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

CHAPTER IV (1914-1918) Political prisoners again flood the Andamans ! While these manoeuverings of the German submarine in the waters of the Andamans were in progress to attack the islands, I happened to receive a press-cutting from a friend which contained the heading "Mutiny at Meerut". This cutting was thrown into my cell by a political prisoner employed as a writer in the office below. About the month of May last, a plot was discovered in India to start a revolution with an army at Meerut rising in mutiny against the Government. Several arrests were made. Some were tried and sent to the gallows. As I read the headline, a thrill went through my heart and all over the body. In 1857, in the same town of Meerut, and about the month of May, Indian regiments had broken into open revolt against their masters. That also was a spark of fire thrown up from the furnace of revolution that was preparing all over the country. What was to be the end of this recent mutiny at Meerut, I wondered. Was it a spark of a general revolution? If it were confined to Meerut alone, the Government would not make such a mountain of it; it would not so broadcast it all over the country. What a difference it indicated, all the same, between India ten years ago and India now ! Discontents, petitions, appeals, protests, censures, conspiracies, and riots, action and reaction, revolvers, bombs, fights, and the revolt of an army—the widespread rumours about it ! What a change had the whirligig of time introduced in India in these ten years! Since the War of Independence in 1857, the word mutiny had been expunged from the political vocabulary of India. The idea had faded out of her political sky. In the conflagration of the European War of 1914, it had risen phoenix-like to inflame that sky, and the daring of the people had risen to its highest point in that thermometer. On that day and during the week, the mutiny at Meerut had become the absorbing topic of discussion for all of us in that prison. Then came in its wake the news of conspiracy and revolt in Lahore and Punjab. Within a few days thereafter, the soldiers who had refused to go t>n the front and regiments of them, were being deported as prisoners to the Andamans; and we had first-hand proof of the agitation going on in India.