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

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

of any anxiety of our hearts to meet. For, in that case, even if they do not grant it, we shall at least have the manly satisfaction of not having displayed the most sacred and the most human of all wounds—the wounds of separation—to an alien and unsympathetic eye. Again, whatever you wish to write in amelioration here should be written directly to Delhi. For almost nothing lies in the hands of the authorities here as far as change, especially for the better, is concerned in my case and whatever they can do, they are doing and I would request them to do if possible, when it be left undone. I know that some of you, though sure and certain that I shall not break down under this imprisonment, are still grieved to think that I should have been suffering all this and should have been forced to desist from all work, social or political or even literary. But brother just think—is suffering no work? Who worked more for Christianity—they who suffered in silence and unknown or they who worked? Surely both; but I suspect that those who work for a good cause outside, work much—but they who suffer for it in prisons and fields work more. At bottom, work, if true, is suffering and suffering, if true, is work. Suffering is the motor, the power that moves, and goads and propels a people. Unless the best amongst them suffer, the rest cannot work. Both are grand, both are indispensable, and if both be indispensable, then what grief if we be chosen and ordered to guard this post rather than that? I bless myself that—this fell to my lot! Do not grieve, brother, that I sit in darkness and simply waiting, while everyone else is lighting his or her lamp to shed light on the path of man. Do you not remember that ‘Her State’, is queenly thousands at her bidding post—they also serve who only stand and wait! And how much more then do they who not only wait but suffer and yet stand!! The worker is great for he puts stone upon stone and chisels and moulds; but then the cement of the Church?—is the sufferer! The martyr that bleeds!! And indeed, Bal! You can hardly believe how happy I feel from moment to moment—strange breezes of bliss pass and repass, kissing all the inevitable physical worry and weakness into ever fresh and ever blossoming joy of the soul at rest. I feel just as I used to feel in the college days after some final examination had been satisfactorily gone through and went to stay home quietly but confident by expecting the welcome news of passing. This Great Trial, This Test, to achieve the deliverance of the Mother!—and so satisfactorily gone through as far as I was concerned! and now I have

come Home here and am confidently expecting the Great News that must come! Oh! how I sleep soundly—how sweet the thing; for I worked so strenuously in the day and while I was required at Her headquarters that as soon as this night came, sleep fell as gently on my eyelids as dew. There are moments when ugly dreams trouble desire to shine and see light—but at the first touch of analysis, the self stands revealed and the dreams melt away, are swept away—and calm once more sets in. Oh, when some times after such a sleep, I wake in my cell and hear the waves idly breaking on the beach just outside my little, high-placed and barred window, I remember the lines of Kalidas प्रासादवातायनदृश्यवीचिः। प्रबोधयत्यर्णव वं सुप्तम् and fancying myself like that king, I laugh and play and joke—all with myself! Such thoughts are suggested by that consciousness of a rest, that is at the same time the intensity of work—and they in their turn guiling away the mind from the too real hideousness of a prison, strengthen that consciousness of that rest. And thus, it is a fact that on the whole, I am and so is our brother happy, satisfied and willing to live as long as that must be in the atmosphere of frowns and frettings and harshness, of constant clash and constant discipline, every step in which reminds you that you belong to a race of slaves. The account of your marriage ceremony was very graphically written. As to the writer—he is indeed a very gifted man but with him, self-diffidence is a great drawback. I think he should first try to write small popular stories and short novels and get them published in some of the magazines, for that would give him confidence in himself. Take, for example, the question of caste system. Let him by suggestive stories paint the harm it is now doing, how it is retarding us from the great goal, to which all mankind is moving. Then let him write bigger works and so on. To him and to the Sahodar Yamaraj and to all of them, give my most affectionate remembrances—my companions of childhood and chums of the college days and comrades in the field, all they whomever I called mine and to whom I pledged my word, I remember them all with fresh affection and esteem. I was glad to know the whereabouts of my dear Rishi! Is he still in the ‘Service’; holds the same office? And my new friend! I remember him so much; for he had been so considerate and kind under—even under these circumstances, even when he himself had been undergoing the same trial! And then he is so intelligent and active. I have missed the name of our Professor in the account of your marriage ceremony? All my best wishes for him, and my dear and very

