Although the prison complex itself was constructed between 1896 and 1906, the British authorities in India had been using the Andaman Islands as a prison since the days in the immediate aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.[citation needed]
Shortly after the rebellion was suppressed, captured prisoners were put on trial, with many of them being executed. Others were exiled for life to the Andamans to prevent them from re-offending. Two hundred rebels were transported to the islands under the custody of the jailer David Barry and Major James Pattison Walker, an Indian Medical Service (IMS) doctor who had been warden of the prison at Agra. Another 733 from Karachi arrived in April 1868.[4] In 1863, the Rev. Henry Fisher Corbyn, of the Bengal Ecclesiastical Establishment, was also sent out there and he set up the 'Andamanese Home' there, which was also a repressive institution albeit disguised as a charitable one.[5] Rev. Corbyn was posted in 1866 as Vicar to St. Luke's Church, Abbottabad, and later died there and is buried at the Old Christian Cemetery, Abbottabad. More prisoners arrived from India and Burma as the settlement grew.[6] Anyone who belonged to the Mughal royal family, or who had sent a petition to Bahadur Shah Zafar during the Rebellion was liable to be deported to the islands.[citation needed]
Port Blair - Viper New Jails under construction
The remote islands were considered to be a suitable place to punish the independence activists. Not only were they isolated from the mainland, the overseas journey (kala pani) to the islands also threatened them with loss of caste, resulting in social exclusion.[7] The convicts were also used in chain gangs to construct prisons, buildings, and harbour facilities.[citation needed]
By the late 19th century, the independence movement had picked up momentum. As a result, the number of prisoners being sent to the Andamans grew and the need for a high-security prison was felt. From August 1889 Charles James Lyall served as home secretary in the Raj government, and was also tasked with an investigation of the penal settlement at Port Blair.[8][9] Both he and A. S. Lethbridge, a surgeon in the IMS, concluded that the punishment of transportation to the Andaman Islands was failing to achieve the purpose intended and that indeed criminals preferred to go there rather than be incarcerated in Indian jails. Lyall and Lethbridge recommended that a "penal stage" should exist in the transportation sentence, whereby transported prisoners were subjected to a period of harsh treatment upon arrival. The outcome was the construction of the Cellular Jail, which has been described as "a place of exclusion and isolation within a more broadly constituted remote penal space."[10]
The construction of the prison started in 1896 and was completed in 1906. The original building was a puce-colored brick building. The bricks used to build the building were brought from Burma.[citation needed]
The building had seven wings, at the center of which a tower served as the intersection and was used by guards to keep watch on the inmates; this format was based on Jeremy Bentham's idea of the Panopticon. The wings radiated from the tower in straight lines, much like the spokes of a bicycle wheel.
One of the seven wings
Each of the seven wings had three stories upon completion. There were no dormitories and a total of 696 cells. Each cell was 4.5 by 2.7 metres (14.8ft ×8.9ft) in size with a ventilator located at a height of 3 metres (9.8ft).[11] The name, "cellular jail", derived from the solitary cells which prevented any prisoner from communicating with any other.[citation needed] Also, the spokes were so designed such that the face of a cell in a spoke saw the back of cells in another spoke. This way, communication between prisoners was impossible. They were all in solitary confinement.[12] The locks of the prison cells were designed in such a way that the inmate would never be able to reach the latch of the lock. The prison guards would lock up the inmates and throw the key of the lock inside the jail. The inmate would try to put his hand out and try to unlock the door but would never be able to do so as his hand would never reach the key.[citation needed]
Conditions faced by prisoners in the Cellular Jail were frequently abysmal. As noted in a Guardian article, prisoner could face "torture, medical tests, forced labour and for many, death."[13] In response to poor conditions in the Cellular Jail, including the quality of prison food, numerous prisoners went on hunger strikes. Those who did were often force-fed by the prison authorities.[13]
Sher Ali Afridi, a former officer in the Punjab Mounted Police, was a life convict in the jail who had been imprisoned for murder. He was sentenced to death on 2 April 1867 and during appeal this was reduced to life imprisonment and he was deported to Andamans to serve his sentence. The 6th Earl of Mayo, Viceroy of India from 1869, was visiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in February 1872 when he was murdered by Afridi.[16][17]Sher Ali Afridi wanted to kill the Superintendent and the Viceroy as a revenge for his sentence, which he thought was more severe than he deserved.[18] He said that he killed on the instructions of Allah.[19] He was subsequently hanged.
