Negotiating the Carceral Space

Abstract

Following the Sepoy Mutiny (1857), a penal settlement in the Andamans started operating to accommodate mutiny and other prisoners, and a convict society devised by class, caste and religion gradually evolved in the Andaman Islands. Starting in 1909, the government transported “political prisoners” whom they labelled as “anarchists” or “terrorists”, and the settlement witnessed a revolutionary history. Subject to incessant tortures, the political prisoners wrote constant mercy petitions to the government reflecting remorse for their past revolutionary activities. This essay reads the politics of juridical and mercy petitions of the political prisoners and their families, and suggests that an inverted political identity negating contemporary nationalism operated in the carceral and personal site. It also presents the narrative of the struggle for personal and political freedom that involved hunger strikes and political negotiations in the penal space.