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

Both of us laughed. He laughed spontaneously while mine was a forced laugh. After discussing a few matters with me, he left the place. I sat down; we two alone were in that cell confronting each other; myself and my punishment. In that gloomy room we were staring each other in the face. The rest of the day’s story and the turmoil within, I have depicted in my poem, ‘The Saptarshi.’ Its first part contains it and I need not dwell upon it here. The Second Day “It is just day”, so the Jamadar greeted me, “ although your sentence started from yesterday, the Saheb has asked me to take out for your morning walk as usual, and so I am here.” I went down with him to have my constitutional. During my absence my cell was searched through and through. My kit and my books were removed from that place. I was having my perambulations in the open square downstairs. My former clothes were not on my person. I was dressed in the garb of a prisoner. And curious eyes were looking on me to see how I appeared in my new vestments. From the hospital, along the passage, and through the windows, they observed me finding out one excuse or another to do so. Some to satisfy their idle curiosity and others full if compassion for me! The goal of Dongri is in the very heart of the town. For I could see high up and around me, chawls and other tenements on all sides of it. Everyday when I was brought down for exercise, I had noticed people from these neighbouring houses standing in the windows and the galleries to have a look at me. Men and women were there peeping and whispering. They stayed there till I had done my morning walk. Sometime, evading the watchman, I used to look up, and exchange salutations with them. I was pleased in my heart by the regard they had shown to me. I felt then that we, who had worked for their liberty, were rotting in jails, while they were silently looking on without the least notion of taking revenge. Once I learnt that the guard had administered a stern rebuke to the landlord of one of these chawls. So I decided to walk in the square and never once look up so that none of them should suffer on my account. During my walk I used to recite the whole of the Yoga Sutras, and recalling each text to my mind used to meditate on it. Today, while I was thus absorbed, the guard pulled me up saying that the time was up and I must return to my cell. I climbed up the stairs and went to my room. Being lost in thought I sat in one part of the room for a long time to come. Suddenly, I heard the knocking on the door and looking up saw an Havildar coming in. he had a prisoner with him who carried a bundle on his head. The reverie had made me oblivious of my surroundings; so I kept on looking at him with vacant eyes, whereupon the Havildar said to me, “Sir, do not please be anxious. God will make the days easy for you. He is a witness to the dire distress, and he will be your stay in it. I and mine, I assure you, were full of tears

when we heard the news. But I assured them all with a pride in my heart that you will never go down under it. Why, then, do I find you taking it so much to heart? Do not think of it.” This well-meant exhortation produced quite a different effect upon my mind. It brought to my mind very clearly the fact that some heavy blow had fallen upon me. And a pang went through my heart. Fully recovering myself I asked the Officer what that bundle was. With a smile, that was forced, he replied,” It is nothing. As a mere matter of prison regulations, I am giving you this piece of work to do. Do it or not do it, or do as much as you can. It does not matter at all.” He, then, took down the coiled rope, he cut it into pieces, and asked the prisoner to show me how I was to break it, spin it and again make threads out of it. It was as they say ‘picking oakum’. “this is rigorous imprisonment, then”, I concluded, “not simple imprisonment for life!” The Weary Round “ O, face it, you are condemned to pick oakum, that is all! How foolish you are, O, my mind? What is degrading in it? You think that your life is going to be a waste. But is not life itself the same process-a weary round, spinning and unspinning, doing and undoing, evolving and dissolving, a tremendous pis-aller? The strand of life is woven out of the fusion of five elements. Piecing together the same threads it is lengthened out, and when the threads and the strand suffer decay, death, with its wooden hammer, pounds it into pulp, to restore it back to the elements from which it was drawn. ‘Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.’ “ The morn is followed by the evening and the day follows the night-again a weary round. We live by feeding on the herbs, and then we die. Death consigns our flesh and bones to the earth, to be consumed again by the herbs-the same process over again. The solar system- an array of effulgent stars, and burning nebulae; the earth, an offspring of that system; a stray comet dashes into the body of the earth, and the earth consumes itself into fire and returns to be a nebulae!-again a weary round. We are a part of this earth and subject to the same fate, the same law, the same process. I have only to break up this coiled rope, spin out the threads and roll them up again! If the larger process going on in the Universe is worth it, if the life of the Universe is no waste, though it is involved in that procession of time, then why within it, should I regard this task as in vain? For is not this the inescapable part of the grander process? It has happened and I must take it as such.”

I began to pick oakum. The Havildar and others had left the place. Once again I found myself alone confronting my punishment, each, as it were, making better acquaintance of another. Soon we became familiar friends. There was no doubt about it. Though without hope, I had still hoped that the Hague Tribunal would come to my rescue. But there was an end to that hope. It was now certain and beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I was doomed to pass the rest of my life, rotting in one cell or another, in this prison or in another far away. What then? I must face it, come what may. Adversity Is The Rule In my life, crushed as it was under a mountain of calamities that I had brought down upon myself, one rule. Bitter though it was to start with, that had sustained me throughout, more than any other, was to take it for granted that the worst always happened and that the mind must be kept ready to bear and endure it. Those who are unfortunate to be born in time, a country or circumstance as adverse as ours, and who yet aspire to rise above them, beating, fighting and conquering them on their way to realise their ideal and to usher in the dawn of a new age, must needs digest the poison administered to their lips by cruel fate. If we once resolve to face up and fight the adverse that we know to be our lot herebelow, the favourable that comes in our way gives us a joy twice blessed, and its faint smile delights us. But hoping for the best makes the worst that befalls doubly cursed for us. The unfortunate ones like us, born in times of utter helplessness, have always to look forward to a fate equally adverse. And, then, the vain hope is apt to crush us completely when the bludgeoning blow of circumstance falls on our heads! Let the fortunate swans of Manas Sarovara, in the exultation of their triumph, feed fill on the lotus fibres, and drink deep of the pearly drops, that float on the crystal waters of that calm lake. But men like us, who are condemned to wade up to their ears through the miasma of dead waters, defeated efforts, and hopes that turn into dupes, must beware that life for them is ever a grim battle, and they must be prepared in mind and body to pass through the severest ordeal. The Blow Had fallen Hardened though I had been to bear the worst that could happen, the blow felled me completely, so terrible was its reaction upon my mind. Its suddenness almost staggered me. My arrest in London had prepared me for twenty-five years’ transportation to the Andamans. My recapture at Marseilles-when the whole world was positive in its conviction that I would be restored back to France-made me conclude that I would be sent to the gallows. But, at last, both these forecasts had proved entirely false. And here I

