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

Our last strike had ended in the beginning of 1914. And, thereafter, we alone, some few on transportation for life, were detained here while all other political prisoners were sent back to India. Of that I have already written. But in the turmoil and confusion of this war, who was to follow that rule? All politicals convicted for conspiracies and revolutionary movements on the eve of the Great War were being sent for incarceration, batch after batch, to this jail, and this change had become convenient for us to secure the latest reliable news of agitation all over the country, and of war in Europe.

The German submarines had, for some time, blocked the passage in the seas of the Andamans. They had captured and detained one or two merchant ships during the period; as such there was no communication by sea between India and the Andamans, and no prisoners from India could be sent to the prison in the Andamans. When these submarines were destroyed by the warships of Japan, Russia and Great Britain, the sea became a safe passage for traffic between India and the Andamans and the system of sending Chalans from India to these islands was resumed as before.

And one day we found a party of political prisoners entering the Silver Jail. This was the first batch of convicts in the Lahore Conspiracy Case and consisted, for the most part, of Sikhs involved in the 'Gadar' trial.

On seeing them, I exclaimed, forgetting for a while their pitiable condition in the jail, "Behold these Sikhs, they have come here at last as I had predicted."

When I was taking a leading part in the Indian revolutionary activities in England, I had a discussion one day with my Sikh colleague, Sirdar Harnam Singh, on the subject of national awakening among the Sikhs in India. There were at that time many Sikh students taking their education in England. Punjab being the centre of recruitment for the Indian army, it was easy for these young students on their return to India to spread the cult of nationalism from hut to hut, and village to village throughout the Sikh Community in the Punjab. I told my friend how to do it and drew up a scheme far that purpose. I emphasised the need of such work as I regarded the Sikhs as part of the Hindu community as a whole. My friend, Sirdar Harnam Singh, seemed to have no hopes about it. He said that the Sikhs as a community were extremely clannish, they had no vision and interest beyond their particular habitations in the Punjab. They had no national outlook, and he doubted very much if they could ever be persuaded to think and feel as nationalists. Their religious fervour on behalf of the Panth and the Sangha was a great obstacle to their being converted to the view that they were Indians, and they were one politically with the Hindus of India. I said to my friend, then, "Look here, you are a Sikh, you come from a Sirdar family of moderate views in politics. You take your education in England and you have become one of us, a nationalist, a revolutionary like myself, and ready to sacrifice everything for your country. If a Sikh like you can in such a short time be this, why not all other Sikhs? I have studied the history of the Sikhs closely and I know what type of men you are. If you agree to work up the scheme, I have outlined for