Podcast Summary: Stephen Legg on "Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities"

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Soumya Dadu
Guest: Stephen Legg, Professor of Historical Geography, University of Nottingham
Book Discussed: Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (University of Georgia Press, 2025)
Release Date: January 23, 2026

Overview of the Episode

This episode explores Stephen Legg's latest work, Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities, which offers a fresh theoretical and spatial analysis of anticolonial politics in Delhi during the two decades leading up to Indian independence in 1947. The conversation delves into Legg's innovative use of governmentality and Foucault's concept of parrhesia to reinterpret anticolonial movements—not simply as resistance, but as the creation of new political and social forms. The episode stands out for its methodological reflection, vivid storytelling about Delhi’s upheavals, and its careful negotiation between European theory and South Asian realities.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Intellectual Trajectory and Book Genesis

• Legg traces how the book emerged from an 18-year journey, not as a straightforward follow-up to his previous work, Spaces of Colonialism.
• Initial attempts stalled on analytical blocks—particularly how to conceptualize power, space, and subjectivity in the context of fragmented archives.
• Collaborative projects with scholars like Dina Heath and Tariq Jaziel, plus in-depth engagement with Foucault’s late lectures, unlocked new ways of theorizing anticolonialism.
• Key Quote (Stephen Legg, 02:14):

  "The breakthrough...hints at the sort of inherent Eurocentrism in a lot of these theories...it did no justice to the people or the project to approach anti colonialism as an outside...it was the British who were the alien government, they were the outside."

2. Reframing Anticolonialism as Governmentality

• Legg challenges the common view of anticolonialism as solely reactive "resistance."
• Instead, he conceptualizes it as its own governmentality—an active production of new modes of subjectivity, social relations, and forms of rule.
• He cautions against limiting analysis to postcolonial state-building or seeing projects as merely derivative of European models.
• Key Quote (Stephen Legg, 07:07):

  "Anti colonial movements...were way more than just resisting colonialism. They were future oriented...committed to articulating an alternative form of being, an alternative form of conducting populations that went way beyond resistance."

3. Theoretical and Methodological Positioning

• Legg highlights the dangers of treating anticolonialism as an "outside," a perspective shaped by colonial surveillance and archival power.
• He stresses the necessity of seeking the worldview of the anticolonial actors themselves, including subaltern perspectives not centered in elite nationalist narratives.
• Governmentality analytics, adapted and de-Europeanized, allow for a "bottom-up" account that foregrounds everyday practices and spatial relations.
• Key Quote (Stephen Legg, 11:03):

  "To view anti colonialism as an outside is very much the perspective and the spatiality...of what the colonial archive produces...So the attempt to not have anti colonialism as an outside is an archival one, it's a theoretical one."

4. Foucault's Parrhesia and its Application

• Legg deploys Foucault’s concept of parrhesia (courageous truth-telling) to make sense of anticolonial subjectivity, moving beyond the binary of power and resistance.
• Parrhesia frames anticolonial politics as a project of alternative truth-relationships—akin to Gandhi’s satyagraha.
• The concept pushes analysis toward the lived ethics and self-transformation, rather than staying within “resistance” or state-building paradigms.
• Key Quote (Stephen Legg, 14:44):

  "Parrhesia...enabled me to use this framing to help us think about anti colonialism as precisely a broader project...both Gandhi's injunction to embody a different form of truth, self, other relationship, but also as a way of thinking about different forms of power relation."

Delhi on the Ground: Episodes of Anticolonial Governmentality

1. Women’s Leadership in the 1930 Civil Disobedience Movement

• Contrary to prevailing imagery of gender conservatism, women emerge as leaders in Delhi’s civil disobedience.
• Archival and oral histories reveal how women brought anticolonial politics into homes (images, clothing choices, storytelling), as well as onto the streets (processions, activism).
• Figures like Satyavati, from a prominent political family, led public protests and later shifted to more radical politics.
• Notable Segment:
  • Photographs and oral histories (20:00-23:00)
  • Quote (Stephen Legg, 19:51):

    "Women were doing or bringing anti colonialism into the home in a series that's really inventive and often very small ways...encouraging their husbands to wear khadi to work, reading...stories from the newspaper to children in the home."

