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

friends for return to their own religion and to their own names as Hindus. Much less did they fear for it the displeasure or anger of the officials concerned. The change in these circumstances compelled the Muslim converts to look up their original names and caste in the prisoners' register. I had also to search up in the register the real names of those boy-prisoners who had been reported in their personal tickets, without any let or hindrance, as belonging to Muslim faith. I had noted the Mussulman clerk of the jail writing out tickets under such false names and religion. I, therefore, decided to scan the entire register of prisoners in the Andamans and prepare the census of Hindus among them. I had to search up for that purpose all the papers giving a full and faithful record of these prisoners, such papers as they had particularly brought with them from their respective prisons in India for purposes of entry into the Island and the prison of the Andamans. For then alone I could make out who were Hindus and who were Mussulmans, and who had been turned into Mussulmans by conversion and who were again reconverted from Islam to Hindu faith. I could trace those who were passed off as Muslims on false tickets issued to them by the clever Munshi of that jail. But how and where and from whom I was to procure these papers dating back, in many cases, to several years?

A Golden Opportunity

Fortunately enough, chance favoured me miraculously in my projected work. In the last census of the Andamans, following the census in India, the bulk of the work was done through the prisoners themselves. And many of these men happened to be my trusted friends. In that census the authorities had entrusted to me the task of preparing the whole record and allowed me to sit in the office for that work. That story I shall narrate in its own place later on, I make a mention of it here in connection with the Shuddhi movement. The last census in India was taken during the days of the acute differences among the Hindus in all parts of the country. And the Andamans were not without its repercussions of those differences. When we began the census work in the Andamans, it was my ambition to make it an accurate and full record of its population according to caste, creed, race and colour. I had made up my mind to remove from it all the discrepancies and errors of the past, and all the misrepresentations in it about conversion and reconversion. I wanted to give a true and complete picture in that census of the existing Hindu population in the settlement of the Andamans. I and my coworkers on that task sent messages to that effect throughout the districts of the settlement. The most important part of the work had to be done in our own office. The census-forms, properly filled in, had to come to this central place. We had to compare them with the corresponding original records of all the prisoners in that island. We had to check them as regards name, village, religion, and caste from their original warrants kept in the jail-