Vimukta – Freedom Stories

Vimukta – Freedom Stories is a collaborative effort to weave in diverse yet shared experiences of being a Vimukta¹ in contemporary Indian society. While there are many books on the experience of criminalisation of Vimukta communities, the novelty of this book is that it reflects the sense of collective agitation and organising that has been growing in fractals in India.

The book’s title Vimukta is a term used to refer to more than 200 nomadic/semi-nomadic communities who were labelled as hereditary criminals in 1871 by the British government of India. The editors of the anthology, Dakxin Bajrange and Henry Schwarz, provide an erudite summary of the phenomena of making the ‘carceral society’ (p. 9), scripted on Vimukta bodies – the de-notified nomadic communities. They map answers to critical questions such as why the British rulers considered Vimuktas a threat; why the colonial regime used legal apparatus against millions of people; and what were the ethical and philosophical convictions that made mass incarceration possible.

The volume consists of three concise autobiographical vignettes, three plays written and performed by community members, and three translated extracts. Each text delves into a meaning-making exercise to ground human dignity. In a literal sense, Vimukta means ‘free’ or ‘set free’. Vimukta, as ‘free’, were social groups who resisted the violent system of caste and chose a nomadic way of life. They made a living by transporting forest goods, performing arts, acrobatics, selling tools, salt, crafts, and indigenous medicine, and also by preaching spirituality led by iconoclast figures such as Gorakhnath and Kabir. As such, their dissent was considered a threat. Vimukta in the latter sense, ‘set free’, is ambiguous. After five years of India’s independence, in 1952, the Government of India decriminalised Vimukta communities; they were set free on paper. However, the question is where do the Vimukta belong, being ‘set free’ after 150 years of incarceration? The social world that Vimukta communities inhabited before the seemingly perpetual incarceration does not exist anymore. Their access to forests is curtailed by wildlife protection laws; their movement within cities or villages is policed by the settled caste communities and administrative authorities. Vimukta, as ‘set free’, is thrown into a world of systemic caste-based violence. Forced labour, police brutality, custodial death, rape, custodial rape, precarious existence around barbed wires, and systemic erasure characterise the Vimukta experience. ‘These storytellers bear witness to the historical experience of their ancestors and point us towards an uncertain but hopeful future’ (p. 21). The Indian story of the colonial prison industrial complex gets further complicated as it becomes a site for the reproduction of caste. Each text narrates how caste society keeps Vimukta communities captive behind bars and beyond, through codified violence.

Vimukta communities are in a unique situation of derailment in relation to society, and their lived situation poses a challenge to the notion of social justice. As such, Vimukta freedom stories are a timely intervention to the literature on the global movement towards decarceration, prison abolition, and transformative healing justice. What options do communities have if they are given limited options to survive and what they do is criminalised? In such a situation, choosing life is choosing crime or death. So, the choice is between crime and death; there is no life. The ascription of criminality leaves no possibility of a soft landing or bridgehead for the Vimukta communities to participate in the moral realm of society.

The first two creative texts in the anthology, Budan Bolta Hai (Budan Speaks) and Bulldozer, are written by Bajrange. The former is an excerpt from his autobiography and functions as a careful auxiliary to the latter. Both texts are connected through the presence of Bulldozers in the precarious Vimukta lives. Kaushal Batunge’s personal narrative draws attention to how structural situatedness at the intersection of caste and criminality contributes to the making of a dysfunctional fractious family. Subba Rao Mali Rao, who can be called a breathing encyclopaedia on Vimukta lives, has contributed one such story from his ethnographic research in this book. His contribution, titled The Life, Livelihood and Aspirations of a DNT Couple, maps the crucial moments in the lives of a couple belonging to two different Vimukta communities, their challenges and aspirations for a dignified life. An excerpt from Dhruv Bhatt’s novel Children of Darkness brings out the limits of the proposal to anchor empathy as an effective tool to ethically develop anti-caste institutions. It makes us question the role of empathy in building an anti-caste society because empathy can be invoked through lies and deception. Instead we need to cultivate a culture of belonging that enables fearless existence. The excerpt beautifully captures a fragile moment of belonging where a girl child rejects the sense of self-incrimination, which most Vimukta communities embody due to constant criminal profiling. She embraces her oneness with nature as she collects millets from the fields owned by settled caste communities. In such intangible joy of freedom, the little girl reclaims her humanity.

Professor Kanji Patel’s Pata (Rail Tracks), a collection of three scenarios, has three dissenting Vimukta protagonists who are rooted in their dignity and ask for legitimate wages, the right to use forest produce, and the passage to move. However, their voices remain unheard; they are made to face the brute force of caste and are pushed out to the margin of the village. The three protagonists meet at the railway track, which is a metaphorical reminder that the Vimukta communities are forced to dwell at the margins. Their anger towards rail tracks suggests that the shared history of incarceration is a point of solidarity for culturally different Vimukta communities. The excerpt from Bhimrao Jadhav’s Story of a Hero Who Broke the Fence holds heartening hope that the abolition of carceral society and a life-centric transformation of India’s social dynamic is possible. Despite many odds, the Vimukta community members are reaching for the sky; Kalpana Gagdekhar shares her story of persistence and triumph. The volume concludes with the play Budhan. The script is based on Budhan Sabar’s custodial torture and death. The play brings out the role of community effort for justice that brought the concerns of police brutality against Vimukta communities to the nation’s attention.

Although the book does not get graphical at any stage, a trigger warning would be helpful since the readership includes first-generation readers belonging to oppressed communities. Other publications that publish similar content should also consider this. There can be moments when the inter-generational trauma may manifest in the reader’s body, and therefore, a message of care can be useful. This book is a critical text in building a discourse on Vimukta studies and social-political organising for the realisation of full citizenship of all Vimukta communities.