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

wise, you would not have ventured that remark. Supposing I carry on as before, can you not put me back in the jail again? Will you keep a convict for ever in jail for fear that if he is discharged, he will begin his old game again? It is fair that you release me in pursuance of your own regulations. There has not been a single complaint against me during the last five years. Those who had tried several times to break away from the prison have not been kept in the Silver Jail for more than one year. I would abide by every condition you lay down for me even if you make me free in India, instead of transferring me from this prison to any other in India. If you forbid me from entering into politics, I shall do social and literary work in India. I shall try to serve mankind in many other ways. And if I break any condition that you may impose upon me you are free to send me back to this prison on transportation for life. Your law is so comprehensive and your power is so all-embracing." Member: "Not so, for so long as you evade the law, the law cannot cover you on the charge of breaking it. You may not be caught and proceded against for high treason. But that will not mean that you have not committed it." I:—"But then, you cannot also say positively that I have committed it." So long as you don't catch a thief in the very act, or you have no ground to suspect him of theft, you cannot arrest him for theft. And the same rule applies to a case of treason. I have several times forwarded my opinions to the Governor General in Council. The constitutional reforms will enable me to do some constructive work for the country. And I would try to,do my work in a constitutional manner. If the reforms prove fruitful that way, and clear the path to the goal all have in view, a political revolutionary like myself will prefer that path to bloodshed and unnecessary murder. Surely he is not so tired of his life as to risk it in that way. We followed that dangerous course in utter desperation and not because we were in love with it. And if you don't take me at my word, then I would give you in writing that I will take no part in politics for a stipulated period. Many of my friends will bind themselves down in writing like me. Let us be made free even with that restriction upon us. For we have much else to do in the service of our country in the field of literature and social reform. Why do you prevent us from doing it? Why do you keep so many useful, honest, brave and self-sacrificing persons behind the prison-bars and its stone walls? You have let off the Irish Sin-feiners ten times. They broke your conditions ten times and yet you have made them free on the same conditions the eleventh time. Why not trust us then at least once? Why not give us a chance?" In this strain, the conversation went on for one hour and a half. I narrated to them the whole story of my experience in this prison, much of which I have already woven in this narrative. I also covered the whole ground of Criminal Law and Penology. I traced the whole system of prison administration from the Borstal system in England to the latest experiment in America and on the continent of Europe. We had a long discussion on it.

And, last, I embodied the gist of it all in a written petition. With this last direction, the Commission took leave of me. The Commission had called for similar written statements from three or four of other political prisoners. Petitions were sent to the Commission from all parts of the settlement through the leaders of the prisoners working in the colony, as was previously arranged by us. These referred to matters special to the districts in which they worked. Two of the statements by political prisoners were very plain-spoken. All of us spoke with one voice and had unanimously made out a case for our release. And we had all demanded a thorough overhauling of the system of prison administration in the islands of the Andamans. A major portion of the political prisoners had represented that the Andamans should no longer be used as a prison settlement. In the newspaper world of India there was a similar appeal for closing up the settlement. In the 'Bengali' of Calcutta, a series of articles had appeared in support of that policy. For no one in India knew in detail the exact difference between mending and ending the system as a whole. The prisoners in India were totally ignorant about it. Therefore, the case for ending it was not so well made out in Indian newspapers in that matter of opinion. In my own statement on the subject, I had given all the facts relevant to the point at issue. This difference of view- point led later on to the sharp opposition by me to the general tendency among the prisoners of the Andamans. I give below an outline of my statement on prison administration as also on the legal and the practical aspect of the whole question :— "The ideal of the administration should be to improve the prisoner, to level him up physically, intellectually and morally, and not merely to punish him as a matter of revenge. The punishment and discipline should be strictly enforced only with an eye to that improvement. The punishment should be deterrent and not execessive. It is needed because human nature has not yet completely shed off its cruel and beastly instincts, and only the fear of punishment can make the ordinary class of prisoners abstain from crime. Moral responsibility has no share in it. Therefore, the punishment and discipline should be in strict proportion to the nature of the crime and to the nature and propensities of the prisoner himself. As far as possible caning and hanging should be the rarest of all punishments, if their total abolition is found to be impossible today. Those convicts alone should be visited by that extreme penalty of the law, who are found to be absolutely irreclaimable. The juvenile criminals should not be classed with ordinary prisoners. Their youth, their impressionable disposition, their repentence, should be taken into particular consideration in the sentence to be passed upon them, and as regards the prisoner with whom they should be herded. They are more to be pitied than punished for their offences, and they should be weeded out for a kindlier and more sympathetic treatment. A milder attitude towards them is eminently desirable, while those who appear to be distinctly anti- social may be reserved for stricter discipline and severe punishment. As they improve, the latter may be included in the former class of prisoners, as individual cases, as the former may change places, individually, if they show no sign of improvement whatever.

