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

him. For an hour when the fit came he had absolutely no respite. I see him before me even now seated on a tattered ratten chair with his long coat of coarse blanket on him, a tall, thin, worn-out man, a true patriot and devoted worker, a prisoner piteous to look at, yet himself unbent under the blows that had fallen on him. Enjoying the moonlight, and this limited freedom in jail, I had determined not to pine for what was not, and to go on persistently with my self-imposed task. As I was living my life thus, one morning my elder brother hurriedly came up to me and put a cutting from a newspaper on my table. I had to read it unnoticed by any one else. I read it and found in it the news that the Government had resolved to close the Andamans as a colony for prisoners, that no fresh prisoners were to be sent in its Silver Jail, and the old ones were to be transferred to prisons in India in case they would not agree to stay in Andamans on some specific conditions. Andamans closed as prison-colony The news, of course, gratified me for it was the fulfilment of the work we had started and carried on for the last ten years. I had stated before the Jail Commission all the grievances of the prisoners at Port Blair; and the manner in which I had championed their cause before the Commission, I had no doubt, had cost me my freedom from this jail, and was the main reason of my exclusion from the general amnesty that was proclaimed subsequently. Therefore, I had the self-satisfaction that, though I had not won my freedom, I had done all I could in the best interests of all other prisoners in that jail, and was instrumental, at least partially, in the success that had come to them. Hundreds of prisoners in the jail showered their gratitude upon me. All of them knew one thing very well, and it was that during ten years of my association with them, I had carried on incessant agitation in the Silver Jail and outside for giving them an organised existence. I had carried on agitation in the press, through petitions, through civil resistance, through questions asked in the Imperial Legislature at Delhi, through protests, correspondence and personal letters, to draw the pointed attention of India and its Central Government to their condition in the Andamans. And it was my persistence at it that had made the matter a live issue before the Jail Commission. To those who would felicitate me I said, "At last the Andamans as a prison-colony is no more, the Silver Jail is dismantled. This change is not the result of any single-handed endeavour. It is the reward of ten years of continuous and all-sided agitation, to the success of which all of you, and especially the political convicts, have made a tremendous contribution by your trials and tribulations throughout this period. And if it has succeeded even partially, the credit is yours. I told them so and offered my sincerest felicitations to them in return. I added how fine it would have been for Mr. Barrie to be alive that day. Mr. Barrie used to taunt me that all my efforts were to go for nought and add that I was