What comes to your mind when you think of a jail?
The perception of a jail, behind the bars or lock up- one visualises vertical bars clanking wrought iron doors, unkempt flooring, one concrete slab to sleep on and a rough blanket with hardly any mattress to sleep on. One ‘matka’ for water, a half open loo which you cannot hide behind and just enough space to move around. Cockroaches, ants, rodents and mosquitoes; heat and dust. Routine is punishing- day starts early, routine is mundane, no communication, no TV, no paper, infrequent visitors and very basic food. You need to wash own clothes deal with hardened criminals and you are in a jail uniform all the time. Harsh language by wardens, jail staff and constables. You are a prisoner and treated like one- certainly looked down upon. Prisoners are given jobs to do like cooking, cleaning and distributing food to all inmates.
Jails are overcrowded; several prisoners often land up in one small room packed like sardines. The Model Prison Manual recommends a minimum of 96 square feet say 10 ft by 9 ft area of ground area per prisoner in a cell. However, due to overcrowding, prisoners often have far less living space, sometimes much smaller than the recommended standard. Reality is different. Capacity is often exceeded, leading to crowded cells (around 60 inmates in one cell).
For instance, life in Tihar Jail is a complex mix of harsh realities like overcrowding, corruption, and violence.
With daily routines involving early mornings and structured meals.
Wake-up around 6 AM, followed by roll call, hygiene, and breakfast (daliya/khichdi, tea). Insipid food.
Meals Served at set times (7 AM, 11:30 AM, 5:30 PM), typically roti, daal, sabzi, with some flexibility for rice at dinner, but portions can be limited.
People around you are all criminals big, small dangerous and very dangerous. Gang fights can erupt, leading to lockdowns, though some areas appear peaceful for visitors. New inmates face isolation, mental stress and frustration due to the lack of answers and harsh environment, impacting sleep and appetite.
In a nut shell it is depressing and each day weighs heavy on a prisoner and so should it be, as you are serving a punishment sentence for a crime. This is by and large how jails are- definitely not a bed of roses. No wonder you hear filmy dialogues like ‘aab jailki salakhon ke peeche sadana’.
This is how we all perceive jails and jail term- no jail house rock of Elvis Presly.
What we were told about sacrifices of Nehru and Gandhi
Immediately after independence two names always popped up in front of the entire nation who made the ultimate or supreme sacrifice for our freedom. They were Nehru and Gandhi. They were jailed for a long-time during freedom struggle. This was a fact and this was enough for any one to assume that they were treated harshly by our tyrant British rulers QED. Therefore, no wrong was told to the 40-crore people then. Jail is a jail is a jail. So, the entire free India imagined the scenario of a jail described above.
Jawaharlal Nehru was imprisoned nine times by the British for his role in India’s independence movement, spending over nine years (around 3,259 days) in various jails between 1921 and 1945. Perfectly right.
Jawaharlal Nehru was imprisoned at the Ahmednagar Fort from August 1942 to March 1945, spending over 1,000 days there in jail- absolutely right.
MK Gandhi was imprisoned multiple times by the British in India for his leadership in the independence movement, facing charges like sedition for his writings in Young India. He spent thousands of days in various jails, including Yerawada (Pune) and Aga Khan Palace (Poona). He spent approximately 2,338 days in total across various imprisonments in South Africa and India between 1908 and 1944, a significant portion of which was in India. Suffice to say Aga Khan palace was a palace and the British administration authorised a maintenance allowance of one hundred rupees a month for Gandhi those days which translates to a whopping Rs 3 lac a month today.
Brown Sahibs and brown plebeians
The British were smart enough to divide the freedom fighters in two blobs for their convenience- like black and white (though all were brown skinned).
They wanted to deal with Nehru, Gandhi and the like who were western educated, soft spoken, English like in a different way. They found dealing with them lot easier than those who were up in arms for real fight. This was the Brown Sahib gang.
Gandhi, was seen as a moral force, while Nehru was a respected in the eyes of the British, Western-educated leader, smoking, (Nehru loved ‘555’ brand cigarettes) drinking (he had a strong preference for Scotch whisky) and eating like them like country cousins; negotiating with them was a way to manage the inevitable transition and avoid a more radical uprising. All supporting these two also fell into the soft basket. Though Gandhi’s trademark dress was a simple, homespun white cloth, specifically a dhoti (a loincloth) and a shawl (often accompanied by a cotton wrap or chaddar). He got himself called a ‘half naked fakir.’
Gandhi was the face of Bharat-fakir- and Nehru the suave Ameer.
The entire freedom struggle was in a way hi jacked by these brown sahibs and the nation was told nothing of torture to the thousands and thousands who were tortured and killed! Two different sides of the same coin- Bharat and India.
The plebeians were Sardar Singh Artillery, Diwan Singh Kalepani, Yogendra Shukla, Batukeshwar Dutt, Vishwanath Mathur, Hemchandra Kanungo, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Shadan Chandra Chatterjee, Sohan Singh, Hare Krishna Konar, Shiv Verma, Allama Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Sudhanshu Dasgupta, Ullashkar Dutta, Barindra Kumar Ghosh, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Ganesh Damodar Savarkar. They were the plebeians- unsophisticated and connected with or typical of people from a low social class. (so, they imagined). These were in tens of thousands.
