As a documentary filmmaker drawn to stories of marginalised communities, could you tell us about your 2023 trip to India and the circumstances that led to your arrest and subsequent month-long imprisonment in Gorakhpur Jail?

At the beginning, it was simply about travelling. I wanted to discover India as I had imagined it, which I call in my book an “Indian dream”: spirituality and metaphysics. I was especially fascinated by the figures of the sadhus. I pictured Varanasi, the Himalayan landscapes. I thought India was another world, so vast that I could lose myself in it and perhaps become someone else. There’s a longing for renewal in India that draws many Westerners.

But that exotic vision faded quickly. What truly shocked me were the power dynamics. It was obvious that some people moved through the world with ease and confidence, while others seemed weighed down, their heads lowered. I realised that most of my interactions were with English-speaking Indians from relatively privileged, upper-caste backgrounds, and they often downplayed the importance of caste. I even heard Brahmins claim that Dalits were extremely powerful and enjoyed many privileges. At the same time, I saw Dalits cleaning their homes. I didn’t believe what I was being told. That’s when the idea for the film began to take shape, when I came across the long list of atrocities committed against Dalits, particularly Dalit women, in Uttar Pradesh. I felt this was a major human rights issue that no one outside India was really talking about.

The Uttar Pradesh police accused you of participating in a Dalit land-rights protest led by peasant women at an Ambedkar Jan Morcha march, along with violating the terms of your business visa. You have said there were political motives behind your 2023 arrest. Could you elaborate?

I did attend that protest—a peaceful sit-in made up mostly of Dalit women farmers. I went as an observer. Legally, nothing in my business visa, which was issued in the name of a French production company, prevented me from being there. It was never clear what violation I was supposed to have committed. The chargesheet mentioned illegal NGO funding, except there was no funding and no NGOs were involved.

When the Gorakhpur police surrounded me as I was leaving the protest, I sensed a kind of nervous tension. They seemed almost as afraid of me as I was of them, as if the mere presence of a foreigner was somehow a threat. At the police station, they turned aggressive. They accused me of wanting to make a film. “Why are you here? Why don’t you deal with the problems in your own country? These people, the Dalits, are doing just fine!” the commissioner told me. Ironically, he had attended the same school I did in France: Sciences Po.

I wasn’t the only one arrested. Several members of the movement were detained alongside me on absurd charges of attempted murder. To me, it’s obvious that the alleged visa violation was just a pretext. What the newspapers and local TV channels repeated nonstop over the next two days made that clear. I was described as a terrorist, an “urban Naxalite", part of an international conspiracy. The goal was to discredit the Dalit movement by portraying it as being orchestrated from abroad. It was a media stunt, built around the familiar figure of the foreign conspirator.

Valentin Hénault’s memoir J’avais un rêve indien: Dans l’enfer de la prison de Gorakhpur (I had an Indian Dream: In the Hell of Gorakhpur Prison) documents prison brutality, caste inequality, and political repression in Uttar Pradesh. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

In your memoir you write about pre-trial detention and caste hierarchies in Gorakhpur jail.

The most obvious thing is the number of innocent people in the prison. For a long time, I wanted to call the book The Prison of the Innocent. At first, I thought: you’re innocent, you’ll be out soon. And then I realised that so many of my fellow inmates were innocent too. Love jihad, inter-caste marriages, journalists that need to be silenced, extorting money. There are countless bad reasons to put someone behind bars. Many prisoners were being blackmailed by “victims” outside. The deal was: give me this much money and I’ll withdraw my complaint. It could be as simple as that. 

Really, the prison was a parallel world. Once you ended up there, you were in a hole. For some who weren’t from Gorakhpur, their families didn’t even know where they were. They probably assumed they were dead. Because the system runs on pre-trial detention, once you’re in, it’s extremely hard to get out, especially if you don’t have resources. Only a tiny fraction of prisoners had already been sentenced. The rest were waiting, stuck in a kind of purgatory. People live in a kind of moral torture: they don’t know if they’ll be there for a few weeks or for years.

As for caste in prison, it’s obvious that in every barrack, those who wear the janeyu are at the center and have more space, while those packed near the toilets belong to the lowest castes. As far as I know, the sweepers were all Dalits or Muslims. Prisoners from the lowest castes who don’t have money have to work for others. One Adivasi specialised in massages. Another washed the laundry. A young Muslim filled water bottles for all the prisoners. Meanwhile, an important inmate, a former hospital director whom I nicknamed Doctor Sahab, from a quite powerful OBC cast, was always lying back on his bed and wouldn’t even get up to fetch his newspaper.

The jati was always asked in jail. Mine was easy. Jati: videshi! [foreigner]

As a foreigner, did language barriers hinder your interactions with fellow inmates? Were they initially hesitant to speak with you? How did you earn their trust, and which personal stories or experiences have stayed with you?

I had learnt Hindi for two years before entering jail. I was close to three or four inmates who spoke English, and with the others I could have simple conversations in Hindi. I could also more or less understand what they were saying, which was very useful.

There are so many stories I’ll remember forever. I go into detail about them in my book: Arjun, who took the blame for his older brother’s crimes; a Brahmin who rejected untouchability and let people from other castes sleep near him; Ravindra and his tragic love story; Sultan, a very young boy who was there because of the so-called love jihad; and an inmate that I called the “Ghost”. Prison was hard but it was a real adventure. It was always about meeting people and having deep interactions with them.

Valentin Hénault with members of Ambedkar Jan Morcha, in Gorakhpur in 2023. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

You describe barracks crammed with up to 300 inmates in tiny spaces.

Yes. In some barracks, there’s so little space that you can’t even sleep on your back. Only on your side. But I don’t think prisoners are complaining anymore. I know there have been uprisings in the past at Gorakhpur prison, and anyone who dared take part ends up facing even heavier charges for danga [riots]. Rebelling is a pretty sure way to spend your life in prison, so I understand why people don’t do it. Instead of complaining, prisoners try to find ways to make things a little more bearable: getting transferred to a barrack in the shade, one that’s a bit less crowded, for example. Or becoming a “writer” and working for the prison, which comes with a few privileges, though to do that, you have to belong to the right caste.

Did your foreign status result in better food or facilities compared to Indian inmates? How did this affect your relationships with other prisoners and prison staff?

Yes, and more than simply being a foreigner, since there were Afghans and Nepalis there too, I would say I clearly benefited from white privilege in prison. For one thing, I was spared the extortion guards routinely imposed on most prisoners when they go to or return from the mulaqat [formally scheduled meeting between a prisoner and their family members, friends, or legal representatives]. I was also allowed to skip the line for the phone. After about two weeks, I was given a bed in the hospital ward. It’s worth knowing that the hospital isn’t where the sick are sent, but the dying and those who have money or connections. “Athiti devo bhava,” [A guest is equivalent to God] said the jailer to me while handling me over a free water bottle, a rare privilege. As if I was kindly hosted in this jail. With other prisoners, we found it very funny. “Welcome to Incredible India,” some prisoners joked.

I never really understood the privileges granted to me throughout India. It often made me uncomfortable. Even in a train station, almost anywhere, if a white person is waiting in line, people will often urge them to go ahead of everyone else. I suppose this is what’s called a colonial hangover.

That said, there was a downside: as a white man in prison, I was constantly under scrutiny. Some prisoners would watch me eat or wash as if I were some kind of alien. In the central yard, I couldn’t take two steps without being surrounded by a crowd, as though I were a street performer about to put on a show. The curiosity was immense, bottomless, it seemed.

Valentin Hénault in a village in Uttar Pradesh in 2023. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

You note that Muslims were confined to cramped spaces and kept together, while the so-called upper-caste prisoners occupied central areas. What was the most striking example of caste- or religion-based discrimination you witnessed firsthand?

The most striking example is the access to the phone. Prisoners normally have the right to access it, but it’s not automatically granted. It’s a matter of favoritism, if the prison authorities are in a good mood toward you, if they like you. I had to submit requests to the jailer myself, even begging him in writing to let me contact my family.  Everyone knew Muslims were systematically denied access to the phone. One of them had been in prison for a year without ever being allowed to use it.

During your incarceration, what were the most harrowing and shocking stories and experiences shared by lower-caste prisoners and religious minorities, like Muslims?

The situation of one prisoner Parwez Parwaz saddens me deeply. In my book, I call him the “Specter”, because he is no longer more than a shadow of himself. He is in a state of dementia. He had cataracts, and the prison administration did not allow him to leave to receive treatment. He is accused in several rape cases; he has already been acquitted in one of them, but he will not be released anytime soon. His principal “fault” was to accuse Yogi Adityanath following the 2007 riots, during which he delivered a hate speech, something he himself admitted on television. He’s resistant and he’s now dying in jail.

Then there is the way prisoners are left to die. I saw a man agonising all night in our barrack. No one came to open the doors to take him to the hospital. Worse still, the guards opened later than usual, which never happens. In the morning, “khatam!” [finished], the other inmates said. He was dead. Many people die in prison. As an American inmate, the only other Westerner in this prison, used to say, “this place is a killing machine.”

You were also held in a cell for mentally challenged inmates. What did you observe there?

Yes, we called that place Pagalpur [Crazy Town]. Physical punishment with sticks was still practiced. I would cover my eyes when I saw inmates being beaten. They would scream in pain. Inmates labeled as “crazy” were injected with medication, for which they lined up every evening. They always looked a bit stoned.

It’s said that many of these so-called insane inmates are actually innocent, because it’s easy to pin a crime on someone who is vulnerable. They were fed on the ground, outside, a porridge far worse than what the other prisoners received. And yet, what awaited them outside was so cruel that many of them were actually relieved to be there. It says a lot about the level of violence in society beyond the prison walls.

Valentin Hénault in a village in Uttar Pradesh in 2023. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

During your incarceration, were there particular moments when you felt most hopeless or emotionally vulnerable?

I was terrified and I feared for my life. When I saw from inside the prison that the newspapers were calling me a “terrorist”, I thought they would book me under UAPA [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act] and I’d be facing ten years of jail, that I would lose my youth in this dirty jail. You have to understand: it was their word against mine. And everyone knows they can say whatever they want, any absurd lie. They can do anything to you.

Meanwhile, the French embassy didn’t want to do anything for me. I always felt that they were terrified in their dealings with Indian authorities. They were probably afraid that if they raised their voices, they would face the cancellation of this or that arms deal. France turns a blind eye to human rights violations in India and abandons the vibrant democratic civil society that still opposes the project of Hindutva. Instead, we invite Narendra Modi to Bastille Day celebrations in France, supposed to be a celebration of the revolution, of the triumph of the people over oppression. It’s terrible, but it’s the truth. I was nothing, and they could do whatever they wanted to me.

I consider it a miracle that I got out so quickly. I resisted by writing. From the very first day, on scraps of paper that soon became entire piles I hid in my underwear. I told myself I was a witness and that I had to record everything, to carry maybe this story further one day. Then, there was the power of irony. I found it funny, in a way, to be shipwrecked in this prison, showering shirtless below the punishment barrack. The situation was so absurd. Me, once with ambitions, now standing in line in my underwear for a bowl of oatmeal. Sometimes it made me laugh uncontrollably. In this ocean of pain, I tried to make the book also funny in some absurd and desperate way.