A ‘great leveller’? Class, gender and activism in Bengali colonial prisons through the accounts of bhadramahilas inmates

Abstract

Though these efforts can be seen as a facet of women’s solidarity, they were received with hostility by lower-class detainees. Kalyani Das blamed this on the colonial government, which granted better conditions to ‘respectable’ prisoners; Bina understood the tensions as caused by the patronizing attitude of bhadra prisoners: when they acted as teachers of other inmates, bhadramahilas often ignored the latter’s desires, forcing upon them an uncomfortable bhadra identity. This paper contends that, even in levelling environments like colonial jails complementarily to narratives gendered solidarity, social fractures were present and important, thus conveying a more nuanced picture of Bengali colonial prisons.