conceptions of what constituted ‘war
priority’ work found expression in the rhetorical model of the application.
Requests indexing the political ethic of compassion were made in connection
with electricity and motor spirit applications. The urgent tone of the relative of
the dying or the ailing patient was conspicuous in the representations accompany-
ing these application forms too. While permanent connections were not allowed
for domestic purposes by the Labour Department, applications for renewal were
sought on the plea of compassion to allow for the comfort of a sick person. This
request for a residential connection seems to have been granted on the condition
that consumption should not exceed 12 watts.48 A government employee, Kishore
Lal, sought such a connection for his wife attaching a few reports and certificates
attested by medical authorities bolstering his claim. Not all medical cases were
regarded with a conciliatory eye. An application from R.R. Bhatia working for
New India Colour Company imploring authorities for a permanent connection on
grounds of his wife’s deteriorating health was turned down.
Bhatia’s own compassion was mirrored in his plea for the officials’ solicitude.
He wrote,
Your humble petitioner’s wife has been suffering from respiratory trouble for
the last two or three years and at the special advice of the medical officers under
whose treatment she has remained from time to time, your humble petitioner
underwent a huge expense and built a house in Jawahar Nagar Subzimandi.…
your humble petitioner has again got his wife examined by the Additional Civil
Surgeon Delhi and he is again of the opinion that your humble petitioner’s wife
should not live in a house lit with oil lamps as the fumes will be harmful. It
should not be out of the place for your petitioner to mention here that he has
undergone a very enormous expense to provide his wife with a suitable living
46
Davis, Fiction in the Archives; Ginzburg, History, Rhetoric, and Proof.
47
Riles, ‘Introduction: In Response’, p.11.
48
Kishore Lal to Superintending Engineer, PWD, Delhi province and Registrar to the Chief
Commissioner to the Superintending Engineer, Delhi Province, 69/4/44-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA,
1944.
abode and if she has to quit these premises for want of an electric connection,
it will be almost impossible for your petitioner to find her suitable accommoda-
tion elsewhere, and the consequences must therefore be serious so far as her
life is concerned.49
Bhatia refers to himself as petitioner instead of applicant, calling attention to the

regime’s propensity to treat applications for the rationed commodity as appeals to a
less formalised and legalised order of bureaucratic consideration. Bhatia produced
along with his application form and request a rash of medical certificates attested
by the Civil Surgeon and Chief Medical Officer of the province showing his wife
to suffer from kerosene fumes making out thereby a case for electric lighting.50
While an extended connection was sanctioned ‘on compassionate grounds’, the
Chief Commissioner categorically denied a permanent connection saying that this
would open the door to an endless stream of applications. It is noteworthy that
this letter backing the application form was written using the Company letterhead
even though the request was for domestic, non-commercial purposes signifying
the applicant’s recognition of the legal force of documentary conventions and by
extension, his enhanced status on office paper.
A plea for compassion could not be an irrationally stated one. Emotions repre-
sented evaluative and ethical judgments51 and so, a person invoking compassion
or giving vent to feelings of rage was not intrinsically being irrational. The request
for an application on grounds of compassion was however a rational one not sim-
ply in content but in form too. In other words, the applicant sought to conform to
rational-legal standards such as medical certificates, employment certificates and
recommendation letters as he recognised the validity of his claim within the docu-
ments regime. A ‘documentary regime of verification’ in the modern sense involves
the crystallisation of identity through an evolving set of documentary procedures
which are rationalised and systematised over time.52 But such a regime also presumes
that state functions and bureaucratic transactions are embedded in technologies of
writing where documents bear the seal of legitimate and legible sovereign force.
Kishorelal and Bhatia recognised that behind the certificate or a representation
of identity, there were pre-existing traditions of verifying claims through written
evidence. In this tradition, the production of certain documents dispelled all official
mistrust or suspicion about the validity, the authenticity or the truthful basis of a
claim. While the medical certificate conformed to these rationales, it was a document
unlike others. It enjoyed a referential significance that was tied to the opinion of
an expert outside the realm of government. Though it was a piece of paper sealed
49
R.R. Bhatia, New India Colour Company, Delhi to Chief Commissioner, Delhi, 69/4/44-C,
Confidential, CCO, DSA.
50
Ibid.
51
Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, p. 22.
52
Robertson, ‘A Documentary Regime of Verification’, p. 336.
and sanctioned by a medical expert outside the government, it was nevertheless

