Star city was once a site for city jail
Jaideep Sarin

NOT many people would know that long before Chandigarh came into being, the British wanted to use the site for setting up Star Jail. This plan was under consideration just a decade before the country got Independence.

Documents (dating back to 1938 and) pertaining to the correspondence between the then Inspector General of Police and the Home Department of the Government of Punjab in Simla disclose that the site on which City Beautiful stands now was seriously being considered for setting up Star Jail. The unusual name to this Jail was given as it was to house 350 selected young adult casuals (prisoners). This was to be the first experiment of its kind to be taken up by the British anywhere in India.

The significance of having such a jail was that the usual jails in the undivided Punjab were getting too crowded with freedom fighters and criminals. This jail proposed to take some load off from the jails in the Punjab and provide a new option for administering the prisoners.

That a lot of modern thought had gone into the Star Jail proposal is evident from the fact that besides the hard labour that prisoners were supposed to undergo, it was proposed that other reformative steps would be undertaken. The authorities intended to provide primary education, rural uplift lectures, and recreational facilities like radio, games and sports.

The proposed jail was to be an open quarry site in which the selected prisoners would have had to do ‘good hard labour’ in open air. The memorandum sent by the then IG (Prisons), Lahore, Lt Col F.A. Barker, to the Deputy Secretary of the Government of the Punjab in Simla, V.B. Stainton, on September 16, 1938, mentioned that the proposed site was a ‘healthy one’. Till then, PWD contractors were carrying out the quarrying operations on the site, adjoining the present Ghaggar river. The British officers felt that the camp jail could eventually become a self-sustaining venture since quarrying was a profitable activity.

Initially, it was proposed by Colonel Barker that the jail should be started with 100 prisoners and a skeletal jail staff. The jail was to have tented accommodation and a wire encircling it so that the prisoners would not be able to escape. One unique thing about the proposal was that each of the "carefully" selected prisoners was to be required to give a solemn promise that he would not try to escape. The undertaking further stated that the prisoner would maintain the prestige and conduct of the camp jail.

Colonel Barker even went to the extent of proposing that he would have no objection to the prisoners in the new jail being given cigarettes after the evening meal, provided that their work and conduct was satisfactory. The Home Department at the Punjab Civil Secretariat in Simla, however, did not seem much inclined towards the whole proposal, as the correspondence suggests. The main objection was over the investment in the project and its annual recurring cost. Other objections were whether it would be desirable to keep the prisoners under canvas tents during the hot summer months. The government was also not sure whether the proposed site was a British territory or under lease from the rulers of Patiala.

Star Jail finally was never set up as the anti-British wave during the last few years of their rule became stronger. Today, India’s only planned "star" city stands on the same site with a population of over 10 lakh.