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

but against tyranny and treachery together. The Duab and Ayodhya making a united stand, waged a war, not only against the whole of the British power but against the rest of India too; and yet you fought for three years and yet you had well-nigh snatched away the crown of Hindusthan and smashed the hollow existence of the alien rule. What an encouragement this! What the Duab and Ayodhya could do in a month, the simultaneous, sudden and determined rising of the whole of Hindusthan can do in a day. This hope illumines our hearts and assures us of success. And so we allow that your Diamond Jubilee year 1917 shall not pass without seeing the resurging India making a triumphant entry into the world. For, the bones of Bahadur Shah are crying vengeance from their grave! For, the blood of dauntless Laxmi is boiling with indignation! For, the shahid Peer Ali of Patna, when he was going to the gallows for having refused to divulge the secrets of the conspiracy whispered defiance to the Feringhi said in prophetic words: ‘You may hang me today, you may hang such as me everyday, but thousands will still rise in my place—your object will never be gained.’ Indians, these words must be fulfilled! Your blood, oh Martyrs, shall be avenged. VANDE MATARAM

Letters From Andamans D/15-12-12 Dearest brother Thus it is after 18 months I have a chance to touch pen and ink again. At this rate one can quickly unlearn the art of writing altogether! You must have been very anxious about this delay but as you had received a letter from our dearest Baba in July, I thought it would be more assuring to you to hear from us a few months later than at about the same time. How glad I was to learn that you have joined the medical course and are doing well. How do you like that course? To me it is a noble course. I should like you to take not only Medicine but the Science of Physiology itself as your special province. Please do follow it up not only as a profession but as a pursuit. It opens out inexhaustible field for charity and benevolence. It is respected all over the world, in the Hotenttots as well as in the Aryans. The study of body—a temple wherein the soul lives—is next to the study of the soul itself. Your choice of books last year was simply capital. Moropant, Bharat, Vivekanand—all standard books. Out of the books asked for by me only ज्ञेयमीमांसा and अज्ञेयमीमांसा did not come why? I have sent a list for this year, but do not spend more than 10 rupees on my books. If the list comes to more than that please go on omitting from the bottom. You need not buy all books new. You can send some second hand ones if you like. And how do you like Bengal? By this time after the Puja holidays you are back to Calcutta and must have grown quite into a Bengali Babu—is not it? Forgotten Marathi language? Please take care you do not lose something else. For, I am afraid I might hear at any time that some one in those clever Bengalis has stolen your heart away! Though I for one should like so much to have found a dear little Bengali sister-in-law. I am as strongly in favour of these inter-provincial marriages among the Hindus as I am deadly opposed to the practice of marrying the European girls at this stage of our national life. And now my dear Bal, something about me here. My health is all right. Ever since I came to this jail, I never had a serious illness and have managed to keep my weight just what it was when I came here. I

am both physically and mentally doing well—believe me, dearest, in some respects so well that I had hardly ever done so before; for life in a jail, for good, for evil, is a unique chance. Man can never go out of it exactly as he came in. He goes out far better or far worse. Either more Angelic or more Fiendish. Fortunately, for me, my mind has so quickly adapted itself to the changes in circumstances. It seems so strange that a nature so restless and active, roaming over continents, should so quickly feel quite at home in a cell hardly a dozen feet in length. And yet one of the kindest gifts of the Providence to Humanity is this plasticity, this adaptability of human mind to the ever changing environments of life. When early in the morning and late in the evening, I try a bit of Pranayam and then pass insensibly into a sweet sound-sleep. Oh how calm and quiet is that rest; so calm that when I get up in the morning, it is long before I can realize again that I am in a prison cell lying on a wooden plank. All the common aims and allurements of mankind having receded far, the conscience is perfectly pleased with itself with the conviction of having served under His banner and served to some purpose. A calm, a sweet equanimity is left with my soul and it lulls my mind in an intense peace. There are exceptions but this is the general rule. In fact, if I be suddenly dropped in the midst of Bombay or London I think I will have to shout with the hermit in ‘शाकुन्तलः — ‘जनाकीर्णं मन्ये हुतवहपरीतं गृहमिव॥’ And even if hearing the market gossip, your mind sometimes sighs: ‘Oh still his life would have been more useful and dazzling outside’, even then remember that those who work outside, work much; but those who work in the prison, work more; and after all, my dearest Bal, don’t you think that suffering is in itself work intense because it is subtle! I get up in the morning when the bell goes on at 5 A.M. At its sound, I feel as if I have entered a higher college for a higher study. Then we are doing our work of rigour till 10 A.M. while my hands and feet are automatically doing the given task, my spirit avoiding all detection is out for a morning trip, and across seas and oceans, over hills and dales, it roams sipping only pleasant things, and things noble, like a bee amongst the flowers. Then I compose some new lines. Then we dine at 12 noon, work again. From 4 P.M. comes rest; reading & c. This is the usual round of life here.

