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

Eighty per cent literacy among the prisoners An officer of the prison once asked me what was the fruit of it all. And in order to ascertain results I went into prison statistics, counting the total number of prisoners, and the percentage among them of those who knew reading and writing, and those again who had learnt it after they had been admitted into this jail. I knew from this investigation that eighty per cent. of them were literates, while out of these ninety per cent had learnt to read and write only after they had entered this prison. I conveyed the information to the officer in question, who, in order to test it, paid a surprise visit to our chawls one Sunday morning. And what did he witness? When he went over the chawls room by room he saw the prisoners absorbed in reading books on various subjects or in singing national songs. Ten years ago, he had seen prisoners in the same place on a Sunday playing at dice, gambling or quarrelling with one another or whiling away their leisure in similar degrading pastime. He was an officer who had spent years in that jail and he was simply surprised to notice the change between the past and the present. An education enough for a voter I have only mentioned the percentage of average literacy in the prison, but considering the method of education we had followed and the subjects included in our scheme, I can say that as he was taught everything about his country and of current politics, he was so widely-read and well-informed that he was capable of understanding how to exercise his right as a voter. Of such there were at least forty per cent in our prison. In any European country a voter does not generally know more than this. Our pri- soners had been rendered fit by our training to be included in any Electorate for a Legislative Council, or to cast his vote correctly in the election of any village panchayat. With my elder brother in the moonlight My post as a foreman had enabled me to enjoy personal freedom at least to some extent. I could come out of my room not only in the morning but long before day-break. It was then that I stood out in the open with the flood of moonlight all around me. After nearly ten years of buried life, what an exhilaration of spirit it brought me. Though I enjoyed the right immensely it was not without its shadow upon my soul; for, was it not, after all, moonlight behind the prison-bars as good as the moonlight in a burial ground or at a burning ghat? A few days after, I had for my companion under such moonlight my elder brother. I could sit with him thus for hours under the moon, but only to talk over the sufferings he had to pass through and weep for these sufferings. For his constitution had been thoroughly undermined, he was coughing all the while and T. B. had already come near