'Called a Terrorist, Denied COVID Treatment': Anand Teltumbde Talks Jail Horrors
Anand Teltumbde, social activist accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, discusses imprisonment, Ambedkar, and caste.
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“I went in there mentally prepared to die,” said Anand Teltumbde, sitting beside his collection of books in his apartment in Rajgriha — the former residence of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar in Mumbai’s Hindu Colony.
An undertrial in the Bhima Koregaon case for over seven years, Teltumbde has been charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). He recently chronicled his two-year-long experience of imprisonment in Maharashtra’s Taloja Jail in his book The Cell and the Soul.
From ‘urban Naxal’ to ‘anti-national’, Teltumbde has been given many labels since his incarceration. Yet few know of his direct familial ties to Dr Ambedkar himself — through his marriage to Rama, the granddaughter of the architect of the Indian Constitution. Why then does he choose not to publicise those ties? Why did he not use the influence of the Ambedkar family name to rally support after his arrest?
On the landmark 50th episode of Badi Badi Baatein, Teltumbde revisits the years that tested his faith in the justice system, recalls the silences of prison nights, the impact on his family, the fleeting warmth of letters from home — and the unshakeable spirit of Father Stan Swamy, who became a symbol of moral courage.
We are speaking to you at the residence of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar...
Imagine, Hindu Colony was a typical upper-middle-class Brahmin locality. Babasaheb Ambedkar acquired two plots here in Hindu Colony: one was this corner plot, where Rajgruha stands now, and the other was in the Third Street. So, he had to face a lot of opposition; all the Brahmins in the neighbourhood opposed it—the entry of a Dalit in their midst. Vitthalrao Gadgil was also living in the same colony. He was a minister in the Nehru Cabinet. He supported him and helped him acquire this land in 1930. Ambedkar then constructed it. It is said that the entire structure was designed by him. He constructed the bungalow with all that imagination. The first floor was entirely for his library.
His personal library has over 50,000 books.
It is one of the biggest personal libraries; that is for certain. He was a bibliophile, and he collected books right from his student days in America and England. So, there is no doubt about it. The entire first floor was occupied by his library, and there is a small place you can see upstairs: a small room where, whenever he would get tired, he would go and rest. After a few years, a rule came from Bombay University that every college had to have a hostel. Ambedkar had started Siddharth College then, so he was looking for a suitable place to house students, to call it a hostel. But he couldn’t find any. So, he decided to vacate Rajgruha; he vacated the library, donated most of the books to People's Education Society, his own society, and the books now lie scattered in different colleges in Aurangabad and Bombay. Rajgruha was practically emptied.
This place actually symbolizes something like a living, a testimony for the struggle, for dignity and equality.
I visited for the first time when during my summer internship after engineering and one of my seniors from village brought me here. This place was unkempt. What do you see now is actually made up by state. The state takes care during 14th April and 6th December. They whitewash it and all the upkeep is taken care by the government. I was painful. So much noise is made in the moment and his own residence is not taken care of. At 10 o'clock, people will throng from very distant places, and they get emotionally charged. They actually bow down here, they touch this stage as if they're entering the shrine. They would be very quiet and you should see their composure.
You have spoken in detail in the book about your childhood and how the idea of Ambedkar was ingrained into you. You said that there were two or three aspects of Ambedkar's life that everybody around you always thought you should imbibe. One of them was education
In early childhood, what I can remember is when we used to attend meetings, and what we could gather was that Ambedkar was an extremely intelligent student in his school. He had an image that he was the most educated person in the world.
Secondly, people spoke about how he was the one who stood opposite Mahatma Gandhi. That was the second thing I mentioned there.
The third thing was that we had to assert a Buddhist identity. People said that we are Buddhists, so we had to assert a Buddhist identity.
The fourth thing is a very mundane and comical thing: it was that he lived with a coat and tie, which I never understood and still don’t understand.
So, these were the impressions of Ambedkar in my childhood. I imbibed the first one: the importance of education. Our parents used to tell us. My mother used to say that we have to become something like Ambedkar
Speaking of your mother, the well for Dalits in your village was a separate well. One day, somebody vandalised that well, put cow dung into it, and your mother led an entire revolution to fight for the right to get water from another well.
That way, my mother was a remarkable person. She was very militant, extremely hard-working, and intolerant of injustice.
So, our well—the well for Dalits—was situated near the farms of landlords. One day, they put cow dung and trash into the well. We were very young at that point; I must have been in the third or fourth grade.
