A recent Supreme Court judgment has struck down discriminatory practices that have been found coded in prison manuals across India. While the judgment provides a concrete legal basis to advocate for reforms within prison manuals, the mere removal of discriminatory provision is inadequate as caste-based discrimination is deeply entrenched within the culture and practice of prisons.
Every morning, the nearly 4,000 inmates of Bihar’s central jail wake up at 5 am to the sound of a metal gong. The night had been spent in wards that are severely overcrowded. The wards are also organised along caste lines although this is not acknowledged officially. Upon entering the prison, the inmates are allotted a ward on the basis of their caste, be it upper caste, Dalit or Other Backward Classes. Each ward has its own toilets, which are almost always unsanitary. Some states had specific provisions in their manuals directing that only inmates from a certain community should be tasked with cleaning toilets. But even in states like Bihar which do not have any discriminatory provisions, Dalit inmates alone are given these ‘polluting’ and ‘degrading’ tasks. Between 6:30 am and noon, convicts are sent to work in prison-based workshops, making goods like mustard oil, bread, and wooden furniture. Here, too, caste plays a role in the allocation of work: the hardest tasks are reserved for Dalits and the more marginalised among the OBCs, while the clerical or more white-collar duties are taken up by the upper castes. This is not done officially either; it simply is the practice and culture of prisons across India.
Inside prisons, caste, religion, and economic status are not manifested through identity markers entered on paper alone. Names are asked, told, and revealed. If you are from one of the so-called upper castes, you would not be expected to do certain chores. If, on the other hand, you bear a surname such as Manjhi, Das, Rajak, Sada, Paswan, Chaudhari, Dom and Ram or any other name belonging to scheduled caste/scheduled
tribe communities — in Bihar, there are over 197 such groups including OBCs — then, according to prison manuals of several states, you’d be made to do work like cleaning toilets, washing laundry and other such tasks that are considered polluting and degrading.
Although Bihar’s manual contains no such provision, owing to the progressive politics that the state has incepted and pioneered under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and Karpoori Thakur in the decades after Independence, it would be naïve to believe that caste-based discrimination is not practised in the state’s prisons.
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Pinku Thakur (name changed to maintain privacy) belongs to the Nai caste, a group traditionally seen as barbers. However, within Bihar’s highly stratified caste system, Thakurs, despite some social stature, often face caste-based marginalisation, especially in interactions with dominant upper-caste groups and State institutions like prisons. In 2023, Pintu was arrested under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, and accused of trading in illegal liquor. Although the charges against him were yet to be proven, Pinku was incarcerated as an undertrial in the central jail where his real
ordeal began.
Upon entering the jail, Pinku faced intense caste-based discrimination. Inside the prison, he was harassed by upper castes who imposed menial tasks upon him, singling him out due to his caste identity. He was forced to clean the toilets of the ward, wash the utensils used by other inmates, and perform personal chores for them. Pinku Thakur’s caste, though not as oppressed as Dalits, still placed him in a vulnerable position within the jail system where the unwritten codes of caste hierarchy dictated behaviour. Upper-caste inmates often refused to interact with him on equal terms. The prison guards, indifferent to his complaints, reinforced this discrimination by either turning a blind eye or tacitly approving of the caste hierarchy within the jail. Pinku’s repeated protests about his ill-treatment fell on deaf ears as the prison authorities were reluctant to intervene in what they deemed were ‘prisoner issues’. His dignity as a human being was eroded by this institutionalised casteism.
The discrimination Pinku Thakur faced is symptomatic of a larger issue in Bihar where the caste system continues to permeate all aspects of life, including the criminal justice system. Within the prison environment, caste-based hierarchies thrive, creating unequal power dynamics among prisoners. While undertrial prisoners like Pinku await justice, they are subjected to harsh social realities that mirror the outside world’s casteist structure.
Prison labour, in theory, is supposed to be shared equally among inmates; however, caste often dictates who does what. Lower-caste prisoners are typically assigned degrading tasks, such as cleaning latrines, picking garbage from wards, cleaning stinking dustbins and messy sheets, while upper-caste prisoners may dominate other duties or avoid such work altogether. In Pinku’s case, his ward mates, predominantly from privileged castes, imposed these menial duties on him as part of the social hierarchy that exists in the prison.
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Sunny Manjhi (name changed to maintain privacy), a middle-aged man from the Musahar community in rural Bihar, was arrested in 2022 under the Bihar Prohibition
and Excise (Amendment) Act, 2022. The Musahar community is classified as SC, the lowest tier in the caste-based classification in Hindu religion. They are referred to as Mahadalits because they are often the most oppressed among the Dalit communities.
Since Bihar passed an Act banning production, sale and consumption of liquor in 2016, it has disproportionately affected the Musahar community. While the law was passed to address various social issues, it has inadvertently criminalised an entire community like the Musahars.
On his second day in prison, Sunny Manjhi was assigned the most dehumanising of tasks. He was made to clean toilets, scrub the floors of the cells and toilets, pick up waste from the prison and so on. He and the others from Dalit and OBC communities are not assigned the task of cleaning utensils because upper castes perceive them as untouchables. These tasks were imposed on him based solely on his caste identity.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau data of 2022, 65.9% of prison inmates in India belong to the SC, ST, and OBC categories. Although SCs and STs make up 25.2% of India’s population (as per the 2011 Census), their numbers in prisons are as high as 34%; this means one in every three prisoners belongs to the SC or the ST community.
For Pinku and Sunny, their prison tasks are not merely jobs; they are symbols of the systemic discrimination that has plagued their communities for generations. This reality reflects a broader issue faced by thousands of prisoners across India where caste-based discrimination continues to thrive in institutional settings.
Praveen Kumar is a PhD scholar at JNU and works with undertrials in Bihar’s prisons. Valay Singh is Lead, India Justice Report
