 Hello, everyone. I know we've had a long day of conferencing, chatting. So we'll try and make this conversation as interactive, interesting, and informal as possible. I'm Adrita. I'm a senior research fellow at the University of Westminster. And I work around sexual harassment in higher education spaces and trying to think about an abolitionist understanding of higher education, especially within the context of sexual and gender-based violence. But I am here today not to talk about my work. I am not here definitely as an expert in the topic. I'm here as a friend and comrade to facilitate a conversation and to hear from Natasha. Just a few quick things before we begin. Firstly, thank you very much, Olli, for organizing this wonderful space and putting this together and bringing people from across the world together so that we can chat and have conversations and connect and build solidarity. We are very thankful. And thank you to all of you for your brilliant presentations. I'm sure all of us have learned so, so much from each other in this space. Also, a trigger warning. We will be talking about things which might be triggering to some of you. So if it is, please take care of yourselves. Reach out to us if you need anything. As some of you may know Natasha already, but Natasha's case in India is still ongoing. So this panel will not be live-streamed. It will be recorded. We will send it to Natasha to see if she's OK with us putting it online. If there are parts that she's not comfortable with, it'll be taken out. And then it'll be put online and made publicly available. I think that's it. But also, we wanted to do the recording and not live-stream so that Natasha, you can speak a bit more freely as well. And there are definitely parts which can be edited out. Natasha, you as well, if you want to take breaks in between and if you're tired of talking, let us know. We will take. We will break for five minutes, and we'll come back. In my head, I'm looking at you, but then I don't think I'm looking at you, because my screen is here. So it's very weird because the camera is in front. So forgive me if I'm a little lost. But I would like to, at this point, introduce my friend and comrade, Natasha. Natasha Narwal is a doctoral student at the Center of Historical Studies at Devaharlal Nehri University in New Delhi. She's also a student activist and a founding member of a feminist collective called Pindratur. In 2015, a group of women students from across Delhi universities came together to form an autonomous women's collective called Pindratur to basically demand that the excuse of safety and security could no longer be used to silence women within university spaces and curtail their rights to mobility and freedom. Their demands ranged from eliminating curfews for women in hostile spaces, making hostels freely available and more affordable for students' better lighting in university campuses, setting up of elected committees to dealing with sexual harassment on campus. They consistently engaged with issues of class, caste, religion, and spoke out about fee hikes in university. They spoke out about what was happening in Kashmir, about policing and police brutality in Northeast. They stood with sanitation workers who were on strike, and these were all feminist issues. I went to a couple of your Johnson vise in a time where we could all get together and celebrate. It was probably one of the most joyous collective of women that I have had the pleasure of being in the company off. But they also, at the same time, before the 2019 elections, got together to resist what was happening in India, particularly stood against the current regime. So before the elections, they campaigned with songs and pamphlets in universities, on roads, in public transport, speaking out against the intensifying violence against minority communities, exploitation of the working poor, the systematically destroying of public education, of state welfare provisions, dismantling of democratic institutions, et cetera, et cetera. On May 23, 2020, Natasha was arrested and accused for inciting communal violence during the 2020 Delhi pogrom. She was, however, targeted for leading peaceful protest opposing the religiously discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA. She was charged along with other students and activists with the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, UAPA. We've talked about this in some of our sessions, which is the draconian colonial era anti-terrorist law, which, by the way, has striking similarities to the PCFC Bill or the Police Crime and Sentencing Bill in the UK. And I will use my privileges as a chair to speak a little bit about it and solidarities around that at the end. And one of the aspects of it, which we were talking about in the last panel as well, makes it almost impossible for people to get bail when you're charged with laws like that. So on June 15, 2021, the Delhi High Court granted Natasha a bail. And she was released from prison on 17 June last year. I actually wanted to play a video of the time when they were released from prison, but maybe we forgot to set it up. But it's OK. I will, shall I give it to you, Ali, the video? And we could post it on social media. Because, again, it's a video of hope when we saw Natasha and Devyangana and other comrades being released. And they came out chanting slogans of, we will break cages. And we will change the flow of history, long live the revolution. So Natasha, how are you? Well, that's a pretty good question to answer. What's up, Natasha? Sorry, sorry. You are, we can't hear you very well. We have to increase the volume. OK, OK. OK, we can hear you now. OK, is it better now? Yeah. Can everyone hear? Yes. Perfect. Even I can hear more. Oh, no. I don't know how to, if I could. Turn it away. Now? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I can still hear you. You can still hear yourself. OK, I can use myself then. Yeah. OK, yeah. Now I can't hear anything from across this screen. But yeah. So I mean, yeah, I'm as OK as, I don't know. I really don't know how to answer that question. Because the kind of the times you're living in and with, as you said, all these cases and there are comrades, friends still inside prison under these charges. And I mean, even if one has gotten bail and is now out in the what is called the pre-world, which I also am putting quotes in this because it doesn't feel free anymore with, I mean, there are still these cases going on and you have to keep going to courts and almost every week. And your life is just now just bound by being charged under a terror law and various other offenses. So but yeah, life is going on in some ways. And still, I mean, trying to be part of the struggles and resistances which are somehow managing to survive under this regime. So yeah, just, I guess, trying to go with whatever the flow is and with simultaneously trying to resist that flow and change that flow of history as you said. I don't know how successfully that is happening. But yeah, it's trying. Thanks, Natasha. I think the first question that we wanted to ask you was like in the media, you were widely described as jailed activist. And to others, you might be classified as a political prisoner. And so just to start the conversation and also based on some of the conversations that we've been having here, is that what does the term political prisoner mean to you? Thanks for that question, Albeja. Actually, I mean, it is something which I have been thinking about a lot since my incarceration. Because before that, yeah, like the term political prisoner, it was, I mean, when you would say or imagine a political prisoner, the image which would come to the mind would be of like an activist, mostly middle class or upper middle class who have been arrested and put behind bars for participating in various movements and resistances. And of course, their incarceration would be just purely out of the state vindictiveness because they dare to raise their voices against the state and its policies or the kinds of repression that it unleashes on its citizens. But during the incarceration and after the incarceration, actually, this is something which I've been trying to think a lot. And it's still not like a settled question in my mind. But what I felt was that we have been, I mean, the term, first of all, it also reflects. And I have been also reading about the origin of the term political prisoners and how in law and by the state, how that has, at least in India, how that has emerged. And that kind of emerged during the freedom struggle, the anti-colonial freedom struggle in India. And initially, that kind of separation was brought in by the state itself, by the colonial state to kind of separate these instigators from the normal prisoners so that at least the prison discipline can be maintained so that they do not instigate the other common prisoners. And so that's why there should be a separate category and they should be kept separately in separate wards and stuff. But also, the demand also did come from the prisoners themselves, themselves, to kind of distinguish themselves again from the common prisoners. That oh, we are not like so-called criminals and we are revolutionaries or dissidents and we should be allowed, we should be granted that status. So I mean, in one way, yes. I mean, I don't, I mean, that distinction is there and there is a value of that distinction, that. But it kind of, in terms of the actual experience or the demands, it kind of sometimes get translated into like, you know, this, now, that's what I'm trying to say. Now