recognised by the government. While its production within a bureaucratic context
was part of procedure, its creation was not, as it was the product of networks of
mutual understanding and trust between doctor and patient. The medical certificate
was a document that settled identity, affirmed the plea of the patient, ascertained the
fact of illness beyond reasonable doubt and gave a name to the medical condition
and physical liability of the patient. It determined the cause of illness, corroborated
the diagnosis and pitted the voice of the expert against lay opinion or the official
voice in crucial criminal and legal suits.53
In determining eligibility and entitlement in official categories of compassion,
the medical certificate stood out as an irrefutable document marking the body of
the person for empowerment. The medical certificate may be exposed to scepti-
cism about the veracity of the claim to illness implicit within, whether it was a
product of a hand-shake between the mercenary doctor and the malingering welfare
claimant. But in this context of wartime rationing, this document’s rationality and
supreme claim to consideration was measured not against its claim to truthfulness
but in terms of a superior bureaucratic rationality. It would appear that the war
superimposed on the bureaucratic frame an authority to deny and constrict and the
colonial rationing document—which may very well be considered the prototype of
ration cards post-independence—stood in for a regime that balanced compassion
and objectivity with a bureaucratic passion for thrift. If this is one explanation of
why the veracity of claims in medical certificates was irrelevant, one must also
take into consideration the customary practice of bureaucracies to brush aside
arguments about the truth or falsity of documents when bureaucratic actors are
merely interested in achieving certain outcomes.54
The ‘Interpretive Community’ of the Document
Applications citing ‘dire need’ on grounds of war work were somewhat different
in tone and entreaty from applications invoking the government’s compassion in
private matters. An applicant invoking ‘dire need’ in the context of war work sug-
gested that the denial of electricity or motor spirit coupons (to a group of individuals
or an institution) could seriously compromise or slow down the war effort while
an applicant citing personal need argued that his case was urgent even though it
may impede the war endeavour. Applicants in the former category gestured at the
immense load of war work they were labouring under, arguing that an official
deprivation of motor spirit would constitute an egregious and grievous lapse in
facilitating the quick completion of a war-related project. One application gestured
at the loss that would be incurred by the government in not sanctioning electricity
to an institution well known for its war efforts in educating government employees.
53
See Partha Chatterjee’s A Princely Impostor for more on the medical certificate as a truth claim.
54
Hull, ‘Documents and Bureaucracy’, p. 259.
This application, written by the Honorary Secretary, Government of India Press

Youngsters Institution in New Delhi, reads,
This institution is finding great difficulties owing to not having electricity.

The aims and objects of our Institution and the sphere of the usefulness of
its activities are very well known to the Government. We would like to submit
that this is a public institution run for the benefit and welfare of the employees
of the Govt. of India Press. We are running an adult education Centre, a Library,
reading room, stores, Civic Guards Club, National War Front, war efforts
work, etc., all of which you will agree are of great service to the employees
of the Govt. This institution is very well known for its war efforts….You
will kindly see for yourself that some of our activities, e.g., Adult Education,
etc., will have to come down to a dead stop, if the use of electric light is denied
to us.55
Many of these letters tried to smuggle in the rhetorical counterfactual of what

the government would do in the absence of their institution and the invalu-
able services they provided. On the one hand, such questions were pitched at a
quotidian level where the everyday competence of public institutions exacted
a certain infrastructural rigor provided by a commodity like electricity. On the
other, the everyday gathered around itself a new vitality when cast in the mould
of the war. Colonial authorities responded to these applications through multiple
‘reading strategies’56 where interpretations of the rationing document would often
privilege bureaucratic cognition over legislative norms. The ‘interpretive com-
munity’57 in the sense that Skaria uses it, was founded on the ability to repro-
duce domination through the varying and episodic interpretations of texts under
different circumstances often to the effect of exclusion. In the case of rationing
documents, textual domination did not translate into conditions of extreme disen-
franchisement or violence as contracts, maps and lists were demonstrably capable
of vis-à-vis the subjugation of tribal, forest-residing groups or ryots.58 Here, the
implications of interpretive latitude around the rationing document were much less
terrible. The various rationing authorities, who together constituted this interpretive
community, retained a severe stance towards granting coupons through broadly
stated refrains of overstretched resources, failure on the applicant’s part to explore
alternative avenues and more generally, charges of profligate use of coupons
and fraud.
55
The Honorary Secretary, Government of India Press Youngsters Association to The Officer-in-
Charge, Electricity, 69/4/44-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1944.
56
Skaria, ‘Writing, Orality and Power’, p. 37.
57
Ibid., p. 38; Fish, ‘Is there a Text in this Class?’
58
Sengoopta, Imprint of the Raj; Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify’; Skaria, ‘Writing, Orality and
Power’.
The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) demanded a power connection