The object of hard labour allotted to the prisoner should not be to bring in large profits to the jail in which he is confined. It should be to improve him that he may return an honest man and a good citizen. He should be made to learn, in addition to doing his allotted labour. In the Andamans there is no provision for the general education of prisoners in charge. On the other hand, the authorities discourage and try to put down any such private effort. The practice is not only inhuman but devilish. Education in prison should be more compulsory than hard labour. And it should concentrate on the building up of character; it should bring about a change in his mental and moral outlook on life, and in the society in which he lives, moves and has his being. Prisoners, upto the age of twenty-two, should not be regarded as hopeless, whatever be the nature of their offence in the eye of the law. The aim of punishment should be to reclaim them as future citizens. All discipline should be directed to that purpose. They should be trained vocationally, so that they might have some useful occupation to fall back upon when they come out in life. By way of recreation every prison should be provided with amenities like Cinema and Music which will make them both human and responsible citizens. Of course, the prison ought never to be a place for an easy way of life. The prisoners must feel that they are segregated from the world not for ease, indolence and enjoyment, but for severe self-discipline and for realisation that the kind of life that they had led was not desirable or worth while for them to continue further. If they want freedom, they must deserve it; and the sooner they learn the lesson, the better it would be for them in the near or remote future. Prisons are penitentiaries and not places of inquisition and torture. There are very few races and families of whom one can say positively that they are a race or a family of hereditary criminals. They should be treated as exceptions. The normal rule should be that the convict is sent to a prison to go back a better man. As heredity and race are not yet final facts like other facts of Science, no penal legislation should be built up on its conclusions as if they were un-controverted truths." This is only the barest outline of what I had stated in my petition. And the reader may object to parts of that statement. But I explained the objections fully in my oral evidence. My final conclusion about the Andamans came to this : That today it was not a place of health because of the sea-winds blowing into it. But engineering and sanitation may turn it into a healthy resort before long. If sanitation, drainage, anti-malarial measures succeed in improving it, it may be a colony for settlers who aspire to longevity and sound health. Even as things were today in that settlement, the European settlers are found to thrive there and enjoy perfect health.

Those people who are proved to be exceptionally cruel in their propensities and who, by their anti-social activities, stand self-condemned as the out-laws of society, should be compelled by law to settle in the Andamans and should be made to develop the settlement, and to help social uplift under strict supervision and discipline rather than be made to rot uselessly in the jail of that place. This will be nationally fruitful, as it will give their lives some social bias, and make their own life happier and better than it could ever be in the prison itself. For if they are enemies of civilised society, they can, within the area of the settlement, develop a social sentiment and mutual aid under strict regimentation. By well-appointed work many of their rebellious instincts can be brought under control and directed in fruitful channels of duty and responsibility. They can be thus moulded into a social organisation all their own. The most cruel, and selfish convicts are found to turn into men soft as clay under the hard discipline of prison-life today. They have become obedient slaves of the tyrants who rule them. But it is of no use to them to be broken thus. If, on the other hand, they are put as free men on the settlement, if they are allowed to marry and manage things for themselves, their meekness and obedience will bear good fruit, and they will not be a burden and a drag on society. And their progeny will be immensely better than themselves. The children, under proper training, may become good citizens. To bury so many prisoners in jail for a term of fourteen or more years is to destroy the possibility of marriage and progeny which is a great loss to the country. While if they are made to colonise and develop the settlement on the basis of independent, hard-working and self-supporting families, in a generation or two the nation gains in number and in good citizens. Canada and Australia are living instances of such beneficent policy. They were, to start with, prisoners' settle- ments. Now they have grown into prosperous, self-contained and civilised dominions. The cruel and domineering temper of men in civilised countries proves useful in the development of back-wood regions peopled by savages. The qualities of head and heart that are a nuisance in older countries are assets in these regions. So that the prisoners can be best utilised for developing a settlement like the Andamans, first, to their personal advantage, and next, as a fine colony of the mother country. This is the policy that the Government of India should adopt towards the development of the Andamans." For these reasons I am not in favour of closing the Andamans as a prison-colony, but I wish the whole nature of it to be changed from harsh and cruel methods of jail life that prevail in it today. The prison-regulations today border on savagery and slavery for the prisoners and encourage despotism and tyranny on the part of the officers in charge. The aim should not be to exact as much work as you can. This ought to change into treatment for each prisoner according to individual merit or demerit. They should be classed together according to their past record of crimes and their present behaviour in the prison. And they should be so governed that by their permanent settlement in the colony they should become good citizens and their progeny a grade higher than they. Thereby they will be contributing a new chapter to the cultural and social growth of India. By this reform, the Government will be more than repaid for the crores of rupees it has so far sunk in the Andamans and in maintaining there the Silver Jail. There will be

no ground for it to think that by the change they shall be wasting that money. For the Andamans will rise in importance and the new arrangement will turn it into an asset for the country. From the day that I stepped on the shores of the Andamans, I had begun to realise that it could be fortified into a great naval base for the defence of India, and, before long, it was to become an area for the location of her naval and air forces. In case an enemy were to attack India from this side with its fleet, warships and aeroplanes, this base will checkmate them first, and constitute its strongest fortification to beat back the attack. (See Part I, Chapter VII) My memorandum to the Commission consisted of these and similar other proposals. My discussion with them about the Andamans struck them as a new light on the subject. Some of them did not take it seriously, but all of them were deeply impressed by it. When they used to come up to me on the third floor of the chawl, they would laugh and, pointing to the shore, ejaculate, "Behold your naval base and fortification and the warships floating up and down the waves." And I would reply, "You and I may not live to behold them; but our children will very probably witness them." This discussion between the Commission and myself took place about 1919-1920. I had said then that our children would see the Andamans transformed into a naval base and fortification for the defence of India. In 1926, when I am writing this, I feel I myself shall see it so converted. I read only in November last, in a newspaper in India the following, to confirm my opinion on the subject: "The Andamans will no longer be used as a settlement for the convicts. The Indian Government has sanctioned an annual grant of Rupees four lakhs and a half in order to turn it into a self-supporting colony and to use it as a base for naval and air- forces as also for a wireless station." Suffice it to say here that it will give me great pleasure to see my vision of the Andamans since I stepped on its shores in 1910, and my suggestions all along, to turn it into a reality, as the report from a newspaper, which I have quoted above, goes to show that it will be so. I may, however, remark that in order to make the Andamans a naval and an air base for the future defence of India, it is not necessary to cancel it as a prison- settlement, of course, on the lines indicated by me in my written statement and my oral evidence before the Jail Commission. If both the plans were properly correlated and vigorously carried out, they would largely contribute both to the prosperity and military strength of the Andamans. That was the opinion I held in 1919-20, and that is what I hold and maintain even today.

