“This world, in its vastness, is a prison in itself, with women trapped in countless smaller prisons. Women’s jails are but slightly larger than the smaller prisons of home or family.” - Seema Azad.
One cold February day, Seema Azad and her husband, Vishwa Vijai, were whisked away from Allahabad’s railway station and charged with waging war against the state. Even as their struggle for justice began and they navigated a system designed to crush dissent, Azad kept a meticulous diary.
The result is a memoir in which Azad chooses, like Sudha Bharadwaj, to bring a gender sensitive prism in her contribution towards the growing genre of prison memoirs.
Chronicling the events in Naini jail from February 6, 2010, to June 8, 2012, when she was released, Unsilenced has the advantage of having been written by a journalist as well as a social activist. It is thereby eminently qualified to analyse experiences through a socio-economic perspective and also bring political understanding along with acutely felt sensibility.
Lucidly written and divided into various components, the book is an indictment - not just of the carceral system but also of the society which produces criminality.
‘Criminalised’ for Her Work
Ironically, Azad believes it was her journalism and social activism that led to her being targeted by the state. She was criminalised because she reported on the militant struggle by sand mine workers against exploitation, the struggle by farmers against land acquisition for the construction of the Ganga Expressway and was a member of the fact-finding mission for the 2007 Kareli Madrasa rape case.
Like Anand Teltumbde of the Bhima Koregaon case, who has written in his prison memoir, about various illegalities and how police procured keys and broke into his home in Goa whilst the family was away, Azad too details the lawlessness and utter disdain for procedure.
She narrates how an attempt was made to plant two mobiles in the premises where she lived with her husband, Vishwa Vijai, during a search operation. Both of them were “abducted” by the Special Task Force (STF) as they got down from a train and stood outside the station. They were then shown to be arrested as Maoists. The draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) was slapped on them.
The media, in what is now a familiar pattern, sensationalised the arrests, quoting verbatim from police sources, pushing canards like that her camera had photos of key Naxalites. And that huge amounts of cash and Naxalite literature had been seized from them.
In his book, Teltumbde frames this crucial issue of collusion, asking who will “account for the lies of the police issued for public consumption?”
Azad narrates how she was asked to sign a document that already had her father’s signature, stating he had been given the keys to their room. Her keen scrutiny of the document brought home to her that there was a page missing. She refused to sign. These are the distressing examples of a bid to plant evidence or extract false statements through guile.
Another familiar pattern of prisons all over the country is the way the administration deliberately sets out to strip prisoners of their dignity by addressing them with insults or labelling them as Maowadi or by the number of the section under which they were arrested. This is highlighted in Bharadwaj’s book.
Azad, on her part, notes how she was referred to as nayi aamdani (a new source of income) when she entered the prison after her remand ended. A telling comment on exploitation and corruption.
The Jail as a Microcosm of World Outside
Like other prison memoirs, there are descriptions of the abysmal conditions - unsanitary surroundings, poor food, quarrels over scarcity of water, and alarming levels of authoritarianism.
But, what is significant about this particular narrative is the way the jail manifests as a microcosm of the world outside. Uttar Pradesh’s extremely feudal, regressive, and patriarchal society is shown up in the attitudes and actions of not just the prisoners but the jail staff.
For many of the women inmates, violence by husbands or sons had been so normalised that they accepted beatings and scoldings by constables within the prison too, because self-respect was non-existent. Sometimes women actually felt a little freer because they didn’t have to face the physical abuse of their menfolk.
Rampant obscurantism and superstition were also reflected in their behaviour. Inmates often claimed to be possessed and would act in a bizarre manner, cursing or screaming. On other occasions women claimed they were possessed by goddesses.
Black magic spells - some of them truly obnoxious - were practiced like women dipping cloves in their menstrual blood and offering it to others or smearing faeces on the walls of the toilets.
Religiosity also prevailed in the form of a stone surrounded by bricks under a peepul tree, being revered by Hindus. Under a jackfruit tree, a green sequined satin chaddar was believed to be that of the grave of Syed Baba, by Muslims.
Criminality was also a consequence of superstition and faith in tantriks. One prisoner was serving a 20-year sentence for having killed her sister-in-law’s child on the advice of a tantrik.
Azad’s observations on whether the judge also saw the backwardness of society as being equally responsible or the tantrik’s culpability in defrauding gullible women is a striking indictment of the state and judiciary.
In her observations on criminality and gender, Azad examines socio-economic factors of how Dalit, Adivasi, and Muslims make up a large section of the population in jail. There are the Sherawalis, women of the denotified tribes, imprisoned for trade in the body parts of lions and other animals. There is also an examination of the lives of sex workers and how they often get re-arrested after release because they go back to the same practices.
It is again a striking example of how the prison system lacks any reformative features and how urgent it is to “dismantle the social system that gives birth to criminals in huge numbers daily.”
Here, I am also reminded of feminist Uma Chakravarti’s remarks at a public discussion on how the women’s movement has tended to overlook the issue of women in prison and not taken up their cause.
Learning to Survive Behind Bars
How do women live and survive behind bars? Azad has a fund of anecdotes and stories of romances that strike up during mulaqats or jail meetings, or then how being produced in court becomes something of a social occasion - an outing with the women dressing up, colouring their hair, or fixing eyebrows. For the children, who accompany their mothers, it is a glimpse of the outside world they have scarcely known. Their excitement on what they ate, whom they met and the sight of the Yamuna River is a heart-rending illustration of the deprivation they face.
A chapter which focuses on children with great emotional sensitivity elaborates on how they seldom ever see the night sky, have never witnessed the phases of the moon, or the setting and rising of the sun.
Khushi, born in prison, is a cheerful, tiny fifteen-month-old girl when Azad enters prison. She is the first child to be befriended by Azad and with whom a strong bond is formed. When finally, Khushi and her mother, Refali, one of the Sherawali women, are released, the young child is not even aware of what it signifies. She thinks it is just another court visit.
But for Azad it will be days before she stops feeling that all khushi (happiness) is gone.
For Azad, the long-awaited release happened, when after many delays, the Allahabad High Court overturned the life sentence handed and granted bail on appeal to her and her husband. Jail experiences, continue to haunt her, the traumatic aftereffects expressed with an inability to handle routine chores or to sleep. The silence has now become fearsome, with nightmares of murder and violence triggered by stories of crimes heard whilst in jail.
Slowly, Azad learns to adjust and reflect. It culminates in this memoir, which is not only about herself but of shared suffering. It throws light on the darkness of a jail experience but is also a wonderful testimony of living with grace, courage and solidarity.
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