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

to realise after the Malabar riots. We must not now, for our very existence and preservation, refrain from playing the "childish game" of pulling out a convert's beard, and making him wear a tuft of hair instead. We must change his Christian or Muslim name into a Hindu name; we must give him a Tulsi leaf to eat and we must declare that he is purified and accepted back into his own faith. Our leaders must play the game as the Christian and the Muslim leaders have played it in the past and are playing it today. We must admit these sinful men in our society not for themselves but for their progeny which, otherwise, will be lost to it. It is first, our social duty, and it is a religious duty as well. Who knows that a Valmiki may not be born to any one of these Hindu robbers, dacoits and highwaymen? You denounce and disown them today as being more holy, more pious Hindus than they are. This is a pride and self-righteousness highly injurious to the future of Hinduism and Hindu culture. A pirate robber and highwayman wrote the Ramayan which is the admiration of the world. Let, therefore, a Hindu however depressed, criminal and abandoned in character he may be, repeat the name of Ram, however wrongly he may utter it to start with. Make it worth his while to do it. Do not shun him, do not revile him, do not turn him out. Treat him as your own brother, make him love his religion. Then he will recite that holy name properly, and it is sure to be good for him. Inspired by this conviction, I taught the Hindu prisoners of our jail, and chiefly its political prisoners, to rescue the worst of Hindu prisoners from the grip of Islam, to save them from the coercion and blandishments of their Pathan jamadars. For six or seven years these thoughts were passing in my mind and these words were dancing on my lips. In 1913, that is a year and a half or two years after my coming to the Andamans, the first complaint was lodged by me against a forcible conversion in our jail. This was the first resistance I offered. I carried on the campaign of resistance and Shuddhi which began in that year to the end of 1921-22, that is till the day I was transferred to a prison in Hindusthan. My friends, the political prisoners, and my friends, the ordinary prisoners, gave me considerable co-operation in that work, and gave the moment, the impetus, and the drive it had received. I did not give up even when I was a prisoner in India. For that, attempts were made on my life by Pathan Goondas from time to time. There were riots on that account in that jail itself. My brother was actually injured in such a strife. But we never gave up the movement. The movement went on and one appreciable result of it was that forcible conversion in the Andamans had become a thing of the past, and the reconversion of the forcibly converted by Shuddhi became an established fact. Shuddhi in the Andamans The usual way of conversion in the Silver Jail of the Andamans was as follows:- As soon as the Chalan came in that prison or whenever, later on, a suitable opportunity was found for the purpose, the young and the simple-minded lads out of Hindu prisoners were taken in charge by the head of the Mussulman warders and