Cellular Jail balcony
In March 1868, 238 prisoners tried to escape. By April they were all caught. One committed suicide and of the remainder Superintendent Walker ordered 87 to be hanged.[20]
Among the records of the Government of India's Home Department, we found the Empire's response in its Orders to Provincial Governors and Chief Commissioners. "Very Secret: Regarding security prisoners who hunger strike, every effort should be made to prevent the incidents from being reported, no concessions to be given to the prisoners who must be kept alive. Manual methods of restraint are best, then mechanical when the patient resists."[13]
Hunger strikes by the inmates in May 1933 caught the attention of the jail authorities. Thirty-three prisoners protested their treatment and sat in hunger strike. Among them were Mahavir Singh, an associate of Bhagat Singh (Lahore conspiracy case), Mohan Kishore Namadas (convicted in Arms Act Case) and Mohit Moitra (also convicted in Arms Act Case). These three died due to force-feeding.[21][22] Other prisoners:[13]
Prisoner 31552 Ullaskar Dutt (made home-made bombs that exploded inside a carriage in Muzaffarpur, killing the bridge partners of Douglas Kingsford, the chief presidency magistrate, Mrs. Pringle Kennedy and her daughter, Grace). He was tortured, declared insane due to malarial infection, transferred to the island's lunatic ward at Haddo, and held there for 14 years.
Prisoner 31555, Indu Bhushan Roy (hanged himself with a strand of torn kurta, "exhausted by the unrelenting oil mill")
Prisoner 38360, Chattar Singh, who was suspended in an iron suit for three years
Prisoner 38511, Baba Bhan Singh, who had been beaten to death by David Barry's men
Prisoner 41054, Ram Raksha, who had starved himself in protest at the removal of sacred Brahminical threads from around his chest
Haripada Chowdhury (caught in the attempted murder case of the editor of The Englishman (later Statesman) Watson and was sentenced for 10 years and deported to Andaman. Was eventually released in the year 1939. During his capture he was found in possession of a pistol along with numerous bullets of different caliber and which are now on display, along with his photograph, in the Kolkata Police Museum, situated in the premises of North Kolkata DC Office.)
Prisoner 147 Dhirendra Chowdhury (robbery to raise funds for bombs and guns), one of the few survivors of Kalapani
Naringun Singh (guilty of desertion at Nuddea) (hanged himself in his cell, due to torture by the prison authorities)
Prisoner 15557 Sher Ali, killed Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, who arrived at the Andaman Islands on an inspection tour on 8 February 1872; hanged on 11 March 1872
Prisoner 12819, Mehtab, and
Prisoner 10817, Choitun, came the closest to succeeding. According to The Guardian, "They stole away from the islands on 26 March 1872, rowing out into the Bay of Bengal on home-made rafts across a 750-mile stretch of turbulent water, dodging schools of bounty hunters who fought over 250-rupee rewards (then £25). Picked up by a British vessel, they persuaded the crew that they were shipwrecked fishermen and eventually pitched up, free, at the Strangers Home for Asiatics in London. The two were fed, clothed and given a bed. But while they slept, Colonel Hughes, the home's proprietor, took photographs that were circulated around the Empire. One morning, Mehtab and Choitun awoke to find themselves shackled and frog-marched aboard a ship bound for India."[13]
Prisoner 68 Mahavir Singh: "It took a while for the whisper to reach the Yard Five Wing. By then it was 8 pm." The bell rang again. Every prisoner shuffled to his locked gate. "The feeding tube had gone into Mahavir Singh's lungs. They were filled with milk. Doctors were now fighting to revive him. So we shouted 'Inquilab Zindabad' – long live the revolution. 'Inquilab Zindabad'. Twenty-one warders ran out of the Central Tower. 'Inquilab Zindabad'. Truncheons were drawn, a gun was cocked." "Midnight", Dr. Edge noted in the penal colony's hospital log. "Mahavir Singh – dead."[13]
Prisoner 89, Mohan Kishore, had also been killed. Drowned in milk
Prisoner 93 Mohit Mitra, killed. Drowned in milk
Prisoner 61, Narain (having excited sedition in the cantonment at Dinapore) was the first to try to escape. He was fished from the black water, hauled up before Dr Walker and executed.[13]
Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore launched a campaign to shut down the jail, and the colonial government decided to repatriate the political prisoners from the Cellular Jail from 1937 to 1938.[1] "The Cellular Jail was forced to empty in 1939. Two years later, the Japanese seized the islands, transforming the penal settlement into a prisoner of war camp, incarcerating the British warders. In 1945 the Andamans would become the first piece of India to be declared independent."[13]
State-wise list of freedom fighters sent to the Cellular Jail:[23][24]