I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with this division, this distinction of the political prisoners from like, you know, the other common prisoners who are presumed to be criminals, right? If we are not like them, we are, you know, I mean, so of course, for the kind of things you are in prison as a political prisoner are different and I think there is still merit in that distinction, but I think in terms of the experience of incarceration itself, that distinction, I think we should, we have to like rethink because ultimately it kind of, kind of again, you know, in a very walkway, marginalizes the experiences of the majority of the population of prison which already come from marginalized backgrounds and maybe like, you know, for example, like, if a woman is there, who is a victim of domestic abuse and one day like, you know, she got fed up and hit her husband back and then she is in prison for that. So how is that not also like, you know, how is she also not a political prisoner in some way? And why should that distinction be there when we demand rights for political prisoners or political prisoners should be treated in a certain way? Why should not that extend to, you know, someone like that? And that's what one realizes being inside. I mean, we all know like, you know, the theoretically, like, you know, prison like targets, I'm sure in the conference as well, this must have been spoken about, that how incarceration like works already on the marginalized communities and works on marginalizing them further through incarceration. So, but by like, this distinction, you kind of leave out the prison population and the experience of marginalization and oppression of the majority of prisoners. So I think that is something we all need to really think about and expand the definition of political prisoners and talk, when we talk about prison rights, it cannot be just from the vantage point of political prisoners, though, of course, there is some distinction and like, it works kind of both ways. Like as a political prisoner, you are also kind of accorded certain privileges which you also want. But then you only want that for like, you know, a certain kind, which is the idea of a political prisoner, but not all prisoners, which like, I mean, as a political prisoner, to look at the prison system as, you know, as an institution, what it does to people's lives. So yeah, I don't know if that answers. Yeah, I think you made some really important points there, but also I think none of these questions that we are asking have any straightforward answers. These are messy, complicated questions that we're all trying to navigate in various different ways. But I think these are really important points to make about like, you know, the distinction between, you know, which bodies are criminalized in what ways, but also thinking about the imperial legacies of some of these laws that are being used in the current context to put political activists, writers in prison, and we've been talking about that in our sessions, like, you know, laws like UAPA, AFSPA that we were speaking about have like long legacies since the Rollert Act, and before that in the 1800s and the early 1900s, which were basically imperial laws specifically used to jail, like you were saying, revolutionaries put them in prison. So it's important to keep those legacies in mind. Since you brought up like the topic of like, you know, that incarceration works in a way to put the most marginalized in our society, in prison and criminalized the most marginalized in our societies and in India, it happens very much on the lines of cost and religion and class and gender. And I was just wondering if you wanted to go elaborate a little bit more on how, you know, these manifest in India largely, but yeah, how do these intersecting really relationships of hierarchy work within the larger context of incarceration and imprisonment? Yeah, so I mean, I think I would like to begin with just quoting certain statistics, particularly to India along these lines, which I mean, there is this National Crime Reporting Bureau and they come out with their reports every year. So according to the latest report, I mean, 67.5% of the prison population belongs to the schedule cast, schedule tribes and other backward cast. And 18.7% are Muslims, which is much more in proportion to their general share in population, which is around 14.2%. I mean, so, I mean, just by these mere statistics, one can see like, you know, who are the people, who constitute the majority of prison population. And I mean, this, it is like, you know, this kind of perpetual cycle of criminalizing people from these communities and then putting them in prison. And then, I mean, and also that's, and that's also kind of again gets linked to what I was saying, you know, why we need to expand maybe the category in the definitions of political prisoners because, you know, even 75% of people are still under trials in prisons. And even within them, the majority of people who constitute, you know, under trials or they are people who have been sentenced to like what is called imprisonment up to like one or two years, which means, you know, in legal terms, what is called petty crimes or theft, right? And who are the people who would do that? People who are already on the margins and do not have any other way of survival. It's kind of, you know, their survival mechanism in the society. And, but they are the most vulnerable to incarceration. So, in a way that, you know, I mean, they are being forced to do whatever they're doing because of the kind of society we live in, which is based on inequality and, you know, oppression. And then they become criminals according to the law and then they form the majority of the prison population. And also then once you are inside the prison, what happens, right? So how do these different structures of oppression further get consolidated even inside prison, which is supposed to treat all the prisoners equally, right? I mean, once you enter the prison, even as whatever, from whatever section of society you come from, at least according to the law, you, and it is supposed to be like, okay, now you are a prisoner who does not, I mean, being a prisoner or being inside prison means that you do not have any rights as a citizen anymore. And you're kind of, even your human dignity and what you call human rights are supposed to be completely taken away from you, even if not legally, but that's how it happens. That's how prisons operate. That's the system of incarceration. It is meant to make you feel less human, right? But apart from that, like, I would want to share, like, you know, some what I experienced in these 13 months I spent in prison and how to see how these structures still operate inside. So one of the ways is like, you know, labor, right, inside prison. And because prisons actually do run on the labor of the prisoners, most of the work, I mean, apart from the administrative work, all the manual work of upkeep of the prisons, be it like cooking, be it cleaning, you know, like taking stuff from here and there, everything, whatever is required of managing of the prison or working, actually functioning of the prison apart from like administrative stuff is done by the inmates. And so inside prison, apart from like whatever space you are accorded and your basic food, everything else you have to buy for yourself. So be it like a soap to brush, to paste your bucket, like from those things to your clothing, everything you have to get for yourself. So then there are two ways of doing that. Either you come from families who can support you and then they will send you money inside so you can buy all these things for yourself. And otherwise you have to find work inside prisons and whatever meager wages you get, you have to survive on that. So I guess one can imagine who will be the people who will actually again end up working doing the labor inside prisons, not the people who come from privileged backgrounds, you know, whose families can support them. But again, the people who are coming from these very backgrounds and then they have to work inside prison on like not even, they're not even given minimum wages because they're prisoners. So you are working on like even less than half of what are minimum wages mandated by law. And from those wages then again, there is a cut which is called the maintenance cost of the prison. So you're kind of paying for your income. You cannot pay, you know, because the others who come from those privileged backgrounds, they don't have to work like, I mean, so they are not paying the maintenance cost. The maintenance cost is also paid by the people who come from these backgrounds and then have to labor on less than minimum wages inside. So it is like, think about that is just, and to experience that was just so mind boggling. And then these are also the people who would be in prison much longer because they are people coming from those backgrounds who cannot afford a lawyer. Like in the prison I was like it was a woman's prison. And I can tell, I mean, of course there is, I didn't do an actual survey, but around 80% of the women did not have a lawyer. And that is the story across prisons. Anywhere between 70 to 80% people do not have the privilege to hire a lawyer. And then they are dependent on the state's legal services, which is like a mess, like it's a completeness. It's a miracle if someone gets bail through like the legal aid services. So I mean, then they are the people who also have to spend much more time inside prison and also have much higher chances