Behind the High Walls

 ANAND TELTUMBDE’S new book, The Cell and the Soul, is a recollection of the 31 months he spent in jail as an undertrial before he received bail in a case related to the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence. It is more than a memoir because the author— a civil rights activist and an academic who is an alumnus of IIM-Ahmedabad—starts off with the circumstances leading to his arrest in April 2020, and then goes on to make forceful arguments for radical prison reforms and the need for adopting restorative justice principles besides revealing harsh truths about prisons.

Teltumbde did not expect his arrest. Many others, mostly activists and intellectuals, were rounded up by authorities in 2018 and later on charges of colluding with Maoists to instigate violence during the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Koregaon. In 1818, Mahar soldiers aligned with the British trounced the numerically superior Brahmin Peshwa rulers in Maharashtra. Mahars see this battle as a fight against caste oppression. Since Dr BR Ambedkar’s visit to the victory pillar in 1927, thousands of his followers have

gathered there on January 1 each year to honour the Mahar soldiers. In 2018 on that day, there was a clash involving the Dalits and Peshwas, following which several activists were picked up by the forces accusing them of conspiring with Maoists to instigate violence.

Teltumbde, who was then a professor at the Goa Institute of Management, writes, “I was under the delusion that because of my qualifications, exalted positions I had held in the corporate world, my impeccable record of integrity and my general public image, I might not qualify for arrest.” By the time he surrendered to the police in 2020, other activists and academics including Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira and Sudha Bharadwaj were already in detention. Gautam Navlakha and Teltumbde were picked up on the same day. Stan Swamy, then 83, was arrested in the case by NIA later, in October 2020.

The book traces Teltumbde’s journey as a promising student in Rajur, now in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra, to his successful academic pursuits (besides that of IIM-A, he is an alumnus of the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology where he did his BTech, and the University of Mumbai where he did his PhD in cybernetic modelling), writing career and activism. It also spotlights his experiences in jail, how his family (his wife Rama is a granddaughter of Ambedkar) coped with the ordeal and humiliation of being called an anti-national, and his views on a section of legacy media. His stint in jail became tougher because of the spread of Covid-19 and the lockdown. Social distancing in Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai was better said than done, he recalls, along with his memories of interactions with prisoners of all kinds, gangsters, financial criminals from business families, rapists, petty criminals and others. He also narrates his conversations with Varavara Rao, Stan Swamy, and others.

Teltumbde has published in this book a poem he had written as a tribute to Swamy, who his family and friends believe died in prison at the age of 84 due to medical negligence. Swamy had on one occasion told Teltumbde that he would live up to 185 years, the writer recalls with a touch of irony.

The book talks about the death of his Maoist brother Milind and efforts to link him to Maoists because of this connection. It was reported that Teltumbde was also targeted using Pegasus spyware. Teltumbde also dwells on how, after his release on bail in November 2022, he gradually adjusted to life outside. This book hits the stands in the wake of an Indian court denying him permission to visit the UK and the Netherlands for academic reasons.

The title of the book echoes a mantra intrepid activists hold on to: “never sell your soul”.