Erased from History: How Bengal’s Freedom Fighters Are Being Sidelined at Andaman Cellular Jail

There are no busts of freedom fighters Ullaskar Dutta and Barin Ghosh at the Andaman Cellular Jail, and no plans to install them—this is how the Ministry of Culture most recently responded to the query raised on March 13, 2025, by Ritabrata Banerjee, a Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament from West Bengal, serving in the Rajya Sabha since December 2024. The Ministry also made it clear that the jail is not protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, and no proposal was made to announce the British-era prison as a national monument, either.

Exactly a month before this exchange, in response to another question raised by Banerjee, the Ministry had said that out of 585 revolutionaries jailed between 1909 and 1938, 398 were from Bengal, making up as much as 68 per cent of the total count. As Banerjee complained, despite undivided Bengal’s lion’s share of the contribution to the freedom struggle, this part has been deliberately ignored by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, which spared no effort in promoting Vinayak Damodar Savarkar—the only ‘freedom struggle icon’ of the Hindutva ideologues, imprisoned there for a substantial period of time from 1911-21.

This is not the first time Banerjee has raised the issue. In 2017, as a Rajya Sabha MP on a Communist Party of India (Marxist) ticket, he urged the government to engrave the names of teenaged revolutionaries who took part in the Chittagong uprising of 1930 and were sent to the Cellular Jail (many of whom went on to become Communists), which he claimed was missing from the display on the premises.

Incidentally, this happened months before Banerjee’s expulsion from the CPI (M) on charges of anti-party activities and moral turpitude. He served as an independent member for the rest of his term. On February 4, 2020, he further questioned the Ministry of Culture, this time asking for the whereabouts of the mercy petitions filed by Savarkar to the colonial government and the reasons for not displaying them in the museum. The reply from the Ministry was surprising: “As per the information received from Andaman and Nicobar (Directorate of Art and Culture), such Mercy Petitions are not displayed at the Cellular Jail since no record is available with the Department of Art and Culture, Andaman and Nicobar Administration.”

The History Before History

The Andaman’s history as a penal colony can be traced back to 1789, when Archibald Blair and Robert Hyde Colebrooke, on direct orders from the East India Company, landed in Chatham Island in September 1789, and recruited around 270 convicts to clear the forests and develop a settlement. Three years later, the setup was shifted northward. However, a malaria-prone environment and an increasing death rate forced the colonists to close it down in February 1796, not to return for the next 60 years.

After the British crushed the Revolt of 1857 (widely considered as the first war of Indian independence), executed a large number of rebels and still had many more to punish, the long-awaited idea of setting up a penal colony finally materialised at Ross Island in early 1858. The Viper Island prison was built in 1867. The first batch of 200 mutineers reached the Andaman on March 10, 1858—within six years, the number reached 3,000. These included prominent names like Fazl-e Haq Khairabadi, Liyaqat Ali, Garbaddas Patel, Bheema Nayak, Kura Singh, etc. The leaders of the Wahabi movement—a religious reformist campaign that turned into an anti-colonial peasants’ struggle—were also imprisoned. Thus, Muslims, historically tagged as ‘anti-Indian’ in many respects, constituted a major part of the prisoners during the Andaman’s first significant phase as a penal colony.

Surrounded by the sea and the tribes inhabiting the dense jungles who would hardly spare any civilised intruder, the Andaman was already infamous for its inhospitable environ­ment. Moreover, crossing the sea was considered a great sin (‘Kalapani’, as it was termed) in the still-conservative Hindu society, leading to social isolation for not just the prisoners but their families, too. Of the large number of prisoners deported, only a handful of names are in the records. Anyone trying to escape the horrors of confinement would face British bullets or the gallows. Even if they succeeded, the shark-infested sea and tribes’ arrows would be waiting for them.

One convict, Dudhnath Tewari, however, made it into the jungles and was accepted into a tribal community. But, ironically, it was Tewari who informed the British officials about an impending attack by the tribes, resulting in the deaths of many members of his saviour community in the Battle of Aberdeen (1859) and his eventual release. The most sensational event from this period was the assassination of Lord Mayo, Viceroy of India, on February 8, 1872, at the hands of murder-convict Sher Ali Afridi, when the former was returning to his boat at the Hopetown jetty. The assassination of a direct representative of the Crown (the only such instance in the whole British period) sent shock waves across the Empire. Afridi was hanged at the Viper Island prison, the same prison where Maharaja Brij Kishore Singh Deo of Puri would perish seven years later.

Mir Jafar Ali Thaneshwari, a Wahab, is the only recorded person to have been released unconditionally and returned to the mainland in 1883, after spending 20 years in prison.

