2025/12/18 by S Sarangi, Akshaya K. Rath · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #South Asian Studies and Conflicts #Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies #South Asian Studies and Diaspora
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2602606
This article examines Andaman penal narratives and argues that resistance is a central metaphor in India’s penal transportation history, not only as defiance but also as a process of political identity formation. Drawing on Kenney’s Dance in Chains (2017), which views political imprisonment as a space for cultivating dissent and agency, and Yang’s Empire of Convicts (2021), which highlights how penal labour shaped both colonial control and subaltern resistance, this article situates the Andamans as a site where incarceration and nationalism converged. The infamous Cellular Jail, modelled after the Madras close prison, enforced strict surveillance and supervision on the prisoners, subsequently helping in institutionalising convicts’ struggle in the Andamans as a part of India’s freedom struggle. Starting in 1909, with the arrival of the ‘political prisoners’ in the Cellular Jail, the jail became a centre of organised resistance, petitions, and hunger strikes. This collective struggle for the repatriation of transported convicts suggests a national appropriation of penal servitude, thereby addressing the question of transportation and the freedom struggle movement within the penal space. Further, this article examines the role of Gandhi and other political spokespersons in the repatriation and appropriation of the Andaman prisoners as ‘freedom fighters’.