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

two or three chawls by turns and delivered in each place a lecture on the great Guru of the Sikhs. In these anniversary celebrations of different chawls of the same prison, the Sikhs and the Hindus participated as brothers. They sang bhajans together, they heard lectures on the life of the Guru together, they listened to various anecdotes from his life together, and they pleaded for solidarity among them with unanimity and fervour. On that day I had in the depot puja and prasad. This prasad known as 'Kada Prasad' was distributed among all the prisoners of the place without distinction of caste and creed. According to the common practice on Sundays the prisoners had to go back to their respective cells and be locked in it at a particular hour. That day I managed that they may be sent to their room, but the door be kept open. And when all the higher officers had left the place, I assembled them in the open courtyard and addressed the meeting. Prisoners from different chawls had come out to hear me, and petty officers and others who had now been converts to our views watched all about to warn us in time against the surprise visit of any higher officer of that place. A hundred of them had spread themselves out to keep guard. Others were at the meeting. We sang national songs on the occasion and then they heard my speech with rapt attention. The thing to note is this: We celebrated the birth-day of Guru Govind in, a place where a few years before it was an offence for one prisoner to meet and talk to another. To swear by India as motherland was, of course, then out of question. And it has also to be admitted that not one in a hundred could have understood us then, if we were to speak to them of one country, one nation and one mother-tongue.

To encourage the prisoners in the training and development of their mind I would always put such of them on easier work in the prison as showed themselves apt pupils and as would regularly attend our meetings. When we started the classes, the pupils were given slates, pencils and readers from the funds at our disposal. But when an educated man and a lover of learning like Mr. Diggins became the head of the institution, I approached him with a petition that Government should provide slates and books for our pupils. At last, after considerable correspondence and repeated petitions, Government issued orders and they got slates and books at Government expense. I drew the attention of the officer to the zest with which the prisoners were using books and slates supplied to them. I also obtained permission for other prisoners to obtain books from the political prisoners' library. I then suggested that Government should purchase books and stock them in the prisoners' library. The task of making a list of such books being entrusted to me, I chose as many books of national views as I could, and included in the list a large number of Hindi books. Some of them were marked as undesirable when the list was finally approved by the authorities. Such books I included for purchase in our own collection. Thus I kept on working for national ends either by the help of Government or through our secret organisation till the end of my period in the Andamans. I included in the library, a large collection of books in Tamil, Andhra, Malayalam and Canarese languages, as I regarded them as essentially of Hindu stock, and as helpful to the promotion of national solidarity and national sentiment among the people.