of getting convicted because they do not have good legal representation. And even after you become a convict, so your conviction also like, is apart from the time you have to spend in prison, there is also prescribed labor even in conviction. And actually that is mandatory for from whatever classes you're coming in or whatever. But if you have gotten convicted, you have to perform a certain amount of labor. But even that labor can be outsourced by like a person who has the means, their families are rich or whatever, they can send them money. So then they will outsource that work to another prisoner who needs that money. So they even then avoid that labor. So yeah, I mean, it just for these and of course the kind of treatment you will get inside prison from the authorities coming from like a middle class upper class class background, it will be very different from someone who comes from minority or who is a Dalit, who is poor, the way they will be humiliated and treated as non-humans will be very different. It's just, yeah, these things intersect in your everyday life inside prison in ways which is just completely like, I mean, you just think like, where do you even begin to like unravel these things? And of course, like, you know, gender, like so as women, like, I mean, though like women do still form a much lesser number of people who are incarcerated, but the kind of discourse around women who are in prison is much harsher. Like, you know, you will find women very easily abandoned by their families once they find themselves inside prisons for whatever reasons. And so, and actually half of the women are inside prisons because of their families have put them there. They have put the cases there, either their own families or in laws. Because, you know, as I have given that example, like a woman who was a victim of domestic abuse, if one day like fights back and something happens to the husband or whatever, like the in-laws will file that case on her to like, you know, and like, this is just one example. But even if the cases has not been put by the family themselves for whatever reasons, like there was this young girl with us in our barrack who was like 17 or 18 years old and because she was in love with a Muslim guy, a family threw her out of the house. And then she took to life of what is called petty theft, petty crime to like survive. And so she got caught and she was there. And through, like, I mean, hers was one of those miraculous cases from the state dear Legal Aid Services after many months actually, she managed to get bail. But when you get, when you secure bail, going out of the prison, you have to provide an address to the court so that they can track that you have not run away or whatever. And which is again, like, you can imagine like a homeless person, if they get incarcerated and even like managed to get bail, they can't come out of prison because they can't provide an address. So they will keep languishing inside. So that is another way that, you know, the prison system keeps the marginalized people incarcerated and exploits their labor. But the example I was giving, so then when she finally secured bail and had to go out of prison, she called her family members, that can you please like, you know, I'm giving the address and if the police comes, can you please tell them that I do stay there? And they refused. And she could not go out for many, many months. I don't know what all happened for her. Like she finally found someone who gave the address as, you know, and that was a person from prison who had finally secured bail, went out and provided her own address to that girl so that she could come out. So yeah, so for women, it becomes even much more harsher and the kind of gaze then that is of the society even after their incarceration is much more different, much harsher rather than like, you know, I mean as to say like, for men being criminal can be still understood, you know, that okay, fine, whatever, it happens. But as women, your punishment, even if not in terms of your number of years you have to do, but generally like the discourse around you, the kind of hardships one will face post-incarcerations are much harsher. Yeah, thanks Natasha. It kind of goes completely against the Brahminical idea of how a woman is created, the idea of a woman is created also in the current context of India. But you know, that's the thing about what you were saying about like these cases where like their own mother-in-laws are putting these cases on them and like the statistics of like false complaint because I work around like sexual harassment, people would be like, oh, what about false complaints? That's the first question I very often get asked. But one of the best things is to cite the example of India where like the majority of like whatever false cases or whatever they are are actually cases which haven't gone on trial because they go in that category. But also most of them are anti-caste marriages or anti-religious marriages where the families are putting these cases against people to kind of stop these marriages from happening. It's kidnapping cases. Exactly, I have many, many follow-up questions. But I'm gonna start with the dehumanizing and the demoralizing aspects of prison that you were talking about because prison's a brutal and you know, you were in prison in a time when like COVID was at its peak, like family visits for stop, you didn't have access to books, but you also lost your dad in prison. And I remember in an interview, you said, I'm gonna quote that because can you hear me Natasha? Your video's paused for a bit. Yeah, I can hear you. I'm gonna read something that you said in an interview and you said, since we were cut off from the outside world and couldn't meet our families, we ended up building intense friendships in prison. We were in a ward where there were children, many of them were born in prison and it was heartening to see many of them being brought up collectively. It was not that there were no conflicts or fights, but there was also a sense of being together. Women were always braiding each other's hairs. We played Ludo, which is a popular board game together. We learned so many ways of braiding hair. There is something so heartbreaking, but also something so joyous about collectivity in there. So I wanted to ask you because this is something that we've talked about at length is that if you could talk about some of these relationships that you formed in prison, some of these women and children and their stories? Yeah, I mean, that kind of was the bedrock of the 13 months that I spent there. So yeah, I can actually talk and talk about these things and you'll have to stop me at some point. So as I said, prison itself is an institution which is meant to completely dehumanize you. And make you feel less human. And just to make you feel that you do not have any rights or any control over your life anymore. You do not have the autonomy over your life anymore from when you will sleep to when you'll wake up to what can you wear, what can you eat? I mean, everything is taken away from you. And also prison, I mean, that's, I was kind of thinking like, you know, prison is something which also seems kind of very pervasive in our society. Like can we as a society imagine prisons not being there? No, right? Like it's like, oh, how, how will anything function if the prisons are not there? So it's kind of very somehow without realizing it becomes very central to how the society is supposed to function, where like the good people are supposed to do this and the bad people are supposed to end up in prison. So it's kind of very foundational to the way we imagine, you know, good and bad behavior or the ways of being in a society. But we also end up not thinking about prisons at all in some way on the other hand. Like the discourse on prisons, apart from like say whatever the abolished discourse, which is mostly also more in the US, but at least here in India, even in political circles, even in activist circles, you don't talk about prisons that much. And apart from that, those circles are still, you could find something or the other, but just generally as a society. Like I don't think I've ever heard anyone discussing prison or what happens in a prison. So it's kind of like, you know, something so foundational and yet so out of our minds that it's kind of a blind spot. And so that's why like after our arrest and I literally had Naki to, you know, I mean, I just couldn't imagine what the prison would be like. What is it like? And so I kind of remember the first day like me and my friend Devangna, we got arrested together. And as we were admitted in the prison after all the checks and searches and stuff, when we finally entered the prison and we were being taken to the boards where the prisoners are in mid-state, there were like women who are like, you know, walking around, someone is like filling water, someone is like, you know, maybe some people are like playing or just sitting, gossiping, laughing. And I just couldn't believe it. I was like, what? What is happening? How are people like seeming normal here? Like, this is not, I mean, I didn't know what I imagined but this is not what I imagined. And it was a shock. And I'm not saying this to like kind of say that, oh, everything is normal inside. Of course, it's a very brutal place. As I said, it is meant to dehumanize you completely. But what I'm, I think what I'm trying to say is that despite all that, what I discovered was that people still managed to retain that, managed to retain that humanity, managed to retain that dignity