So, she took the pitcher and went to the Kunbi well. A quarrel broke out there, and she pushed women aside and forcibly put a bucket into the well and drew water. There was a bit of tension, because of which, during the night-time, everything was tense.
A meeting was called in our house, in the Dalit side of the village. They were worried. The men were sort of worried, and they said that their women shouldn’t have done that.
My mother declared that until they cleaned up our well, we would continue to fetch water from there. Everyone else can do whatever they want.
By evening, the police came, and they told the people that they couldn’t stop them from drawing water from the well; that is against the law. You must strike an agreement.
So, an impromptu meeting was called, and it was decided that they would be allowed to fetch water. Half of the well would be reserved for these people, and the other half for others. They would also arrange for the cleaning of the previous well. It was also decided that a new well would be dug up in the Dalit locality.
You have spoken at length about how there are times when outrage is more over the desecration of a statue or picture of Ambedkar and not so much around the actual atrocity that happens with a fellow Ambedkarite or a Dalit person. What is your thought process for that?
Ambedkar is obviously a towering personality; there can’t be a question about it. The contributions he has made are historic; there can’t be any dispute about it. But what happened was that everything got put into a single basket. So, Ambedkar emerged as a single pivot around which the entire thing moved.
In such a situation, given the way Dalits are placed in this country, the ruling classes understood this for quite some time. Ambedkar faced neglect during his lifetime and even after death. When he died in 1956, it was not until 1966 that there were any monuments in his remembrance. The place where he was cremated, the BMC, was not ready to give even that small patch of land to the Dalits, and they had to struggle for that. My wife says this because they had to go there on 6th December to pay homage, and the place would be just guarded by bamboos, and it remained like that for ten years. Not more than one or two hundred people used to visit it on 6th December. Today, it goes over two million people.
So, when electoral politics started becoming competitive, and they started realising that Dalits would be an important vote bank—because the way the community is placed here as the lowest strata, and a significant thing being that Dalits comprise 16 per cent of the country’s population—and if you include Muslim Dalits and Christian Dalits, it becomes over 200–225 million people. There’s not a single example that such a mass could be revolved around one single icon. That place was given to Babasaheb Ambedkar.
So, they projected and started painting him in their own ways. He was projected as someone who should be constitutionally claimed as a nationalist, and now it is getting completely saffronised. Every ruling party started painting Ambedkar in their own ways. Evidence for that could be how on 6th December, all parties will mark their presence in bold.
Electoral politics became competitive, and it created importance for vote banks, and there is vote bank politics, into which Ambedkar got sucked in.
Speaking of vote bank politics, do you think that is what is happening in the country as well with the Congress and Rahul Gandhi’s entire movement about caste politics? Even ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the entire messaging was 'Jitni Sankhya, Utni Hissedari'—the pitch for caste census which came from the opposition party, which was staunchly opposed by BJP in the beginning. But now, it’s eventually going to happen. How do you look at the current events in the caste politics of India?
No, they did nothing wrong. This became a very popular idea; in popular imagination, people think that if castes are accounted for, then every caste should be given its own share and such things. With that kind of populace, the political parties also upheld it. Rahul Gandhi, for instance, has been the biggest advocate for that.
Kashiram's slogan, like, 'Jiski jitni sankhya bhari, uski utni bhaagidari,' sounds very well, but actually, it betrays an understanding of caste per se. The fundamental misunderstanding/misconception is of what this entity is—what is caste?
In British times, the Scheduled Castes were conceived. Scheduled Caste had a definitive criterion of untouchability. Broadly speaking, what happens is that this betrays the misunderstanding of caste. Caste is a continuum of hierarchy, and you cannot draw lines. That’s why I keep on saying that caste cannot be a kind of identity on which any kind of radical movement could be based. There are castes, visible castes, sub-castes, and more. So, if you keep on dividing, it will be like dividing an amoeba. So, there’s no end to it.
When they say 'hissedari' or 'bhaagidari,' you have to question 'bhaagidari' in what? Or 'hissedari' in what? Is it confined only to seats in Assembly or Parliament? Is it confined to reserved seats in government jobs? Or are they going to demand land redistribution? The land distribution in India is so skewed; are they going to redistribute all the land? Are they going to redistribute all the wealth? Are they going to end inheritance of wealth? All these questions are legitimate questions, and they should be asked.
The argument that usually comes is that you need these systems in place because no matter what you do, you cannot eradicate the idea of caste at the social level. That is what is usually said. For example, in Uttar Pradesh, there was a diktat that came in the recent past where it said that there will be no mention of caste allowed in a political rally.
