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

The preliminaries of Conversion There are no appointed persons to bring about conversion in jails, nor is there any organisation behind it. Every Muslim is trained from his very childhood to regard the conversion of a Kaffir to his own faith as his sacred duty. He is told that thereby he will be forgiven ail his sins and abide in the heaven of Allah with all its pleasure and ease to be his, from eternity to eternity. This is, in truth, the mainspring of conversion of Hindus to Islam throughout the prison-world of India. The process begins in big cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Lahore and Madras in the gangs of thieves, robbers and dacoits v their own dens to lurk in. The Mussulman gang of criminals do not consider it a sin in the eye of God to raid a Hindu village and to loot and burn the property of a Hindu sowcar. Nay, it is a matter of pride to the gang to have successfully brought off the coup. I have met Maulvis who have condoned these crimes and declared their perpetrators as innocent beings. Those who know anything about this side of human life will bear me out when I say that in places like Bombay, every den of thieves and robbers has its 'Mahant' or high priest to propitiate its tutelary deity. Ostensibly each of these mahants is a decent shop-keeper doing his own particular trade. "Honest, decent and above-board" is his reputation in the ordinary world. Young boys as novitiates are given to work under him. And, in course of time, they turn out clever pick-pockets and cut-purses. Then they are promoted to the job of cat-burglars—those who enter people's houses through windows by climbing over the pipes and by breaking open the doors. Then they are put upon the work of breaking safes, and finally in the highest standard of a highway man, stopping men to stand and deliver, with a knife pointed to their chest. At last they are initiated into the gang itself which plans and executes organised raids and dacoities. It is these street- arabs that often go to jail. The mahant, the leader, the high-priest is ever safe, he never leaves his place and is never taken in. The profession lives and thrives on the continuous recruitment of these lads into the gangs. The Dens of Hindu Thieves In the dens of Hindu Thieves you will find a large number of helpless orphans and vagabonds belonging to many faiths. But these don't dine together, eat together and mix together, for the Hindu religion does not sanction such practice and allows no conversion from one. religion to another. Hence in the dens of Hindu thieves presided over by Hindu mahants, you will find but a sprinkling of Muslim lads. And those who are in it practise the usual trade of thieving, pickpocketing and street-hooliganism. But they are never decoyed from Islam. They retain their faith intact, whatever they do or become otherwise. In case the Hindu lads and the Hindu mahants mess with their Muslim fellows, it is the former that go down and are corrupted. The lads and recruits in Muslim gangs from the fold of Hinduism inevitably catch the faith of their Muslim fellows and mahants and gradually drift into Islam. They learn thieving and other crimes which take them to jail. They commit all sorts of sins from cheating, lying and pilfering to rape, incest and murder. As occasion demands, they assume disguises in which they have to cut their sacred tuft of hair and grow a beard. And if once or twice they are made to eat flesh and