The Feared: Conversations with Eleven Political Prisoners by Neeta Kolhatkar. Published in 2024 by Simon and Schuster India, 818, Indraprakash Building, 21, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi 110001 and Yoda Press LLP, C-28, Basement, Mayfair Gardens, New Delhi 110016, www.simonandschuster.co.in; www.yodapress.co.in. Pp: xxx+240. Price: Rs 399.
In the Nobel Prize winning novelist Dorris Lessing’s Briefings for a Descent into Hell (1972), there is only one individual who is portrayed dealing with what may be described as the tyranny of the state, never mind the state, or the country, that she’s described.
Neeta Kolhatkar’s experience talking to 11 political prisoners in Indian jails across different states is much more upfront and personal. Each one of them has a different version of the hell that they have faced in the jails across the country. For some of them the shock of suddenly being incarcerated, stripped of their belongings, and with no recourse to an early hearing, of getting bail and thrown into a bleak cell with other prisoners possibly with criminal records, reads very much like a chapter from Lessing. They break down even after they have been released and describe how close they had been to losing their minds.
It is therefore a very disturbing series of portraits that Kolhatkar has collated from her interviews with those she has chosen to describe as "the feared.”
Neeta Kolhatkar: emotional conversations
Kobad Ghandy: grim world of Indian prisons
As Kolhatkar, a journalist working in both the print and electronic media notes in the Preface: "It may seem unlikely that a pediatrician, politician, editor, publisher, journalist, professor, housewife, businessman and activist could be remotely connected. Furthermore, it is impossible to think that all of them could have been incarcerated. This is true, however, and through these deeply emotional conversations, we discover how these 11 have shared the terrifying experiences they, or in some cases, their family members, have undergone after serving lengthy periods of time — months or even years — in prison.”
For readers of Parsiana the interview with Kobad Ghandy will seem familiar enough [see "Leftist’s long road to freedom — I” (Parsiana, June 21-July 6, 2025) and "Leftist’s long road to freedom — II” (Parsiana, July 7-20, 2025)]. Ghandy’s plight has often been quoted in his own words or described in the pages of this publication while he was in jail. He repeats a sentiment that others in the series also share. "I was wondering whether I would ever come out alive.” We know from his writings that this was not to be the case with his wife Anuradha. Though like some of the others in the book, Ghandy’s portrait shows a very vibrant looking person with a frank smile sitting at a table prepared to face any question as he opens a corridor into the grim world of Indian prisons.
Having said that this reviewer has also to add however noble and altruistic the reasons that have led many of the individuals in the book on their path of revolt or resistance against the system that has systematically degraded the lives and habitat of those living on the margins of our society, it is difficult to be entirely convinced that their way is the only one. Not all of them are victims of tyranny. A politician may well be in jail for reasons completely different from a social activist fighting for a tribal minority living inside a jungle.
In his report on the recent killing of some of the Maoist cadres in the Bastar area of Madhya Pradesh, the writer Rahul Pandita (Times News Network, May 25, 2025), who has written extensively about the people of Bastar, reminds us: "But once they get back to the barracks (the Chhattisgarh Police District Reserve Guard) one must think of the irony of a group of Adivasis working for the state killing another set of Adivasis working against the state.”
This irony seems to have been lost in Kolhatkar’s impassioned series of interviews with her respondents that in some cases also include their close relatives who may well be the real victims of the choices made by the individuals she describes as "the feared.” The very image of the raised fist that appears on the cover signals an ideology that has been tried again and again. It tends to end with the death and defeat of those who resorted to violence, extortion, and terror tactics of their own, or other helpless people, to achieve their ends.
It’s equally important to be reminded of a simple truth expressed by Koel Sen, whose mother was incarcerated for her deeply held beliefs. "There’s nothing wrong in believing in an ideology and politics which is not majoritarian.” This may be the factor binding these very different 11 individuals and their partners or close family members. What they have chosen to oppose, or simply put into the public forum, is the danger of a majoritarian one nation, one people, as envisaged by a small coterie of persons with a tunnel view of history.
Again, to quote a line from the interview with Prashant Rahi who had been put into the Nagpur central prison and at the prison in Amravati during the height of the Naxal era: "Generally, most prison authorities believe Naxals are those who fight for peoples’ rights and there is a positive perception about them. Some jail staff even maintain that they know that Naxals are pro-people who have dedicated their lives for the rights of the uneducated and the poor. That is why they have been jailed. So, there is an element of sympathy towards Naxals.” He even manages to give us a comparison about how different jails provide different kinds of blankets, rough black wool in some instances, that even the jailors used, and raw grey cotton in others. These details are what make the interviews riveting.
For the most part however what is the most degrading sub-text of these narratives is the unrelenting degrading conditions of our penal system. The outward manifestation is in the deplorable conditions in which the inmates are treated once they are inside.
Again, one can only reproduce the observations of the two eminent persons who have contributed a Foreword to the text. Former Police Commissioner of Bombay Julio Ribeiro writes: "Neeta Kolhatkar’s book opens a door to a different world where human beings, born to be free, are incarcerated for their views which are not in tune with the lexicon of the prevalent regime.”
Justice (retd) B. N. Srikrishna echoes these sentiments: "However anathematic the political views held and propagated, it would be unjust and even illegal to treat the persons holding such beliefs as ordinary convicts, while they are detained pending arraignment and trial. Even assuming there is a good reason to detain such persons, there is no reason to treat them as less than human beings. Human dignity is their fundamental right and is non-derogable (a right that cannot be… suspended or limited even during a state of emergency or armed conflict), whatever the allegations against them.”
GEETA DOCTOR
Doctor, a longtime contributor to Parsiana, is a writer and critic.