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

of India. Life would be a misery for them in these new conditions as bad as that in the
Andamans, if not worse than that. And society would get no benefit whatever of the
better part of their criminal propensities like courage, enterprise, daring and recklessness
of life. From the national point of view, the very qualities that stink in our nostrils as
criminal, furnish rich manure for the soil where the prisoners are transplanted as free
men; or are like explosives which, if wisely handled, become powerful weapons of
defence. And the greatest harm of it all was that the seed falling on rocky soil, was run
to waste, while cast on fertile soil might multiply a hundredfold. The nation loses
immensely from the disuse of this potentiality for man-power when a prisoner is
condemned to rot in the jail; whereas as a free man in a new settlement, he could marry,
prosper and multiply to the immense advantage of the country from which he hails.
Crime is hereditary only in a limited sense
In my opinion heredity and crime were not so inviolably bound up as scientists
had tried to make it. If there was any truth in this proposition, it was nothing better than
half-truth. Not every criminal sinner transmitted his sin and crime to his children as
heredity would seek to prove. A man or woman became a criminal not as the result of
heredity alone. That may be attributed to many other causes. Education, circumstances,
associations, and several other causes act upon a person to turn him into a criminal and
develop or kill the instinct of crime he might inherit from his parents. If virtue and vice
were invariably to pass from father to son, there would never have been a son like
Sambhaji to a king like Shivaji, or the political convicts deported to Canada would never
have been able to give us a nation like Canada as from generation to generation. As a
poet does not necessarily beget a poet, so a criminal father does not necessarily give birth
to a criminal son.
Prisoners on life-sentence should be allowed to marry
Therefore, to put a ban upon prisoners transported for life against marriage was
virtually to punish the nation. It is not only to punish them individually but to penalise the
country, for it is a distinct set-back to the growth of her population. Instead of this policy
of cruelty and castration, it would be wise to continue the settlement as a free colony of
prisoners who, under strict discipline, may be allowed to make a home in it, marry and
multiply; and turn the settlement into a thriving and prosperous concern. From
generations born of them, men who grow up in social virtues should be made entirely free
so that the settlement and the country to which it belongs may both reap the rich benefits
flowing from such a policy.
My work of awakening in the Andamans had been all along guided by this far-
sighted aim. To improve the life of the convicts, to make their children good and capable
citizens by education and association, must be the policy of the Government charged with