Caste Inside the Prison

Prison manuals that assigned work by caste, kept barracks by caste, and were struck down in 2024.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: article 14 guarantees equality before the law and the equal protection of the laws; article 15(1) forbids the State to discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth; article 17 abolishes untouchability and forbids its practice in any form; article 21 protects life and personal liberty; and article 23 prohibits traffic in human beings, begar and other similar forms of forced labour. In Sukanya Shantha v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 753, decided on 3 October 2024, the Supreme Court held that prison manual provisions dividing manual labour by caste, segregating barracks by caste, and discriminating against members of Denotified Tribes were unconstitutional as violative of articles 14, 15, 17, 21 and 23.

Why the chapter is here

Because a prison is the purest test of whether a constitutional guarantee reaches a place the State controls completely. If caste can be abolished anywhere by an act of the State, it can be abolished in an institution the State builds, staffs, and in which it decides where every person sleeps and what work he does.

It was not abolished there. Prison manuals in several States, some of them drafted in the nineteenth century and carried forward, provided in terms that certain kinds of work were to be done by certain castes: cooking by one, sweeping and scavenging by another. Barracks were allotted on the same basis. And the manuals carried provisions discriminating against people described as habitual offenders, applied in practice to communities that the colonial Criminal Tribes Act had listed and that are now called Denotified Tribes.

Sukanya Shantha, worked

The facts. A writ petition demonstrated that the prison manuals and rules of several States sanctioned three things: the division of manual labour by caste, the segregation of barracks by caste, and provisions discriminating against prisoners of Denotified Tribes and against persons described as habitual offenders. The Union and eight States appeared.

The holding. The impugned provisions were declared unconstitutional as violative of articles 14, 15, 17, 21 and 23. Note the five articles and why each is engaged: article 14, because the classification is by caste alone; article 15(1), because it is discrimination by the State on the ground of caste; article 17, because assigning scavenging work by birth is the enforcement of a disability arising out of untouchability; article 21, because it denies dignity; and article 23, because work exacted by reason of caste rather than agreed is forced labour of the kind that article prohibits.