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

Resolved to go out at any cost As soon as I had completed my one year in the Silver Jail, I began sending petition after petition to be sent out for work. During one year and a half, I had the misfortune to be caught by Mr. Barrie and appear twice before the Magistrate on charges framed by him against me. First, on having written an anonymous letter to a person outside the prison for some news and press-cuttings from him. Unfortunately, the man to whom I had entrusted the letter happened to be Mr. Barrie's spy upon my move- ments and the letter went straight to him. I had not mentioned the name of the man to whom the letter was to be delivered. A certain man would meet him at a certain place to whom the letter was to be given. That was the direction I had given to Mr. Barrie's man. Hence that man's name could not come out in the trial. But I was punished for it by one month's solitary confinement. The next occasion for coming into Mr. Barrie's clutches was the first strike. I had discussed in a letter how the strike was to be organised and carried on, and I was about to circulate it among the political prisoners. On a sudden my room was searched. The Officers had just stepped in when I threw the letter away. Somebody got hold of it and handed it over to the authorities. It was written in Modi script and the Officers could not ascertain who was its writer. Mr. Barrie got it read by one of his confidents. But the political prisoner dared not depose before me, when the case was on, that it was written by me. For he feared his other friends in the prison. Whereupon Mr. Barrie got his Bengali clerk to declare that the letter was written in Bengali, and to read it out before the Superintendent. But a friend on our side gave evidence to prove that the letter was not written in Bengali. "Damn me", said he, "if a single Bengali alphabet appears in that letter." The Superintendent was non-plussed, but Mr. Barrie held his own, and shouted, "Oh, Sir, these political prisoners have conspired not to give true evidence." At last the clerk's word was accepted as truth and I was sentenced to be manacled for a week. While so manacled I appealed to the Chief Commissioner that he should make a thorough investigation and decide if the letter, put In evidence, was written in Bengali or Modi. The complaint was against false evidence about the letter in question. It did not matter to me if the sentence passed upon me was not annulled. The Commissioner replied that the letter contained not a single word in Bengali. The clerk had deposed otherwise and had read the letter clearly and boldly in the Bengali script and had interpreted it to mean that I had advised the prisoners to go on hunger-strike. The Superintendent, when he knew of the report of the Commissioner upon the letter, was simply in a rage. He sent for the clerk and asked Mr. Barrie to go out. He threatened the clerk with punishment if he were not to tell the whole truth. The clerk was terribly frightened and blurted out, "Sir, I am only a prisoner; I have to do what Mr. Barrie orders me to do; I swore that the letter was in Bengali and I drew upon my wit to read its contents as if it was a Bengali script. It is not so, but I read what I was made to repeat in original Bengali. It was all under Mr. Barrie's instruction that I did it." The