was face to face with a sentence much worse than these and, in its cumulative impact, the direst calamity I had to bear. Fifty years of prison-life, alone and in a solitary cell like this! To pass my life, to count the hours of the day as they sounded and rolled on into months and years till they completed the long, inevitable, unredeemed, dark period of fifty years! What a hell on earth? Yet I had to live it. Well, then, let me plan to live it. I had already made a plan for myself how I could spend my time in prison during the twenty-five years I had to pass there. The Hague decision had come and gone. The twenty-five years were now to lengthen out into fifty years and I must change my scale accordingly. What work could I undertake during these twenty-five years, so I had thought, that would fulfill my life, that would enable me to pay back the debt I owed to my motherland, and to serve my fellowmen ever so little, in the hapless condition of prison-life, where I had no means, and no encouragement to do the task I would like to accomplish? I recalled to my mind the lives of great prisoners from Sir Walter Raleigh down to Prince Kuropatkin. Bunyan, who wrote his Pilgrim’s Progress, had, at least, the materials to write it with. I have not with me even the end of a broken pencil. I am not allowed the use of it. W. T. Stead wrote articles on non-political topics from the prison where he was confined. I could not do that either. Not a sparrow could come near me. Therefore, I could convey no messages and do no propaganda. It was an offence to have scrap of paper with me. Hence any writing was out of question. If I thought of reading and thus would add to my knowledge, I could get only one book to read, off and on, and with great difficulty. And mere reading and adding to one’s knowledge was as barren as a tree without fruit and flower or as a pond of stagnant water that could not slake the thirst or feed the hunger of one human being, not to speak of thousands whose hunger and thirst it should satisfy. Was I not then the most unfortunate of those who had done some useful and noble work while behind the prison bars? I had to bear greater hardship than they, and I had not their means to relieve it by any congenial work that I liked to do. What can I do then? What plan can I make? An Epic When I was but a lad, I remember having decided to write an epic. Write it I will, I said then to myself though I knew not what an epic was, how I was to write it, and what the subject was that I could weave into it. That desire persisted all along till it had grown into the passion of my life. Caught in the storm and stress of active life, it had seemed to fall in the background. But now that I lay in the dust of my silent cell, it at once came up before my eyes. Methought that in this cell and in the darkness of the night, condemned as I was to hard labour during the day, I could compose such a poem, though I had not a scrap of paper to write on or a piece of pencil to write it with. None can prevent me from composing verse after verse and writing it on the tablet of my mind. This work I can accomplish even in the direst condition of my prison-life. And if I could finish even a single poem in this manner, and, if ever I come back alive from my prison, I could give my garland of verse as an offering at the feet of my motherland, the fruit, as it were, of

my twenty-five years' experience of that life. It was no small service that I could render her. Why should I not then start at once and earnestly? I could no longer undertake any active work in her behalf, I knew it so well. My mind was made up. I was to write at least one long epic during the period of my incarceration. Even it the Hague decision went against me, I thought then, I could do at least this much while under sentence for hard labour. The idea satisfied the yearning of my heart, and, to that extent, brought peace to my active mind, though for a time only. I learnt that the decision of the Court had against me. The period of imprisonment was doubled. A bolt from the blue had fallen upon my head. And yet I remained unshaken in my resolve. It relieved the gloom of my mind, for I felt, under its spell, that I was not so helpless as I seemed, that I could yet do something towards the fulfillment of my life and the realization of my dream. The fear that my life was futile was gone forever. The burden was rolled off once for all. Impatiently, my eager mind counted the days and the lines I could compose every day. I calculated that from ten to twenty verses a day meant an epic of from 50,000 to 100,000 lines at the end of the period. I had to compose the lines, repeat them, carry them in my mind, adding on to them from day to day, and the work was complete. So argued with myself. I resolved then to begin at once. I chose the life of Guru Govind Singh as the subject of my song. The Life of Guru Govind Singh I chose that life because I felt that he was a prince among martyrs. The great men, who have achieved success and have won the cause, no doubt shine like golden domes that crown the summits of palaces. They are, indeed, pinnacles of glory. But I can derive no peace in the present condition of my life by celebrating them in song. On the other hand, I was likely to feel, all the more poignantly, the failure that fate had doled out to me. I must sing, therefore, of those high-souled persons whose failures had contributed to lay the foundations on which these splendid palaces had reared up their heads to constitute the admiration of the world around them. To meditate on such martyrs, was an incentive to me “ to follow the gleam.” Guru Govind Singh struck me as a man who had triumphed over defeat. Behold him facing utter rout as he sought to slip out of the fortress of Chamkore; call to mind the utter annihilation of his family-life, the separation of his mother, wife and son, scattered far and wide from him; remember how his sworn disciples had betrayed him in the hour of his great need, and had blamed him for the failure of the cause which he and they had pledged themselves to stand by; and, last, realise how he had proved himself a brave man, brave as a lion, who like Rudra swallowed the poison of defeat, humiliation and woe that destiny had put to his lips, and yet survived as a hero and an incarnation for generations to emulate. The failure of such a man was, I felt, the fittest subject for my song. It would support me in my hour of sorrow and defeat like a pillar of strength. It would help and inspire generations to come to erect a splendid edifice of success on the failures, miseries and defeats of the generation to which I belonged.

As I was lost in the contemplation of the bright future which imagination had depicted for me, my hands were busy uncoiling the hard entangled threads of the oakum before me. That very day I composed some fifteen verses of my song by the time I had finished the hard work allotted to me. My hands were cracked and covered with blisters, and blood oozed out from them. I cannot say today how long I had to stay in the goal at Dongri from the time that the Hague decision had gone against me. What was my daily routine during that period- you may very well ask me. It was as follows: Every morning I had my usual walk in the square below. During that hour I recited the Yoga Sutras, and thought upon them in their order and context. Then I returned to my cell and set myself to do work assigned to me as a prisoner on hard labour. While engaged in that work I compose the lines of my meditated epic. I used to recall the lines composed on previous days, and add to them the fresh ones that I had recently written out in my mind. After the evening meal when the door was shut upon me, and everything around me was wrapt in perfect silence, I practised concentration and meditation as laid down in the Yogas. I retired to bed punctually on the hour of nine. During all these days I enjoyed sound sleep. This solitary life, with its fixed routine from minute to minute, wherein I tried my hardest to control the mind by the power of thought and dispassion, sometimes became so intolerable, that I felt, on occasions, that my grief and anxiety were sitting on my chest like a night-mare with their grip in my throat that had almost strangled me. In such moments I could hardly breathe for relief; I felt then that I could even bear this, if I were, sure that my cause would prosper through my sufferings. But then……? Instantly I recovered from this dark despair, and I was myself over again. The poise came back to my mind, as if nothing had happened during the interval. Sir Henry Cotton One day the news went abroad that a certain high official in England had forfeited his pension on my account. I could make no head or tail of this report till, a few days after, I fell upon a cutting from The Kesari of Poona which I found dropped in a corner of my room. That cutting helped me to piece out the news and gather up all its threads. It was thus; In London the Indians had a public meeting in connection with the celebration of the new year. The chief guest of the evening happened to be Sir Henry Cotton, the author of New India, and the president of the Congress Session in Bombay in 1904. in the hall where the meeting was being held, they had put up my portrait and Sir Henry Cotton happened to notice it. Looking at the portrait he said a few words in my praise, and regretted that a young man of such adventurous spirit and fervent patriotism should be reduced to a pass that had blighted his life for good. He expressed the hope that the International Court of Justice at Hague would restore me back to France and thus save itself from being the instrument of trampling under foot every man’s bare right to hold his own opinions without any molestation from the State. This reference to me by Sir Henry Cotton had raised a storm of criticism against him in the political dovecotes of England. To sympathise with Savarkar was such an abomination, even though the praise

had not been free from censure! Some suggested that the speaker should be deprived of his knighthood. Others hinted that he should be made to forfeit his pension. Ultimately, the whole incident had proved to be nothing better than the proverbial storm in the tea- cup, though it was not without its repercussions in India. The Indian National Congress was alarmed by the news, and seemed to have lost its balance. Sir William Wedderburn, the president of the Congress session that year, and Surendra Nath Bannerji, one of its most prominent spokesman, while returning from the annual congress Session, attended a public meeting at Calcutta, where, speaking on the incident, they put a gloss on Sir Henry Cotton’s remarks upon me, and declared that the Congress had nothing to do with Savarkar and his tribe and felt no sympathy whatever for him and his doings. I read this news in the cutting of the Kesari noticed above. Strange to say, the Kesari itself in its two leaderettes had sought to exonerate Sir Henry Cotton, and, in reference to me in that matter, had used a form of address that was highly insulting to me. It had said, “ Sir Henry Cotton did not even know who this Savarkar was, whether he was a black man or a white man.” Even a nationalist paper like the Kesari at Poona had to write in that tone then. It was a subterfuge, common in those days, to establish one’s innocence and prestige by running down Savarkar as a traitor, and by referring to him, in name and style, as the veriest criminal. Every political organization, at the time, used that handy weapon to save its own skin. It was a cruel irony of fate, indeed, that an English gentleman should speak of Savarkar in glowing terms, while his countrymen at home should refer to him in newspapers and elsewhere in the language of insult and infamy. But it was not the newspapers that were really to blame in this matter. It only showed the wretched plight to which a foreign rule inevitably reduces a subject nation. It showed that we lost under it even the sense of humanity which, as individuals, we ought to hold, as the minimum that is due from one man to another. What a heavy price this, to pay for bare existence!

Martyr or Rascal

Some one was peeping in through the bars of my door.

“How do you do, barrister?”

“ I am all right, by your grace”, I answered.

“ What is it that you say? Sir, where are you in worth? What am I before you?”, he said. He continued that he had a talk with a friend from England from which he had learnt that the whole of Europe was applauding me as a martyr. The newspapers in France and Germany were comparing me with patriots like Woolfetone and Robert Emmett and Mazzini. Even in far off Portugal, newspapers had published a sketch of my life as it came to their hands. The gentleman from Europe had mentioned that he desired to see me, but the man who was talking to me had informed him that it was impossible to grant

his request. He was, however, placing himself in the chawl opposite at the time of my usual walk in the square below, and, to satisfy his curiosity, I was asked to look up in that direction. The man indulging in this panegyric suddenly veered round, as it were, and added pointedly, “ And, Sir, do you know what an Anglo-Indian Newspaper in Bombay has written about you in its latest issue? Referring to the Hague decision it has poured its poison upon you.” “ Let me know what it has said about me; a public worker is ever eager to know what his opponents, rather than his friends, say of him”, I interposed. “ The paper is glad over the sentence passed upon you, and in its jubilation it has it has written- “ The rascal has at last met with his fate.” “ Well then the newspapers in Europe have called me martyr, this paper denounces me as a rascal. The extremes cancel each other, and the real man that I am abides as ever.” The door that was shut upon me in the morning was unlocked only at ten o’clock thereafter. There was not the least chance of its being opened earlier. This rule had habituated me to expect none during the interval, and it had reconciled me completely to the solitude of the cell in which I lay confined. Besides, what little restlessness I had felt at the beginning had by now entirely disappeared. Again, I had lately come upon the means to overcome the tedium of my utter loneliness. Underneath and in the hollow of the tiles overhead and through the cleft in beam over my head two pigeons used to come and make their home. I used to while away my time watching them. My work went on as usual; only I had something here as diversion for my mind. Today, while I was so pre- occupied, I heard the jarring sound of the door. This was so unusual, indeed, that I at once surmised that something uncommon was going to happen. With eager eyes I looked up, when the Havildar told me that the Sahib wanted me in the Office below. The word ‘follow’ had an electric effect upon my mind, as it has upon the mind of every prisoner here, so anxious he is to escape from the dull monotony of hid daily life in the cell. It was not unlike that of a tethered animal which, the moment it learns that the tether had snapped, feels an exhilaration and joy that freedom instills into its frame. I got up. I suppressed my curiosity to know why the Sahib had ordered me down. It was a rule with me never to make such an enquiry. But the kind-hearted watchman volunteered me the news that “mine had come to see me.” I Meet My Wife I came into the Office and what did I see? I saw my wife and her brother standing in front of me, and near the barred window. In the garb of a prisoner, in the abject

condition writ large upon my countenance, with heavy and chained shackles upon my feet, they saw me coming up to them! A pang went to my heart. Four years ago when I had left them in Bombay to proceed to England for further studies, what glowing picture they had drawn of my returning home as a full-fledged bar-at-law! They must have imagined then, that I would come back to them covered with glory, and with prospect of affluence before them. But today and here, they meet me as a prisoner laden with heavy shackles and nothing but blank despair before him. My wife was but nineteen years old, and such a rude shock it must be to her tender heart to see me in this plight. The two were standing on the other side of the window-bars. They dare not even touch my hand. There was nearby a strict and relentless guard of strangers to us. The mind was full of thoughts which would not allow the contact of words to express them. This was going to be the last meeting between us, and the fifty years that were to follow meant perhaps the separation of a lifetime. The words of parting were to be uttered in the presence of the goaler, who was no countryman of ours! He looked at us with eyes that were devoid of any sympathy for us. The meeting told us, as it were, that we were never to meet again on this side of life. These thoughts passed through my mind like clouds in a summer sky, and they went to my heart to choke it completely. But my will, the sentinel on guard, barred the door against their entrance, and had instantly dispelled them to the winds. Our eyes had met and I sat down before her. I asked if she had recognized me. “Only the dress has changed”, I added with a smile. “I am the same as ever. These clothes protect me well from the cold weather.” The two outside the window, recovering their good humour talked to me as if were together in the privacy of our home. The conversation flowed freely, and, picking up the thread, I assured them that we might meet again if benign Providence so willed it. Till then, they must think of life, not as mere multiplication of children, or building of houses, as birds build their nests of straw, but as something higher and nobler than these things. For the usual kind of life even the crows and kites live. If life meant dedication and service, then they had already lived it. They had broken up their home and their fire-hearth along with it. And they had done so, that thousands may live happily and freely after them. If they thought too much of their personal safety and comfort, let them remember how plague and pestilence had devastated a hundred happy homes. Had they not seen newly wedded couples rent asunder by the cruel hand of death? They must face the inevitable with fortitude. They say here that prisoners are allowed to take their families to the Andamans after a few years’ term of imprisonment. I told them that, in that case, I would take them there to establish a home and live happily in each other’s company. Otherwise, they must prepare themselves to bear it all with patience, and to live courageously. To which they replied that they would ever try to do so, and that the brother and sister together could take care of each other. They asked me to be no more anxious about them; and what they desired was that I should take care of myself. If that was assured to them, they would get all they wanted. While this talk was passing between us and some words yet remained unuttered on our lips, the Superintendent intervened and warned us that our time was up. I stopped it all at once. My brother-in-law turned to me while he was about to depart, and whispered hurriedly that I should never fail to repeat the mantra he had given to me. Every morning I was to repeat the Mantram

कृष्णाय वासुदेवाय हरये परमात्मने । प्रणतःक्लेशनाशाय गोविंदाय नमोस्तु ते ॥ Looking at him wistfully, I promised to carry out his behest. They had departed. Without looking back, I walked inside, clanging my chains as if I could wear them easily. But my mind was not so easy. It repeated vehemently the words I had spoken to them and tried to frighten me. But my will tied it down as a wild animal is tamed under the yoke. Exhaustion and fatigue overcame me completely. As soon as I had entered my cell and the Havildar had locked the door on me, I collapsed on the floor. I had almost fainted when I heard some noise over my head. I looked up and I saw the young little ones of the two pigeons in the tiles above, cooing and crying with a shrill wail. The mother-bird, I learnt, later, had been that very morning shot by the bullet of our goaler, while she was carrying in her beak food for her youngsters. The little ones waited and waited, and, in sheer desperateness and hunger, flapped their wings and were raising that wail. Alas! It was a picture painted for my eyes of the suffering I was experiencing. The Creator had chosen such a dark and tragic background for it in order to spite me. The tension was too great to bear, and I passed into sleep where I lay in the ground. “Wake up, hoe dare you sleep? If the boss sees you sleeping during the hours of work, he will rate us severely for your lapse.” So said the warder passing by my door, while he beat the bars with his stick to rouse me from my stupor. I got up, I picked up the coil; I began to pound it; I spinned it and I pulled out the threads-the same dull process over and over again! It must be a mouth now that I was serving my sentence in this gaol. All the same I was being given the same food that I used to bet before I was declared a member of this fraternity. Milk was, therefore, a part of my food even now. I had hardly finished my food when the Havildar called me out, and I saw the Superintendent right in front of me. “Take up your bedding”, he said. I felt within me that the time had come for my transportation to the Andamans. I came down to the gate of the prison and saw the prison van drawn up before it. I was put inside, the shutters were down, the door was closed, and I could see nothing around me. Only the rumbling and rolling sound of the carriage wheels told me that I was moving to some place outside the prison I had left behind. Suddenly the van came to a standstill. I was let down, and, behold! I was in front of another prison-gate. I passed through all the ceremonial of a prisoner to be freshly ushered into its sanctum! I was put into the cell assigned to me for my stay in the new place. This gaol was drearier and more lonely than the one I had left behind. I saw in the distance a warder coming in my direction. Dinner was served. The warder, who put me in this gaol, was not an Indian. He was a foreigner. Casting his look round about him, the

European sergeant who had brought me here, bid me good day. I asked him in a low voice where I was, what prison it was. The sergeant spelt the word for me so that the warder in charge may not know what he was saying to me. The word he spelt was “Byculla.” End of Chapter I

CHAPTER II In The Gaol At Byculla While climbing up to my cell in the Byculla prison I felt that I had to go one step higher in solitariness and dejection. For the cell here was more gloomy and far lonelier than the one I had occupied at Dongri. At Dongri I had no other person near about me, but the noise of the outer world fell upon my ears. I had, besides, a book or two to read, and some sundry articles about me. Here everything of that kind was gone. No noise was heard here of the humming world without. Not a soul moved here, and articles of daily use were not there, so that I had no companionship here of any kind whatsoever. For want of these, I felt here completely isolated in mind and body and hence more lonely and deserted than ever. I surveyed my room. There was nothing in it to see and inspect. I paced up and down. What must be the condition of my fellow-conspirators and of the revolutionary society we had formed? What plan must we work out for its future? These thoughts occupied my mind at the moment. The evening meal was served. A mind tossed on the stormy ocean of politics and full of conflicting thoughts on the subject found some relief in other kind of occupation. After the meals I cleaned my pots and washed them. I then came up to the door and stood behind its bars. The evening came to pass into night with its philosophic calm. The same day and evening and its thoughts ‘too deep for tears’ have formed the theme of the second part of my poem-Saptarshi. I submitted two petitions to-day to the authorities concerned. In one of them I had asked the Government to allow me the quantity of milk given me in the jail at Dongri. The stopping of it gave me pain in the stomach, as I had to eat my bread dry in the prison at Byculla. In the second I had requested the authorities to permit me the use of my books, - one at least out of the, which they had taken away from me at Dongri. If none of them was to be made available to me for reading here, I should at least be permitted here to read the English Bible, I added. The answer to these was-“No milk, shall see about the Bible.” Some days passed and I got a copy of the Bible. For a good long time now I had read nothing. Hence I opened the Bible so soon as I had it in my hands. The warder, thereupon, warned me that I was not to read during the day and in working hours. It was not to be kept in the cell; he would give it to me for two hours after the day’s work was over. I handed back the book to the warder and resumed my work. As usual I composed my verses to keep company with the work my hands were plying. At last the day went down and the Bible came back to me.

The life of Jesus Christ and his Sermon on the Mount had always appealed to me, and I had cherished them both with deep reverence. In France, I had read the New Testament with close attention. I used to read it daily and to meditate upon the text. My verses on Guru Govind Singh had now been finished. Saptarshi was almost drawing to its close. I had not sufficient historical material with me to continue the former and I had no fresh subject in my mind to compose into verse. The life of Jesus Christ suggested itself to me, at this juncture, as a proper theme to weave into a song. The setting for it was furnished me by the history of the Jews which I had studied with interest and appreciation when I was reading the Old Testament, especially in relation with the bitter struggle of the nation and its heroes for emancipation from the thralldom into which it had passed in its unfortunate history. Their helplessness and anguish and their efforts to set the race free had struck a sympathetic chord in my heart at the time........... But why do they not despatch me at once to the Andamans? If a prisoner bound for the Andamans were not sent there within six months from the time that he had begun to run his sentence, the period outside, I had heard, was not to be counted in the sentence itself. Further, I had read in the Andaman Regulations that within six months from the time he had spent in the Andaman jail, the prisoner was set free on the island itself to do the work he liked, and if he knew the three ‘R’s, he was given work to supervise over a batch of hundred prisoners, or some similar light and lucrative job to follow it. If there was any truth in what I had heard and read on the subject, then life there was anyway better than life I was leading here. At least in the Andamans, under those conditions, I could sit on the sea-beach and watch the waves rolling at my feet. I could inhale draughts of fresh air; I could mingle in the crowd, and make contacts with the people. I could then do some work for enlightening the people and be of use to them in several other ways. Ten years more, and I could take my family there and set up a house for myself. Life for me would not then be so hard to endure. In this vein of thought, I suddenly remembered those who had suffered for me and had been sentenced for ten or fifteen years of hard labour. What of them? I thought. Are they dot doomed to spend their lives in dark cells? Some of them were my friends from childhood; others my trusted colleagues; others, again, were my staunch followers. Most of them looked up to me, loved me and adored me. And I could do nothing for them or for their bereaved families! These calamities had befallen them on my account; they had suffered for me. Right or wrong, they had a clear grievance against me. Out of many such, I recalled those who had old parents to look after. Fate had taken from these parents the staff of their lives. For two out of them and their parents again, I felt deeply grieved. And last, what of that friend of mine, a hero indeed, who had suffered hardships that one could not bear narrating? He had not breathed a word of reproach against me for all that he had endured so bravely. And those young men, again, - O, it made my heart too full, to remember them all. What were my sorrows, what were my trials compared to these? I must forget mine in theirs. Again, the mind would recoil from these musings. Have I lingered behind? It would ask me. Have I not borne the brunt and faced the music? Why then should I brood over the inevitable and be lost in grief? My work was their work. And we must be all burden-bearers and burden- sharers. And the worst to bear was yet to come. It was but the beginning... The end? Who knows of it, and who dared forecast it?

Long before this I had submitted an appeal in which I prayed that the sentences passed upon me should run concurrently. Among the reasons I had given to support my plea, I had quoted relevant sections of the Penal Code which had laid it down that a life- sentence meant a period in a man’s life which was the period of his active work. In England, it was reckoned, at the longest, to be no more than fourteen years. In India, commensurate with the offence, it could not extend beyond twenty-five years. Here I was sentenced to run a full period of fifty years’ hard labour. According to the Penal Code then and its interpretation of what constituted a life-sentence, I must take two lives to finish up my sentence, if it were to run consecutively. That was, on the face of it, ridiculous. If I were to survive these fifty years across the seas in the Andaman islands, it would really mean, my rebirth being dead once, and being born again legally speaking to put through my second sentence of twenty-five years. And what a horrible death-in-life it was to endure the first twenty-five years in the prison-house of the Andamans! So I appealed to them that the two sentences passed upon me should be made to run concurrently. The year of my discharge should not be 1960 but twenty-five years earlier. That would save them the ridicule of the step they had taken.

I got to-day a communication from the Government saying that the decision of the Court that my two sentences shall run consecutively was final and the Government saw no reason to alter it. A gentleman had come to me personally to report the contents of the communiqué. Adopting its technical language he remarked jocularly, “My dear Savarkar, the Government had, at last, decided that you were to run your first life-sentence first, and your second life-sentence after it, that is, you have to take a second life to run it full.” To which I replied in the same vein, “Yes, indeed, but I have, at least, the consolation that for this purpose it has subscribed to the Hindu doctrine of re-birth, and had disowned the Christian doctrine of resurrection.”

The dinner so early to-day? How was it/ the prison meant the strictest regimentation. Everything was to happen there punctually upon the hour. Not a minute too early, not a minute too late, even if a prisoner were at the door of death itself. If the prisoner were to starve and die, none could give him a morsel to eat before the prescribed hour. Death, if it so chose, may wait for its victim, the dinner shall not wait upon death. How can I account, then, for its arrival earlier? Yes, it may be the shadow of some coming event. The European Officer in duty upon me-I looked at him with expectant eyes. He pretended to push his hat backwards, and taking his hand behind it, waved it twice. It was a sign to me that I was to be removed from here to some far-off place.

I finished my dinner. The verses that I had scrawled on the prison-wall with the help of a pointed stone, I read rapidly, and treasured them up in my memory. I rubbed off the scored lines as hurriedly as I had read them. I did not desire to leave any trace of them behind me. Hardly had I finished the job, when the Havildar at the door called our ‘Come away”. He opened the door at let me out. The gaoler handed me over to the European sergeant as if I was some goods or chattel to carry over. Motor, station, railway, and

station once again! That was all I knew of it. The station where they got me down was Thana. And my destination from there was to be the gaol at Thana. End Of Chapter II

CHAPTER III At Thana It seemed to be all bustle and noise in the prison at Thana. Every one was, as it were, on the tiptoe of expectation. A prisoner sentenced to fifty years’ transportation to the Andamans, a bar-at-law was arriving! The officers in charge had issued the strictest orders that none was to look at me even with an eye askance. A part of the person was purged clean of its prisoners and warders. It was kept apart for my occupation. But nothing could repress the curiosity of its inmates to have a look at me. My cell was guarded by the worst known warders of the place. They were, one and all, Mussalmans, and the wickedest of them, into the bargain. There was preternatural calm and solitude about me. My meal was served in due time, but I could hardly touch a morsel thereof. It consisted of hard-baked jwari bread and some vegetables ill-cooked and too sour to taste. I broke the bread, put the piece of it in my mouth, could hardly bite it, and had to wash it down with water. Only a little of it I could eat. Then came evening, the door was closed, and I lay on my bed for sleep. It was now completely dark, for night had followed, when I heard gentle tapping on the door. I heard the voice of some one calling. It came from somewhere, I felt, as if in fear and trembling. I turned round and saw and discovered that the wickedest of my warders was beckoning on to me. I went to the door when, “ all eyes and ears”, he whispered to me, “Sire, we have heard about your daring and valour; I an a slave to one so brave as you; I will do all that I can for you, no fear about it. Today I have brought you some news which I may pray you will keep strictly to yourself, for woe to me if it were to leak out. You are a hero, and I feel sure that you will never let me down. But I must warn you all the same.’ So he carried on in a suppressed tone, and them coming up very close to me, whispered, “ your brother is here.” “ What brother?”, I asked him. He replied that it was my younger brother. And he left precipitately as if he was anxious not to be caught in the act by any casual observer. For my part, I withdrew inside. The Younger Brother My younger brother! A youth hardly twenty years old, and so many of the same age with him. A bomb was thrown in Ahmedabad at Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, and my brother was put under arrest as a suspect in that case. He had to undergo much persecution on that account but he did not flinch, though he was then but eighteen years old. He was soon after released as innocent of the crime, and returned home to rest. But hardly had he laid his head on the pillow when he was arrested for a conspiracy and crime of a political character, and was sent to jail as an undertrial prisoner. For one long year he had to pass through all the agonies of mind and body-intimidation, threats, torture and persecution. But he bore them all well with stern determination and, even in that tender age, did not fall from his vow. This was my younger brother. Orphaned form his

childhood, I, his elder brother, was like a father to him. He never knew to live apart from me and me and cried like a child when I had to stay away from him even for a day. And this was so until very recently. To find him in the same place, in shackles like myself, and undergoing the hared labour of grinding corn, was an experience harrowing in itself. To add to it he was to learn from me today, as I had learnt about him, that I was here on a life-sentence and on my way to the Andamans. He had heard of that sentence no doubt, but they had all hoped that the Hague tribunal would turn it down and order me back to France. In that expectation my brother, and others like him, would drown their own suffering. But now that the slender thread of hope had given way, and I was to be transported for life, how can I be the bearer of that news to him? Oh that I should be the person of all others to break it to him! One of his elder brothers had already gone to the Andamans. And now I was to follow him there! I was to meet him no more. Already orphaned in the loss of his parents, this brother of mine to be doubly orphaned now. When he realizes that the Andamans for me meant no sight of me for him any longer, what a blow it will be for him, and how it will break his tender heart! In case he is set free, to whom will he go for help and shelter? Who will shelter him? Who will look after his education? The lad shall have to go from door to door, and every door will be shut against him. With contracted brows they will look at him and turn him out as a prisoner, a convict, an outlaw, and a man to be shunned. On the rising tide of grief these thoughts lifted their heads to be drowned with the ebb tide that followed it. But they suffocated me all the same. My Master, Have It The warder returned. He came up very near to me. It was completely dark by this time and he whispered, “Master, take it”. He put a slate into my hands, and expostulated, “The Superintendent has warned the warders against giving you any news of your brother on pain of ten years’ rigorous imprisonment across the seas. If you were to breathe a word of it, then I am finished.” So saying he instantly left me and went his way with measured steps and with creaking noise of his shoes in the corridor. The slate was a letter to me from my dear brother, my younger brother, Bal as we called him. A lantern was burning at a distance, and the writing was dimly visible in its light. I read the letter with feeling of affection welling up in my heart. It contained not a word of sorrow, repentance or defeat. On the other hand, it breathed an assurance that, come what may, he would never budge an inch from the vow that he had taken. He was prepared to face the worst in fulfillment of that vow. I decided to indite an answer. In the Andamans we can send only one letter home during the year. But sometimes that opportunity even is denied to us. I felt, therefore, that this was the last chance I had to write to my dear Bal. I beckoned to the warder who was patrolling in the corridor. He came up with stealthy steps. Let the night fall, and then he would do what he could, he said to me, and went away.

I must have completed half the period of my sleep when I was awakened from it by some noise near my door. Startled from my sleep, I got up, and, behold, the warder was taping with his staff against the bars. He signed me to write on, and brought his lantern close unto me. I was amazed to find him so sympathetic to me, knowing as I did, what risk he was running for his life if he was found communicating with me. And who was he? He was a notorious and hardened dacoit with not a spark of kindness in his cruel heart. I simply wondered then as I have wondered since when I had a similar experience in my later life. And I had no small measure of such happy surprises. I tried to thank him, but he stopped me, adding that the first thing I was to do was to finish the letter forthwith.

Do or Die

And yet I doubted that the man might deceive me. Who knows, he may hand over the written slate straight to the gaoler and would then put me in a fix. I had passed years of my young life dodging the detectives set on me. Therefore, I put no name in the letter that I wrote. I mentioned no names and referred to no places. Nor did I write about any specific plan for the future. I pointed out that I was going to the Andamans by putting the necessary asterisks to indicate the name. And I added, “If, according to regulations in that quarter I could take the members of my family to that place after five or ten years, then I would spend the rest of my life in the acquisition o knowledge. If it were not given me to step my foot once again on the soil of India, my projected epic, like that of the sage Valmiki, will announce me to the world through the mouths of my disciples, my Lavas and Kushas, who would sing it throughout the length and breadth of my dear motherland. This service was enough to fulfill my life’s work. But if they were not to release me even after the completion of my first life-sentence. - then? I shall try to escape by any means available to me or perish in the act. This was my firm resolve and there was no relenting form it. Do not think of me, and do not shed tears of sorrow that you have failed in your life. Some fuel to burn in a steam-engine that the steam may rise up from it and the engine begin to move. Are we not that fuel that the fire may burn and the flames rise up and spread far and wide? To burn thus is in itself a great act……….” The warder coughed and warned me to finish up in time. I put the slate near the door and withdrew inside. I said to the warder while he was about to leave, “ I do not wish that you should suffer the least for me. Do this bold act if only you feel like doing it. Don’t risk it.” “ What boldness is there in this?”, he replied with a smile, “Sir, I am no ordinary thief, no coward soul is mine. I have attacked a whole village with open eyes. I have plundered it in the teeth of them all. I have escaped fighting while they had pursued us. I am fearless, and hence I am out to serve one like you. Where is daring here? I know not. It is only two months from now and I am free. The daring is on your side; for you laugh in the face of adversity.”

