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

harass me thus throughout the day. These were the worst of their kind and had a free run of all the wards in that prison. They stood for hours together before my room or my chawl, and flung at me their choicest epithets of abuse. And the officers stood nearby to enjoy them, and giggle in laughter. I was no match for them in this contest. And even if I could improvise similar abusive language, it would not heal the bruises on my soul, and it could inflict no pain on them. For such vulgarity was their usual pastime. I had however to bear it with patience. My cause was, however, taken up by the Hindu goondas, and they succeeded in silencing them. For in that jargon of abuse and vulgarism, these had proved their masters. They did not compalin against the Mussulman Goondas, for they knew that Mr. Barrie would not entertain any complaint against them. But one Hindu warder devised a more effective plan to damn them. He secreted in the bedding of a Mussulman warder, knives, tobacco, money and other articles which he was not allowed to keep with him. And one day when the Superintendent came on an inspection tour, he quietly placed the bedding with its contents before him. In consequence the Muslim warder was dismissed from office, discharged from his duty, punished and sent out on hard work outside the prison. There he was caned for some dispute with the Hindu prisoners. They dealt in a similar fashion with other members of the gang with the help of the political prisoners in the jail, catching them somehow upon the hip and beating them at their own game. In course of time the whole gang was completely routed and there was an end to all our troubles. The Muslim goonda infuriated by our Shuddhi movement, had at last come to his senses.

The Shuddhi movement outside the prison

As the political prisoners, trained in the organisation that I have already described in previous pages, went out in increasing numbers in the settlement of the Andamans, they carried with them the torch of Shuddhi to the locality in which they were called upon to do their normal daily Work. And the movement gathered in strength and volume as these mixed and moved among the people. This agitation, all round, deepened the people's love for Hinduism, and their resentment for those who had persecuted the Hindus or tried to convert them to their own faith. The suffering and the awakening contributed greatly to the fusion of the people, and to minimise, if not altogether abolish, the distinctions among them, as Hindus, of province, caste and custom, and to their consolidation in these parts as one society. Let there come news of some one converted, and the whole community of the Hindu primers in that settlement was alive to the need of retaining him;. In this manner even the Hindus who had embraced Islam eight or ten years before I had reached the place, were, by this Shuddhi movement, reconverted to Hinduism. These dined freely with their Hindu brethren and without any objection by the Hindus themselves. I may give here only one instance to point the moral and to adorn the tale. There was an old man of fifty by name Tulshi. This fellow was a veteran in all kinds of vices. He was a first class thief and a first class gambler. Realising that in the Andamans the Mussulman was in power everywhere, and hating the taboos in Hinduism on food and drink, he had embraced Islam. But when he knew by our Shuddhi movement that one did not cease to be a Hindu by food and drink with his fellows of any caste or creed, or religion, and when public opinion of the community