Any discussion on the subalternity of the prisoners invites some risks. Firstly, specific causes of considering prisoners as a subaltern community may be called into question. Secondly, some may suspect whether we are questioning the legitimacy of the existence of prisons and the legal and social framework that enables the prison system as it is now. However, at a time when prison abolitionists are raising their voices in many parts of the world and formal initiatives are concurrently taken to ‘humanise’ the prison even in several developing nations, the idea of considering Bangladeshi prisons as ‘subalternising apparatus’ bears some theoretical as well as empirical value provided that the existing prison apparatus of Bangladesh is a colonial formation that has largely failed to accommodate the universally recognised human rights standards vis-à-vis criminal justice and imprisonment.
Before going into the main discussion, a reflection on a particular question is necessary: who are subalterns? In Gramscian theory, subaltern classes refer to any “low rank” person or social groups living under the hegemonic domination of a ruling elite class that denies them the basic rights of participation in the making of local history and culture as active individuals of the same nation (Louai, 2011). Gramsci (2021) wrote, ‘the history of the subaltern classes is necessarily fragmented and episodic…subaltern classes are subject to the initiatives of the dominant class, even when they rebel; they are in a state of anxious defense.’ In the 1980s, the Subaltern Studies Group, under the mentorship of Ranajit Guha, adopted the term from Gramscian literature to refer to the marginalised and subordinate people in a social, political, or economic hierarchy, particularly within the context of colonial and postcolonial societies (Louai, 2011). Guha (1982) used the word ‘elite’ as a categorical opposite of the word ‘subaltern’. By the word ‘elite’, he referred to the foreign and indigenous dominant groups who belonged to the top tiers of the socio-economic and political hierarchy of colonial India. The SSG authors, along with Guha, accentuated the shortcomings of the elitist historiography of colonial India and emphasised the documentation of the underexplored history of subaltern consciousness. In 1988, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak showed a new direction for subaltern enthusiasts through her seminal essay titled ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ In that essay, Spivak (1988) used the word ‘subaltern’ to refer to the marginalised, oppressed, and silenced social groups who are often excluded from hegemonic narratives and elite-centric power structures. Spivak furthermore delineated her concept of subaltern and subalternity in her subsequent works on this topic. In another widely read essay titled ‘Scattered speculations on the subaltern and the popular’, Spivak (2005) wrote, ‘subalternity is a position without identity… subalternity is where social lines of mobility, being elsewhere, do not permit the formation of a recognizable basis of action’. However, in an interview, Spivak described a ‘certain dilution’ of the word ‘subaltern’ ensuing from her attempt to ‘make the work of Subaltern Studies more easily accessible’. As a result, ‘subaltern’ became a claim to a certain kind of undifferentiated victimage… “subaltern is anybody who feels inferior” (Srivastava and Bhattacharya, 2012).
Thomas (2018) problematised Spivak’s emphasis on the expressive incapacity of the subaltern in her definition. He also disapproved of the mystification of the concept of subaltern in Spivak’s works:
In some of her more provocative formulations, for instance, the subaltern becomes an almost mystical concept, in a Wittgensteinian sense: the subaltern not only cannot speak, but is also that figure of whom one should not speak, lest one falls into the trap of speaking for the subaltern and thus dominating it. In Spivak’s words, “If the subaltern can speak, then, thank God, the subaltern is not a subaltern anymore.” Here, the subaltern is represented, paradoxically, as that which is not representable in any given order; the entrance into (self-) representation is immediately the exit from subalternity.
Thomas (2018) reinterpreted the concept of ‘subaltern’ by drawing new resources from Gramsci’s original theorisations rather than the later developments of the concept of subaltern. In contrast with Spivak’s interpretation, Thomas (2018) demonstrated three refigurations of the concept, such as the irrepressible subaltern, the hegemonic subaltern, and the ‘citizen subaltern’. Under this new construction, the subaltern is no longer unable to speak, or ‘understanding of the subaltern does not oppose the figure of the citizen. Rather, it conceives the subaltern as a figure in which the contradictions of modern citizenship are intensely realized.’
