Isolated Lives

Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands by Satadru Sen; OUP, 2000; pp 283 + x, Rs 595. CRISPIN BATES
of the enduring myth of the kalapani the notion that natives of India dreaded sea travel, and were concerned about loss of caste through transportation, identifying use of the term rather with nationalist political transportees. It would have been more rewarding had this premise been developed within the main text itself, and convict transportation placed within the larger framework of intercontinental Indian migration in the period. Again, a tantalising eight-page afterword introduces us to 20th century political prisoners transported to the Andamans. This perhaps deserved to be developed more, since it is a subject with which many readers will have some familiarity and would have aroused great interest. That said, Sens book is a pleasure to read. He manages to add his reasoned, sophisticated voice to the flow of modern Indian history writing in a manner that satisfies alike the keen-eyed theorist and the casual dipper into Indian non-fiction. This is no mean achievement. In sum, Sen has made a thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution to the study of Indian criminal and penal history. It is to be hoped that, having this publication under his belt, he will now go on to produce a more wide-ranging study of Andaman history shamefully neglected by Indianists to date in which the local tribal inhabitants may have a larger voice. Otherwise possibly a sequel to the volume under review, in which the 500 or so political prisoners sent to the Andamans between 1906 and the first world war are given a similarly detailed and revealing treatment. EPW

his is a very well-written and competently researched book, although there is no disguising the difficulty of securing the readers interest in the detailed workings of a penal settlement on the Andaman islands over nearly 300 pages. Satadru Sen succeeds brilliantly, however, demonstrating his familiarity with the broad trends of prison and criminal studies from Foucault on, and placing the Andaman study within the context of British-Indian policy regarding criminal tribes, and state interventions in the judicial and medical spheres. His perceptive comments in chapter two concerning remarkable British attitudes towards murderers (seen to be more decent than thieves and commonly given domestic roles in family households) mirror recent convict studies elsewhere and alone deserve a wider audience for this book. Chapters three to six provide, in exhausting detail, the ideology and practice of the Andaman penal colony, around pertinent themes such as medical intervention, surveillance techniques, and segregation through labour. The specialist will find much to applaud in these pages. A very useful two-page preface disposes

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Economic and Political Weekly

September 1, 2001