S. No.
State
Number of Freedom Fighters
1
Bengal
608
2
Punjab
95
3
Maharashtra
3
4
Bihar
17
5
Uttar Pradesh
18
6
Kerala
14
7
Andhra Pradesh
8
8
Odisha
5
9
Himachal/ NW Frontier/ Tamil Nadu/ State not known
27
Total
795
INA control
The Japanese launched an invasion of the Andaman islands in March 1942, capturing the Cellular Jail and all prison personnel. The Cellular Jail then became home to British prisoners-of-war, suspected Indian supporters of the British, and later of members of the Indian Independence League, many of whom were tortured and killed there by the Japanese.[25] Notionally during this period control of the Islands was passed to Subhas Chandra Bose, who hoisted the Indian National Flag for the first time on the islands, at the Gymkhana Ground in Port Blair, appointed INA General AD Loganathan as the governor of the Islands, and announced the Azad Hind Government was not merely a Government in Exile, and had freed the territory from British colonial rule.[26]
On 7 October 1945 the British resumed control of the Islands, and prison, following the surrender of the islands to Brigadier J. A. Salomons, of the 116th Indian Infantry Brigade, a month after the Surrender of Japan, at the end of World War II.
Post Independence
Another two wings of the jail were demolished after India achieved independence. However, this led to protests from several former prisoners and political leaders who saw it as a way of erasing the tangible evidence of their history.
The Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital was set up in the premises of the Cellular Jail in 1963. It is now a 500-bed hospital with about 40 doctors serving the local population.[27]
Cellular Jail was declared a National Memorial by the then Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai on 11 February 1979.[28]
The centenary of the jail's completion was marked on 10 March 2006. Many former prisoners were celebrated on this occasion by the Government of India.[29]
Apart from guided tours, a sound-and-light show is also run in the evenings narrating and showcasing the trials and tribulations of the inmates. It is available in English and Hindi.[30]
In popular culture
Kaalapani, a 1996 Malayalam historical drama film was based on the prison and its inmates during 1915. Some scenes were shot in the actual prison.
Arthur Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four, centers around a group of characters who were inmates or guards at the colonial jail in the Andaman islands. One of the characters is an escapee who has returned to England with a native Andamanese man as a companion. The novel characterizes the Andamanese people in a racist manner, by contemporary standards.
Gallery
Exhibit at Cellular Jail: model of the facility
Exhibit at Cellular Jail: flogging frame
Exhibit at Cellular Jail: oil mill
Inner view of a cell
Special condemned cell for keeping prisoners before hanging
The hanging cell, where three prisoners could be hanged at once
The Andaman Islands are an archipelago, made up of 200 islands, in the northeastern Indian Ocean about 130 km (81 mi) southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between the Bay of Bengal to the west and the Andaman Sea to the east. Most of the islands are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a Union Territory of India, while the Coco Islands and Preparis Island are part of the Yangon Region of Myanmar.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India comprising 836 islands, of which only 31 are inhabited. These islands are grouped into two main clusters: the northern Andaman Islands and the southern Nicobar Islands, separated by a 150 km (93 mi) wide channel. The capital and largest city of the territory, Port Blair, is located approximately 1,190 km (740 mi) from Chennai and 1,255 km (780 mi) from Kolkata in mainland India. The islands are situated between the Bay of Bengal to the west and the Andaman Sea to the east. The northernmost point is 901 km (560 mi) from the mouth of the Hooghly River. Indira Point, located at 6°45’10″N and 93°49’36″E on the southern tip of Great Nicobar, is the southernmost point of India.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was an Indian politician, activist and writer. Savarkar developed the Hindu nationalist political ideology of Hindutva while confined at Ratnagiri in 1922. He was a leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha. The prefix "Veer" has been applied to his name by his followers.
Port Blair, officially known as Sri Vijaya Puram, is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (tehsil) of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South Andaman, and the territory's only notified town.
The Japanese occupation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands occurred in 1942 during World War II. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are a group of islands situated in the Bay of Bengal at about 1,250 km (780 mi) from Kolkata, 1,200 km (750 mi) from Chennai and 190 km (120 mi) from Cape of Nargis in Burma. Until 1938 the British government used them as a penal colony for Indian and African political prisoners, who were mainly put in the notorious Cellular Jail in Port Blair, the biggest town (port) on the islands. Today they form a Union Territory of India.
