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

and at length succeeded in getting from them a grant of five hundred rupees for the purchase of books for the library. I made a list of books, and I sent the list through the Superintendent for approval by the educational department of the Government. And after the list was approved of by that body, the books were at once purchased and kept in the library. The prisoners developed great fondness for reading them so that during the course of a year and a half the Superintendent had to make a special mention of it in his report as the main cause of the remarkable decline in that jail of the propensity of the prisoners to quarrel, fight and come to blows.

A public holiday for the Muslims on the day of Id, was marked in the jail by the permission to them for general prayer. The prayer was led on such an occasion by a Moulvi from outside. The Christian prisoners had a similar privilege on their great holidays. Only the Hindus were without this right. The political convicts therefore petitioned to the authorities that the Hindu prisoners be granted a similar concession to celebrate their public holidays. The Government granted the permission asked for, and we decided to celebrate the Gokulashtami day as a great Hindu holiday. We fixed upon holding a Kirtan that day, and the Government did not object to it. They gave us things to eat suitable to the fast that we observed and the Kirtan was done in the jail as a public function.

The practice overthrown

As has been already pointed in another place the manner of sending prisoners to answer the call of nature in prison administration was extremely barbarous and highly objectionable. There was no partition and no door to the latrines arranged in a line, and the prisoners were made to sit down rubbing shoulders with one another. There was no roof overhead either in the rains or in the hot seasons. No water was allowed to be taken into the latrine. All were to get up after the function and to go to a water-tap at a distance to wash and clean their parts. The political prisoners agitated for reform in these matters with the result that this hideousness and dirt disappeared for good and the prisoners began to lead a clean and disciplined life. There was improvement in food and the general mode of living, and order was strictly maintained as laid down by the prison regulations.

One more thing was being carried out in the jail at Ratnagiri. It had remained unfinished in the Andamans. When I knew that I could no longer do any national work I had resolved upon, as the reader may remember, to finish a poem and had begun composing it in my own mind. But as other work grew upon my hands, this project lay in abeyance. At Ratnagiri I resumed the task and completed the poems that I had proposed to write. I gathered together the smaller poems previously composed by me. I wrote longer poems and gave a complete notion of what I meant by 'Hinduism'. Some of the writings I had already despatched home from the Andamans. My brother brought out from these writings complete editions of three poems which were.