End of Chapter VII

CHAPTER VIII Amnesty and political prisoners The Jail Commission had left the Andamans. There was no doubt in my mind that the members of the Commission were considerably impressed by the statement I had submitted, and the discussion I had with them. And I have reason to believe that they did not suggest my release because, though I had plainly put it to them that if the new reforms proved a success the revolutionaries would follow the path of peace, I had introduced many if's and but's to qualify that general proposition, and they were angered by them. All the same, I had the deep satisfaction of realising that I had done all that I could for the well-being of thousands of my fellow-prisoners and the Government had no rational explanation to offer for my detention in that prison. While the Jail Commission was engaged in its work in this prison and afterwards, a great movement had been started in India for the release of political prisoners in the country and outside. It made the release a great national issue. The 'National Union' of Bombay had submitted to the Government of India a monster petition signed by 70,000 persons, demanding their release. I was always insisting on the need of such a petition to bring home to the Government the keenness of public opinion on this vital matter. It is clear to the reader from what I have written about it in the foregoing pages as also from the extracts I have quoted in them from the annual letter I had sent to my brother in India. Our leaders in Bombay and Maharashtra by their strenuous efforts had at last fulfilled that desire. The Government had always maintained that politicals like us had absolutely no following, much less any sympathy from other parties in the country; that the country was indifferent to our fate. They went further and asserted that the mass of people regarded us as wicked and self-centred revolutionaries, no better than other criminals in the country. The representation made by the 'National Union' on behalf of 70,000 signatories to it, was a conclusive answer to the position the Government had taken. It had a great moral effect in the country, as a vindication of the opinion that the people regarded the revolutionaries as good patriots as those who differed from them in their methods of work, and in their approach to the great national issue. It showed further that the people were full of gratitude to them for their daring and sacrifice in the public cause. The representation was bound to create a great moral force so much needed to persuade the Government to do justice by us. I had said as much to my brother in his visit to me in the Andamans. The 'National Union' of Bombay had rendered a great service to the country by preparing the petition and taking as many as 70,000 signatures upon it, covering in its activity a wide area from Bombay to a far off village like Bhagur, within the period of a fortnight, an activity in which ladies took such a great part in distributing leaflets and collecting signatures from door to door. It may be rightly described as a

landmark in the history of political convicts in India. I may be allowed to say here that my younger brother had done a fine piece of work in promoting the agitation which had fructified in that petition. The petition was also an indication of the great national awakening in the country and the courageous attitude of the people behind it. There was a time in our national movement when the word political prisoner was a terror to the people, and even great national leaders uttered his name without using behind it the appellation due to him as a gentleman, as if he was no better than the most condemned miscreant in society. The petition had demanded the release of all political convicts including the revolutionaries. And it had made a special mention of me and my brother, precisely because the Government bore a special grudge to us, as deserving such a release. Most of the signatures were taken from people in Maharashtra, as there was very little time for the 'National Union' to approach the people of other provinces. The monster petition submitted by the 'National Union' would surely have grown into a grand remonstrance containing ten times the signatures it bore, if there was time enough to pursue the activity, far and wide, throughout the whole country. And yet the petition had on it sig- natures of representative leaders of all the provinces in India. What we in the Andamans felt about it is well-expressed in my letter to India written in 1920. I give the following extract from the letter here for the information of my readers. "Many thanks, I am grateful to all the leaders and patriots and, especially, to the members of the Bombay 'National Union' for undertaking the task of preparing a petition on behalf of all the political convicts, signed by 75,000 persons and forwarding it to the Parliament. You have achieved the task within such a short time that it deserves all the greater praise for it. It is bound to weigh with the Government, if not directly, at least indirectly. To say the least of it, the petition had raised the moral status of political prisoners all round, as also of the work for which many had fought and failed. I shall now welcome release, if it were to come to me. For people themselves have expressed their desire to have me back among them. I do not find words adequate enough to express all that I feel about it. The gratitude is overwhelming and the joy inexpressible. They have given me more than I deserve from them. I have no doubt about it." Within a few days the Government announced its decision to let off all political prisoners in accordance with the terms of general amnesty. The credit of it all goes as much to the petition submitted by the Bombay 'National Union' as it goes deservedly to the work behind it of an all-round agitation and awakening in the country about the political prisoners' condition in the Andamans.