When we propose to consider prisoners as ‘subaltern’, the first question that arises in our mind is: is it possible to consider prisoners as a ‘social group’ like other subaltern groups who are categorized based on their gender, race, class, ethnicity, and so forth? Prison is a space where people from varying social, economic and cultural backgrounds are forced to live together under the same penal authority. While the prisoners build up a sense of community among themselves, their lives in prison are heavily detached from the society they came from. In most cases, they have to adopt completely new lifestyle, norms, gestures, and etiquettes to lead a ‘problem-free’ life in prisons. Therefore, they are not like any other subaltern social groups, who, in spite of their exclusion from dominant narratives and power structure, have a society of their own. Prisoners, who live in prison because of their ‘criminality’ or ‘supposed criminality’, build up a ‘society within societies’ based on their shared victimhood and oppressedness in prisons. This hidden society, constituted by DIG, Jail Super, Deputy Jail Super, Subadar, Jamadar, Mian Sahib, Warden, Writer, Chali, Mate, Inmate (undertrial and convicted), etc., has its own hierarchy and power structure (Parvez, 2000; Bhuiyan, 2023). It has its own norms and values and fosters a certain subculture based on those norms, values and hierarchies. Unfortunately, the civil society of Bangladesh possesses little or no knowledge about the many aspects of this parallel prison society. Very few accounts of prison experiences have been written in the post-independence period of Bangladesh. Those that are written are also inevitably written by the middle and upper-middle class, educated prisoners, not the ordinary poor prisoners who constitute the majority in prisons. For example, Parvez (2000) conducted a study on the prison memoirs written across the British era, Pakistani era, and Bangladeshi era. Of the thirteen books he mentioned, ten were written by professional politicians. The writers of the three other memoirs were not politicians; however, they went to prison for political reasons as well. This uncovers the fact that the prison knowledge that is prevalent in our society is, for the most part, narrated by the educated middle class. We don’t bother much about the experiences and realisations of poor prisoners, who don’t write memoirs or autobiographies. Or mass media also rehearses and propagates the conventional narratives. Occasional news reports and editorials on the sufferings and adversities of prison life strike many readers who don’t possess any previous knowledge regarding a certain unjust practice inside prisons. However, these attempts provide only a fragmented account of the overall prison scenario and fail to have long-term critical impacts on the conventional prison knowledge. Furthermore, in moments of tension and rebellion inside prisons, the mass media usually side with the government. Instead of publicising the legitimate demands of the prisoners, the media consciously legitimise whatever action the government takes to subdue the prisoners. Parvez (2000) described how the media of Bangladesh, by disseminating false and distorted stories, manufactured public consent in favour of the government’s brutal subdual of prisoners during the revolt in Jessore Central Jail in 1996. As a consequence, the civil society of Bangladesh, whose opinions are often shaped by popular media representation of crimes and criminals, has never shown substantial avidity for prison reform. We live in a country where the so-called civil society tends to be firmly convinced by the logics of carcerality and state security. In our conventional prison discourse, legal aspects of incarceration get more attention than the social construction of prisoners. Therefore, the popular ignorance regarding the dynamics of imprisonment is not an accident. It is a manufactured phenomenon. Nothing would be closer to the truth than to say that the civil society of Bangladesh has been systematically kept in the dark about the particulars of imprisonment.
The current imprisonment scenario, as evident from the above discussion, is horrifying. We are living in a society where prisoners are voiceless under the existing penal apparatus and cannot speak. On the other hand, the civil society has a voice, yet does not speak due largely to its socio-politically constructed nesciences and preconceptions regarding imprisonment. This situation can be better explained by the subalternity of the prisoners. We have already provided the reader with a short introduction to what we should understand by the concept of subaltern. We have quoted several exponents of subaltern studies. The next part of this essay will be dedicated to interpreting the prison system of Bangladesh as an essentially ‘subalternising apparatus’. Here, we have two propositions to begin with:
- The prison system of Bangladesh is, legally and practically, a subalternising space. Even people with non-subaltern backgrounds attain a certain level of subalternity when they enter prison as accused/convicted criminals. Not all subalterns are born subalterns. People become subaltern in Bangladesh’s prisons.
- When people from a subaltern background enter prison, the norms, values, and hierarchies of the prisons intensify their subalternity, hence rendering them doubly subaltern, by making them immobile and socially dead. This newly added subalternity does not leave them even when they are released from prisons. Rather, they become more subaltern than the rest of their community. Prison subalternity keeps affecting their livelihood capacity and social connectivity in their post-prison life.
