Carceral Capital: The Prison Industrial Complex in Colonial India 1

Abstract

Supported by the colonial state and motivated by the need to manage an unfamiliar population, the construction of prisons in nineteenth-century India was among the most important changes incurred by British rule. Bereft of a moral imperative, colonial prisons over the course of the nineteenth century developed a pragmatic imperative that was specific to the needs of the colonial state. Jail spaces such at the Bhagulpore Central Jail were significant in the development of modern colonial infrastructure because they represent the culmination of years of experimentation with different building types. Colonial officials sought to validate their marriage of industry to incarceration through the positive social consumption of prison labor. Labor histories from colonial India, such as that of the colonial prison, fall outside of the dominant narrative of capital. Capital functioned differently in the colonial setting both in terms of the actual workforce involved and the way that it ameliorated itself into the social fabric of India.