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

Nani Gopal was spared the ordeal made us all happy, but he himself felt bitterly disappointed. For he was determined to bear the caning and hold out to the end. He was flush with it and now it had all gone. His courage extorted the admiration of his enemies. He was taken out of our midst and far away, perhaps with the belief that they would be able to tame him down in the new prison. Soon they discovered how mistaken they were in this belief. For, in that new place he at once went on hunger strike. When Nani Gopal was among us, we had all along tried our best to dissuade him from that step. For three days he went in that prison without a particle of food. But none paid the slightest attention to him. He did not eat and he did not speak. He lay on the ground without food and water. He was brought back to the Silver Jail, but he would not give up. Some five or six days it had continued like this, when they forced the food into him through a tube, as was allowed by the regulations of the prison. He was made to inhale milk through the nose. While this was going on in the prison itself, something happened outside that fell upon us like a bomb-shell. The political prisoners detailed for outside work went about from district to district and established contact with those who had become free and set up a house for themselves over the entire settlement. This was strictly for-bidden by law, though all prisoners without exception fully availed themselves of the opportunity of work outside to move freely among the people in the locality where they worked. The political prisoners were specially interested in the spread of Swadeshi among those with whom they came in contact and to get from them bits of news which they would communicate to us inside the prison. There were in the settlement families of former prisoners of the Silver Jail. The. new generation among them were free citizens and as such got reports of happenings in India without let or hindrance. We spread through them, by poems and articles, the spirit of Swadeshi all over the settlement. The articles sent out by us through this agency assumed the form of a circulating newspaper, and it helped to build up the influence of political prisoners in the world around them. The news of this spreading influence was carried to the ears of the authorities in an exaggerated manner, so that, before long, it was interpreted by them as a regular conspiracy. By this time, the letters surreptitiously passed from here to India about the suicide of Indu Bhushan and the insanity of Ullas, had gone to their proper quarters. And they found their place and publicity in the newspaper world of India. This fact and the knowledge of it in the jail itself created a flutter in the official dovecotes. Even the most commonplace news was to us, prisoners of the Andamans, good tidings of great joy. A question about us in the Legislative Council gave us the strength and the hope to bear it all with patience here for a month following. For, we had begun to think of ourselves as the neglected ones of the earth, whom any one could trample under foot with impunity; it had filled us with dark despair about our life. This news came as a ray of hope to illumine that darkness. And hope revived and with it courage, when we realised that our sufferings were not all in