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

for that work as before. They had gone on strike as their last recourse against the tyranny of their prison-life. I asked the officers why a thing that was just in their case should not be so in mine. The only answer they could give me was the remark of the Chief Commissioner that "my previous history in India had prevented them from doing so." I answered to it that there were others like me involved in that history and sentenced to life-imprisonment for the same offence; but they had got the relief which was being denied to me. The previous record of that jail was that a prisoner was set free to go out and work on the settlement without regard to his previous history, if in the prison itself he had done nothing to violate its regulations. Besides, there were instances in that record of those who had been granted the concession in spite of the fact that they were prisoners on two to three years' sentence and were clapped in this jail for the offence of breaking open and escaping from prisons in India. Invariably the reply was that the Government of India had ordered not to give me that relief. How long and for how many years was this ban to continue in my case? That they could not say definitely I, therefore, decided to appeal directly to the Government of India.

They would not let me appeal

I was, therefore, in a fix. My brother was in the prison much earlier than I came in. But even he was not being let out though he had been long assured of the concession. While discussing and arguing in this fashion, the Superintendent of the jail said to me, "Your protests are no doubt unanswerable, but, there is no doubt, it is you who encourage the strike." To it my answer was, "But those who were actually in the strike have already been sent out. Why do you then come in the way of one who, like me, has only approved of the strike? Is my offence really graver than theirs? Is it not against all laws of the British Code? Just consider why I had not encouraged strike so far, or if I had done it, why did not my friends approve of it before? Why should there have been a strike at the moment when it happened? Did I encourage Indu Bhushan to hang himself? Did I teach Ullaskar to go mad? It is not I but the regulations of this jail, its hard physical labour, its mental agonies, its insults, and its whole system that are to be held responsible for the strike." This way of reasoning convinced the Superintendent as also Mr. Barrie. Their stock answer was, "We are helpless; everything rested with the Government of India. It is their orders which have compelled us to keep you in this prison." While I was fighting out my case, a new episode occurred and matters were carried to extremes. Among those political prisoners, who had held out to the last in the last strike, there was a Bengali youth sixteen or seventeen years old. He was a Brahmin lad from a respectable family. His name was

Nani Gopal

Nani Gopal was sentenced to fourteen years' rigorous imprisonment for throwing a bomb on the running motor of a high police officer in Bengal. He was a lad of sixteen and in spite of prison-regulations to the contrary, he was put on the hard labour of the oil-