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

whole, and, particularly, by what he had to pass through in the prison of the Andamans. If prison-life in India and especially for the Indian political prisoners, has at all improved, the credit of that improvement must go entirely to the work of uplift and awakening he carried on relentlessly during his ten years' stay in the 'Silver Jail' of that island settlement the pages of the book before the reader make that fact clear, as clear as day light. Savarkar came back to life when he was past fifty, and lie revived Hindu Mahasabha as its President for five years, as none before him had done it. He has given the Hindus and all Indians a message to live by. He has charged them to live as true patriots, and to so live that life that India may become, under God's providence, the glory and the greatness that she was in the noble past, as typified. for instance, in the reign of Asoka. "One country, one people and one goal; victory to the Mother"-that is what he has toiled for and suffered for. And that urge within him, this book makes it clear to us in burning pages, as no other prison-diary written by an Indian for an Indian has made it before him. Time is not yet to judge whether his name "is writ in water" or shall abide. Savarkar himself will leave that for his Maker to decide. His is to work and leave the fruit of it in the hands of Him who has made the world and looks after it. V. N. NAIK

INTRODUCTORY Thousands of my countrymen in Maharashtra and the rest of India have sympathetically expressed their desire to hear the story of my life in the Andamans and of the hardships that I had to pass through during my imprisonment in that island. Since my release I have also felt that the yearning to narrate the story, and share in the tears that my dear ones will shed while reading these pages. Sorrows remembered are sweet and that sweetness I hope will be mine, while I unfold page by page that heart-rending tale. All the same, the events of that story, even when they had been upon my lips, had not found expression in words up to this time. Like some thorny creeper growing in darkness, they seemed to wither away at the touch of light. They were dazzled and blinded by the anticipated glare of publicity. Occasionally the thought came to me that I did not suffer what I had suffered to tell it to others! Then it would be all a stage-play. Sometime there was the irrepressible longing to recount the tale of my bitter experience because those who had died in the midst of them had not communicated them to the surviving members of their families. They had not that consolation and I should do it for them. Those sufferers are not with me today-my fellow-workers and prisoners. Why should I, then, in their absence from this world, reveal their sufferings and enjoy the relief and consolation denied to them by Providence? The sweetness of sorrow remembered was not theirs. Why then should I claim it for myself? Will it not be an act of betrayal towards them as also of self- deception? And have not several persons suffered like me before this? Have they not gone through similar dangers and catastrophies, and are not many more yet to face mountains of trouble like me? Why should I then make so much noise? What is my tom-toming before the sound of their kettle-drums? In the bivonac of life and in the noise of the battle-drum, let me not sound my tom-tom. Let me be silent. But grief is always eager to express itself in words. The cry of grief is irrepressible. Nature has bound that drum round its neck and it must beat it. A falcon pounces upon its prey and carries it in its claw. The little prey sure not to escape from that claw, still sends forth its yell, knowing full well that no help will come to it in that dire plight. It is Nature’s impulse that makes it utter that piercing sound. From the wail of that bird to the funeral march accompanying the corpse of Napoleon brought back from St. Helena to find its grave in Paris, with flags at half-mast, with drums beating and trumpets sounding before the coffin is let down in its last resting place, is not all this wail of sorrow but an expression and outlet for suppressed grief? Every being in this world finds an outlet for the soul pent up with grief, “in words that half reveal and conceal the

soul within.” It is the second nature of grief to cry out. Why then should I not add the sigh of my individual sufferings to the countless sobbings, passing into the infinity of sky, from the souls of innumerable sufferers, and seek the relief that such heaving may bring me? Surely enough the vast deep has space enough in it to contain that sigh. My individual self would often be ready, with these musings, to give out what I had held so far within my bosom. But circumstance had held me back and would drag me back. For, in my present position I cannot give to the world just what is worth knowing in my life in the Andamans. What can I expose is but the surface, relatively insignificant, and superficial. And I have no zest in me to put it in words. What I would tell I cannot, and what I can tell has no sufficient spur to goad me on. I had almost decided to say nothing lest I may present the picture in blurred outline and without proper perspective. To give a colourless and tame account of that story was to render it worthless. I had better wait for the day when I could narrate it in full, omitting nothing and exaggerating nothing, and giving full vent to my thoughts and feelings about it. If the day were not to arrive, let it to go to the grave where it will be buried along with my body. Let not the world know it, it does not lose its worth thereby as its edge is in no way blunted by oblivion. In the vast well of loneliness and sound that this world is may remain deposited in tears, and that will not stop the world from running its appointed course. Such were the thoughts and counter-thoughts that kept an assailing my mind. In this woe-begone condition of my mind, I had to put off my task of writing the story of my prison-experiences for the information of my fellow-countrymen. Many that entered the Andamans later than I, and many who went out of it earlier, had published such writing and narrated their reminiscences. And I have read most of them. Those who were in prison elsewhere for a period of not more than six months, have given to the world an account of their life in prison. And I have seen them as they were being published. But such kind of autobiography has always incurred the charge of self- adulation, and I did not desire to be tarred with the same brush. So the mind has hesitated all along, and the hand has been restrained by the thought. To be communicative, to open one’s heart to persons dear and near to us, to state everything freely and frankly is the natural tendency of the human mind. It revels also in the expression of triumph over difficulties and dangers, it exults in enlarging upon those conquests over trials dead and gone. It finds a sort of joy in dwelling long over them. But circumstances intervened to postpone that desire and reap the joy of its fulfillment. But my friends insisted that I should give them some account of my life in the Andamans, however imperfect, brief and partial it may be. Even that much would be interesting to them, the friends added. From the youngest lad going to school right up to the oldest among my friends the demand became persistent and imperative. The publishers pursued me with it as much as the school boy. And it emanated from a sincere and loving heart. So much so that I could no longer put it off. Not to accede to it would be an excess of modesty and pride combined. It would mean disappointment of public expectation. Hence I finally resolved to write these pages and to give to the world such

