Frames per Second: In custody, then and now

Anand Patwardhan's film Prisoner of Conscience, on political prisoners in India during the Emergency, has some deep resonances for our times

English schoolteacher Mary Tyler, who spent five years in Indian jails in the early 1970s on suspicion of being a Naxalite, recalled her experience in Anand Patwardhan-directed documentary Prisoners of Conscience (1978). “As for the condition in the jail, they were very overcrowded,” she said. “Sanitation was extremely primitive; medical care was extremely poor, especially in the smaller jails; and there were lots of infectious and contagious diseases. Medical treatment was almost nil. Apart from that, there were severe water problems, clothing was not provided according to jail rules, visits were arbitrary... In general, one had a feeling that most of the