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

The life of Jesus Christ and his Sermon on the Mount had always appealed to me, and I had cherished them both with deep reverence. In France, I had read the New Testament with close attention. I used to read it daily and to meditate upon the text. My verses on Guru Govind Singh had now been finished. Saptarshi was almost drawing to its close. I had not sufficient historical material with me to continue the former and I had no fresh subject in my mind to compose into verse. The life of Jesus Christ suggested itself to me, at this juncture, as a proper theme to weave into a song. The setting for it was furnished me by the history of the Jews which I had studied with interest and appreciation when I was reading the Old Testament, especially in relation with the bitter struggle of the nation and its heroes for emancipation from the thralldom into which it had passed in its unfortunate history. Their helplessness and anguish and their efforts to set the race free had struck a sympathetic chord in my heart at the time........... But why do they not despatch me at once to the Andamans? If a prisoner bound for the Andamans were not sent there within six months from the time that he had begun to run his sentence, the period outside, I had heard, was not to be counted in the sentence itself. Further, I had read in the Andaman Regulations that within six months from the time he had spent in the Andaman jail, the prisoner was set free on the island itself to do the work he liked, and if he knew the three ‘R’s, he was given work to supervise over a batch of hundred prisoners, or some similar light and lucrative job to follow it. If there was any truth in what I had heard and read on the subject, then life there was anyway better than life I was leading here. At least in the Andamans, under those conditions, I could sit on the sea-beach and watch the waves rolling at my feet. I could inhale draughts of fresh air; I could mingle in the crowd, and make contacts with the people. I could then do some work for enlightening the people and be of use to them in several other ways. Ten years more, and I could take my family there and set up a house for myself. Life for me would not then be so hard to endure. In this vein of thought, I suddenly remembered those who had suffered for me and had been sentenced for ten or fifteen years of hard labour. What of them? I thought. Are they dot doomed to spend their lives in dark cells? Some of them were my friends from childhood; others my trusted colleagues; others, again, were my staunch followers. Most of them looked up to me, loved me and adored me. And I could do nothing for them or for their bereaved families! These calamities had befallen them on my account; they had suffered for me. Right or wrong, they had a clear grievance against me. Out of many such, I recalled those who had old parents to look after. Fate had taken from these parents the staff of their lives. For two out of them and their parents again, I felt deeply grieved. And last, what of that friend of mine, a hero indeed, who had suffered hardships that one could not bear narrating? He had not breathed a word of reproach against me for all that he had endured so bravely. And those young men, again, - O, it made my heart too full, to remember them all. What were my sorrows, what were my trials compared to these? I must forget mine in theirs. Again, the mind would recoil from these musings. Have I lingered behind? It would ask me. Have I not borne the brunt and faced the music? Why then should I brood over the inevitable and be lost in grief? My work was their work. And we must be all burden-bearers and burden- sharers. And the worst to bear was yet to come. It was but the beginning... The end? Who knows of it, and who dared forecast it?