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

was that Hindi should supersede Urdu in these offices and in their records. I, therefore,
directed my energy to that work. As a rule, all proceedings and records were in English in
these offices; but the clerks being men from the North of India and most of the prisoners
being more familiar with Urdu than with English, statements came to be taken down and
recorded in Urdu and the tradition had continued to our day. These records were in bulk
made up of documents in connection with prisoners that were sent out in every steamer
from India to Port Blair. The Munshi took down their statements in Urdu. Hence my first
move was to ask the authorities that the prisoners should be permitted to submit their
statements and other documents in their own native language, and not in Urdu only. Days
passed before permission was obtained thus for Marathi and Gurumukhi. The Munshi
knew only English and Urdu. And until the Munshi had passed the letter as
'unobjectionable', it would neither enter the prison nor go out of it. After the permission
was granted, the prisoner could put the contents in any language he knew. Urdu was the
common language of communication in Punjab, Lucknow and parts of Northern India.
And I had to persuade those who sent their letters from those places, and those who sent
their letters from here to them, to write them invariably in Hindi. My Marathi and
Bengali friends also sent and received letters in Hindi. The authorities had, perforce, to
appoint Hindi-knowing Munshis to scrutinize their contents before the letters passed in or
out of the prison. The older Urdu-knowing officers now began to study Hindi. If no clerk
was found to write a letter in Hindi, our volunteers did it for him. Formerly ninety per
cent of the letters were in Urdu script. But at the end of our campaign, ninety per cent.
were in other languages, the bulk of them being in Hindi, and only the rest in Urdu script.
As the officers with powers to appoint clerks in offices under them became members of
Hindu Sanghatan, they appointed Hindi knowing Hindu clerks in these places. It became
a rule in the prison thenceforward that a Hindu must write either in Hindi or in his own
native tongue. The Mussulman was free to write in Urdu. No compulsion was to be
exercised on him to the contrary. But a Hindu could no longer be compelled to send or
receive letters in Urdu. When I was admitted into the office, I saw through all the letters
coming in and going out, to note how many of the Hindus still persisted in corresponding
in Urdu script. And if I found out any one still doing so, I lost no time in dissuading him
from that habit. In course of time, things had so changed in this prison, that it was full of
Hindu Munshis at the top and all correspondence in and out was carried on in Hindi and
in Nagari script. Letters addressed to us from outside were also written in Hindi for we
had directed our relatives abroad to write to us in Hindi. So correspondence in Hindi and
other provincial languages went on multiplying and Urdu began to dwindle
proportionately. Consequently, the staff of clerks in the office showed an increasingly
larger percentage of Hindus, and the prestige of Urdu began to diminish and it sank in
popularity.
Only the political convicts had to write compulsorily in English as their
correspondence was personally gone through by European officers. But as their number
increased by hundreds, they were also permitted to write and receive letters in their
mother-tongue, for many of them could not speak or write in English. It was after
tremendous effort that this concession was made to them, though, to the last, I had to
write in English alone.