“What I knew in the abstract I was now living, feeling and observing”: An interview with Sudha Bharadwaj

In this interview, trade unionist and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, who was jailed in the Bhima-Koregaon matter and has just produced a book on From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada, tells Freny Manecksha how prison changes one for the worse, but also for the better.

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“BUT the irony is on the day they (Adivasis of Sarkeguda, Chhattisgarh) are vindicated, seven years after they began their fight, I, their first lawyer, am in jail 1,000 kilometers away! Yet it is a happy day.”

In her poignantly humane book From Phansi Yard, released recently, trade unionist and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, jailed along with other lawyers, academicians and activists in what is known as the Bhima Koregaon case, recalls a bitter-sweet occasion in the Yerawada Central Jail.

Bharadwaj’s endeavour for workers is legendary, but her work to help Adivasis seek justice is not so well known. One such case pertains to Adivasis of a remote hamlet, Sarkeguda, in the Bastar region, challenging the official report that 17 of their fellow villagers who had been killed by security forces were “dreaded Maoists”.

A commission of inquiry concluded they were “ordinary, unarmed villagers, including six minors”. But one of the lawyers was far away “in a cage” in Maharashtra.

Bharadwaj spoke of how as a young student she was influenced by Shankar Guha Niyogi and his vision for a working-class movement that went far beyond lobbying for their rights.

During my interaction with Bharadwaj, I asked her to share her long journey from her days as a trade unionist, her concerns for Adivasis and the criminal justice system to her jottings in notebooks on the “unfreedoms” of prison life that ultimately led to the book.

She spoke of how as a young student she was influenced by Shankar Guha Niyogi and his vision for a working-class movement that went far beyond lobbying for their rights. Taking up the invitation of ‘Comrade’ Niyogi, she left her middle-class surroundings to visit Dalli Rajhara, a mining township that supplied the Bhilai Steel Plant with iron ore.

It was at the headquarters of the Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh (CMSS), the workers’ union Niyogi, a worker himself, had founded. She writes of the visit, and “being enveloped in a warm embrace of the working people”.

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In 1984, she took the plunge to be associated with the red-green flag of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, an initiative of Niyogi signifying worker–peasant solidarity, and moved to Chhattisgarh.

Beginning with teaching children, she then moved to Bhilai, where for 14 years she was a karyakarta (activist) doing work such as sweeping the office, maintaining a file of newspaper clippings and liaising with lawyers.

Taking up the invitation of ‘Comrade’ Niyogi, Bharadwaj left her middle-class surroundings to visit Dalli Rajhara, a mining township that supplied the Bhilai Steel Plant with iron ore.

Niyogi, she said, envisaged a “class struggle with a kind of nationality approach” in Chhattisgarh, a rich land of poor people. Workers would lead the movement to create a new society that would improve lives and distribute resources.

The approach was an antithesis to the chauvinist policy of a Shiv Sena or a Maharashtra Navnirman Sena that sought to throw out people not belonging to the state. The working class, she explained, had the capacity to bring such change because it had developed deep links with the peasantry. Miners of Dalli Rajhara, which adjoined the tribal belt of Bastar, included Adivasis and members of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

Many Adivasis from Bastar already came for treatment at the Shaheed Hospital built by the union in memory of the 17 workers who had died in police firing in Bhilai during a protest in 1992.

So this rich vibrancy and commitment of the movement with the peasantry already existed. After getting a law degree at the age of 39, at the behest of the workers who felt Bharadwaj could better represent their cause, she honed an even keener understanding.

As a member of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, she was involved in judicial inquiries and realised the need for a level-playing field.

In 1984, Bharadwaj took the plunge to be associated with the red-green flag of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, an initiative of Niyogi, signifying worker–peasant solidarity and moved to Chhattisgarh.

“Adivasis needed to put forward their point of view, statements and their side of the story. This evolved into the belief that people should be specifically studying that aspect. That was how a very courageous group of women set up the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Society or JagLAG as it was called,” she said.

“One grave issue was the way ordinary Adivasis are incarcerated under charges of serious offences and later acquitted because no evidence was produced. They are picked up randomly.

“This needed to be addressed as an unfair system, prejudicial to Adivasis living in the area. It needs to be documented. We made an effort and supported the Adivasis with legal aid. This was where my involvement came in but the bulk of the work was done by JagLAG,” Bharadwaj recalled.

Upon being asked how it felt to be thrown into the maws of the incarceration system and finding oneself a prisoner after documenting, observing and fighting cases, she replied, “As a lawyer, I visited jails in Odisha and Chhattisgarh and saw terrible conditions. At Malkangiri Jail (bordering Chhattisgarh and part of the Maoist belt) toilets did not have roofs.