Early Years of the Cellular Jail

The construction of the Cellular Jail between 1895 and 1905-06—done on the recommendation of Sir Charles James Lyell, Home Secretary, and A.S. Lethbridge, Inspector General (Prisons), Bengal—was aimed at isolating criminals ‘within a more broadly constituted penal space’. Heavily influenced by Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon Theory of circular prisons, the whole structure consisted of seven three-story wings radiating from a central tower, the top of which was designed for constant surveillance. Each wing had numerous individual cells (the total count being 690) to prevent any communication between inmates, giving rise to the name ‘Cellular Jail’.

In its early years (1909-21), the jail incarcerated around 130 freedom fighters, with Punjabis (73) and Bengalis (46) constituting over 91 per cent. All but a few Punjabis were linked to the Ghadar Party-influenced 1915 Indian Mutiny, while the Bengalis’ transportations were in connection to various conspiracy cases, including the widely-publicised 1908 Alipore Bomb case, the 1910 Khulna Conspiracy case (Nangla Dacoity case), the 1911 Dalhousie Square Bomb case (bombing a car mistaking it for officer Godfrey Denham’s vehicle) and the 1912 Dacca Conspiracy case. Three Maratha prisoners interned during this period were the Savarkar brothers (Ganesh and Vinayak) and Vaman Narayan Joshi, all in connection with the Nasik Conspiracy case. Four consecutive editors of the Allahabad-based magazine Swarajya—Hotilal Verma, Baburam Hari, Nandgopal Chopra and Ladharam Kapur—were imprisoned for publishing ‘seditious’ articles.

The colonial administration continued with their no-mercy policy. The convicts were transported handcuffed and fettered; waiting for them was a sadist jailor, David Barry. They spent years inside a dank 9×5 ft cell with low-quality food; inhumane daily routines of extracting either 15 pounds of mustard oil or 30 pounds of coconut oil using a ghani (wooden grinder); and harsh punishments if the daily target was not met.

Nandgopal Chopra was one of the people who faced severe torture for refusing to work on the grinder. Seventeen-year-old Nani Gopal Mukhopadhyay, imprisoned in connection with the Dalhousie Square bombing, even while facing the ordeal of being hung by his hands for eight hours a day, executed a 150-day hunger strike in protest. A visit by Sir Reginald Craddock in 1913 resulted in a few improvements and transportation of some limited-term sentenced convicts to mainland prisons. But the overall situation remained the same.

Several casualties over the years included the deaths of the Alipore case convict Indu Bhushan Roy (who committed suicide in 1912); Ghadarite Bhan Singh Sunet (beaten to death in 1917); the Second Mandalay Conspiracy case convict Ram Rakha (who succumbed to tuberculosis after a prolonged hunger strike in 1919); mental derangement of Roy’s comrade Ullaskar Dutta (who was subject to repeated electrocution and sent to Madras afterwards); Jatish Chandra Paul (Bagha Jatin’s associate); and Jagat Ram (Editor of ‘Ghadar’ magazine published from the United States).

A series of relentless hunger strikes ultimately forced the British Government to look into the matter. Once WW1 was over, with Britain emerging victorious and ‘Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms’ having been implemented, a prison reform committee was formed, on the advice of which, the Government of India declared that it would ‘end the use of the Andamans as a penal settlement’.

The official declaration date was March 11, 1921.

Interwar: A Promise Not Kept, A Period of Transformation

Between 1920 and 1921, a broad-scale amnesty drive was carried out, either freeing or sending the political prisoners back to the mainland prisons. Even revolutionaries sentenced to life imprisonment were eventually freed. However, the British Government never completely abandoned the idea of a penal settlement in the Andaman.

Thousands of revolutionary prisoners of the Moplah or Malabar Rebellion of 1921-22—a peasant revolt directed against the British administration as well as the British-backed Hindu landlords—were offered favourable terms if they agreed to migrate to the Andaman. These offers included one-third exemption of their prison sentences and the chance to take their families along after a certain period of ‘good behaviour’. Apart from the Moplah rebels, followers of Alluri Sitaram Raju, who carried out the Rampa Pithuri; and participants of the Tharawaddy Rebellion of Burma, better known as the Saya San Rebellion; were also sent to the Andaman before 1932—the year the British again started sending across batches of political prisoners.

From the end of the third decade of the 20th century, armed revolution took a new shape. When it came to organisational strength, Bengal led the charge again, as manifested in the overwhelming number of 338 Bengali revolutionaries incarcerated in the Cellular Jail during 1932-38—associated with the 1929 Mechua Bazar Bomb case, the 1930 Chittagong uprising, the 1930 Dalhousie Square bomb case, the 1930 Chandpur shooting, the 1931 Peddie murder case, and the 1934 Lebong outrage, etc.

