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Vice-President C. P. Radhakrishnan visited the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and paid homage to the freedom fighters imprisoned there.
He laid a wreath at the Martyr's Column and visited Veer Savarkar's cell, Swatantra Jyoti, the Central Tower, the Gallows and the Museum and Exhibition Gallery.
He arrived at INS Utkrosh, Sri Vijaya Puram, and was received by the Lieutenant Governor, Admiral Devendra Kumar Joshi (Retd.), on a two-day visit that also includes the launch of 'Har Ghar Tiranga' and a visit to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Island.
The jail's architecture was itself an instrument of punishment. Seven wings radiate from a single central tower so that a small number of guards could observe every corridor — the panopticon principle set out by Jeremy Bentham, in which the possibility of constant observation does the work of actual observation. Cells were arranged so that the front of one wing faced the back of another, denying prisoners any line of sight or communication with each other. Combined with the islands' remoteness, the design was intended to isolate political prisoners not merely from India but from one another, since the colonial authorities feared organised revolutionaries far more than individual ones. The name Kala Pani captured what the sentence meant in practice: transportation across the sea, from which return was not expected.
Simple Analogy: An ordinary prison holds the body. This one was built to hold the mind — by making every prisoner assume he was being watched and ensuring he could speak to no one.
The Cellular Jail is constructed at Port Blair by the British for Indian political prisoners.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is sent to the Andamans under a sentence of two transportations for life.
Savarkar is imprisoned in the Cellular Jail, serving ten years of his sentence.
Subhas Chandra Bose hoists the tricolour in the Andamans.
Ross Island is renamed Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Island.
Port Blair is renamed Sri Vijaya Puram.
Vice-President C. P. Radhakrishnan pays tribute at the Cellular Jail.
GS Paper 1 > Modern Indian History — the freedom struggle and its important contributors
General Awareness > Indian history and national memorials
General Awareness > History and geography
General Knowledge > Freedom struggle and national memorials
Literally 'black water'; the popular name for transportation to the Andamans, and for the Cellular Jail itself.
A prison design by Jeremy Bentham in which a central point allows observation of all cells, so inmates cannot know when they are being watched.
The flame of freedom at the Cellular Jail memorial complex.
A colonial sentence of banishment to a penal settlement overseas; Savarkar was sentenced to two such terms.