esteemed Madame Cama! She must have suffered a lot of worry owing to the war! Give her my best and freshest love and tell her that those whom I saw in Paris while I was with her then, are ever foremost in my memory— especially the Sannyasin! The photos that you sent have been a constant source of happiness to us. My dear Yesu, Vahini looks so calm and ever bearing and ever true ‘like a Devata,’ as one of the officers had said to me when she came to see me in the Bombay jail! My deepest love to her and my Tai and my Shanta. I am proud of them all! Next time do not forget to forward the translation of my beloved Yamuna’s letter—Noble girl! poor girl! a thousand pities! and yet a thousand glories for her silent and yet intense fixity of purpose. Do not press her to come to Bombay if her parents object. Their judgment and love must be respected. How are all her brothers? My most humble Âý‡æx to my mother and aunt मावशè. With all love I am yours—TATYA ❑

Cellular Jail 5-8-1917 Port Blair My beloved Bal, I was extremely glad to get your answer to my last letter, which I sent to you in July 1916. How grateful we felt to hear in your latest that you with all our friends are getting on well, and are healthy and happy. Thus, it has pleased Providence to spare for you another year of bliss and especially of that tender and pure bliss, which is only to be found in the bosom of a devoted and dear family life. You see, my Bal, the times and the climes, in which the lot of our generation has fallen, make it so imperative for all noble and honest hearts to choose the path that leads through sorrows and sighs and separations which is the path of duty, that the heart so hardened and accustomed to the hard and merciless blows of fate comes to look upon disasters and disappointments as the very order of nature at any rate of our part in the nature’s scheme, and when a delighting event takes place, its attention is more fixed on how temporary such a good luck must be than how good that luck is. To me, a joy is ever a solution of tears. Well, any how the days are changed and with changing fortune, friends too are returning. When I left you in the dock in Bombay High Court, and had a last look of you not being allowed even to shake hands, waved my hat and parted, my child, at that time the sting of the whole scene was in the thought that we—Dear Baba and I—could not do anything for you, our nearest and dearest charge. So young, so humble and having already suffered more than a man in his whole life does, you, my brother, were cast adrift, befriended by none, hated by many, suspected by a powerful Empire! The family hearth seemed extinguished for ever, the family gods broken to pieces. And although even all that could not deter us from the right nor make me ally myself with the wrong, yet it was with a bleeding heart that I wrote ‘जो वंशबाग उध्वस्त झाला। संततपुष्प तोचि क’ (the garden that has shed all its flowers for the garland of the Gods, is in blossom for ever.) Even the evergreens of hope stood withered and blasted. Only dear Vasanta, that was the bud, a melancholy memory of the past. But now a few kindly touches of the spring have revived the sap and the creepers are putting forth new buds. We had dear Vasant, and we have our Ranjan and God willing, we may be blessed with one more messenger of new life. The lamp of love is burning cheerfully under thy roof, and its warm and kind reflections have lightened the utter darkness of my cell here. And the new

name of little Ranjan brings do mind the all suffering, the all loving, mother, his grandmother, my dear Mavashi. What a joy it must have been to her! Please to give my love to that dear little child, whom perhaps I may never see! And tell me whether it understands it or not! And why did you not write to me about Shanta herself? You left it to Vahini to do it for you. It is typically Indian but in your next, you must write to me directly about your child and everything else. It is this extreme modesty that makes the generality of Indian babes grow rather in the shade than in the full light of their parents' eyes. No, No! you must look upon it as a special and a sacred charge. It was a pity that our dear Vahini should have been suffering from plague. I thought that this dire epidemic had at last, by this time, left our shores but it seems that it rages there still. Please be very careful of it. Is it a little less rigorous than it used to be? Has not medical science as yet been able to find some reliable cure for it? You should better leave Bombay as soon as it appears there. Nothing can be too costly to avoid its dire claws, if indeed we cannot blunt them. The last parcel that I got was in January 1916 and our dear Baba in March 1916, so neither of us has received any parcel for the last eighteen months or so when we ought to have received two. Now this was the reason what made us very anxious about your safety and I had to ask the permisison of the Superintendent, who so kindly gave it, to wire to you. But I think we should take as much care as it is possible to avoid any such necessity. The best way would be that letters and parcels should be posted by you in fixed months, if not dates, ... This much, so far as we are considered. But then there is the other party in the game-the post or the Government, and we cannot help suiting things to their pleasure. In your last letter, you have written of a parcel lost in the post and last year, my letter also was lost. Now what is the meaning of this? Thousands of parcels and letters come all right to this place; only our letters and parcels should be so mysteriously spirited away! Is it the post? If so, please do leave no stone unturned till they give some definite explanation for the loss of this parcel. You must have registered it; then it would be clear whether and through whose indulgence or malice, my letters and parcels are tampered with. This much for the post office. But if not the post—It is the Government! Well; if so, then, mum!!! Mum is the word!! As I have learnt to do without so many things which make life worth having, so also I shall and can learn to do without a yearly parcel too! But one should have thought that when a dozen censors have followed a book from the printer's office to the

