Domesticating Penal Libido

Andaman and the Empire

Abstract

In immortalizing the political prisoners while the postcolonial nation has commemorated the Cellular Jail as a National Memorial, it has documented in detail their “sacrifices” for the “love of their beloved nation”.  Consequently, with popular representations, a sentence of transportation has been synonymous with political prisoners incarcerated in the Cellular Jail.  Two significant phenomena occur during this period.  First, it is established that between 1857 (Mutiny / First War of Independence) and 1942 (Japanese Occupation), the Empire negotiated with approximately twelve thousand Indian convicts to establish an elaborate convict society in the Andamans (among whom were the political prisoners caught in the act of militant nationalism).  The second part of the factual “tale”—which I intend to explore in this paper—is lost in oblivion which invariably creates a subaltern site for/of postcolonial studies.

In this paper, with archival resources and semi-biographical narratives, I intend to explore that the Empire practiced a libidinal logic in controlling the population of the Andamans.  First, native sexualities found a splendid political move in juridical / administrative literatures.  Second, the eventuality of colonial coital care provides a serious transgression to native sexual ideology.  And third, in translating the alternative tongues to juridical tongue does the Administration negotiate in the formation of a convict society.  In short, this paper reads colonial documents to argue in favour of an alternative site of postcolonial sexualities.