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

rigour towards me was even greater, for they knew that the the newcomers would look up to me with reverence and affection, and, therefore, they must keep me isolated from them as lay in their power to do. Mr. Barrie took the lead in the matter. And when he found that he had failed, he set his henchmen—our political renegades—to do that dirty work for him. He and they left no opportunity to damn me in their eyes; he left no stone unturned to destroy their faith in me, and to divide them from me by poisoning their minds about me. That continued till the end of the chapter, and he chafed that he could not succeed. He used to tell all the prisoners, "Do not run after Savarkar; you will unnecessarily incur the wrath of your superiors by depending upon him. He is a clever fellow and a shirker; do please listen to me. I shall give you all the comforts you need here, I will make your life easy. And if you don't believe me, ask these fellows, they are also political prisoners, they will convince you of my good faith. How very modest and gentlemanly they are. I have given them responsible offices in this jail, while your Savarkar still rots in his cell picking oakum." While Mr. Barrie went on talking in this vein to the prisoners he reported about me to his superiors in the following terms. He said, "This man is, indeed, the source of all our troubles. He praises Germany; he gives news to the prisoners about the reverses of England; he incites them to plots and conspiracies; he dares not take the lead himself for he is afraid of his own skin; he fears punishment, but he is behind the scene, all the time. He will inflame the Sikhs against us counting upon their respect for him. Nothing that I may do will diminish his hold upon all the political prisoners here. He is, indeed, a dare devil." He had a motive in thus misrepresenting me to them as an irreclaimable and confirmed revolutionary. For then, it was easy for him to saddle me with every disturbance in the jail, and show himself as an innocent being to his masters. "This was due to the instigation of Mr. Savarkar," was always the burden of his song. Though Mr. Barrie considered himself a wily fellow and an expert in the art of lying, he was, indeed, a shallow-minded officer and a fool. When he tried the same arts of deception upon us, political prisoners, that he had tried upon others, it made me simply laugh at his self-delusion. Once it came into his head to show me but a portion of what he had written about me to his superiors. He wanted thereby to cow me down, and make me give up the leadership of the party I had built up in the prison. With this object in view one day he sent for me in his office. He started with praising me lavishly for my intelligence and scholarship, and for my fearlessness in public life. And the same Mr. Barrie had been representing me to my friends as a shirker. Then he began reproving me for the misuse I was making of these high qualities. He, then, pretended that he had all good wishes for me and yet was bound to report against me as he had reported. If I were to see these reports, he added, I would wake up in time and mend my ways. He was showing those reports to me against all prison regulations, because, indeed, he loved me, he concluded. And then Mr. Barrie took out his diary, and read to me a portion of it from day to day. What I have quoted above are the sentences from his daily diary as I could recall them. I must state here that every petition that I had sent from here to the Government of India, bore Mr. Barrie's inevitable comment that "it was all a lie and that Savarkar was not a man to be won over by any facilities or concessions that Government might grant him. He was not to be intimidated either by the severest punishment it might