The Cellular Jail, also known as Kālā Pānī (), is a former British colonial prison in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The prison was used by the colonial government of India for the purpose of exiling insurgents and political prisoners. Many notable independence activists were imprisoned there during the struggle for India's independence. Today, the complex serves as a national memorial monument.

Originally built with seven wings, the building suffered extensive damage during the earthquake of 1941. Later, two wings were dismantled during the Second World War by the Japanese, who repurposed the bricks for constructing bunkers and other structures. After India gained independence, two more wings were demolished in the 1950s to make way for the nearby Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital. Today, only the watchtower and three wings (1, 6, and 7) remain.

History

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.

thumb|left|200px|The [[Ross Island Penal Colony|Ross Island Prison Headquarters, 1872]]

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. 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. 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. 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.

thumb|250px|right|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. The convicts were also used in chain gangs to construct prisons, buildings, and harbour facilities.

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. 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."

Architecture

thumb|Cellular Jail

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.

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 wheel.

thumb|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 in size with a ventilator located at a height of . The name, "cellular jail", derived from the solitary cells, which prevented any prisoner from communicating with any other. Also, the spokes were 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.

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.

Notable incarcerations

  • Sardar Singh Artillery
  • Diwan Singh Kalepani
  • Yogendra Shukla
  • Batukeshwar Dutt
  • Vishwanath Mathur
  • Hemchandra Kanungo
  • Sachindra Nath Sanyal
  • Shadan Chandra Chatterjee
  • Sohan Singh Bhakna
  • Hare Krishna Konar
  • Shiv Verma
  • Allama Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi
  • Sudhanshu Dasgupta
  • Ullaskar Dutta
  • Barindra Kumar Ghosh
  • Ganesh Damodar Savarkar
  • Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

Prison conditions and inmates

thumb|left|From inside a cell

According to an article in the Guardian newspaper, prisoner could face "torture, medical tests, forced labour and for many, death." 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 in order to save their lives. Many moplahs arrested in the 1921 Malabar rebellion were also lodged in Cellular Jail. Several revolutionaries were tried in the Alipore Case (1908), such as Barindra Kumar Ghose, the surviving companion of Bagha Jatin, was transferred to Berhampore Jail in Bengal, before his mysterious death in 1924.

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. 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. He said that he killed on the instructions of Allah. He was subsequently hanged.

thumb|left|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.