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

jamadars, the notorious Mirza Khan, and at once put on hard labour. The Mussalman warder or petty officer, in their immediate charge, lost no time in browbeating and thrashing them on the one hand, and in offering them baits on the other in order to force them into Islam. He would give them, with that end in view, tobacco to chew and sweetmeats to eat. On such an occasion, he treated these gullible lads with extreme kindness. When these boys were beaten and worked to the point of crying, he would openly advise them to become Muslims and all their troubles would be over. Gradually these new victims were caught in his net, and at last the ceremony of conversion came to be completed, by making them openly abandon their seats for meal among the Hindu prisoners and go into the rank of Muslim prisoners. They were then served Mohomedan food so that there was no more chance left open for them to rejoin their Hindu friends. The Hindu and the Mohomedan kitchens were kept separate in this jail and the cooks were Hindus or Mohomedans according to the kitchen they looked after. Once the Hindu lads were discovered dining with the Mohomedans, they were sure to be banned by the Hindus. This was, therefore, an effective mode and final stroke of absorbing them in the Islamic faith. They were at once baptised with Muslim names. If any one called them by their former names, Mirza Khan would growl at them, and his myrmidons would threaten them with severe punishment. "He is now a Mussulman" -they would say, "and you must call him by his new name, beware." This was all the ceremony through which these poor lads were made to pass to be the followers of the new faith. No circumcision, no recital of the Koran, no Nimaz, was necessary in their case. Tobacco was their circumcision, hard labour their Koran, and dining with Muslims was their Nimaz. The Hindu prisoners, themselves, against Shuddhi Generally these were the means employed to convert them. Some of them were, later on, circumcised. When they passed from the prison, they registered their names as Mussulmans. None of the officers cared to enquire how they had happened to change their names. None asked them if they were converted by force and bribes or were converts through the intelligent study of the Koran. When they went out to settle in the colony, the officers to watch them were also Mussulmans. The officers outside converted the Hindus by pursuing similar methods. And if, fortunately enough, they happened to be thrown into the company of Hindus and showed their desire to cast off their borrowed feathers, it was the Hindus themselves who threw the greatest obstacles in their way. If they tried to mix among them they shouted at them as polluted beings, and reminded them that they had lost their caste by dining with Mohammedans. And they at once turned them out as untouchables. I have seen that a convert Muslim takes on his own Hindu name and sits for his meal among his former coreligionists, whereas he is driven out by the Hindus with a hue and cry much worse than the Mussulmans would have raised against him. They make him sit down with the Mussulmans, at any cost. And this made the task of Mirza Khan much easier to accomplish. He had only to put a Hindu prisoner into a tight corner; he had to make him dine with a Mussulman, and all was done. He need not then keep the new convert under his eye; he need no more give him a pinch of tobacco; he need not make him do the Nimaz. For the rest was done by the Hindus themselves to keep the convert safe under his paw. Only one day he had to do his