Basilico (2024) used the concept of ‘becoming subaltern’ to analyse prison graffiti of an early modern inquisitorial prison of Italy as a form of subaltern writing. She considered confinement as a condition of temporary subalternity that can impose a certain level of subalternity upon a hitherto non-subaltern subject. Although a subaltern is one who ‘cannot speak, cannot be heard and is being silenced’, this subject who has become subaltern can speak and write thanks to his/her past and post-prison subalternity (Basilico, 2024). We can contextualise this concept to refer to the middle-class citizens and professionals (e.g., the aforementioned writers of prison memoirs), who, despite their non-subaltern past, fall into subalternity after entering prison. These prisoners, as Bhuiyan (2023) showed in his book, are solvent enough to ensure their legal representation and leave prison early if they are innocent. However, as long as they are incarcerated, they cannot disobey the prison norms and subcultural standards. They can purchase comfort by spending money, as the prison administration of Bangladesh is severely corrupt (Parvez, 2000; Bhuiyan, 2023). When they don’t have enough money to extract underhanded services from prison personnel, they become equally exposed to the insults and miseries of prison life, just like prisoners with subaltern backgrounds (Bhuiyan, 2023). Like poor prisoners, they are removed from all lines of social mobility once they lose their social, political, and financial capital to defend themselves against the callous and sadistic treatments of the prison authority. However, even in these circumstances, the new subalterns try to get involved in several forms of emancipatory actions. Kaaktaal, a Dhaka-based band that began its journey from the confinement of Dhaka Central Jail in 2021, is an example of this.
Nonetheless, even when a person has considerable social links, he can be a victim of prison violence. Author Mushtaq Ahmed, who died in Kashimpur High Security Prisons in 2021 after being denied bail 6 times despite his poor health, is an example of this. A day before his death, Mushtaq went to the jail hospital to receive medical treatment. However, the compounder of the hospital misbehaved with him, and he returned to his cell without getting treatment (Bhuiyan, 2023). There are allegations that he was tortured in prison. Even if he is not, he is an ideal victim of the immobility and helplessness that is imposed on many innocent citizens by the penal system of Bangladesh. Similar cases shall be found among the victims of the infamous Digital Security Act 2018, as many sections of that law were non-bailable, and hundreds of citizens used to be detained month after month in jail as under-trial prisoners awaiting release. The most horrific side of DSA as a law was that, like the Special Powers Act, it subalternises its victims by postponing the legal protection a citizen must be provided in a democratic state. The same goes for the prisons. All accounts of prison life are reiterating one single fact: the basic rights of a prisoner are either unfulfilled or irretrievably conditioned. In such a condition, a person who is detained in prison immerses in the miasma of subcitizenship, where he is constantly at risk of experiencing various forms of state-led violence, like torture, intimidation, shackles, intentional postponement of food supply, and so forth. The prison system of Bangladesh, as described by victims and observers, is essentially a vindictive penal apparatus. It focuses more on punishment than on correction and rehabilitation.
This is an unfortunate fact that even after eight decades of independence from British colonial rule, the criminal justice system of Bangladesh has remained faithful to its age-old colonial legacy. It would not be wrong to say that the whole of our current criminal justice system is fundamentally a colonial formation, which was originally dedicated to repressing and punishing Indian citizens living under colonial rule. Arnold (1994) writes about the prison of the Indian subcontinent:
The prison stands as an archetypal colonial institution, not only reflecting and institutionalizing colonial ideas about essential social categories, but also constituting one of the key sites on which the ground rules of colonial engagement with Indian society were laid down.
The statement is still relevant for Bangladesh’s prisons. The state of Bangladesh formally guarantees the fulfillment of the fundamental rights of all citizens under all conditions. However, it has not abolished colonial laws that are contradictory to the human rights spirit. The list involves the Penal Code, 1860; the Police Act, 1861; the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898; the Prisons Act, 1894; the Prisoners Act, 1900, and so many. Time and again, claims for the reform of these outdated laws have been raised from the civil society, but the successive governments have constantly ignored the issue. Numerous prison revolts have occurred where prisoners also demanded, along with other demands, humanistic reform of the colonial penal laws. As prison revolts are a misunderstood and underexplored domain of our history, civil society never took a keen interest in the evaluation and appreciation of the demands of the prisoners. Nevertheless, when one goes through the 39-points demand during hunger strike in Dhaka Central Jail, 1978; 24-points demand during the revolt in Khulna District Jail in 1980; 37-points Demand during hunger strike in Dhaka Central Jail in 1983; 10-points demand during revolt in Dhaka Central Jail in 1990: 10-points demand during revolt in Jessore Central Jail in 1996, etc., one will astonishingly find that the state of Bangladesh has not only kept the legitimate demands of the