मेरा आजीवन कारावास / माझी जन्मठेप (स्वातंत्र्यवीर सावरकर - काले पानी का ऐतिहासिक संस्मरण)

A Hater of Books There were many reasons why Mr. Barrie hated books. One of them was that he had himself very poor education and was smitten with jealousy for the political prisoners who were better educated than himself. Secondly, these did not bend their knees to this demi-God of Port Blair; they burnt no incense before him. Some of the Superintendents also objected strongly to any kind of reading. A prisoner may chew tobacco before him and many tames Mr. Barrie did not mind it, and he called it kindness and leniency But if a prisoner was found with a slate or pencil or with a book, Mr. Carrie would fly into rage and burst out, "You scoundrel, you want to read and write. This is no school. Why did you not learn it at your father's? Send him on to the oil-mill, put him on 'Kolu', confiscate his book, his slate and pencil." Their Effect In a sense and from his point of view, Mr. Barrie was right. We know how in their exile, the Pandavas used to be down-pressed, how they would pity and condemn themselves. They were tortured by their mends for what they had brought upon themselves; despair and melancholy overcast their souls, and they forgot their own valour and greatness. Then Dhaumya and other sages narrated to them stories of Nala and Rama to put courage in their hearts and teach them to defy misfortune and cruelties of fate. And these stories from the past put a new hope in their hearts. Similarly, stirring ants of former heroes in history, poetry and romance, or discourses on the immortality of the soul from the Upanishads and the Bhagwatgita would prove a tonic to the shattered hearts of our political prisoners. That would Imbue them with the spirit of defiance. That would fortify them against all onslaughts of the severest persecutions of prison-life. Was it for this that they were incarcerated in the Andamans? How could, then, the doorkeeper of the Silver Jail let in such incendiary stuff within its portals? Will he not be false to his charge? Will he be true to himself and his calling if he allowed such matter to spread among his prisoners and influence their mends? But their argument against reading books was just our argument for reading them. I began my work of teaching them without any books to start with. They learnt and taught by word of mouth. We used to gather every evening on the reservoir of our prison. I utilised this time to give them talks on history. Sometimes we were interrupted, sometimes punished for disobedience, and sometimes we could go on with these evening meetings with the connivance of our warders And on occasions, even if the political prisoners were caught in the act, they told the warders boldly that they were having some talk, of course they had to face the consequence of being hand-manacled. This way, week after week, we continued to meet and I discoursed to the political prisoners on the History of India from its early beginnings in the Vedas down to our own day. I drew their

attention particularly to the heroic deeds of the past. acquaint them with the lives of its outstanding personalities, and of epoch-makers in that history. I then took them similarly through a course of European history. told them of heroes like Napoleon, Mazzini and Garibaldi and gave them an insight into the contemporary history of tottering Russia and the great revolution that was going on there against its monarchy. From that course in very broad outline, I took them in a course on the elements of economics, politics and theory of government. The lectures were followed by discussion and the political prisoners who would gather together for them began to take deep Interest in the subject. As their number Increased in the prison, and as the wave of strike and resistance. fight and opposition, spread like wild fire among them, the Officers, just to pacify them, allowed us to sit together for a longer time, read what we liked, talk as we chose, so that we may work and not trouble them any further. At this stage mere conversation of an evening took a turn into a regular meeting for settled study.

The Sunday Meeting

Throughout the week we continued to meet every evening at our appointed place on the reservoir. But, in addition, on every Sunday morning till the hour of nine I used to sit together with nine or ten of them who happened to be in my immediate neighbourhood and gave them regular lessons in subjects which I have already mentioned. At nine we were taken out for weighing our bodies or cutting grass. I used to allot to each of them a particular subject for study. The student had just to tell me what he already knew about it. Then I carried on discussion with him. And we ended with the singing of our national song This meeting was all a hurried business and not like an elaborate study in a class- room. For, in the very midst of it, some one would announce the arrival of Mr. Barrie, or we were afraid that a jamadar would appear suddenly on the scene. Then we were all told off to cut grass, and asked to disperse. As soon as we smelt a cat, we ran helter-skelter to our holes, like the proverbial mice. The lecturer and the audience had both to cut short the meeting, and distribute themselves, some on the field, some behind the iron-sheets and some to clean their pots and pans. And we met again as soon as the alarm was no more, as described in the famous lines of the poet, "Let the legions thunder past and plunged in deep thought again. " After their rout some faint-hearted individuals would point out in self-condemnation, the futility of it all, when I had to remand them of the prayers of the early flying Christians. When these had to follow Christ, in defiance of the tyranny of the Romans and the persecution of the Jews, they lived up to his Commandments by praying in catacombs, round the graveyard and in prison vaults, whenever five of them could assemble and hearten one another Sometime they had just knelt down in these secret places lifting up their faces to God, when they would hear the foot-falls of the Roman legion pursuing them, and instantly they had to disperse and hide themselves. But, when it had passed, by they would return and pray as before.