for their refrigerator for cooling arrangements showing that they were entertain-
ing servicemen and that unless the government provided for refrigeration, their
institution and, by implication, the empire would suffer the charge of poor colonial
health standards.59 A moving theatre company requested electric supply for a pro-
longed period stating their contribution to the propaganda campaign against the
Japanese invasion. Their application, supported by the form and a recommendation
demonstrating that their production and free shows of the anti-Japanese play
named Hindustani Sipahi—Japan ki bhool (Indian soldier—Japan’s mistake) where
donations went into the war fund, entitled them, as powerful propagandist servants
of the colonial state in wartime, to an extended power connection.60
Yet another application citing dire need was written by the Executive Engineer
on behalf of the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) requesting rationing
authorities to sanction motor spirit coupons for transporting coal dust to brick kilns
in connection with war work citing the limited time at hand to finish the project
of construction, part of wartime building operations for officials in the Lodi Road
neighbourhood. The PRA and the Chief Commissioner were sceptical of the claim
owing to the seeming aversion of the CPWD to use animal-drawn transport or
charcoal gas-run vehicles and the relative proximity of the work site from the place
of transportation.61 On another application for granting petrol rations to the North
West Frontier Propaganda Van, rationing officials had to acquiesce and give in to
demands owing to the Van’s role in the dissemination of war propaganda material
in connection with the military campaign against Japan.62 These applications had at
their heart the rhetoric of internal government; the language of legal entitlement and
wartime authority in these ration applications was of one piece with the vocabulary
of power embodying colonial policies to ration India and control its economy to
suit imperial purpose. These applications featured the colonial state directing its
gaze inwards in order to reconcile superficially conflicting rationales of authority,
namely, the rationale to save resources needed to conduct the war and to nourish
men and machines required to conduct the war.
59
Secretary, YMCA, New Delhi to Superintending Engineer, Central Public Works Department, New
Delhi and Superintending Engineer, Delhi to the Chief Commissioner, Delhi, 69/4/44-C, Confidential,
CCO, DSA, 1944.
60
Proprietor, The Great Shahjahan Theatrical Company, Calcutta to the Chief Commissioner, Delhi.
69/4/44-C, Confidential, DSA, 1944. The Company was denied an extended connection as it was feared
that the interim favour could become a standing arrangement.
61
The Chief Commissioner, Delhi to The Secretary to the Government of India, 28/1/44-C,
Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1944. However, in this instance, the Delhi rationing authorities were forced
to concede defeat as the Chief Engineer cited the terms of the contract by which the government was
bound to supply petrol. Besides, it was established elsewhere that for a radius of six miles and more,
animal-drawn transport could not be used.
62
Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, Delhi to the Provincial Rationing Authority, Delhi. 28/1/44-
C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1944.
Some applications hinted that the colonial civilising mission in India would be
compromised unless demands of the kind the claimant made were met. For instance,
a School Principal implored the issue of motor spirit supplementary coupons for
school buses to pick up children from across the province and warned that a refusal
would seriously jeopardise the fulfilment of the lofty ideal of the education of the
European and the native subject. The Principal of New Delhi Church School and
the Chaplain of New Delhi, J.D. Tytler wrote,
During this past winter the number of children attending the school has increased
considerably, due largely to the increased population of Delhi and New Delhi.
Owing to the inadequacy of the ration allowed the school was forcibly closed
one day last week because the supply of coupons had run out. The Authority,
after repeated requests, verbal and otherwise, allowed a supplementary ration
for this month, but his last letter makes it quite clear that he has no intention
of raising our quota….Furthermore, I am at a loss to understand what would
more greatly ‘constitute a just cause for any increase in the motor spirit ration
sanctioned’ than ‘the fact that the number of children attending school’ has
‘increased considerably’. Many parents, through frequent transfers and other
wartime conditions, have for some time found it most difficult to give their
children adequate education, and it has been a real pleasure to me to be able to
