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

overnight. The prisoners were dead sure about the authenticity of the news. They had, of
course, no answer to give when we questioned them on the point. They would tell us that
they had got it from this/that or another source. Some said it came to them from the
waiter or the cook of a particular officer. Another said that it was the head-cook of the
Chief Commissioner who had given the news to him. He had himself seen the Chief
Commissioner break open the post and reading the letter had dropped down in the chair,
and dashed his hat on the table. Mr. Barrie was seen in tears, and his little daughter had
thrust her head into the knees, and was lost in fear.
Such were the bits of news purveyed to us by the prisoners, and such were the
proofs that they produced to support them. I was reminded by them of the alarming and
false news in the days of the last Peshwa, Bajirao II. What reporters were those on whom
the Peshwa depended! One correspondent reported to him of the big victory won by
Yeshwantrao Holkar over the English and in support of the news the wise-acre stressed
the fact(?) that the political resident at Garpir, while reading a communique, had flung his
hat on the floor! The same evidence and the same inference still obsessed the mind of the
people of India even today. The Britisher has not gone and wears his hat fast on his head.
We are the fools for all that.
Indeed during the last hundred and fifty years of British Rule in India, there has
been no change whatever in these traits of British character. They are born politicians,
strong-willed administrators and tough fighters. And we have not changed either. We
have remained the same gullible people, incapable of appreciating British character and
ignorant of the ways and means to effectively confront them. The Britishers have not
forgotten much during the last hundred and fifty years. And we have not learnt very much
from them. The word-for-word report conveyed to me of the sahib dashing his hat on the
ground, spontaneously made me retort "Fools! the sahib was no Indian to do it. He was
an Englishman and no coward. You would find one in a thousand Britishers whom you
could < all a coward. The rest would not budge an inch. They light to the last and win.
Behold how among a thousand lambs like you, five of them live like lions, brave, fearless
and stern. A sahib to dash his hat on the ground for fear! Nay the weather was warm and
he did it, Barrie's daughter to thrust her head between the knees because she was
frightened! No, she must be sleepy because she played too much, and was dozing. How
do you know that the news of the submarine had scared her?"
Though it was foolish to be elated by the news, true or false, of British reverses and to
exclaim, "0, brother, we are free, today or tomorrow," it was no less shortsighted to
affirm that, while kingdoms and empires were tumbling down in the earthquake of war,
the god in India Mould stand firm on its pedestal, and the shock of the war could never
make him totter and fall. My information of movements abroad, the hovering of the
German submarine about the Andamans, and the intensive British preparations to defend
them, made me conclude that it was equally foolish to say that nothing would come out
of it, that we must ever remain weak, and rot and weep for ever in this jail. I still believed
that the Emden was plying in these Waters according to plan, and the plan was no other