somehow. And the bedrock of that retaining of your humanity and your dignity is the relationships that we form with each other inside prison. I mean, that's what, like, you know, let people dance it together and have a laugh or sing or like even have a fight or whatever or cry on each other's shoulders. I mean, that was, that was the most, I mean, yeah, you realize that despite everything, whatever they cry and they try a lot. It's not to break you and also literally, like, you know, there are, I mean, even in prison rules, it is like, oh, prisoners should not be able to come, like, you know, get together too much or there are constantly, they keep shifting your place of like, you know, your cell or barracks so that you don't actually get to form what they call unity, like, you know, revolt again or whatever they imagine. But even just generally, like, you know, if they see you talking to one person too much, then they'll come, oh, what is happening? Why are you talking to this person so much? Why is this person talking to this person so much? This happens, so they try all kinds of those things. But what I'm going to say is like, yeah, despite all of that and as you said, I was incarcerated in a period of the pandemic where even your normal visits, like you get with your family or your court productions where you kind of can get to go out of the prison, go to a court, meet your family members maybe there or get, like, you know, produced before a judge and you can tell them what's happening inside or phone calls or even just inside prison, whatever activities were allowed before the pandemic. Everything was just completely shut, completely suspended. And in fact, for the first 14 days, you were kept in complete isolation because of the pandemic, but that is also the period where you need someone the most because you've just entered prison, you don't know what it is like, what you're supposed to do, how is it supposed to function? And that is, those are your most vulnerable moments inside. And you have to spend that locked inside one cell that you're not allowed to come out at all. And so that's what happened. And I mean, it was terrifying, but at night, like, you know, there was the, so the isolation ward where we were, at least, you know, we had the soles of from one cell, you could see the other cell and another human being in that cell. So people would just like, even without being able to really see each other, but they would talk, talk across walls. And you know, if you see someone, like hear someone crying from some different corner of some cell, someone would shout and try to console that person that, you know, it's okay, it's gonna be okay. Don't worry, it will like, you know, pass. Or so, I mean, yeah. So that's what I say, like, despite everything, there are these very beautiful moments of people just somehow finding ways to connect to each other and form like relationships, especially in the period of the pandemic where you have literally like no one else, no contact from the outside world. The kind of, I mean, and as what you had quoted, I'd said, yes, there are fights there. I mean, but that is also a way of, you know, relating to each other, expressing your emotions. So, I mean, that's how, and yeah, that's how one really survives inside, through like forming these beautiful relationships and friendships. And I have so many stories about them, but I think I... No, tell us, we are actually, tell us some of these stories, like, you know, especially because I remember us having the chat about the relationships that you formed, especially with the children, and you were talking about how much you missed them and the fact that because of regulations and the kind of your status, you can't go back and see them now. And also the thing that like, you know, in Indian prison, mothers, even if they give birth in prison, they can only be there with their children for the first six years. And after that, they are forcibly separated. And yeah, so tell us some of these stories. I mean, I mean, whatever you want to share, there is no pressure for you to share, but if there is something that you would like, like to share, it would be, yeah. Yeah, as I said, there are just so many stories. I don't know from where to begin and where to end, but I'll try. So yeah, as you had mentioned, I did form a very, very special relationship with the children there. And some of them were born inside prison and some of them had come with their mothers. So, and as you already mentioned that in prisons, like the children can be with their mothers up to six years of age. And after that, they are separated. So either they have to go back to, if they have family members around to take care of them, which mostly is not the case because again, these especially mothers are abandoned by their families. So they have no option but to send their children in like some state run shelter homes where they can hardly like meet their children or see them on a regular basis. I mean, that is completely dependent again on the authorities of those shelter homes. And I mean, because they also have so much, so many children and so much other things to I guess manage that making the children meet their mothers on a regular basis is not one of their priorities. So after like, suddenly for the child who has spent all their that childhood inside prison and hardly has gone out and seen the world and suddenly they're separated from that environment from the mother and from their friends, whatever, they have been interacting with for the six years of their lives to suddenly a new space where they don't know anyone, where they can't meet their mother, talk to them. I mean, it's brutal. And in fact, like right now there is this girl who we were very fond of and she was also very fond of us and she has been sent to one of these shelter homes. And right now we are trying to first figure out which shelter home she has gone to because even the mother has not been told where exactly she is. So from that, but whatever interaction with the mother she has been able to have over home calls, she is miserable. So we are trying to find some information about her and to put her in a shelter home where she can feel secure and can get quality care and education, but yeah, but from that, so coming back to the children who were inside in the relationship we formed, I mean, yeah, as I said, we were in a ward where all the mothers with the children were kept. And very soon, like, we became quite close to all the children there and our barracks which thankfully the prison authorities did not manage to separate me and Devanna and Gul Fisha who's also another convoy who's incarcerated under these charges for participating in the NDAC protests. So we, the three of us were together in the barrack along with other units. But so the children like very quickly made our barrack their unofficial crash because again, the crash was closed because of the pandemic and the mothers are more than happy. They were because as mothers and as people who mostly had abandoned by their family, they had to work inside prison doubly hard because they had to support themselves and the children to combine diapers from there to like, you know, especially food for them, fruits, whatever, like, you know, you can provide your child inside the prison. I mean, they would want to do that and so then they'll have to work doubly hard as anyone else. So they would be busy throughout and then the children will just like, come to us and be with us to like, not 24 seven, but whatever the lock wherever, you know, there are these timings which is the lock up time and when the blocks are open. So whatever the open timings they spent with us and especially like I got really close to this one kid, Emanuel, whose mother is a, she's Brazilian and she'd come to India and got arrested and got convicted. And when she got arrested, it was only after that she discovered that she was pregnant. And so Emanuel was born inside prison and because her mother is a convict, she does not even get to go outside for court productions. So he has literally not seen the outside of those walls of prisons and he's about to get like this December, he'll turn four and the mother does not know the language, even English, she can't speak. So, and it is now almost like five years for her that she has been in that prison without knowing anyone, without any family support, any lawyer, not knowing the language, is somehow working her way around to support herself and Emanuel. And so yeah, I mean, and for him especially like because her mother does not speak English or Hindi and he's just a very confused kid who does not know what to speak, how to speak. And so he picks up words from everywhere and just weaves them together in some manner. And he got really like both, I mean, of course I also got really attached to him, but he as well. And as the barracks like the lock opening timing in the morning is 6 a.m. So the locks open at 6 a.m. And by 6.30 or 7 he would be at the door and shouting my name and till the time I would not open the door, he would not go away. So like I sometimes used to hide in the bathroom so that he can't see me. But, and when the lock up timing would happen and they would have to be sent back to their own barracks, they would just not go and they'll start crying and all the matrons will be like, oh my God, you have trained these kids too, like, you know, make us make our work of lock up difficult, we know if this is your call. I was like, yeah, yeah, with the children also we are doing conspiracy here. So yeah, I remember the