supply their need to some extent…Although the school has been open for only
three years we presented five pupils last winter for the Cambridge Examina-
tions, and will be presenting at least seven this year. I do not think it is asking
too much that, in supplying an essential service for the next generation in this
country, we should have at our disposal whatever facility is essential, including,
for Delhi certainly, adequate transport.63
This letter sent along with the application form was an appeal to the Chief Com-
missioner to take a sympathetic view of the irrefutably ‘just cause’ of keeping the
school open. Implicit was a plea to the higher authority to see the injustice in the
rash decision of the PRA to deny the request to increase the supplementary coupons.
The tone of the application was at the same time practical, and demonstrative of the
romance of the colonial project of education: the Principal made out the practical
case (an increase in school children) for imperial consideration. However, neither
the highest rationing authority, namely the Chief Commissioner, nor the PRA was
touched by the lofty reasoning contained in his multiple letters. They only chided
this and other Principals for taking in more children than they could handle, in
terms of transport, and for not being bold or original in exploring other avenues
of transporting children.64
63
Tytler to The Chief Commissioner, 28/1/44-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1944.
64
28/44-C and 28/1/44-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA, 1944.
The ‘Emotional Economy’ of Colonial Rationing Documents
The archive of rationing documents boiled with the intensity of colonial officials’
caustic instructions, nasty asides and verbal jousts with claimants and colleagues.
The institutionalised mandate for compassion clashed with veritable indignation
when the official encountered lazy spending in the application. The ‘emotional
economy’65 of the rationing document was also indexed in some of the applicants’
charged defence of intimacy to the wartime effort, where the question, ‘if not me,
then whom?’ was left hanging in the air. In many senses, this intimacy was anti-
thetical to the kind of ‘hierarchical intimacy’66 turning on ‘ritual address to a divine
sovereign’67 evidenced in petitions of the nineteenth century. The letters requesting
supplementary rations neither featured an appeal to paternal indulgence nor were
they marked by religious undertones of civility and obsequiousness.68
As I already discussed, though applicants tried to reverse unfavourable decisions
by appeals to higher authorities, they had to do so very delicately. They could not
hope to win by playing higher and lower officials against each other as all authori-
ties were engaged in competition to be war-conscious. Their only chance was to
word their requests in terms of proximity to war work or insuperable personal
exigencies. And applicants for non-essential commodities, who were European
or Western-educated, gainfully employed Indians, knew that an overly deferential
frame of address would immediately alienate a chain of authorities who scoured
every application for incriminating reasons for rejection, which in this case would
be an insincere, nepotistic bid to win favour. Therefore, intimacy was fashioned
with the official in a temporal sense through the object that was dearest to him,
namely, winning the war or alternatively that which he could not ignore, namely,
the exigent circumstances of extreme illness and impending death.
The argument that ‘affective knowledge’69 lay at the heart of political ratio-
nality was also borne out by the treatment of applications on par with petitions
in the sense that they too brooked information about popular sentiments.70 If
petitions revealed festering grievances and suppressed anger of ordinary and
affluent subjects in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in colonial metropo-
lises and colonies, applications—which were documents signalling a different
genre of materiality71—also bubbled with resentment. In order to claim additional
food and cloth rations for festivals, weddings and funerals, a concession that was
65
Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance’, p. 101.
66
Appadurai, ‘Topographies of the Self’, pp. 92–112; Raman, Document Raj, p.166.
67
68
Ibid., p. 306.
69
Bayly as cited in Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance’, p. 102.
70
Heerma van Voss, Petitions in Social History, p. 4.
71
By a different materiality, I mean that appeals within application forms were integrated within
the legal process of sanctioning bureaucratic entitlement while petitions by aggrieved subjects listed
demands which were at one remove from this process.
furiously debated by the colonial government in various provinces and states,

