Opinion Court shows the way: No place for caste in prisons

The Constitution places equality and the dignity of the individual at the heart of the republic’s legal and moral architecture. However, given the reality of stratification in society and the nature of the colonial state apparatus — much of which independent India inherited — realising the constitutional promise is an ongoing task. On Thursday, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of India, ordered the Centre and state governments “to revise their Prison Manuals/Rules” by removing discriminatory language and provisions. It directed that the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023 include a prohibition on caste-based discrimination in prisons.

The Court is right to point out that “Not providing dignity to prisoners is a relic of the colonisers and pre-colonial mechanisms, where oppressive systems were designed to dehumanise and degrade those under the control of the state”. The Uttar Pradesh Jail Manual, 2022, makes open reference to “convicts of the scavenger class” while the West Bengal Jail Code says that “Food shall be cooked and carried to the cells by prisoner-cooks of suitable caste”. And that “Sweepers should be chosen from the Mether or Hari caste, also from the Chandal or other castes, if by the custom of the district they perform similar work when free.” The Madhya Pradesh Jail manual entrenches colonial-era prejudices against certain “de-notified” tribal communities — notified as “criminal tribes” during the British Raj — by classifying them as “habitual offenders”. The rules governing prisons can be summed up by a line in the Andhra Pradesh Prison Rules — “make allowance for caste prejudice”.

Advertisement

In the last few years, both political debate and policy reform have been informed by a call for “decolonisation”. It seeks to place the blame for many social ills — including caste-based discrimination — on the colonial hangover. It has culminated in the three new criminal codes. The Court shows the way by championing constitutional values of dignity and equality for the incarcerated. However, it is not in prisons alone that both the repressions of “traditional” Indian society as well as the vestigial oppressions of the colonial system find expression. As the SC pointed out in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, the police, for instance, is an institution that “has not come out of its colonial image despite six decades of independence, it is largely considered as a tool of harassment, oppression and surely not considered a friend of public”. For the political project of “decolonisation” to be meaningful, it must cast its net wider and include aspects of law, government and bureaucratic functioning that continue to be discriminatory.