video, no, not video. Sorry if you're saying that you were teaching them how to slogan and they would chant like little asadi slogans. Yeah, apart from that, like, there were all these, I was fortunate enough to be permitted to work in the prison library for a bit. So that was, that was a very enriching experience actually. And then you realize that, you know, I mean, there is such an urge to learn. And I mean, also because when you're inside, I mean, people also do, you know, whatever the idea of reformation, however, like, however dysfunctional that is, I mean, but people still want to use that time in whatever is called a productive way. And so there were these so many women, especially young women who would want to like, you know, spend their time in prison to like learn something new, learn to get to read and write, because as I said, the majority of the prison population comes from backgrounds who have not had these kinds of opportunities. So there were used to be these so many women and young girls who would come to the library, come, like, you know, there would be early, like, literally after my life that, okay, now give us something else, even now we want to read this, now we want to learn. And as it's a prison, prison library, especially in a woman's prison, because again, like, that is again, one of the ways that gender comes and plays that they would keep the library very, very minimal basic that you, of course, like in a prison, any library you will find, it will not be very well stocked, but still if you compare it to say the men's prisons and the libraries that will be there, there is a very stark difference. So, so yeah, there will be just no books to give them. And I would then constantly write applications to the authorities that please, you know, provide these books in the library, provide these books in the library. And then after a while, they got fed up and threw me out of my job. I know we are, I want to leave some time for Q&A. I was actually about to ask you, like, you know, there must have been suspicion around, like, you being a political prisoner and the circumstances you being arrested and what then were the relationship with the people and authority, you know, within the prison system. But maybe that's something that we could pick up later on. But I want to pick up on something that you said, you know, and of course, like today, we would have liked you to be here with us, but you can't travel. So in a process, incarceration, as we know, doesn't end with the walls of the prison. It continues long, long after. It continues with, you know, delayed court hearings. It continues with endless waiting, lack of support, you know, with it affects families, friends, communities, your solidarity circles. And I was just wondering if you could speak a bit about that. It also, actually, I'm going to use this opportunity to kind of just say a sentence about it. It also continues in the form of cancellation of PhDs as we are seeing in case of our other comrade, Safura, who's Jamia Melia, her university has taken the opportunity of incarceration to cancel her PhD and she's fighting very, very hard. And she requires our support. There is a statement on Soas India Society page, which kind of talks about what's happening and how you can support her. There is also a list of female IDs that you can write to. So if you do want to, please tell me and I'll pass it on to you, because we cannot distribute that publicly because it's like the Vice Chancellor's email ID, et cetera, people in party. So tell us and we will give you those email IDs that you can write strongly worded emails to saying that please reinstate her immediately. But sorry, over to you, Natasha. Yeah, no, I mean, as you said, and I had also indicated this earlier, that it really, I mean, it just changes its forms, but once you are arrested in act, I mean, of course, as a, here as a political prisoner, arrested under certain kind of charges and under certain kind of discourse, but even as I was saying, especially for women who get incarcerated under any circumstances, like, I mean, even after you come out, it is not over. There is no freedom, like, as you just gave the example of Sepura, but I would again, like, want to stress the examples of other common prisoners, even here, like, just a day before, like, we got a call from one of the women who was inside when we were there and sometime last year, she had come out after 13 years of her husband and after 13 years, a high court acquitted her and found that she's not guilty, but she has already spent 13 years of her life inside and now after coming out, of course, her family is the one who put the case, so they don't want her and she just does not know where to go and how to survive. And she does not, of course, I mean, has the skills to get a job or even if she does, no one wants to give her a job, no one, like, wants to talk to her. So, yeah, even, even, that's one thing, that's the extent that even after you have gotten acquitted, like, the courts have said that you are not guilty of anything and serial life is, just can never be the same again and not just the same. I mean, you just still are seen as a criminal and you will not get the kind of treatment who whatever, I mean, as whatever court unquote a normal person or someone who has not been charged with anything or has not gone to prison. Of course, like there are so many other hierarchies and marginalizations which work on people's lives and stops them from realizing what they want to do in their lives, but incarceration is a definite stamp on your life which does not go away and talking about my own experience of that. I mean, you know, people, like, whoever I meet these days and they're like, oh, okay, how's life going? And you're like, yeah, I mean, trying to get back to whatever is called the normal life, but you realize there is no normal life anymore and I have three cases on me. So that means going to court around five or six times a month which also means that going like in the morning to the court, waiting for your turn and nothing really happens when he's courtiering them. Mostly the trial has not started in any of the cases and it's just for attendance, but when you're there, you also meet so many other people who are similarly just embroiled in so many cases and their life is now just this coming to court and you see like families of people who are incarcerated coming to these hearings, breaking down, someone's health is breaking, someone's like, you know, someone's children are seeing their fathers or mothers being taken away by the police and not being allowed to even touch their hands because that's not allowed and or like, you know, and they see their children or their parents like aging with every hearing, they're health deteriorating after every hearing, but they're not even allowed to like, yeah, just give them a hug or touch them in any way. And even inside prison when these mula cards, there is a glass wall separating. So like that's the humanity of it that is not allowed to touch anyone from the outside world and it just breaks your heart to see that every day and there are, I mean, I'm saying at three cases, you have to go to court like five, six times a day, but there are co-occuses or people accused, there is other cases from the Muslim community, from the Northeast Delhi where the violence happened. There are like people who have 10 cases on them. So that means like going to court 20 times in a month. So they can't even hold a job if they even, if they want to even, they find some sympathetic employer, but if they have to go to court 20 times in a month, who's gonna give you a job. So it, yeah, it just doesn't end with coming out of prison. Yeah, I think that's a really important conversation also to have, I think Shyamila pointed that out in the last panel that we had just before your talk, was to kind of think of how incarceration continues in the form of like families, in the form of surveillance, in the form of exactly this court hearing, in the form of like, you know, how it manifests through complexities of class and caste and gender. I think there is a really good film made by academic Uma Chakravarti about women in prison where she interviews women political prisoners and they talk about, you know, how difficult it has been for them to come out of prison and, yeah, get back to what normal life was. But also, again, people like Safura, they've also produced a report on the police atrocities which were particularly policing and incarceration is and how they're being used against other activists in the CA, following the CA and RC protests, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and they have released a fact-finding report. And it's a really, really powerful report. If any of you want, again, access to that, let me know and I'll forward that. But on that note, I'm gonna open it up to the audience. I'm gonna take a few questions. Natasha, I'm gonna filter the questions and I'm gonna like, you know, like read them out to you but you don't have to answer all of them. Just feel free to pick and answer whatever you would like. I don't think you can see the audience. No, I don't. No, I'll send you with everybody. If people don't mind, what I'll do is I'll take a photo of the audience, is that okay? And I'll send it to Natasha on WhatsApp. So at least she has an idea of like, what the room looks like and like give a face to the audience. But yeah, just feel free to raise your hands and ask questions, comments. Shamila. Hi, hi, Shamila. Thank you so much. Congratulations. At that very time, you