This book examines the lives of women who have been imprisoned because of their politics in postcolonial India. Beginning with the fact of incarceration, the study mediates two distinct lives of women political prisoners, their activism prior to imprisonment and their experiences of captivity. The book avers that the integrated account based on the captive–political dialectic provides a completed account of women's political participation, strengthens the gendered analysis of state violence and proffers an enabling study of prison testimonial literature. The book historically explores the linkages between organized politics and captivity, between collective action and individual punishment through a study of written and oral testimonies. The wider feminist aim is towards decolonizing prison power as women's political incarceration provides accounts of the inherited coloniality of state power as well as of women's resistance created through captive collectives and struggles.

The study demonstrates that the interface between political activism and incarceration is not a settled one but dependent upon the dynamics between people's legitimate right to protest and the state's coercive response. Three recent incidents help explain the political nature of this interface. On 9 March 2021, Hidme Markam, an Adivasi woman in her late 20s, was arrested from a public venue in Sameli village in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district. The police practically kidnapped her in front of a large gathering of women and hustled her into a waiting vehicle without showing a warrant. The police claimed that she was a Maoist, a village-level leader, with a ‘1 lakh bounty’ and

involved in several incidents of violence. Eyewitnesses and activists contested the police version and stated that the arrest was done to silence Markam's vocal concerns over the issues of coercive mining, and the issue of impunity that has been prevailing in south Chhattisgarh since the early 2000s when the state decided to militarily fight Maoism. Resident of Burgum village in Dantewada, Markam, a midday meal cook turned environmental and political activist, is an active campaigner against paramilitary atrocities, especially sexual violence and coercive mining activities carried out by the state–corporation combine. She is a member of the Chhattisgarh Mahila Adhikar Manch (Women's Rights Forum) and convener of the Jail Bandi Rihai Manch (Prisoner Release Forum).