Dagshai jail: Where Gandhi stood with Ireland & Godse spent a night

On the misty ridges of Himachal's Dagshai hills, a fortress-like structure stands in silent defiance of time. Built by the British in 1849, this prison, once feared as a chamber of torment, now lives on as a museum. Within its cold stone walls are layered stories of cruelty, courage, irony and defiance.

On Gandhi Jayanti, as the nation pays tribute to the Mahatma, Dagshai's jail recalls a forgotten chapter of his journey. In 1920, Gandhi voluntarily stayed here for two days. He was not an accused, nor a convict, but a pilgrim of solidarity. When Irish Catholic soldiers of the Connaught Rangers mutinied against British officers stationed in Solan and were confined in Dagshai, Gandhi rushed to assess the situation. His admiration for Irish leader Éamon de Valera and his belief in shared struggles brought him here.

The cell where he stayed, different from the suffocating dungeons around, was a VIP chamber with two rooms, a fireplace and even a private door opening outside. Today it bears his photograph and the iconic charkha, symbols that stand in stark contrast to the prison's grim history.

And yet, irony stalks these corridors. In 1948, Nathuram Godse, Gandhi's assassin, also passed through Dagshai. While being taken to Shimla for trial, Godse spent a night here in cell number six, near the entrance. He became the last official prisoner of this fortress. The contrast of Gandhi's chosen solidarity and Godse's act of violence encapsulates the paradox this jail preserves.

A name born of scars

The very name "Dagshai" is a memory of cruelty. Derived from Daag-e-Shahi, the royal stamp seared into the foreheads of convicts, it marked men with lifelong shame. The prison was built by the East India Company just two years after Dagshai was founded as a cantonment on land gifted by the Maharaja of Patiala. Costing Rs 72,873 and engineered under Robert Napier, it was designed to be escape-proof.

The T-shaped complex has 54 cells with towering ceilings, yet the air within was suffocating. Sixteen of these cells were dreaded punishment chambers -windowless, unlit, designed for slow torture. Ingeniously engineered vents drew air through underground ducts, but the only light seeped through tiny grilled openings.

Mutinies, martyrs and rebels

Dagshai's history is inked with rebellion. In 1857, Gurkha soldiers of the Nasiri Regiment who joined the uprising were imprisoned here before being executed. Prisoners from distant lands too were dumped here - Boer fighters from South Africa, captured during the Anglo-Boer War, were shipped to this secluded Himalayan prison. The museum today displays rare photographs of those prisoners, alongside a young Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in military uniform, serving as part of the Indian Medical Corps in that war.

The gallows here claimed many Indian revolutionaries as well. Four men from the ill-fated Komagata Maru voyage, who had challenged British immigration laws in Canada, were executed at Dagshai in 1914. In 1915, 12 soldiers of the 23rd Cavalry accused of sympathy with the Ghadar Party were incarcerated and executed. Each cell carries whispers of defiance that the empire tried to silence.

When Irish soldiers mutinied in 1920 against British atrocities in their homeland, Dagshai once again became the stage for repression. Their incarceration here linked the Irish and Indian struggles in a unique thread of shared resistance. Gandhi's stay at Dagshai was not mere symbolism. It was a recognition that freedom movements were bound by a common enemy and a common dream.

A museum of memory

After Independence, Dagshai jail slowly slipped into obscurity. Its heavy gates rusted, its dark cells turned to silence. Then came revival. In 2011, thanks to the dedication of Dr Anand Sethi, a local resident, the jail was transformed into a museum. Sethi scoured archives across India, Ireland and the UK, collecting photographs and documents. With the support of Brigadier Ananth Narayanan, the neglected prison was resurrected as a space of remembrance.

Today, as visitors walk through its damp corridors and peer into its cramped cells, they encounter more than history. They meet paradoxes. Gandhi's spinning wheel and Godse's cell, Irish rebels and Indian martyrs, Boer prisoners and Ghadar revolutionaries - all coexist in stone and silence.

Dagshai Jail is no longer a place of torment. Instead, it has become a museum of memory, urging us to remember that freedom was neither local nor easy.