There were some changes with time. Oil extraction at the jail was replaced by rope-making using coconut husks. Compared to the Swadeshi period revolutionaries, this 1930s’ generation possessed more determination and thanks to unprecedented progress in communication technology, they were more exposed to global politics. Even though the authorities were in no mood to relax, defiant 46-day hunger strikes by more than 20 prisoners in 1933 managed to achieve many demands. Tragically, betterment of living conditions came at the expense of three young lives—Mahavir Singh Rathore (Second Lahore Conspiracy case convict), Mohit Kumar Maitra and Mohan Kishore Namadas (both convicted in the Arms Act case).

One of the demands achieved was the access to books and newspapers. Communist and socialist texts became increasingly popular among freedom soldiers, ultimately resulting in ‘Communist Consolidation’ in 1935. As Ganesh Ghosh (one of the Chittagong leaders imprisoned at Cellular, who later joined the CPI and then the CPI(M) in 1964) claimed, the British at that time would not allow any book on revolution but did not cause trouble for Marxist or Leninist literature. Even Sir John Anderson, the notorious Governor of Bengal, gifted them a package of Marxist writings in 1936. Despite the tensions between the imperialists and the Communists, this particular attitude, as evident from the writings of other contemporaries, bitterly suggests whom the British considered ‘more dangerous’. Nevertheless, the number of members rose to over 200, indicating a significant shift of ideology from revolutionary terrorism to Communism. The members’ 1937 hunger strike played an instrumental role in the release and repatriation of political prisoners from the Andaman.

By the end of the 1930s, the political scenario changed significantly. Establishment of provincial autonomy in several provinces, creation of pressure on the British Government by Congress leaders, and interventions of personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Charles Freer Andrews, Saumyendranath Tagore, Muzaffar Ahmed, Bankim Mukherjee, etc., forced the British to permanently stop transporting political prisoners to the Andaman. The last batch of around 110 Bengali political internees returned to Calcutta in January 1938.

Except for a brief period of Japanese occupation during WW2, during which Subhas Chandra Bose visited the Cellular Jail as a part of his Port Blair trip, and British reclaim—thus practically ended the darkest chapter in the history of a naturally beautiful island.

Post-Independence

The Cellular Jail—the Bastille of British India—faced the prospect of demolition in the post-1947 period. But since it also bears the legacy of unshakeable human resilience and the liberation of the Andaman proved to be a pivotal step toward a free India, former political prisoners protested strongly in the late 1960s, eventually halting the erasure of history in the process.

Famous novelist and poet Sunil Gangopadhyay’s 1976 Kakababu-novel, Sabuj Dwiper Raja (The King of the Green Island)—set in the Andaman with the titular character being a Bengali freedom fighter, who escaped the penal settlement 50 years ago and was saved by the Jarwas, thus unaware of India’s independence—is a pure manifestation of not just Gangopadhyay’s humanist outlook but also Bengal’s emotional connection with the jail.

Interestingly, just a year ago, as A.G. Noorani showed, the publication of ‘Penal Settlement in Andamans’ by historian Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, (who is said to hold Hindu nationalist views), revealed for the first time what Savarkar had done during his ten-year internment. This information also explains why there is hardly any criticism of Savarkar in the books written by his contemporaries, including Communists.

The steady rise in Hindutva politics in India in the 1990s set the stage for the validation of Savarkar’s ideals; renaming the airport in Port Blair after him during NDA-1 being the foremost step. The two UPA governments did nothing about it, the only action being the removal of the plaque bearing his name by Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar in 2004.

Post UPA-2, not just the plaque but Savarkar, too, were back with a bang. Today, he is everywhere—in and outside the Cellular Jail—there is a cell identified as ‘Savarkar’s Cell’ (which is historically controversial); there are two parks named ‘Veer Savarkar Park’; the light-and-sound show script is just Savarkar-worship in disguise; and even tourist guides do not bother narrating others’ contribution.

Sarmistha Dutta Roy, a film studies professor and the granddaughter of Surendra Nath Dutta—imprisoned in connection with the 1930 Dalhousie Square bomb case, now placed at No. 324 on the list of ‘Freedom Fighters Incarcerated in Cellular Jail (1932-38)’—says, “My father (Swadesh Ranjan Dutta) first saw his father when he was about ten. The family had to face immense hardships in the absence of their guardian, which eventually created an emotional distance between the father and the son. But, till his last day, his respect for freedom fighter Suren Dutta remained intact.”

She adds, “Those prison years practically devastated my grandfather’s health, resulting in his death pretty early. Cellular Jail may be just another tourist spot for others, but for us, it’s a pilgrimage. It’s tragic to see such distortion happening today, which is nothing but an insult to my grandfather and many others who made supreme sacrifices for the sake of freedom.”

(Views expressed are personal)

Soham Das is a Kolkata-based bilingual author and independent researcher who takes special interest in culture, history and politics

This article is part of Outlook’s 1 June 2025 issue, 'Gated Neighbourhood', which examines the state of diplomacy, media, and democracy in the wake of the ceasefire. It appeared in print as 'Speak, Memory.'