The partition of British India was an extraordinary event. It brought forth giant personalities, monumental egos, brilliant strategists, saints, scoundrels, politicians, thinkers, tinkers, stinkers, sages and sycophants. Like an angry volcano it spewed forth human passions in their ugliest form consuming oceans of humanity. In its aftermath it left more than a million dead, fifteen million refugees and tens of thousands of women abducted. Two nations inherited the Raj and were immediately locked in mortal combat. A third nation has sprung up since, while the first two, India and Pakistan, now nuclear armed, continue to stare at each other waiting to see who will blink first. The last chapter of the history of partition is yet to be written. The secret of whether it will have a tragic end with a nuclear holocaust or a happy new beginning with cooperation and brotherhood for the poverty stricken millions of the subcontinent is hidden in the womb of the future, dependent as is all human endeavor, on the wisdom of generations to come.

1. Colonial Prison
19th century INDIA

2. Introduction
• 1757 – Public torture and execution- burning in France
• 1830- theatrical representation and torture was avoided
• Prison – Aim not to torment flesh but- to correct reclaim and
cure the soul of prisoner
• Foucault – strike the soul rather than the body

3. Jeremy Bentham 1791 Panopticon
• Warders located in a central tower.
• To induce in each prisoner a state of conscious and
permanent visibility
• Prison-more than a penal institution.
• Had analogues in the school, hospital, mental asylum, the
parade ground and factory.

4. Headings
• Cultural
• Architectural
• Finance
• Administrative
• Reforms
• Administrative rules
• Contemporary world influence
•Medical/ health

5. Indian Jails
• Indian Jails in 18th- 19th century grew out of British
preoccupation for extracting revenue and maintain law and
order.
• Use of local bad practices- a way to condemn India, its social
set up and religion
• Importance given to Indians cruelty to their fellow men
expressed a growing contempt for Indian religion social
practices and governance. Contrast to advances the claim of
European humanity in speaking for body of colonized.

6. Indian jails
• Prior to British rule Islamic rule prevailed where mutilation, stripping,
branding and penal deductions were common punishments however
jails existed even before Muslim era.
• East India company officials considered the local customs like satti,
self- amolition and female infanticide as inhuman and talked about
punishments which were more proportionate how ever they resorted
to mostly death punishment and transportation.
• The jails took a sign of colonial rule once the punishments labeled as
cruel were abolished and resorted to putting the people in jails as
punishment to various crimes.

7. Indian Jail Cont’d
• Even when political will was present penal practice was slow to follow
humanitarian theory.
• Public gallows stood outside madras penitentiary till 1880.
• Display of bodies of executed criminals continued till 1836.
• The practice of branding the convicts ceased in 1849.
• Despite repeated condemnation bar fetters continued to be use to
punish.
• In 1889 government committee looked to the day when these
appliances would be abolished.

8. Cultural
• 1834- British magistrate (Thomas Richarson) brained by a brass lota. Subsequent
reaction on order of removal.
• 1840- Prisoners in Bihar Jail allowed to purchase and cook individual food
(requirement of cast). Disarrayed, clay prepared numerous fire places.
• Order to receive food cooked by prison official cooks sparked protest and hunger
strikes.
• 1842- 45 Opposition to common messing in Bihar jail- Govt uses coercive power
• 1854 not implemented in 8 of 40 prisons.
• Other occasions when prisoners took over and temporarily dictated their terms.
• 1855- Bengal Inspector jails ordered confiscation of brass- force conversion to
Christianity- determined resistance broke.
• 1877- president of Indian Jail Conference- great practical fault, orders not rigidly
carried out.

9. Cultural/Administrative
• Difficulty to control specially first 60 years of 19th century
• Connection between prison protest and popular revolt 1840s-50s
liberation of prisoners in Meerth, Kanpur and Allahbad Jails.
• The practice-1880- some warders received pays and special
uniform/ permitted to eat and sleep apart, wear hair and beard.
• 1877- Jail conference – employment of convict officers “an
inversion of order of things”.
• They organized smuggling, violence, harassment, extortion and
torture in jails.

10. Culture Administration cont’d
• J Rohde- Madras inspector – we have no means of enforcing hard labor.
• Prisoners are too often employed with very little regard to the object of
their being in prison.
• 1877- President of Indian jails- orders are not rigidly carried out.
• Indian prisons ‘enter without dread and inhibited with out discomfort’.
• Day to day running of prison was entirely in the hands of convicts.
• Untrained supervisory staff.
• Practice of using prisons to run the jail started in Malaya early in the
century and spread in Bengal and rest of India.

11. Culture cont’d
• Physical and sexual intimidation of new inmates in
order to extort or make them to submit to the
authority of convict warders.
• Most inmates were illiterate but occasional
communication intercepted gave insight. (Ganja
opium….).
• Movements of revolt and resent in Indian jails-
particularly 1920 onward.

