Defending prisoners’ right to publish: Roopesh T.R. must be allowed to publish his novel!
Activist and writer Roopesh T.R. has been hospitalized following a week of indefinite fasts in prison urging authorities to permit the publication of his novel.
Roopesh T.R., 53 year-old political activist from Kerala has been in prison since 2015. He was charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and booked under a total of 43 cases, of which he has been meanwhile acquitted in 16 cases. These include activities such as distributing leaflets among Adivasi communities. Roopesh has spent a full decade in prison. Recently, Viyyur Prison authorities in Kerala refused him permission to publish a novel he wrote in prison. This arbitrary measure goes against Supreme Court rulings that uphold prisoners’ rights to publish and a long tradition of prison literature in India.
The carceral state thus crushes the prisoner’s right to publish and thereby also denies those outside the freedom to read and be informed about prison conditions. InSAF India stands in solidarity with Roopesh T.R. and fully supports his right to publish his novel. We are gravely concerned about his health and condemn the callousness of authorities. We demand that the Viyyur Prison authorities adhere to the constitutionally guaranteed right to exercise his freedom of expression and political opinion. Roopesh must be immediately allowed to publish his writings. We call on all citizens and on the international community to raise their voices for Roopesh!
We publish below a note written by Shyna PA, activist, lawyer and Roopesh’s wife.
Captive Imagination is a memoir written by famous Telugu poet Varavara Rao while in jail. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, wrote The Discovery of India in prison. Gandhi wrote his The Story of My Experiments with Truth in Yerwada Jail. The writings of Antonio Gramsci, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Julius Fučik and many prominent political thinkers emerged from their time in prison. Cervantes wrote his classic Don Quixote while in prison. Daniel Defoe and Ezra Pound wrote their famous works during their imprisonment. Their imaginations took them beyond the heavy walls of the prison and opened a space for communication with the outside world. Many prison memoirs have shown outside readers the world of inmates inside the prison walls and how important freedom is in our lives and how humiliating its lack is. Writing frees a prisoner from their lonely and depressed present to spread their wings into the world of imagination.
While fighting to build a more egalitarian world for the last ten years and in prison since 2015, Roopesh has been trying to bring meaning to his imprisonment by undertaking various creative activities. He completed a master's degree in history and is currently studying for another master's degree in philosophy. Starting from computer hardware and mobile repairing to automobile and baking, he has taken many short-term courses and actively participated in everything from prison badminton to prison radio programs, short films and installations. Apart from this, he has written stories, essays and poems.
It was in prison that Roopesh wrote his second novel, "ബന്ധിതരുടെ ഓർമ്മക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ" (Bandhitarude Ormakurippukal) / Memoirs of the captives. He applied to the jail authorities to publish this novel, but was verbally informed that it was not possible to grant permission. The reasons given for denying permission were that the novel was written inside a prison and contained references to prisons, the UAPA Act and courts.
It is common for one's writing to reflect the social environment in which one lives. Baljit Kaur, a Quill Foundation researcher who researches prisoners' rights, points out in a 2019 EPW article that prisoners' writings help raise public awareness of prisons and their environment, which in turn helps prison reform. Writing is not just a need for the prisoner, but a prisoner’s writing is also needed for us as a society so that we can understand prison conditions and its effects; and it can contribute to the prison reform movement in India.
In several judgments, the Supreme Court has held that the right of prisoners to read, write and publish is a fundamental right. In the case of State of Maharashtra vs. Prabhakar Pandurang in 1966, the Supreme Court said that the right to life mentioned in Article 21 of the Constitution should be given to prisoners along with other fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. In this case, the Supreme Court held that it was illegal for the prison authorities to prevent a prisoner from handing over a book written during his incarceration to his wife for publication. In the case of Francis Coralie vs. Delhi Administration in 1981, the judges held that the right to life includes the rights to read, write and various forms of self-expression. In Madhukar Bhagwan Jambhale vs. State of Maharashtra & Others (1987), the Court observed that "just because a person is imprisoned or punished does not deprive him of his political rights or the right to express his views on political matters".
But even today, prison authorities prevent the publication of works written in prison. Abdul Wahid Sheikh wrote Begunah Qaidi (Innocent Prisoner) while he was in prison in relation to the 7/11 Mumbai train blast. Sheikh was acquitted after 9 years and it was revealed that the first copy of the work was destroyed by the prison authorities and the book had to be rewritten. Sanjoy Deepak Rao, arrested in the Maoist case and lodged in the Maharashtra jail, complained that the jail authorities had seized the manuscript of his book when he was brought to Kerala for the purpose of the case.
It is not easy to get notebooks and pens to write in prisons. Though prisoners are legally entitled to all this, there is a tendency in most prisons to deny all this as prison rules allow the superintendent to impose restrictions they consider necessary. It is regular practice in prison, that when a prisoner complains to the courts or requests permission to publish their experiences or ideas, it is denied for various reasons or the petition is kept pending indefinitely. The fate of Roopesh's novel is no different.
It is the duty of every citizen to stand for the democratic right of prisoners to write, read and express themselves. It is part of the relentless struggle for democracy against a totalitarian fascist regime that regards intellectuals, writers and artists as prime enemies. As Nelson Mandela famously remarked, the measure of a country's democracy is how it treats its lowest-ranking person in that society. The prisoner, shut behind walls in a bid to be made totally invisible, epitomizes the lowest ranked citizen in a society – and must therefore be defended.
On 2 March 2025, a day commemorating the death in police custody of the engineering student P. Rajan in 1976, Roopesh first conducted a one-day fast in protest against the authorities’ refusal to reply to his request. Since 22 May 2025, he embarked on an indefinite protest fast to pressurise jail authorities to respond after more than two months of delay and silence. As of 29 May, Roopesh has been hospitalized and has been diagnosed with jaundice after a week’s fast. The authorities continue to refuse to grant him his basic rights such as family visits to the hospital. He has also been refused permission to sign a writ petition concerning his publication.
I call on all democratic citizens to join Roopesh's fight against the denial of law by the prison authorities.