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

informed me to catch them in the act, and then he would certainly resist it, and bring them severely to book for it. The Superintendent left, and Mr. Barrie and Mirza Khan were very much angered. For in my conversation with him I had to expose many of their machinations. To ask me to catch them in the act was, in Mr. Barrie's opinion, an encroachment upon his rights and the violation of his orders. Among the Mohomedan prisoners every one was gnashing his teeth at me. For to them Hindus were a negligible quantity. And the complaint was against their so-called individual privilege of a Mussulman to convert a Hindu. They had never heard such a thing in their lives. Barrie decided to teach me a lesson and ordered Mirza Khan and the angry Mussulman warders to tutor the boy to declare that he was embracing. Islam of his own accord. Next day he was brought to our block, though his cell was in another block, and Mirza Khan gave him food along with the Muslim prisoners in our block. He went away after showering indecent abuse upon me without uttering my name. The Hindu lad was for the whole day called by his Muslim name. This was done to humiliate me by showing how helpless I was before them. I had, of course, to quietly pocket that insult. Next morning a Mussulman warder was giving two or three annas worth of tobacco to the Brahmin boy when I saw him; and I drew the attention of the Hindu warder to that act. He went down on his knees before me and requested that he should be spared the step of catching the Mussulman warder in the act of •bribery, as that would mean Mirza Khan's grudge against him. I then raised a cry and gathered together a number of persons, and, sending for the petty officer, asked him to search the boy himself. If the petty officer desisted, I warned him, I would take the matter to the Superintendent. He had to search the boy, when he found on his person the quantity of tobacco palmed off to him by the petty Mussulman warder. All this noise brought Mirza Khan on the spot. He questioned the lad as to who had offered tobacco to him, and he gave him the name of that warder. Mirza Khan kept me in the lock-up and took the boy to Mr. Barrie for further disposal. On fuller enquiry into the matter I found that nothing had happened. I asked Mr. Barrie about it in the evening when he replied that he was the man to do anything that was to be done in that business, and I had no right to interfere in it. He added that I was only a prisoner like the rest of them, and could only say anything about myself; and, that, if I were to dabble in matters that did not personally affect me, I was liable to punishment for such interference. Two days after, the Superintendent came on his usual rounds, when I called out to him with the usual cry— "A petition please." The Superintendent was a man who used to be put out by any complaint lodged to him on any other day than he had fixed for it during the week. He at once went at me furiously, saying that I had no business to speak about others, and that I should speak only for myself. I answered straight to him: I am bent upon submitting the petition for the boy, do what you will with it. The political prisoners are reported to you by the ordinary warders on the charge of merely speaking to one another. Their notes are intercepted by them without any let or hindrance; as such I had the right to complain to you on a matter which I regard as the most serious, namely, bribing a boy in order to convert him from one faith to another." These hot words of mine had their effect on the Superintendent whose duty it was to listen to every complaint we made to him. He came up to the door of my room, and asked me what the matter was, I said to him, "I caught the Mussulman warder giving tobacco to the Brahmin lad. I had a search made upon his