13. Reform Committees
• Lord McCauley Commission Report, 1835
• The Prison Discipline Committee, 1836
• Commission of Jail Management and Discipline, 1864
• The Calcutta Conference of 1877
• The Fourth Jail Commission, 1888
• The Prisons Act, 1894
• The Indian Jail Committee 1919-20

14. Reform Committee
• 1835 Macaulay appointment of a committee to investigate
prison discipline in India- influence of utilitarian thought on
government in India at that time.
• The best criminal code can be of very little use to a
community unless there be a good machinery for the
infliction of punishment.
• 1860 Marry Carpenter , 1870 John Howard British reformers
showed interest in Indian prisons.

15. Reforms
• 1835 –36 Macualy committee to investigate prison discipline
in India- recommendation echoed Benthem and prison
reforms in USA 1860- 70 Mary Carpenter British Reformist
(anti- slavery, ragged schools, social reformer, women
suffrage).
• John Howard- Elizabeth Fry. (in Europe)

16. Committees Recommendations
• A penitentiary for all prisoners sentenced to more than one years'
imprisonment shall be established in the centre of every 6 or 8
districts, and that a better system of classification of prisoners shall be
adopted;
• That each prisoner shall have a separate sleeping place ;
• That solitary confinement shall be much resorted to;
• That monotonous, uninteresting labor with in doors shall be enforced
upon all prisoners sentenced to labor;
• The prisoners shall be deprived every indulgence not absolutely
necessary to health , and that the management of each penitentiary
shall be committed to an able trustworthy superintendent , either
European or native.

17. • The language of report and its recommendation echoed Bentham and the
spirit of prison reforms in North America and Europe
• Committee and its critics departed from western precedence stressing
impracticality of importing British model into India .
• Between 1830-1920 proposals for reforms were rejected as impractical or
inexpedient .
• 1838- Lord Auckland ,the governor general skeptic about committee’s
proposal on grounds of cost. Every reform of prison discipline is almost of
necessity attended at the outset with extra ordinary expense. He argued that
there were intrinsic differences between England and India.
• He concurred with the committee in seeing an insuperable problem of
agency.
• He sees India as a land where local constraints not just of cast and religion
but also of climate, health, funding and agency power fully represented
themselves.

18. Reforms
• Prohibitions of prejudice and climate had to be respected.
• Each province should have a senior officer solely responsible for jails
not done till 1844.
• 1844- appointment of W H Woodcock as IG jail in the interest of
economy rather of reforms. Subsequent appointments of IGs 1852 in
Punjab and 1854 Bengal.
• Middle of 19th century prison were uncertain places requiring security
and clear institutional identity.
• In late 1840 start was made on the construction of prisons on the line
of Panopitcon.

19. Committee of Jail Administration 1889
• Situation did not change significantly. 1889 committee reaffirmed the
view that for habitual offenders , silence and rigid discipline and
segregation from other prisoners were the only means of rendering
imprisonment distasteful.
• The practicality of single cell system in India on both sanitary and
financial grounds was doubted.
• Sufficient numbers of reliable warders could not be found for the
wages available , hence strict system of discipline and surveillance
was simply unattainable

20. Abolition of Torturous Punishments
• 1790 – Abolition of mutilation 7 years for 1 limb and 14 for 2 later on
branding encouraged imprisonment.
• 1835 – T B Macauly imprisonment terror to wrong doers instead of
death as main punishment.
• Best criminal code be of not much use till there is a good machinery
for inflicting punishment.
• 1836 – Public display of bodies.
• 1880 – Public gallows.

21. Inmates Population
• No great confinement as no great upheaval or revolt as compared to industrial
revolution in Europe.
• 1938- jail population 55,632 of total 91.5 million Indians- 0.06%
• Women 8% in 1877 and 5% in 1891 of total jail population.
• Mortality 25%. Mainly due cholera, malaria, dysentery and diarrhoea
• 1861 Mirat 62% died
• The rate fell after 1860s due construction of healthy jails, sanitation and medical
attention. Imprisonment for minor offence could tantamount to death.
• Dr. G S Sutherland a participant in Indian Jail conference of 1877 found a direct
correlation between wheat price and 15-30% increase in jail population in Awadh jail.
• Colonial officials- poor deliberately courted imprisonment during period of extreme
hardship. For them prison was ‘father in laws house’.
• 1838 Prison Discipline Committee- convict really and apparently in better condition as
for lodging food and clothing was concerned.

