The prison-handicraft complex: Convict labour in colonial India

Abstract Prison labour was an integral part of the penal order in colonial India nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Especially Bengal, such coerced labour, overwhelmingly male, increasingly deployed handicrafts production rather than extramural construction projects, a regimen that led to development prison-handicraft complex. Colonial efforts refine this system focused largely on increasing severity conditions incarceration indoor work, but also conflicting goal maximizing profits its handiwork. Prisons thus emerged as effective sites production, with products their forced facilitating revival crafts industry whose growth is generally attributed rise international arts movement Britain India.