Indians had to procure applications for supplementary rations which they could
naturally obtain only if they possessed a ration card.
Almost every religious community in Delhi was mutinous against the colonial
government at some point during the war for not allaying their fears vis-à-vis their
religious expectations in this time of austerity. The President of the Provincial
Majlis Ittihad Millat for instance urged the Viceroy of Delhi to give Muslims
supplementary rations during Ramzan as Muslims needed sugar for making syrup
with ice which they drank when they broke the fast.72 So did the President of the
Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee in the year 1943 on behalf of the Delhi Sikh
Sangats—he expressed the agitation of the Sikh community over the refusal of
the rationing authorities to grant additional rations on the sacred occasion of the
martyrdom celebration of Guru Teg Bahadur.73 The weekly magazine Diwan of the
Sikhs warned of violent protests if supplementary quantities of rationing articles,
possibly wheat, were not made available for the langar, which they argued, was
‘an absolutely essential right’ of the Sikhs.74
It is however not clear whether these exhortations took the form of covering let-
ters to application forms or petitions to the government as they were reported rather
than documented in the form that they appeared, in the National Archives of India
(NAI) files. Emotionally charged applications were probably common with regard
to cloth rationing where communities were given the option of applying for extra
cloth in the instance especially of funerals. The cloth ration permit was perhaps
an exception among documents in a crucial sense—it was the only document that
allotted rations to dead persons.75 The creation of applications for supplementary
coupons for essential commodities like cloth and food was designed for special
classes like soldiers and heavy manual labourers. However, colonial authorities
could scarcely afford to ignore the mass upsurge of religious fervour which touches
everyday cultural life at a crucial imperial juncture. Festivals, weddings and funerals
as well as embassy functions and private parties hosted by officials were allowed
under regulated conditions of the various wartime Guest Control Orders and
the Special Articles (Restriction of Acquisition) Orders. Honouring ‘structures
of sentiment’76 attached to everyday life as well as imperial dignity—which
could be compromised if diplomatic functions were forbidden—were imperatives
underlying the different categories of applications.
72
No. 277/44, Home, Public (C), 1944, National Archives of India (NAI henceforth).
73
Ibid.
74
Ibid.
75
Chapter V, 38, 41 (2), Cloth Rationing Order, 1945 as found in 12 (47)/1945, Civil Supplies, DSA.
In ordinary circumstances, cloth ration coupons in Delhi could be produced only as long as the person
was alive and the head of the family was to report dead or missing family members. 34(1), 34 (2) and
35, Cloth Rationing Order, op.cit, DSA.
76
Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance’, p. 101.
Colonial officials in Delhi were loath to entertain missionary applications as