Now, that raises questions among people as to whether the problem of caste is going to get solved by banning the mention of it in political settings, because it is not going to promote any kind of inter-caste harmony. Those problems will still exist on the ground. Issues like separate wells, separate crematoria, children of oppressed castes being assaulted for merely touching a pot—those issues will still exist. Then why not allow caste to be mentioned in a political rally? Because there is an attempt to create a façade that caste problems don’t exist.
This is the duplicity of our public life. Caste is a palpable reality, but they would go into a denial mode, that there is no caste, and the entire middle class and the upwardly mobile class would say that where is caste? There is nothing like caste.
Fundamentally, I think that this needs to be settled: that caste cannot be dealt with by any reform. What needs to be dealt with is the annihilation of caste. Ambedkar emphatically gave that place that holds the key. Caste needs to be annihilated; there is absolutely nothing else.
The question comes: how can caste be annihilated? My answer is very simple. Such kinds of social divisions existed in all societies. It is a different matter that, naturally and dormantly of this subcontinent, caste got deeply rooted and took this formidable form.
There was an opportunity when we became independent and the Constitution was being written. Everybody wanted 'untouchability' to go. So, Mahatma Gandhi supported the Varna system, supported caste system, but he wanted 'untouchability' to go.
The same thing happened during the Constituent Assembly. There is a unanimous resolution that was passed, saying that 'untouchability' would be outlawed, and it was outlawed. But not caste system, because caste system, with a tacit alibi of doing social service on that basis, is preserved; no one questions it. Only three people from Bengal questioned that; everyone else in the Assembly kept quiet. So, this was a (tacit agreement) to preserve religion and caste.
Your arrest took place from Rajgruha.
Yes. It so happened that my case was going on. I got about one and a half years clear to fight through the process. In my innocence, I thought that all things would fall flat in the courts, but it went on getting rejected.
On 23rd or 24th March, my wife and I then booked the ticket and boarded a plane. As we boarded the plane, the lockdown was declared. We came to know in the plane itself that lockdown was declared. The Supreme Court petition was rejected. The Supreme Court said that I had to surrender by a certain date. It happened to fall on 14th April, so I surrendered from Rajgruha.
So, you surrendered from Rajgruha on 14th April. Did the irony not strike you back then that you are somebody who is in a way related to Dr Ambedkar?
Yeah, there are many ways to look at this event. That someone from Ambedkar’s family…I am not elevating myself to that extent, but emotionally, when you talk about emotions in this context, then it stands. That somebody from Rajgruha actually gets arrested on 14th April; so this is a big deal in emotional terms at least.
The State invested a lot of resources to propagandise how I am not Ambedkarite, how I am Marxist, Maoist, and all kinds of things. So, this preparation was going on for years, systematically, to detach me from Dalit masses, so that they would not identify me as such. They have started to even denigrate the Ambedkar family itself as being anti-Ambedkar. Even Prakash Ambedkar at one time, but then they realised the folly, then they zeroed in on me.
You said that it sends an emotional message that you were arrested on 14th April from Rajgruha, as somebody who is related to Dr Ambedkar. You have mentioned that you don’t really like to talk about your association with Ambedkar, even by marriage to Rama ji. Don’t you think that could have somehow helped you politically in a way? If this messaging had gone out more strongly, it would have had a little more impact on the minds of the people. Why do you choose not to popularise your familial association with Dr Ambedkar? Wouldn’t that have helped create a movement?
No, because principally, I am against the dynastic notion of inheritance or legacy. A family person only inherits the legacy of a great man. And when I got married into Dr Ambedkar’s family, at that time, people used to introduce me as Babasaheb’s grandson-in-law in public functions. And I used to really express my dissatisfaction and publicly discourage them to not mention it as such.
Because I believe I have enough contributions of my own to claim that legacy. I was quite sincere in my academics, I sincerely contributed to the uplift of the downtrodden masses, I fought for that practically. All these things were very incongruent with my formal profession, but I still did it.
Ambedkar wanted people to be independent, and not like bhaktas. So, I demonstrated that again aptly. So, I did not want to bask in reflected glory. However much I would have tried, I would hate to use my Ambedkar connections for my protection like that. It is very antithetical to my nature. Even if I had done so, it would not have worked.
And you continue to live here because you said that the court procedures and the police procedures get easier.
Yeah. Actually, when we left Goa on 24th March, we came here. We always had a transit home here, so we came here and were living here. And as I said, I surrendered from here too, so we went from here. My wife continued to live here.