One evening before the day's work was over, I was standing with other prisoners around me, when one of my Sikh friends came running up to me and said clapping his hands, "Babuji, you are free, orders have come for the release of all the political prisoners in this jail. You are free, Babuji, you are free." What the word freedom really means and what joy it brings, only the heart of him can tell, who has been sentenced to transportation for life, or who is waiting in his cell to be taken to the gallows. All the prisoners in our section stood rooted to the spot; the unexpected had happened, and they kept on whispering to one another the word deliverance. But I had heard the word so often, and so many times had it been broken to my heart, that my joy of it could not last long; my heart failed to respond to it. In 1911, on the occasion of the King's coronation, a prisoner had come up to me all agog with similar news. And prisoners had rolled up their beds and kept themselves ready to depart. Eight or nine years had rolled by since that day, and I was in the same prison now as I was then. So many political prisoners had come and gone during the period! Therefore, I asked my Sikh friend pointedly what his source of the news was, whence had it come and how. Had it come by wire or otherwise? Our organisation for getting the news had been so efficient now, that whenever the officers received any order or information from India, that order or information was being instantly communicated to us; the copy of the printed order or information would reach our hands at the same time that the original fell into the hands of the officers concerned, crossing all the barriers of the seven seas, watches, walls, locks and bars that would keep it away from us. A copy of the wire had similarly passed into the hands of a warder who had handed it over for me to the Sikh prisoner. As soon as I put him the question, he put the telegram in my hands and smiled. He then asked, "Well, are you now satisfied? Do you or do you not believe me now?" And full of joy and in a victorious mood, he gave me a hearty shake. I read the wire. The political prisoner was not to be free. I read the sentence to my friend which ran 'so far as it is compatible with public safety'. The meaning of the qualifying clause was clear as daylight. The amnesty was granted compatible with public safety, from which I was sure that myself and my brother, and other fiery prisoners like us were not to get the benefit of the general pardon. In spite of my doubt about it, lost in joy they would not believe me. Every one of them waited, morning and evening, for the order of their delivery from that jail. I told them frequently that many of them were no doubt to be set free, and that was, indeed, a matter of sincere rejoicing and personal victory for all of them. But let them not delude themselves that all of them were to go out, for their despair would be sharper and more unbearable. The one thing certain was that we must live, struggle, pine away and die here. The thing that was not so certain was anything else beside it.

And it turned out as I foretold. The amnesty was not only not applied to me, but also to most of those political convicts who came there many years after me. Some of them are still rotting in different jails in India. Heaven only knows when they shall be free. Those who were released included by far the largest number of political convicts from Punjab and Gujarat. Most of them were soldiers and had fomented riots in that part of India. They had been in this prison, at the most, for two years and a half. The pure revolutionaries transported for life,—political prisoners strictly so called,—who got the benefit of general amnesty, all hailed from Bengal and were involved in the Maniktola Bomb Case; and others who were convicted in the Punjab and the Benares trials for conspiracy and sedition. It was, indeed, a day of universal rejoicing for us all. But in the midst of this rejoicing, I did not fail to point out the fly in the ointment, which was that India was not yet free, that they had fought and suffered for her freedom which was the national goal. And so long as that battle was not won, this rejoicing could not but have its dark shadow of grief, and the rejoicing may be but momentary, to be followed by similar hundred battles, and sufferings and incarcerations. Many still have to die fighting for the cause which my trusted friends and colleagues should never lose sight of. I also drew their pointed attention to a matter of deep significance locally; and it was that among those released were some fire-eaters, one of whom had resounded the whole chawl with his songs of patriotism culled from the revolutionary journal 'Gadar', and made crowds of prisoners hang on his lips while he sang those passionate songs. I may give here just one bit from them to show how fiery they were. Here is the catch : "Open your eyes, O, Indians, the nation is reeling and sinking." I can never forget this refrain; I can hear its sound even today. That such vehement persons should get their pardon was an indication of change in the national temper, and the change in the policy of Government dictated by that temper. It was not the reward for the good conduct of prisoners in the Andamans. I kept on hammering this fact because the amnesty would otherwise have been construed as the reward of obedience, and of abstention from any activity in the prison for the unity and uplift of its inmates. And this feeling would have reacted detrimentally on the conduct of the spirited persons among political prisoners as also on that of other nationally-minded prisoners in that jail. That would have bred in them cowardice to make them withdraw from many a useful activity which I had kept going in that jail. Leaving alone this aspect of the matter, I was very glad that the Bengali friends who had borne the brunt of the revolutionary struggle and suffered terribly for it, shoulder to shoulder with my elder brother, had got their release from this prison as a consequence of the general amnesty proclaimed by the Government. I saw them personally, and felicitated them upon their good fortune. There were among them some who were more intimate with me and who were trusted friends and ardent patriots. They