they were fearful of opening the floodgates to applicants from other communities.
Evangelical Christian leaders were not entertained as evidenced in the treatment of
the motor spirit application of the Delhi Chaplain’s request for additional rations.
Rationing authorities in Delhi believed that by sanctioning this request, they
would be vulnerable to other communities which also demanded concessions
for attendance at places of religious worship. The Muslim leader, Khwaja Hasan
Nizami, for instance, sought rations for his community for purposes of travel to
the mosque. The Secretary to Chief Commissioner wrote that entertaining
the Christian community would be tantamount to opening the Pandora’s Box of
religious demands for motor spirit.77
The Discursive Field of the Application Form
If applications excelled in a dizzying rhetoric of empire, war and cultural national-

ism, the application process embodied narratives of bureaucracy that set trapdoors
through which applicants could easily fall. In this sense, it is important to trace the
bureaucratic registers of truth in the formal application form and how these are
related to subjective acts of description. The applicant could not possibly know
in what light his own assertion of certain truths made him appear. Within the form
of the application, there was a strong likelihood of an interpretive misfit between
what the claimant thought was a specific aspect of proof and the bureaucratic
reading of his representation as a whole. Such a reading secreted selective informa-
tion, highlighted certain details and suppressed others for purposes of determining
eligibility.
Let us, for the purposes of this discussion, take the application form for tyre
rationing. The claimant had to submit a lengthy application complete with all the
columns that made him open to scrutiny on various fronts—whether his use for
the vehicle was urgent (as cited in the essential purpose of the vehicle), his legal
credentials (if he owned a document representing his identity), his adherence to
legal channels of ownership (whether his vehicle was registered or not), his com-
pliance to the current wartime regulations (whether he drew petrol rations through
the right channels). He had to mention the basic and supplementary coupons he
was drawing and he had to prove his status as a worthy applicant for a certain
class of rations (by providing a statement of his profession, business, occupation
and business address).78 If these were details that at once corroborated the status
of an applicant as a respectable law-abiding subject and responsible motor vehicle
77
28/5/43-C, Confidential, CCO, DSA.
78
See Form 5 of the Tyre Rationing Order. Separate applications had to be filled out for each vehicle
for which tyres are sought. Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, Supply Department to the
Chief Commissioner, Delhi (among many other authorities of other provinces), 9(52)/1944, Local
Self-Government, CCO, DSA.
user in colonial Delhi, they also established his eligibility to receive tyres, a scarce
commodity during the war. A hoarder or a tax evader, for instance, was neither a
good colonial subject in normal conditions nor was he worthy of ration supplies
during the war.79
Documents attested not simply to the identity of the holder, but also to his crite-
ria of eligibility and his status as a citizen of colonial India. Ironically enough, an
applicant found that in satisfying criteria establishing him as a respectable candidate
for everyday consumption, he often convinced the rationing official that there was
nothing special about his case that entitled him to supplementary coupons of petrol
or tyre permits during the war. An applicant who desired a permit for a new tyre or
tyres was required to surrender unserviceable tyre or tyres while those who applied
for re-treaded tyres had to surrender used re-treadable tyres as emphasised by the
Controller of Rationing.80 In setting down this rule, rationing authorities were of
the firm conviction that all tyres were re-treadable and re-usable. Advertisements
were placed in newspapers advising applicants to first apply for permits to re-tread
old tyres (see Figure 2). And barring a few heavy transport vehicle owners, every
applicant should be able to surrender re-treadable tyres: if he was not capable of
doing this, his application for a permit opened the case for re-consideration of his
registration. Was he worthy of owning a vehicle if he could not keep his tyres in
good shape? An application thus rendered the owner vulnerable where he least
suspected it.
On the face of it, it would appear that the formal application form for ‘a new
supply or additions to connected load and/or maximum demand’ of electricity (see
Figure 3) privileged those who could assert power and status. The column asking
for the nature of service or the use to which the electric connection was sought to
be put lists three options, namely residential, industrial or public building. When
read along with the internal correspondence as well as the Tyre Rationing Order, it
would certainly appear that the prejudice against occupants of residential buildings
was ingrained in the form. The field listed in the table of the form, asking for details
of the industry to be served, functioned to remind the applicant that the rationing
regime of non-essential commodities was weighted in favour of those who were
contributing palpably to the colonial edifice. While the war itself was not indexed
in the form, the question of what industry was served was probably intended to
satisfy the colonial evaluating authority about the adequacy of the application to
the war effort. In its use of terms like ‘sanction’, ‘shifts’, ‘industry’, ‘load maturing’
79
Precautions were to be taken to ensure that permits were not issued to hoarders, those engaged
in illegal trade, those whose vehicle tyres had illegible serial numbers. Applicants had to use up their
stock for re-treadable or used tyres before seeking new tyres. Deputy Secretary to the Government of
India, Department of Supply to the Chief Commissioner, Delhi, 9(52)/1944, Local Self-Government,
CCO, DSA.
80
9(52)/1944, Local Self-Government, CCO, DSA.
Figure 2
Advertisement Advising Acquisition of Permit for Tyre Re-treading
Source: HT, 26 February 1944.
Figure 3
Application for an Electricity Connection
Source: Delhi State Archives.
and ‘registered address’, this form taken as a whole fulfilled the marginalisation of
the name and the personal identity of the claimant. The use of the word ‘consumer’
in this form rather than claimant or holder as used in other application forms only
reinforced the relative irrelevance of the applying subject.
This is starkly observed in the response of one applicant, who, in the field
marked name, chose to instead enter his designation as Chairman of a Committee
(see Figure 3). The fields spelling out questions like load enjoyed as on a certain date,
additional sanction subsequent to a certain date, the amount in terms of kilowatts
of electricity applied for were there to help the rationing authority assess the
discretion of the applicant’s spending as well as to determine the prudence of
granting an application request given the electric power available under any given
plant. It is also noteworthy that these fields were common: those ‘consumers’
who applied in their capacity of service in industrial or public buildings were