You mentioned that there was outrage after your arrest, and even following the charges that were slapped against you. But you also mentioned that your batch from IIM Ahmedabad did not stand by you. Were there any friends through this entire legal process, your incarceration, or anybody you were close to, who you lost because of the case?
"Quite a few. Actually, as I mentioned, in business schools, you don’t expect that kind of political awareness among people, but surprisingly, pan-IIT and IIM—all these institutes—actually openly supported me. They carried out signature campaigns, they published them, and even the Director of IIM signed it and supported me, spoke in my favour.
When it comes to a closer circle, it so happened with my batch-mate—my younger daughter also passed out from IIM Ahmedabad—and in her anxiety she mailed in her IIM Alumni group, saying that they should come in support of me. So, one of my classmates, whom I considered a very reasonable person and a friend, he reacted, opposing it, saying that there must be something in the charges, and it’s an anti-national thing, so we cannot compromise with national interest.
I was also surprised. My daughter is quite short-tempered. She was quite annoyed and she wrote back to him that I am ashamed to pass out from an institute that produces such brainless morons. And, she just called me, saying that Baba, you please exit the group. And without saying anything, I exited the group. You expect people to inquire privately and not in a group, but no one did. After my release, when I came out of jail, recently one of my classmates actually invited me to rejoin the group; I said no.
So, there are a lot of such people. This poison has drilled down to people’s minds a great deal, more than you and I can imagine. But there are a lot of people who you considered very close to you, and friends, but they keep a distance. They shied away from that. So, it naturally happens.
You saw COVID-19 from inside the prison. What was COVID like in prison?
It was simply horrific. The Taloja Central Jail was actually praised outside for being managed very well. But, let me tell you, there was nothing that was happening in the hospital. There were no tests being conducted, nothing was there until the second wave came, and many people started falling dead. A dozen were counted. There was no arrangement to take the dead bodies out. There were no stretchers, there were no tests conducted.
Outside, people came and they took blood samples. During that time, I also fell ill and probably would have died; it was just a miracle that I got saved. Suddenly, I started feeling better, but for four or five days I was in a very bad shape. They would resist taking people outside to hospital. They will keep on claiming that the jail hospital is fully equipped. It actually got exposed in the court that the jail hospital did not have a single qualified doctor, an MBBS doctor.
According to the jail manual, there should be an MD stationed, but there wasn’t even a medically qualified doctor. There were two Ayurvedic doctors. They just show off that they are fully equipped and that there is no need to take people to hospitals outside. I asked myself to be taken out to which they declined. They kept on saying that it’s not COVID. I had lost my temper and shouted at the Superintendent that you are not a bloody doctor and if anything happens and it gets leaked outside, then you will have it.
And then they later found COVID antibodies.
Yeah, later they tested us. Many people were found to have antibodies, which means we had COVID. And the doctor simply said that you had it and you survived the COVID. I said, 'What if I had died?' So, he kept quiet.
Stan Swamy’s case got a lot of media attention outside as well because, at the age of 84, he was inside prison with Parkinson’s disease. While all of this was happening outside, while all of this was being reported outside, how was Stan Swamy inside the prison at that age?
Stan was a very service-oriented and so saintly a person. When he was arrested and brought to Taloja Jail, in the morning the news came that Stan has also been brought. I was living upstairs, so immediately I asked the Jailer that I want to see him. So he gave me permission. And then I went downstairs, in the common area, and I saw that he was just lying and when people woke him up, he woke up looking for his earphones. He was 84 at that point.
When I told him my name, he got so affectionate, he held my hand and was not leaving it. He said that I longed to meet you for years. Stan and I used to take BP and oximeter readings together. With that alibi, we used to get downstairs and have a morning walk in the corridor. We got a lot of time to gossip and discuss."
You said that he used to crack jokes. Once, he said that I am going to live 185 years.
Stan was very innocent, he was too innocent and he was so attached to people and would talk about the poor. He always would recall how the Adivasis are simple and how they get exploited and things should change. So, Stan used to be concerned with these kinds of things, that these people, why do they have to leave those containers and go around? Why can’t there be a simple solution of trolleys, etc. And I would always have a funny counterpoint. I said, 'Where are the ramps to take it around to the first floor?
You are somebody who is in some way related to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. But even you get labelled as an anti-national in this country. How do you look at this term — ‘anti-national’?
This is a recent phenomenon, from 2014 on, since BJP came to power. Actually, the bottom line is that they conflated nationalism with their party, and party and religion and nation are all fused into one entity. And it became a sort of amalgam. So, that is what defines ‘anti-national.’ And those people who were defending this Republic’s founding principles should be eulogised; they should be the nationalists. Those people are branded anti-national, and those people who have been eroding these values—the founding values of the Republic—are being upheld as guardians.