In your answer, please inform me how our dear Motherland is getting on? Is the Congress united? Does it pass the resolution for the release of the political prisoners from year to year as it did at Allahabad in 1910? Any remarkable Swadeshi enterprise like the iron works of Tata or Steam Navigation Company or new mills? How is the Republic of China? Does it not sound like Utopia realized? A Romance of History! Don’t suppose that China’s work is a day’s. No! from 1850, they have been strenuously at it, though the world knows not where the Sun is making its way—till it is risen: and Persia, Portugal and Egypt? And are the Indians in south Africa successful in getting their demands? Please do mention if any important law has been passed by the new Councils, e. g. the Education Bill of the Hon. Mr. Gokhale. When the great Tilak is due to be released? Did you show my letter to my beloved Yamuna? Please translate all to her. It is only a few years more not more than 5—when a better day will dawn. So my beloved wife, hold on as nobly as you have done. My most respectful pranams to my dearest Vahini—she who had been and is still through her blessings—a mother, a sister and a friend at the same time. I cannot name, for obvious reasons, others with whose memory my heart is now overwhelmingly full. Tell them all that I remember each and all of them. How can I forget them? No, a man in a prison cannot forget. The mind, shut up from the new impressions can only feed on the old ones, and so in a prison, so far from forgetting old acquaintances, one vividly remembers and begins to love even those who were before forgotton. My sweet friends, in a prison one weeps and weeps and vainly waits for some one to come to wipe the tears—to speak a word of affection and love. Oh in a prison how can I forget? To all those please give my affection and love who you know were my sweet friends and comrades and dearer than life to me, and to those who even when some were not ashamed to disown the ties of blood, are still standing by you and remember me, my deepest obligations are due. They know that a letter from a jail must be more or less stereotyped, and hence no names. Please give my ashirwadas to dear Mai, my only sister and Vasant, my only hope. Also remember me to dear Mami and little Champi. with all love I remain, your own brother TATYA

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Cellular Jail 15-2-1914 Port Blair My beloved Bal, And now come along. A year has rolled by and the happy day has come back again! Only those who had been in a jail can fully appreciate what a soul-entrancing blessing it is to hear from home, to write to home!! Sweet- sweet something like the sweetness of conversation in the moonlight, by the sea-beach, with one whom one loves and adores! But wait, the bell is gone and I must go to take my food—it is 10 A. M. ...yes, now I have come back again, after having taken my food in the general file of the denizens of the jail. Yes I said it was sweet; in fact the day of a letter to home is to me always the real पाडवा, my new year’s day; I count my year from that day; for I get a stock of energy and enthusiasm from the communion with my chosen few, which enables me to breathe and live and laugh a year further on. I was sorry not to write earlier and to compel you to undergo the troubles of sending a telegram. The authorities had kindly informed me of it. But you see, brother, though a year was past and I was entitled to send a letter, yet the antediluvian spirit of our postal system here does not carry a letter to Calcutta from this place unless some five or six weeks after it is written, so I am told. That is why a letter cannot be sent unless some fourteen months go by. But then any letter that you send reaches here almost as soon as in this twentieth century it ought to. From your letter, I am so glad to learn that you are in sound health and passed the examination with credit. Examination or no examination, you must not neglect your health. No. I long to see you robust, bubbling with health and freshness and vigour. The dawn of youth, that is just breaking upon you, is the very fountain of life and energy. So do not waste it by overwork of any one member in excess of the rest. But grow in harmony, brain and body. You are a Doctor yourself and it is a bit of presumption on a layman’s part to insist on good health. But then youth is blind and forgets to lay by, a fund of energy and life, while the vital forces are still welling up from within, and the organism is growing so that when the winter age comes, they may have abundant fund of vitality to draw on. Otherwise, if your eyesight is weakened, if you look like the willow of a man—I will shout out: ‘Physician, heal thyself! (Don’t laugh in the sleeves—for I am not a physician and so I can afford to have a bad eyesight! For, all lawyers have