Such were our prayers also The Sunday meetings had as their adjunct prayer and bhajan to end them. This addition I had made that our spirit may be sustained an the depressing atmosphere of our normal prison-life, so that our meeting and our prayer were of a like nature to that of the early Christians. I kept on this Sunday bhajan for years together in my prison-life We had discussions, political, religious, literary, linguistic and scientific at these weekly meetings. I felt happy that what I had at our Sunday meetings at Nasik in my very early life, what I continued in Poona and later on in Bombay, and when I had gone abroad, an England and elsewhere, I could resume in the Andamans and in the Silver Jail presided over by a man like Mr., Barrie. I could thus keep up my resolution. I could offer my daily sacrifice, I could perform my daily 'yadnya' in the little space of the family fire-hearth (my prison) as I had performed it in the spacious spaces of the world's altar And that was how, by the grace of God, I could keep the fire burning. In addition to 'flying meetings', we had discovered other means for the propagation of knowledge. These were the high, spacious, white-washed walls of our apartments. With the pointed thorns of the cordage plant, we used these walls as our writing tablets For in the prison-cell no political prisoner was allowed the use of a scrap of paper or the end of a pencil to write on it. The thorn was our writing Instrument and the wall was the paper to write on. The prisoner, inspire of close scrutiny and strict vigilance, managed to have on his person pencil and paper to write on. He concealed them in his tuft of hair, in his mouth, from one hand to another, and, last of all, where they could least suspect to find them. Search them how you will, the things were never found out. But these were not enough for the propagation of knowledge. And I am not going to let you, besides, into all the secrets of our prison- life. Some tricks and stratagems and subterfuges one must always keep to oneself, perhaps, for future use! With all our handicaps, the prison-wall proved to us of Immense use in writing out our notes and discourses on the subject of study on its spacious surface. The very first year a difficulty arose to damp our spirits. We were studying the elements of Geology from a book published by the R.P. A. Series. It was my habit from boyhood onwards to summarise a book and note its Important passages in a separate exercise- book. And this habit proved of Immense use to me. For I could draw upon my memory to reproduce the contents of the Important books I had read and even to quote notable passages from them. Accordingly, I made an outline of geological time from that book on a sheet of paper which I somehow procured for that purpose. I returned the book on the following day and, when my room was locked for the evening, I took out the paper and began to read it, when, to my surprise, the overseer came up, stamping his shoes, approached my room and opened the door He searched my room right through. It was not an unusual experience for me, for my room was searched like this three times previously and during the same day. Let any one whisper into the ears of Mr. Barrie that "Bada Babu" had something with him, and 'search' was the order that followed. When he had found that not even in two per cent of such reports was there any substance, he gave it up. But this change come after seven or eight years. That day, however, when the overseer surprised me in the act of reading that paper, it became impossible for me to hide it.

A Sudden Onslaught The overseer picked it up and asked me what it was. I told him that it contained my notes. Whereupon he strictly enjoined me that I was not to make notes in this fashion from any book given me in this prison. But, anxious as he was to make a political capital out of this episode, he subjected that paper to the closest scrutiny. He held it up in light and against the just lighted lamp, and began to read it minutely. What did he find in it? Words like Pliocene, Miocene, Neolithic, which were abracadabra to him. "What cipher is this"? he questioned me and showed from his face that at last he had caught me. I told him in a light-hearted mood, "It was the language of geology." He then muttered something to himself and calling the Jamadar, asked him to bring me to his office the following morning, and that he was going to prosecute me. Accordingly, I was taken to the office the following day, I was treed for the offence, but, it being my first offence in that prison, I was warned and discharged. And for two following weeds I was to get no book to read. The question then arose how I was to summarise and make notes of the books I was reading The political prisoners must have summaries of the weekly lectures I had given them. How were they otherwise to remember and make progress in their knowledge? Where was I to get so much paper and writing material? And, if at all I could procure it, where was the place to hide it? Suppose I were to write sheet after sheet who will be able to read them under the very nose of the supervising warder and Jamadar? All of a sudden and whale I was cudgelling my brains, I suddenly happened to look at the wall and there I found the paper to write on. A white- washed wall-a paper-a broad sheet to write on ! What a relief the discovery gave me. The wall-a paper; the cordage plant-thorn-a pencil I had already treed an experiment of that kind in the jail at Byculla when I wrote on the wall with the sharpened point of a stone I sought to perfect it in the Silver Jail of the Andamans. And I made a full use of it till my release from here after a full period of fourteen years' imprisonment. I used to hide a pointed nail in the bolt of my door. And as soon as I was locked up inside the room and the door was shut, I would began to write on the wall with that pencil in columns which I drew upon it. All the wales of the 7th crawl were thus scrawled over and each constituted for me a book by it self. For example the cell in which I was confined to weave the stranded cord was written with a full outline of Spencer's 'First Principles.' My poem 'Kamala' was composed and copied in full on the walls of this seventh division. In another cell I wrote all the definitions of political economy as I had learnt from Mill's Work on the subject. My object was that when I was changed from that room to another, a political prisoner, brought in there, may learn those definitions as he was learning that subject from me, With a little management such a student could succeed being put up in this lock-up. He could then learn them off in a month before his turn came for transference elsewhere. As I was being changed from division to division I saw to it that every division and every cell in that division had its writings on the walls from my improvised pen. And the political prisoners who had turned students took the fullest advantage of these written tablets-their books of study in

