Women Political Prisoners: Caged, Still Striving for Change
By PUCL Bulletin Editorial Board
8th March is the day to remind ourselves of the struggles that have been waged for women’s rights. The 8th of March is the day to acknowledge women in struggles and the day to remind ourselves that we need to take forward those struggles. When we say “struggle” the picture that springs to the mind of people in our society is that of a ‘male’ ‘hero’. Whereas the history (rather herstory) of Women’s Day reminds us, that, not just to wrest their own rights, but also to bring about democratic change in society, women too have waged courageous battles .
The whole of March is also women’s history month, which we will commemorate by opening out the closed structure of jails through women’s voices and experiences. Women writing their own stories, in spite of every attempt to silence them, is also a tale of courage and resilience. It also shows the power of the voices of women , who struggle against both state and society.
When women fought to change the conditions of work in the factories, or for the right to vote and to establish themselves as citizens in their own right, this was not just for women but a step towards the democratization of the society as a whole. Women’s movements have demonstrated that struggling for the rights of a dalit community, a repressed minority or a marginalised caste or gender is the struggle for greater democratisation or our society.
Many women have been martyred, incarcerated or have suffered cruel tortures in these struggles. This issue of the PUCL Bulletin is dedicated and centred around those women who have, in the course of their struggles for the protection of the human rights of women and of all sections of society, been incarcerated and have been creating “herstory”. From Rosa Luxemburg, who was incarcerated and martyred in the struggle to establish socialism, to Assata Shakur or Angela Davis who spent long years in jail fighting racism within a capitalist society; Uma Bhujel who was incarcerated for her participation in the struggle against monarchy; Aung San Su Kyi who suffered years of jail and house arrest for fighting against military rule; Shireen Ebadi and Nahd Taghavi and Mahsa Amini who revolted against religious dictatorship in Iran ; to the long list of such women in India. And these are just a few examples.
In one of the first rebellions against the British in India – the Santhal Revolt of 1855 – among the Santhali prisoners taken by the British, there were 47 Santhal women, who were handed down severe sentences by the British.
Nanibala Devi, who was arrested in Peshawar in 1917, was possibly the first woman to be recognized by the British as a political prisoner. She was taken to Benaras Jail and tortured severely there during interrogation. To the extent that chilly powder was stuffed into her private parts. She went on a hunger strike against this torture, after which she was transferred to Alipore Jail in Kolkata . Nanibala came to know of another woman political prisoner Dukribala, who had been incarcerated for stowing away weapons, Nanibala used the excuse of being a Brahmin to keep her as her cook and save her from the hard and inhuman labour that prisoners had to put in normally. This incident demonstrates the caste system that was being practised in jails since the British times, which has been mentioned in B. Anuradha’s article. It is a tragedy that like the British Raj, the incidents of stuffing chilly powder in the private parts of a woman prisoner, or pebbles as in the case of Soni Sori, are still to be seen in today’s independent India.
Everyone knows that many women went to jail during Gandhiji’s Satyagraha movements even if their imprisonment was not so harsh. During the Quit India Movement, Usha Mehta was tortured and incarcerated for 4 years for running a Radio programme in support of the movement, an incident on which a film has been recently released. In the Naxalbari movement, many women went to jail and were martyred also. Till a few years back, it was only the Jail Memoir of Mary Tyler, a political prisoner associated with that movement, which was most well known as an example of women writing about their jail experience.
But in the last 10-15 years, when the democratic climate of our country has worsened instead of improving, the sending of political women to jail has become a normal practice of our government. Sudha Bharadwaj, Shoma Sen, Jyoti Jagtap, Safoora Zargar, Gulfisha, B. Anuradha, Nodeep Kaur, Soni Sori, Madkam Hidme, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and so many other socially aware women have gone to jail, they have made the jail their area of work, and after coming out they have written a great deal. They have uncovered this invisible, secret, hidden, cruel feudal and patriarchal world for all the rest of us. Reading the memoirs of all of them, of which a brief glimpse is given in this issue, we learn that jail is a microcosm of what our society is like. Every evil of our society can be seen here in its crudest form. The revolutionary poet Varavara Rao writes in his memoir that this world is a jail, jail is just a smaller version of it. This is true, but things are somewhat different for women. It would be more correct to say that each woman is imprisoned in her own separate little jail, the State’s jail for them is a bigger collective jail where they are able to share the sorrows of their little jails with other women.
When Rona Wilson, a victim of the Bhima Koregaon Governmental Cyber-Conspiracy, was released after 6 years, he said in an interview that ordinarily only leftists are considered to be political prisoners, but that is not the case. Adivasis who are fighting to save their land or the minorities who disturb the pyramid of power, particularly Muslims, are also political prisoners. This is absolutely correct. The proportion of Muslims in the country’s population is less, but their proportion among jail inmates is much greater. This is not because they commit more crimes, but because Hindutvavaadi governments attack them more ferociously owing to their communal intentions. That is why they are present in large numbers in jails and they are also political prisoners. Similarly in the jails of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and wherever else there are adivasi populations, their number is greater in the jails because they are fighting to save their homes and the forests, this is the “crime” for which they are incarcerated. Also because many nomadic tribes have been declared since the British times and are still treated by present day governments as “criminal”, they are political prisoners.
But it is necessary to add to what Rona has said, and say that most women in jail are also political prisoners, whether or not they are social/ political activists. This is because the crimes of most of these women are against patriarchy, though these incarcerated women may not be aware of it. Someone has killed her drunk husband to escape his beatings; another has committed a crime to live life with her lover, another sick of hearing taunts of being barren has murdered her father or mother-in-law or her husband or stolen another’s child. Some women has murdered her rapist, while another who had sexual relations with her devar (younger brother-in-law) has been imprisoned after he married and his wife committed suicide. The stories of most women in jails revolve around these themes. Because of her journey from her little jail to the bigger one, a woman is also a political prisoner.
In this issue, we are happy to be doing the important task of bringing you the voices of political women, women who were sent to prison by governments for the work they were doing to make the society a better place and to ensure the rights of women. We want to make the jails humane. Even beyond this, in the words of Angela Davis, we want to abolish the jails. Because the reason for crime is actually within the society itself.
The PUCL demands the immediate release of Sunita Pottam, from Dantewada Jail, Chattisgarh, of the Mulwasi Bachao Manch and the release of Gulfisha Fatima, from Tihar Jail.