it—at least ought to have!) And how proud am I to know that some of my pet lambs have come out first class B.A. and M.A. That is noble! But then nobler when the field of duty that faces them now, is also well fought and well won, and they are hailed therein too, as deserving of its gold medals, for before the gold medals of that great corporation of man, the gold medals of these so-called ‘universities’ are as of tinsel! I should be so glad to hear from them personally—for some of them are never absent from my memory even down to this day. About those who inform you voluntarily to do so, write to me by naming and particularizing. The books that you sent are simply capital. The महात्मा परिचय—what a fine translation.—and the introduction of two lines how modest and appropriate—‘फोडिलें भांडार धन्याचा हा माल। मी तव हमाल भार वाही’!!!I liked it awfully. And the ‘जाईचा मंडप!’ No sooner did I go through a dozen of pages, then each time, each word began to pulsate harmoniously with my heart, and I knew who could have written it! The language is worthy of the sentiments, the sentiments so poetic and sublime, worthy of the theme, and the theme worthy of both. I wish that such popular series as the भारत गौरव माला realize their responsibility of guiding and not only tickling the popular fancy and so publish every now and then political history, science and economy, e.g. Mill’s Representative Government etc. About the books on Vedant philosophy, well, I fear it is not opportune that such men should be busy with such things. The Americans need Vedanta philosophy, and so does England; for they have developed their life to that fulness, richness and manliness—to Kshatriyahood and so stand on the threshold of that Brahminhood, wherein alone the capacity to read and realize such philosophy can coexist. But India has not. We are at present all शूद्र and cannot claim access to the Veda and Vedanta. That is the underlying idea why शूद्र were not allowed to read Vedas, not certainly not, for cruelty, nor for narrow or vested interest—otherwise “पुराण would not have been written by the very Brahmins expounding the same philosophy more lucidly. We, as a nation, are unfit for these sublime thoughts, for it is well known that Bajirao II was a great Vedantist and that is why, perhaps, he could not see the difference between a kingdom and a

pension. Let us study history, political science, science, economy, live worthily in this world, fulfil the “गृहस्थाश्रम—the house-holders’s duties —and then the वानप्रस्थाश्रम and its philosophic dawn might come. And whatever these works are meant to do, they might be left to be written by widows, old men and pensioners out of offices. They should live in the past old works and old puzzles of God and soul and man. The young, the youth—why not live in the future? Talk of Vedanta—Benares has not produced a single martyr and they cannot give up a farthing for their fatherland!!! And now, something about myself here. Well, during the last year, I had no illness, whatever. My health is excellent and my weight, as yet, unreduced and that is a feat, is it not? In this tiny cellular sanitarium, I get up early, take regular amount of food regularly, and go to bed early—in fact have to do all these things and so early to bed and early to rise is making me healthy—(though not)—‘wealthy and wise’! In fact you, Oh! would-be-Doctor Saheb! could not have devised a better time table for your patients. And, good as is the health of my body, the health of my mind is better still. Any work hard or mean, I ply myself to humming every now and then, ‘स्वे स्वे कर्मण्यभिरतः संसिद्धिं लभते नर’ : शङ्क ‘यतः प्रवृत्तिर्भूतानां येन सर्वमिदं ततम्। स्वकर्मणा तमभ्यर्च्य सिद्धिं विंदन्ति मानवा’ or ‘सर्वारंभा हि दोषेण धूमेनाग्निरिवावृताः!!And every evening—for nowadays I am in a cell, a bit of the sky is visible from—I watch the glorious sunset and the pomp of light and shade and loose myself in the rose and the lilly, and the lilac of the west; thinking now this and now that; from the poets ‘कतस्तटतमालमालिनीम्। पश्य धातुरसनिम्नगामिच’ or ‘तेन मानिनि ममात्र गौरवम्ं to the profoundest fancies of idealist philosophers, that all that seems is but subjective affection and there is nothing objective to correspond to it—at least we do not know of it. And my mind is perfectly happy—happy even as it was in his company there— with her company there!! And if at times, the mind like a child gets silly and simply will weep—then the Grand Reason steps in and smiles ‘well sweet heart, what ails thee? What un-known you suffer? How silly! Did you want to ride on the crest of ambition, drive in the chariot of self-