petitioned the courts because it was the pandemic time and it was an instance of racial abuse that you witnessed in jail. And, yeah. And jails are not really places and you were lucky to get so much love and support, but I don't think everybody does. And that was a very important instance because I think in India, we don't recognize racial abuse in jails and that we have a fair number of African prisoners and they are treated very badly. So I wondered if you would like to talk about the way in which, because we have been talking about how race and caste can intersect in prison. And I was wondering if you could just throw some light on the experiential nature of that as you witnessed and which we had read off in the papers. But I had one very quick question on just a factual matter. You talked about prison and labor and you talked about how a lot of women are forced to labor to be able to earn, to be able to buy because the state won't take care of you even while it takes over your body and your mind and whatever. But I thought, again, as far as the Indian prison laws are concerned, you only could be a convicted prisoner to be able to work. I did not know that under trial or pre-trial prisoners were allowed the option to work. I just had a question. Okay, shall we take a few? And then Natasha can answer. Anybody else? Someone in front? Yeah, please raise your hands. Keep raising your hand so I can see you and I can, yeah. Hi, Natasha. My name is Sahela and I'm from South Africa. It really resonated with me your description of how important connection and community was within prison. I work for South Africa's Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services. So we try to make sure that certain standards and human rights standards are upheld within our prisons. And very recently, we visited a supermax prison in South Africa where offenders are, as a matter of policy, essentially kept in solitary confinement for a minimum of three years at a time. And I was comparing visiting that prison to the other prisons that we've inspected, where there isn't that solitary confinement. And though often those prisons are more overcrowded, the facilities are worse, there is increased violence. It, in general, the inmates or the people in prisons, they were happier, were more well than those who were kept in solitary, just because, as you say, that connection is so important and to some extent keeps you going and acts as a support structure when you are inside. I just wondered if you had encountered instances of solitary confinement being used as punishment or as policy for particular offenders, and in particular, maybe in your case, for political prisoners. Though as you say, that category is problematic in some ways. And if so, if you could tell us about that, what your thoughts are, whether there was any resistance to that or there is any resistance to that in India. And so the Africa solitary confinement is technically illegal, but is used nonetheless. Okay, any other questions for now? Okay, we'll take one more and then you can start answering them, Natasha. Is that okay? Cool. Yeah, yeah. Natasha, it's David Lamy here. I want to ask a slightly philosophical question. So I hope this is appropriate. We're living in an age of massive regression globally in the political sphere. If you were a human rights activist traditionally, you would talk about an age of authoritarianism and an age of populism making it very hard in a sense of a democratic justice type space. And clearly India on a spectrum in terms of populism and maybe authoritarianism is at one end of that spectrum. However, when we think of prison, what's interesting philosophically is it doesn't really matter whether you're in a democratic space, a populist space or an authoritarian space, all of them deny freedom. So I just wondered if you had a perspective on that sort of truth because in policy terms, it means that there's a hell of a lot to do in terms of prison reform or indeed abolition. Thank you, David. Okay, so we have four questions, one around racial abuse in prison, who can work? Solitary confinement and resistance to it? By the way, there are amazing prison memoirs which kind of talk about that in India, especially because people who've been in prison in Bombay, in Naseg, they've all been like solitary confinement there specifically has been used and they write a lot about that in their prison diaries and memoirs. So I can point you towards some of that resource as well. And then the question that actually we were speaking about yesterday when we were on the phone, philosophically, what does freedom even mean in this context that we are? Over to you, Natasha. Yeah. So yeah, we're taking the first question first. Thank you, Sharmila, for like bringing this up because I had thought I'll talk about this, but somehow I missed this, so I'm talking about the various kinds of marginalization inside prisons. And yes, race is one of very significant factors. And as you said that in prisons, there are a lot of African nationals incarcerated. And even in the women's prison in Tihar where I was, there were a significant number of African women and Latin American women incarcerated. But yeah, the African women were specifically targeted or viewed in a certain way, which was both very dehumanizing and degrading, but also with the kind of fear, which is again very, comes from viewing them as inherently violent and that kind of discourse, which also invokes a certain degree of fear, but also is not the same fear of authority as such, which as a prisoner you feel, but it comes from this characterization of the Africans as inherently violent people, which also plays in the kind of disciplining discourse around them, that they will be kind of kept as much as possible separately from other prisoners, so that they don't again instigate or the other prisoners are formed bonds or with them, and that is seen as a big threat by the prison authority. And the incident you're mentioning, and what I had also mentioned in a lot of places, even in the court, you had mentioned this that what had happened was as that was the time of the pandemic, and because Indian prisons are anyways way overcrowded, like the occupancy rate is more than 155% in the prison, so one can imagine the kind of overcrowding there is, and when the pandemic broke out from the Supreme Court, there was so a motto guidelines issued for decongestion of prisons, so that and it was left to various states and the high courts to form guidelines for those for that decongestion. And so then there were these various criterias formed, according to which people can be released from prison on an interim basis, but foreign nationals as a category were denied this, right? Like as a category, no matter what offense they are under, they were just denied this humanitarian measure of getting out of prison in the time of a pandemic, along with like people who are charged under UAP and other terror laws and some other laws, but they were as a category blanketly refused that relief. And so some of the African women inside prison were kind of holding a peaceful protest around that, that we are also humans, we also deserve to get out of prison as anyone else during this time. And so when they were doing that, then the prison authorities called like male police force from other prisons, other male prisoners such as around a human's prison. And they just beat them up to black, like, I mean, bones were broken. There was just blood all around me. Of course, all of us were locked inside. Like we, I mean, could not actually witness anything, but people who were there outside did witness, like, I mean, children witnessed that violence. It was, it was brutal, like, and then it was like, not even confined to the people who were protesting. I mean, they would see any African woman and they would just beat them, like brutally beat them, break their bones, skulls, everything else, just like blood on the ground. And then they were not even given like proper treatment or anything. They were just like, nobody was taken to a proper hospital and whatever bandages and stuff like they could do inside prison, they did that. And then they basically imposed a complete lockdown on everyone inside prison for 15 days. Like phone calls were not allowed, nothing was being allowed. Even people were not being presented in courts saying there's no network or something like that. So there was just no way you could tell anything to anyone outside the prison. And then finally I got access to my lawyers. I told them that this has happened and they filed something in the court to like ask for a status report from the prison. And of course the prison authorities, the kind of impunity, and that's, yeah, that's one of the things which I also wanted to talk about, the kind of impunity the prison authorities have. It's just mind boggling that they can literally do anything to anyone inside the prison. And even if there is a court order or whatever, it just does not matter because there is just such low level of discourse around prisons and not just discourse. I mean, because the courts are anyways, and you are as an under trial in judicial custody, but the courts are anyways full of so many, the pendency rate is like so high that the judges just do not have the time to look at, like, what is happening to a prisoner inside the prison, especially if you are coming from a marginalized background and if you are an African woman or a Latin American woman stuck in an Indian prison. I mean, you are like literally have no way of getting anything, any justice or