BANGALORE, INDIA – S.V. Ramesh is a prisoner at Bangalore Central Jail in India’s Karnataka state. But thanks to a rehabilitation initiative, he also spends time outside the prison taking acting lessons.
He has performed in some seven plays, with roles including Mahatma Gandhi.
“I was trained to be like Gandhiji,” he says, using the respectful regional suffix. “I changed myself completely for the role. I left eating meat, I would walk barefoot, and I would walk fast. I molded myself into the character.”
He thanks Hulugappa Kattimani, a famous theater artist and play director from Karnataka who trains prisoners like him in acting and casts them in his shows.
“He has transformed [me] to perform – one who has no artistic background,” Ramesh says through a translator. “And it’s a great opportunity to perform and rehabilitate in a different platform.”
Ramesh, who worked as a farmer before he came to the prison, says that the opportunity to participate in Kattimani’s plays has made him forget that he’s in jail.
“When the audience responds and claps for your performance, that moment you forget that you are a prisoner,” he says. “It is escapist into a different world.”
He says that his elder brother came to see one of his plays. His brother was astonished by his acting skills and happy for this opportunity to thrive while in prison.
Doctors say that prisoner rehabilitation efforts are often inconsistent here, increasing their chances of returning to crime. To fill this void, several nongovernmental organizations and individuals are working toward the rehabilitation of prisoners in India through activities ranging from counseling to acting. Prisons are also promoting training for prisoners in trades such as baking and clothing design and building factories for them to earn money through these skills, though budgets for rehabilitation remain small.
There are 370,000 prisoners in India’s 1,400 prisons, which have the capacity to hold only 320,000, according to a 2010 report by the Ministry of Home Affairs’ National Crime Records Bureau. Prisons spent just 3.2 percent of their 2010-2011 budgets on vocational and educational trainings for inmates and 2.2 percent on welfare activities.
The rehabilitation of prisoners in India has been inconsistent, says Dr. Pratima Murthy of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, who has done a study on prisoners’ mental health.
“Not very consistent involvement is there,” she says.
She says that society needs to do more to challenge and to empower prisoners.
“Society has not applied their mind adequately,” she says.
If society doesn’t effectively rehabilitate prisoners, their chances of going back to crime is higher, she says.
A handful of prisons, organizations and individuals are aiming to change that.
Kattimani directs plays in which prisoners act alongside other actors who are not in prison. He says that acting channelizes the inmates’ creativity in a positive manner.
“Everyone is an actor,” he says.
For Kattimani, teaching the new actors can be challenging. But he says it’s overwhelmingly rewarding when he sees them perform.
He prepares them for their acting lessons through various sessions such as yoga, clay sculpture and other communication sessions.
“These sessions are important because these prisoners have mentally created a wall [around themselves], just eating, sleeping and watching TV,” he says.
He says that all prisoners have a heart, but they have little outlets for using them while in jail.
“They do not have friends, no good habits,” he says. “Good things are strange things in the prison.”
In many of Kattimani’s plays, male and female prisoners, who are separated in jail, share the same stage.
“It was difficult to get permission to allow male and female prisoners [to] act together,” he says. “Moreover, during the rehearsals, they both would not look at each other and say their dialogues looking in opposite direction.”
Kattimani says he gets creative to inspire the prisoners to get into their roles. For example, while rehearsing for Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” the prisoner playing the role of King Lear was not performing the sad scene properly.
“I poured four buckets of water on him,” Kattimani says. “He was to do a sad scene in which King Lear is drenched in rain and sad, so to get the naturally acting out of him, I put him in live situation.”
In turn, he says that the prisoners respect their roles, their fellow actors and him. For example, once during a live play, the power went out. After the power came back on, someone asked one of the prisoners why he hadn’t escaped during the commotion.
“‘If I would have fled, then who would have done my role?’” he says the prisoner asked them.
In the past 13 years, Kattimani has involved more than 300 prisoners from five of Karnataka’s eight central jails in more than 100 shows.
One of these inmates is M.K. Mahadev, 37.
“The director, Mr. Kattimani, was very strict and intense, at the same time very loving,” he says.
Acting under Kattimani helped him realize that he – and others – have a purpose.
“It was great joy, as Mr. Kattimani treated us like his own children,” he says. “And through this, I learned how to treat others.”
Mahadev says that he learned a lot from observing the other actors, describing himself as a better person because of it. He says that he used to abuse others and misbehave, but now if someone mistreats him, he doesn’t react. Instead, he just bows his head and walks away peacefully.
“That is the constructive things which I learned from my and other characters,” he says proudly.
