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

violence which was no definition but its perversion! And what shall we say of truth but that it was downright falsehood, a cant, a sham and a bunkum! I discussed the movement and its everyday incidents and exposed its hollowness before hundreds of my listeners in spite of their strong prejudice in its favour and, therefore, of their bitter opposition to me. I calmly bore it all, and gradually convinced them of its useless hair-splitting and its unreality and hollowness all round. It was bound to do more harm than good to the country and could never bring in Swaraj in one year as it was pledged to do. That I was speaking to them the barest truth was brought home to me by many an incident that followed. I may mention here only one of these. Two terrorists and political convicts, whose names I may not mention, had just been sent to the Andamans. They had warrants issued against them as involved in the riots in Punjab, but they had gone underground and the police had no clue about them. For six months they moved freely in the country carrying on their usual work, but no trace was found about them. And like Babu Guru Datta Singh they could have gone on for years defying the C.I.D., to catch them. But they went and saw Gandhiji, the leader of the Non-cooperation movement, and as ill-luck would have it, narrated to him the story of their life. The great leader was in rage and denounced them. He said, "It is sheer cowardice to be in hiding and to evade warrants against them. Go instantly and deliver yourselves in the hands of the Magistrate. I cannot countenance such untruthful conduct." They asked him plainly if that action was not cooperation with Government. They said to him, "We are making the law inoperative, we are practising civil disobedience in the right way. As we are carrying on our work, you cannot say of us that we are in hiding and elude the law out of fear. To act as you would have us act is to help the Government and help the law to have its own course." Before they had finished the argument, Gandhiji reprimanded, "That will not do, I order you to appear before the Magistrate and surrender yourselves. Do it instantly." Poor men! They returned to the North at their own expense and appeared before the Delhi Magistrate. After arrest and trial they now find themselves on life-sentence in the Andaman jail. And now they censured Gandhiji and had repented for their ever having committed the blunder of seeing him. I plainly told them that he alone was not to blame in that affair. Those who had the weakness to obey him implicitly, were as much to blame and deserved as much censure as he. Why did they listen to him, why did they not exercise their reason, and think, and act for themselves? I add only two sentences to this disquisition without referring in detail to other incidents and episodes to give the reader a picture of my notions at that time and of my line of work then. Summing up the discussion, I said, "We revolutionaries ought always to remember one thing and guide ourselves by one principle. That politics worth the name is neither cooperation nor non-cooperation. It is responsive cooperation, and morally it can be no other. If we win a step by cooperation, then let us cooperate with the opposition. If we feel certain that cooperation is useless, then let us resort to non- cooperation. Sometime non-cooperation has to be non-violent. At another time, it cannot

help being violent. And even violence or resort to terrorism ought to be only a temporary measure. Non-cooperation cannot be a principle, it is only a remedy for the time being. Co-operation with all and in the best interests of all is a positive doctrine. And when it works for all and promotes the good of all, and is acted upon, according to time and circumstance, it is rightly described as responsive cooperation." I had pointed out even then to my fellow-prisoners how far this chameleon would go, what would be the extent of its jump. I had warned them how the alliance of non- cooperation with the Khilafat agitation was bound to end in disaster, that it was sure to raise in the country a wave of fanaticism and plunge the whole movement into con- flagration, with its consequences to the country too terrible to imagine. I continued impressing the fact upon my colleagues and fellow-prisoners as long as I was in the Andamans. End of Chapter X

CHAPTER XI I meet my family again Last days in the Andamans Just about this time my younger brother paid me a visit in the Andamans. There was no hope then of my release from that place. My elder brother had continued to be failing in health. And, therefore, the first thought that struck us when we three met together was that perhaps that was the last meeting together of us three. For, the next time that such a permission would be granted to us would be only after the lapse of one year. And one year was such an interminable period for a person like my elder brother who had found himself so thinned in body and so gone down in health that it was hard to imagine he would last long. Every day was such a difficult day for that emaciated body to pull on with. As such I told my younger brother the bitterest truth in plain words. I said, "Bal, Truth is always harsh but I am sure you are not so weak-minded and cowardly as not to face it with fortitude. I see, therefore, no reason to conceal it from you. On the other hand, the sorrow that comes with perceptible and slow steps is easier to bear than any calamity that comes down upon us with a sudden blow. Be prepared to hear the worst of us any day in the future. I don't think we can pull on for a long time now. Do not forget, however, that even the unexpected sometimes happens. Who knows we may survive from this. But the chance are very remote for that. Take it that this is our last meeting together on this side of the world!" Every word that I uttered went like a burning brand to my heart. The face of Bal had completely darkened and his countenance fell. But he realised that words were like heart-beats, and harsh though they were, they were but echoes of truth. I had uttered them as the voice of my conscience, and he heard them intently. As I had by now completed my period of ten years in that prison, I had petitioned to the Government- to grant me the ticket to which I was entitled. The reply that I got was that I had been granted the ticket, but in the prison itself. To have a ticket itself meant freedom to live outside the prison, and to make a home and live in it by earning one's independent livelihood. Others had got such tickets on the expiry of three years in the Silver Jail. I got it at the end of ten years. But a ticket to live in the prison itself was indeed a travesty of terms. That really meant that I was to pass all my days in the prison itself, not in the free life of the Andamans, without a home of my own; and yet it was a ticket that they had given me! That was bitter irony indeed. That was lacerting a bruised heart. I was to be made an exception to all the rules operating in these islands; I was to get no benefit of any word or plea I had advanced to improve the lot of the prisoners in that jail.