Brown Sahibs and Plebeians were both ‘incarcerated’ means jailed. But no one knows the details.
We never had videos of brutal killings like we have today. The word ‘Lynching’ raises goose bumps where as to shoot someone may not. Lynching is an extrajudicial killing of a person by a mob or group, acting outside the law, often publicly, to punish an alleged crime or enforce social control through intimidation, typically involving hanging, beating, or burning without a trial. So is killing or decapitating.
Starkly Differential treatment
The plebeians were sent to kala Pani a horrid place on Andaman Nicobar Islands more than thousand kilometres from main land India so that not a word could go out. No Media, no escape and the British could play hell with them- deaths and physical torture was routine.
The First War of Indian Independence in 1857 had rekindled the interest of the British Administration in India to establish a penal colony in the Andaman Islands for political prisoners.
No one came to these islands, and they would be out of public glare or scrutiny in India as well as the rest of the world. For nine months a year, they noted that the Andaman Islands were caught in the crosswinds of monsoons, and they remained uninhabited apart from pockets of “unearthly and ferocious tribes”. A better place to exile the “gigantic evil” of rebellion could not be found.
The revolutionaries in Cellular Jail were not treated as political prisoners but as ‘seditionists’ or ‘anarchists’ and were treated worse than ordinary criminals. They were given class ‘D’ (Dangerous) or ‘PI’(Permanently Incarcerated). Initially Veer Savarkar was given 50 years jail sentence! Sentenced in 1910, his sentence would finish in 1960.
Prisoners were subjected to backbreaking tasks of hard labour, clearing dense humid forests, and building infrastructure on the island making their life hell on earth. They were not given enough food- food was rotten, -worm infested-, or water, and were devoid of medical facilities which lead to the death of several convicts.
Prisoners were treated as disposable commodities, and any attempt to escape or rebel was met with severe punishment, often resulting in death. The idea was to crush the spirit British colonial rulers aimed to crush the spirit of resistance and break the will.
A famous plaque at the jail states, “Yeh Teerth Mahateertho ka hai, Mat Kaho isse Kaala Paani, Tum suno yahan ki Dharti ke, Kan Kan se Gaatha Balidaani”
At one time in the beginning around 1862 the doctors at the camp reported that only 45 prisoners out of the 10,000 were considered medically fit!
So many died during the journey as they were shackled and stuffed like sardines into cramped spaces that the doctor in charge asked for another 10,000 to be shipped – so that work could go on. They were greeted with jeers as they landed and were told by their captors that they would never be able to escape from these remote islands and thick dense jungle; animals and cannibal tribes would consume them if they attempt escape.
These were like infamous ‘concentration camps’ of Hitler’s Nazi party during world war almost 150 years after this. Though the British made lot of noise about the holocaust where Jews were tortured and killed by the Nazi SS soldier- they conceived something as sinister almost 130 years before that at Kala Pani.
Cellular Jail in Andamans symbolizes the fire of freedom for motherland, which once ignited, cannot be doused by shackles or bullets. A painful story of our great Freedom fighters which must be revered & remembered— Sadhguru
The Brown Sahibs and their ways
This lot were treated with kids gloves if one can use the expression.
Pandit Nehru was generally kept in comfortable (lavish) jails. The longest period of his jail life was spent in Ahmednagar Fort. All comforts and facilities, including a library, were available.
He was allowed to meet his family. Indira his daughter often visited him. A servant and a cook were provided. He had a private toilet and a sweeper. It was peace and tranquillity for three years. A paid holiday!
Jawaharlal Nehru and other Indian National Congress leaders imprisoned in Ahmednagar Fort shared a common mess located within the barracks.
The leaders lived in large rooms within the barracks and ate their meals together in a common mess. They also had a common room for reading newspapers and discussing events.
On the other hand, Veer Savarkar spent 11 years of his life in a dark cell. His was cell number 52 just 10 ft by 12 ft with one small ventilator 12 ft high.
The so-called jail where Nehru had a large toilet was bigger than the tiny cell where Savarkar lived for 11 years.
For Savarkar it was rigorous imprisonment. Prisoners were yoked like oxen to extract coconut oil.
There was no question of facilities. The conditions were like those for animals.
Even after coming out of there, Savarkar faced even longer house arrest and was confined to the Ratnagiri district. In total, this went on for 27 years.
For instance, In Ahmednagar Fort jail – yes jail- Jawaharlal Nehru’s lifestyle was active and intellectual; he gardened, developed a rose garden, played badminton with fellow leaders, and famously wrote his seminal book, The Discovery of India, while living in a designated “Leaders’ Block,” making his long imprisonment a period of creative work and camaraderie despite confinement. His fellow prisoners celebrated his birthdays (Nov 14) during his time there.
Privileged Prisoners of Independent India
Though conditions in Indian prisons are bad and routine mundane and disciplined- overcrowded due to administrative lapses are not uncommon. Yet several high profile, rich, corrupt prisoners make their life more liveable- nothing compared to cellular jail of Kala Pani.
For example, Charles Sobhraj was known for finding ways to live in relative comfort in jail by manipulating officials and bribing guards in both Indian and Nepalese prisons. He was even given the nickname “Sir Charles” by other inmates due to his special perks. He reportedly had access to a television and fresh fruit and vegetables not typically available to other inmates.
After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going in to a shop and buying a newspaper — Nelson Mandela