were all transported here for life but had only served four years of their term. The Sikhs, who happened to be released in a batch, began singing patriotic songs on their march to the harbour. On them the Chief Commissioner had said in his report, so the rumour went then, that "these devils were bound to return to the Andamans once again with a life-sentence passed upon them." It was very likely, indeed, for they were proud and rebellious spirits, every one of them. All these discharged prisoners had to sign a pledge that they would abstain from politics and revolutionary activity for a certain number of years. And, if again they were tried and found guilty of treason, they would come back to the Andamans to serve the remainder of their life-sentence. Since the receipt of the wire to which I have already referred on a previous page, a hot discussion went on among us whether we should at all sign such a pledge for procuring our release. My advice to my friends was that there was nothing wrong in it, as it referred to a future contingency and was in the best national interest. I quoted to them instances from the life of Shivaji, of his dealing with Jay Singh and Afzulkhan; I told them of Guru Govind and his flight after the incident of Chamkore; nay I drew Upon the life of Lord Krishna himself, in order to convince them of the correctness of the step they were taking. The most obstinately proud among them would not be peril d even by these parallels from the past. Their stubbornness on this subject, after all that they had suffered for the cause, inspired me with great hope for the future country. But, at last, I could convince them of my point of view, and they all signed the pledge without demur, thus broke open the lock of the jail in the Andamans. So many followed them out in regular batches. Of them all the deliverance from jail of Bhai Parmanand made all of us extremely happy. For though he was only five years in that jail, life there, and the wickedness of the place and its atmosphere, had filled him with such horrid disgust that he could breathe in it with difficulty; and already a month had expired since he had gone, on fast unto death. I was all along trying to make him desist from that course and they had begun to feed him through the nose. After things had gone on like this for a few days more, news of general amnesty fell on our ears. I thought that the name of Bhai Parmanand was sure to be included in that pardon. Hope rose high and he resumed taking his food. A few days after the incident, news came of Bhai Parmanand's release. He came to me full of feeling and affection and said, "You should have been the first to be released; how I feel restrained to go out without you." As he said this tears rolled down from his eyes. At last he bid me adieu and left the prison. I returned the compliment with the sincerest good wishes, and took leave of him with the words, that seeing him leave the place was such a great joy to me that in it was completely drowned the thought that I was to be here after he had gone.

Graduates of Naland Vihar From the day that I saw every possibility for a large number of political convicts to be released under general amnesty from this jail, I carried on among them in every meeting and on every occasion throughout the week till the last batch of prisoners had gone out, a vigorous campaign of education. We discussed the line of work we ought to follow, now that we were being free, for national awakening and in favour of national freedom. When these batches had stepped into the Silver Jail years ago they were only lovers of their country full of the spirit of self-sacrifice. But within five or ten years of their life here, they were completely transformed by self-education and study to such an extent that I may sincerely say of them, that they were going out as full-fledged graduates of our "Home University" of "Naland Vihar", as I have preferred to designate our educational centre in this jail. They were no more mere soldiers in our army but they richly deserved to be promoted, some of the best among them, to the rank of captains and generals. For their patriotism was no longer a passing emotion or mere fervour, but had deepened by self-discipline and study into a steady flame—"the pale flame of strenuous self possession." Years of hard work and patience had brought them that rich reward, and hen I saw the flame burning with its rich glow, I felt an indescribable joy within me for the transformation I had witnessed in them. I felt that through them the fruit of my labour and service will pass on to my country, and my power and my way of thinking will spread throughout the land. That these were sure to be implemented through them made me so cheerful and happy. There were some among them whom I had saved from the brink of suicide. And I was particularly pleased that their lives would now be dedicated to the service and uplift of the nation. The thought that it would be so, made me glad beyond measure, and reconciled me to my present position in this prison. After all of them had gone out in their respective batches, only thirty political convicts remained behind of whom myself and my elder brother formed inevitable com- pany. Putting our case aside, as out of question, I did not understand the logic of keeping the rest still in that jail, when those who had been known to be hardened criminals and dare-devils, any day worse than they, had been given the advantage of the proclaimed amnesty. This may have happened, I laid the flattering unction to my soul, for want of impartial and close scrutiny of every individual case as worthy or unworthy of pardon, and because there was no fixed standard by which every prisoner should be weighed in the balance. As a result some of them who really deserved release had been kept behind; and the worthy had to suffer with the unworthy. Ten years of intensive and wide-spread agitation had at last helped to turn the tide in favour of all politicals prisoners in the country, but my brother and myself were once more left high and dry to linger on the shore behind. Those who had come with me on transportation for life, those who had been sent here on life-sentence some eight years after me, had left the prison after only two years of incarceration. But we two continued to rot here without even a day's pardon in the period of our sentence. Of course, the treatment meted out to both of us was not without its due effect on the mind of the Indian

people. The more Government tried to repress us, the more the people thought of us and remembered us. Questions were put in the Imperial Legislative Council at Delhi why an exception was being made in our individual cases, when almost all of the political convicts had been discharged from prison under the terms of the general amnesty. The newspapers kept up the same cry. The Working Committee of the Indian National Congress passed a resolution "demanding the release of Savarkar brothers and of two others from the Punjab, namely, Boga and Ratan Choudhari." But—at last, we also had our chance; Dame Fortune smiled upon us too. We were discharged in the Silver Jail in the Andamans. But from where and how? When others were taken out of that jail, we were taken out of our respective solitary cells in the chawls, and made to stay in the courtyard of the prison. After some ten to fifteen representations, we were removed near the door of its office. I was given the work to note down the names of the prisoners in the prescribed forms, to take those forms from and to the office, and to stay near the door. I was not allowed to enter it. Once even that door was shut against me. Not for any fault of my own, sure enough. One of the political prisoners was writing a letter to be sent to India when he was caught in the act by the warder in charge. The prisoner had written in that letter information for newspapers in India about the condition of prisoners in this jail. The warder and the writer of the letter were duly punished for the offence, but I also suffered along with them. For a few days more I was forbidden from taking my seat near the office-door. This was ever the hitch in my way. Whenever anything untoward happened in the jail, I was made a scapegoat for all the sins, and had to pay heavily for them. With all this useless lamentation on wrongs done to me continuing, I was again brought near the office-door, and at last stepped into the office itself. But that again proved to be a step and nothing more. I had by this time finished ten years of my sentence in this prison. To be more accurate, I had certainly completed my nine years. I then began petitioning to the authorities that, as some of those who had come into the prison along with me, had already been given permission to go out of the prison for a stroll, and one of them was granted leave to stay in the settlement, and as others who had followed me years after, were detailed for different kinds of work outside it, like, for instance, higher work in the factories and the printing press, I should be given the permit to move out and sit all to myself in some place for some part of the day. When hundreds of political convicts on life-sentence and ordinary prisoners on two years rigorous imprisonment had been discharged only after two years' hard labour in the jail, a convict like me, who had been there for ten consecutive years, should, at least, be not denied such a ticket. The answer to