Cornered thus on all sides, life for me and for other political prisoners in that jail would sometimes become a burden too hard to bear. In order to save them and myself from suicide, we had hatched up a secret plot among the most trusted and confidential friends of our group. We had included in that dark conspiracy some of the ordinary prisoners as well. Whenever we found that there was no hope whatever for this, that, or the other of the political convicts in that jail, when the last thread of hope had perished, then these convicts together were to..... So a day passed, a long, lingering day! The bell tolled announcing the coming of evening. A day of pining had gone by! Relief, rest, sleep, forgetfulness, and the approach of release nearer by a day. But release meant death as well. A day that passed was one day less from the sentence, sure enough. But it was one day less also from the lease of life. That also kept on haunting the mind. One of such days. The hour was evening; the bell had rung; and I had made ready to return to my cell. I locked the oil-depot and had handed over the keys to the jamadar. Though on ticket, every evening I had to return to my solitary confinement in the appointed room. I gave the keys and was winding my way to the room for the night. A warder came up to me and slipped a chit into my palms. He smiled full of joy and hinted that it was good news. And he went away. I opened the note and I read that an order had come from Indian Government in the head office of the Commissioner that day that Savarkar brothers were to be sent back to India. The Government of Bombay had asked for their recall! Such news had been brought to me several times before, and had ended there. And I had remained in the prison all the while. Hence I had never put any faith in these reports. My friends knew it and, therefore, had added that they had seen the order with their own eyes, and there was no humbug about it. The news may be true, for aught I thought to the contrary. For where prisoners had got their tickets after three years, I had got it after ten, and my ticket brought me no freedom, but permit to rot in the jail for all time to come. I realised that this farce could not continue for long and the shamelessness must end. There were only two alternative to this dirty conduct. Either I must be free in the Andamans; or as the report went, must be sent back to India. The authorities would prefer any day to take me back to India and put me in jail there. They would not have me on them as a free man in the Andamans. What I did not get for the asking, I was to get now from them without asking for it. For this concession would enable them to detain me in the prison in India after ten years in the Andamans. And that, in the name of mercy again, as an act of kindness towards me! For my transportation to India would be hailed by all who did not know the other side of the matter. They would regard it as an act of grace.

These were my night-thoughts on that date. Next morning the jailor sent for me in the office and ordered me to pack up my things. I then felt sure that this was a prelude to my departure for India. The Andamans were all agog with the happy news, for they knew not that my send-off from here was to be my imprisonment in India. The people welcomed the news as an order of release and freedom. Wish was father to the thought and they protested, "Babuji, none is going to put you back in the jail again. So soon as you step in India, you are free. That is a certainty." Taking the wish for the deed, they showered on me messages of congratulations from all sides. But the more I thought of it, the more indifferent I grew to that news. In the Andamans, I had the consolation of staying together with my brother. In India we were sure to be separated and housed in different jails. I had made intimate friends in the Andamans during the last ten years. I had already secured the ticket, and the chance was that, before long, I could live here as a free man in a home and a family of my own. In India I would again be confined in prison and as a solitary man. I would lose my friends, the ties would be sundered. And I felt the same wrench of separation that I had felt when I took leave of my friends in India and was transported to the Andamans. I felt as miserable and unhappy as I was ten years ago when I left India. And now that I was leaving the Andmans, I felt that I was being sent back on transportation for life once again. I packed up my books. I gave many of them to the prison library. I distributed others among prisoners and friends. On the last day, there was a crowd of men to pay me their last visit. They kept on coming to me from morn till evening. Every moment I feared that the officers might misunderstand the crowd and might arrest any one of them again. But all went off smoothly and the officers paid no attention to the crowd. Every one was free that day to go out and come in as he liked. The prisoners ceased to be afraid of the officers, and the officers in their turn did not over-do their part as custodians of the place. In spite of my repeated protests and when many of them could not personally meet me, they brought to the prison-gate gifts of all kinds. Fruits, flowers, sweetmeats, soda water bottles, tins of biscuits, there were in any number, heaps of them. And who were they that showered these presents upon me? Free men in the Andamans prisoners. What was their worth? Most of them earned no more than ten rupees a month. But what loyalty and what devotion there were in the act! Unsought and unretricted they came with their gift of a plantain, a watermelon, and a flower to deposit it near the prison gate. I went in the afternoon to the door, and I distributed them all among those whom I found near the gate. I only kept such of them as none would take back from me. I administered the pledge of service to a few of my choise friends who lingered behind. The pledge of our association contained the following words :— "One God, one country, one goal"

