My Shifting Sense of ‘Self’ in a Mumbai Prison

During my MPhil days, I was working on understanding the experiences of women inmates who have been accused or convicted under IPC section 302, for committing murder. Considering the severity of the crime, the scope of justice is more or less limited in many such cases – making it worthwhile to understand the narratives of women who fall under this category.

My idea was to explore how these women inmates, while carrying a socially condemnable tag which in itself goes against the dominant nature of femininity, bargain inside an authoritative regime structure. I wanted to understand how the prison experience particularly impacts the women and if it does, what do they think about it. The thought was to bring out the voices of these women and their experiences to understand how they negotiate with the identity provided by the State, of a murderer or criminal, and what are their methods of resistance.

I started my research by watching documentaries and shows online based on the lives of women inmates, and I was pretty daunted by their stories. I was daunted by the whole structure: police custody, police station, officers, the court – and pretty much everything around it. The very idea of prison was scary and the constant thought of how I position myself within the structure was a bit nerve-wracking.

My fieldwork was in June, July, August and half of September – the rainy season in Mumbai. I was very nervous on my first day, as I had never visited a prison or had known anyone from there before. I remember standing at the front gate of the jail and feeling scared to death as soon as I saw the main gate of the prison from outside. The frames were made up of steel and a bunch of fully armed guards was standing on both sides of the gate. 

I took a seat, sipped some water and, then gathered the courage to walk up to the main door. As expected, I was stopped and asked for my permission letter. Once I cleared the checkpoint, the guards opened up a small gate and allowed me in.

The journey from the main gate until the main entrance of the prison was the most frightening experience ever; it shall forever remain etched in my conscience. On my first day, I was provided with a list of instructions to follow, i.e. no tape recorders, no extra notes, nothing. I was told that every day, I will have to show my notebook to the staff and go through a full-body scan in the washroom – which I did for the whole three and a half months.

After that, I was asked to find my ward and barrack by myself and was left alone thenceforth. As soon as I entered the confinement area, I saw a group of men in prison uniform, cleaning the ground, painting the wall, and watering the plants. I couldn’t find any women. I was lost for a moment, a bit scared, and was panicking. 

I gathered my courage and asked one of the guards who was standing at a distance, about the women's ward. He escorted me to the main gate of the women's barrack and as I entered, I started hearing the voices of women shouting. A prison staff mistook me to be a fellow inmate and scolded me for roaming outside the barracks. At that moment, I somehow imagined myself to be a part of that environment and felt a rush of emotions. I felt suffocated.

After introducing myself, one of the constables shouted and called a fellow inmate, saying: “Aree madam ko murder walo se milwao”. There started my three-month-long journey of interacting with the women inmates and understanding their lives.

As I was asked to visit and meet the inmates for a fixed period, I adhered to the schedule for approximately fifteen days. Later, I started negotiating with the staff to let me stay for a while. On some days, the staff would agree on a condition that I don’t disclose the deal elsewhere, and on other days, they would restrict my movement inside the prison. But I was able to gauge their mood during our interactions vis-à-vis the inmates. 

The staff were almost always present during my visit and made sure they made me feel their presence around me. However, I would spend more time with the women inmates during my visits. The very first space where I was allowed to sit and conduct ‘interviews’ was in a Kitabghar – a tiny dark place with stacks of books around me. I was nervous about how I would start the conversation. What if I offend these women in some way and what if they never agree to come and talk to me in the first place.

But with due course of time, the women started sharing their personal stories and the experiences in the prison. One time, we negotiated for the change of space – from the kitabghar to the place where they would play carom (a more informal space). In the process of finding my ways to interact with the women and observe the prison politics, I was caught in an endless cycle of self-questioning about my position of privilege. I had the privilege to talk to the women and share a small part of my life with them; I heard them cry their feelings out and at times cried myself too. But I also had the privilege of moving out of that space, catching a local train and, going back home. My sense of identity, or the sense of self, was constantly shifting before, during, and after the research.

In the initial few days, whenever I would step inside the prison gate, I would almost fail at making sense of it. I used to feel like an outsider who was trying to understand everything with a little set of knowledge and skills. On my first day, when I visited Building A, a women's cell, an inmate asked me “aap Tata Institute se aaye ho?”. For a moment, I was reminded of my position, of being someone with more “knowledge”, “authority” and “power” than others around.

As Bowman(2009) points out, both “studying up” (studying elites) and “studying down” (studying ‘disadvantaged’ people) involves a certain set of ethics and methodology that we need to adhere to. Nader (1974), on the other hand, talks about “studying sideways” where, as she says, “We are not dealing with an either/or proposition; we simply need to realize when it is useful or crucial regarding the problem to extend the domain of study up, down, or sideways”.

In my case, the women hoped that I was there to help them get out of the prison, which wasn’t the case. Both the women and I took some time to acknowledge each other’s presence. In the process, I was constantly trying to position myself in the whole scheme of things while listening to their narratives.

On some days, we would talk inside the barracks and on other days, over a game of carrom. With time, it almost became a ritual for inmates to ask, “ Aur beta, din kaisa tha tumhara? Baarish mai mat aana yaha”, as the women started opening up to me. It is impossible for me to tell the particular date or time when the boundaries between me and the inmates blurred. I had built a certain level of comfort with that space as well as the inmates, while being an outsider. Their narratives became a part of my life and vice-versa. Suddenly, the “interviews” were not formal anymore and the women would often say, “koi toh aake baat karta hai humse, hum “murder waalo se, haina behen?”. During our interactions, they used to have their moments of breakdown and sometimes I used to cry too.

As Rimple(2018) perfectly argues, prisons are not an easy space for conducting research. Although I tried my level best to narrow the power differentials between the women and me, it wasn’t (and isn’t) entirely possible. Every now and then, my privileges would become visible through various markers, such as class, caste and educational background – making it impossible to bridge the gap between us. Often the women used to call me “Madam” and say, “ aapko toh pata hoga madam”.

The position of self was constantly rotating, shifting and evolving. Sometimes, I used to say, “mujhe court aur law ke baare mai inta pata nahi hai, tum bataoge kaisa hota hai sab?”.

 The woman used to feel embarrassed and say- “kya madam aap mazak bana rahe ho?”

References

Bowman, D. (2009, December). Studying up, down, sideways and through: situated research and policy networks. In The future of sociology: Proceedings of the annual conference of the Australian Sociological Association. Canberra, Australia: Australian National University. Retrieved from http://www. tasa. org. au/conferences/conferencepapers09/papers/Bowman,% 20Dina. pdf. 

Mehta, R. (2014). So many ways to love you/self: Negotiating love in a prison. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(2), 181-198.

Naderi, N. (2014). Prisonization. The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1-5.

Post by : Spriha Shukla