“There’s silence in the courtroom
As the prisoner hears the law,
As judgement breaks the silence,
The prisoner hopes no more.”
As crime hurts, justice should heal. ‘Open prisons’ show us the way to a more compassionate society.
“There’s silence in the courtroom
As the prisoner hears the law,
As judgement breaks the silence,
The prisoner hopes no more.”
—Susmit Bose, singer-songwriter
“In view of the success that has been obtained (in two open prisons) using the law of love instead of fear and punishment, such instances ought not to be rare as they are.”
—‘Model Prisons’ in New York Times, August 25, 1875
It took over half a century after this NYT article and a Jewish refugee escaping the Holocaust in Poland to make his home in India in the 1930s, to first practise this principle in our country. In 1939, with the blessings of Gandhiji, Maurice Frydman converted land gifted by the Raja of Aundh in Maharashtra into a fertile field, tended by a flock of six murderers, now tillers—India’s first open prison. This transformative experiment of hope became a filmmaker’s dream plot. Maurice agreed to bring realism to the screenplay and sets of the V. Shantaram-directed Do Ankhen Barah Haath in Bombay. His only condition: no credits or compensation. In 1957, the film went on to win awards at the Berlin Film Festival and a Golden Globe Award.
The absence of alternative, graded forms of reformation and punishment, and lack of the concept of healing and forgiveness are in themselves crimes within our culture. During judgments, jail seems the shortest, simplest word to pronounce.
A young person, a first-time offender, is caught shoplifting or for credit card fraud or a minor assault. How might he or she be punished in Canada, in the UK, in Australia? The reason I asked this question to the Rt. Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh is because, way back in the 1960s, on his appointment as attorney general of British Columbia, Canada, he went on a study tour to the UK and Australia, where laws and practices are similar to Canada’s. Courts, jails and prosecutions are not a panacea for non-violent crimes. His response: “If the person is prepared to acknowledge fault, police actively encourage him/her into a diversion restorative justice programme. This involves counselling, expressing remorse and performing community service to repay society. This civilised approach towards first-time offenders contributes to a healthier and less vengeful society.” A reminder of the Gandhian principle—“Reject the crime, not the criminal.”
Back home, Right Livelihood Award winner and senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India, Colin Gonsalves paints a blinding, darker picture. “No one knows or cares what is happening behind the iron curtains of prisons, with impenetrable barriers to communication and information. More than half the inmates are undertrials, packed within cages. Society must increase its compassion quotient,” he says. The law of retaliation, measure for measure, an eye for an eye, was of the Roman civilisation.
As India’s prison walls get higher; as concertina wires, named after a type of accordion, bare their fangs wider; as metallic gates shut louder, so that darkness outshines daylight and air is denied escape within cells—it is in the name of Justice. Trapped within this shroud that defines prison architecture, physical and psychological spaces for inmates shrink. What parameters determine 4 feet x 6 feet as adequate space for each human? May they evoke unborn memories to revert to womb positions, in shape but not in size? Are these dimensions coffin-inspired? The world’s oldest password doesn’t work here: “Open Sesame” or “Khul ja Sim-sim”.
During the mid-2000s, Smita Chakraburtty was commissioned by Justice V.N. Sinha, acting chief justice of Bihar, to inspect prisons in the state. She is witness to inmates in jail strapping themselves to high objects in order to sleep vertically without nodding off onto other bodies. Sleeping in shifts is common practice.
In 2017, now retired Supreme Court judge, Madan Lokur took cognisance of Chakraburtty’s report, ‘Inhuman Conditions in 1,382 prisons’, and made prison inspections mandatory throughout the country. Her appointment in 2016 as honorary commissioner to study open prisons of Rajasthan led to the genesis of PAAR (Prison Aid + Action Research), a non-partisan research and advocacy organisation, a boat for a sinking person to go paar or cross over.
At the open prison in Sanganer, an industrial township on the outskirts of Jaipur co-managed by PAAR, murder convicts along with their families live out their sentence within an open community. Daybreak does not bring jailbreak or being ferried for court dates. Murderers work in factories or as security guards in schools; trust, humaneness and graded liberty come together in this cost-effective alternative to jails. There is not a single escape from this camp of Second Chance.
The name PAAR was perhaps inspired by the award-winning film by Goutam Ghosh, as fiction meets facts. Naseeruddin Shah and his wife Shabana Azmi, contractual labourers, become fugitives from justice. It was not a well thought-out premeditated murder of an exploitative landlord. Some progressive justice systems might consider this on-the-spot grave error of judgement, a mitigating factor.
Actor Shah lost several kilos for this role, going on a “protein-loaded diet”. Not exactly the “Pingla diet” practised in prisons in Bihar, where prisoners are kept deliberately malnourished, just the bare minimum to keep the soul within the body skeleton. Pingla diets are convenient strategies of torture as malnutrition leaves no tell-tale visual evidence, reducing adults to the stature and submissiveness of David Copperfields. Not a keto diet, its name is perhaps a tribute to ancient India’s mathematician Acharya Pingala, to whom the use of “zero” or shunya is sometimes ascribed.
Behind these cemented cages, the rib cage may get increasingly more visible. The National Hunger Index remains unaccountable or concealed here, preventing our food-sufficient nation from slipping further down, its current position being 101 among 116 countries.
While protecting the public, can we transform the way we punish and manage offenders, and reduce re-offending, cutting crime and costs? Till such time, can we take genuine pride in our heritage of humanism—the karuna, kripa and daya of Hinduism, forgiveness as central to Christianity; sewa bhav among Sikhs; Surahs on forgiveness in Islam; the metta or kindness among Buddhists, the annual day set aside for “michhami dukkadami”, or seeking apology for hurt or harm?
Well-known urban folk singer-songwriter Susmit Bose prefers music over muscle, conducting workshops in open prisons and jails of Rajasthan, converting inmates into mates. Murderers or musicians—the ability to scale musical high notes over high walls inspires his killer songs:
“How do you speak of freedom if your self is all in chains?
How do you see the rainbow without the rain?”
In conclusion, it is prayed that the court may take suo moto cognisance of his plea and summon him to give his musical testimony.
(This appeared in the print edition as "The Law of Lo ve, Not Fear")
(Views are personal)
Meera Dewan is a filmmaker who has frequented prisons