When stone walls cry

Jails continue to be a source of horrendous violation of human rights, says the writer.

July 12, 2014 06:09 pm | Updated July 13, 2014 03:58 am IST

In today’s murky prison world, inmates try their very best to escape.

In today’s murky prison world, inmates try their very best to escape.

“If my country can do without me, I can do without her. The world is large enough.” This is Hugo Grotius, a jurist in the Dutch Republic who escaped from imprisonment. Yet his sentiment and personal fate must not lead us to believe in this being either the outlook or fate of Indian prisoners. During the anti-colonial struggle, prison signified an ashram (religious heritage). Aurobindo Ghose claimed that God sheltered him; at one point, he found himself in the lap of the World-Mother, cared for like a child. When he was asleep in the ignorance, he came to a place of mediation full of holy men and found their company wearisome and the place a prison; when he awoke, God took him to a prison and turned it into a place of mediation and His trysting ground.

Gandhiji transposed jail conditions into a metaphor for the condition of the whole of India under British rule. He used the same metaphor at the meeting of the Commonwealth of India League in 1931. Having spent more time in prisons than any Indian, he told his British audience: “We are prisoners. You Englishmen and Englishwomen are our jailors. You have to realise your responsibility; just as we have to render an account of ourselves, you as jailors will also have to render an account of yourselves.” Gandhi underlined this point because the atavism of cruelty was far too deeply ingrained in wardens and jailors. He therefore sketched an inspired outline of his life with the assumption that he would have to pass through the ordeal of being locked up in order to redress the wrongs.

The enthusiasm of the freedom fighters was such that even when they felt their limbs fettered and body bound with iron chains, each one of them moved in, glittering like the morning star, full of life, splendour, and joy. This is no longer so; the meanings of prison-life have changed over time as more and more people realise, as did Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), that the violence of the oppressed is no way comparable to the violence of the oppressor. One is justified and the other is not. All said and done, Independence has brought no relief to political dissenters or to the thousands of under-trials who perish in the bloom of manhood through deprivation, disease, or suicide.

On January 26, 2013, the Los Angeles Times reported 55 persons dying during a prison riot in Venezuela. Usually, this kind of violence, the fourth time in less than two years, occurs wherever the courts are undermanned, the backlog of cases is enormous, and the prisons are overcrowded.

In Israel, 3,000 Palestinians staged a one-day hunger strike against the death of an inmate. The protests it sparked raised international concerns. In December 2013, global Sikh organisations sought the intervention of the United Nations for the release of 118 political prisoners (Sikh) lodged in various Indian jails. The Hindu reported on February 14, 2014, that over 1,100 to 1,500 prisoners, mostly Maoists, went on hunger strike across central and district jails in Jharkhand. The CPI (Maoist) observed a bandh in their support. Such incidents take place with unfailing regularity, and yet the state functionaries have not addressed the essential issue of locking up people and figuratively throwing away the key. Jawaharlal Nehru, who was called upon to initiate reforms as free India’s first Prime Minister, suggested that very few of the nobler things — truth, mercy, love, etc. — of the world can enter jail; they are stopped at the gate. His sole consolation was that the authorities couldn’t keep God and His nature out of jail. This has been the thrust of some recent writings by Jeffrey Archer.

In today’s murky prison world, inmates try their very best to escape. This happened in Libya; more than 1,000 detainees turned fugitives. They were inspired by the bitter and violent engagement between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood in neighbouring Egypt. On February 12, 2013, the 3,700 inmates of barrack number 4, called Chhota Chakkar, dug an 18-ft tunnel in Sabarmati Central Jail. The escape bid exposed poor monitoring. The problem in the U.S. is of a different nature. One in every hundred adults in that country is in prison, and experts discuss the impact of harsh punishments and, in particular, long mandatory sentences.

In July 2012, the available capacity in Indian jails was 3,43,169, but the occupancy rate went beyond 112.2 per cent. Currently, the government spends about Rs.3,500 crore on jails housing some 3,80,000 inmates — about 60,000 more than their capacity. The colossal Tihar prison in Delhi, the largest and most famous in Asia, is overcrowded with about 10,000 prisoners — 4,000 more than its capacity to handle the nine jails within its complex. The smaller ones are so chock-a-block that there isn’t enough space for the inmates to sleep. So they sleep in shifts. What is more, their conditions are beyond scrutiny and reason with the result that the lives of today’s prisoners have not changed much. As in colonial India, a high percentage of them are under trial; for them justice is delayed and denied. “India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom,” stated Aurobindo Ghose.

Stories of rape, extortion, and corruption are associated with the jails all around. Even though international law regards prohibition of torture a jus cogens norm, that is, a compelling law prohibiting torture, custodial torture is rampant. This is documented by the 2009 report of the Asian Centre of Human Rights. India has neglected to even ratify the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture, or CAT). The political classes have not heeded the row over political prisoners’ status to Maoists; they have also ignored the demand for the unconditional release for all political prisoners by an international committee. As a result, jails continue to be a source of horrendous violation of contemporary human rights, norms, and standards.

Surendranath Banerjea, one of the architects of the swadeshi movement in Bengal, remarked that “a bad law in the hands of rulers owing no responsibility to the people is apt to be worked in a manner that often creates grave public dissatisfaction.” Indeed, this applied to the codification process, which involved transplanting the English law, complete with lawyers and judges. And though free India longed for laws divested of colonial association and adapted to the changing times, Act 45 of 1860 and the Prison Act of 1894 are still in place. Consequently, the ambiguities of the colonial system itself have weighed down the justice system. The ‘official’ thinking is the same; the attitude of jail superintendents resembles that of the British. A truly general humanistic approach is missing with the result that the restructuring of jails is, in spite of everything, a tender plant. In 2005, the proposal to amend Section 436A of the Criminal Procedure Code to free under-trials, who had served 50 per cent of the term they had been charged with, has not been implemented.

When will India abandon the colonial model and learn to treat its prisoners with dignity? Do we need to re-visit theories on crime and punishment? Have we run out of ideas in the punishment list, but not in the offensive list? If the colonial implant had a specified agenda, what is ours? It may be useful to conclude with the following lines from Oscar Wilde, who was jailed for homosexuality in one of the great scandals of the epoch.

For they starve the little frighten child

Till it weeps both night and day:

And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool

And gibe the old and gray,

And some grow mad, and all grow bad,

And none a word may say.

For only blood can wipe out blood,

And only tears can heal.

Professor Mushirul Hasan is a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi.

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