When you call somebody an anti-national, the regime creates that binary: patriots vs. traitors, which actually brings in an emotional appeal to the majoritarian democracy that we are. The State can easily mobilise public hatred against such kind of people when you brand somebody as anti-national.
The imprisonment of the Bhima Koregaon accused, then came the imprisonment of activists like Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam. Do you really think people care as much anymore, because as you said, even you wrote an open letter to the people of India after you were imprisoned? Umar Khalid has been imprisoned for five years now, without a trial, without a bail hearing, and when the bail hearing finally came, it was rejected. Somehow, it doesn’t bother the people or the masses anymore, and it fails to turn into a movement. Do you think that people have largely become uncaring over the years, or there’s just too much on everyone’s plate; what is it?
Yeah, it looks like people are totally indifferent. Superficially speaking, one can easily point out, from 2014 onwards, there is a collapse of all the pillars of democracy, like the judiciary, the executive, the administration, and the media. All these State institutions have been failing.
'Bail is the rule and jail is the exception'; there is a tendency that the judiciary would reverse it to 'jail is the rule and bail is the exception**.** So, all over the world, the jurisprudence is getting upended. All these institutions—all these pillars of democracy—are complicit in shirking the abdication of constitutional duty.
Umar went in 2020, but our Bhima Koregaon precedes it and people are there in their eighth year now. There were two people from the first batch who are in their eighth year of incarceration. One person got bail from the High Court, and it was stayed in the Supreme Court as it came for hearing. The Supreme Court gave a stay which continued for two years. Probably it’s a historic case, and the fellow is begging for a hearing. It’s still not coming to the court.
While you were in there, a lot that has to be done according to the legal process—the paperwork—it is your immediate family that goes through an equal amount of torment of another kind. Your biggest support system was Rama ji, your wife, and your daughters. What kind of an emotional toll did it take on them?
How can I describe, because you have to go through it yourself, only then can you realise. It’s very painful. As I wrote in the book, when I was surrendering I had a brush with the first arrest. I had two arrests: one was for 13 hours when I was in a police lock-up and had a horrific experience. The second time I was surrendering and going to jail, I had that reference point, and I didn’t think I would survive. And mentally, I went prepared to die there. But somehow, this organism learns to live, and I came alive.
But, the kind of drama, the kind of humiliation, the kind of emotional pressure that you undergo is indescribable. Writing, reading, etc. is the only thing I could do there, and it was my survival strategy. I was not wasting any time, any moment, and was doing something of that kind. So, I survived, I found out a way.
But, outside there was no way. Initially, there was no communication. We drew a blank of how to communicate with our families. In the peak of COVID, we didn’t have any contact. You had to bribe the guard to send a message outside and wait for something to come.
As regards the family, I don’t know how it stands in jurisprudence, but a man commits a crime but the family gets punished more. I still consider that my family was punished more than me. You find a way out to survive, but these people will be under COVID. My wife had also caught COVID, and I did not know until I came out. And she was in a bad shape like me, but I just didn’t know. I just did not know that this happened. On her regular meeting, when the date of the mulaqaat came, she used to be present there. Such was the case with my daughters as well. Fortunately or unfortunately, they were away abroad. So, there was so much of a psychological load that you carry; they were quite attached to me.
Your mother was told that you were abroad.
Oh, with my mother, it was a different story altogether. Because in my imagination, I thought that if my mother were to come to know that I was arrested and in jail, she would just collapse and die. So, that’s why I just sent a word to my siblings, to not reveal it to her, whatever happens, and say that I am abroad. I don’t know, my mother is illiterate in that way, but has an innate intelligence. So, she might know, yet she still didn’t reveal that this has happened to me.
You’ve described your whole experience of being imprisoned in the last 2 words - ‘hum dekhenge.’ Those are the last two words of your final chapter.
I think there is something amiss in the entire system, the entire jail system, the entire law-and-order system. I tend to question the fundamentals of it. I didn’t find a viable rationale. It doesn’t affect political prisoners anyway. Bhagat Singh is their role model.
That ‘Hum Dekhenge’ actually connotes that line of thinking, because in jail, it used to be sung as an anthem. So when everything would get dark, it was not allowed officially, but what is allowed in that place? So, from one barrack, people will start singing, then from the other barrack, and so on. This way, we passed on the entire thing. When you don’t know how things will unfold, so let’s just see: ki laazim hai ki hum dekhenge.