my petition was a point-blank 'no'; and the ground was that I had not yet completed my ten years! The regulations which went against me had always been observed meticulously; while those which went in my favour were far from being so strictly applied. According to the rule, I should have met my kith and kin after five years, but I did not secure the permission to see them till after seven or eight years. And now as I had technically completed my ten years, the permit I had applied for was being withheld from me! But was the rule at all observed strictly? By no means. Ten years had passed, the time for granting the ticket was already over-due, and I was lingering in that jail yet! A Foreman But now I came to be appointed a foreman, and I drew for the appointment the handsome salary of Rupee One per month! And that was, again, an act of favour. I am sincerely thankful to the individual officer who did me that kind turn. Never mind, I am a foreman all the same. Some of them spoke to me by way of a jibe, "Many others after you are now occupying higher jobs here; they are 'Babus' and are exercising their authority as such. While your good self! You are only a foreman in an oil-depot!" I used to give them an equally curt answer: "You do not realise the power that I possess. What of the Babu? A prisoner, a Superintendent, a Commissioner—each of them is only a 'man'. While I am a 'foreman', that is the leader of men. The Government has at last seen my worth, and honoured me as I deserved. The honour which even the Viceroy did not have, they have bestowed upon me. A foreman, the leader of men—what better title should I aspire after? As a foreman I was in charge of the big oil-depot of the factory. In the prison- world, the office had its singular importance. The oil-depot contained hundreds of casks of coconut oil containing a month's produce of thousands of pounds of oil ready for export abroad. This was the main and a great source of income in the Andamans—its coconut gardens and the oil manufactured out of them. Three big reservoirs were full of oil ground out of the oil-mill in that prison. Big casks were filled with oil on order for export abroad. They went to Calcutta and Rangoon and returned to the treasury an income to be calculated in thousands. The oil-depot was the centre of all these tran- sactions from month to month and throughout the year. It was the nerve-centre of the Silver Jail—its thews and sinews. And others were naturally jealous that I was put in charge of the job. So they began to twit me. Indeed, it was a key-job, an important job and I was dressed in that authority!

What the job meant and what I made of it had better be told in an independent and a new chapter. End of Chapter VIII

CHAPTER IX The spread of Hindi in the Andamans I had begun my work to obtain for Hindi the status of the national language of India, and to popularise it by every means at my disposal from the year 1906 when I was in England. The members of the Abhinav Bharata in England repeated the pledge every night before they retired for sleep, to 'make India independent, to weld her into one nation, to turn her into a republic, and last and the fourth, to make Hindi the national language of India and Devanagari the script in which it should be written.' Accordingly, when I found in the Andamans a suitable opportunity for consolidation and propaganda work, I drew up a plan in 1911 in which I gave a prominent place to the spread of Hindi in these islands. The very idea of making Hindi India's national language seemed so preposterous at that time that the so-called great leaders of India simply pooh-poohed it. The man in the street had no notion about it. Lokamanya Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi openly espoused it only after an agitation in its favour had gathered momentum and weighed behind it. And that was long after 1906. Only the Nagar Pracharini Sabha of Benares and some members of the Arya Samaj were the first agitators in its favour. The first credit of propaganda in favour of Hindi as India's national language, as also of writing patriotically in that language goes to Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the great founder of the Arya Samaj of India. It was in this stage of the public mind that I undertook in 1911 the task of persuading all the prisoners at Port Blair to study Hindi. I had to begin at the beginning, that is, with a discussion whether Hindi was at all a language after all. To the inhabitants of Maharashtra and of the South of India the word Hindi itself was a strange word. They would designate Hindi as 'the language of the Mussulmans.' For in the South the Mussulmans often used it as a mother-tongue, or, at least, as a language peculiar to their own community. Prisoners hailing from the North knew it not only as the common language of the Hindus but had come to realise that eight crores of Hindus and Mussul- mans together had begun to adopt and use it as their common mother-tongue. Even these, however, used to say that it was not a language fit enough to be the national language of India. Some said it had no grammar, others alleged that it had no literature. It was natural for people from Madras to fight shy of it. But the prisoners from Bengal were as averse from it as those from Madras. For the Bengalis cherished the ambition of making their own mother-tongue the language of India. In fact, next to Hindi, it is the Bengali language that deserves the honour of becoming the national language of India. In point of number, four crores of the inhabitants of India speak in Bengali, and it is as advanced in

