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

Mukunda The entire aspect of the war had begun to change by this time. The advance of Germany had come to a stand still and her former strength was showing clear signs of decline and breakdown. Correspondingly our hopes had also sunk low. The bubbling point had already spent itself and coldness had already begun to invade us. Even the late arrivals among us had some blind believers in the slogan : "Tomorrow we clear off, we quit this place." That the rule of Great Britain over India was bound to collapse in a week or two was the faith of them all; in one man alone I found a singular exception to the general rule. The prisoner was an old Maratha, Mukunda by name. He was a man of firm will and steady nerve. He told them positively that British Rule in India was not going to disappear that way. He was a fighter; he was full of daring; he had made three attempts to escape from the Andamans. He had already served his ten years in the prison, and had effected his escape. But he killed the man who was responsible for his first sentence and imprisonment, and was sentenced to transportation for life for the second offence. He again escaped from the prison. He was wandering all alone in a boat for one long month, and was caught just when the boat had touched Madras. Foiled in this way, he had lost all hope of release, and as the other prisoners had been elated with hope, Mukunda was depressed by defeat. Whenever any one said in his presence that Britain was bound to lose in this war, Mukunda went at him with fury, "I have seen three successive wars, and I have heard fifty times that there was no hope for Britain to win the war. But all that had proved a vain hope; all shame. Britain will never lose. He who says so is a liar." Not that he asserted this out of love for England or Englishmen. He had arranged a plot to avenge himself upon an Englishman. He was caught attempting on the life of the Chief Commissioner himself. A tragedy happened in this prison during the strike which must find a place in these pages. A Punjabi Brahmin, Ramraksha by name, happened to be involved in a conspiracy to spread sedition in the army and bring about ;m armed revolution in Siam and Rangoon. The man had travelled far and wide in China and Japan before reaching Rangoon and Siam. He was tried and convicted for the offence and had undergone great hardship in those countries. When he stepped as a prisoner in the jail of the Andamans, he was asked, according to the prison rules, to surrender his sacred thread, which he would not do. Being a widely-travelled man, he was not orthodox in his views. But a Brahmin to be asked to do away with his sacred thread was, in his eyes, a sacrilege; and, on no account, was he going to put up with it. It was to him the symbol of his religion and he was not going to destroy it. He, therefore, straightaway refused to obey that order. It was to be noted here that the officers did not trifle with the sentiment of the Mussulman in this respect, though they did not scruple to trample under foot a similar demand by a Hindu prisoner. They tore off the thread from the body of that Hindu prisoner. To protest against this outrage on his religious sentiment, the Brahmin at once went on hunger-strike. He said that so long as he had not the sacred thread on his person he would not touch his food. Ramraksha not only said this but affirmed it as a solemn vow. Food and water, he gave them up both in fulfilment of that vow. Without a particle of food or a drop of water he lay in his cell for days together. After a fortnight they tried