AT

The politics of deciding the “right” approver shows how legality and justice have been historically constructed to serve the state’s interests. The pardoning of Thakur Ahir shows how it was important for the British (or state) to portray themselves as being on the “right side of history”- to construct a narrative that could achieve the exact results that they desired. In this regard, it is not only the testification of the crime that is important, but also its pre-history.
The reading highlights how Shikari’s was "a “competent” testimony against the Chauri Chaura accused, forged from an early stage to feed and fit into the production of judicial discourse". Shahid Amin further reiterates this point when he mentions that the Approver's Testimony "is neither a confession nor a renegade’s perception of past events; it is very much a construct of the prosecution’s view of the event and its pre-history". This episode shows how such judicial discourses have the potential to "create histories" or "erase" them- as befits the ongoing political project.
It was especially interesting to note how subalternity was created in this very domain- it was only the testimony of the approver that occupied any importance in the history- the rest were all labelled as rebels and deemed irrelevant in the dominant historical narratives!