Society in Prison. A social history of the Benares Central Jail and its inmates, 1883-1947.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ravi Ahuja
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 282218682

The research project „Society in Prison”, for which a funding extension is applied for, builds on a continuing international research interest and unique source material, which allows for an identification of important everday structures of a local prison over the period of a century. Even though the history of colonial-Indian prisons has continuously proven itself to be an especially fruitful field of research, there are still significant research gaps as to the social structures within the prison, the implementation of penal regimes and correlation of the prison with the hinterland. By way of digitizing material from the British Library’s archival collections it was possible to enlarge the already acquired primary material substantially and to subject it to a deeper comparative analysis. The newly obtained primary material comprises yearly prison administration reports (1845 – 1947) of the North-Western/United Provinces, reports of different jail committees, protocols of conferences attended by inspector-generals, jail manuals, as well as detailed architectural plans. The systematic comparison of the qualitative and quantitative data contained in these sources with the prison registers of Benares central jail, render possible not only a contextualisation, but also a further specification of the research questions. Moreover, individual cases, ego-documents and petitions were digitally secured, which makes a complementary change of perspective from the macro- to the micro-level possible and allows thus for an approach to the experiences of incarceration of subaltern convicts. The proposed extension period would allow the completion of a monograph on the basis of the now considerably expanded source material, which will contribute significantly to locate the development of the colonial-Indian prison more firmly in a social-historical context.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants