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

In former years I had submitted representations for the transfer of prisoners from the Andamans to India. I had done so, as the reader will notice from what I have written about them in the pages of this book, on grounds of health and other facilities they would get in India. But today the whole aspect had changed in the Andamans and hundreds of prisoners stood to gain from residence in these islands. And their colonial development and expansion was sure to benefit India as a whole politically and nationally. I, therefore, had made up my mind to pass my days in the Andamans to help that process of expansion and development. My example inspired others to stay there along with me. My strenuous efforts to stabilise the Andamans as a prison colony filled the free inhabitants of the place with gratitude for me. These were only a handful and owned lands and plantations. They were farmers and their living depended on the existence of prisoners in that colony. If all the prisoners were turned out from these islands, they would suffer most. They began to submit petitions to Government on the lands they cultivated and on the rights of ownership about them. They complained about the taxes levied from them and the irregularities about them. They protested against arbitrary eviction from these lands, and they tried to organise a regular campaign in support of their grievances. The prisoners often used to say and suggest as if they would be none the better for freedom in the Andamans. In order to bring home to them the advantage of such freedom, the Government was bound to treat those, who were already living as free inhabitants in these islands, with consideration, adopt a well-thought out policy of action towards them. But in order that they may be enabled to take full advantage of the policy, continuous agitation was indispensable. Their leaders used to see me often and I used to see the representations they submitted and even improve them. The repercussion of jejune Indian Politics on the Andamans The main topic of politics that year was the Khilafat and the Non-cooperation movements in India. In our discussions of that topic, I condemned them outright. I said, "The death of Lokmanya Tilak in India gave a fillip to these movements. It is a belief current among us that when a great man dies, nature herself is unable to bear the shock and she erupts in hurricanes and typhoons, in pestilence and epidemics full of evil portent to the world. The exit from the Indian world of a powerful personality like Lokamanya Tilak ushered in the mad intoxication of Khilafat agitation conspiring with the cult of the Charka as a way to Swaraj in one year. It is to be won by the perverse doctrine of non- violence and truth. The Non-cooperation movement for Swaraj based on these twin principles was a movement without power and was bound to destroy the power of the country. It is an illusion, a hallucination, not unlike the hurricane that sweeps over a land only to destroy it. It is a disease of insanity, an epidemic and megalomania." I was the first to protest against the Khilafat movement in India. I denounced it as dangerous to the nation. I did not style it 'Khilafat' but 'afat' a menace to the country. Every house in the Andamans knew it as 'afat' or a calamity. And that definition of non-