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

marry and make a home for themselves, then the difficulty on that score was bound to
disappear. Many of them would, in that case, bring their families from India or marry
women of the Andamans. So long the prisoners were forbidden from having any contact
with free men and their families in these islands. But that ban would not be there under
the new order of things. Would it not be better, in these circumstances, to stay here and
improve their social and economic position than to go back either to rot in the jail, or to
carry on litigation for a small piece of land and thus quarrel with their kith and kin? Here
was free land open for their occupation. They had better settle on it, cultivate it, reap a
new harvest from it, live and be happy. The so-called free men here were the progeny of
prisoners who had come to the Andamans a generation back. They were their blood and
bone. To establish marriage alliance with them would be addition to that progeny. To live
here in contentment was better than anything they were going to do in India. It would be
hard for them to win any status there, to settle, to marry, to make a home for themselves,
have children in the family, and make a little money on their own. Why! In India their
caste would shun them as pariahs. Those who had returned from Fiji to India in similar
circumstances preferred to go back, for in India conditions were hard for them to endure.
They were labourers, while the prisoners will go back branded as convicts or ex-convicts.
Was it not better, therefore, for them to obtain their freedom after ten years in the
Andamans, which in former days came to them after twenty years of penal servitude?
Was it not better to use that freedom to improve their lot by settling here, for which they
would get a ticket on mere application? Now the ticket was being given only after three
years of imprisonment in the jail here. Turn farmers, cultivate the soil,. be independent,
earn your living and be happy. Take it that you have come to this foreign country to make
your fortune.
You will thus not only serve yourselves, avoiding all the hardships of
imprisonment, but you will be helping to add to India, if you make full use of your
opportunities and work as an organised unit, a colony as prosperous and enlightened, in
the course of a few generations, as Canada or Cape Colony. That will mean Greater India,
not unlike Greater Britain, though on a smaller scale. For your stay in the Andamans
ultimately means to keep the flag of India flying on these shores. It will be the expansion
of India from the cultural and religious point of view."
"Look at Nicobar. It originally was an off-shoot of India. Now it belongs to the
Burmese and the Malayans because the Hindus refused to settle and colonise it. It is lost
for good to Hindu culture. And the same thing will happen in the Andamans as soon as
the Hindu prisoners are removed from it, and their settlement here is broken up for good.
The Burmese and the Malayans are sure to put themselves in possession of it. And the
three generation of Hindus which had sown the seed and spilt their blood in its
development will disappear in no time. It will be lost to their children and the toil and
sweat of their ancestors shall have been in vain. Lost to Hinduism and Hindi culture by
such expropriation the Andamans may remain a possession of India, yet its soul will
belong to the Chinese, Malayans and other races of Mongolian stock and culture.