clearance house and when powerful microscopes have searched the very anatomy of the pages, the books, at least, those that are found unobjectionable, should have been returned to their owner! The Nasik conference was really a success. The resolution about the release of the political prisoners has delighted even us, the forlorn and forgotten, and our deep gratitude to those who dare to remember us still. One wonders why the Congress should fight shy of any such thing even after its union. Perhaps the leaders of that body are too much weighed down by the sense of self- importance. Perhaps they think themselves too immaculate—far more responsible a band of statesmen and patriots than General Botha whose Government has released the leaders, the rank and file of the Boer rebellion or Redmond, whose nationalists have never ceased to try for the release of the Irish prisoners till they succeeded in having it. Nor can it be said that ‘that was a general participation in a rebellion’, as Mr. Bonarlaw has attempted to state; for firstly in the Indian political prisoners also, the overwhelming majority are convicts of general participation and secondly, the suffragists though admittedly and case for case had been convicted of ‘individual’ charges, were released by Mr. Asquith long ago. But leave the Congress alone! At any rate as soon as the war ends please do see if a public Petition for our release could be sent. Such petitions and resolutions do not in themselves bring such a release, but they at any rate make it more acceptable if it ever comes. For, I for one would indeed feel it a shame to go back to a people which dares not, or for all I know wills not to remember those who loved and love and will never cease to love the land of their birth and rightly or wrongly but fell fighting for Her! See, see if the petition could be sent. That would be far more significant than any resolutions or meetings. While together for a minute or so, I said one day to our dear Baba, that there is said to be a पितृऋण Pitrarina and देवऋण Devarina and ऋषिऋण Rishirina & C. So, also there is Putrarina पुत्रऋण (debt due to a son). After the receipt of your letter, I felt myself fully acquitted of it! For, after all, you are now fully educated and fully fledged. Now come what may, at least two years of joy have been bestowed on you by the kind Providence and through you on us. No day can shine forever. The life on this earth is like a three petalled flower; one is coloured with pleasure, the second with the colour of pain, the third mixed or colourless. Now the petal of pleasure and then that of pain gets wormed and thus this vain round of recurrence goes on.

Take any letter or any life or even History itself, it is more or less a book of mere statistics of so many births and so many deaths, so many weddings and so many mournings, so much colour and so much shade. So, while there is a brief respite, a passing ray of joy, a single touch of the spring, let us not forget the hardship of the winter or foolishly depend upon and get addiction to these wines of spring, while they are dancing in the cup. No, No, our, ...of those who are born in India in this age ...our constant companion is winter and not spring! Let us not forget that our life is a vast Sahara, unbearable and still to be borne, sandy, burning. And while we are keeping to the path of duty that passes through this parched desert, if the grace of God places in our path such an ‘oasis’ as this, with which we have been recently blent, then let us not forget that it is an accident, an art of grace; and without haste and rest, must continue our way on this holy pilgrimage of life. Let us pray in all humility as the old saints prayed: ‘Give unto us what thou wilt and when thou wilt and how much thou wilt! And also take away from us what thou wilt and how much thou wilt.’ After all, the fine ideal for a young man is not to acquire but to sacrifice, not to rear but ‘the garden that sheds all its flowers for the garland of the Gods and thus is in blossom for ever.’ How is my dear Mai getting on? What a silly idea that I could forget my only sister! I may as well get angry and cease to speak with myself. While the day lasts, try to save something and invest in some safe form in the name of dear Shanta or dear Ranjan for we can never tell when winter may come again!! Nothing could match the ideal constancy of affection of our dear MadameCama. Even the war has not made her forget you! Thus, it is that many a time the blood is not thicker than choice and there are affections, which noble hearts alone can know, of which neither the lack of blood nor of interest can cool and which growing up in an ideal land flourish and are nursed on forces so subtle that the every day and matter of fact world fails to see or comprehend. How are also my beloved Mai (Yamuna) and Vahinis, getting on? My love to them all. How is dear Balu? When I saw him in the Bombay jail he seemed so upright and so loving a boy! Now he must be quite a respectable gentleman? And so also Anna. I expected him to be a clever and able youth and shall be very glad to know how far my guess has been correct. I wish I could know everything about all my brothers, including dear Dattu and Nana and what they do. But it is not and cannot be owing to my forgetting them as my dear Yamuna seems to think, but for other reasons, which she can well