"One caste, one life, one language." We stand by these. I gave this mantra to him and explained to him deeper significance. For the fulfilment of this hope, for the attainment of this goal, every Hindu, who is one with the ideal, must be ready, if an occasion arises, even to HUI I his life fighting for it. I told him in detail what and how to do it. Before every Hindu individually and collectively can summon up strength for this supreme sacrifice and even during the process of it, he must carry out in I In-present circumstances certain tasks in the Andaman s and I told him in detail the tasks devolving on all of them severally in that connection. Just then a warder came to inform me that tin Sahib was coming as also the party of policemen that was to fetch me away from that jail. I got up, and I had the unalloyed gratification that on the last day of my life here I could convey to the men to whom I had just spoken the vow that I had taken when I was but eleven years old. I had buried my hope alive in that prison for ten years and on the day that its door was to open to let me out, my last act on the last day and at the last moment was no other than the message I gave to the prisoner in that jail. I had to step into this prison because I had given that mantra to young India, and now that I was leaving it after ten years, God had spared me to leave the same message behind to inspire young men in the Andamans. "One God, one country, one hope, "One caste, one life, one language." These words were on my lips all along. My brother and myself were made to stand before the prison-gate. The jailor handed us over to the police party in order to take us on the steamer bound for India. The kind jailor asked them not to put fetters on us. We were marched along and at last the iron door of that horrible prison opened its jaws to let us out into the spacious atmosphere of the world outside. It had opened in 1909 and closed after swallowing up my elder brother. In 1911, the same horrible jaw opened out again and shut so soon as it had gulped me down. We

had no hope then that we could come out of it alive. The iron portal that had shut upon us in 1911, turned on its hinges with a grating sound in 1921, the jaw opened and we came out of it. The iron threshold of that iron gate, as we crossed it, made us aware that we were leaving the Andamans alive. I said to my brother, "This little threshold is a borderland between life and death. From death we are crossing into life only by stepping athwart the threshold. Yes we have crossed it and stepped into the land of the living. And now? We do not mind very much. Let the future take care of itself." A garland of white Champaka flowers The outside of the prison was strictly guarded against the crowd that had gathered to give me a send-off. A large number of people had come there only to have a sight of me. The) prisoners scattered over the settlement were scrupulously kept at their work that day. And yet many had come under some excuse or another and lay in hiding to have a look at me. We had walked only a few steps on our way to Port Blair and under an escort when a Maratha prisoner by name Kushaba who had been raised to the position of a jamadar and who was shortly to receive his ticket of freedom, suddenly rushed forward and defying the escort that guarded us put a garland of Champaka flowers round my neck on behalf of all the prisoners present. While the police party was about to raise a cry, he had already left after cheering my name and prostrating himself at my feet. He was liable to lose his job and be punished for such a sacrilege. But he seemed not to mind it. I still visualise the scene. The Maratha prisoner intent on garlanding me, and the baffled police-officers straining to pull me off and handcuff me. The police officer was a symbol of twenty years' effort on the part of the authorities to blot me out from the memory of the people, to prevent one and all of them from having any photograph or book in their houses, or any relic to remind them of me and my work. All these years they had branded these actions as punishable offences. And now the police officer taking me to the steamer was making his last effort to prevent the prisoners from honouring me. On the other hand, the garland of Champaka flowers and the jamadar who gave it to me, were a token of the love and veneration in which thousands of my fellow-countrymen still continued to hold me. My life and life-work had all along been the battle-ground between these two contending forces and of their action and reaction. And the manifestation in my life constituted so many symbolic expressions of the whole story. That was how I felt about the scene before me, and I expressed it in so many words to my brother beside me.