2. The Gurudwara Sisganj Police Shooting and the Dilemmas of Nonviolence (1930)

• This event, central in archival records but absent in popular memory, saw police open fire on protestors at a major Sikh temple, killing and injuring many.
• The contested interpretations (official vs. community-led inquiries) illuminated not only the complex spatial politics but also the tension between nonviolent ideals and urban realities.
• Congress struggled to commemorate the incident due to unresolved questions about protestor violence—foreshadowing later debates about the boundaries of nonviolence.
• Notable Segment:
  • Scene-setting and spatial analysis (25:20-30:00)
  • Quote (Stephen Legg, 25:19):

    "There was absolutely no recollection of it in...Delhi...But this shooting, this huge event, slipped from memory. And...the reason I think it's central...is that it problematized this claim which Congress were making, which was that their movement was a non violent one."

3. Quit India: Redrawing Urban Divides (“Vertical Cities” of Overground and Underground)

• Quit India didn’t replay the standard Old Delhi vs. New Delhi division, but instead operated across a “vertical” split: visible (overground) protests and hidden (underground) revolutionary activity.
• New Delhi, paradoxically designed for colonial control, was leveraged for fast movement, clandestine meetings, and even provided shelters due to the sympathies of Indian civil servants.
• The underground was a geography produced and sustained by networks of informers, safe houses, coded communication, and its own ethics—sometimes blurring lines between nonviolence and violence.
• Aruna Asaf Ali exemplifies the emergence of new kinds of political actors, refusing Gandhi’s instructions and leading the underground with increasing radicalism.
• Notable Segment:
  • "Magical-realist" alternative cityscapes of resistance (32:15-38:27)
  • Quote (Stephen Legg, 32:11):

    "The underground operated across New and Old Delhi...what I try to do is to not unveil this invisibility, but to look at how it was produced...through messengers, through carriers, through monies and objects and texts which circulated..."

Reflections: Foucault, Theory, and South Asian Contexts

1. Using and Critiquing Foucault in South Asia

• Legg reflects on his reading of Foucault always being filtered through Subaltern Studies and postcolonial critique.
• He adapts Foucault to fragment and reassemble urban archives, while being attentive to the dangers of re-centralizing European theory or repeating colonial erasures.
• Foucault’s late works open space for imagining different relationships of self, truth, and politics—inviting scholars to critically adapt his concepts.
• Notable Segment:
  • Discussion of theory adaptation (39:02-41:56)
  • Quote (Stephen Legg, 39:02):

    "Like many Indian scholars or scholars of India, I was actually reading Subaltern Studies in depth way before...Foucault's lectures...I've always read Foucault through the lens of post colonial scholarship."

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On theorizing with humility (Stephen Legg, 43:15):

  "One of the best...defenses of [Gandhi] I read is that he would always try to engage people, no matter who they were, with some of the deepest and most profound philosophical and religious questions in a language that they could understand..."

• On broadening the historical cast (Stephen Legg, 43:15–45:17):

  "...when you do increase the scope of people, you do increase the cast of people who were engaged in making a city political. It's just the most rewarding process. And you find that you engage with people who are inspiring and challenging and often very funny..."

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | Speaker | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------|-------------------| | 02:14 | Long intellectual journey & Eurocentrism in theory | Legg | | 07:07 | Anticolonialism as more than resistance | Legg | | 11:03 | The colonial archive and methodological challenges | Legg | | 14:44 | Adapting parrhesia to anticolonial context (Foucault) | Legg | | 19:51 | Women’s agency in Delhi’s civil disobedience | Legg | | 25:19 | The Gurudwara Sisganj shooting and dilemmas of nonviolence| Legg | | 32:11 | Quit India’s “overground/underground” urban politics | Legg | | 39:02 | Adapting Foucault for South Asian archives | Legg | | 43:15 | What readers should take away; broadening historical scope| Legg |

Conclusion: Takeaways and Final Reflections

• Legg urges scholars and readers to look beyond major figures and events, piecing together histories from “the most rewarding process” of capturing underrepresented voices and everyday actions.
• The approach combines rigorous theoretical reflection with sensitivity to local context and archive, offering a replicable yet flexible model for studying anticolonial urban histories.
• The episode closes with Legg’s hope that broadening the cast of historical agents reveals just how political, creative, and sometimes humorous, urban life under colonialism could be.

For more: Detailed information about Spaces of Anticolonialism can be found in the episode description.