any, literally anything can happen to you inside prison and nobody will get to know about it. So that's what happened. And they completely like brushed that incident as like, they were, the inmates were trying to attempt a jailbreak and that's why they had to use that kind of force. And though like, and a month later of that incident, a woman, an African woman died inside prison because of those injuries and because she was not provided with proper medical care, but they could just show that as like a heart attack or something and though a petition was filed for inquiry on her death and what happened, but that after that, like there is just nothing done. So yeah, that, I mean, this is again, a very big factor, how the incarceration works. And I think like as Africans, as Latin Americans or coming people coming from other developing countries and getting incarcerated in other countries, prison is like even worse than people, I mean, I don't want to like do a competition between marginalities, but yeah, having just literally no one to look out for you is, and the prison authorities can literally do anything to you. And that's what happened with this woman, Jessica, who died, like just nothing. And people like there was just another woman, from a Latin American country who died in the pandemic and there is nobody to even tame her body, like just. So I don't know. Yeah, the question of labor, I mean, yeah, as convicts you on like the labor gets mandatory, like it's part of your sentence, that you have to do certain kind of labor inside prison, but as under trials, you're not, it's not mandatory, it's not required, but it kind of becomes mandatory because as I said, people who are coming from backgrounds where they have no other way of supporting themselves, they have to find work in prison. And I mean, prison authorities also know that. So they, I mean, it is still a competition, not all people are actually able to find that work from the authorities because there is also a limited amount of whatever work that is available and there are already convicts doing that work. And then as under trials, there is very much, not everyone can do the work or get to do that, any kind of work. So it's, so what people do is like then, and that is another way of how class and class operate inside among prisoners that prisoner who like say someone from my background can like, you know, who has the resources of their families or friends supporting them and sending them money. So another prisoner who cannot, who then, you know, a person from this kind of privileged background in the class, upper caste class background will hire that prisoner to do their domestic chores inside prison. So like I can hire someone to wash my clothes or wash my dishes or make my bed or clean my whatever cell. So that is another way how it operates. And then I will, of course, will give them whatever, they cannot demand a minimum wage there. So it will be like some amount of, and you can't transact in money. So like I'll buy some stuff like whatever is needed, whatever she needs from the canteen, the prison canteen and give them that stuff. So that is how also labor operates inside prison, even if you don't get to work officially inside. But yeah, as an under trial, it's not completely prohibited. Okay. Do you want to take the questions of freedom and solitary confinement or we can move on and get some more questions as well? Why do you think about it? Yeah, actually, yeah. Okay, let's do that. We are also running out of time. So we will just do one very quick round of questions and we're going to try and keep it as brief as we can. We cannot go over too much. So any final questions, comments, thoughts? Hi, Natacha, Sushant Desai. And first of all, thank you so much for your contribution in whatever way you're doing, not from now, but I've been personally saying since 2017. So first March had happened, the over all night March happened in the university, like one year of the Pindra thought. So first of all, thank you so much for you and your group. The second thing I would like to ask, because I have a very limited understanding of prisons because whenever I have visited, including the women's cell, I have visited either as a lost student or as an advocate, but you have the better experience. So whenever we are talking about that the prisoners in the jail, prisoners in the prison in India, one thing is agreeable by every word. Everybody is that majority of them from the minority section and especially from the Dalits. So Dalits are the one who is in the majority in the jail. But unfortunately, we have less heard of them. Like for example, that we only think, for example, I have come across, I don't know how true it is. The Dalits are not allowed to cook food in the jail because untouchability is practiced that if they are going to cook the food in the jail, the other prisoners will not eat. So the allocation of work is happening according to your cast. First thing is that I don't know how true it is, but I got it got to know from some resources sources. And the second thing I would like to know from you that as a you being part of that is fair for limited time period like that 13 months. So how did you observe that what kind of castism is happening inside the jail against the Dalits and how it is problematic, what kind of untouchability, et cetera, et cetera. So if you could put some light on that, I'd be grateful. Okay, thank you so much. Okay, so we have now, yeah, just how cast operates within the prison system. Any last questions, comments? Final call? No? Good, okay. Over to you, Natasha. Okay, so I think I'll begin with this question of the cast because I'll take some of this. So as I said, as has been pointed out that Dalits do form like majority of the prison population. And that in itself is like one of the ways that cast or cast and incarceration interact that they are already seen as criminals and the bodies are already criminalized. And then, and also because cast in class also are so closely linked that you are, as a lower caste person, as a Dalit, you are mostly, most likely, and especially the ones who are incarcerated, you're most likely to also economically come from like an economically marginalized background as well. So inside when the people who end up laboring are then both like coming from Dalit's OBC backgrounds and also not having the economic resources to support themselves from outside. So then they are the ones who end up doing the majority of the labor inside the prisons anyway. And they're not being paid even the minimum wages. But apart from this particular question of being pointed out that Dalits not being appointed as books inside the prison, I mean, it is really not possible. Like, I mean, I'm not denying that there could be instances like this in certain prisons, but because they form the majority of the prison population and majority of the conflict convicts anyways. So, I mean, there is literally no way that this can practically happen even if the prison authorities want. And so I'm not saying that there might not have been certain instances like that, but at least what I saw practically and from the statistics themselves, I don't think that is possible inside prison. And I know of people coming from these backgrounds who were employed in the kitchen either and there are like different roles even inside the kitchen. So maybe there something can be like who actually gets to cook the food. But even there, I know women from those backgrounds who were employed in the kitchen. But again, I'm not saying that I can deny completely that this kind of at least, if not practically implemented, but certain instances might have happened that people would have refused to employ people from certain castes. And apart from that, what else did you ask me? Sorry. No, no, don't apologize. It's also like, it's very late in India. I mean, it's pretty late here. Like, you know, it's after our working hours technically, but it's like, we're very thankful to Natasha for staying up like quite late to do this for us. So, you can find me and freedom. Yeah, and a little bit on the more of the cast question was, of course, like, apart from the question of labor, like, and again, untouchability is really also not possible inside prisons because of the kind of overcrowding there is. There is actually literally no space. People have to like literally be stacked one after the other. So, but of course, it's not like the discourse is not there or, you know, especially among like upper class, upper class prisoners, like they would often, like I can tell you this from the personal experience as well of other middle class, upper class, class prisoners, they would constantly like, you know, not even if they don't use the word, it comes from the discourse of untouchability, which is, comes from cast structures that, oh, we, oh my God, we can't believe that, you know, we have to share our space with these kind of people who have to live like they're filthy, they're not clean. And, oh my God, like, you know, we should like maybe write an application that all of us similar people should be like kept together away from like, you know, these dirty people. So, and even some of the so-called political prisoners unfortunately have this kind of, and that's why I was saying that this kind of distinction between prisoners sometimes we need to rethink about that. I mean, so, what I'm trying to say is that even if it's not practically operationalized, the discourse is very much there and even from the authorities side, like, you know, we were also constantly told that