this lonely place of a prison-house books FL utilised in this manner all them. Three means I employed in my opportunity to train that laborious task of self-education. These were lectures delivered at Sunday meetings, oral Instruction on every other occasion of personal contact, and, lastly, the use of the prison-walls for purposes of writing. One great draw-back But the life of these writings on the wall could not be longer than one year. They could not last for centuries like inscriptions on the bricks of Babylon. Every year the wails were being white-washed, and, as the process went on, the writings on the wall began to perish. They were completely effaced. Hence the month before this operation was my month of serious and Intensive repetition, not unlike the time-honoured recital of the Rig Vedas. I had to recall all the verses that I had composed in my mind and scrabbled on these walls, and learn them by heart during this transition period. But there was one advantage in using this wall as a sheet of paper to write on For, though the writing lasted only for a year, the fresh wash on it gave us a new blank sheet of paper to write on for a whole year once again. The paper as such was subject to the processes of time. It was bound to get old and worm-eaten. But these walls for fourteen long years furnished a broad sheet that was ever new and ever white to write on Sometime, whale the white-wash was proceeding, our secret would come to light. But such a thing rarely happened. For the writing was carefully rubbed out before the process and the faint lines that survived made any deciphering an Impossibility. Besides, I wrote in Marathi and on abstruse subjects like political economy. This made the task of deciphering a hopeless job altogether. Mr. Barrie could not read the writing much less could he decipher it. He was so learned and wise after all, that he finally opened that it was a wicked attempt to spoil and disfigure government property. My brother was caught in this prison using the thorn of the cordage plant and was punished for it. His offence was to write comments on Vivekananda's lectures on Vedanta in which he had raised some doubts and answered some objections. The book was his own and he had marked certain passages in it and written some marginal notes. These markings and annotations he made in the margin of the book with thorn. And this was his cognisable crime according to the prisons penal code. Mr. Barrie's words were, "This is a jail, this is not a school; if you wanted to learn why did you not learn when at home? Why did you come here? Don't fight, don't read; only work-yes work. I know nothing else here." What avails it to learn? These obstacles to learning were external? but there was one great internal obstacle, and that was that some of the prisoners themselves were averse to learning, Being political prisoners they cared nothing for knowledge. Their motto was action What do we want with pure knowledge?-they would say. Action and sacrifice, that is what we need. I had to make them realise that many of them, when they were released after seven or eight years, shall have to play their part in the Indian world Let them not read anything

then, if they felt that it was no use reading. But here they must add to their knowledge even for the sake of their ideals, rather than rot without knowledge as they were bound to do, if they did not make a special effort to keep their minds active I further brought home to them the fact that if winning freedom was difficult enough, retaining it after it had been won was more difficult stall. And until their minds were trained perfectly, they would never realise this fact of politics and political advancement. In a free nation no constructive work can be undertaken by those who were Ignorant of subjects like history, economics and science of politics and government. I cited to them the instance of Persia. Revolution in Persia set the people free. But because the poetical revolutionaries were ill- equipped in the art of government, in the essentials of good government and of reform and progress, when power came to them they had to depend upon foreign experts in finance and economics, in the knowledge of trade and business- organisation, and to carry on with the help of these experts. It led to chaos and confusion, all over the field, in the economic, Industrial and public life of Persia, it led to maladministration, indiscipline and nepotism in public servants. Want of knowledge was the root of all these evils Mere destructive action, leading to anarchy and the reign of terror, and resulting in dictatorship, benefits no nation On the other hand, it sets back the clock of progress. This has been ever the lesson of history And its best Illustration is the French Revolution of 1789. Blind fury is ever national suicide, and if it is not controlled in time it exposes a country to danger from without as well as to danger within its own domains That is the lesson of that revolution for all time to come. The story of the Chinese Republic from its early beginning down to this day conveys the same lesson. That was because the leaders of the Chinese Revolution were inept in the, art of government And they had to Import administrators from abroad to establish peace, order and good government These were naturally Interested in their own countries and exploited the anarchy in China to serve their own ends; and China remained as backward as it was in the pre-revolutionary era. Hence, no political revolutionary, if he really loved his own country, can afford to be ignorant and to trade on the ignorance of his own countrymen. The more they know the practical art of good government, sound administration, and of the management of their country in every walk of public life, the better it is for them and their country when they came into their own. In this respect, the so-called 'moderates' were better equipped than their friends, the extremists. And political prisoners must learn to follow in their footsteps. The moderates can claim among them economists, administrators, and statesmen of the highest rank like Gokhale, R. C Dutt, Ranade and Sir T. Madavrao. I asked them frankly, "Have you any one to rival them?" Hence to waste their time in idleness in this prison was sheer folly and shortsightedness. It was equally useless to be rotting and despondent. They had better keep their minds well employed and active by study and hard thanking on problems they shall have to tackle hereafter. And the subjects Indispensable for future equipment were Constitutional History, Politics and Economics I said, "Every one who presumes to think of his own country, to dabble in politics, and to aspire to political leadership, must needs possess full and deep knowledge of subjects like politics, economics and constitutional history To be wanting in such

knowledge is to spell yourself inefficient and unfit for responsible self-government, or for high administrative offices in it. As in religion so in politics, action with knowledge is the key to salvation. At present you are working out the nation's destiny by self-immolation and service which are apparent failures. But if this service and self-immolation are to fructify in success and commonweal, then here it is: when you have plenty of time before you, a number of years to be passed inn enforced idleness, you must add knowledge to service and vision to self-sacrifice. Heroism, to do or die, is not enough. It must be illumined by deep learning ripening into wisdom-" I exhorted them finally to cast off gloom and despondency, and apply themselves to knowledge which was their proper work there. End of Chapter XII

CHAPTER XIII Correspondence with India and means of information A prisoner in the Andamans was permitted to write only one letter home during the year. The letter had, perforce, to be as brief as possible. Again, it was to be an open letter, to be censored first by the jailor, next by the Colonial Officer, and to be despatched if approved by them. Every prisoner was warned that the letter shall not be forwarded if it breathed a single word against the jail authorities. Thus only a slip of a letter could be sent by him home once every year. Even this small facility was taken away from him for the year if he was guilty of the slightest offence like talking to a fellow-prisoner, committing nuisance outside the stated hours, not sitting in a line, so on and so forth. One can imagine how difficult it was to be free from any trivial offence of the kind we have mentioned, during the course of three hundred and sixty-five days. It was impossible, therefore, for any prisoner in the Andamans to convey any news about him to the outside world. It need not be said that it was also impossible for the outside world to send any news to him. The prisoner, in these circumstances, could not write even two lines, every year without fail, to inform his people at home that he was alive. The worst kind of gagging Moreover, the letters that were officially sent from here through the Government of India could contain no reference to our ill-treatment and persecution in this jail. Nor was there any scope for publication of such description of jail-life anywhere else. For the Jail Inspection Committee never visited our jail. Occasionally a magistrate condescended to pay a visit to us. But, as a rule, he did not report against Mr. Barrie and his doings here. All petitions to the Indian Government from our side had to pass through the Colonial Officer—the Commissioner—who threw them away or rejected outright the petitions which contained complaints against the administration. Who would then care for us? Not the Jail Committee for there was no fear of its regular visit, nor Mr. Barrie and the Superintendents for they were personally concerned in these matters or the Commissioner who always sided with them. The highest official would step in if only there was such a thing here as riots or an open rebellion. But the local men took very good care that the news should not, at least, officially reach the ears of the highest authority. So the five functionaries of the Silver Jail were the sole masters of the situation and not a word went out from this prison about the real position here. These functionaries disposed of all complaints, petitions and counter-statements without any let or hindrance from the outside world. In case an obvious injustice was found out in that disposal, to make it reach the higher authorities or to ventilate it publicly had become a process more difficult here than in the prisons of India. And the ready means, available to prisoners in India to send news with their brethren on going home after their release, was denied altogether to the outgoing and the in-coming prisoners of this jail. For whoever came here

had to stay on for twenty to twenty-five years. And the least period was never less than ten years. And, then, there was the question of his ever going out alive, for the Andamans was such a wretched place for the prisoner to dwell in, whether inside or outside its prison-walls. How, then, were we to take our complaints to the public place and hang them on the gates of India? Ways and means to do it The political prisoners were thus faced in my time, with the question of making the public known what they were suffering in this place. The only way to keep body and life together and release themselves from the persecution and tyranny of Officers of this jail was to bring the facts to the ears of the highest authorities in India. For the local Officers told us that the kind of treatment meted out to us by them was according to orders from the Government of India, and that they were not to blame for it. Even to ascertain the truth or otherwise of this allegation, it was imperative that India should know about it, that the matter be brought to her notice. When a prisoner was taken to the Andamans, India knew as much of it as she knew about Honolulu. After all it was transportation out of India ! What little was known of these islands by Indians came to us when political prisoners began to be sent there for suffering their term of imprisonment. But the public and the newspaper-world of India had no clear notion of them. And the same was the condition for years together of the Government of India, The annual report to them came in substance to being 'all well in that settlement. And the officials never cared to enquire closely into that business. Perhaps, they thought that, once the political prisoners were deported to that place, they need not further bother about them. With all these circumstances against them, the political prisoners were busy devising means to communicate with the Government of India. For it was with them the question of ' to be or not to be', if not of release from this dungeon of a prison-house. It was all well to confer and conclude, but who will bell the cat and how, that problem still remained. There was among us a prisoner from the U. P. named Hotilal who had been sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. He, in collusion with a friend, offered to bell the cat. The strike of political prisoners and the strife between them and the local authorities which I have described in a former chapter, and the sequel of these happenings had contributed not a little to have a sobering effect upon a few level-headed men among the ordinary prisoners. And out of them some had begun to cherish the wild hope that these editors, professors and barristers would agitate and finally make the Officers bend before them. These also hoped that if they rendered a timely help to the political prisoners now, they would reap its reward by securing for themselves an earlier release from this jail. Mr. Hotilal managed to procure some paper from these hopefuls and wrote out a long letter full of our grievances.

Hotilal's letter This Hotilal had made things very hot for all Officers of the prison from Mr. Barrie downwards during the days of our strike against being put on the 'Kolu.' He was a man from Northern India and spoke Hindi as his mother-tongue. But he had an equal command over Urdu and English. He had travelled all over the world including Russia, China and Japan, and had seen and enjoyed life to the full. He was imprisoned in a solitary cell, apart from all others, as one of the "irreclaimables". A strict watch and ward was kept on his' movements. In that cell, notwithstanding the surveillance upon him, he had written that three-columned article upon us. None knew anything of it except his two or three most trusted friends. One fine morning Mr. Hotilal managed to smuggle out the letter with one of them who was being sent for work outside the prison. Hotilal had put his signature to it and had also put upon it the number of the cell and the chawl in which he was locked up. He contrived to send out that letter despite the strictest watch upon all his actions. He did it in the rush of prisoners going out for their day's work. It went out of the Silver Jail no doubt, but it had yet to cross the barrier of the Andaman Islands, which itself was a big prison settlement. But the letter travelled all the same. It travelled in the envelope of a trusted friend on voyage and reached its post at Calcutta safe and sound. It went into the hands of the famous publicist and leader, no other than Surendranath Bannerji of Calcutta and the editor of The Bengali. In those days of terrorism and Press Act, Mr. Bannerji published it entire in his widely circulated daily, and wrote a leaderette on it. As soon as The Bengali had published the letter, other newspapers had no hesitation in taking shelter behind that paper and writing their own comments upon it. At last, the letter became a subject of questions and replies on the floor of the Imperial Legislative Council. If it was difficult to send out news from the Andamans, it was equally difficult to get the news from India in that place, and still more difficult for it to reach us in our jail. Hence, those who had done the coup were naturally anxious to know if the surreptitious letter had reached its destination or if the friend who took it across had dropped it in the sea, or had delivered it straight into the hands of the Government. While they were so nervous about it, all of a sudden we got the news straight from the horse's mouth, from Mr. Barrie himself ! He played the postman for us in the following manner. Mr. Barrie inflamed One morning, without any apparent reason, Mr. Barrie came to our quarters in uproar and all red with anger. He had gone through all the seven divisions of the prison- house dashing his big stick upon the floor and showering abuse upon every one he met on his way. The warder, the petty officer, the jamadar and the poor prisoner had each his full share of recrimination and abuse. The prisoners were confounded with this sudden outburst of temper. The petty officer could not account for it and all of us were dumb- founded. Mr. Barrie kept on shouting, "You rascals and rogues, I will teach you a lesson

for it that you will never forget. What kind of watch is this? I will pound you all into dust." With all these ejaculations, he would not let us know what had happened. In the Andamans there is a kind of reptile known as centipede. Mr. Barrie's 'dance of death' and fury, his wild gestures and grimaces made the frightened prisoners indulge in the humour that he was so whimming and contorting because he was bitten by that reptile. In the course of his peregrination he came to the cell of Hotilal and shouted out to him to stand up. He rebuked him, "Why don't you stand up? You are the greatest liar in the world." And he went on like this, which others could not explain, but which the wily Hotilal understood well. And he also inferred that the shot that had wounded Mr. Barrie and gave him such a pain was none other than the long letter that he had indited and managed to send abroad. Perhaps, the letter had reached its destination and had been published. And the news of it carried to the Andamans was the cause of his sudden outburst. After wasting hot words on Hotilal, Mr. Barrie issued a fiat that no political prisoner was to come within ten feet of one another and the violation of that order meant a sack for the warder, the petty officer and the jamadar without fear or favour. The prisoners were no longer to come together for dinner. They were to sit apart, one from the other, and none else was to be within the shadow of his body. Issuing these strict orders Mr. Barrie left the place. Those who were in the secret knew the cause of it all, and concluded that the letter had done its work. In a day or two after, we learnt that Mr. Barrie had referred to the letter in his talk to his confidants,—the 'gentlemen' political prisoners who had become his allies. He enquired of them how the letter had gone out and who had taken it. The 'gentlemen' assured us that nothing could be more foolish than that action. And they informed us further that The Bengali, which had published it, was prosecuted for the offence and its press was confiscated on that account. "Mr. Hotilal's folly had cost The Bengali the loss of a press worth from two to three lacs of rupees! And we shall all be liable to severe treatment as the consequence of that blunder. Hotilal will suffer the most for having made false allegations. All of us would also suffer in consequence. What a reckless act it was and how contumacious!" That was what the allies would say to us; it was no better than the echo of what Mr. Barrie was saying to them, sure that it would reache our ears and frighten us.

The Echoes of Mr. Barrie

These renegades and time-servers, however, forgot that the letter in question had exposed the sufferings that they themselves had undergone. And when an opportunity came to them later on, they had not refrained from the 'folly' which they had condemned in other political prisoners. They were playing the double game of propitiating Mr. Barrie with the condemnation of Hotilal and of being ready at the same time to welcome any relief that would come to them by the publication of that letter in the press of India. However, all other political prisoners did not hesitate to congratulate Hotilal on his astute move and his brave action. They did it openly unafraid of any consequences that might follow. They answered the objections of the detractors that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by that step. For already the Officers of the jail were treating

them harshly 'enough. Worse they could not do. And to put an end to that harsh and inhuman treatment the first step was to expose it to the daylight of public criticism. It would mean, for the time being, relentless suffering but the price had to be paid for the object all had in view. And this was no question of any single individual. It concerned and affected the future of political prisoners as a class. Political Prisoners as a Class After the first batch of political prisoners had been transported to the Andamans, and in the conditions obtaining then in India, the political prisoners had almost become an institution in the country, and they were sure to arrive in the Andamans no longer in batches of ten and twenty but in a growing volume of a hundred and a thousand prisoners. The fact was obvious and resistance by the early batches was necessary to relieve the yoke on those who would follow them there. Either they bear the yoke themselves or shall have to resist more fiercely and on a tremendous scale to put an end to the evil. Why not then begin now and face the consequences? Why not make the path of our successors easier? Why not strive and fight to raise the status of political prisoners as a class? I would go further and say to them, while I was there, that the task which had fallen to our lot was much nobler and wider; and that was to improve the condition of prison-life in India as common to all its inmates and to see that we did not merely work to ameliorate it for a class known as political prisoners. Raise the Status of all It was to improve prison-conditions as a whole that we were striving, and, therefore, we must agitate and rouse public opinion by every means at our disposal,— letters, strikes, petitions and stiff resistance, in scorn of consequence to ourselves. Even if we were to fail and reap greater trouble than relief, doing the work as a duty, we must be ever prepared for it. This reasoning produced a desirable effect on the mind of the political prisoners and they openly supported Hotilal's action, that he had done the right thing in sending that letter to Calcutta. All felt within their hearts that he was right, but now by far a large number came out in the open to defend him. The stir and excitement over the letter lasted for two weeks. After the first reaction had passed, Mr. Barrie began to worm out the secret by flattering those who had despatched it. "What can we do? Everything happens here as directed by the Indian Government", so he began excusing himself to me. Once he said, "Look here, that Hotilal of yours has killed the newspaper Bengali; it was for that letter that Government has confiscated its press." I answered, "I do not really understand why it should be so. I am afraid the news is entirely false." "Taking for granted that it is true," I added, "the action of Government should not deter any publicist from printing in his newspaper what he is convinced to be right and fair. Not only one but ten presses, the Government may confiscate, but the price is worth paying if it helps the cause of the political prisoners and relieves them from the kind of harsh and humiliating treatment that is meted out to them in this prison. That was the

only way to improve conditions here. The Government should have taken note of that letter and started proper investigations. If the allegations proved true, then steps should be taken to remove the grievances. If they were proved to be false, being made by Hotilal over his own signature, the authorities should take him severely to task for having made them. How can the confiscating of the press help in such matters?", I concluded. But was the press really confiscated? How was I to know about it? It was very difficult to get any news from India. The political prisoners were always very anxious to get news about their families, of what had happened to their property and their people after they had left India. But they were still more anxious about the news of their country, what was its political condition, and what was the state of the agitation in which they had taken such an active part. How is my Country ! That was what many a political prisoner was anxious to know. The party of revolution was most ascendant in the country when I had left it. In what condition it was now, when political prisoners were all sentenced and sent to jail? Crushed as that party was under the heel of power, it may have gone down. But were other political parties doing something for the emancipation of the country, shielded as they were under the aegis of the ruling power? How were we to know this and other news of the world? What should we do to have it? Whenever one political prisoner met another, the first question that was asked was how the country was faring. If even a single item of news came to them, they felt, for the time being, that there was nothing wrong with them and they kept on discussing the item for the whole day in small groups of two or three. Such was the curiosity of youth which remained unsatisfied here. The political condition of their country made them more restless than their personal grievances. A lover is always keen to get news of his beloved. Our political prisoners were equally keen about the news of their mother country, for they had sacrificed their all in her service. No newspaper could reach him in this prison and no letter; all political news was expunged from such newspapers as were given to him. Hence the only anxiety that ever preyed upon his heart was how to get at the news. The first source was the 'Chalan' And yet they devised means after means and succeeded in getting news, however scanty,, of the outside world. The first source of such news was, of course, the Chalan. Every month the convicts transported to the Andamans landed on its shores to be taken to the Silver jail. It was a gang of 50 prisoners. The importance of the party during the first month of its prison-life was so great that even the petty officers from the warders to the jamadars sought to be in their good books. For every one tried to get some news of his village or town from the prisoner belonging to his own part of the country. Common

language, common native place constituted an affinity between them. He got something to know from the fellow-countryman about his relatives and friends from this common source. To meet a man belonging to our part of the world and speaking the same language begets an attraction for us and affects us like a woman who meets some one coming from her paternal home in a far-off place where she happens to stay with her husband. A man living in a foreign country and on the continent of Europe experiences the same emotion, the welling up of the heart, When he sees there a person who is a native of his own village and country and talks in the same mother-tongue. Here we were banished from India to the Andamans and passing our lives in isolation and prison. No wonder, therefore, that an in-coming party of prisoners should evoke such feeling in the hearts of those who had spent many years there. The slogan indicative of this common bond between us was

my countryman, a man of my native place

This was the title of the new-comer in relation to one older than himself in the experience and the habitation of the Silver Jail. And the title sounded sweet in the ears of the incoming man and was more precious in his eyes than any other title in the Andamans. The title 'Mulkhi' was stretched to signify my countryman when its meaning was a man from one's native place in India. How the linguistic divisions of India were more natural than its territorial divisions, as they obtain today, was brought home to us in this jail more than anywhere outside it. When a Mahar from Maharashtra began to speak Marathi, the heart of a Marathi Brahmin went out to him spontaneously and he felt that the Mahar was his brother and fellowman. The feeling that the latter came from his own province and, perhaps, his native place too, made him give that untouchable of Hindu Society all the help he could in this place. Fellow-feeling and brotherhood got the better, in such a condition, of differences of caste and the taboos that the caste had brought into being. Whenever a new Chalan arrived in this place from India, the old birds here inquired of their kith and kin, but even before that, the political prisoner invariably sought information from the coming party of the political condition of their dear Motherland.

A large number of the party were illiterate and ignorant men and they had the least notion of the political upheaval in India. So that they could give but poor information about it to our political friends. Only when a great political trial was going on, and they happened to be in the court as arrested men for certain other crimes, or when they happened, for the time being, to be locked up in the same prison as the political prisoners, and when something in that connection had casually come to their ears, then alone some persons, in that part, used to give our friends piece-meal information on it in their broken and muddled words. In case an educated prisoner happened to be in that company, it was an effort and a trouble to us to glean information from him. For in whatever division he was locked up, there the political prisoners managed to make their way and contact him or sent him oral messages for such news. They gave him no rest till he had told them something. And how much they had to entreat him earnestly for that news! They would even help him on the sly in his labour of picking oakum, in order to propitiate him for the

news. But even an educated prisoner was not up to the task of picking political news. If he were asked about any political party, its agitation and its power at the time that he had left them, he would fumble for he had no answer to give. He would often end that he had no knowledge of it, and everything was quiet there. And that answer was a damper on the enthusiasm of our sentimental political prisoners. If there was one piece of information that he could definitely give them it was about the arrest of some great political leader or of the immediate arrival of the King-Emperor to India. "The Emperor is coming"; "There was a great show at Delhi"; "A big Lord had been killed"—that was all their definite talk. This news came ready to them, because it had spread like a conflagration throughout India, in all its market-places and thoroughfares. Minus this he could tell nothing about the Indian National Congress, or of the Imperial Legislative Council, of Swadeshi, of the struggle for Swaraj. Of course, I am narrating here experience of my first five years of prison-life in the Andamans. What change came over, will come later on in this book

It is interesting to note here a few stratagems we employed to get information from the Chalan. A few of the political prisoners in India used to meet some of the prisoners bound for the Andamans, and they would pass on letters to them to be conveyed to their friends in the Silver Jail. They knew that the letters would be taken charge of by Officers in that jail. So the trick that they used was to put the letters well-concealed within the pages of an ordinary, innocent book bound specially for that purpose. In the body of the binding the letter was inclosed so that none could detect it. The book happened to be duly delivered to the political prisoner concerned and along with the book went the letter to the proper person.

