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The freedom fighters who
were brought to the Andaman islands can be roughly divided into three
phases. The first included the rebels of the 1857 struggle; the
second the political prisoners between 1910 to 1921; and the third
the political prisoners between 1932 to 1937.
Records pertaining to the
first phase are scanty or completely missing. However, it is known
with certainty that Maulana Liquat Aly (Ali), the leader of 1857
struggle died here.
The second phase of
prisoners started with the Alipore conspiracy case in 1908. Except
for Aurobindo Ghosh who was acquitted, the other four suspects were
sentenced to transportation for life to these islands. In 1911,
another well known name, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar of the Nasik
Conspiracy case was sentenced to transportation for life. Noni Gopal
Mukherjee was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment and sent to the
islands following the Dalhousie Square bomb case. The life for these
prisoners was extremely hard since they had to help run the daily
affairs of the islands. They were expected to help in construction
activities, keeping the settlement and the jail clean, and do many
more activities in addition to these. But for all this, they still
received very inhuman treatment from the British. This fact is amply
illustrated by the suicide committed by Indu Bhushan Roy in 1912 (a
young freedom fighter from Bengal). In another case, Ulaskar Dutt who
was convicted in the Alipore Conspiracy, turned insane.
Consequent to these
tragic happenings, Ladha ram who had edited the Swarajya, a
nationalist weekly, went on a hunger strike protesting against the
prevailing inhuman conditions. In the following years, between 1913
and 1914, the jail saw further protests in the form of hunger
strikes.
Somewhere around this
period the records tell us, Bhai Paramananda and Ashutosh Lahiri
resorted to violent tactics and threw a European jailer down. By
1919-1920 things had deteriorated further and the Indian Jail
Committee was appointed which finally decided to abolish the
settlement and send all the prisoners back to the Indian mainland by
1921.
Transportation resumed
only in 1932 again and the number of prisoners hovered around 300.
However, following the 1937 elections which were swept by the Indian
National Congress, there was heavy unrest in the jails and mass
protests by way of hunger strikes.
The penal system in the
Andamans is sui-generis and has grown along its own lines. The
convicts were divided into two broad categories: the labouring and
the self supporting convicts. The former performed skilled and
unskilled labour in the settlements, while the self supporting
convicts were basically tillers and cultivators.
The two groups were
further subdivided into four classes according to the duration of the
sentence. Newly arrived convicts were of the fourth class and kept in
the Cellular Jail at Port Blair for the first six months. During this
period they slept in solitary cells and worked in the day.
Good behaviour prompted
their promotion to third class convicts. These men were enlisted for
gangs, allowed to work outside the jails and slept in barracks.
Convicts were expected to serve about four and a half years as third
class prisoners and were then promoted to second class convicts. In
this class they normally served as petty officers or entered domestic
service. However, they were not entitled to pay and lived on the
rations provided.
Another five years would
be spent as second class prisoners and if the incumbent showed good
behaviour, he or she would be promoted to first class prisoners. This
class of prisoners was entitled to the self supporter’s ticket;
was free to seek his or her own livelihood, could own property in the
islands; was permitted to send for his wife and children, or choose a
wife from the female convicts. Since the previous wives and children
of the convicts rarely rejoined them in their new life on the
islands, such marriages were not uncommon.
It is interesting to note
that on certain days the first class prisoners were allowed to visit
the female jail. The eligible women were paraded for the male
prisoners to choose from. After selection, an application had to be
made to the superintendent for permission to marry. If the authority
found the case satisfactory, the marriage would be allowed. Normally,
intermarriage was rare and discouraged. The ceremonies were conducted
solely in accordance with the religious customs of the contracting
parties.
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