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

news. But even an educated prisoner was not up to the task of picking political news. If
he were asked about any political party, its agitation and its power at the time that he had
left them, he would fumble for he had no answer to give. He would often end that he had
no knowledge of it, and everything was quiet there. And that answer was a damper on the
enthusiasm of our sentimental political prisoners. If there was one piece of information
that he could definitely give them it was about the arrest of some great political leader or
of the immediate arrival of the King-Emperor to India. "The Emperor is coming"; "There
was a great show at Delhi"; "A big Lord had been killed"—that was all their definite talk.
This news came ready to them, because it had spread like a conflagration throughout
India, in all its market-places and thoroughfares. Minus this he could tell nothing about
the Indian National Congress, or of the Imperial Legislative Council, of Swadeshi, of the
struggle for Swaraj. Of course, I am narrating here experience of my first five years of
prison-life in the Andamans. What change came over, will come later on in this book

It is interesting to note here a few stratagems we employed to get information
from the Chalan. A few of the political prisoners in India used to meet some of the
prisoners bound for the Andamans, and they would pass on letters to them to be conveyed
to their friends in the Silver Jail. They knew that the letters would be taken charge of by
Officers in that jail. So the trick that they used was to put the letters well-concealed
within the pages of an ordinary, innocent book bound specially for that purpose. In the
body of the binding the letter was inclosed so that none could detect it. The book
happened to be duly delivered to the political prisoner concerned and along with the book
went the letter to the proper person.

A letter behind the badge

After a time the stratagem became too patent to be used safely by the emissary
abroad. Another was quickly resorted to, and that was to secrete the letter in the badge
itself. Every prisoner had to wear a badge with its marked number hanging on his chest as
soon as he became the regular convict in a prison. The letter was written on the inner side
of the iron-plate which was seldom exposed to view. And thus the news was conveyed
safely to its proper quarters. The son of a great Punjabi leader sent me a missive from a
prison in the Punjab, where he was serving his seven years' term of imprisonment, by
resorting to this trick. The prisoner through whom he had sent me the letter was in the
Punjab jail before he was deported to the Andamans. He carried the badge on his person,
and though he was searched fifty times and stripped naked to discover anything he might
hide on his person, the thing remained undetected until it had reached me. No one
suspected the iron-plate as the carrier of that message. The prisoner had taken good care
all along the transit that the letter written on the back of the plate was not rubbed off. And
he handed the strange missive to me as soon as he was inside the jail. I read the letter and
handed him back the iron-plate with all the letters erased from it. Thus the news
percolated to us through the prison-walls of the Silver Jail. The Chalan was an invaluable
agency for such news. And yet the news was so inadequate, fragmentary and intermittent
that none of us was satisfied by it, for it did not inform us fully of what we were most