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

harass me thus throughout the day. These were the worst of their kind and had a free run
of all the wards in that prison. They stood for hours together before my room or my
chawl, and flung at me their choicest epithets of abuse. And the officers stood nearby to
enjoy them, and giggle in laughter. I was no match for them in this contest. And even if I
could improvise similar abusive language, it would not heal the bruises on my soul, and it
could inflict no pain on them. For such vulgarity was their usual pastime. I had however
to bear it with patience. My cause was, however, taken up by the Hindu goondas, and
they succeeded in silencing them. For in that jargon of abuse and vulgarism, these had
proved their masters. They did not compalin against the Mussulman Goondas, for they
knew that Mr. Barrie would not entertain any complaint against them. But one Hindu
warder devised a more effective plan to damn them. He secreted in the bedding of a
Mussulman warder, knives, tobacco, money and other articles which he was not allowed
to keep with him. And one day when the Superintendent came on an inspection tour, he
quietly placed the bedding with its contents before him. In consequence the Muslim
warder was dismissed from office, discharged from his duty, punished and sent out on
hard work outside the prison. There he was caned for some dispute with the Hindu
prisoners. They dealt in a similar fashion with other members of the gang with the help of
the political prisoners in the jail, catching them somehow upon the hip and beating them
at their own game. In course of time the whole gang was completely routed and there was
an end to all our troubles. The Muslim goonda infuriated by our Shuddhi movement, had
at last come to his senses.

The Shuddhi movement outside the prison

As the political prisoners, trained in the organisation that I have already described in
previous pages, went out in increasing numbers in the settlement of the Andamans, they
carried with them the torch of Shuddhi to the locality in which they were called upon to
do their normal daily Work. And the movement gathered in strength and volume
as these mixed and moved among the people. This agitation, all round, deepened the
people's love for Hinduism, and their resentment for those who had persecuted the
Hindus or tried to convert them to their own faith. The suffering and the awakening
contributed greatly to the fusion of the people, and to minimise, if not altogether abolish,
the distinctions among them, as Hindus, of province, caste and custom, and to their
consolidation in these parts as one society. Let there come news of some one converted,
and the whole community of the Hindu primers in that settlement was alive to the need of
retaining him;. In this manner even the Hindus who had embraced Islam eight
or ten years before I had reached the place, were, by this Shuddhi movement, reconverted
to Hinduism. These dined freely with their Hindu brethren and without any objection by
the Hindus themselves. I may give here only one instance to point the moral and to adorn
the tale. There was an old man of fifty by name Tulshi. This fellow was a veteran in
all kinds of vices. He was a first class thief and a first class gambler. Realising that in
the Andamans the Mussulman was in power everywhere, and hating the taboos in
Hinduism on food and drink, he had embraced Islam. But when he knew by our
Shuddhi movement that one did not cease to be a Hindu by food and drink with his
fellows of any caste or creed, or religion, and when public opinion of the community