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Abstract When Indian anti-colonial activists courted prison sentences beginning in the 1920s, the colonial state treated these political prisoners exceptionally and they were kept within the prison’s limited cellular system. Political prisoners wrote about their experience of incarceration, contributing to a global literary tradition of prison writing that dates back to antiquity. These writings comprise a well-known part of nationalist mythology, particularly as they correspond to the biographies of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Subhas Chandra Bose. However, these writings are linked to earlier acts of carceral resistance and space-making. A spatial lens elucidates the prison’s affective potential, focusing on how prison writing provided an escape from the lived reality of colonial incarceration as well as serving as a generative activity for narrating visions of an independent nation. Consequently, prisons such as the Yerawada Central Jail, where Gandhi was incarcerated, were re-signified as commemorative spaces in the postcolonial period through various forms of representation.