History of Cellular Jail

Kalapani — The Complete History

The historical importance that this place holds is very traumatising but worth knowing. The Andaman islands were used to hold the political Indian activists as prisoners even before the Cellular jail was constructed. After the revolt of 1857 (Sepoy Mutiny) the Britishers were using these islands as prisons for freedom fighters but the Cellular jail was built between 1896 and 1906.

After that particular revolt many activists were executed then and there while two hundred of them were sent to these islands for life imprisonment under the charge of jailer David Barry and a military doctor, Major James Pattison Walker who had earlier served as a warden at the prison in Agra. These islands were selected for life imprisonment because they were located in isolation, far from the main Indian subcontinent. Moreover the journey through the kaala paani was considered threatening by the prisoners as crossing seas seemed to lead them to the loss of caste.

With time as the independence struggle grew stronger and patriotic activists gained enough confidence to provide a momentum to their fight, more and more activists were deported to these islands. The Penal settlement got a recommendation of inserting a 'penal stage' in the transportation sentence. This was suggested by Charles James Lyall, home secretary in the British government, and A.S Lethbridge, a surgeon in the British administration. The penal stage was included because they felt the purpose for sending the prisoners wasn't getting fulfilled and hence the transported prisoners should be subjected to sessions of harsh treatment. The result was the construction of the Cellular jail.

Architecture

The architecture of the jail is just as amazing and unique as its history. The original building was puce coloured—dark red brown-purple—as the bricks brought from Burma were puce coloured. The building had seven wings with three floors each. The seven wings radiated from a central tower in straight lines just like the spokes in a bicycle wheel.

The central tower was used by the British guards to keep an eye on the inmates. There was a bell in this tower to raise alarm when required. The whole idea of such a construction was inspired by Jeremy Bentham's idea of the Panopticon—a structured building from the 18th century intended to make it easier to guard all inmates from a single source. There were no dormitories and a total of 696 cells in these seven triple-floored wings. Each cell had dimensions of 4.5 x 2.7 metres with a ventilator at a height of 3 metres. The very nature of these cells and the vast number of them led to the naming of this prison as the Cellular Jail.

Prisoner Life

The British Raj got Indian rebels and dissidents to this remote island for torture, medical tests, forced labour and for many of them death. Out of 80,000 political prisoners held captive, only few survived. The independence activists held here included Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Babarao Savarkar and Sachindra Nath Sanyal among others.

The solitary confinement rules were so strict that the Savarkar brothers—Babarao and Vinayak—didn't even know that they were in two different cells together for 2 years. The prisoners still tried to revolt: 238 prisoners tried to escape in March 1868, were caught by April, and 87 of them were hanged.

In another act of resistance, some prisoners went on hunger strikes in May 1933. Three of them—Mahavir Singh (an associate of Bhagat Singh), Mohan Kishore Namadas and Mohit Moitra—were killed due to force-feeding.

Japanese Occupation & Independence

The Andaman islands were invaded by the Empire of Japan in March 1942. The Cellular jail was then used to capture suspected British India supporters and members of the Indian Independence League. During this period the islands were under the control of Subhas Chandra Bose who hoisted the Indian flag on these islands for the first time. He announced the Azad Hind Government and freed the territory from British rule.

The British regained control on 7th October 1945, a month after the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II. After India got independence two wings of the Cellular jail were demolished, followed by protests from former prisoners and leaders who saw the demolition as erasing proof of India's struggle for freedom. A hospital named Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital was constructed in the premises in 1963.

Significance of Kaala Paani

The significance of the term kaala paani when used with the Cellular jail indicates that the prisoners were held captive at these islands surrounded by black waters. 'Kaale paani ki saza' was the phrase used for the act of putting the political activists in the cells. It was clear that even if they tried to escape they couldn't because the island has black water all around. The beauty of these islands was used as the dark element to capture these independence rebels where all they knew was that they were far away from their homes with the kaala paani in between.