Across the Black Water

Abstract

From 1857 to 1947, the Empire negotiated with thousands of Indian prisoners to form a convict society in the Andaman Penal Settlement and built an elaborate archive. Devised by punishment and reward, human copulation, and judicial surveillance, the Settlement created a unique penal culture away from ‘mainland’ India with religious, class, and caste divides. The Andaman Archives not only amounts to frequent commentaries, administrative studies, reports, opinions on prison reformation, and prisoners and their families, the study also encompasses significant documentations on Andaman aborigines, ocean politics, and agriculture and trade and offers insights into the work undertaken by the Empire for its overall governance. Staring 1909 elite political prisoners were transported, and after the influx of political prisoners, during 1932–1937, the Andamans entered a period of strong resistance movement. The inverted personal and political activism/nationalism and continuous hunger strikes in the Cellular Jail generated a lot of debates and agitations in India, and the repatriation of political prisoners started when Gandhi and Tagore intervened. Moreover, the contribution of petty and hereditary ‘criminals’ and female prisoners transported to the Andamans remains as important as that of V.D. Savarkar and other famous political prisoners who were incarcerated in the Cellular Jail. With a detailed introduction that recounts the genesis of the penal settlement in the nineteenth century and follows its story till the arrival of the Azad Hind army of Subhas Chandra Bose in the Andamans during the Second World War, this book introduces readers to key documents and events that remain symbolic of the themes and motifs of the penal culture and of the counterculture of nationalism that evolved with it for which the Andamans, after the independence of the country, became an integral part of India.