A letter behind the badge

After a time the stratagem became too patent to be used safely by the emissary abroad. Another was quickly resorted to, and that was to secrete the letter in the badge itself. Every prisoner had to wear a badge with its marked number hanging on his chest as soon as he became the regular convict in a prison. The letter was written on the inner side of the iron-plate which was seldom exposed to view. And thus the news was conveyed safely to its proper quarters. The son of a great Punjabi leader sent me a missive from a prison in the Punjab, where he was serving his seven years' term of imprisonment, by resorting to this trick. The prisoner through whom he had sent me the letter was in the Punjab jail before he was deported to the Andamans. He carried the badge on his person, and though he was searched fifty times and stripped naked to discover anything he might hide on his person, the thing remained undetected until it had reached me. No one suspected the iron-plate as the carrier of that message. The prisoner had taken good care all along the transit that the letter written on the back of the plate was not rubbed off. And he handed the strange missive to me as soon as he was inside the jail. I read the letter and handed him back the iron-plate with all the letters erased from it. Thus the news percolated to us through the prison-walls of the Silver Jail. The Chalan was an invaluable agency for such news. And yet the news was so inadequate, fragmentary and intermittent that none of us was satisfied by it, for it did not inform us fully of what we were most

anxious to know. To satisfy the craving the only way was to have a newspaper sent to us from the outside world. And this was the hardest nut to crack. The time of which I am writing was one when no prisoner could have even the sight of a newspaper in this jail. It was much easier to let an elephant pass through its portals than to let even a scrap of a newspaper in. A prisoner may be pardoned for the former offence but never for the latter. We were content, in these circumstances, if we got at even small pieces of a newspaper properly smuggled in. Some political prisoners had a greed even to draw carriages, in which the Officers drove from place to place, as part of their prison work, with this objective in view. They even carried out carts full of garbage, took them to the Officers' bungalows, that they might load their garbage on these carts and discover in the process old newspaper or its cuttings. They discovered them and concealed them in the planks of the lumber on the carts on their way back to the jail. They used to hide them well in the drain pipes of our building for safe custody. And in their movements during the day they would read them all right. Funny was their experience of such reading. One scrap told them of Edinburgh; another of the cricket-world in England; a third delighted them with a column and half of a vulgar and serial fiction. Some came from wrappings round old shoes, and others from wrappings of clothes sent to a washerman. But these contained no news from India. Whenever we came upon a scrap of the "Times of India" or of a wire from London, we were on the qui vive, but to be disappointed soon after. "Foreign Mail" The newspaper scrappings thus imported into our jail sometimes brought us striking news and without our least expectation of it. One such was Sir Valentine Chirol's article on India and Indian revolutionaries in an issue of the London Times. Another gave us a full report of the Congress presidential address. A third, of which I have the clearest remembrance," was a full one-columned report of the Tuticorin trial. When they got the scrap they handed it over to me with eagerness and attention. That we could procure this piece of news and pass it on safely to all political prisoners made the prisoners realise to the full the utility of drawing these carts full of garbage to and from the prison and they never felt the hardship of months for the gain they had reaped from it. The dumping ground of this foreign mail was the lavatory of Officers' bungalows. It contained scraps from the daily Times stored away for daily use. Or they were thrown there on the floor carelessly after the Officers had read and done with them. The political prisoners bribed the scavenger in charge to collect them and put them in the garbage for carts to carry. And after they had been picked out and stowed away, we read them as we have pointed out above. Sometime 'The Local Mail' kept company with 'The Foreign Mail' for proper delivery to us. The factory attached to our jail wanted nails and other articles for use. They came in the factory, parcels of them, wrapped up in newspapers. The prisoners picked up these wrappings. Whenever they read the word India in them, their curiosity was sure to be roused by it and the scrap passed forthwith to the political prisoner. Often the piece of paper was so full of dirt that it had to be held with blades of straw and picked

up from the garbage. Small chips of coconut shells and cord had to be employed to spread it out for reading. But even then we never failed to read it. We read in such a bit, a portion of Gokhale's last speech on Free and Compulsory Education Bill—the finest portion of it full of despair over the opposition of Government to its enactment. We read also from the same source a report of his having introduced the Bill in the Imperial Legislative Council. How it gladdened our hearts to know of it. The spread of free and compulsory education all over India would dot the whole land with schools that will so richly contribute to the literacy of India. A new mill opened; an old tax removed; a trial going on; a bomb thrown revealing the underground activity of revolutionary societies; a riot breaking out; a new book published; a new poet coming up;—whatever the news conveyed to us in a far-off place like the Andamans, even though it be through such a dirty source, it sent a thrill of joy through our hearts, for we felt that we were linked by it to our dear country and it marked some progress for it. The political prisoner hungered for such news, great and small, pleasant or unpleasant, for it gave us a topic for discussion in that dark, lonely dungeon of the Andamans. Dear India, we, your forsaken children, ever thought of you in the dreariness and rigour of that lonely residence. We were rudely torn from your breast, Mother India, but we never forgot you; and we forgot our personal cares and sorrows in thinking of you and reading about you. In that news we felt your pulse and marked its beats. And we passed our years in this prison forecasting her pains and joys, and experiencing them by the news that filtered down to us through this channel.

Another source of information

In addition to Chalan and The Mail', we established another agency of communication with the outside world. It was to send some of our prisoners detailed for outside work to certain Indians settled in the colony of the Andamans. These gentlemen were full of sympathy for us, but they were not habitual readers of newspapers. Even if they agreed to read them for us, they could not communicate news from it to men whom we sent to them, and these, again, were not so trained in mind as to carry the report faithfully to us. There were very few among them to keep correspondence with us. And even if they had dared it, harder still it was for any one in the prison to convey such letters to us. For those caught in the act were liable to severest punishment. They lost their jobs, and suffered in so many other ways. I had advised them not to do that. Even then a few undertook that risk, imbued with the spirit of patriotism which they had derived from their contact with political prisoners, and through the lectures they had heard. They did it as a part of their duty. This did not happen during the first three years of my life in that prison, and in the beginning we had to beg of them so much to do it for us ! The political prisoners had nothing to give them in return. But they parted even with a portion of their daily bread so that their appetite for news should be partially attended to. They had semi-starved themselves that they might get some news every evening about their dear motherland from the outside world.

