The history of the enterprise of language in Hindutva-dominated India after 2014 will surely reserve a significant, if dark, place for prison literature. By “prison literature,” we mean the books, essays, and poems written by those imprisoned – accounts born of the experience of incarceration.

The state might even claim, with a kind of arrogant irony, that by sending these intellectuals to jail it has rendered a service to the language and to the public sphere, by compelling them to live through experiences so profound and so revealing that they have enriched our collective understanding. 

Over the last decade, the state has methodically imprisoned teachers, researchers, students, writers, and intellectuals on a variety of charges. Mostly using the draconian and anti-constitutional Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) which makes it nearly impossible for them to secure bail thanks to the courts.

The judiciary, far from being a countervailing force, has been its willing accomplice. By consistently denying bail, the courts have ensured that these men and women remain in custody for years. With the active cooperation of the government and the courts, they were condemned to spend long stretches of time inside prison walls, observing that world with the precision only suffering can sharpen. The results of that enforced observation are now beginning to appear in print.

Anand Teltumbde’s new book, The Cell and the Soul, is a powerful addition to this growing body of prison writing. Not long ago, we read Sudha Bharadwaj’s moving memoir  From Phansi Yard. Before that came Seema Azad’s Zindannama. Kobad Ghandy’s Fractured Freedom appeared after his acquittal. G.N. Saibaba’s Why Do You Fear My Way So Much?– a collection of poems, essays, and letters – is also, in essence, an account of his life in prison, an intimate record of his political and moral reflections born of captivity.

Anand’s book, however, is more than a record of the thirty-one months he spent behind bars. While recounting his days in confinement, he re-examines the arc of his own life and engages deeply with questions of Indian politics, Dalit politics, Ambedkarism, and Maoism. It is, at once, a personal diary, a political meditation, and an anatomy of the state.

Also read: ‘Never Imagined I'd Be Qualified For Arrest, Let Alone Write a Prison Memoir’: Anand Teltumbde

Anand was arrested in the so-called Bhima Koregaon case. On December 31, 2017, the Elgar Parishad was held near Bhima Koregaon, in Pune. The event commemorated the British victory over Baji Rao Peshwa II two centuries –  earlier a victory made possible, crucially, by about five hundred Mahar soldiers.

For the Mahar community, and for Dalits more generally, this battle carries a profound symbolic significance: it marked the end of the oppressive Peshwai order. Every year, Dalits gather at Bhima Koregaon to celebrate that liberation. The 2017 Elgar Parishad, organised by a committee led by two retired judges, called explicitly for the end of the “New Peshwai,” the new order of Hindutva domination.

When participants were returning home, they were attacked by Hindutva mobs. One person was killed. Anger erupted among Dalits across Maharashtra. The police, compelled by public pressure, registered an FIR against the two Hindutva leaders –  Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote. But almost immediately, a second FIR was filed, shifting the blame entirely. The police now claimed that the violence was provoked by “inflammatory” speeches at the Parishad. Thus began a new narrative.

What had been an assault by Hindutva groups was swiftly reframed as a conspiracy by “urban Naxals”. Poets, journalists, lawyers, professors, artists, and a Jesuit priest were arrested one after another – Rona Wilson, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Father Stan Swamy, Arun Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha, Vernon Gonsalves, Mahesh Raut, and members of the Kabir Kala Manch. The state alleged that they were part of a nationwide plot, even one aimed at assassinating the prime minister.

Ironically, Anand himself had been critical of the Elgar Parishad. In an article for The Wire, he argued that while Dr. Ambedkar had used the Bhima Koregaon site symbolically, to claim it as a “Dalit victory” was a form of self-deception. He had publicly distanced himself from the mode of commemoration.

That is precisely why his arrest came as a shock. When the police raided his house in Goa, disbelief rippled through the academic and activist circles. How could Anand – who had openly questioned the very logic of the event – be linked to this so-called conspiracy? But this question had already been asked after the arrests of Stan Swamy, Sudha Bharadwaj, and Mahesh Raut: what, after all, did any of them have to do with the violence at Bhima Koregaon?