Another initiative, Prison Ministry India, is a voluntary organization that works for the release, renewal and rehabilitation of prisoners in 21 states in India.
The Rev. Sebastian Vadakumpadan, a Christian priest and national coordinator of Prison Ministry India, says that inside prison, people’s lives completely change. Prisoners must share rooms, submit to 24-hour surveillance and wear clothes that are not their size. They receive a number, and no one addresses them by name.
But Prison Ministry India volunteers address them by their names. Vadakumpadan says that the organization coordinates programs inside and outside the prison for current and former prisoners, including counseling, motivational classes and health camps.
“Judicial can imprison, and public will forget after the judgment,” he says. “But church cannot forget [them], whatever may be their crime.”
Vadakumpadan says he came to know during prison counseling sessions that many prisoners hadn’t received any letters, phone calls or guests to visit them for years. So Prison Ministry India aims to connect prisoners with people in the community, many of whom want to help.
For example, he says that a group of beggars donated 11 rupees (20 cents) after hearing him talk about the organization after church. The following week, another beggar approached him.
“An old lady beggar came to me and said that last Sunday, she was not there when other beggars had given money, so she wanted to give 3 rupees (5 cents) for the cause,” he says.
Another time, he spoke about Prison Ministry India at a school in Mumbai. After, one of the students who had won a prize for her academic achievements despite a physical disability approached him.
“The small girl came to me and handed me her prize money envelope,” he says, adding that she hadn’t even opened it yet to see how much was inside.
He says he tried to refuse her donation, but she and her mother insisted.
“People who have experienced pain understand pain of others,” he says.
The organization aims to assure the prisoners that life is not over.
“We want prison to be a place where people pray and have hope,” Vadakumpadan says, with hope brightening his voice. “We want them to feel that life is worthy.”
Prison Ministry India also started a shelter called Jeevodaya for the rehabilitation of girls who have committed crimes. The Child Welfare Committee, established by the state government in every district, can’t send the minors to jails, so it sends them to shelters like Jeevodaya.
Sister Ancy Augustine from Jeevodaya says that the sisters and the girls eat and pray together. The shelter also offers various classes according to their interests.
“Here, we give them counseling, moral classes, vocational training like candle-making, craft-making, computer [operation], gardening and cultivation of vegetables,” she says.
Augustine says that she is happy that many girls have studied there and have passed academic exams. Some of them have also become nurses and are now serving others.
One of the 10 girls staying at Jeevodaya says she has passed her high school exams and plans to apply this month to a training program to follow this path.
“I want to become a nurse,” the 18-year-old says, whose name the center requested not be published because she was convicted as a minor.
Augustine says the sisters support the girls in their transitions from the shelter.
“We also help these girl in getting married,” Augustine says. “We search for a suitable person for them.”
The sisters at Jeevodaya do a thorough background check of the potential husband and his family. They also save the money earned by the girls from the trades that they learn to use for their marriages. They offer financial support when they have babies and follow up on them frequently.
Augustine says that there are challenges. Many girls have run away from the center or can be difficult to handle.
“They come from different situations, so some girl[s] steal, some lie, some have anger problem[s] and are fighting,” she says. “Some of them are very abusive and violent.”
A few sisters have received beatings from the girls. But she calmly says that the sisters use this opportunity to teach the girls about forgiveness.
“Whatever they do, we forgive them,” she says. “We do not react to them. Through that, they will understand forgiveness.”
There are also rehabilitation programs within prisons.
K.V. Gagandeep, additional director general of police and inspector general of prisons for the Indian Police Service in Karnataka state, says that the past officer in charge did a lot of work to improve the life of the inmates and that he has further reactivated the prisons’ rehabilitation programs.
He expressed excitement about the new bakery unit at Bangalore Central Jail opened in March 2012, where the prisoners produce bread, buns, biscuits and other items under the brand “Parivartan,” which means “change,” in Sanskrit and various languages in India. He says that these items are in great demand, and, more importantly, baking skills are extremely helpful for the prisoners.
“We are not looking for profit, but for rehabilitation,” he says.
The prison already has many factories inside, including a printing press and others for tailoring and soap-making. The prisoners next plan to start making shirts under the brand “JB,” which will stand for “jailbird.”
Gagandeep says that after the prisoners’ sentences, the jail also provides them with placement services depending on their skills.
But one prisoner, who declined to be named to avoid retribution, says that he wished more time was spent on more thorough investigations into whether prisoners are guilty or innocent than on rehabilitation programs.
“Rehabilitation is not needed for the person who is innocent,” he says.