Over and above the improvised agencies for getting news of which we have written in the foregoing pages, suddenly we got the news from the authorities themselves. Mr. Barrie himself would blurt it out to us. Others also brought it to us occasionally out of absent-mindedness or because they were overcome with fits of sympathy for us. Mr. Barrie's news was ever bad news—a curse more than a blessing. Whatever to the detriment of India, whatever was damaging to our cause and was bound to fill our hearts with despair or told us about the weakness and disintegration of our past flowed freely from his lips, and he took pains to come over and communicate it gleefully to us. He told it to us and listened to our comments upon it, which he carefully noted in his diary and journal. Even then we were not slow to thank him for whatever he gave us. For a man, worth the name, always likes to hear news unfavourable to one whom he loves, as he loves heartily to hear great, good tidings about him or her. News that is good news brings satisfaction to his soul while bad news makes him ready, body and soul, to run to the rescue of his beloved person. It nerves his arms and fortifies his soul to fight for and save the person from the impending calamity. We shall have occasion as we go on to hear more about this matter. But as a sample of Mr. Barrie's behaviour with us I give the following incident. When Mr. Gokhale, the great patriot of India, had died, Mr. Barrie rushed up to me and said, "Well, Sir, you always want news, Mr. Savarkar; here is something for you, Gokhale is dead!"

Gokhale dead!

He brought this sad and tragic news to me in the evening when I had set down for my meal. The news was so sudden and so unexpected that I could not believe it for a moment. I burst into tears, whereupon Mr. Barrie said, "But was he not against you?” I uttered, "By no means; I have learnt in a College of which he was the head. We had differences but we were not enemies. He was one of the best products of our age, and an undaunted patriot and a sincere servant of India." On this Mr. Barrie went on, "What then of the evidence in your trial of a conspiracy against him? And what of his observation that until you were caught and punished there will be no peace in India?" I answered promptly, "Do not, please, believe in such hear-say reports. It is no use. We had intimate talks with each other and we cherished deep affection and reverence for each other. And this can be borne out by those who were present on the occasion. My way of doing things may not approve itself to him from his own standpoint of service of the country. But that does not detract from his sterling patriotism, and as for revolutionary and secret societies I may say that when he attacked them in a speech or two in England and when some of the members of the Abhinava Bharat Mandal, at a secret meeting, spoke of finishing him off, I stood up and censured them severely for even a thought of doing harm to his body. I condemned it as a reprehensible act to attack any one for honest difference of opinion, and much less a man who was our own in blood and race and whose service to the country was unimpeachable. This would be downright heinous act and an unpardonable sin, and saw that the resolution, that they had put down was thrown out by the meeting. My friends themselves will bear me out in what I am telling you today. If every Indian were as patriotic and as dedicated to the service of India

as Mr. Gokhale, our country would take immense strides forward towards emancipation and all-round progress," Mr. Barrie noted down every word of what I said to him. I saw his notes long after the incident. In those notes he had made one surprising observation which was that 'however different these Maharashtrians appeared on the surface they were at heart one with the other." While I am narrating this episode, I am reminded of a similar utterance of great patriot of India. While I was in England, Hardayal told me much about Tilak- He narrated to me about him the following story. While in India Hardayal once went to Poona to pay a visit to Tilak. And then he paid a similar visit to his rival Gokhale. He had travelled all over India paying visits to the leaders of India in opposite camps. And he had heard from them nothing but abuse and misrepresentation of one another. But Tilak and Gokhale were free from this foible. Each of them tried in his own way to persuade Hardayal to join his own party, but not a word they breathed about each other, to traduce character or misrepresent work. Not a word of malice or vilification escaped their mouth. On the other hand, what they spoke of one another was full of appreciation and reverence. Tilak said, 'Do see Gokhale once." And Gokhale said, "You have done well in seeing Tilak." And he added, "That you have put up with him is as it should be, for the next generation is going to be his." After telling me this story, Hardayal remarked, "The conviction that we are hundred plus five before our common enemy, I find deep-rooted in the heart of the Maharashtrian alone, and it is not so evident anywhere else in India. The Marathas forget their petty jealousies and quarrels in a national cause. Their leaders have learnt the art more than others. And I have experienced the truth of it many times in my life." The political prisoners during the first three years of my stay in this jail had, facing all difficulties and using all possible means, devised a news-service from India to the Andamans, and from the Andamans to India. As time went on and conditions improved, they grew in power and then correspondence with India proved more effective. New means were added on to the old, the details of which we shall narrate as we go on. It was through this new source that we learnt before long that it was Mr. Barrie's invention, pure and simple, that The Bengali was prosecuted for publishing Hotilal's letter and its press was confiscated in consequence. And he had spread the news through his minions to demoralise political prisoners in his charge. A few days after, we procured a cutting from the Paper itself and we learnt that it was the first paper in India to publish the news that I, as a convict in this prison, was put upon the hard work of turning the oil-

mill. The news was, thereafter, published in American Papers. And our workers of the Abhinava Bharat in that part of the world improvised a cartoon and circularised it in the press there, and distributed its copies all over the States. I shall narrate its effect on India when I deal with the story of convicts in the Lahore Conspiracy Case since their arrival in this settlement.

End of Chapter XIII