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

Europe that India was a live nation, that it would prove a thorn in the side of England,
and, therefore, would be a handy weapon in its hands for future use. England and
Germany, being on bitter terms with each other, this notion swayed the mind of
Germany more than that of anyone else. The German officials tried consequently to
establish a direct contact with our workers. One or two of our outstanding leaders had
made their permanent home in Germany for that purpose. And those of us who had
settled in America wrote in our Newspaper, 'Gadar', published in that country, that
Germany would soon go to war with England, and, therefore, they must be ready to use
the opportunity to make the final effort to liberate India. We used to know about it in our
prison in the Andamans.
I have given a brief account of this past history here so that the reader may realise
what bitter disappointment the news of war brought to us because, though we had known
that the war was coming for many years now, it came at a time when we were prisoners
in the Andamans, and as such helpless to make any use of it as we had planned it to do in
the long past. It is unnecessary to dwell further on our ambitions and plans at the time.
Even in this helpless state of mind and body, I determined to take full advantage
of this rare opportunity in the life-time of a nation to further the cause near my heart in
such ways as I could adopt for that purpose.
In the meanwhile, the Superintendent himself told me one day, while he had come
to inspect the prison, that war had broken out in Europe on an international scale and
Turkey had joined the side of Germany in that war. It was decided, he added, to raise
funds in Port Blair to support the war and start a magazine to which writers in that place
were to be invited to contribute. He asked me to give an article or a poem for that
magazine.
I wrote a long poem in English and gave it to the Superintendent as he had asked
for it. From time to time I used to write short poems which the officers of the place were
not unfamiliar with. I doubted, however, if this poem, considering the feelings it had
expressed, would pass muster with them. But the projected magazine never saw the light
of the day, and the matter rested there.
However, when I learnt that Turkey had gone over to Germany in that war; I had
to change the plans I had made to take advantage of that war for the freedom of India.
The siding of Turkey with Germany as against England, roused all my suspicions about
Pan-Islamism and I scented in that move a future danger to India. I discovered that
Turkey in this war had made it possible for Germany to stretch her long arm to India and
create a critical situation in India itself. This was, indeed, a circumstance favourable to
my designs. For then England was bound to grant India all the rights that she would
demand, or India herself could wrest them as the result of the exhaustion of England and