“What I knew in the abstract I was now living, feeling and observing”: An interview with Sudha Bharadwaj (on her book" From Phasi Yard" Freny Manecksha ·December 17, 2023
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.
“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. “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.
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.