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

With all this, freedom has not come nearer. And it will demand tremendous
sacrifice on the part of her people and an amount of suffering to accompany it, till India
can hope to be free. That is the price of her victory.
Naland Vihar
This was the lesson of my preaching to all prisoners in the Andamans. And that
made them stand up against any hardship that fell upon them. The newcomers were all
drawn from the villages. They were all uneducated, ignorant people but no whit less
patriotic on that account. I began to tell them that now that they were to be in prison for a
number of years, it was up to them to add knowledge to their patriotism. Let them enforce
their love for their country with rational sentiment behind it. Let them read, let them
study, let them grasp and understand, so that patriotism would not be with them a vague
sentiment or a mere emotion. The prison was a university for such study. It was our
'Naland Vihar'—a Buddhist temple of study and retirement. Train yourself, discipline
yourself and acquire learning. And I and my old colleagues began to instruct them
accordingly. We started with alphabets for these newcomers—shop-keepers, farmers, and
villagers, all of them. Some of them were Gujaratis, and I procured books for them in
Gujarati. Others were Punjabis and I made them read through Gurumukhi. The rest took
their lessons in Hindusthani. I mixed with them partly in the morning and partly in the
evening, and used my time with them in imparting lessons. Every chawl was humming
with life. And all our members applied themselves seriously to that task. Most of them
had heard my name and that counted much with them.
One of these newcomers told me, and I had heard it from others also, that when,
during the war and in the early part of it, American warships went along the route of the
Andamans, the Indians on board raised their hands in salute in front of Port Blair in
honour of the political prisoners imprisoned in this jail. When I heard stories like these, I
used to recall the words I uttered almost in the second week of my residence here. I had
said then, "Do not be depressed by insults and humiliation. A day will dawn when they
will raise their hands in salutes to you in this very place." I have already " mentioned this
in the first part of my narrative. That stimulant, that tonic dose which I had administered
then to my colleagues against their darkest mood of despondency—those words which
had painted the golden morrow on the midnight sky of sorrow—had not proved
altogether useless. Some portion of our dear India still remembered us! India had not
altogether forgotten us.
After the three 'R's, the new comers were given lessons in history and geography.
Every evening after dinner, I talked to them for half an hour on Indian history, on the new
reforms, on European history, and on elements of political economy. And I continued the
topic with a batch of twenty-five men in turn in our Sunday Meetings. In these days the
programme of national education was carried out with special vigour and intensity. Songs