Caste in prison: SC ruling welcome

That caste discrimination has remained encoded in prison manuals all these years is shocking.

The Supreme Court’s landmark order scrapping caste-based discriminatory practices from the prison manuals of some states, including Karnataka, has removed a serious blemish which has tainted the manuals for many decades. The court has ordered the states and Union Territories to revise their prison manuals to end caste-based discrimination, including allotment of work based on caste, for prisoners.

The central government has been told to make necessary changes in the Model Prison Manual, 2016, and the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023. The ruling was issued in response to a petition by a social activist who brought these practices to the court’s attention. It was pointed out that inmates belonging to the so-called lower castes and marginalised sections were assigned cleaning and sweeping tasks which are of the lowest order, and those belonging to higher castes were given tasks like cooking.

Caste professions in social life were followed in prisons, replicating the caste society. The phraseology used in prisons also targeted the lower castes. There is discrimination not only in the works assigned for prisoners but in the living quarters allowed for them.  

It is no surprise that the court has found these practices discriminatory and unconstitutional. The surprise is that these provisions existed in the jail manuals for so many years after caste discrimination was banned in every field and area of life in the country. The manual which contained these provisions would compare with the Manusmriti, which prescribed discriminatory treatment of people on the basis of their caste.

The manuals were updated on the basis of recommendations from various bodies and committees in line with the best ideas relating to human rights and constitutional provisions, but the glaring points of discrimination remained unnoticed. The prisons in the country have so many other kinds of discrimination also, based on gender, money and political or official status, but the court’s focus was on caste discrimination.

The court has prescribed a compliance mechanism for its order. It has ordered immediate deletion of the caste column from the registers maintained in prisons and a ban on description of de-notified tribes as “habitual offenders”  or “born criminals”. The court noted that discrimination by the State is the worst form of discrimination that militates against constitutional rights.

It also noted that the “criminal laws of the colonial era continue to impact the post-colonial world”. Though the laws and rules are colonial, the attitude that drives discrimination is much older than the colonial times. That attitude, based on the entrenched sense of hierarchy in society, needs to change. The prison reflects the world outside it. The changes have to go beyond the prison manual and the laws and rules that govern the prisons.