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

only way to improve conditions here. The Government should have taken note of that
letter and started proper investigations. If the allegations proved true, then steps should be
taken to remove the grievances. If they were proved to be false, being made by Hotilal
over his own signature, the authorities should take him severely to task for having made
them. How can the confiscating of the press help in such matters?", I concluded.
But was the press really confiscated? How was I to know about it? It was very
difficult to get any news from India. The political prisoners were always very anxious to
get news about their families, of what had happened to their property and their people
after they had left India. But they were still more anxious about the news of their country,
what was its political condition, and what was the state of the agitation in which they had
taken such an active part.
How is my Country !
That was what many a political prisoner was anxious to know. The party of
revolution was most ascendant in the country when I had left it. In what condition it was
now, when political prisoners were all sentenced and sent to jail? Crushed as that party
was under the heel of power, it may have gone down. But were other political parties
doing something for the emancipation of the country, shielded as they were under the
aegis of the ruling power? How were we to know this and other news of the world? What
should we do to have it? Whenever one political prisoner met another, the first question
that was asked was how the country was faring. If even a single item of news came to
them, they felt, for the time being, that there was nothing wrong with them and they kept
on discussing the item for the whole day in small groups of two or three. Such was the
curiosity of youth which remained unsatisfied here. The political condition of their
country made them more restless than their personal grievances. A lover is always keen
to get news of his beloved. Our political prisoners were equally keen about the news of
their mother country, for they had sacrificed their all in her service. No newspaper could
reach him in this prison and no letter; all political news was expunged from such
newspapers as were given to him. Hence the only anxiety that ever preyed upon his heart
was how to get at the news.
The first source was the 'Chalan'
And yet they devised means after means and succeeded in getting news, however
scanty,, of the outside world. The first source of such news was, of course, the Chalan.
Every month the convicts transported to the Andamans landed on its shores to be taken to
the Silver jail. It was a gang of 50 prisoners. The importance of the party during the first
month of its prison-life was so great that even the petty officers from the warders to the
jamadars sought to be in their good books. For every one tried to get some news of his
village or town from the prisoner belonging to his own part of the country. Common