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“Sentries atop the walls could look into areas where women bathe. Sanitary conditions were bad. In contrast, Yerawada and Byculla have better physical conditions. But when you actually stay in prison, it begins seeping in a very real sense … that unfreedom and what that means.

“What I knew in the abstract, I was now living. Feeling it, watching it and what it does to people and how they cope with it. It was a revelation. And it was the sorting out of those thoughts that led to this book.

“I hadn’t thought of my notes as a book at that time. It was just a means of escaping the solitude of my cell. In Byculla, I got the opportunity to write applications and stopped writing my notes. I stepped back into my old role. I became inhouse Vakeel Aunty.”

Prison reforms speak of equality before the law. There are declarations that all prisoners must be entitled to basic human rights, human dignity and human sympathy. But, as Bharadwaj’s book reveals with non-judgmental empathy and a keen perspective of human rights, jails are designed to strip one of all that.

As a member of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, Bharadwaj was involved in judicial inquiries and realised the need for a level-playing field.

It begins with the jhadti or body strip search and the search of the barracks when one’s belongings are opened and thrown around.

Said Bharadwaj, “It is the first thing you confront. It is a shock. You feel you will get used to it. The number of times you are stripped and frisked before going to court or on your way back, on the way to and while returning from a hospital, etc., but then you cannot get used to the consistent indignity.

“It goes well beyond the stripping. Where you are supposed to sit, to whom you are supposed to talk, and so on. The emphasis is on punishing you. You must not even have friends.

“If they find you are getting friendly with someone you will be separated, sent to different barracks. What you give to another inmate can become an issue or even when you want to help. Anything perceived as organising or the collective raising of grievances invites reprisal.”

Bharadwaj recalled a time in Byculla when she was hauled up by jail authorities because she helped another woman get her court Orders through her lawyer, “I was accused of trying to perhaps extract some service or money from her!”

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Later, though, the authorities themselves began asking for her help and people were directed to go to her for legal help.

“Rules, rules, rules… The first thing one learns in jail is to obey rules. Rules that are not written or consistent, not necessarily legal and sometimes not even rational,” writes Bharadwaj citing several examples in the book.

Bharadwaj’s book reveals with non-judgmental empathy and a keen perspective of human rights that jails are designed to strip one of basic human rights, human dignity and human sympathy.

Shoma Sen, a co-accused in the case, with painful arthritic knees was finally allowed a plastic chair for use between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. after a lengthy legal battle.

“Something historic” happened when a request went out for something as basic as fans in the cell! Other inmates were sceptical, “They will never allow it. We have never had a fan for more than twenty years.” But a few months down the line, the request was accepted.

Bharadwaj humorously likens going to prison to going “back to the stone age. No use of metals, no spoons, no scissors, no nail cutters, needles, or even safety pins. You crush food or tablets with some other implement.”

Forbidden items include socks, mosquito nets, hair clips, empty plastic covers and any fermented food for fear it could lead to food poisoning. Even the use of dupattas in barracks is forbidden in case they are used to hang oneself!

Yet, curiously enough, the dupatta became mandatory at other times. Bharadwaj explained that in the paternalistic and patriarchal framework of the prison, there were very firm notions on appropriate dress code for women when they go for mulakat (meetings with relatives and lawyers allowed in prison) and during court appearances or even going to the prison office.

Bharadwaj humorously likens going to prison to going “back to the stone age. No use of metals, no spoons, no scissors, no nail cutters, needles, or even safety pins. You crush food or tablets with some other implement.”

“The staff were women but they insisted we had to wear the dupatta. Shirt-pants or tracksuits were prohibited. They hated ‘masculine attire’. They were scared of sexuality. They had a real horror of love between women!” Bharadwaj said.

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A complex hierarchy implements rules. At the top are the senior madam, who is the jailer, and her assistants; then junior madams, the head constables and constables; and, finally, the kaamwalis or prisoners who do modestly paid sanitary, clerical and managerial work. This last group had a role in enforcing discipline as warders. All of them had to be accorded the appropriate respect.

“Even the remote of the TV was in the hands of the kaamwali. I would plead with her to let me see NDTV for five minutes to catch up with what was happening in the farmers’ movement when others went for a tea break,” Sudha reminisced.

Regimentation extended to the coffin-like spaces that each woman occupied on the floors that were fiercely guarded. Fights broke out if anyone stepped into another’s space.

“But children (prisons allow mothers to have children up to the age of six to stay with them) have no concept of that. They ran about everywhere. There were beatings by mothers. But then other women consoled the child,” she said.

“I remember this woman from Finland who developed a beautiful relationship with a boy called Babu. She hardly spoke to anyone, maybe there was a language barrier or she was generally quiet but her link with another woman’s child was marvellous,” she continued.