glorification yourself? If you did, well, then you deserved to be baffled and defeated in such a selfish and demoralising ambition! But God and I know you did not covet any reward personally—no, neither fame nor name nor land nor lucre, nay, not even happiness. The only thing you wanted was to be privileged to suffer most! At least, that is what you used to say in my presence—to sacrifice most, for others, for humanity. Then lo! where is the disappointment? you have done ‘यज्ञम् सर्वस्वदक्षिणम्’ are suffering without end, without limitation of time! Not a minute, not an action of yours that is not dedicated to the purification of the race through suffering. Then rejoice! What could you have done better than this? And the mind plumes its feathers again, and soars, and rises and sings once more! But if ever the mind still goes on still puffing up its little ego, then the Grandam takes it out and showing the world says: ‘There are the Himalayas! There was a time that they were not there and a time there will come when they shall not be there!!! And this moon and this solar system and the Sidereal!! It is too much then for that little mind; it forgets itself, is absorbed in the Universe—ashamed of its self-importance and self-care!!!’ So my beloved Bal, both of us here are in perfect health of body and mind. Do not care at all about us. The only thing that we feel still individually attaches us to this world is thy health and safety. So if you guarantee these two—of course, try your best and then we do not care for the result—we shall be happiest. As yet jail has left no mark, no shadow on us for anything, worse—and all this health is in spite of circumstances and not in virtue of them. You have written about the petition you sent to the authorities here enquiring about the time of visit. Well, in fact, I ought to have been, according to the practice here, released from this Cellular Jail and allowed to live on the island. My ‘behaviour’ is admittedly good. But then neither of us is released. I am trying to request the Government to reconsider this and you, too, whenever you know anything be writing to the authorities here. Very soon our dearest Baba will have done his 5 years and you can then claim a visit. But our release and permission to bring our relations here to live with us, the authorities here can do very little, though they can do every thing in the case of other convicts. Nor are they very much to be blamed, for orders we suppose come directly from the Indian Government. So, you better send a petition to the Indian Government whenever you fail to know anything directly from the authorities here. But even as it is, do not worry yourself about any arrangements concerning us.

The Government will do in all likelihood all that justice demands themselves. And we shall be reminding them every now and then. What else have we to do? You only care for your health and safety. I am glad you remember what I told you in the High Court. Assure our beloved Yamuna that these four years will not pass without ushering the dawn of a happier day. So let that noble heart and that heart— our dearest Vahini hold on! Hold on even as they have been doing up to this time!! Let them read all मराठी literature and not only the old mythological works but new and current and living streams of life's expression in the West and the East. It was a sad pride that I felt when I heard the noble death of our noble comrade and brother Sakharam.$^1$ You know it was in the High School days that we first saw each other! He lived bravely—died bravely. What more can one wish for oneself! His wife— dear Janki Vahini—well I have not seen her and yet have seen her through your pen-pictures. All that I feel for her is that she is not poor, not ill- starred—but called upon to play the holiest part in life even because it is the lanliest! Remember me to her. And how is tiny Vasant? Will the great little man write me a word? He is now some 7 years old, is he not? And his mother? Oh! I saw her for the last time in the Dongri jail A sister is one of the richest gifts that a man can have!! Give my love to her and a sweet kiss to that great little gentleman—my Vasant! Also remember me to all our relations—one and all—and above all to her who though not a relation and even because she is not a relation, whom I used to call jokingly the mother of the party and whom now in all seriousness and gratefulness, 1 call my own mother, and who is standing by you and remembers me—give her my most grateful regards and loving remembrances—names not to utter which seems a sacrilege and yet which cannot be uttered, for their own sake, from a prison wherein not only legs but tongues too are fettered! Well you know them all. I told you who were nearest to my heart as my most intimate friends—to all of them give my love, my fresher love! If some of them voluntarily ask you to be particularized in letters to me from you, I will then umburden my heart and name them. The books that are to be sent to me, I write down here. The time is up and so my sweetest Bal, I am, with most reluctant steps receding and tearing myself away from you. Your own brother TATYA

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Celluar Jail 9-3-1915 Port Blair Best beloved Bal, And once again, my pen after a Ripvanwincle’s sleep is wakened and hastens to acknowledge the receipt of your letter received some 7-8 months ago. To have a letter from you is like to see you: for partly owing to the cinematographic flashes with which your letter abounds and partly owing to the wonderful faculty, with which the solitude of a prison, endows the power of hearing in man-faculty, which enables one to visualize the thing heard, as in the case of those born blind. Whenever I hear from you, I succeed in almost seeing you and all those dear faces and dear scenes that constitute our happy little home on the banks of the musical Godavari. Our dearest brother Baba and myself are happy in seeing you doing well and as long as you take care of your health and try your best to lead a life, at once noble and happy and healthy, you need not be anxious about our health, mental and physical. The books that you sent last year were 16 and this year’s 13 (4 English 2 Oct. 2 Nov. The rest Sanskrit and Vernacular. Please do write whether this is correct. Next time you send a parcel, please do send a list with it in your own handwriting, so that we may be able to check the postal delivery. I was glad to read समाज-रहस्य (why you sent two copies of it?). It is a very good novel. One thing more—among the social institutions—the greatest curse of India is the system of castes. The mighty current of Hindu life is being threatened to perish in bogs and sands. It is no good saying: ‘We will reduce it to four caste-system first. That would not and should not be. It must be swept away, root and branch.’ The best means to that effect is a crusade against it, in all forms of literature, especially drama and novel. Every true patriot should cease to have double dealing and speak out his mind clearly and act up to it. The only care to be taken being not to pay so much attention and not to create so much fuss in this side-issue and our internal relation as to forget and hamper and thwart the issue—our relation with the world—but for the right adjustment of which, no internal questions can be satisfactorily solved, or solved to any substantial purpose. So, I shall like to have a number of goodly written novels like the समाज-रहस्य, which would attack this effete and unjust social curse. It had done much good in the past, but it is dead now. So let us

bury it, with tears if you like. I am glad to hear that the Government is going to allow you to see me this year. Please do thank the authorities for it. But I am firmly of opinion that dear Vahini should not be put to troubles of the voyage this year. You should come alone and when you see all the facilities or otherwise here and know the best way to bring her, then the next time you come to see me, you may bring her, and dear Mai too. I feel it a duty to forego the inestimable pleasure of seeing those dearest ones this year for the sake of their convenience. So, please come alone this year. It sent a thrill of delight in my heart to hear that the Indian troops were allowed to go to Europe, in their thousands to fight against the best military power in the world and that they had acquainted themselves with such splendour and were covered with military glory. Thank God! Manliness, after all, is not dead yet in the land! And what a funny thing! We have been trying our best to encourage foreign travel and used to congratulate ourselves if a dozen could be sent a year! And now Providence has done what we could not—thousands of Hindus, orthodox like the Gurkhas and Rajputs and reformed like the Shikhs have crossed the sea and under the Government patronage! Now let our Pandits sit hatching over the eggs of शास्त्रार्थ to see if foreign travel is permissible to the Hindus or not. Permissible or not, the Hindus have crossed the sea, and in crossing it, they have crossed an epoch! What the crusades have done for Europe by bringing it in contact with the superior civilization of Asia, this conflict with the Europeans of our Hindu troops across the seas will do for India—for Asia. As for the petition, that is made for the release of Political prisoners in the Punjab we can hardly thank them sufficiently for this, their charitable deed. You may be knowing by this time that some of us have already volunteered, to go to the front of the War and I am glad to inform you that Government have made a special note of it, though no answer could come as yet. By the by, please do write of the rumour that some M.P. had asked a question in the Parliament about me, or some of us before the war broke out, be true and if so the particulars of it. Did you get the poems on Guru and Ravi? It pained me very much to hear, that Hon. Gokhale was dead. He was, after all, a great patriot. True, at times, especially in panics, he used to say and do things, which he himself must have been ashamed of a few months after, to own. But then, his life was dedicated to the service of Motherland