22. • Inmates not treated alike but according to their status.
• Locals of high status
• English and Eurasians (separate prison wards)
•Early 19th century removal of immunity of death penalty from Brahmin.
•Court in England warned against advantages to be gained through common
messing could ignite and excite the locals.
• Luckhnow Jail- Allowed ‘bodi’ to Hindu one inch beard to Muslim and all hair to
Sikh also to wear metal kara (bracelet).
•1838- Prison discipline committee commends Transportation: a dreadful
punishment for Hindus ‘incredible horror’.
•Violent and unruly women- cutting of their hair- institutional widowhood.

23. Reforms Concept
• Until late in 19th century little emphasis on reforms.
• 1838- prison reform committee gives less weightage to reform than
deterrence.
• 1877- jail conference- idea of reforming prisoners, what ever its validity
in the west, has but little significance in India. Majority of Indian
prisoners were not below the level of outside population.
• As aliens British Raj felt it was little they could ask or convince locals.
• Found it difficult to recruit suitable warders to induce reforms.

24. Agency for Colonial Control over Productive
Labor
• Extensive use of convict labor on public works in late 18th century.
• 1830- 13,000 prisoners employed in road gangs in Bengal alone. The
task of cleaning river beds and digging canals and building their own
prisons.
• In Singapore Indian prisoners constructed two lighthouses, a
cathedral and government house. This transportation provided cheap
and disciplined labor.
• Development for penal settlement in Andeman for which local labor
was not available.

25. • By late 1830s extramural(outside) labor was being viewed with disfavor.
Communication with public, escaping tended to relaxing the discipline
inside jail also.
• 1850s switch made to inside jail labor (jail industry). Here too reforms
took second precedence to remuneration.
• F J Mouat- a leading proponent of jail workshops justified on premise
of discipline and reforms.
• Bentham and Beccaria had taught him ‘ idleness is the chief cause by
far the greater part of the constant war waged by the habitual criminal
classes.
• Prisoner contributed substantially towards the cost of the their own
incarceration and often produce high quality goods and services for the
state itself

26. • Alipur and Hugly jails produced income of 210,000 in 1861 from high class
printing work and brought in further 60,000 by manufacturing gunny bags
a total profit of 270,000.
• 1881- jails of madras presidency produced goods worth 331832 most of
which supplied to other government departments including uniforms
boots sandals and blanket for the police.
• Discipline was being sacrificed to profit.
• 1880-military department unilaterally reversed the government decision to
favour jail manufacturers over private contractors.
• Lord Ripon the liberal viceroy took the view that jail manufacturers should
be regarded not as source of revenue but a branch of prison discipline.

27. Health
• Jail inmates provided significant role in western medical knowledge and
advance in India.
• 1838 no medical men included in committee
• By 1860s prisons were being actively incorporated- prison Inspector
Generals were usually drawn from Indian Medical Services. Medical men
sat in inquiry committee set up for jail discipline.
• Importance of colonial connection between medicine and penology was
reflected in voluminous medical literature.
• Medical officer could advice the reduction of hard punishment.
• By handing over Administration to medical persons state drew a veil on
problems like neglect and suffering.
• Prison more a site of medical observation

28. • Jail based medical investigation included cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, kala-
azar, meningitis, malaria and hookworms infestation
• Prisoner could easily be post- mortemed as compared to normal citizen by
1860 it was a standard practice for every prisoner who died in the prisons.
• Quinine widely experimented in jails-1907 - Punjab I G Jails GFW Braide
instructed jail supientendents to give regular weekly dose
• 1908- 90% of Punjab population fell to malaria 50% seriously sick, over 400,000
deaths but only 10% in jail fell sick.
• 1846- Dr. A H Leith conducted inquiry into cause of ill health in Bombay jail
• In 1861 after his report Government of India asked each province to report on
jail diet
• 1912 Prof. D McCay of Calcutta Medical College compared jail diet in Bengal
with UP and drew that physical fragility of Bengalis was due to rice eating habit
as compared to wheat eater UPians

29. Architecture
• Building adopted for other purposes (old Delhi jail, converted Sarai)
• Some purpose built prisons in 1790s onward but became dilapidated
by 1850
• 1855- J Rohde inspector Prison Madras submitted design for several
new jails (like Panopticon)
• Aftermath of 1857-58 and reform in IPC number of central and
district jails were built –
• 1849 Woodcock -Mixed design combine the economy of barracks
• 1860-70s jails of pentonville design

30. Pantone Ville Jail Design

31. RECAP

32. Any ?

33. Questions
• Indo-Pak Jails 18th, 19th and early 20th century
• Jail Culture in Indo- Pak pre partition
• Jail Reforms in Indo-Pak
• The effect of putting convicts as warders in Indo-Pak jails
• The evolution of punishment in Indo-Pak
• Architectural history of Indo-Pak prisons
• The health issues in Indian pre partition prisons