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

If I did not succeed in making Hindi indispensable in schools for boys, I did succeed in that respect in schools just started for girls. Even the girls would have been compelled to read and write Urdu script, and Hindi and Nagari would have been given the go-by. But I remonstrated with the parents not to tolerate this sort of tyranny, I put them to shame for asquiescing in such a course, I dissuaded them from sending their daughters as Hindus to learn the Urdu alphabet from a Mohomedan Moulvi, and compelled the authorities to introduce Hindi and Nagari script in schools for Hindu girls from their very start. The political convicts from the Punjab, it need not be told, began writing home in Hindi rather than in Urdu or Persian. There were many noted writers and good poets among them who composed fine poems in Urdu. They strongly resented my action. But when I brought home to them as Hindus, how by their pre-possession for Urdu, they were letting that foreign script and language thrust out Hindi from its high position as the national language of India, they took a vow that never with their pens would they write anything in Urdu, but devote all their talents towards writing in Hindi alone. I had to teach them such simple words in the beginning as "Akasha" (sky) and "Vyayama" (exercise). So much was their mind steeped in Urdu; but it must be said to their credit that they gladly went through that toil and began to master classic Hindi. My campaign against Urdu was not dictated by malice or hatred. I myself had learnt Urdu and can still lisp some words in that language and spell its rudiments. I understand Urdu even today when it is read out to me. And I had no objection to its survival as a dialect between Mussulmans and Hindus. I shall cherish it with love as the language of our Muslim fellow-countrymen. But that Urdu should be a dominant language of Hindusthan, and that by the patronage and encouragement of the Hindus themselves was more than I could bear. I shall never tolerate Urdu if it tells me to cast off Hindi and to enthrone itself in its place as the national language of India. If it threatens me that way, then I will overthrow it. To that extent alone I will resist Urdu. I carried on agitation against Urdu in the Andamans because it was imposed upon schools run and maintained by the Hindu community of that place. I insisted that in those schools Hindi and Nagari must have their unchallenged place as medium of instruction. To force Hindu children to learn Urdu was to denationalise them. It was an inroad upon the Hindu culture. As mere language and script every one was free to learn it. As we learn German so we may learn Urdu. But as mother-tongue and national language it had no place in Hindu culture, and could not displace Hindi which traces its pedigree from Sanskrit and has so many cultural associations with what we love as Hinduism. To let Urdu dominate us in this manner was highly ruinous to us. I have already written about the stocking and circulation of Hindi books throughout these islands in my chapter on libraries in Part I of this book. I bought for these roving libraries, so to say, choicest books in Hindi on politics, political economy, and the history of our national movement so that those who studied them became really conversant with these important subjects. Most ordinary prisoners passing through this training became, at the end of it, entirely different men. I made them study particularly Satyartha Prakasha of Swami Dayanand Saraswati. Political convicts especially were