Once upon a time…

The twilight sun shone wanely on the Presidency. Some units of armed soldiers were returning from the next phase of the war. They were seen everywhere, on the streets, in the coffee shops, markets, everywhere. Some went back to the Empire. Many stayed on in the barracks or with their families in Madras.

Scores of them wandered… trying to shake off their shell shock. Their ears were still ringing with the deafening roars of the canons. They still saw human bodies shrieking and pumping blood as they fell dead. The stink of death was in their nostrils, their mouths, the pores on their skin and their hearts. The humanity in them shuddered and grieved. They screamed their terror in the nights.

In another part of the world, a man of unimposing stature wearing a swastika, and hard military attire, manipulated the minds of medical experts to purify the race. Among those who perished in this purification process, were thousands labeled as “feeble minded” and as “lunatics”.

The experts of the mind in the rest of the civilized world invented the beginnings of “trauma” at this time, calling it the “war neuroses”. Sophisticated theories were built. They found secluded places to house the “lunatics”… mental hospitals. They sterilized the “lunatics”. Instead of inventing chances for world peace, they invented shock treatments and anti-depressants.

What a disgrace to the proud Empire… mad soldiers walking the streets. A superior white race was showing signs of weakness, on the streets. It would be embarrassing to send them back to Britain. The higher authorities took immediate action. Mental hospitals were thus created to protect the imperialist honour. Small native wards were built separately to serve the Indians. During the colonial period, most of the forty or so state run mental hospitals in India were built.

The laws of the time (the Indian Lunatic Asylums Act, 1858; the Lunacy Act, 1912) allowed persons of “unsound mind” to be housed in any custodial institution on humanitarian grounds, other than the hospice system (such as poor homes, jails, or police custody). There was a more than a coincidental similarity in the architecture and management of these institutions. It was also no coincidence that, in many sites, these institutions were situated almost back to back. Criminals, beggars and “lunatics” shared a common fate, which they continue to share today. We continue to use the colonial language of “non-criminal lunatics”, “criminal lunatics”, “wandering lunatics”, “persons of unsound mind”, etc. in all our official discourse.

We remember…

In this booklet, we bring you stories of people, women and men, who are living invisible lives as “mad criminals”, “wandering lunatics”, and unrecoverable patients within institutional settings: jails, mental hospitals and beggars’ homes. This booklet is dedicated to the men and women who have struggled bravely with the troubles and traumas of their lives. Some of them continue to survive the harsh institutional environments where they eventually found themselves in, without knowing why. Others perished leaving no living memory of their foot print upon this world.

As with our other booklets, this booklet has been drawn from extensive research and documentation of users and survivors of psychiatry living within custodial institutions: jails, mental hospitals and beggars’ homes. We have used the story telling method, drawing from our case studies, our library and our archives. The booklet may be used for training of government officers in different departments, as well as NGO staff in some human rights and advocacy aspects plaguing institutional care. The booklet is firm in its advocacy for non-institutional, non-coercive care for persons with psychosocial disabilities.

Contents
1. Once upon a time…
2. The mental institutions
3. The homeless mentally ill
4. Mental ill health in prisons
5. Strategies

Produced by: CAMH/ Bapu Trust, 2005
Written by: Ramya Anand and Bhargavi Davar
Layout and illustrations: Marion Jhunja
Printers: Mudra, Pune
Financial support: Action Aid, India
No. of Pages: 68
Price: Rs. 90/= + Rs. 50/= for courier charges
USD 3 + courier charges

Acknowledgements

This booklet is written out of the experience of visiting and recording many case stories and field visits in Maharashtra. We thank:

People from within the institutions who have shared their stories with us

Officers of the institutions where we have worked and the staff

Professor Amita Dhanda [NALSAR] for supervising the project, “Creating mental health friendly prisons”

Ms Kamini Kapadia, Divya Singh from Action Aid for stimulating thought, ideas and giving continuing intellectual support to our work

Vijay Mane, assisted by Deepra Dandekar and Darshana Bansode for extensive field work in institutions

Action Aid, India, for financial support

Disclaimer: This booklet fictionalizes the institutional contexts as well as the individual life stories, based on facts from our archives, field observations and case stories.