the background

There are over fifty kinds of crimes in India, for which there is legal sanction to sentence the guilty to death. We hear about the death penalty mostly in the context of terror crimes, multiple murders, or sexual assaults that horrify us, and assume that capital punishment must be reserved for the most heinous, the rarest of the rare cases. But, in fact, across the country, 730 people have been sentenced to death in just the last 5 years. That’s 1 person every 2.5 days. And there's almost nothing we know about any of them.

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CAPITAL LETTERS is an attempt to unlock our minds and meet some of these people. To get a glimpse, through their letters, of what it is like to live in that dark space where death is the only certainty. Letters filled with trauma, memories, information, helplessness, loneliness, remorse and desperation. Letters that sometimes, amazingly, carry a glimmer of hope, joy, or laughter. Letters often written by other inmates on behalf of those who cannot read or write. So that through their words and silences, we may hear their voices. Loud and clear.

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"Commissioned by Project 39A, the experience of working on this project has been like no other. For it is rare to be trusted with the words of those living under the shadow of death. It is challenging to confront the suffering they may have caused, and yet have compassion for them. It is worrisome to consider that a system meant to be impervious to social prejudice, remains firmly skewed against the poor and illiterate, and those disadvantaged by hierarchies of caste, class, religion or ethnicity. People whose life experiences compel us to rethink how the criminal justice system should work; how the Constitution's promise of equality and liberty can be fulfilled; and how we, as a people, must reimagine justice beyond revenge and retribution. And in doing so, question the death penalty itself."

These are the words with which we described our experience of creating the online exhibition www.capitalletters.in based on letters and art from death row, India. 

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