More precious than a jewel necklace This garland of flowers was an invaluable recognition of our efforts during the last ten years for uplift of the Andamans. We felt our efforts rewarded by this token of love and reverence. It was dearer to us than any necklace of jewels. As he garlanded me, the crowd expressed its joy by clapping. These plaudits betokened loving gratitude that went home to my heart. It was a conclusive answer to the efforts of the authorities to inspire fear and disaffection about me among the settlers in the Andamans. I found some time to talk confidentially to my friends and chief co-workers before being taken up into the steamer. Through them I gave my parting advice to the dwellers in the Andamans. I told them, "Stay in the Andamans, cultivate the soil, inter marry, multiply, and add to the growth and expansion of the Hindu culture in those islands." I also chalked out for them the work they were to do. As I climbed the ascent ten years ago from Port Blair to the Silver Jail, I had never imagined that time would come when I was to descend from that place and go back to India. But now I had climbed down and was stepping into the steamer that was to take me back to India. As the thoughts were passing in my mind, the steamer 'Maharaja' had arrived. She was bound for Calcutta. We went up and I felt a strange sensation coming over me. I was to lose the little freedom I was beginning to enjoy in the Silver Jail, and, when in India, I may be put under severer custody as if I was to run my whole sentence once again beginning from it first day. As I stepped into the steamer, I was taken to the cage for prisoners on the ground floor. It was in the same cage that I was locked on my first voyage to the Andamans. A shiver passed over my entire body as I remembered it. And my elder brother was to be with me now, a thin, emaciated scare-crow of a man hiccoughing without rest or relief. We were both put in together. Put in the cage of maniacs The cage in which we were locked up was packed full of lunatics. The insane in the Andamans were all being despatched to India by the same steamer. And in their company we were bound for voyage to India and in the same cage with them! The lunatics were pouring forth foul abuses on one another and were crying aloud in turns. Some were holding their throats in the grip of their hands as if to throttle themselves. The man put in charge of these madmen was one of themselves, who had recovered from that ailment. He used to hammer them all one by one. There was not even moving space for us two in this medley. And my brother was burning with fever and so emaciated in body, and he was herded among this pack.

What the madmen saw and spoke they believed for the time being as gospel truth. Some imagined that the mice were running all over their body and mounting up their chests. Some believed that all the people around were shouting out abuse towards them, and they would wake up at night, sit on the neighbour's chest, each one of them, and were about to belabour them with fisticuffs. Others were rolling pell-mell in their own vomits and urine. And we were planted ourselves in their midst! Who are mad, whom can you call mad? For a moment I could not help asking myself the question, who is really mad and who is not. How do we know that what our senses apprehend is really the truth? Perhaps, what the senses of these madmen perceive may be the reality! On the side of the sane as on the side of the insane, the senses alone constitute the witness. And some one sense alone is to determine that the other sense reports correctly. If the senses of us all were like the senses of these lunatics, we should have felt like them the mice running over our bodies. Why then should we take it that we are right? Perhaps, they may be right and we, seated in the midst of their vomitting and discharges, are deluded that we are in that foul and dirty place! For aught we know, we are mad and they are in their senses! These musings gave me a shock. In the whirring noise of the rolling steamer, in those offals around me, in the obscene chatter of the lunatics thereby, and in the fetid and oppressive atmosphere of the place, I felt my life choking within me. I had often the fear and the feeling that this philosophic reverie may be the first intimation of lunacy creeping over my being, and under it things visible may be rapidly melting away into illusion. I felt the weakness of my shattered nerves at the time as I had never felt them during the ten years of my life in prison. The weak nerves were due to that life, no doubt, but I felt it overwhelmingly in the steamer and at that moment, as I had never experienced them before. I appealed and protested to the officers on board the steamer to remove us from that place. There was a part of the steamer occupied by other Indian passengers bound for India, and they also interceded on our behalf. Their efforts and chiefly the persuasion of one who shall remain unnamed secured for both of us seats in the other half of the compartment, and somewhat detached from the space allotted to the lunatics. But there was no breeze on that side. There were other prisoners carried by the same steamer to India and among them were some consumptives, dacoits and robbers. These convicts were accommodated on the deck that they might get fresh air to breathe. My brother, who was more sick than any one of them, had to rot in the cage on the lower deck—the cellar of the ship as it were—and in the cage I have already described. He was

consumptive, his body was burning with fever, and I suffered from hard breathing due to chronic bronchitis, and we two were placed in that stuffy atmosphere. Again, I appealed for fresh air; again I wrote to them that we needed very badly some fresh air to breathe in. From the following day a sort of ventilator was improvised to let down fresh air from the deck above two times during the day. A heavy gunny bag was suspended from the top downwards open at both ends from which air passed downwards from the deck above. Later on we were taken on the deck, under guard, for half-an-hour every day to sit there and inhale fresh air. The passengers on the deck and officers, at times, came in the cellar below to have a talk with us on the sly. The Indians among them were full of sympathy for us; but even some Europeans treated us with respect. One educated Anglo-Indian gave me a living proof of it by presenting me a copy of my favourite book, "Thomas a Kempis's 'Imitation of Christ' " which he asked me to cherish as a keepsake from him. They sent us by private arrangement good food to eat. I sent back out of it soda-water bottles, ice, and sweetmeat as not wanted by me. Some of them would force us to accept gifts in money which we thankfully refused. I told them that we were sure to be back in prison in India where we had no use for money. I distributed the sweet-meats among our fellow- passengers—the lunatics on board. At night my brother would narrate to me the story of his prison-life. I left India for England, in 1906. And from that date till fourteen years after, we were not in one room for a single day or night, so that we could talk together and exchange our thoughts. He told me how the movement of Abhinav Bharat had spread in the country after I had left for England, the names of members enrolled in it, how he happened to be arrested, how he was persecuted by the police to force from him the information necessary to round up all of them, how he breathed not a word about them and their whereabouts, how, at last, he had fainted under the torture, so on and so forth. They tried to get out from him information about conspiracies in Maharashtra and Bengal, but they failed. I heard that thrilling narrative with rapt attention. While on that steamer, I constantly remembered the friends I had left behind in the Andamans! And the thought brought home to me the void in my life that their separa- tion had made. I often had the yearning that I should go back to the Andamans and meet them! Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand! On the fifth day as I was seated on the deck for half-an-hour's daily draught of fresh air, I saw a fortified wall right in front of me. A fellow-passenger told me that we

