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

scripts current in the Punjab, a Guru chose the older one and stamped it with his own
authority as the script to be followed. Hence its nomenclature Gurumukhi. The religious
scriptures of the Sikhs, instead of being written in Shastric or Nagari script, were written
in the common script known as Gurumukhi for use by common people even as Buddha
wrote them in Pali script with the same end in view. This is a subject by itself. I have
referred to it here in the context of Hindi alone. This origin of Gurumukhi, I know, has
not yet been accepted by accredited scholarship. Whether it is historically correct or
otherwise, I must say that the credit of that finding, so far as I know it, is entirely mine. I
have, however, discussed the matter so often with Sikh scholars of language and history.
I did not allow any one of another province to study Marathi in the first instance.
My order of study for all the prisoners was first their mother-tongue, next Hindi, and last,
the language of any province other than their own. I encouraged all of them to study at
least one provincial language other than their own. I could make no provision for
teaching the Dravidian languages of Tamil province including Malayali, Andhra, Tamil
and Canarese, for I did not know these languages myself and there was none among the
prisoners competent to teach them and to collect the necessary literature in them in order
that their study could be properly conducted. I was ever conscious of this defect in our
common programme of teaching languages, and I have not yet been able to remove it.
Otherwise during the last ten years, I have made the prisoners study all other languages
like Marathi, Punjabi and Bengali in addition to the common language Hindi and their
respective mother-tongue. Most of them could read important works in the Marathi
language. I used to collect information about standard works in Dravidian languages, and,
through the Superintendent, was able to get permission to purchase elementary text-books
in that language. I had made a list of them and had provided money for that purpose. But
my sudden departure from the Silver Jail put an end to all these projects. Today, I cannot
say, what has been the upshot of these plans of mine.
Urdu given a set-back
The Andamans is a colony of men drawn from different provinces of India; as
such its lingua franca is Hindi. The progeny of the prisoners who had settled in that
colony also uses Hindi as its language of common speech. Intermarriages among their
families had given Hindi its natural prominence among them. Most of the settlers are
Hindus by religion and race. As such the medium of instruction in schools for their
children should have been Hindi, as, for all practical purposes, Hindi has been their
mother-tongue at home. But from its early years, the Muslims appointed as teachers in
these schools hailed, most of them, from the Punjab and Delhi and were familiar with
Urdu script and language. The result has been that Urdu had become the common
medium of instruction in all the schools of the Andamans. Another source of this
tradition was that the writers in the prison office were recruited from Muslim prisoners,
and Urdu had become the language of the office-records. Those who came out of these
schools had all got their education in Urdu; as such those who learnt Urdu came to be
regarded in the Andamans as having the stamp of education upon them. Hindi as a