prisoners unfulfilled, it has also been victorious in the long run by oblivionising the true causes and consequences of every prison revolt (Parvez, 2000). The 184 reform initiatives recommended by the Munim Jail Reform Commission in 1980 are also unimplemented for the most part (The Daily Star, 2000). As a matter of fact, the state lacks the altruistic motive to work for the betterment of its citizens who are rotting in jails. From time to time, it adopted minor and superstructural changes in the prison management; however, it never showed any intention to abolish the colonial biopolitics vis-à-vis post-colonial penal institutions. As a result, when a citizen of Bangladesh enters prison, he no longer remains a citizen of Bangladesh. As soon as he enters his cell, he turns into a (sub)citizen of colonial India. He loses his rights to the fulfilment of basic needs. He is exposed to so much probable state-led violence during his tenure in prison. The concept of social death, as elaborated by Patterson (1982), can be utilised to explore the imprisonment experiences of a Bangladeshi citizen. According to Patterson’s analysis of slavery, a slave is always condemned to social death. The death comprises three aspects: (a) he becomes subject to systematic violence, (b) he becomes subject to generalised humiliating treatment, and (c) he is exposed to natal alienation, that is to say, he is severed from all sorts of social links, including his children and ancestors. Whenever we hear the stories of prisoners, especially those of convicted poor prisoners, we realise how the state has rendered them ‘socially dead’ by forcing them to survive in a subhuman prison environment day after day. These prisoners find it difficult to be reintegrated into their families and society. They bear a permanent social mark, a stigma of being a prisoner, which makes their social rehabilitation and reintegration a great deal more difficult. The whole situation can be read in the light of one of Franz Kafka’s famous stories titled ‘The Penal Colony’. In our case, the former Commandant of the story is none other than the British colonial rulers. The Condemned man, supposed to be executed, is a representative of the prisoners. The officer can be compared with the current penal system of Bangladesh. The state of Bangladesh has been tirelessly defending, nourishing, and reinforcing a decidedly brutal and dispassionate penal system that was founded by the colonial rulers to subdue and punish the ‘unruly’ citizens of this subcontinent.
However, prison is not the only place where subalternisation happens. Rather, the whole criminal justice system of Bangladesh fosters this type of silencing and subalternisation. Astonishingly enough, in Bangladesh, the actual conviction rate hovers around only 10%; that is to say, the criminal conviction system is largely corrupt and ineffective in this country (Prothom Alo, 2025). Provided that a prevalent culture of manufacturing confessional statements through torture and intimidation is present in the system, it will not be unreasonable to question the credibility of the existing conviction rate. As a matter of fact, justice is expensive in Bangladesh. Even when justice is offered, only the rich can afford it. Poor people, who lack sufficient social and financial capital, often come out as victims of the criminal justice system. The costliness of justice has been so much normalised that little debate exists regarding poor people’s right to justice, both as an accuser and an accused. Bhuiyan (2023), in his book titled ‘Kemon Jail Chai’, rightly commented that a prison is an extreme manifestation of the society in which it operates. For example, just like Bangladesh, which has been facing overpopulation for several decades, the prisons of Bangladesh are also overcrowded. At present, 77291 prisoners are living in the jails of Bangladesh, while the jails can officially accommodate not more than 42887 prisoners (Islam, 2025 August 2). In this situation, the socio-economic inequality of Bangladesh is bound to be reflected in the relationship of prisoners with fellow inmates as well as the prison administration. Poor prisoners lead a very miserable life inside jails, because they can’t afford the illegal facilities provided by prison personnel. Dissatisfaction regarding prison facilities is intense. The disgruntlement of the prisoners can lead to massive outbreaks of revolts and strikes at any time. In fact, this is exactly what happened during and after the July uprising in 2024. Several violent jailbreak attempts occurred in a few central and district-level prisons, in which at least 12 inmates were killed and hundreds of prisoners managed to escape (Rahmati, 2025 August 10). The prison labour scenario is also horrifying. Right now, prisoners earn only Tk 2 per day for their labour thanks to the outdated wage policies of the existing jail code (Khan, 2025 July 7). In such a condition, any meaningful prison reform will necessarily mean the desubalternisation of the prisoners, that is to say, creating an environment where the fundamental rights of the prisoners shall be fulfilled, and they won’t have to suffer the aforementioned social death by losing all connections with their community. Recently, the Inspector General of Prisons declared that a draft Correction Services Act 2025, dedicated to converting jails into correctional facilities, is in its final stages (Khan, 2025 July 7). Whether such ideas will be implemented or not is difficult to say. However, until and unless we convert our prisons into an open, humanistic, rehabilitation-centric institution, the evils of the current prison system will keep on hampering democratic state-building and long-term development of the nation.
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