account as I could render of my experience in the Andamans, I could not narrate the whole story at the time for reasons that were obvious. Such a cogent, clear and well arranged narrative must bide its time. The reader must be content with what I can present to him and with the way in which I shall present it. Whatever is imperfect, one-sided, or inconsistent in the story, must be accepted with pardon, for it is production of time and circumstance beyond my control. The reader must wait before he can have from me a perfect piece of writing. I am fully aware of the value of such writing for the public at large. But in these reminiscences, I am not confining myself to the narration of events and incidents merely. For I regard the reaction of these events more important than the events themselves. So I have woven in this bare and imperfect record of events, my thoughts and feelings at the particular time, which I have considered more interesting and enlightening. But the recollections themselves are but piece-meal jottings, and the feeling and thoughts evoked by them faint, imperfect and suggestive. I could not help otherwise, and, therefore I would beseech the reader not to draw any final conclusions from the bare record I give him. Though I have not been able to give the story in all its aspects and with a fuller detail, I must ask the reader to believe me when I state that whatever I have written I have written with particular care to present the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The thoughts, feelings and happenings recorded in this work are but expressions of my reaction at a particular phase and time of my life in the prison of the Andamans. It is a historical document and should not be confused as being anything more than pure history. I expect the reader to peruse it in the spirit I have written it. V. D. SAVARKAR.

CHAPTER 1 The Goal at Dongri, Bombay “ You are sentenced to fifty years transportation. The International Tribunal at Hague has given judgment that England cannot be constrained to hand you over to France”, said Mr. X to me. “ Well then, I had never depended on any hopes from that quarter. But can I have a copy of judgment to look at?” “That does not rest with me, though I will try my very best for you. Yet the fortitude you have shown in hearing the news that has wrung the heart of a stranger like me, does not make me think that you will wait for any help from an outsider like me,” said my interlocutor almost overwhelmed with feeling. “ Do you really believe that this news or any other news like this does not terrify me? But as I am determined to face this danger and have courted it deliberately, I have now grown impervious to it. Had you have been in the same plight, you would have proved as resolute as myself. For every one can crush such experiences on the threshold of his strong mind. All the same, I am grateful to you, indeed, for your help and sympathy.” Just then I heard some one coming. The gentleman instantly left my room and went his way in the opposite direction. I withdrew a few steps in my cell and kept standing. The word ‘fifty’ kept on ringing in my ears. In a moment those, whose footsteps I had heard coming near my cell, appeared on the scene. The Officer opened the door and his attendant served me my meal. Till the decision of the Hague Tribunal, I was not treated as a prisoner either in food or clothing. Today I had my usual meal. Perhaps the goaler had not yet received the order of the Court. I finished my food but did not that day touch the nice things in it. The Officer questioned me about it- “ Why, why, Sir, have you not touched these things? Why don’t you dine as usual?”

“ Of course I had my fill. But I have taken such things as are common to all prisoners here. For, who knows, I may be put tomorrow to do the work that they do now. Then I may not get the food that I have now. The dirty food of a regular prisoner is to be my lot henceforward. Why not, then, make friends with it from now? It will last me for life.” I replied with a smile. To it the Officer impatiently retorted, “ No, no, that shall not be. The order has already been received, I hear to send you back to France. You, to serve your sentence as a prisoner! Never, never. God will not grant it.” At that instant a watchman came up running, and said that the Jamadar was following. The door was slammed. The warder and his attendant proceeded further. Soon after came the Superintendent and informed me, albeit courteously that thenceforward I was to wear the prisoner’s uniform and would be given the food he ate. He conveyed the news that my life-sentence of fifty years commenced from that day. I got up, took off the clothes I had worn so far, and began putting on those that I was to wear as a prisoner. A thrill of horror vibrated through my whole being. These clothes, I felt, I was to use all my life. No longer I was to part from them. Perhaps in these very clothes my dead body may be taken out from the prison door. Faint, shadowy thoughts these-but the mind was overcast by them. The Superintendent kept on walking on sundry things and I tries to divert my mind by engaging myself in that conversation. As if not to give me the solace I was seeking for, a sepoy brought to the Superintendent what looked like an iron plate. It was the badge, with the number marked on it, which a prisoner has to wear on his breast. The badge shows the date of his release. What was my date? Am I ever to be free, or death alone was to be the date of my release? I cast my look on the badge and its number with mingled feelings on longing and despair, humour and curiosity. The year of my discharge was 1960. for a moment I did not take in the full significance of that writing. But, in a minute or two, it flashed upon my mind. I was sentenced in 1941 and I shall have my discharge in 1960! The British Officer grimly observed, “No fear about it, the benign government was to release you in the year 1960!” To him I replied in the same vein, “But Death is kinder. What if it lets me off much earlier?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martyr or Rascal

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

“How do you do, barrister?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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