Batukeshwar Dutt was an Indian socialist and independence fighter in the early 1900s. He is best known for having exploded two bombs, along with Bhagat Singh, in the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi on 8 April 1929. After they were arrested, tried and imprisoned for life, he and Singh initiated a historic hunger strike protesting against the abusive treatment of Indian political prisoners, and eventually secured some rights for them. He was also a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
Communist Consolidation was a radical communist organization, founded by the prisoners of the Cellular Jail who got influenced by the philosophy of Marxism. In the mid-1930s, it became the largest resistance group against British rule in the jail; this organization also led the historical 36-day hunger strike in 1937, where the british government had to bow before the demands of the political prisoners.
Kaalapaani is a 1996 Indian Malayalam-language epic historical drama film written by T. Damodaran and directed by Priyadarshan. Set in 1915, the film focuses on the lives of Indian independence activists incarcerated in the Cellular Jail in Andaman and Nicobar Islands during the British Raj. The ensemble cast includes Mohanlal, Prabhu, Tabu, Amrish Puri, Nedumudi Venu, Sreenivasan, Tinnu Anand, Annu Kapoor, Alex Draper, Sankaradi, and Vineeth. The film was produced by Mohanlal for Pranavam Arts in association with R. Mohan's Shogun Films.
Ross Island, officially known as Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Island, is an island of the Andaman Islands. It belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The island is situated 3 km (2 mi) east from central Port Blair. The historic ruins are a tourist attraction.
Viper Island is an island of the Andaman Islands. It belongs to the South Andaman district of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India.
Madras Central Prison was one of the oldest prisons in India. It was located in Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It became operational during the British Raj period. Its prisoners were moved to the newly constructed Puzhal Central Prison starting in 2006, with the 172 year old prison being demolished in June 2009.
Sher Ali Afridi was an Indian soldier of Pashtun background, convicted of murder and imprisoned at the penal colony of Port Blair, Andaman Islands. He is known for assassinating Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, on 8 February 1872. The British sources described him as a "fearless soldier and one who would have been selected for any service of danger".
Ross Island Penal Colony was a convict settlement that was established in 1858 in the remote Andaman Islands by the British colonial government in India, primarily to jail a large number of prisoners from the Indian Rebellion of 1857, also known as the Indian Mutiny. With the establishment of the penal colony at Ross Island, the British administration made it the administrative headquarters for the entire group of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and built bungalows and other facilities on the site. This colony was meant as "manageable models of colonial governance and rehabilitation". The Chief Commissioner's residence was located at the highest point on the island. Over time, several other islands including Chatham and Viper were used for the penal colony.
Tourism in Andaman and Nicobar Islands relates to tourism in union territory of India, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Andamans are an archipelago of over 572 tropical islands, of which only 38 are inhabited. In 2004 Radhanagar beach at Havelock Island was bestowed with the title of "Asia’s Best Beach" and as the world's seventh most spectacular beach by Time magazine.
Mohit Mohan Moitra was an Indian revolutionary and Indian independence movement fighter in the 1930s.
Mohan Kishore Namadas was an Indian revolutionary and independence fighter in the 1930s.
Mahavir Singh Rathore was an Indian revolutionary and independence fighter in the 1930s. Singh was a member of Naujawan Bharat Sabha. He helped in the escape of Bhagat Singh, Batukeshwar Dutt and Durgawati Devi from Mozang House in Lahore. He was arrested as part of the Second Lahore Conspiracy Case and took part in the hunger strike of 1933 to protest the treatment of prisoners along with Mohit Moitra, Mohan Kishore Namadas. and 30 others. Singh died on 17 May 1933 due to force feeding. Mohit Moitra and Mohan Kishore Namadas also died during the hunger strike. A statue was erected in front of the Cellular Jail in his honor.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is an archipelago of 572 islands of which 37 are inhabited. It is a union territory of India.
Pandit Ram Rakha (1884–1919) was an Indian revolutionary and a member of the Ghadr party from Punjab. Primarily known for his involvement in the Burma conspiracy case in Myanmar and also as a victim of inhumane torture in Cellular Jail.
Mount Manipur, formerly known as Mount Harriet, is the third highest peak in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. The mountain houses the Mount Manipur Memorial, which commemorates the Manipuri freedom fighters of the Anglo-Manipur War and the Mount Manipur National Park (Mount Harriet National Park), which is best known for its rich biodiversity in the archipelago. On 17 October 2021, Mount Harriet was officially renamed as Mount Manipur by the Union Government of India, as a tribute to the freedom fighters of Manipur. This was initially announced by Amit Shah, the Union Home Minister of India, in a function in Port Blair, highlighting about the sacrifices of Yuvaraj Tikendrajit Singh, General Thangal, Meitei King Kulachandra Dhwaja Singh, the Maharajah of Manipur kingdom and other 22 freedom fighters of the Anglo-Manipur war of 1891.
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