literature as the Marathi language on our side. But a Bengali gentleman by name Mitra had given his approval to Hindi as the coming national language—the lingua franca—of India. He had gone the length of conducting a magazine in Hindi in furtherance of that object. I had to meet all these objections and to prove to them that it had grammar, literature, richness of vocabulary and style, and all other qualities capable of making it common language of India. And it had behind it the overwhelming strength of numbers who used it as their language of common speech. I brought for that purpose some classical works in the Hindi language and pointed out, though it was at the time lacking in modern literature, how it was fast making up that deficiency. And, further, that if all of them would put their shoulders to the wheel, in five years' time, we should be able to give that language its proper status in the world of letters. Again, Hindi had always been the 'lingua franca' of India; we had not to create it afresh to enjoy that status. The dervish from Rameshwar, as also the merchant, carried on intercourse with each other at Hardwar in that common language from the days of Prithviraj or even earlier. With these and similar arguments I at last brought them round to the study of the Hindi language. I tackled prisoners in the jail by a similar persuasive method. The courses of study we followed were as follows : Every prisoner should learn the languages of provinces other than his own. The Andamans offered a rare opportunity to them for such a study. I used to teach, accordingly, the Bengali prisoners Hindi and Marathi; to prisoners from Maharashtra, I taught Hindi and Bengali; and to the Punjabi I taught Hindi as well as his own Guru-mukhi. I carried on this pursuit throughout my stay in this jail. The Gujaratis were the last to come there, but I taught them, all the same, the Hindi alphabet and equipped them, within the brief period at my disposal, to read and write. Others I taught Hindi first and any other language after it. For ten long years I stuck to that work and my colleagues gave me their fullest co-operation in that self- imposed task. In a former chapter I have already informed the reader of the circulating library of Hindi books which we had started under our organisation and also of the manner in which books were passed from hand to hand for that purpose. Our colleagues were teaching Hindi to some well-meaning Madrasi officers in a secret and silent manner. One doctor taught Hindi to his wife and son, and made them talk to each other in Hindi that it might become the common language of all Indians. He contributed Rs. 5 to 10, from time to time, to our fund for the propagation of that language. I may give here an instance or two of how we collected funds for the purpose, apart from the generous help that some of these officers gave us. A convict by name Divan, sometime an Arya Samajist, had been transported for life to the Andamans. He was a peasant by caste and was convicted in a trial for dacoity. He became my devoted disciple soon after his arrival in the Silver Jail. He did a lot of

work for our secret organization. He had a power of easily influencing the people. Unfortunately Divan died in the prime of youth succumbing to the insalubrious climate of these islands as also to the exhausting hard labour in the prison itself. Some friends decided to celebrate the anniversary of his death by a big dinner. I advised them to divert the collection of money for that purpose to the purchase of Hindi books for the use of prisoners. They agreed and the money was spent in the purchase of Hindi primers and other books which were distributed freely among needy prisoners in the name of the deceased. A man named Bihari was sentenced to death. He made a vow to God to give some money as donation if the sentence was commuted for life-imprisonment. By a turn of fortune he got what he had prayed for, when he asked me how he could donate the money which he had vowed for. The dinner was out of question here since I had discountenanced it. I asked him to spend the sum on the purchase of books. But there was a great hurdle here in the way to jump over. Every section claimed the donation to purchase books in his own language. Thus Urdu and English books claimed it at the time. My championship of Hindi was attributed to my desire to kill the Bengali and the Punjabi languages. I told them that I would not sanction the sum for Urdu or English books and I would not claim it for Marathi either. And nobody would charge me with the motive of killing Marathi. Why do I then ask for the money to purchase Hindi books, when I love Bengali, know Marathi, have learnt Gurumukhi and can teach in all of these? Precisely because what is national must be preferred to what is local and provincial. We must sacrifice our personal bias in the interest of the country as a whole. At last, I persuaded them to use the hundred rupees, which the man with the vow had set apart, towards the purchase of Hindi books. I bought out of the sum the Hindi writings of Al-Udal down to many a book published by the Nagari Pracharini Sabha of Benares. I must say that Al-Udal was my favourite author in Hindi. I used to impress upon the minds of my Bengali friends, who maintained that Hindi was not a well-well developed language or had no literature worth the name, that it was a growing language by bringing to their notice the best works in it as were published by the Gurukul in the Punjab and by similar other publishing houses. Sometime they were considerably annoyed by my persistence, and attributed my efforts to a bad motive. But at last I won and made the prisoners realise the value of Hindi as the national language of India. Henceforward, the matter was no longer under dispute but had become an accepted, proposition. I had to use a different line of argument to convince the Sikhs about it. They did not know that the best writings of Guru Govind were written in pure Hindi, like his drama 'Vichitra' and history named 'Surya Prakash'; they were written in Brija Bhasha—which is the purest Hindi and the language of Tulsidas. I convinced them in this manner that Hindi was the language of their religion, and Gurumukhi was only a script and a dialect. So they realised the worth of it not only as a national language but as the language of their panth. About Gurumukhi I was of opinion from what I had read on the subject in the prison, that it was not a script invented by Gurus, as tradition maintained, but it was only an older script common in the Punjab among merchants and persons of average literacy, as Modi is to Marathi. Historical investigation went to prove that, out of many similar