were almost in India and the fortified wall was its boundary. I startled. The fortress of India. The embankment, sighing for which I had kept my body and soul together during all the hard years I had passed, in the Andamans, was right in front of me and I was soon to be landed on it! This was Mother India whom I was seeing again with my eyes. Her holy feet I was touching with my head. In this very life, I was seeing and touching them. I turned round to my brother and ejaculated, "Dear brother, behold our dear Bharat once again! Behold her feet washed by the blue waters of the sea around." We both got up from our seats full of adoration and worship. We folded our hands with reverence and devotion. We felt a thrill passing through us, and we uttered the following prayer: "Victory to the Goddess of Freedom, "Bande Mataram!" End of Chapter XI

CHAPTER XII

As we alighted from the steamer and touched the port at Calcutta we were put in the lock up at the Alipore Jail. The fear that I had felt on leaving the Andamans in the morning had but proved too true. Myself and my brother were put in different cells. Wearing our prison-garments and holding our bedding under the arm-pit and our pots and pans in one hand, we were both marching together like thieves directed by our escort of sepoys, when my elder brother was directed along a side passage by the sepoy in charge, and I was taken in a different direction by another. Then I felt that I and my brother were parted for good one from the other.

I heard him coughing hard as he was being moved away from me, and for a good long time after. Wearing his long coat of coarse wool and carrying his bed under the armpit, he was walking on groaning under the pain. "Whatever will happen to him? Who will care for him?"—'that was what kept me thinking. When he turned into the side pas- sage, I felt that he had not merely left me, but that he was taking the road to death while leaving me back on the road of life, and that I was having the last sight of him.

I cast my glance to have the last look of him, and walked silently on, though, within me, I was crying for the loss. I was taken to a lonely room in the prison's wing which was entirely vacated for me, and I was locked up therein. How sad and woe- begone I felt then!

Along with the sepoys appointed to keep guard over me, there used to come a warder, who was convicted for fourteen years' transportation for life, but was promoted to the place of the warder after serving only three years of that sentence and had thus become relatively a free man. How I envied him for that freedom! I had served my term of nearly twelve years and all the while in solitary confinement, and had not been free from restrictions of prison- life yet. Nor was I relieved of hardships bound up with that life. On the other hand, they threatened to be all the more oppressive now. I was standing near the door holding its bars. The evening was passing into darkness and , night. A sepoy was speaking something in an undertone. I gathered from one remark in that talk a partial proof of the foolishness that had run rampant in the politics of the day. Expressing his own notion of political agitation in Calcutta and other part of the country, he had remarked, "We are going to have Swaraj in two months. For a powerful Yogi of the name of Gandhi has begun his fight with the Government. The British are helpless against him. For a bullet-shot does not hurt him. If put in prison, he knows how to come out of it. Such superhuman powers he possesses. He vanishes from his cell and is seen standing beyond the outer wall. Such is the magic he wields. This has happened several times. Mahatma Gandhi had gone into prison several times, and, time after time, after short sentences, he had been let off. This fact had reflected itself in the mind of this man and in the minds of several persons like him in this queer fashion. I said to the sepoy smilingly, "What you

say is correct. For when the Mahatma is seen standing outside the prison wall and near its gate, it is precisely the time when he is released after running his sentence. He thinks of coming out and showing himself on the day when the Government lets him out of the prison. A young Chinaman was later put in a cell near my own on the charge of selling cocaine. He danced, sang and frolicked for he imagined that within two days he was to be free. I had not the good fortune like him of cherishing that hope. Does a shot wound you? The Chinaman knew the name of Sun-Yat-Sen. As I talked to him I knew that he was not unfamiliar with my name. He could not believe his eyes when I told him that I was that Savarkar of whom he had heard. How could a big man be contained in the ordinary cell of a prison! His idea of a big man was that he must be a man of abnormal size. Ordinary people have always similar notions of greatness and when they see that the great man before them does not come up to their notion of him, they are often shocked and disillusioned. So the Chinaman put me the question, "Does a gun-shot pierce your body?" I answered, "No doubt, it will." And a deep disappointment was visible on his face. Another sepoy asked me, "How many days and nights were you swimming in the sea?" Of course he meant at Marseilles. I answered, "What of days and nights? I swam only for ten minutes before I reached the shore across." This reply gave a rude shock to his admiration for me, and to the miraculous powers he attributed to me. If I had bragged and lied to him, he would not have received any shock, but the barest truth that I told him seemed to put him out. My habit of reporting correctly what happened at Marseilles had lost me many friendships in life and their reverence for me. Within a week I was despatched from Calcutta elsewhere. I did not know to what prison I was being taken. In the train I had the same experience that I had on my way from the Silver Jail to Port Blair. People used to put in my compartment fruit and newspapers from station to station and quietly went away. Sometime they would gather in large crowds to have a look at me. From the scenes I witnessed as I passed through, I could not help thinking that the news of my departure from Calcutta must have been communicated abroad by wire. As our train reached Nagpur and beyond, I saw newspapers with big headlines announcing my release from the Andamans and expressing their joy for the event. I also saw leaders and articles written upon it. A person sitting on a bench behind me in the same compartment had held a newspaper open and was reading it. He held it deliberately in a manner that I may also be able to see it. The writing was in Marathi and the Anglo-Indian officer in charge could not make any head or tail of the writing. The impression gathered from what I read in the newspaper was

