Fri Oct 10 22:47:00 UTC 2025: Okay, here’s a summary and rewritten news article based on the provided text:
**Summary:**
A new book, “The Colonial Prison in Bengal, 1860-1945,” by Professor Animesh Bag, explores the unique resistance of Bengali revolutionaries within British colonial prisons. Unlike other nationalist movements in India, Bengali revolutionaries often embraced militant tactics and viewed violence as a necessary tool against colonial rule. The book uses examples from prison life to demonstrate how these revolutionaries, drawing on both Western education and indigenous values, challenged the colonial penal system through acts of defiance, symbolic resistance, and even violence. Examples cited include revolutionaries locking up prison officials, successfully demanding religious celebrations and movie screenings within the jail, and enduring brutal torture rather than betraying their cause.
**News Article:**
**Bengali Revolutionaries’ Prison Defiance Detailed in New Book**
**Kolkata, October 11, 2025** – A newly released book sheds light on the remarkable acts of defiance exhibited by Bengali revolutionaries incarcerated in British colonial prisons during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “The Colonial Prison in Bengal, 1860-1945,” authored by Animesh Bag, an assistant professor at K.K. Das College, Kolkata, challenges conventional understandings of colonial prisoners as passive victims.
The book, drawing on literature and historical accounts, reveals how Bengali revolutionaries, often hailing from the educated *bhadralok* class, combined Western rationalism with indigenous concepts of sacrifice to resist colonial oppression from within the prison walls.
“Unlike the largely non-violent movements in western and southern India, many Bengali revolutionaries embraced militant nationalism,” Bag told *The Hindu*. “They viewed violence as a necessary purgation of colonial humiliation.”
One striking example detailed in the book involves Panchanan Chakraborty, a leader who briefly united the Jugantar and Anushilan Samiti revolutionary groups. Frustrated by the lack of basic necessities, Chakraborty reportedly locked up the jail superintendent, jailor, doctor, and several guards within his own cell at the Presidency Jail.
The book also recounts how Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee persuaded authorities at Rajshahi Jail (now in Bangladesh) to allow Durga Puja celebrations, including a late-night movie screening, for all inmates.
The book highlights the harrowing experience of Nanibala Devi, who was brutally tortured at Varanasi jail for refusing to divulge information. According to the book, she was stripped, smeared with chilli paste, and held in an underground punishment cell on the orders of a Deputy Police Superintendent.
According to Bag, these acts of resistance, from seemingly trivial demands to outright defiance and suffering, undermined the colonial power structure and demonstrated the agency of prisoners within the penal system. “The resistance to the discipline of the colonial penal regime not only weakens the power of the colonial authority but also extends the prisoner’s agency,” he writes.
“The Colonial Prison in Bengal, 1860-1945” promises to offer a fresh perspective on the history of Indian nationalism and the complex dynamics of power and resistance within colonial institutions.
First Piper 