scripts current in the Punjab, a Guru chose the older one and stamped it with his own authority as the script to be followed. Hence its nomenclature Gurumukhi. The religious scriptures of the Sikhs, instead of being written in Shastric or Nagari script, were written in the common script known as Gurumukhi for use by common people even as Buddha wrote them in Pali script with the same end in view. This is a subject by itself. I have referred to it here in the context of Hindi alone. This origin of Gurumukhi, I know, has not yet been accepted by accredited scholarship. Whether it is historically correct or otherwise, I must say that the credit of that finding, so far as I know it, is entirely mine. I have, however, discussed the matter so often with Sikh scholars of language and history. I did not allow any one of another province to study Marathi in the first instance. My order of study for all the prisoners was first their mother-tongue, next Hindi, and last, the language of any province other than their own. I encouraged all of them to study at least one provincial language other than their own. I could make no provision for teaching the Dravidian languages of Tamil province including Malayali, Andhra, Tamil and Canarese, for I did not know these languages myself and there was none among the prisoners competent to teach them and to collect the necessary literature in them in order that their study could be properly conducted. I was ever conscious of this defect in our common programme of teaching languages, and I have not yet been able to remove it. Otherwise during the last ten years, I have made the prisoners study all other languages like Marathi, Punjabi and Bengali in addition to the common language Hindi and their respective mother-tongue. Most of them could read important works in the Marathi language. I used to collect information about standard works in Dravidian languages, and, through the Superintendent, was able to get permission to purchase elementary text-books in that language. I had made a list of them and had provided money for that purpose. But my sudden departure from the Silver Jail put an end to all these projects. Today, I cannot say, what has been the upshot of these plans of mine. Urdu given a set-back The Andamans is a colony of men drawn from different provinces of India; as such its lingua franca is Hindi. The progeny of the prisoners who had settled in that colony also uses Hindi as its language of common speech. Intermarriages among their families had given Hindi its natural prominence among them. Most of the settlers are Hindus by religion and race. As such the medium of instruction in schools for their children should have been Hindi, as, for all practical purposes, Hindi has been their mother-tongue at home. But from its early years, the Muslims appointed as teachers in these schools hailed, most of them, from the Punjab and Delhi and were familiar with Urdu script and language. The result has been that Urdu had become the common medium of instruction in all the schools of the Andamans. Another source of this tradition was that the writers in the prison office were recruited from Muslim prisoners, and Urdu had become the language of the office-records. Those who came out of these schools had all got their education in Urdu; as such those who learnt Urdu came to be regarded in the Andamans as having the stamp of education upon them. Hindi as a

medium of instruction naturally fell into the back ground and, later on, came to be altogether ignored. As schools grew in number, Urdu grew in importance along with them. As a matter of fact, there was very little difference between Hindi and Urdu, except for the script. Hindi written in Persian characters becomes Urdu. So the point of difference between the two lay in the question of script. Most of the boys and girls learning in these schools being drawn from Hindus and having Hindi as their mother- tongue at home, should have been taught Hindi in the schools through the Devnagari script. That was proper and desirable from the common standpoint of nationality and religion. The schools were built up on the taxes paid by the Hindus; and the wonder of it was that their children were forced to learn Urdu script in schools which were meant for them, and which were maintained from taxes paid by their parents. Hindu boys and girls educated in such schools did not know the a, b, c of the Hindi alphabet; they could not read Tulsidas' Ramayana or Slokas from the Bhagvadgita while they were familiar with couplets from Persian poets. They knew nothing of Kalidas. Let alone Kalidas, they knew not a line from Surdas or Prema Sagar. The Hindi primer or first book was as strange to them as Latin. The boy however read an Urdu newspaper with facility and ease. All his ideas and images were drawn from rivers in Persia and Arabia. He knew more about heroes from those countries. About the Pandavas, or Bharat, or Ramayana, or Bhagwat, he knew practically nothing, for he could not spell a letter out of them. When I went to the Andamans, I saw this state of things in these islands. If Hindu culture and Hindu tradition were to be saved from extinction in these parts, I felt that the first step to be taken was to make every child learn Hindi script at home, and to talk and read in Hindi alone. I, therefore, thought that an agitation was necessary to bring about this change first in the mind of the Hindu settlers of the place, and then in the schools where their children were being sent for education.

I maintained that the medium of instruction in these schools should be, as a rule, Hindi written in Devnagari script. And for Muslim pupils in such schools Urdu may be accepted for instruction only as special case.

But a change in the schools implied a change, in the first instance, in the mind of the people themselves. For the Hindu settlers in the Andamans had but little sense of nationality in public life, and their notions of Hindu religion were no better than foolish customs from the past. The survival of Hinduism in them was but rigid adherence to these time worn superstitions. They never realised that Hindi was their national language; much less did they appreciate that it had to be preserved and learnt by them as the language of their sacred books. For, after Sanskrit, these were written for common people in Hindi language. The Devnagari script and the Hindi language were their sacred trust, but they knew nothing about their responsibility in that respect; they were not even remotely conscious of that trust. For two or three generations Urdu had dominated the place and had monopolised their attention. They had embraced that language with pride, and had lost touch with their real mother-tongue, an attitude suicidal to them as Hindus in race and nationality. I, therefore, sent round men of my way of thinking among these settlers. I made them visit their houses from door to door, that they might be awakened to