On Thursday, October 3, 2024, for instance, the apex court ruled that cast discrimination of prisoners, caste segregation of manual labor among the prisoners, and treating inmates of de-notified tribes as criminals of the habit, confined to the four walls of jails in India, all amounted to violations of the basic dignity and personality of human beings.
In a judgement by a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud ‘everyone is born equal’ and that automatic stigmatization that comes with caste should not be endured for life.
The ruling banned caste based oppression behind the prison walls as unconstitutional and called for the rephrasing of all prisoners’ manuals without delay.
The Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud indicated that there could be no indiscriminate arrests and detention of members of denotified tribes.
He said that denying prisoners respect, dignity was just as a “colonial hangover”, colonialism of powers peoples are wrongly arrested.
These therefore mean and infer that the States are non negligent’s with respect to discrimination practices doing unjustifiable arms within the prison walls. Caste based distribution of work to prisoners by prison [manuals] contravenes [the] constitutional ethos. And practices in the manuals and these guides are biased towards the persons of low caste.
In a judgment anchored by the Chief Justice, it was held that discrimination based on caste system is not an impediment for any oppressed class people.
The partitioning of prisoners into groups depending on their caste and the allocation of their work in accordance with stereotypes hinders their rehabilitation processes, and “reduces individual persons to a group identity.”
‘Segregation of work based on colonial understanding’
The court stated that designating certain castes to do ‘honourable work’ such a cooking in the prison kitchen and assigning members of lower caste ‘undesirable work’ is practicing untouchability. This kind of segregation of work was looking at the caste system in Indian society from a colonial perspective.
The judgment stated the use of such derogatory words as ‘scavenger’ to distinguish some castes was tantamount to practice of untouchability.
“Nobody is born a scavenger,” the Supreme Court said.
The court said such prison manuals that label denotified tribes as a “criminal race” only serve to promote colonial views. These manuals ‘protect’ the imposition of sociocultural practices that “institutionalize the marginalization or exclusion of whole communities”.
The judgment was based on a petition of herself lodged by journalist Sukanya Shantha who was represented by senior counsel S. Muralidhar and advocate Prasanna S.
The highest court had found that prison manuals in more than 10 states including that of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala leant to discrimination and forced labour at the ground of caste in prisons.
“Dalits even have separate ward in the prisons… He reminded them that there was no discrimination still in back of the prison manual there was changes. These provisions in the prison manuals of the States are in bad need of amendment,” Mr. Muralidhar had submitted.
The petition included examples showing How Mehtar had been given to the latr(lines) in the Rajasthan Prison Rules 1951 and the clearly upper caste Hindus or ‘sufficiently primal’ wanted for the Prison Kitchens.
Separating Thevars, Nadars, Pallars and other castes and housing them in different sections at Palayamkottai Central Jail in Tamil Nadu is another form of caste based cell segregation, in the petition submitted by Ms Shantha, a report on the subject funded by the Pulitzer Centre.
In another instance, the petition had said that the West Bengal Jail Code permitted prisoners of Mether or Hari caste or Chandal and other meant for cleaning like in making a broom.
The petition had said that no one shall be stripped out of his or her fundamental right to violation of the equality oath whose sole offence is being a prisoner.