and there was very little personal and selfish about him. All along his life, he served Her and for the good of Her, as he saw it. How anxious I was to see him, before death parted us; and to compare notes as he had said to me in London, when we saw each other for the last time. We could not agree on certain points and he said ‘well Mr. Savarkar, come! We will see each other after some six years and then would compare notes’! Maharashtra must send some one—worthier than he—to his place in Councils. If every Indian could do at least as much as he did! Next time you send books, please send the novels जन्मभूमि and गौतम, which brother is very eager to read. I was very much afraid that owing to the invasion of France, you would be unable to hear from Madame Cama- who had been ever since my coming here a second mother to you and who had so nobly and so faithfully stood by us in the darkest hour of our life. But I was very glad to be assured that she, even in the midst of this world- hubbub, remembered you and had regularly been sending letters to you. At the touch of one such faithful, noble, unshaken loving hand, one’s heart recovers its belief in Humanity—belief rudely shaken by the disappearance of the closest and by the treachery of the truest and by the indifference of the dearest. It is a pity I can not write to the dear lady and tell her how I esteem her noble life and her solicitude for the needy and the distressed and love and long to see her once more: but as it is, please give to her all my esteem and respects, before you give them to any of our relatives: for what wonder they do something for us? Wonder is how she does and does so much. While I am reading the books you sent, I see that in the Telugu provinces, the new life that is struggling to find expression all over India, has been sweeping over our bretheren there. The Andhra-Sabha आंध्रसभा is a great and grand movement but the question of getting that province separated from the Tamil one is not ennobling. But what pained me most and what was but a natural corollary from the desire of petty provincialisms was that the national shouts were आंध्र माता की जय! In this little thing and straw, we see the direction of an ominus wind to come. This is one of the unhealthy reactions of the grand Swadeshi movement and must be corrected before it is too late. The Swadeshi connected in Bengal with the little partition question brought in this reaction. Every province wants to be separated, and shouts and invokes long life to itself! But how can the

province live unless the Nation lives? They all—Maharashtra, Bengal, Madras—are great and will live long but through Her-India! So let us not say आंध्र माताकी but भारतमाता की जय of whom आंध्र is only a limb, and let us sing not ‘वंग आभार’ इूहह ‘हिंद आभार’! All provinces and petty languages, instead of asking to be separated, should try to get amalgamated and remove the barriers that yet remain and destroy the confusion of tongues and not to hug to it. Smaller nationalities! Is not Belgium a sufficeint warning? The greatest good that the British Government has done without meaning it, is to, melt and mould the disintegrating factions of our Motherland and hammer us into one people. Now instead of trying to remove whatever stands in the way of its consummation, we are, on the one hand, hugging to the fetters that were the necessary price of this boon and trying to turn the very boon into a curse, on the other. Now I think I had written all that I felt and wanted to ask about your letter and the books you sent. Next time you please send me the books the list of which I subjoin. Instead of sending a parcel, you may bring them with you if you come before September 1st. If not, send a parcel. Please do answer this letter as soon as you have carried the necessary communication with our friends. I am extremely glad that you could see the gentleman, you refered to in your letter. I knew you would like each other very soon, for birds of the same feathers gather together. Please give my affection and best remembrances to him. I remember him every now and then. How is our dear Professor getting on? My heart gladdens at the thought that by this time, one more bird must have come back to that dear little nest after sustaining a night through dreary deserts of burning sands, where no drop cools the thirsty heart and no dew vivifies the parched flower of hope. In his release and the release of so many of them, I feel as if my own partial release had come. If poor dear Sakharam too would have been there today! Though foolish and almost dishonourable to feel he should have been living, who has done better to die in such a cause—still the heart feels. As far as we are concerned, I again assure you not to be anxious about us at all. All the term-prisoners of our case had been sent back to India, and we lifers (life-transportees) only remain. As long as the war is going on, I, on principle, have made up my mind not to ask for anything so as to embarrass the authorities here; and at present both of us are keeping good health and