He Delivered The Letter

He went and gave the letter faithfully to my brother. I had not forgotten the definition of valour he had given me. The dacoit considered the thief as his inferior and despised him even as, among the untouchables, the mang does not touch the domba. Next day I sought to bring the truth home to him that pillaging and loot may involve daring of a kind, but, as it was selfish, it was by no means either laudable or meritorious. I did not put it so to him directly, but by means of a parable I set him right on the matter. He seemed to understand me all right. Never since then did he boast to me o his exploits as a dacoit. It was not even two days after my arrival at Thana when my brother-now Dr. Savarkar-was removed elsewhere. The officers knew that we were never to meet each other thereafter, but they did not arrange for our meeting together here and behind the prison bars, when only the partition on a wall separated us, one from the other. For years together after this event, I did not know where he went, when he was set free, and what he did in life. No information was given me about him by the authorities or by any one else who knew him. Behold My Tiger! The head of waders in this jail was particularly appointed in charge of the lonely part of it, where, for the time being, I was kept in custody. He was stout in body, light hearted and funny in disposition, ever smiling, but the most secretive of all the warders in that gaol. Naturally the European officers of that place confided in him. He always tried to draw me into conversation. Real or apparent, perhaps it was mingled feeling, he was full of compassion for me. He tried to give me as much good food as possible. He never gave the slightest trouble. He ever connived my talking with any one else. He discussed politics with me and sought to impress me that I had ruined my life by following the wild goose chase. Coming and going, he called other warders near my door and pointing at me would exclaim, “ Behold my tiger. A man should be like him.” Then he would sing a skit-“ Marvellous is thy deed, O Fate, marvellous thy play. Thou hast trapped a tiger in a spider’s net I say.” And then he would eye me significantly and go into a dance while he chanted those lines again and again. Sometimes he raised a discussion in which he put a question and answered its pros and cons, all by himself. “ How mighty is this Government”, he would say, “ how funny that these few brats who would beat it! And, look here, these aspire to take the raj back from the British Government”! Then with this argument on his lips he would flourish his stick around him, take a few steps forward, and whirl himself round in a dance. Suddenly he would put a question to the company of warders he had gathered round him. He would ask one of them, “Why, O, Ramya, do you think that the wind is cut to pieces by my passes at him?” and the company would burst into a peal of laughter. They could not but laugh, for was it not their Havildar, their chief, who had cracked the joke? Perhaps, they would suffer if they showed reticence. But the chief would turn round on them and ejaculate, “Fools, why do you laugh? Do not these few brats do the same to the British Government? I beat the wind with my stick. My lord,

here would blow up the Government with his daring conspiracy. Am I so ridiculous after all? Is not his venture as foolish as mine? The Coquette Some time, as I was bathing, he used to stare at me, and calling out the warders under him, would address them, “Oh Gondya, behold his body! It is like the bar of pure gold. How well-knit the arms, how full-developed the chest! Evidently he must be a fine wrestler in his day.” Suddenly he would change the tune. In a piteous tone he would say to me, ‘Sire, what a splendid young man you are, and what the devil have you done with your youth? This was your time to serenade with some fine girl abroad and be lost in her embraces. Instead of spending your time in England in such pleasure, here you are, hardly turned twenty-five and with but a fringe of moustache on your lips, embracing these heavy iron chains and shackles. How do you love to fall into their arms, I wonder.” At other times, he would burst, ‘No, indeed, these are not your deeds. Some big men have made a cat’s paw of you, that is all. They have feathered their nest and lined their coats very well, indeed, and at your expense. How they must have duped you with fine promises and then, in the nick of time, let you down! O, Sir, I am so happy, I am far happier than you are. I draw my wages all right. I have my pension as a retired servant. I get fifty to sixty rupees every month. I jingle the coin in my pocket and am carefree. While you, with your fine appearance, your youth, your noble profession, high status and with the daughter of a minister for your wife, you have shattered your life completely, and have forfeited the bliss of paradise on earth. Al for the country you say, Pooh!” I bore it all patiently. But sometimes it became too much for me to put up with this nonsense. With folded hands and in a sneer he would say to me, “Tell me verily, my master, how you were going to win the raj. When do you think you will be set free? There is going to be a big Darbar at Delhi in coming December (he evidently referred to the coronation of King George V); do you think that it will bring you amnesty and pardon?” To which I would reply calmly, “What is that jubilee to us? Yet I hope to get out ten or twelve years hence, if times prove propitious.” Then he would make a wry face and say, “No, they will never release you. They will torture you and make you rot in the gaol and they will take you out with your corpse, not a minute earlier.” It became impossible for me, at times, to save myself from this harsh man’s cruel badinage. Whenever he would call some five or ten warders to gather round him, and would address me in their presence as ‘behold, my hero’, and would jig and dance and deer at me with the flourish of his stick, I felt I would die of it, so piercingly it went to my heart to watch him. He was, as it were, taking out a caged tiger for show round the circus ring. This show, for children to laugh at and to enjoy, was so much painful to me. I chafed at it and felt that being sent to the gallows was better than life in that condition. This was like piercing red-hot iron into heart already lacerated with grief.