In The Cell and the Soul, Anand describes in painstaking detail the process of his own arrest. It began in 2018 and culminated, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, with his surrender after the Supreme Court justified the police action. The book meticulously records this ordeal. One needs to only follow the Bhima Koregaon proceedings to grasp how India’s judicial system often stands not for justice, but against it – acting in tandem with the police and the executive rather than checking their overreach.

Anand’s own life before his arrest was one of unusual intersections. He was deeply involved in human rights work, yet had also held senior positions in the corporate world and taught at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and other prestigious institutions. At the time of his arrest, he was working at the Goa Institute of Management on a project concerning Big Data. 

His disbelief, when his name appeared in the list of the accused, was therefore entirely understandable.

Across twenty-two chapters, Anand narrates his jail life. Again and again, he encounters flashes of deep humanity among those branded as criminals. Yet his realism remains unsentimental; he neither romanticises nor despairs. Prison, he shows us, is where one’s civility and compassion are tested most severely.

The jail itself becomes a microcosm of society. His incarceration during the pandemic added another layer of terror. To survive in the overcrowded Taloja jail through the waves of COVID-19 was nothing short of miraculous. Anand lived daily in the shadow of death, witnessing the callousness of jail officials and doctors.

One of the most affecting portions of the book recounts the slow, painful decline of Father Stan Swamy, who was imprisoned with him. Anand’s tribute to the Jesuit priest is both tender and devastating.

He also turns his sharp gaze inward, toward his own community, he belongs to involuntarily. He writes of the misplaced caste pride of some Ambedkarite prisoners and reflects critically on the limitations of Ambedkarite politics itself. He has long argued that Dalit politics, in its current form, fails to be transformative. In prison, that realisation acquired new urgency.

Prison mirrors society in its hierarchies. Its walls replicate the structures of caste, class, and privilege with cruel precision. The relationship between crime and class is laid bare most starkly there. One begins to see, as many have before him, that the state is nothing more than an instrument for maintaining the dominance of the ruling class.

A striking chapter concerns the disproportionate number of Dalits and Muslims accused under the POCSO Act. Anand was astonished to find that most of those charged under this law came from the poorest and most marginalised backgrounds. Within the jail, they were despised and treated with utmost contempt. Mahesh Raut even conducted a small survey to document this reality. Anand notes that “upper” caste Hindus cannot tolerate intimacy between their daughters and men from “lower” castes or minority communities. The POCSO law, he observes, has become a weapon to protect caste and religious purity – an instrument that deepens discrimination in the name of safeguarding children.

Also read: The RSS Was Also a Reaction to Early Dalit Mobilisation

The most poignant section of the book comes when Anand learns of his brother Milind’s killing. He recalls that he had originally named him Anil, but a teacher enrolled him as Milind in school. Milind went on to join the Maoist movement and rose to its top ranks. Anand, though critical of Maoist politics, could understand its moral and emotional appeal. In jail, hearing of his brother’s death, he relives that story – the brilliant mind consumed by the fire of revolt for justice for the most wronged, a life extinguished by an unjust and cruel state.

After thirty-one months, Anand was finally granted bail. Others too – Sudha Bharadwaj, Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudhir Dhawale, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao – have since been released on bail. Yet, in truth, they all live in an invisible, larger prison. Their movements are restricted; their professional and personal lives irreversibly altered.

Anand’s own life, too, stands transformed. He cannot return to his institute in Goa. His ambitious Big Data project remains unrealised. His resilience commands admiration, but we must not lose sight of the larger crime: the arrests themselves, and the unconscionable duration of their imprisonment. Is this not the clearest evidence of the judiciary’s complicity in injustice?

The Cell and the Soul is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand post-2014 India. It is a book about Anand and the injustice he suffered, but also about the deeper, structural cruelty of a state reconfigured by Hindutva. Should we then, in the end, thank the police and the courts because this book came into being? Or should we remember that it exists despite them, as a testimony to their failure?

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.

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