clubbed together with their residential counterparts. The constraints of available
load, whether the demand was for a temporary connection or a permanent one,
the fragility of power plants overtaxed by war work were imposing on all appli-
cants as reflected in the common nature of the fields. In other words, the various
fields conveyed that even applications by occupants of public buildings, public
servants contributing to the war effort and dignitaries would be entertained subject
to certain conditions.
Rudimentarily, micro-practices like seals, stamps, signatures, dates, counterfoils,
serial numbers may be regarded as bureaucratic fetishes that serve to entrench
Weberian norms of attestation, attribution and organisation. But a close examina-
tion of their use in the colonial rationing regime shows them up as rhetorical
utterances of documents within the ‘graphic genre’.81 Hull writes that bureaucrats
strive through their employment of procedures and artifacts to ritually remove
traces of individual authorship and to discursively locate individual actions within
an impersonal and thoroughly rationalised corporate order.82 Another dimension
that scholars point out is the evidentiary value of a revenue instrument which is
at the same time a graphic artifact like stamp paper. One such scholar writes of
the disciplinary effects of protocols like signing, dating and using purchased
stamp paper which was deemed necessary to deter excessive petitioning, to
establish the identity of the petitioner and to bind the petitioner to the veracity
of her or his claims.83 The sheer ubiquity and the ritual reproduction of graphic
artifacts thus served more than to merely foreground the authority of the issuing
bureaucratic rulers.
Following these scholars, I would like to show that these artifacts, taken sepa-
rately and collectively, tried to elaborately and narratively enact the legal materiality
of handling corruption. The various artifactual practices like registration numbers,
coupon books, certificates and counterfoils were instituted to remind the applicant,
the issuing bureaucratic authority, the clerk, the dealer and the vendor that they
were engaged in legitimate transactions and to socialise them into the appropri-
ate context of using them. The various graphic artifacts and signs of the colonial
wartime regime were garrulous about the elaborate protocols that they imposed
and the bureaucratic attempts to tie commodities to documents and documents to
persons. The paper regime of wartime rationing was boastful as it performed the
minute marking of the commodity where even something as unremarkable as a
tyre was linked to a person and a document. Each tyre was identified, (usable or
re-treadable) correlated to its owner, whether a stockist, a fleet-owner or a civilian
customer and marked within the document by its serial number. The relation of
81
Hull, Government of Paper, p. 115.
82
Ibid., pp. 132–33.
83
permits, licenses and coupons to documentary protocols and applicants was

