ABSTRACT
More than 150 years after 1857, the Rebellion still remains as a defining event in public memory, perhaps because it was the mightiest challenge faced by British colonialism over the nineteenth century. A lot of controversy and debate has been generated by the rather famous ‘greased cartridges’ and the way these were perceived as an attempt to undermine the religious and social identities of Hindu andMuslim sepoys. However, historians have yet to take into account the prisons and the world of the prisoners and their anger vis-à-vis certain prison ‘orders’ that interfered with their religious, social and cultural identities. Although the language of opposition was articulated in terms of religion, one should not lose sight of some serious grievances that these ‘orders’ entailed. After all, the colonial prison was ‘a captive domain, in which discipline appeared to reign supreme’1 and where the administrators were often confronted with episodes of resistance by the convicts. As will be seen, the denial of certain kinds of religious emblems or practices in the prisons increasingly became a source of friction between the prison authorities and the jail inmates. This site of conflict should not be overlooked while exploring the explosive aspects of the 1857 Rebellion, especially when it comes to features such as jail-breaks in some parts of colonial eastern India. The rescue of the sowars (sepoys on horses) in Meerut was followed by the wholesale liberation of prisoners and the destruction of jails in Kanpur, Allahabad, Punjab, etc. In the Bengal presidency, the rebels broke open at least seven jails, which included Gaya, Shahabad, Hazaribagh, Chittagong, Mymensingh and Puruliya.2
