Animesh Bag is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at K. K. Das College, Kolkata, India. His scholarly works have been published in books and journals, both in English and Bengali. His primary research explores how literature represents, archives, and critiques the lived experiences of crime and punishment in modern legal and penal frameworks.
This book presents alternative histories of the colonial prison in Bengal, 1860-1945, focusing on the experiences of the colonised subject as produced in literary writings including fiction, dramas, and life writings. The colonial prison, as defined by penal acts, jail codes, jail manuals, committee reports, administrative data, and statistics, was a modern punitive institution that evolved from the religio-local and the Company’s capricious system into an effective humanitarian machine for ‘the rule of law.
This book presents alternative histories of the colonial prison in Bengal, 1860-1945, focusing on the experiences of the colonised subject as produced in literary writings including fiction, dramas, and life writings. The colonial prison, as defined by penal acts, jail codes, jail manuals, committee reports, administrative data, and statistics, was a modern punitive institution that evolved from the religio-local and the Company’s capricious system into an effective humanitarian machine for ‘the rule of law.