भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

the question of the reforms in India, they should not fail to recognise that if they aimed at the establishment of any responsible Government in India, they should thereby render it utterly futile to continue to lock us in jail. For, if a real responsible Government be given and still the amnesty not granted, then the latter fact would act as a millstone round the neck of such a system as that. For, our presence behind the stone walls and cells cannot fail to keep the memory of the old suspicion and embitterment between the people and the Government living and would take away much from whatever claims and confessions the Government might make, as to change of angles & efforts for co-operation and mutual trust. For, even if Home Rule be granted to the people unaccompanied by a general amnesty of the P. P.s, how is it likely to touch the real roots of discontent in the land? How can there be peace and contentment and trust in a land where a brother is torn away from a brother, where thousands upon thousands are rotting in cage cells and stand exiled and in jails, and where every other family has a brother or a son, or a father, or a friend, or a lover snatched away from its bosom and kept pining away his life in the parched and thirsty Saharas of Separation!! While on the other hand, it would be as futile; I stated this for the sake of entire honesty and truth, though it was against my personal interest—to release the political prisoners unaccompanied with a sincere and substantial effort to a responsible Government in India. For, it would be intolerable for us to live in a land where all paths to progress are barred by a ‘trespassers would be prosecuted’ or to move there without treading on suspicious paths, where every step forward is an affront to the Sultans ahead and every step backward an affront to one’s self-respect and conscience, which is no less Sultanic in its exaction. Therefore, Home Rule and Amnesty go hand-in-hand and in order that the one may be effective, it should and must be accompanied by the latter. I also stated in it that my motive and aim in sending the petition being the Grant of a General Amnesty, I should be the last to be dissatisfied if that could be done by omitting my own name, if that alone be a thorn in the way of its fulfilment. If such view be ever taken by the Government and I see that the recently published Draft of Mr. Montague’s Scheme has in a striking paragraph expressed the hope almost in it—a way of answer to a corresponding question—that the revolutionists would now find something to be constitutionally done to the realizing of their hopes and aspirations and would change their minds and return to useful paths of activity; and a