understand by her past experiences that refrained me from mentioning in my previous letters. If there be any man or any famity next to dear Baba, to whom I owe that is best in me, and owing to whose noble patronage and winning solicitude I had unusual chances and facilities of assimilating the noblest things of this world and even of doing something for our common Motherland, then that man and that family is theirs: (Chiploonkers). But the sense of having been the cause of so much worry and loss and pain to them with whom the dearest ties of blood and love and mutual respect have bound me, has already been so keen a source of sadness and mental unhappiness to me that I do not dare to add an inch more to it all. And so have denied myself the gratification of expressing my thankfulness or love. Otherwise, who cannot be proud of those fine youths such as my own brothers-in-law are—at any rate promised to be? And of him who brought me up as dearly as them? and of that saintly dutiful mother!! The same thing is true of all my friends! I remember them all! But for their own sake and not for my own sake, dare not acknowledge them all. I could not understand who the pleader was, who came to you as my contemporary but if really so, please do thank him on my behalf for remembering me still. By the by, be very careful of men who may come to you as acquainted with me or even claiming to have seen me here or having had talk with me here. You are too experienced to be cautioned but nevertheless, I assure you, I send no word or message through anyone to you. Hear all but believe none, except what stands to your reason without my recommendation and on its own merit. Now the time is over and I must finish. I am all right, the details you asked would be sent in dear Baba's letters. Love to all from both of us. Do not worry for our health. As far as possible, take care of your own health. If in spite of all human efforts, the worst comes to the worst, well then we are quite ready to face it all! Do not worry. Yours affectionately TATYA.

4-8-1918 Port Blair My dear brother, I was very glad to read your letter. This year owing to the regularity with which your parcels and letters had been despatched, we could get them all at the expected time and were, thus, able to get rid of a lot of anxiety and trouble and petitioning. The answer to my letter, then the parcel to brother and then his letter—all these enabled us to get your news almost every three months. Please do follow up this plan as regularly as possible. The news that the Maharashtra provincial conference had passed a strong resolution and that with greater unanimity in favour of the release of all political prisoners was very welcome! In fact, the Bombay provincial conference has been doing its duty with greater vigour, consistency and persistence than any other P.C. in India. Last year, so far as I could know, the provincial conference of U.P. and especially the Andhra Conference had also passed resolutions in favour of this release. The resolution of the Andhra Conference was very definitely and comprehensively worded and showed that the heart of the Andhras beat in thorough and honest sympathy with those who, with the means they thought best to effect the Great Deliverance had, maybe rightly, maybe wrongly but in utter sincerity and indisputable selflessness, offered themselves to pine away in prisons. You write that many of the papers write constantly for the release and magazines too press on do the point that the release of all political prisoners is one of the conditions, under which the removal of Indian discontent is possible. If all this be true, then I really fail to understand why the Congress, so far as I know, should still be fighting shy, should still be trembling to utter a syllable that might smell of sympathy, nay even of ordinary humanity for the political prisoners, of the people in whose name it poses to speak! Last year, they passed a resolution for the release of the interned, forgetting totally and very conveniently that the sufferings which brought tears to the eyes of the patriots sitting comfortably in the well-aired and well-decorated pandal had been indefinitly multiplied and incessantly faced by other men —not one not two, but thousands of other men whose services or sacrifices cannot, at least, be less than our interned brothers and who, because their misery cannot automatically end with the war as in the case of the interned and therefore demand a greater and more persistent agitation on the part of those who are pasing as responsible leaders of the people! ‘Responsible’

