Dr. Anand Teltumbde's 'The Cell and the Soul' Prison Memoir Launched in Mumbai: A Tale of Resistance and Justice

Mumbai- An evening of reflection, resistance, and remembrance marked the launch of The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir by Dr. Anand Teltumbde, held at the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh on Thursday. The event was jointly organised by Innocence Network,India and the Mulbhit Adhikar Sangharsh Samiti (MASS), and attended by a packed audience that filled the auditorium to capacity well before the programme began.

The book, published by Bloomsbury India, was unveiled by Dr. Bhalchandra Mungekar, former Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University and Rajya Sabha MP. The evening featured several prominent speakers, including senior advocates Mihir Desai and Dr. Gayatri Singh, scholar and activist Dr. Anand Teltumbde, Chirag Thakkar, Senior Editor at Bloomsbury and the publisher and two acquitted prisoners from the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case — Ehtesham Siddiqui and Dr. Abdul Wahid Shaikh.

The event was moderated by Dr. Vivek Korde, a social activist associated with MASS. It opened with a stirring performance of Hum Dekhenge, Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s immortal poem of defiance, which set a charged and contemplative tone for the evening.

Dr. Abdul Wahid Shaikh, one of the organisers and founder of the Innocence Network, opened the proceedings by noting that it was a rare and historic occasion where three former prisoners shared the stage together and all three of them have written a book , writing itself is rare coming together of three former prisoners who have written has probably happened for the first time he noted . He praised Dr. Teltumbde for turning his incarceration into an act of intellectual resistance, writing despite the informal ban on study and writing imposed within Indian prisons.

Ehtesham Siddiqui, who spent 19 years in prison before being acquitted, spoke about the brutal realities of the Indian penal system — describing it as a space of punishment rather than reformation. He shared how he completed 22 courses through IGNOU while imprisoned, calling education inside jail a struggle harder than the courses themselves. Siddiqui’s prison memoir Horror Saga documents how the case was fabricated against him and and is a thorough expose of the Indian State and its armed Wing i.e Police

Dr. Anand Teltumbde, the evening’s central figure, reflected on his arrest and imprisonment under the Elgar Parishad–Bhima Koregaon case. “I never imagined I would write a prison memoir,” he said, wryly adding, “I never thought I’d be qualified for arrest.” He described his imprisonment as both a political act and an awakening — thanking “the present dispensation for this award,” which he said exposed the inversion of Ambedkar’s Republic into one of repression.

Written over 31 months of incarceration in Taloja Central Jail, The Cell and the Soul is dedicated to Teltumbde’s brother Milind Teltumbde, an alleged CPI (Maoist) cadre killed in a 2021 encounter. The memoir also pays tribute to Father Stan Swamy, a co accussed of Teltumbde who died in custody the same year after being denied a sipper despite his Parkinson’s condition.

Senior advocate Adv. Gayatri Singh described the memoir as a “mirror to the perversity of the system,” recounting how even educated and respected individuals like Teltumbde could be vilified and criminalised through procedural abuse and media trials. She invoked the tragic death of Father Stan Swamy and questioned the judiciary’s failure to hold the police accountable for custodial misconduct.

Adv. Mihir Desai, in his characteristic humour, remarked that given the current political climate, India may soon see a surge of prison memoirs. He criticised the gap between the judiciary’s lofty judgments on prison reform and their near-total non-implementation, noting how wrongful incarcerations continue without accountability.

Chief Guest Dr. Bhalchandra Mungekar praised the literary and moral depth of Teltumbde’s work. Calling it a “book that suffocates you,” he said it dismantles illusions about Indian democracy and reveals the coercive apparatus of the state in stark light. Quoting from the book’s chapter A Nation of Anti-Nationals, he observed: “India today has become a country where nationalism is used to silence dissent.”

As the event concluded, the haunting refrain of Hum Dekhenge once again filled the hall, a reminder that the struggle for justice, truth, and dignity persists, both inside and outside the prison walls.

The Cell and the Soul has been endorsed by leading intellectuals including Ramachandra Guha, Arundhati Roy, and Shanta Gokhale, and has been widely described as a landmark addition to India’s growing canon of prison literature — a literature that turns confinement into critique and suffering into testimony.