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

taking food. And I compelled him personally to break the fast. But the chord that was snapped could not be made whole again. The excitement had gone to his head, his brain was affected by it and within a month he became entirely mad. He was then removed to the mental hospital where he lingered for a year. It is said that he had recovered from the malady. But here is what we read in what was published after his death. It is from a message that he had sent to his relatives. "Do not think that my soul is fast asleep in heaven. If my love for the country is passionate and sincere, I shall take birth immediately and return to my country to serve her. Be sure of it." Poor Jotish, they say he was sane at the time of his death. But if he is the real writer of this message, then I cannot say of him that he was sane, or that the madness had been but a temporary phase of his life. Lala Ramcharandas One more instance of a fine, generous-hearted man, a staunch supporter of Hindu Sanghatan, and a Panjabi political prisoner, who was similarly caught in the jaws of death and had suffered in jail from consumption and insanity. This man had developed sleeplessness as the result of shattered nerves, and continuous headache, along with many other political prisoners at that time. I received a note from him in the hospital in which he had written to me that he was tired of life, that, in the circumstances he had described to me, he had no other alternative than committing suicide. I dissuaded him, for the time being, from that reckless act, by pointing out to him that it was our duty to serve our country by our suffering and we must live for it. My friend was spared to me by this effort, and within two years he recovered his health and began to move about and to do light work. As if to give us, the political revolutionaries, one more blow during the desperate condition of our life in this period, the superior officers sent me a letter to read, written by Lala Har Dayal. Those who would formerly inflict upon us the punishment of a week's detention in handcuffs for finding even a scrap of paper on our person, gave us matter to read which they felt would be bad news for us. After the great war Lala Har Dayal had written to the daily press that the revolutionaries of India should be let alone and she should co-operate with England and strive to attain swaraj under her aegis, and that he had been convinced that India could attain the goal only by that means. Mr. Barrie called me and my friends and gave me that newspaper-cutting to read. And he asked what I thought of it. I said, "I know that Lala Har Dayal is a sincere man; and I believe that what he had written is an honest expression of his opinion." I returned to my place in the hospital adding that I would say nothing more on it. In our next meeting I had taken that letter as a subject for discussion with our political friends. I told my friends the whole story of Har Dayal's life and the many phases through which it had passed. It was the habit of his mind to be depressed for the time being by any adverse situation he had to pass through, and what he said at the time was said by him honestly. And so he had