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

break bread with their Mohomedan companions, they are stamped as Muslims and swear by Muslim names. In order to cheat the Police in their track, they circumcise themselves and throw off their sacred thread. Once this change is achieved, they remain Muslims for ever. Besides, in their own homes as Hindus, they are brought up to regard the slightest departure from these conventions as utter ruin of faith. In this way hundreds of Hindu lads and young men are becoming Muslims in the haunts of thieves and criminals in the city of Bombay. Their castes, if they learn of their breaking bread and eating meat with Muslims, excommunicate them. And the Moulvi-Mahant is ever ready to receive them with open arms into the fold of Islam. He tells them, "My friend, you are already a Mussulman, now do nimaz, get circumcised, you will have a fine girl for a wife, and I shall make you happy." As the mahant has on his record these vagabond lads, he has also at his disposal a large number of girls who are as reckless as the boys. Thus, step by step, the vagabond thief climbs into Mohomedanism, and is lost for good to the Hindu religion. . The way and the path is not only familiar to the Moulvi-mahant at the top, but also to his henchmen in the craft. And these often lure the Hindu lads into that way. The source of it all from top to bottom is the fanatical belief that to turn a Kafir into a Mussulman is absolution from all sins and the surest gateway to heaven. Those who are saved from the dens in this city, are converted to Islam in the ' prison that follows them. The Muslim warders and jamadars are adept in this art and other Mohomedan prisoners help in the process. The former do it openly with all the weapons of offence and defence available to them. Others proceed indirectly and tempt them into ways from which there is no going back. If this is the situation in India, what can you say of the Andamans? There the warders, the petty officers, and the jamadars are double-distilled rascals and bigoted Mussulmans—the tribe of Pathans, Baluchis, Panjabis and Sindhees. The political prisoners, of all others, suffer most at their hands, because the bulk of them are Hindus. These officers subject them to the hardest labour, threaten them with the severest punishment and lodge false complaints against them. They thus make their lives a hell for them, and out-and-out tell them to become Mussulmans to escape from these throes. The young, the ignorant and the helpless easily succumb to them. How this is being practised I have already indicated in the first part of this book. As I began noticing this, I felt an urge within me to put an end to it. Every week or fortnight I had seen one Hindu prisoner at dinner sitting in the rank of his Mohomedan fellows. It was impossible for me to witness the scene. But I was only a prisoner here; what could I do to save them? I tried hard to infuriate the Hindu prisoners against this act of sacrilege. But one and all of them I found so callous. Each one of them used to say, "What is it to me?", and "What do I care?" The opposition begins