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

with all the political convicts in the country. I was transferred from the Andamans to
Ratnagiri in 1921 and in 1923, I was removed from that place to the Yeravada Jail. That
is at least my impression. I cannot be too sure about the dates. I had no opportunity and
no time to check the dates. I must say about the whole narrative, that there may be
discrepancies, here and there about the dates, though in general they may be pretty
accurate.
Meeting with friends from the Andamans
This was my second visit to Yeravada Jail. First I was put there in 1910 and for
the second time now in 1923. In those days the prison was full of convicts sentenced in
the Mulshi Satyagraha case. They came and they went, all of them political prisoners.
Some were punished with whipping. Those who had remained behind used to tell me of
their severe ordeal in the Yeravada jail. There were in it prisoners hailing from Sindh and
Dharwar who had taken part in the Non-cooperation and the Khilafat movements. Hindus
and Muslims, political convicts they were all of them. The most wonderful fact of them
all was that I met there my friends from the Andamans whom the Government of India
had ordered back to India. Sikhs of the Lahore case and several others on transportation
for life to the Andamans I met in the prison. I was strictly forbidden from inter-course
with any of them, though I managed secretly to see them, and it gave me as much joy as I
would have felt to meet the members of my own family and my near relatives. With
tearful eyes, we greeted one another. In the Andamans we had suffered together. Any one
of us could have won freedom in a day by the betrayal of our friends, by giving away the
secrets of our society, or by putting the noose round the neck of fellow convicts. But God
had saved us from such evil temptation. We revolutionaries had stood our ground bearing
tortures as painful as a row of elephants pricked in the head by the goad of their rider.
They stand rooted to the spot under its severest blows, so we stood up, firm and
unshaken, to all the mental and physical pain inflicted upon us. We could not take a step
forward. We would not go a step backward, so we stood obstinately where we were
planted. No doubt we were cornered and at bay. And all around us were hurled "slings
and arrows" of misfortune. The newcomers—the non-cooperators and the Khilafatists
looked down upon these seasoned soldiers, these fighters and revolutionaries, as sinners,
because they were members of secret societies, and conspirators. The Non-co-operators
and the Khilafatists had not seen even two years of prison-life. They were raw,
vainglorious men, and they bragged of their suffering before those who had passed
through ten years or more of transportation for life in the Silver Jail of the Andamans—
the brave Sikhs who had never winced under the severest hardships! They vaunted of
their worthless 'Satyagraha' and of their short imprisonment for it before these terrorists
and presumed to despise them!