intricate in that certification of the vehicle, authentication of ownership and attesta-
tion of status of applicant attached themselves to a sub-sect of the commodity such
as re-treadable tyres and stage carriages.
Equally importantly, different nomenclatures of the document such as ordinary
coupons, special coupons, special receipts, gathered around well-classified sets
of applicants such as central government and provincial government employees,
stage carriage owners, dealers, fleet-owners and stockists. Colonial authorities
sought to check corruption by instituting safeguards circumscribing the move-
ment and standardising the issue of documents. It was forbidden to supply
petrol except at the legally ordained points of supply and against the surrender
of receipts or coupons attached to coupon or receipt books.84 This was to ensure
that the claimant had not obtained these coupons or receipts in black or through
fraudulent means. Legal practice of curbing corruption involved marking various
objects, the commodity, rationed items and at other times, the document. Tyres
were marked, cloth was stamped, vehicles were issued registration numbers and
applications bearing tyre numbers were clipped, sealed and counterfoiled. Identi
fication documents were not valid unless they bore the counter-signature of the
appropriate authority like the Provincial Rationing Authority or the Director of
Civil Aviation.
Things, if marked intricately, securely fastened themselves to persons and
functions and steadfastly spoke the truth about the legality of a transaction and the
identity of those executing the transaction. Underlying these marking practices was
an endeavour to fashion a discourse of legality where objects were made distinct
through the knowledge (serial numbers, signatures, etc.) inscribed in them and
where objects and persons were correlated through a repetitive narrative process
of identification, verification and authentication. Such narrative rituals may have
been all the more expedient and self-reinforcing in the face of misappropriation and
negligence in handling a bewildering plethora of multi-striped applications, rationed
commodities and paper.85 In Delhi, there were plenty of instances of black market-
ing in petrol coupons. A range of actors like military lorry drivers, shopkeepers,
servants in the Chinese Commissioner’s office, Public Works Department overseers
and clerks were found culpable of crimes in rationing documents.86
84
9 (7), 27, Motor Spirit Rationing Order.
85
There were many recorded instances of negligence and misappropriation across the colony such
as the theft of blank rationing permits by peons and forgery of petrol coupons in Bombay, extortion by
writers for assistance with filling in application forms in Mysore Residency, the large-scale printing
of counterfeit coupons in Calcutta, smuggling of petrol from military sources by a bailiff and a driver
in Poona (Sriraman, ‘Revisiting Welfare’, pp. 57–58; HT, 21 June 1942; HT, 26 April 1943; HT, 20
June 1942).
86
Sriraman, ‘Revisiting Welfare’, p. 57; HT, 2 June 1944; HT, 1 April 1945; HT, 30 April 1942.
Some of these crimes included the sale of loose motor spirit coupons in Delhi, the mixing of kerosene
with petrol and the stocking of charcoal without license (HT, 6 January 1942; HT, 18 June 1943).
Conclusion
When the application for the rationed commodity resembled a petition, it had
very significant implications for the materiality of law and the bureaucratic frame
of colonial power. If colonial discretion spawned various rhetorical possibilities
of the document, the documents generated during this period necessitated specia
lised forms of rhetoric. Owing to the interpretive community of the document,
there was no saying what aspect of the application form became privileged over
the other. A good applicant for motor spirit was also required to be a good motor
vehicle user and a systematic tax payer. So though applicants attempted to sway
authorities, they often had no control over the light in which their assertions would
be read. This article also raises questions of coloniser–colonised intimacy, cultural
upsurges and colonial accountability to the affective lives of their subjects, as
they feature in modes of address and the genre of supplementary rationing
documents. It is important to distinguish various documentary claims of intimacy
and the separate colonial discourses surrounding them such as colonial war
priorities, compassion underlying legal-political rationality and living community
norms. And finally, I tried to show how counterfoils, receipts and other graphic
artifacts attached to the document were contrived to discipline various actors,
wily middlemen, complicit officials and rationed subjects into comprehending
the legal liability of their transactions. The micro-narratives of documents thus
yield many insights on empire, bureaucratic discretion and its challenges, and the
production of enumerated subjectivity during critical imperial encounters like the
Second World War.
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A petition-like application?

Keywords: Rationing, rhetoric, war, empire, identification documents

The salience of bureaucratic documentation to colonial governance can hardly be

the practices of formally addressing colonial authorities across wide cross-sections

The Colonial Wartime Basis of Rationing

Applying for Non-essential Rationed Commodities

Colonial authorities used applications for rationing documents (permits, coupons,

resonances in histories of petition-writing where too it was common to exploit

contingencies, supplementary coupons were issued, usually for a month—if the

Source: Delhi State Archives.

paper. When a supplier or stockist, fleet-owner or anybody else applied for a

The Rhetorical Model of the Application

Bhatia refers to himself as petitioner instead of applicant, calling attention to the

and sanctioned by a medical expert outside the government, it was nevertheless

The ‘Interpretive Community’ of the Document

This application, written by the Honorary Secretary, Government of India Press

This institution is finding great difficulties owing to not having electricity.

Many of these letters tried to smuggle in the rhetorical counterfactual of what

The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) demanded a power connection

The ‘Emotional Economy’ of Colonial Rationing Documents

furiously debated by the colonial government in various provinces and states,

Colonial officials in Delhi were loath to entertain missionary applications as

The Discursive Field of the Application Form

If applications excelled in a dizzying rhetoric of empire, war and cultural national-

Source: HT, 26 February 1944.

Source: Delhi State Archives.

who applied in their capacity of service in industrial or public buildings were

permits, licenses and coupons to documentary protocols and applicants was

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