that is the thing! They talk of the ‘interned’ only, because they know that it is safer to do so and they dare not talk of the rest because they might be losing their responsible positions in the eyes of their boss! Otherwise, when the different provincial conferences have so clearly and so often made it obvious that the majority of the provinces heartily wish to effect the release of the political prisoners, one fails to understand why the Congres should fail to do so. The business of the Congress is not to voice the sentiments of the few that dominate its proceedings but of the many, who give it its weight and support and in whose name ought to derive its right to be a ‘Congress’ at all. When so many provinical conferences have passed this resolution and so often, when the leading papers and magazines have incessantly pressed this point, when many of the leaders of the Congress itself, when it was their turn to be rotting behind the prison walls had expected and had thought they had a right to expect the sympathetic mention of them by the people for whom they fought, above all or rather least of all when the very Austrian people, not to mention the Irish, the Boers &c. had been bold and honest and grateful enough to agitate for the release of all their political prisoners and succeeded in getting it done, when all these things are known and admitted, then I think that the Congress could be and should be immediately forced to pass as bold and as comprehensive a resolution as that of the Andhra or Maharashtra Conferences this year. If some old hags tremble, let them absent themselves from the sittings that adopt this resolution. Why should you all share in this guilty silence because a handful of ‘Responsible’ are shaky about it? Secondly, one or two precautions should be taken in case of any such resolution or movements, if to be effective. Many papers write about ‘political prisoners’ but the language is so conveniently dubious that the Government and even the people are quite likely to fail to understand what is meant by that omnibus term, ‘political prisoners.’ Some times it means interned, at others the detenue, then deported or the state prisoners, but hardly it ever means those also who are convicted for offences of political nature. I pointed out to you last year that Mr. Bonarlaw himself made a distinction in Irish cases that the rebels were not guilty of ‘individual acts’! Now that gentleman knew well that suffragists were all ‘convicted’ for ‘individual acts’ including arson! Yet they were released as soon as the war broke out by the very Government Mr. Bonarlaw works in. Then I don’t see why the word ‘convicted’ should be a bogey to the Indian ‘Responsibles’

and the ‘individual acts’ a screen to hide the Government anomalies in the hands of Mr. Bonarlaw. Botha is a prime minister and Redmond the constituted Leader of a Parliamentary Party and yet they released their own opponents and actual rebels, against their Governments. But the Congressmen think they are ‘responsible men’! The pariah that stands begging at the city gate is more responsible citizen and belongs to a higher caste than the Sheriff and the Chairman of the city itself! So, in the future resolultion and articles, this point should be clearly and definitely pressed that ‘political prisoners means all those undergoing imprisonment whether convicted or not, whether for individual acts or acts in general’ (I indeed fail to understand it altogether!)—for actions which proceeded from purely and admittedly political motives.’ The term political can be distinguished from private only by the criterion of the motive of the act and not by the act itself. No act is or can be by itself political. For, even a rebellion if that proceeds entirely for my own bread and butter is not political and ought not to create any sympathy in others, unless indeed my cause was only a case in hand and was fought out for establishing a general privilege or in vindicating of a general right. The thugs fought battles and were not political in the sense of sacrificing for the general good. But even the arson cases or flogging the prime ministers by a suffragist in England had been recognised by the British Government itself as political because the motive was neither personal aggrandisement nor revenge but the advancement of some social good. The means may be wrong, even criminal or not, the motive counts so far as the moral value, and here national aspect of the act is concerned. I write this with special stress for the reason that in case of an amnesty being granted—which I expect not—this point will be a stumbling block in our path, for the Government might adopt some anomalous distinction and interprete the term in any sense convenient to them but not just in itself. Try your best to make this clear to all you can approach and let our journalists and leaders keep this constantly before them. (a) Please do write to me in your letter whenever any of the provincial conferences have passed any resolution to this effect, whether last year’s Congress had deliberated on it in the subjects committee; how many papers write wholeheartedly about it, and if something could be done in this year’s Congress. When you write about it only mention those cases in which the general amnesty is asked and not only that of a few interned etc.