that the report indicated that I would be released within a week. But I knew how the matter stood at the time. The gentleman in question was travelling by the same compartment out of deep sympathy for me, and helped me the best he could, without being noticed by the officer-in-charge. He read the news items aloud that I could follow him. The Anglo-Indian officers in charge gave me no trouble on the way and at last I reached Bombay. Our train reached Nasik at night, as I learnt from the words 'Nasik', 'Nasik' falling upon my ears. The shutters of my compartment had already been let down and I was seated in the centre between officers on either side. In the next compartment some passengers from Nasik got in. Twelve years had passed since I had left Nasik and now I was passing it in a train! A new generation had grown up during the interval, and who was there that could know and recognise me after such a long interval? And yet the word 'Nasik' itself raised such a flood-tide of thoughts in my mind. So many send-offs and entertainments on that very station; journeys to college and back, and packets of fried grains mixed together; water-melons, faces of friends lit up with joy, friends who had come on the station to see me off to England, and their tears of leave-taking; their cries of "Victory to the Goddess of Freedom"; and now their transformation into prisoners in fetters; and some of them sent to the gallows,—these pictures passed rapidly before my mind not unlike the moving pictures of today in a cinematograph. In Bombay I was put straightaway on a steamer. At the end of the voyage, I was again locked up in jail at about ten o'clock at night. This was no other than The jail at Ratnagiri. I can no more describe in detail and one after another my experiences in the jail at Ratnagiri. Circumstances prevent me from doing it. The main reason for my reticence is that they are very recent matters and concern a jail in our own province. I shall finish the whole by stating what I have to say about the matter in the briefest outline. The first two or three weeks in the jail at Ratnagiri passed away very badly for me. In the Andamans during my last days I was given well-cooked food and milk along with it which had helped to improve considerably my digestion and my general constitution. I was just looking up and had recovered from serious illness, when, sent to Ratnagiri jail, milk was denied to me, even in the small quantity that was allowed to me in the Andamans. And I had to fall back once again upon the usual ration of prison-life which was hard and ill-baked bread. This bad food had brought on continual illness to me for two years in the Andamans, and I was almost dying. The most experienced doctors had therefore prescribed for me milk and well-cooked food, as I have already told my reader in a previous chapter. But now my representation proved of no avail.

To add to my misery, I was kept here all alone, segregated from other prisoners and locked up in the solitary cell assigned to me. All the concessions granted to me after twelve years of imprisonment at Port Blair were now withdrawn. They had given me in the Silver Jail at the end of that period full clothing, freedom from hard labour, mere writing work to do, paper and pencil to write with, and liberty to mix with others. Here I was made to wear the prison uniform which was given me on the first day of my sentence; I had on my chest the iron plate marking the year of the completion of my sentence—1960—, and I was put in solitary confinement. This change from the Andamans to Ratnagiri was so unbearable to me, as I felt that I was made to start running my sentence from its very first day. Again, I could get no news here of my elder brother. Methought that he must have been passing through the same ordeal as I. My condition here made me remember my friends in the Andamans with greater poignancy. The work given me was that of cotton- spinning. Not being habituated to it, I could not finish it in time. I was not allowed to read and I found time dull and heavy. The last impulse of suicide You may wonder, 0 Reader, but every moment in this prison was an agony of mind. For twelve long years—nay, since the time I went to England —life had been for me a series of unexpected, unendurable mishaps and dangers, a continuous torture to my body and soul, with the result that my mind had been stretched on a rack all the time, and my nerves were completely shattered. And this new and additional strain on them was like the proverbial straw. I feared that it would end in utter collapse. One day I felt so dejected that my second thoughts could not come to my rescue. How long should I bear such life? What was the use of such a life? It was no use rotting thus now. Suddenly in this mood of mind I got up. High up in that cell was a barred window as in the jail of the Andamans. I thought out in my mind how to reach my hand to that window and how to put an end to my life by hanging myself by a rope to its bars. The thread of my life was to be snapped by straining it from the bars of the window above my head. The cord tied to the one was to break the thread tied to the other. My mind was overcast with complete darkness. And every moment that passed deepened the gloom and added to the darkness. I am writing these pages in imprisonment at Ratnagiri. Only within call from that place is the jail where I experienced the most tragic moment of my life, very similar to one or two experiences during my fourteen years' stay in the Andamans. This was the last and the darkest of these moments. But it was day when this last fit came upon me. And I had to wait for the night to act accordingly . And during the interval, I gradually recovered the usual balance of my mind. I argued with myself as follows, "In the Andamans, from Indu Bhushan to

