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

The Shuddhi Movement at Ratnagiri Before long I discovered in the jail at Ratnagiri that the Pathan and the Muslim convicts sent there from Bombay were practising the same methods of converting the Hindu juvenile offenders to Islam that were current in the Andamans. The officers of the prison had no inkling about the matter. As I knew their ways and means of doing this business I at once forestalled it. I started the Shuddhi movement to reclaim such converts for Hinduism. Two old prisoners from U. P. and some juveniles I reconverted into Hindus. I gave all the monetary help they needed. In course of time a high dispute arose over the matter. The controversy was carried up to the Superintendent of the jail. There were at the time too many Muslim prisoners in the jail including Pathans and Sindhis. They made things hot for the Maratha warders and their superior officers. I had to join battle with them. Some of them were my immediate neighbours in that jail and they threatened to give me a sound thrashing. I give here one instance in point, to show how they harassed me. Some of them started proclaiming "Bang" at dawn just to annoy their Hindu brethren. All of them were worse characters and notorious thieves and robbers, and they never did their Namaz and never uttered the name of Allah. Yet they shouted out early in the morning inviting Muslims for prayer and disturbed the sleep of the rest of us. It became a great nuisance and when the Superintendent remonstrated with them they pleaded that it was a matter of religion and he dare not object to it. The superior officers could do nothing to stop them. Then I tried my own remedy against the nuisance. I took in hand two of the worst Hindu convicts, the ring-leaders of dacoits and thieves in that jail. One of them had passed his whole life there. Four or five times he had been heavily sentenced on charges of theft and had at last come to regard this prison as his home. He had lost his one tooth and was advanced in age. I tutored him to utter the name of Ram with a loud voice so soon as the Muslims began to cry "Bang". He sang couplets from Tulsidas and in uttering Ramanama, raised his voice louder than the Muslims. The warders would rebuke him sternly when I would intervene and say, "why should you object to his prayer? Either stop all of them or let every one be free to pray as he likes." If a Mussulman prisoner was found doing his Namaz at night, the Hindu followed suit with his Bhajan. The Mussulmans were full of fury but they were helpless to prevent us. As they disturbed the sleep of the Hindus, the Hindus paid them back in their own coin. So the whole dispute ended by itself. One nuisance cancelled the other. What punishment could not stop, counter-goondaism had silenced. I silenced a Khilafatist editor-prisoner by a similar counter-move. He used to touch water for the Hindus on the plea that Muslims were as much human beings as they. I entirely agreed with him on the point and I called upon an untouchable and scavenger to dip his pot and take water from a vessel of water for the Muslims. And the Khilafatist who was preaching broad humanitarian principles at once went at the untouchable and would not touch the water as being unholy for the Namaz. When I had exposed them two or three times they quietly took their water from a Hindu water-carrier and stopped touching the water reserved for the Hindus.