Captain—now Major Murray is superintending the jail affairs. As long as he is here, you may rest assured that nothing that evinces a personal rancour will be done or said; no underhand pinpricks, beyond what the regulations require. Every letter and every book you send will be duly delivered. As far as our daily life is concerned, well, it is going on in the same even way as it did last year. In a prison what happens on the first day happens always-if nothing worse happens. In fact, it seems to be the essence of prison discipline to avoid all novelty, all change. Like specimen and curios in a museum—here we are each exactly in the same place and same position, bottled and labelled with the same numbers with more or less dust about us; and the guide book that I wrote to you in my last year’s letter may serve the purpose of description as long as 1 am here. We get up early—work hard, eat punctually—at the same time, at the same place and the same amount and kind of food prepared with same match-less prison-skill and medical care. I read much in the time that can be spared from work and sometimes in the evening attack many flowers-now remembered only in names-and flower-like themes with blank verse and then sleep. Here one thing must be said. Although it is true that prisoners are not free to do or say what they will, yet to the credit of the jail authorties, it must be admitted that everyone is absolutely free to dream what he likes. And I assure you I take the fullest advantage of this concession. Almost every night, I tell you, I break jail and out by dale and down and by tower and town, go on romping till I find some one of you—some one who somewhere had been held close to my bosom! Every night I do it but my beneficient jailors take no notice of it. You have only to wake in the jail, that is all they say. I hope just at the end of the war, you send a public petition for the release of us. The thing is this. Not only in India but even in any free and self- governing country, the Government cannot release political prisoners unless the Government are backed up and supported by the wish of the people to that effect. An exercise of the right of amnesty cannot be made by the king or the president unless the people are willing to have the prisoners back. If Indians are willing and petitions to that effect go at the end of the war, we may be released and if Indians are not willing to have us back, neither the Government can release us nor it is worthwhile to have that release. Port Blair is willing to have me, and I am here. I have no wish to thrust myself on any people unwilling to have me back. At any rate you may ask for our being sent out of this jail just as all other prisoners—even those who had

been sentenced here additionally—are allowed to go and settle on the island and bring their family here. In short, all the concessions that the prisoners get under the regulations here in force. In this, we ask nothing special and this by repeated petitions from you and us both, we in all probability will succeed in getting. Last year in the letter of our dearest Vahini, she had not written how the little Dhondi was? Is She married? Please give my best love to our beloved Yamuna—how is her health? Does she read? In what class or college is my dear Balvantrao? And the other children? Give my best love and respects to my dearest elder sister-in-law—whose life is a record of self-sacrifice and noble enduring and calm and silent suffering for no fault of her and for the good of others, and also to my younger Vahini whose kind remembrances of me I got last year through our Mai’s letter. I remember them and all other beloved friends every day. At every corner that my mind takes in its aimless rambles, their dear image is sure to be met and then my mind is sure to stop and build a new temple of a sweet and a sad tear and hold them there a while and worship them, who made my life as it is and pray they do not forget me. Whoever allowed, maybe for a minute—the right of loving and being loved by me—I worship them all in the same temple and on the same pantheon my petts and boomfriends, my comrades and chums!! Well my dearest brother, I am glad your study of medicine is promising to be fruitful. Do not injure health for the sake of study. Let me know your weight. Now my dearest Bal with all my love and with my choicest आशीर्वाद to you and our dear little Vasant and our sister Mai, will you allow me to tear myself from your sweet mental communion.

Cellular Jail 6-7-1916 Port Blair My beloved Bal and sweet Shanta, Please accept my and my brother’s heartiest congratulations upon your entering the second stage of life—the life of wedded love. Nobly hast thou, dear Bal! fulfilled the first stage of your life—the stage of self-culture and self-sacrifice. Thou possessest the golden keys to the treasured wealth of knowledge, both ancient and modern, in the acquaintance with Sanskrit and English languages. The final examination that you have passed in Medicine is bound to stand you in good stead, in any part of the world and in spite of any laws passed by a narrow misguided legislature; while your pen has already made its influence felt in Maharastra in both the fields of prose and poetry. On the other hand, the responsibilities and duties of that stage could not have been better discharged and fulfilled. When the storm began to gather over our Mother, it found you unmoved and firm at your post—it burst and left you undaunted and true, and among the many faithless yet faithful! The enthusiasm, to awaken which amongst their youth, Europe has been holding before their eyes the glories of iron crosses and Victoria crosses and unrolling rolls of honour—that enthusiasm and faith had been displayed by you, who discarded even the reward of public acclamation; nobly therefore hast thou completed the first stage of your life and now enter ye-, dear Bal and beloved Shanta!—on the happiest and most exalted stage of life, the life of wedded love. May thy path, dear Bal, be strewn with roses and may thy youth, dear Shanta, blossom forth in Amaranthuses and gold! Domestic happiness—the only bliss of paradise that has survived its fall’ may bless your nuptial shed! ‘मधुनक्तमुतोषसि मधुमत् पार्थिवं रज: (The dawn, the evening sweet and grateful be the Earth)!! You perhaps remember that in one of my letters, I had just dropped a suggestion to the effect that it would not have surprised me if some one amongst the clever Bengalis had stolen your heart! After all, the expected had very nearly happened. For though I long to see the day, when inter- provincial marriages amongst the Hindus would throw down the artificial and harmful barriers of castes and creeds and the Great River of Life—our Hindu life would, having freed itself of all bogs and sands, flow in an ever fresh and mighty current-uninterrupted and interruptible—still the first and