Professor Parmanand, you had dissuaded several of the Bengali, the Punjabi and the Sikh political convicts, who had suffered as many agonies as you do now, from committing suicide. For the same reason you must desist today from putting an end to your own life. According to your own precept, you must exact cent per cent compensation for such an act. You must at least kill one enemy of the country as an exchange for parting with your own life. But is it possible now for you to act up to that precept? The night came and. I spent the whole of it in reviewing my whole life and its outcome. I was completely absorbed in that task. I scanned minutely with as much detachment and concentration of mind as was possible for me, the steps I had taken one by one towards reaching the supreme ideal of my life, and other minor goals subservient to it, and dictated by particular circumstances through which I had to pass. I definitely visualised my duty in relation to them, and I outlined the course I was to follow in the light of that duty. I must bear it all Therefore, I decided to suffer all, to endure all as a supreme national duty in the situation of the moment. I was also to continue doing what little I could, while bearing all that I could not possibly avoid. What cannot be cured must be endured. That was my final resolve. From the following day, I took up the thread of the poem that I had begun in similar conditions of loneliness years ago, and I planned the writing of the story of my life from the day of my arrest in England down to my removal to Ratnagiri. I brought together all its threads in my mind and working-out its outline in my mind, I divided it into parts and chapters and headings and committed the facts, recalling them one by one, to memory as if I was immediately putting them down on paper. I repeated the process page by page, concentrating my mind fully on the events as I recalled them. I, then, recorded them, with a piece of pointed brick, on the walls and stones of my prison- house using all my leisure from my usual work for that purpose, and according to the opportunity I got for executing the task. These jottings of the principal topics in my story occupied me for successive months, and I accomplished the work full of zest and earnestness. This work is the outcome of that task Those writings on the wall and those jottings from memory have given birth to these printed pages. During the three months that I was busy with the task a great change came about in my circumstances. I got better food to eat. The Calcutta weekly 'The, Capital' had written an article connecting my name with the German plot of the submarine Emden. My brother having threatened the Paper with prosecution, it

apologised and withdrew its statement. This affair laster for a few days since my arrival at Ratnagiri, and I also received parcels sent to me by members of my family. The trouble of the Khilafat Some convicts from Sindh and other parts of the country, involved in the Non cooperation movement and the Khilafat agitation, both Hindus and Mussulmans, came to the Ratnagiri jail soon after my arrival there. Their notions of the Khilafat movement, of Hindu-Muslim Unity and of politics in general struck me as vitiated and eccentric. And I had to carry on endless discussion with them on these topics and vigorously attack their misconceptions. A few days after, I arranged in that jail for talks and for weekly lectures and meetings on the line I had followed in the Andamans. We were together at Ratnagiri for a year and a half. When I happened to meet them for the first time, I happened to hear one of them shouting that "the Mussulmans had not done the atrocities in Malabar that were being fathered upon them." Another friend echoed loudly that "it did not matter in the least if they had done them; whatever had happened should be treated as dead past; Hindus may convert themselves to Islam; what mattered most was Swaraj and it must be won." There was no end to the perversion of the definitions of truth and non-violence among them. I may narrate here an episode of a political convict in this prison as a specimen of the mentality of almost all the non-cooperating and the Khilafatist patriots I came across in this jail during that time. The confusion of Gandhism We used the devices that we had employed in the Andamans to get at news in the jail at Ratnagiri. We could thus procure scraps of newspaper from outside carried to us through dust bins or by prisoners sent on work outside the prison. My friends among the non-cooperators often used to read these scraps as I read them also. Twice or thrice some of them were found reading them while moving about in the open court-yard. One of us warned them against this practice, as we were forbidden to read newspapers in prison, and if noticed by officers., our secret would be out, and all means of getting them would be instantly stopped. To this a non-cooperator replied, "Do you mean to say that I should read this in secret? I am a non-cooperator. Whatever is done secretly is against the doctrine of truth and I will not do it." We did not argue the matter with him. We only stopped giving him any scrap of paper to read. He was in rage with us. And he told us that he would report the matter the next day to the officer, telling him that they were smuggling newspapers in the jail in the same manner that some prisoners were smuggling tobacco. To hide a fact was sin, which no non-cooperator, as a follower of truth, would commit. We told him that he knew when he was reading those scraps that he got them from a secret source. Why did he read them then if he felt that it went against his concep-

