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

same as his. He died tired of his ten years' sentence—and you—you will tire of your fifty
years and quit the stage like him."
But Mr. Barrie gave me no time for these musings, for such melancholy brooding.
For he announced within three hours, not that Indu Bhushan had tired of life and
committed suicide but that he had done himself to death in a fit of insanity and personal
quarrel. Indu had tied a slip of paper round his neck which Mr. Barrie had cleverly
removed and concealed. That was what the prisoners present were saying of him. He
tutored the Jamadar, the warder and the petty officer at the postmortem upon Indu's body
to depose that they saw nothing to conclude that the deceased was tired of his life; or that
the work in that prison was too much for him. Before the Officers, brought together for
the post-mortem, the political prisoners on the side of Mr. Barrie supported his statement
and the immediate custodians of the dead man swore that he had hanged himself in a fit
of insanity. But we, on the other side, sent message after message to assure the Officers
that the deceased was not an insane person, that he did not commit suicide on a sudden,
that, he had done it deliberately and as the result of the hardships and insults he had to
bear in that prison. The Officers were requested to call independent evidence to prove the
truth of our deposition, and we suggested for that purpose the name of a person whom
Mr. Barrie could not browbeat. The Officers accepted our offer and the witness gave his
evidence undeterred by the circumstances around him. He was one of the editors of an
Allahabad Newspaper 'Swaraj' who were all sentenced for sedition and came here as
political prisoners. He proved to the hilt that the deceased was a victim of the tortures he
had to suffer in the prison presided over by Mr. Barrie. These had created in him a
disgust for life and he had ended it by suicide. I had told all of them the conversation I
had with Indu Bhushan. And I wanted myself to give evidence. But Mr. Barrie would not
call me. In the evening Mr. Barrie came to me and told me whining, "Indu Bhushan has
left a note behind in which he says plainly that he had ended his life as the result of some
personal quarrel." I turned round upon Mr. Barrie and asked him,
"Why did you not produce that note?"
"Why did you not put in this note as evidence in your favour? It would have supported
you much better than mere argument and logic," I said to Mr. Barrie. I continued, "Please
show me the note even now. I know the conversation Indu had with me only two or three
days previous to this happening. I know what he had said to other prisoners in the same
trying circumstances. He had told me and them that he had no desire to live for ten years
in such hard conditions. He had said so several times and yet you dare say that he
committed suicide in a fit of insanity. Granting that it was so, the question remains how at
all a man strong and young like him could suddenly go mad. He was an arch-conspirator;
he had faced treachery, imprisonment, transportation for life, hardships of prison-life and
at last death by hanging with calmness and indifference and with a smile on his face. He
had never shown temper in hot discussion with his friends, and had not given even the
slightest indication of an unbalanced mind. Political prisoners are accustomed to such
discussions and to sharp difference of opinion among themselves, and yet none of them