Negotiating the Carceral Space

Abstract

AbstractFollowing the Sepoy Mutiny (1857), a penal settlement in the Andamans started operating to accommodate mutiny and other prisoners, and a convict society devised by class, caste and religion gradually evolved in the Andaman Islands. Starting in 1909, the government transported “political prisoners” whom they labelled as “anarchists” or “terrorists”, and the settlement witnessed a revolutionary history. Subject to incessant tortures, the political prisoners wrote constant mercy petitions to the government reflecting remorse for their past revolutionary activities. This essay reads the politics of juridical and mercy petitions of the political prisoners and their families, and suggests that an inverted political identity negating contemporary nationalism operated in the carceral and personal site. It also presents the narrative of the struggle for personal and political freedom that involved hunger strikes and political negotiations in the penal space.Keywords: AndamansCellular Jailfreedom struggle movementhunger strikespolitical prisonersSepoy Mutiny AcknowledgementsThe authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their observations and constructive comments on the essay. In addition, the authors would like to thank the archivists and staff at the National Archives of India, New Delhi and Andaman and Nicobar State Archives, Port Blair, for their help in locating different papers.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).ArchivesReport on the Working of the Penal Settlement by C.J. Lyall and Surgeon-Major A.S. Lethbridge. June 1890. Home Department [Port Blair]. New Delhi: National Archives of India (hereafter ND: NAI).Transportation to the Andamans of Six Men Convicted in the Alipore Bomb Conspiracy Case. December 1909. Home (Political) Department, Progs. No. 84–7 (A). ND: NAI.Treatment in the Andamans of Prisoners Convicted for Sedition and Cognate Offences. December 1912. Home (Political) Department, Progs. No. 11–31 (B). ND: NAI.V.D. Savarkar’s, Sudhir Kumar Sarcar’s and Barindra Ghosh’s Petition to Craddock. February 1914. Home (Political) Department, Progs. No. 68–160. ND: NAI.Barindra Ghosh’s Petition to the Chief Commissioner of the Andamans and Superintendent of Port Blair. May 1914. Home (Political) Department, Progs. No. 96–110 (B). ND: NAI.V.D. Savarkar’s Petition to the Chief Commissioner, Andaman Islands. November 1914. Home (Political – B) Department, Progs. No. 245. ND: NAI.Notes. June 1915. Home (Political – A) Department, Progs. No. 141–2. ND: NAI.Bhai Parmanand’s Petition. October 1919. Home (Political – A) Department, Progs. No. 129–39. ND: NAI.V.D. Savarkar’s Petition to the Government of India. August 1920. Home (Political – A) Department, Progs. No. 368–73. ND: NAI.Notes1 Transportation in Britain, as an alternative to hanging, came into effect in the eighteenth century following the passage of the Transportation Act 1717 and Criminal Law Act 1776.2 The proximity of the Andamans to the Chinese sea trade routes was vital to control the sea line of far-east Asia. Further, the pleas of shipwrecked mariners attacked by Andaman aborigines made the British annex the islands. The Mutiny provided only a backdrop to the pretext by which the Andamans became a penal colony (Anderson Citation2018, 154; Mouat Citation1862, 110).3 After release, Andaman prisoners – in particular Maulana Jafar Thanesari’s Kala Pani or Tavarikh-e-Ajib (1885) – presented the incarceration period in the Andamans as comfortable, which made convicts prefer transportation to a term in Indian jails and made the settlement lose its deterrent effect (Sen Citation2004).4 The construction of the Cellular Jail started in 1896 and was completed by 1906 (Rath Citation2022, 148).5 Notable convicts of this period such as Barindra Ghosh, V.D. Savarkar, Bhai Parmanand and Ullaskar Dutt published their autobiographies after their release from the penal space. Post-independence, these narratives have helped in making the image of the Andaman convicts.6 In general parlance, “political prisoner” refers to “a person who has been deprived of his/her liberty by the state for ‘offences’ perceived to be political in nature” (Singh Citation2001, 20). Based on the context and time period, the term has been variously defined. See Ujjwal Singh’s Political Prisoners in India (Citation2001) for further details.7 The penal space denied the prisoners access to pen and paper. Their grievances were presented orally to the jail officials who documented them in their prison diaries. The petitions were read over by jail authorities and were scrutinized before being despatched. On an average, they were two to three pages long. These texts were preserved in the case files of the prisoners, and post-independence they have been part of different archives and repositories.8 Petitions were also written by Ganesh Savarkar, Hrishikesh Kanjilal, Bhai Parmanand, Sudhir Kumar Sarcar and Nand Gopal describing their prison ordeals and demanding the rights of political prisoners.9 Hewett suggested that if the law permitted, such prisoners should be deported from the country. He was supported by Stevenson Moore, Director of Criminal Intelligence, who considered the Indian jail system negligent.10 Since the prisoners were dubbed “specially dangerous”, they were to be isolated from both their group members and other convicts. Minto had doubts regarding providing such treatment in a distant