tion of truth? Why did he not say he should have nothing to do with such a course? And was it not a betrayal of confidence on his part to tell the officer the name of the prisoner who had rendered that service to him? If this were truth, then Narendra Goshen must be worshipped by him as a sincere non-cooperator. No doubt the man was taken aback by this counterargument. He did not act as he had threatened. But he kept on maintaining that getting news in a secret manner was a sin, that founders of secret societies like Mazzini were all sinners. He asserted that whatever a non-cooperator did, he did openly, and there was no secrecy or cowardice behind his single action. He went about spinning long yarns on the subject. One day, in order to make a fun of him, we adopted a plan just when we were dining together. The gentleman in question always managed to eat a 'Chapati' by flattering the cook in charge, while all of us were being served at dinner with rice. On the day in question, while the gentleman was eating his 'Chapati' as usual, one of us raised an alarm that the Superintendent was coming. The man instantly concealed the 'Chapati' under a dinner plate near him and began quietly eating his rice. There was a roar of laughter raised around him, and all began cross-questioning him. "0, fellow, is it not a sin to conceal the 'Chapati' as you have done it? Is it following truth, according to your article of the creed, to eat the 'Chapati' stealthily?" Another answered on his behalf, of course, ironically, "A non-cooperator lover of truth does not regard it as a violation to eat a small 'Chapati' even stealthily, to feed his stomach. For that is an act of necessity, while your getting news surreptitiously and reading it is violation of truth as harmful to the national cause. "Surely it is no cowardice to eat forbidden food in order to live; that is not a lie or an evil act. To lie for the sake of a nation is, surely enough, an unpardonable sin, and an act of down-right cowardice." I would not have referred to the story if it were an isolated and exceptional incident. But I found this attitude but too common among the non-cooperators and Khilafatists I met in this jail. Hence I found it worthwhile to mention it in this narrative. That they may take in correctly the situation in Malabar I spoke to them in several lectures on that momentous topic, dealing at large with the whole history of the question. Our friends in that prison were dead against my Sanghatan movement. I convinced them of their inconsistent attitude in the light of the unity they were working after. For the larger unity was impossible so long as we were weak and divided among ourselves as Hindus. As to discussion on politics there was no end to it here.

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

Riot in the Ratnagiri Jail During this period a great quarrel arose between the insolent Pathans and the cunning Sindhi Mussulmans on the one side, and the Jail Superintendent on the other. The point in dispute was about the strict enforcement of prison-discipline. And the matter came to such a pass that these goondas decided to break into a riot to checkmate the Superintendent. In the riot they had conspired to beat all the Hindu prisoners in the jail, including the sepoys, the warders and the political convicts like us who were leaders of Sanghatan in that jail. One day after our usual meal was over, the Mussulmans suddenly kicked up a row and began attacking the Hindus. Having already warned the Hindus beforehand against this onslaught, they were ready to meet it though it had come on sudden. Some Hindu warders got a beating to the point of bleeding, but the Mussulman goondas did not go unscathed. They also got their share of sound hammering. They began to leave out and to flourish their sticks and fisticuffs, and in order to attack us sought to force their way inside the chawls. I stood ready near my room to meet them and all along incited the Hindu prisoners to take the offensive against them. In the meanwhile, somebody sounded the alarm-bell. A regular fight ensued between the two sides along with the usual cries to accompany it. The Superintendent came on the scene followed by a posse of soldiers. He threatened to give order for shooting. The Mussulman goondas were in a fright. They were all rounded up. Most of them had received sound thrashing from the Hindus and were bathed in blood. Prosecutions were launched, trials followed, and the rioters were duly punished. The Hindu warders who had saved their fellow- prisoners and themselves from the attack and had fought on the side of law and order, received their due meed of praise. This incident and its sequel made those who were considering me an outcast because I was the leader of the Shuddhi movement, converts to that movement. And soon we succeeded in converting a Mussulman to Hindu faith. Of course, for this sacrilege, the Mussulmans dragged me into a suit. After the usual argument and counter-argument, the court decided against forcible conversions on either side. Thus ended the Mussulman's game of converting Hindu lads to their faith. I was always on my guard against those who had designed against my life. The prisoners who had before this worked for the Khilafat movement as its partisans and had subscribed freely to its funds, now became champions of the Shuddhi and the Sanghatan movements. Their eyes were opened to the truth of the matter by what they had witnessed with their own eyes in this prison. And as they began at last to examine everything through the insight given them by the Sanghatan movement, their politics changed from non-cooperation into responsive co-operation. Out of this jail and free, they became in their respective provinces staunch supporters of Hindu Sanghatan. As in the Andamans so at Ratnagiri, I went on with my work of instruction for the ordinary prisoners in that jail. Some of these I taught myself. I gave from my own purse prizes and scholarships to encourage them to read good books. The prison library had no books worth the name. I petitioned to the Bombay Government for the sanction of books