Whilst the prisoners stepped into nurturing and humane roles as women, was there no rights-based policy as such, I asked.

The lack of a rights-based approach, according to Bharadwaj, was but natural because the uniformed personnel, generally understaffed, only knew how to discipline prisoners.

“Non-uniformed reformatory staff of counsellors, teachers and social workers scarcely exist. The medical aspect is skeletal. Psychiatric care is only for those who are very mentally unstable,” she asserted.

“Some women are imprisoned for sex work or under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. They are generally amateurs since they are the ones who have been caught. They need not go back to such work if there are viable options. But there is no staff with the mindset to provide this guidance,” Bharadwaj continued.

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She added, “What concept of human rights can survive in the face of being addressed as thobade (Marathi slang to address someone, literally meaning ‘face’)? Or when they call you by crude allusions to the allegations that have been levelled against you: Mao, Bengali, Moka (for prisoners held under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999, MCOCA in short)? They sit in moral judgment and already hold you guilty.

“The staff were women but they insisted we had to wear the dupatta. Shirt-pants or tracksuits were prohibited. They hated ‘masculine attire’. They were scared of sexuality. They had a real horror of love between women!” Bharadwaj said.

“There is no perspective that prisoners are human beings who come from a certain context, are in a difficult situation and are worried about the future. Interestingly, these uniformed staff come from the same milieu of rural Maharashtra as the prisoners. One has perhaps been more fortunate than the other. But occasionally friendships do build up and they can be helpful.”

Such supportive associations, despite the policy of the jail to discourage all friendships, are movingly illustrated in the account of a little boy who was looked after by a Muslim warder when his grandmother, with whom he was living in the jail, fell ill and had to be hospitalised.

The warder was always hugging him, putting kohl in his eyes for Eid. When news of the elderly woman’s death came, the jail was plunged in sorrow. The little boy left the next morning for a funeral and an uncertain future. Would any relative claim him or would he be sent to the sanstha as is often the norm. The child, recalls Bharadwaj, was entirely oblivious to the tragic events and was happily playing about.

This important question of child rights is one among others that Bharadwaj raises through her stories. She pointed out to me how obvious it is that jails cannot accommodate children after the age of six but asked why the jailed woman’s bail or sentencing cannot be more humanely considered.

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Why cannot courts take a more enlightened stand with ‘legal hostages’, she asks. Many women are held under the stringent conditions of the MCOCA. Often, they are the wives, girlfriends or mothers of the real offenders. They have no clue of the crimes and are held merely to satisfy egos or to bait the gangsters into surrender.

“If they are brought in during the stage of investigation, at least at the court level the judge should consider letting them go and give bail,” Bharadwaj contended.

Observing the seemingly mundane happenings inside the jail, punctuated by going to court or not being taken to court, gave Bharadwaj insights into how women are denied access to justice.

Many inmates were illiterate, but there was also the question of legal literacy. How many women understand what they have been charged with? Then there is the question of language.

Bharadwaj said, “What concept of human rights can survive in the face of being addressed as thobade (Marathi slang to address someone, literally meaning ‘face’)?”

“In Byculla, chargesheets are in Marathi but many prisoners only know Bengali or Urdu or Kannada. There are foreigners. The chargesheet was like Greek or Latin to them,” she pointed out.

There is the issue of legal aid lawyers who scarcely meet with the prisoners or inform them about what is happening. “Some women who have been in and out of jail develop a rough understanding of the law. They know they are entitled to a chargesheet after ninety days and can demand bail if not filed.

“They know how things work in trafficking matters or Sections they have been charged under. But there is no one they can instruct on what needs to be done,” Sudha explained.

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She stressed the crucial need for better legal aid, “Lawyers must be accountable to the prisoners they are representing rather than the system. They must visit the woman and listen to her story which may be very different from the one given in the chargesheet.

“They must address the special needs of children, and pregnant and depressed women. Does a woman need to move an application for her children? These are the questions they need to engage with.”

In the absence of lawyers and due to an insufficient number of guards for taking the women to court, they have absolutely no idea of what is happening to their cases.

Even when Bharadwaj helped with applications, she was never sure if they ever reached the court. She joked that her “failure rate was spectacular”. Not a single application for bail during the Covid pandemic succeeded.

There were some successes though, made all the more meaningful because she believes “they were not just applications but lives”. A Pardhi woman was reunited with her one-year-old living outside. An intellectually disabled woman living on the streets got bail.

Most rewarding is an indelible link forged with her fellow inmates. A feeling of lightness takes her into a warm embrace when a phone call materialises from an unknown number. 

“Hey aunty, remember me? I have been released.” 

Book details

From Phansi Yard: My year with the women of Yerawada

By Sudha Bharadwaj 

Published by Juggernaut

Pp. 216