foremost thing to be effected in that direction is to restore to love her sole privilege and right of presiding over the wedding rights. Indeed, we can no longer be blind to the fact that we care more for the good breeding of cattle and fowls than for the Eugenics of man. Centuries of child marriages and marriages by proxies! Centuries of love banished from its legitimate sphere of influence to attract and develop elements that tend to the betterment of body and mind and soul; and the inevitable result is a race puny, debilitated, all vigour and manhood sapped out of it. Thousand things have wrought this and the marriage customs that prevail in us are one of the few important factors contributing to it. Authorities should come in to sanctify but not to silence love altogether. And glad was I, therefore, that the age, the education, the part that mutual attraction and esteem played in welding your hearts together and above all, the sanction of all those who feel drawn towards us should have enabled you to have realized that in which I thought our family should not lag behind. Or in short, when dear Bhau has sanctified it with his blessings, it goes without saying that it must have been just after my heart. And now Doctor Saheb, where are you going to settle? Only yesterday, I was told to write this second letter as the first had been lost in the post office by accident. Although it must have cost you a lot of anxiety, to me it enabled to know your present address. From that, I see you are in Bombay, at present. Would you settle in that unhealthy and cramped in city! Would not the rising free Baroda suit better where the enlightened prince Sayaji rules? But all that as you choose and not I—for you are on the spot and know how to judge best. One thing only I would insist upon and that is you must not in any case risk your health and freedom personal freedom. This is —depend upon me—perfectly not only permissible but positively commendable in your case and the case of those who stand as you do. In other cases, too much attention to personal considerations is undoubtedly demoralizing; but you cannot pay too much attention to it. Be anywhere in the world—in the forests of Africa—in the republics of America—the medical knowledge that you possess is sure to serve a passport and a safeguard to you. For, indeed, wherever death is, doctors also can be -(Ugh! Seen very angry? Of course, I mention this with all due respect to the Majesty of Medicines—in fact in order to exalt it.) Therefore, do nothing that would do injury to your health and also, nay more so, health of Shanta. She should, of course, be encouraged to read more and to write even if she

chooses; but the first and foremost consideration of a young lady should be her health. It is a trust she holds for others, a debt she owes to generations not yet born. Every atom of health that a young lady dissipates is so much that is taken away from the strength of souls that are yet to rise. She is a golden link that joins the yesterday to tomorrow; a promise that holds in it the possibilities of her race. Therefore, the first care of a wife should be her health that would harmonise the beauties of her body and mind and soul. So neither study nor pleasure should entice her away so as to tax her energy too much, but both should be indulged in only so far as to render that health perfect and that beauty transparently pure. Now something about me; and yet I wonder what that something is! For there am I, as you left me after you finished the last letter you got from me. Change is a word that is not found in prisoner’s dictionary—especially in its Port Blair edition. The great war that you say has shaken your hemisphere has left totally untouched me and my Port Blair. This, our little kingdom here, is about the only state that can with a justifiable touch of egoism claim in its yearly speech from the Throne of having maintained its interests intact in this world-earthquake. Our imports and exports are unchanged. We keep our lights all night up. While our international communications are as peaceful as they had been ever since this little kingdom rose out of its Oceanic Night! Mr. Asquith has every reason to be jealous of us. Our citizens have not been forced to subsist only on a reduced scale of meal and potatoes as the Germans are said to die for the simple reason that we never ate any! Whatever we eat, we grow—grass and such other edibles, while these solid and aspiring walls of my jail have reduced the very walls of China to a mere heap of debris. Those walls could, and that too not very effectively, stop the outsiders from rushing in but these walls while doing that can also effectively prevent anyone inside from going out. No! On pain of death, no! Thus we, like a little world organized to serve as a prototype and a foretaste of the hope of the Humanitarians, when the war shall have been banished from the realms of man, live—I beg your pardon—exist—as peacefully and quietly as to put to shame the very realm of death. As to the interview, I think it is best to wait till this war be over. For, to a certain extent, we can understand the hesitation of the Government in granting it now. And even after the war, the letters that you may write to them for the interview should be only on the ground that every other prisoner is allowed a visit, so should I after five years and not on the ground