as, because we were constantly petitioning either the courts or the prison authorities for like, you know, the rights of the prisoners, whatever is like provided, at least in the jail manual, at least, you know, provide those things or facilities to the prisoners. And we were also constantly told, of course, there was both things, like, we were also seen as the troublemakers and that's why people should be kept away from us. But apart from that, like, certain officials who tell us that, oh, you don't know why are you fighting for these people, they are habitual criminals, you know, they are dirty people, you should not intermix with them. So, yeah, the discourse is very much there and inside prisons, both among prisoners and like, you know, from the authorities. I don't know if that kind of satisfies me. I think that's also a very important point to, you know, to kind of make that in terms of like political prisoners that these like social divisions are even practiced by those people and in what ways and how that manifests in ways, not only from the authorities, but also from prisoners themselves and how that adds to the process of incarceration and violence experienced by certain bodies within those contexts. So, yeah, I think what we were, you know, one of the things to take away from it, that none of these experiences are simple. They are complex, they have layers to understanding it and yeah, do you have anything to add, Natasha, or should we close for the evening? I think I'll just try to touch upon the two other questions. Okay. So, the question of solitary confinement, I mean, of course, there is solitary confinement in India and it is again, mostly used on people who are categorized as political prisoners. I was, and people who were in the prison where I was, we were lucky enough to not be, though, as I said, like, because it was the time of the pandemic, so when you entered prison, for 14 days you were kept in isolation, so that was kind of solitary confinement and it was quite hard, though at least you could see people around you, but yeah, it was, so it is a form of torture, there is just no denying of that fact, but sometimes people also demand that for themselves because they face the threat of violence from other inmates, like I know people who are co-accused in my cases and especially who are in the men's prison where there is a lot of threat of physical violence, so they have demanded that they should be kept separately from other prisoners, so as we just said, all these experiences are so complex and it's very difficult to put them in one way or the other, but all said and done, of course, solitary confinement is quite, quite torturous and it is mainly used as a way of torture and to break that connection, which kind of as we were discussing that makes like really survive you, makes you survive the period of incarceration, so I mean, I would have not like, I don't know if I would have been able to survive inside prison for those 15 months if I was kept in like solitary confinement in the same way that I could because I had access to other people and forming those relationships and bonds with people around me and of course that is also mediated through your social relations as Sharmila was initially pointing out that you might have gotten that those kind of love and care around you, but of course that is mediated through your social relations, but I would still say that as I was pointing out the example of that young girl, so she could go out of the prison because of another friend from prison who was, so that is the kind of bond they formed inside prison, but she at least lucky enough to have an address to give and she provided her own address to that woman to come out and there are so many other examples of such friendships and bonds being formed inside prison from people coming from various kinds of marginalized backgrounds and then that's how they kind of realize that especially people, women who have been abandoned by the families, they just have those friendships and bonds to rely on even after they come out, so of course it is mediated through social locations but sometimes some things also cut across those, I mean they intersect with each other and people are able to form and be in ways yeah, their last thing, prisons and democracy, I mean that is a question for all of us to speak, I think and in the beginning as I said, like it is in some ways so fundamental to our understanding of how society, as societies be democracy, be authoritarian states, but whatever, like we cannot imagine the running of our society without prison and that is the question to think about and I think one, I mean, I'm sure like in the conference this must have been discussed but I think I still find, I go back and find what Angela Davis has said about this very powerful and understanding the function of what prisons serve in our society and I think in this question, I mean, when you're thinking about that, we should also not forget the, be it like a liberal democracy as we know it, it is based on the capitalist structure, right? And the prisons as we know them today are a product of how the system of capitalism has also developed so without, I mean, we cannot understand, I mean, just it's not enough, I think to just say how can be the prisons in a democracy but we also have to see that even liberal democracies are based on the capitalist system so and prisons serve an important function in that system. So, but what I was, the quote I was going back to from Angela Davis, I think I'll just end with that, is when she says that the prison functions ideologically as an abstract site into which the undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues, afflicting those communities from which the prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. So, yeah. Thank you, Natasha, that was really powerful and I think that's what Ruth Wilson Gilmore writes about as well, like how prisons are fundamental to understanding how race and capital comes together. So if you have to understand society, you have to understand prisons but also I actually wanna end with something that we had a conversation about when we spoke when I asked you, what does freedom mean? And you said, I don't know. And I said that was powerful because do we know? Because we are technically, you know, the word prisons are used to say, well, these people are not free but technically we are free in the society that we live today in the kind of surveillance that we have in the kind of policing that we see around us, are we free and what does then freedom mean to each one of us within that context? And I want to leave us kind of pondering on, you know, thinking more about on that note but I will take advantage of my position as chair and kind of just point one last thing out that like, you know, and we began by talking about like the law that was specifically used to imprison Natasha and our comrades, UAPA, they have long histories of, you know, they have imperial and colonial histories. They come from acts like the Rallet Act, they come from, you know, and they manifest in post-colonial structures. But also they also have, if you have to, and I know various people here who've been campaigning against the Policing and Crime Act and surveillance and policing in the United Kingdom. And in order to understand how, and Gargi actually read Empires Endgame, highly recommended if you haven't, kind of talks about how these policing laws which are coming back in places like UK, they've been tried and tested in the colonies. They have long histories. So if you need to understand these laws, you need to go and understand these histories of colonialism, these histories of how they've been used on people of color in racialized context. But also if you want to learn how to resist these laws, you have to look at histories of dissent that exist in large parts of the Third World. So if you stand against the Policing and Crime Act and walk on the streets of London, and if you don't speak out against UAPA, that is you still used to put people in prison, political activists, writers, authors in prison in the Third World, you're replicating some of the same structures of violence that you claim to stand against. So I'm going to end with that. On the note of international solidarity in order to kind of think about policing, the global structures of policing and how they manifest in gendered, casteist, racialized structures, both in the global North and South and how we can come together to fight that. Thank you very much for coming this evening. Thank you very much, Natasha, for taking time out and sharing so many of your personal experiences. We are very, very grateful. And more than anything else, I want to reiterate what Sharmila said before, that you give us hope and joy that, well, I was about to say we will win. We will win. Why not? Yeah. Why not? The rest of the world is possible because if we can't dream, what's the point of anything that we do? Thanks, Natasha. Absolutely. And your picture of all of us here. But I don't know if you can hear there is, everyone's coming. Okay, okay. I would really like to thank you for inviting me, for giving me this opportunity to share whatever I have been thinking about and the experience. And I hope that I was able to contribute to this very important conversation about international solidarity and how it operates in the ways of resisting. And really thanks for listening. I really hope that this audience agrees that your contribution has been invaluable in this discourse. So, thanks. Good night, Slippal. Good night. Okay.