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

people. The more Government tried to repress us, the more the people thought of us and remembered us. Questions were put in the Imperial Legislative Council at Delhi why an exception was being made in our individual cases, when almost all of the political convicts had been discharged from prison under the terms of the general amnesty. The newspapers kept up the same cry. The Working Committee of the Indian National Congress passed a resolution "demanding the release of Savarkar brothers and of two others from the Punjab, namely, Boga and Ratan Choudhari." But—at last, we also had our chance; Dame Fortune smiled upon us too. We were discharged in the Silver Jail in the Andamans. But from where and how? When others were taken out of that jail, we were taken out of our respective solitary cells in the chawls, and made to stay in the courtyard of the prison. After some ten to fifteen representations, we were removed near the door of its office. I was given the work to note down the names of the prisoners in the prescribed forms, to take those forms from and to the office, and to stay near the door. I was not allowed to enter it. Once even that door was shut against me. Not for any fault of my own, sure enough. One of the political prisoners was writing a letter to be sent to India when he was caught in the act by the warder in charge. The prisoner had written in that letter information for newspapers in India about the condition of prisoners in this jail. The warder and the writer of the letter were duly punished for the offence, but I also suffered along with them. For a few days more I was forbidden from taking my seat near the office-door. This was ever the hitch in my way. Whenever anything untoward happened in the jail, I was made a scapegoat for all the sins, and had to pay heavily for them. With all this useless lamentation on wrongs done to me continuing, I was again brought near the office-door, and at last stepped into the office itself. But that again proved to be a step and nothing more. I had by this time finished ten years of my sentence in this prison. To be more accurate, I had certainly completed my nine years. I then began petitioning to the authorities that, as some of those who had come into the prison along with me, had already been given permission to go out of the prison for a stroll, and one of them was granted leave to stay in the settlement, and as others who had followed me years after, were detailed for different kinds of work outside it, like, for instance, higher work in the factories and the printing press, I should be given the permit to move out and sit all to myself in some place for some part of the day. When hundreds of political convicts on life-sentence and ordinary prisoners on two years rigorous imprisonment had been discharged only after two years' hard labour in the jail, a convict like me, who had been there for ten consecutive years, should, at least, be not denied such a ticket. The answer to