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

throughout the settlement of the Andamans. My being out of the strike helped materially
the smooth conduct of all other activities so needed to hold the team together and to give
the cause strength and cohesion that might lead it on to success.
On a fixed day batches of political prisoners in the rent wards of the jail struck
work simultaneously. AI>out a hundred prisoners had joined the strike. Such a large
number had never before organised such a strike. The hold of the authorities over the
prisoners had considerably slackened during the interval of the first and the fourth strike.
As such, this strike proved very effective. Never in the long history of the Andamans had
a strike on such a large scale been organised or had lasted for such a long period of time.
From the beginning of the strike right to the end, Mr. Barrie tried hard to
poison the minds of political prisoners against me. He stood for half an hour every
day before the cells of these prisoners and say to them, "Look here, Mr. Savarkar makes
you dance to his tune; he is deceiving you, clear enough, for he himself is keeping back
as he is afraid of punishment. You are fools. Behave like that wise man among you—
he, of course, referred to one of his henchmen—who has nothing to do with the strike.
That will be to your good, I assure you." But they were more than a match to Mr.
Barrie. They knew him but too well. If Savarkar was to behave like one of Mr. Barrie's
men, they said to themselves, his lot would have been far easier long ago. But he did
not like to live by flattering Mr. Barrie, they were sure of it. They were aware how long
and what kinds of punishment I had undergone in that prison. Chains perpendicularly
tying up hands at the one end and feet at the other; chains on hands and feet separately;
chains on the arm; and solitary confinement on end, he had passed through all these
ordeals, .added to hunger-strike for a day or two. And all this they could verify for
themselves from the records of that prison. All of them had gone on strike as their duty,
and some of Hum were so enraged that they would not have stopped at strike alone, but
would have gone in for violent action, but for my bidding them not to do so. And most of
them law sufficient cause, in Mr. Barrie's revilings and misrepretations, for me to stand
by. Some of them openly laughed at him and told him, "How is it, Mister, that you are
day and night so much afraid of him, if you really think him to be coward at heart?"
All Mr. Barrie's efforts failed to create a diversion between us, as also failed the
efforts of his allies to sow dissensions among us. The strike went on vigorously. Poor
Bhan Singh, however, did not improve from the shattering blow to his health given by
the drubbing he had got from his tindals and warders. Within a week's time, he began to
vomit blood and had to be removed to the prison hospital for treatment. I was also there
after the shattering of my own health, and we met. He showed me the scars on his back.
In that hospital, he soon developed consumption, and it was so rapid that two months
after he died of it. Bhan Singh was only a peasant, but such a sterling patriot was rarely
to be found among the class of educated men in India. He was transported for life for
service to his country and he expired in the Andamans a year and a half after. Every
political prisoner thought like me about him.
The authorities would not entertain the statement on the strike and its causes
presented by two of the strike leaders appointed for the purpose. Accordingly, as pre-
viously settled, the two went on hunger-strike. One of them was the sixty-year old Sikh
political prisoner, Sardar Sohansingh. The other was a spirited Rajput young man from