land and hence raised objections to their deportation.11 According to the government’s special instructions, Andaman officials viewed the prisoners with suspicion and were extra-vigilant towards them, lest they escape or cause disturbances in the settlement.12 Narratives of political prisoners present their placing under the guard of habitual criminals, the assignment of clerical jobs to ordinary convicts and the fact that Hindu convicts were guarded by Muslim warders as deliberate attempts to promote religious and class/caste division among the prisoners. Savarkar and Ghosh suggest the tactic was to break unity among the prisoners. While recounting this experience, Savarkar’s own orthodox stand on the issue of Hindus and Muslims comes to the fore, which would in the years to come help in the making of his treatise Hindutva (1923).13 Transportation isolated the convicts triply by transporting them from “mainland” India, separating the case men and denying space in the “rehabilitated society of ‘ordinary’ criminals” (Sen Citation2000, 266). Petitioning was the only tool available to them in the Andamans – unlike in Indian jails – to establish a channel of communication with the government.14 While David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn (Citation2004) read prison narratives of middle-class prisoners as a significant subgenre in modern South Asian writing, Mushirul Hasan (Citation2016) explores poetry as a medium of expression to understand prisoners’ jail experience as a part of the Indian freedom struggle movement.15 Working in the oil mill, considered one of the toughest jobs in the Cellular Jail, put every political prisoner to the test. Savarkar (Citation1984, 81) writes that men were “yoked like animals to the handle that turned the wheel”, whereas Barindra Ghosh (Citation2011, 108) suggests its consequences in the following manner: “When it becomes physically impossible to grind out 30 lbs. of oil, one is forced to seek the aid of the more robust ruffians in order to avoid punishment and that means to sell, in return, one’s body for the most abject ends”.16 Harsh treatments and the absence of privileges awaited the political prisoners in the Andamans; in Indian jails, however, state prisoners could read books, communicate with family, and were given a healthy diet. The Andaman prisoners had expected similar treatments in the penal space (Majumdar Citation1976).17 The Indian Jails Committee (1920), while highlighting high maintenance costs and lack of reformatory influence, recommended the stoppage of transportation of prisoners (except dangerous ones) to the settlement. Though the government agreed to the proposal, overcrowding in Indian jails made it change its decision. Transportation of ordinary convicts continued, and following “militant” activities in Bengal, transportation of political prisoners resumed in 1932.18 Resistance by prisoners is visible in various small acts or gestures of defiance. For instance, Jean Genet’s debut novel Our Lady of the Flowers (1943), written in prison, was burned by a guard and was later rewritten by him, thus providing a model of how small acts evoke carceral resistance. Similarly, David Lloyd’s Irish Culture and Colonial Modernity 1800–2000 (2011) shows how, through the survival of oral narratives, resistance to colonial rule was maintained.19 Protests in Indian jails were also seen in the nineteenth century following the introduction of common messing. See Yang (Citation1987) for further details.20 Additionally, the hunger strike was labelled as a strategy developed by the “self-styled” political prisoners to earn remissions (Home [Political] Dept., December 1912, NAI/ND).21 The article in the Bengalee, besides listing Andaman atrocities, reported on the suicide of Indu Bhusan Roy and the insanity of Ullaskar Dutt. Another article published in India (15 January 1915) in London appealed to grant the Andaman prisoners amnesty or have their sentences served in an Indian jail (Home [Political – A] Dept., June 1915, NAI/ND).22 Since the Cellular Jail came under the jurisdiction of the Central Government in Delhi, Indian politicians perceived it as an “opportunity to establish their nationalist credentials” and lent their support to the strike (Grant Citation2019, 122). Political leaders such as Nehru did not condone the strikes; rather, by “acknowledging [their] constitutive power”, they treated the strikes as a “symbolic means to forge national bonds” (Grant Citation2019, 122).23 Gandhi had become “a viable and desirable option for the British” to persuade the prisoners to end their fast (Maclean Citation2015, 226).24 For further details on Gandhi’s appeal to the Andaman prisoners, see Gandhi (Citation1976, vol. 66, 74–75).25 See Gandhi, “Resolution on Andaman Prisoners” (1937) (in Gandhi Citation1976, vol. 66, 464) for further details.26 The hunger strikes in the Andamans have played a vital role in this, as they eclipsed the mercy petitions of the political prisoners that stand in contrast to their heroic image.Additional informationFundingThe corresponding author would like to acknowledge the financial support extended to him by IMPRESS-ICSSR, New Delhi, and the Ministry of Education, Government of India, in the form of a sponsored research grant, for the present study. The original project is titled “Restoring the Sacred in Public Spheres” (file no. IMPRESS/P2124/689/18-19/ICSSR); Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi.