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

Some demands granted, the strike ends
The political prisoners, under the weight of handcuffs and shackles, and in
solitary confinement for six months on end, discovered that some of them had completely
gone down in health. One or two of them showed evident symptoms of T. B. Many a
prisoner in the Andamans is found easily to succumb to this fell disease. The able-bodied,
muscular, tall class of Sikh peasants and workers had all gone down in health and it was
clear from the symptoms that they had developed, that before long they would be an easy
prey to consumption. One or two, in that plight, gave clear indications of insanity. I,
therefore, advised the strikers to go back on light work and end the strike. For that would
give them comparative work and change also. After much heated discussion and
opposition they at least came round and ended the strike. Stubborn as most of them were,
they at last listened to my advice and resumed their work. Excepting our demand for
equal rights with political prisoners in England, the Indian Government agreed to grant us
all the demands in the statement submitted by us before going on strike. We secured the
right to send long letters home; we secured the right of sweet water for bathing; of soap
and oil for the Sikhs; of better food for prisoners; and, last, of light work as our daily
routine. We had gained our main object in going on strike which was to draw the
attention of the people and leaders in India, in a striking manner, to the wretched
condition and the hardship of our life in this prison. Although Mr. Barrie was not brought
to book for the beating he had given to Bhan Singh, yet we knew that an enquiry was
made into his conduct and he had a very hard time of it to escape from the charge. He
was so much pulled up for what he had done, that he had no spirit left in him to play the
old game over again. If the Government were to be compelled to hold an open trial and
punish, only the Legislature and the press combined could do so. The political prisoners
had done all that was in their power to expose him.
The fourth strike in this prison had almost washed out Mr. Barrie. He was
disgraced throughout India. The Government had begun to look upon him with suspicion;
and the political prisoners, who had won almost all their demands had become
unmanageable by him. So the demigod of Port Blair inspired no fear, but was reduced to
be no more than an image of stock or stone. In this plight he was recently found to be
ever melancholy. Enough of that authority, of that terror, he wanted to fill up his
remaining days and retire in peace. Formerly he used to accost me thus: "Well, Savarkar,
you keep on making the same demands, but your persistence is no better than dashing
your head against a stone-wall." And, now, as demand after demand was being conceded
to us, I used to say to Mr. Barrie, "Let us see if my persistence ends in breaking my head
against the stone-wall, or it leads another to do it. I have not lost, that is what our
colleagues say, and the oil-mill at a stand-still is a witness to the fact."

Mukunda
The entire aspect of the war had begun to change by this time. The advance of
Germany had come to a stand still and her former strength was showing clear signs of
decline and breakdown. Correspondingly our hopes had also sunk low. The bubbling
point had already spent itself and coldness had already begun to invade us. Even the late
arrivals among us had some blind believers in the slogan : "Tomorrow we clear off, we
quit this place." That the rule of Great Britain over India was bound to collapse in a week
or two was the faith of them all; in one man alone I found a singular exception to the
general rule. The prisoner was an old Maratha, Mukunda by name. He was a man of firm
will and steady nerve. He told them positively that British Rule in India was not going to
disappear that way. He was a fighter; he was full of daring; he had made three attempts to
escape from the Andamans. He had already served his ten years in the prison, and had
effected his escape. But he killed the man who was responsible for his first sentence and
imprisonment, and was sentenced to transportation for life for the second offence. He
again escaped from the prison. He was wandering all alone in a boat for one long month,
and was caught just when the boat had touched Madras. Foiled in this way, he had lost all
hope of release, and as the other prisoners had been elated with hope, Mukunda was
depressed by defeat. Whenever any one said in his presence that Britain was bound to
lose in this war, Mukunda went at him with fury, "I have seen three successive wars, and
I have heard fifty times that there was no hope for Britain to win the war. But all that had
proved a vain hope; all shame. Britain will never lose. He who says so is a liar." Not that
he asserted this out of love for England or Englishmen. He had arranged a plot to avenge
himself upon an Englishman. He was caught attempting on the life of the Chief
Commissioner himself.
A tragedy happened in this prison during the strike which must find a place in
these pages. A Punjabi Brahmin, Ramraksha by name, happened to be involved in a
conspiracy to spread sedition in the army and bring about ;m armed revolution in Siam
and Rangoon. The man had travelled far and wide in China and Japan before reaching
Rangoon and Siam. He was tried and convicted for the offence and had undergone great
hardship in those countries. When he stepped as a prisoner in the jail of the Andamans, he
was asked, according to the prison rules, to surrender his sacred thread, which he would
not do. Being a widely-travelled man, he was not orthodox in his views. But a
Brahmin to be asked to do away with his sacred thread was, in his eyes, a sacrilege; and,
on no account, was he going to put up with it. It was to him the symbol of his religion
and he was not going to destroy it. He, therefore, straightaway refused to obey that
order. It was to be noted here that the officers did not trifle with the sentiment of the
Mussulman in this respect, though they did not scruple to trample under foot a similar
demand by a Hindu prisoner. They tore off the thread from the body of that Hindu
prisoner. To protest against this outrage on his religious sentiment, the Brahmin at once
went on hunger-strike. He said that so long as he had not the sacred thread on his person
he would not touch his food. Ramraksha not only said this but affirmed it as a solemn
vow. Food and water, he gave them up both in fulfilment of that vow. Without a particle
of food or a drop of water he lay in his cell for days together. After a fortnight they tried

to feed him through the nose. A month passed after this. The man began to get
emaciated, resolved to die, and never to surrender his will or prove false to his vow. The
hardships he had suffered in Siam, and, added to this, a fast unto death in the prison of
the Andamans had done him up completely. He developed pain in the chest and the
doctor declared that consumption had set in. Every one begged of him to take food; but
he would not yield. He was at the death's door when I wrote to him to give up his fast. It
was with great difficulty that I persuaded him to take his meal. But unfortunately, the
disease developed fast, and in two months he died of it.
Dharmavir Ramraksha
But the episode did not end there. The matter was taken up to the higher officials, to the
Indian press, and before a special Commission appointed to examine into the state of
prison administration in India. As a result a Brahmin was allowed to wear his sacred
thread even as a prisoner. But, for this trifle, Dharmavir Ramraksha had to lay down his
life! Now prisoners of all sects in Hindu Society and not Brahmins alone, are permitted to
wear the sacred thread as a symbol of their faith.
As the war began to draw to its close, the defeat of Germany became an evident
fact. In the early years of the war, the Englishmen here were given to spreading false
reports of England's advance against Germany. Now there grew a tendency among the
prisoners of this jail to spread fantastic stories of German victories in order to blunt the
edge of their own despair. The stories became so extravagant during the concluding
period of the war that, after the war, the officers thought it expedient to provide the
prisoners with newspapers in order to remove that illusion. For the newspapers would not
publish fantastic reports like the fall of London, or the Amir's capture of Lahore. The
Superintendent gave me from this time a copy of the weekly edition of the 'London
Times', so that I might be enabled to remove their misapprehension as also to read news
that would interest me. The defeat of Turkey filled me with joy," though the news was a
bitter pill to swallow not only for the Mussulmans but for all other prisoners in this jail.
But soon they realised the cause of my satisfaction. I reported about Germany's defeats as
faithfully as I had read about them; but they were very angry with the reporter himself,
and yet they could not resist the temptation of asking for the news. If I said to them that I
was not going to give them any news at all, and they had better not ask for it, because to
report something that was not true I considered reprehensible, they used to supplicate me
for it. In order to enlighten them on the point, I used to take up the subject of the enemy's
defeat for a talk at our weekly meetings. "To hear favourable news only is the part of a
fool. A brave and forceful man likes to know first of his reverses, for to meet them
fearlessly is his first task. Napoleon Bonaparte had strict orders for his staff never to
delay the news that went against him but to report at once, even if it be at the dead of
night when he happened to be fast asleep. It was no matter if good news were kept back
from him till the following morning. India has not yet gone through the discipline and
preparation for the coming in of good news to her. It is her destiny to hear bad news for a
good long time to come. But she must be fortified to know the truth, for she has to face it.

In good old days our kings used to reward those who brought them good news with the
gift of golden bracelets. And the report of reverses could come to them only from the
mouth of the victorious enemy when he entered the palace and mounted on his chest. It
does not pay one to be such a coward." I gently rebuked my fellow prisoners in this
manner and prepared their minds to hear any news that came to them in natural course.
The wise among them became used, in the aftermath of war, to hear and understand
everything. They began to realise how the defeat of Turkey was a good dose to our
Mussulman friends in this prison, to take off their self-conceit and to change their angle
of vision towards India.
Yet the war was not without its detrimental effect on the health of all prisoners in
this jail, including the political prisoners whom it affected the most. Some suffered from
continuous solitary confinement; others from the insanitary conditions and the bad
climate of the Andamans; and all from lack of fresh air and wholesome food all along.
There were strong, well-built men of rugged constitution among the Punjabi and the Sikh
political prisoners who were the last to come in this jail. But they also suffered from
complete collapse of health in the conditions created by war. Within three or four years
the tallest among them were stricken with T. B., and became thin in body; others fell
victims to chronic dysentery, and others, again, thought seriously of suicide. Three or
four Sikhs died from T. B. before my very eyes. And I was kept for observation in the
hospital suspected of the same disease. I was sorely grieved when I saw them dropping
off one after another like dry autumnal leaves. I was to go the same way soon—I felt
within myself. It was, indeed, a miracle that, when they had dwindled and died within
three or four years, I could hold out for these eight or nine years.
Babu Jotish Chandra
A young man, Jotish Chandra by name, lay in ambush for the arrival of a German
submarine to take him off from the hands of the police who were on his track for revolu-
tionary crime in Bengal. He was a Bengali and a member of the terrorist organisation in
India. The police detected him and in the clash that followed, Jotish Chandra received a
bullet-wound in the leg. He was, thereafter, caught, tried and sentenced for transportation
to the Andaman*. One evening during the strike, the warder took the food to him to be
served on his plate. The prisoner in the room asked the warder first to remove the
chamber pot and clean it. And then he would take the food that the warder had brought
for him. I have already told you how the prisoner had to sit for stools in his own room
when he was locked inside. The warder asked him to go back into his room, and with the
help of jamadars and other officers managed to put the food inside and left. Mr. Barrie
made no inquiries about the incident. Jotish had to sleep the whole night beside the
stinking stools and in a small, ill-ventilated and closed room. This was not the first
experience of its kind for us, political prisoners, in this jail. But Jotish Babu's patience
had reached its breaking point. It was the proverbial last straw for him. He threw away
the food and went on hunger-strike. Within a few days he started passing blood in his
stools; and he was removed to the hospital. We were all pressing him hard to resume

taking food. And I compelled him personally to break the fast. But the chord that was
snapped could not be made whole again. The excitement had gone to his head, his brain
was affected by it and within a month he became entirely mad. He was then removed to
the mental hospital where he lingered for a year. It is said that he had recovered from the
malady. But here is what we read in what was published after his death. It is from a
message that he had sent to his relatives. "Do not think that my soul is fast asleep in
heaven. If my love for the country is passionate and sincere, I shall take birth
immediately and return to my country to serve her. Be sure of it."
Poor Jotish, they say he was sane at the time of his death. But if he is the real
writer of this message, then I cannot say of him that he was sane, or that the madness had
been but a temporary phase of his life.
Lala Ramcharandas
One more instance of a fine, generous-hearted man, a staunch supporter of Hindu
Sanghatan, and a Panjabi political prisoner, who was similarly caught in the jaws of death
and had suffered in jail from consumption and insanity. This man had developed
sleeplessness as the result of shattered nerves, and continuous headache, along with many
other political prisoners at that time. I received a note from him in the hospital in which
he had written to me that he was tired of life, that, in the circumstances he had described
to me, he had no other alternative than committing suicide. I dissuaded him, for the time
being, from that reckless act, by pointing out to him that it was our duty to serve our
country by our suffering and we must live for it. My friend was spared to me by this
effort, and within two years he recovered his health and began to move about and to do
light work.
As if to give us, the political revolutionaries, one more blow during the desperate
condition of our life in this period, the superior officers sent me a letter to read, written
by Lala Har Dayal. Those who would formerly inflict upon us the punishment of a week's
detention in handcuffs for finding even a scrap of paper on our person, gave us matter to
read which they felt would be bad news for us. After the great war Lala Har Dayal had
written to the daily press that the revolutionaries of India should be let alone and she
should co-operate with England and strive to attain swaraj under her aegis, and that he
had been convinced that India could attain the goal only by that means. Mr. Barrie called
me and my friends and gave me that newspaper-cutting to read. And he asked what I
thought of it. I said, "I know that Lala Har Dayal is a sincere man; and I believe that what
he had written is an honest expression of his opinion." I returned to my place in the
hospital adding that I would say nothing more on it. In our next meeting I had taken that
letter as a subject for discussion with our political friends. I told my friends the whole
story of Har Dayal's life and the many phases through which it had passed. It was the
habit of his mind to be depressed for the time being by any adverse situation he had to
pass through, and what he said at the time was said by him honestly. And so he had

changed his opinions from time to time. But the reaction had been with him but a
temporary phase and had never lasted long. This letter was but another illustration of that
passing mood. My friends agreed with me in that conclusion. Some protested that the
letter itself was far from genuine, it was a fabricated document put on to us, as a
newspaper-cutting, just to fathom our minds. I disagreed with them. The analysis in that
letter of Turkish ambition and of the attitude of the Amir of Afghanisthan, along with the
feelings of the Mussulmans towards India and the cause of their opposition to national
demand, were absolutely convincing. I had been telling them the same thing all these
years. The letter had no effect, beyond this, on any one of us.
The slogan "Today we leave, tomorrow, we are sure to go" had now fallen
behind, discredited by facts. The hopes it had roused had been dashed to the ground. If
the slogan and the forecast behind it had proved true, every one would have been
reckoned among us as a prophet, like so many other prophets who go about the world.
But the tide had turned and the opportunity was no more. All of them were full of gloom.
But there was another raw to catch at. The victory of Great Britain in this war must
inevitably lead to general amnesty and pardon from Which we cannot be excluded. This
now became the talk of the prison; and the mind swayed back like a pendulum from
despair to new hope. Just at this time, India was discussing the Andamans and its climate
as detrimental to the health of prisoners. What I had written about it in my last letter had
contributed largely to raise the controy in the newspaper world of India. And they wrote
about me personally that I should be transferred from this place to some prison in India
for reasons of health. Instantly a rumour found currency in this prison that old political
prisoners in the Andamans were soon to be taken back to India. What of me, then? The
rumour had it that I was to be sent to Singapore! And a few days after I found Mr.
Wamanrao Joshi and two more with him getting ready to leave for India. They somehow
managed to see me in the hospital in order to bid me good-bye. These loyal colleagues
who had fought and suffered with me in a common cause took leave of us, and with a
heavy heart I said farewell to them. They had gone and now I was alone and left behind.
For me and my brother I had never expected any change from one place to another, any
turn of fortune in our favour. And, therefore, we had no occasion to be crushed by the
despair which is the reaction of fond hope. We could stand up to anything because we
had expected nothing.
The only hope that now remained to many of us in this prison hanged round the
slender thread of the celebration of victory. But it proved a dupe like a proverbial
mountain in labour. Every prisoner got from it no better solace than the remission of one
month's sentence in a year. Some very old and aged prisoners were, of course, let off and
the political prisoners we're not excluded from the list of those who had got remission of
one month's sentence per year.
But for me ! What was my good fortune? As in the past, so now onwards ! Not a
day's reduction in my sentence—no mention of my release or transfer anywhere.

End of Chapter V

CHAPTER VI
On Death-Bed
While all these activities were carried on with zest during the later years of the
war, I found my health completely shattered, as I wrote in the letter I had sent to my
brother; and I was removed to the Hospital for rest and treatment. When my fever was
ever hundred degrees on my body, and the dysentery had become very acute, the hospital
authorities began to attend to me with greater care and undertook regular treatment of my
disease. Every prisoner when taken to the hospital does get some rest in that place, and,
therefore, it was no wonder that I got it because when I went in I was worse in health than
any other prisoner. It was in the eighth year of my residence in this jail, that they gave me
this relief. Otherwise whenever I was ill before, the only treatment for me was solitary
confinement.
Once removed to the hospital, the Superintendent saw to it that I was well-cared
for. They changed my food from time to time to find out what suited me best in the
present state of my health. This change in prison management, it must be pointed out,
was the result of the criticism passed upon it in the Legislature and in the newspaper
world of India; and my letters had helped materially in ventilating that grievance. But this
reform had come so late, that, speaking for myself, the care that the hospital bestowed
upon me did not lead to any change for the better in my declining health. My fever did
not abate although they gave me dose after dose of quinine to drive it out of my body.
And the quinine brought on dysentery and blood in the stools in a very acute form. I was
unable to digest rice and milk which passed out as it had gone in. In the Andamans and
especially at Port Blair, T. B., Malaria, and dysentery marched on together. They stalked
the land and took heavy toll of its inhabitants. I was already in the grip of dysentery and
malaria, and six or seven months later, the doctor himself suspected that I had a touch of
T. B. In the hospital there were many patients around me who were stronger and better-
built and yet affected by these three maladies. I had passed eight long years of
imprisonment and hard labour, and my constitution had completely gone under. It would
have been no surprise, if I suffered from all three of them. Dysentery took off my appetite
for food, and I could not digest it. Want of food added to my weakness and shattered my
nerves; the fever was continuously on me; only the last enemy was yet to come, though
he was very near. In the prison-hospital I had nothing to entertain me except reading. And
that was the only solace of my life. But my nervous debility made reading and light
conversation a heavy tax on my constitution. The slightest indulgence in these brought on
fever which rose to 102 degrees. So I gave up reading altogether did not keep any books
near me to avoid the temptation, and lay on my cot with eyes shut. Time, already a
tedious factor in the jail, became too long and too heavy to bear and I had to spend the

tedium to the accompaniment of griping pain in the stomach, and of burning fever on the
body. Even then I was doing all those things that I have described in the last chapter.
Sometimes I thought that, due to my illness in the prison, I had come to regard
prison-life as a hell on earth and that to be outside would have been better for me. But
how? Do not people suffer from all these maladies outside, and is it wise to lay all the
blame for them on the jail? People suffer from dysentery, malaria and consumption even
in palaces. Epidemics like bubonic plague and influenza sweep over big cities adorned
with theatres, and pleasure-haunts, and blazing with electric light, And groanings and
cries of pain are heard in a thousand homes through them. The City of Bombay suffered
from such epidemic, and every home in it had four beds of patients stricken with
influenza. Why should I then bewail my lot in this prison because I am in its hospital
down with malaria and dysentery? Pain and disease are rampant everywhere. There are a
thousand villages and a thousand huts of poor families which, stricken down with similar
ailments, do not find any medical aid near at hand to relieve them. You have in this
hospital a medical officer, medicine and nursing of which these poor folk have not the
slightest notion or expectation. Your lot in this dependent state is much better than theirs
though they are free; their lot, in these circumstances, is, any day, harder to bear than
yours. So be patient and put up with it calmly. Do not grumble because you have to pass
through it as a prisoner. Do not add to your pain by this idle pining. It is right for you to
think that freedom is better than imprisonment, but for other reasons. But now that you
are in prison and are ill, you had better not think of it. For disease and death haunt the
prison too often, no doubt; but not that they don't stalk the outside world as well. Life in
this prison, intrinsically, is not more 'flat, weary, stale and unprofitable' than the usages of
the world outside, for have we not all to pass our days in 'the vast prison that is this
world', and is not this prison a part of it?
That is as a part of philosophy. But is the reality so different after all? The
struggles for national freedom and the individual struggle for existence are both hard and
serious things. Is not life in prison equally hard and serious? It is worth while striving to
live up to your noble ideal for which yourself with thousand others like you, and some of
them your friends, have had to come in this prison. It is for that, that you had to pass
through these trials, practise these austerities, and go through this kind of self-abnegation.
And these will shine in the world by their reflected splendour, things great and small, like
great and dazzling achievements of other men on the theatre of the world. People read
with as much eagerness and interest the accounts of the prisoners transported to Seberia
for the political crime of shooting Czar Alexander, as they may gloat over pages of a
book describing the life of Czar Nicholas, or of the hypocritical priest, full of romance,
mystery, lust and dupery, Rasputin. And they certainly cherish greater sympathy and
reverence for the former than they pity or hate the latter. A people's eyes are fastened less
upon the domes of luxurious palaces than they are rivetted upon the cottages of the exiled
and on the Jails of people imprisoned for political crime. And even, were it not so, we, the
worshippers of freedom, must count the hour and mark the day in this dark night for the
arrival of the dawn for which we had dedicated our all. It is a solemn duty for it is a

solemn vow. Then why should I consider this life as meaner and more futile than the life
without?
Free life? What is it, and who is free? Is it without the walls where these people
toil? Outside these walls are the huge walls of Universe and Nature. Mind alone is free. It
is imprisoned only by the skies over-head and by the horizons stretching before its eyes.
If you feel pinned down and limited by this prison, ask those who are free, and they will
tell you that they are as much pinned down by the giant circumstance. In short, what is
here is also without, more or less, but in no way different.
And nothing to entertain here, you think? No, friend, you have plenty of it. Look
at this book; within its two pages the ants have built their capital city.
This much about my ailment. What about the tedium? Nothing more and nothing
less. We find life in prison dull, monotonous and useless. But what is life in the world
intrinsically? You are a prisoner and your jailor and Superintendent are not. But what is
the difference between their life and yours? They rise from their bed every day; they sit in
their office and write; they eat and they sleep; again, they wake up, and again they go to
bed. How have they made their lives, and what have they made of it? Marriage, children,
retirement and pension—that is the sum-total of it. Is that life's fulfilment? Do not
children enact the same part in their sport? How is this sort of life better than that of the
children at play? Can you really say that it is better from your observation and analysis of
that life? Your life and theirs run in the same groove and are cast in the same mould,
though they are free and you are a prisoner. We grow on our parents' knees; we burn or
bury them in due time; then we dangle and rear up our own children; and we go to our
graves finally. And what is all this for? Is not the wheel of life a weary round, after all?
The great Shankaracharya asked the question, 'What next?" And it is a question very
pertinent to ask of life in this world as also of my life hereafter And even to a mighty
cataclysm like the great war just ended. France and Germany have indulged in this game
many times before. The Franks attacked the Gauls, and from that day onwards, how
many times, across the ages, have they not played the same role? And victory has made
sport of them both, sometime swinging to one side and sometime swinging to another.
France is victorious once; and Germany is victorious next, and France going in sackcloth
and ashes before her. Today the great Napoleon Buonaparte; tomorrow Louis Napoleon
III! Today Austerlitz , tomorrow Sedan! One fine morning Bajirao I, another dark
evening Bajirao II! In their uniformity, in their commotion and confusion, whose life was
being reared and built up? Why all this ambition, this strife, this rivalry, this struggle for
mastery, this lust for power? Whither has it all led? Everywhere the same scene, and the
same sequel, and the same end. Futility and weariness are not the signposts of prison
alone. These words mark not the prison-rate alone. They are writ large on the portals of a
palace, on the dome of the Taj, on the summit of a mountain, and on the surface of the
sea. "What then? What is all this for?"—This is writ large on the tablet of eternity. Why
then pine, that you are in prison and your life is running lo waste? For what is in prison,
that is not also in the world?

Then about the news, about the lust for news. The prisoner is sorry that he gets no
news in the prison while the outside world is full of it. That makes life tolerable. But you
have to look at it from another point of view. Does any news give you ever entire
satisfaction? Say, you know that India is free. But consider well, if it satisfies you. For
your mind will begin to think how long will that freedom last and on what terms. For
India once was free; that freedom brought her glory and greatness; the great and glory
made her lethargic; and lethargy made her lose freedom. Look at her history and you
know the truth of the matter. One generation fights for freedom, another enjoys the fruits
of freedom, and the third generation loses it. Suffer, fight, die, enjoy, lose—that cycle
sums up the history of every nation, dynasty, community and society. These three or four
words contain the story that we call history. Is not all news the quintessence of these
basic truths? Do you not think that there is nothing more to hear than this? Why national
history? Even the history of the Universe is summed up in these five significant words.
For all the ups and downs of this Universe end, after all, in deluge. Its origin, its creation
was the first news that has now grown so time-worn, so stale. The end of the Universe—
that news, broadcast,—will surely thrill the world of man as nothing else can, any day or
at any time. From creation to dissolution—the phrase sums up neatly the story of the
Universe. And you know them both—the beginning and the end. Why then worry that
you don't get news here? The philosopher shall find no delight in sports that satisfy the
child. All the detailed news must swing like a pendulum between these two extremes,—
birth and death; creation and dissolution; flux and reflux. And the news are so transi-
tional, transient and passing, that not one of them satisfied any man, and his thirst for it
never ends—whether one is in prison or free like the wind to blow where it listeth. The
last man's news excites your curiosity in this prison as the last week's news attracts the
American. For in America every three hours a newspaper comes to birth and the latest
news is welcomed as the best. America wants no stale news. The American mind is
anxious to know the latest. The Stock Exchange and the Wall Street are the two
barometers of the American temper. If tomorrow we are able to procure news from all
sides of the Universe, the human mind will be anxious to know what happened on the
Planet Mars, as it is eager to know today what happens in the world of man, or as you are
anxious about news from India.
So that philosophically speaking your life is not altogether useless or any worse
than that of the so-called free man in this world. Behold that city of ants within the pages
of that book. How it bustles with life and activity like the great Pataliputra of ancient
history. Look at those eggs, look at their queen, look at their princess, and at their army
of ants ready to fight and sting; their standing army, and their divisions and classes, and
their division of labour. Look at the film of gnats floating before your eyes in the light of
the sky. It is a nation of wanderers like the Jews. They fly together in swarms from region
to region and settle nowhere. Do not regard them as insignificant beings. You call
yourself a man, but you have no wings to fly. But the gnat which is one-tenth the size of
the sesame, has wings and it flies. How fine the nerves and feelers? How intrinsically
small and yet efficient for work? This is God's great miracle, learn it and be wise. This is
real diversion to your distracted mind. Great scientists spend a life to understand the
infinitely small in the Universe. They study insects and worms, or the animal world,
beasts of the earth and the fowls of the air, their life, their ways and habits, and record

them. They watch an ant-hill or a beehive for years on end to know and write on the
evolution of life. And their life, no one can say, is spent uselessly. If it is not a trifle, why
do you look upon your life in this prison as futile or as wasted?
Behold another thing. The cats after midnight mew and cry. They are out
caterwauling. A rival comes on the scene, and the love-song changes into a war-song.
Terrible is the fight and screaming. So shrill and piercing the sound, that it jars on your
nerves. You feel it contemptible, and ridiculous. But if you think of it, what else is our
Ramayana? Like these two cats, the two men fight for the possession of a woman.
Smitten with love, Ravana kidnaps Sita. In pursuit of love, Rama fights and carries her
back. These cats fight with their claws and make terrible noise. Those men fought with
their bows and arrows, sword and trident, and sounded their kettle-drums. The passion
and the impulse, the instinct and the behaviour, are the same. The cats must have taken
this fight between two tom-cats to be as epic as we regard the battle between Rama and
Ravana. To talk in the language of evolution this battle of the tom-cats was the origin of
the heroic duel between Rama and Ravana. Speaking of evolution, there are two basic
facts of life which it enunciates. One is known as the struggle for existence and the other
as the preservation of the race. Hunger and sex are its elements. According to this then,
the Ramayana or the battle between Rama and Ravana may well be traced in its genesis
to the fight of the two cats. And according to another basic fact, the love of Mary for
Christ or of Yashoda for Krishna is the evolution of the primitive instinct of the mother-
cat for her kitten. Look at the court-yard of the doctor's bungalow, and see there the hen
with her brood of chicken. How she plays with them, crows to them and saves them from
the swoop of the eagle or the kite. Yashoda trembled and wept not so much when Putana
swooped upon Krishna, as this Madame Partelett must have crowed when the kite
swooped down upon her little ones. What a wonderful thing is this world! Elders
purchase tickets to witness the sports of children and competitions among schools. Here
is the gathering of these chickens, jumping, cackling, picking up corn with their little
beaks, their dodging one another, their running and their pursuing one another. Is it not as
interesting as the school sports and the school competitions? The same feeling throbs in
their hearts, the same joy thrills their being that we find in children and school boys
playing. The whole life is a symphony of love, and joy, of instinct and appetite. Nothing
is mean and nothing is great. The animal is as much human as the human is animal. Only
we must look at both with a sympathetic eye and we must live to see it.
After a year in the hospital, I was sent back in chawl number five, and on its third
floor. I was kept by myself and all alone, and I whiled away the hours in musings like
these. I overcame the weakness of body and, mind by these meditations. Some time I felt
every day that the body could not hold out any longer because one ailment after another
was attacking it. This garment of the flesh seemed to be completely tattered and torn so
that the soul could no longer wear it. At another time I felt a distinct improvement in my
health. But how long am I to linger thus? So a year and a half had rolled on. Dysentery,
blood in stools, fever and something else followed in succession and I bore it all. So I
resolved to put an end to my life. For, I was in no doubt that this prison and myself were
never to part company and so long as this continued my health would never improve. We

all struggle for happiness and none could weep for all time and continue suffering to the
end of the chapter. I wanted to know how many days I suffered and how many days I was
without suffering. So I made a month's chart and marked on it days when wearing a body
was a joy and when it was intense pain. I marked this on the wall, the day of suffering
from one ailment or another, and the day free from any ailment. This went on for two
months and then I made a reckoning. I found out that of sixty days, fifteen days were
relatively better, and the rest were all worse. So I concluded that things were not after all
so dark, and I must put off the thought of suicide.
But who would thus continue to live on 'the far-off interest of tears'? The castles
in the air are, after all, shadowy, unsubstantial things. And the mind recoils on reality
after building them long enough. So I was pulled back on 'the earth, earthy' and was kept
hanging on the borderland of suicide. In the hospital my weight had fallen down to 95
pounds, I could take no solid food, I felt distant symptoms of Thisis; fever did not abate;
and there was none whom I could call mine near me. During the three following months I
became worse, what with the atmosphere of hostility common to all political prisoners
around me; what with disrespect and stark despair, with none to talk to me words of
kindness and of love, and with no freedom of movement from one place to another. So
much so that I knew not when Death would pounce upon me and snap the chord of my
life. I realised that the time had come when, with all my will to live, I must pass away.
Am I, then, to die in the hospital? This thought began to haunt me all along. I
reviewed in my mind the philosophy of the world and its conclusion on the subject. From
Buddha's doctrine of Nirvana and nescience to the Yoga doctrine of Knowledge; from the
materialism of Science to the Monism of Haeckel and Spencer, and to the evolution
theory of 'Substance' propounded by them, I searched them all for light on death and
immortality. From the Mimansa doctrine of the Vedanta to Mill's Utilitarianism, I
ransacked in my mind their conclusions about religion, and about the triple faith of God,
Immortality and Duty. And as the fruit of them all came forth my poem "On my bed
facing death." I wrote it while on bed in the hospital, and I had no hope that I should
survive to read it.
When I was first arrested, and, when, in England I had expected the sentence of
death, I had composed the two poems entitled "My Will", and "First offering". And this I
wrote on the threshold of death. In the last I have woven an imaginary conversation
between Death and myself. All the three poems find a place in the book, "Echo from the
Andamans", published subsequently.
First meeting with my family
This year my brother and myself got the permission to see our own people in the
Andamans. Others were allowed to meet their own people once in five years, and they

stayed together with the members of their families for a couple of days, and, in some
cases, for weeks together. I got the permission at the end of eight years. I could obtain it
after much worry and effort and with great difficulty. At last my younger brother and my
wife started from Bombay for Calcutta when they received a wire that the permission was
withdrawn. It was a cruel joke indeed. When one wrote to the Government of Bombay, it
directed him to enquire at Port Blair. If the Commissioner of Port Blair was approached
on the subject, he referred us to the Government of India. If one wrote to the Government
of India, it wrote back to say that the final decision rested with the Government of
Bombay. Things went on like this till 1918-19, when at last we met each other. I met
them in the prison, and in the presence of the prison-superintendent, and also within the
hearing of the Marathi-knowing warder concealed behind, so that they may discover from
our conversation if we were hatching up a new plot, conspirators as we were by the
nature of our imprisonment. I met them after eight years,—my wife, my brother and
his wife. I was glad to see him hale and hearty. We talked to each other for an hour and a
half full of joy and with the abandonment of a marriage festival. We suppressed for the
time being all the dark memories of the past, thoughts of the rueful present, and fears for
the unknown future. We dwelt on the immediate before us, and, as if care-free, gave
ourselves up to the delight of the moment. But why did not my elder brother's wife come
along with them? She had borne the heaviest burden of work in our political activities
and in the never-failing dangers of those activities. With what superb courage and an
amount of patience had she faced them all! She was my childhood's companion, she was
a loving mother to me in my adolescence, she was my trusted coworker in all political
planning and execution, and for seven long years I was pining to see her. Why did she not
come? Her eyes had closed on the scene, as I was to learn soon; they had closed after a
long vigil with the lighted lamp of her love constantly kept burning. The lamp had
flickered, the light had failed, the vigil was over, and she had gone to her Maker; hopes
deferred had not only made the heart sick but had broken it. Burning in the sacrificial fire
of the country's liberation, and of her own separation from one dearest to her heart, she
was at last reduced to ashes, and had expired. The wire, that she was permitted to visit her
husband in the Andamans, from the kind Government at Delhi, had come a day too late!
The story was told me by my younger brother, and I swallowed it, without a word,
like bitter poison. The world is always changing; what is today, tomorrow is not. Those
who are united are bound to be separated at some time, sooner or later. God was kind to
keep us together so long, and myself am entering on the decline of life. From the drama
of life, one character after another must depart. They are bound to make their exit from
the stage of this world. Are they mounting up to appear on the stage of the next world?
Who knows? Each one to his faith. My elder brother believes in life after death and in
rebirth. According to his faith, the soul of his dear and departed wife was hovering over
this family reunion in the prison of the Andamans, and it must have heard us all. A man
like me may not have that faith and for me the chapter has ended here. A woman fighting
bravely for the freedom of her Motherland, dies on the battlefield and is said to go
straight to heaven. What does it mean? It means that she is freed from all cares, all
struggles, all pining, that she finds peace. She is extinguished — like the flame of fire,
disappears, vanishes completely. She goes beyond the pale of sorrow and joy. She attains
salvation. On any ground we ought not to weep for her. The sorrow is our own for we can

see her no more. I consoled myself thus and dropped the topic. I turned on other subjects
of national, religious and domestic importance. I indulged in humour and laughter within
the time at our disposal. I do not know whence I gathered so much strength, in my
exhausted condition, to say what I said. We three brothers had met together after twelve
years! We were standing together on the pier near the boat that was to take me to
England. That was in 1906 and we had met now in Port Blair and in prison in the year
1919, and that only for an hour and a half!
Permission was given me to meet my wife alone for half an hour. After the
meeting was over, my younger brother and the other members of my family were
instantly put on the boat at Port Blair. As if their stay here for a week more to see the
Andamans would have been dangerous, and involved some plot to spirit me away from
this place by a boat or in an aeroplane! My brother's arrival had made many people
anxious to meet him, but no one else was allowed to see him. But my fellow-prisoners
saw him in spite of the ban, and did not shrink from presenting him with fruit and
flowers.
Well, my people had left. It was like a happy dream in deep sleep on a night when
the body is burning with fever; and like waking up from that short-lived experience and
relief, to toss restlessly on my bed again. I found myself all alone once more, locked up
on the third floor of chawl number five of my prison-house in the Andamans. At this
time, I was removed from the hospital and put in. this place. It was a solitary place but I
saw from it the broad ocean and the open sky, and the island of Ras on the bosom of the
ocean. I had never before been put in a room so airy and so open to view. And I was
permitted, besides, to move freely in the verandas and the square of that circle of chawl. I
used to sit and watch the island stretching out in front of me, and I often passed into a
reverie. It put a strain on my mind to be lost in thought thus. Sometimes emotions
bubbled over and overthrew thought, and I had to surrender myself to them till the storm
had passed over me and I was again cooled down. A conflict and anarchy was the result
of these surging waves, and then I had to take the helm, ride the storm and let thought
resume its seat as before. That my heart should not be so entirely swayed by them, I
directed my attention deliberately to the most ordinary things about me like the cows
grazing in the compounder's ground like crows picking up and making away with
coconut pieces, in concert and phalanx; or like little boats sailing towards the island of
Ras. In the prison the mind becomes so introspective, that it is hard for one to push it out
and direct it to objects without. We lose the habit of observing the world around us, and
contract the vicious habit of brooding, again and again, over the same old thoughts.
Reading was impossible for the brain was too fagged for it. Serious thinking and
concentration on Yogic practices was out of question. While contemplating the sea and
watching the rise and fall of the rolling waves, suddenly the mind itself like the waves
was lost in the depths of reverie, and a mood of concentration would follow. Sometime
deep silence came over me as I kept on looking at the island of Ras, shining like an
emerald in that sea, and adorned by the Church and its spire pointing heavenward. It

reminded me of the Father in Heaven for whose prayer and adoration it was reared on
that solitary island. But that deep concentration, that solemn all-embracing silence, and
that exhilaration of solitude became too much for my enfeebled body and my shattered
nerves. My desolate heart could not bear them. After I had come to myself, my head
would begin to ache, I felt their strain upon my brain and my nerves, and I felt weaker
than before. Hence even this exhilaration I could not have. I was reminded in these
moments of Lord Buddha. Recovering from the memorable fast, he had fainted, and he
had to regain the lost strength of his body, and his power of concentrated thought and
meditation. He had to eat whatever nourished his body like butter, sugarcandy, rice, milk
and sugar boiled together, and whatever he got on the way. What then of a person like
me! In the depressed state of mind and body, reading, thinking, concentration,
meditation—all were out of court. Serious work was denied me by my failing health;
while the prison-hardships denied to me the calmness of mind as well. Without a friend,
without play and without the opportunity of a stroll, the prison had become a nightmare. I
could look at the hens of the doctor in the opposite compound. I could watch the birds
flying and I could hear the mosquitoes humming. That was my relief, that was my
recreation in this prison.
Yes, speaking of birds, I am reminded of bulbuls, the Indian nightingales, in the
Andamans. Their melody was a real joy to my heart. They are very beautiful birds
indeed. Tiny, well-proportioned, and alert. How playful and how sweet is their music,
how quick their movements. Swarms of them hovered over the heaps of coconut fruit and
swooped down upon them. They picked and ate the pieces to their fill. They continuously
chirped round and about our chawls. The bulbuls entertained me when there was nothing
else to entertain. I could even know their language and that of the jay or maina. The ten to
fifteen notes of the maina I could clearly follow. So soon as the note fell upon my ears, I
at once recognised it. The notes were different for different moods. A simple note; a note
of hide and seek; a note of deep yearning; a note of alarm and fear; a note of deep
happiness and peace; a note of passionate love; of motherly love and affection; of invita-
tion to the mate; of ultimatums; and last of fierce fight and finale—I had learnt and
mastered them all. They were regular like words of human speech. I could not teach them
my language but they taught me theirs, Prisoners, were not allowed to cage a bird as
their companion. It was an offence. Or else I could have kept them in my room. I would
have taught them songs of patriotism. And then! Why, other prisoners would have
directed enquirers to my room as the great Shankaracharya was directed to the house of
the learned Mandan Mishra, by pointing it as a house that had in its window a parrot and
a maina discussing Vedanta! If a bulbul came in search of my cell, the prisoners would
have guided it by saying, "Behold the room at the bar of which the maina and bulbul sing
their songs of patriotism and freedom, and know that it is the cell of the revolutionary
Savarkar."
The crows were my familiar friends. A Mussulman prisoner kept a crow secretly
with my connivance. But within a few days I found that it was the food of the Burmese.
For the Burmese and the Mussulmans in that prison, being non-vegetarians, often killed
crows to make a meal of them. They cooked his flesh on the fire in the factories and ate

it. They sold it to one another at the rate of one anna per roasted piece or four tobacco
leaves in exchange for it. The crow was tamed and kept by the Mussulman prisoner with
the same end in view. And my suspicion Came true when I found him the next day giving
it to the Burmese prisoners for making a dish of it!
I was all alone in the prison, confined in a solitary Cell, when I came here first.
But then I could pass my time in writing poetry. Eight years after, while my fellow-
prisoners could move freely and be warders on tens of their fellows, I alone was put back
to rot in a lonely room, and could not beguile the hours in writing poetry. I had stopped
writing it when I found that I had better work to occupy my time here. But now nervous
prostration had made it impossible to resume my old pastime. And I had to give it up
almost. The three or four thousand lines 1 had composed, I now found it hard to commit
to my memory. How then could I compose any new poems? Even then every week I
recited the old ones and fixed them well in my mind. The whole of my poetry took me
one full day and one full night to recite, I used to repeat it line by line and continuously,
barring the time for meals. But I realised, as I recited it now from my memory, how much
of it I had forgotten during the two years of my continuous illness.
This is the story of my serious illness and the enforced rest that followed it. And
yet I had not discontinued activity altogether. All old activities like Shuddhi, Sanghatan,
education and political awakening were spreading far and wide and were kept on so
spreading by me.
In this lonely chawl and on its third floor, prisoners came to see me and incurred
the displeasure of the officers and were put in handcuffs for eight days for breaking the
prison-regulation. They rendered me all the service they could, with all the difficulties
that faced them in it. I cannot close this story without putting on record my gratitude to
them in these pages.
The main object of the doctor and the other officers in this prison in bringing me
on the third floor of chawl No. 5 was, I must admit, to give me the advantage of fresh
sea-breeze and the open prospect in front of it. This change, along with better food and
better treatment that I got during my two years' illness enabled me to tide over it, and to
improve my health after it. Gradually I began to digest my food, I gained in weight,
shook off fever, and got over the signs which had marked me out as a sure victim of
tuberculosis. And in the end I rolled up my bed and was confident that I had beaten off
death.
My brother suffers from T. B.

But the bed that I had rolled up I had to spread out once more. And this time it
was for my elder brother. His health had been failing for a long time, but it collapsed
completely by the time I had recovered my own. And it gives me pain to put down here
that he was not looked after so well as I had been till almost the last day of his life in
prison. I shall recall the scene: my brother going to the hospital in black coat of coarse
blanket and bent down with the disease that had attacked him; with pain in the stomach
indicating bad liver and spleen; standing before an insolent Madrasi "the sly-boots" of a
doctor; the doctor pretending to examine him and to put him odd questions; and at last
dismissing him with the remark that nothing was wrong with him! My brother taking it as
an insult resolved that, even for the life of him, he would never step into the hospital. He
was taken back to his room coughing and groaning, clad in the same coarse garment, and
was left to be there unattended, unnursed and uncured. The Madrasi was afterwards
sternly warned for his rudeness and indifference. Later on the Superintendent got his
sputum examined, and at last, a specialist, who had been sent from India to inspect the
hospital and offer his suggestions for improving it, declared that my brother had a patch
on his back and was clearly a patient for tuberculosis. Even then, while in prison, he did
not get the treatment that he needed for its cure. Sometime he had such a fit of coughing,
that the sound was heard in the two blocks of building near his own. And that obstinate
cough would exhaust his completely so that he could hardly breathe; and he felt that it
was choking the life out of him. And fever rose every day from hundred to hundred and
two degrees. And his damaged liver made it impossible for him to walk erect. Add to all
this a very bad type of chronic dysentery—and you will be surprised how he could pull
on in that prison for the last year and a half of his term of imprisonment.
During that year and a half about a hundred and fifty political prisoners on life-
sentence, and about five hundred of worst convicts like robbers and dacoits—some of
whom had not been there even for one year—were released on the occasion of the
Victory Celebration of the last war and for amnesty granted in connection with an event
to which we shall presently refer. But my brother who had put ten years of hard labour
and declining health in it, and whom bad health and overwork had made prematurely old,
got no advantage either of the Victory Celebration or of the amnesty following it. And
what was the Government's objection to his release? That he had written a pamphlet pf
ten pages for which offence he had been sentenced to transportation for life. And the
other and the main objection was that he was my brother. So that though he was suffering
from tuberculosis, there could be no amnesty for him.
And yet that Karma Yogi, that sufferer, never lost his confidence, never gave way
to fear and nervousness, never surrendered his principles, and did not budge an inch when
he saw death approaching to claim him as its own.
But this is only about the Andamans. When he was transferred from this jail to a
jail in India, he had to undergo hardships still more terrible. Fate had in store for him
untold suffering in comparison with which what he had got in the Andamans was almost
nothing. He was reserved by Providence to face them.

End of chapter VI

CHAPTER VII
Riots in Punjab and Gujarat
(1919—1920)
The war had ended and its reaction on India was just coming to a close, when
news came in the Andamans About riots in Punjab and Gujarat. We were taken by
surprise to read that news. In the tremendous upheaval of the great war and its
repercussion on the world, nothing cataclysmic could happen in India. And now these
riots— on a day after the fair, an uprising of sleepers awakened and struggling for
commotion, after the tide had turned! Ahmedabad, Viramgaon, and Delhi and towns in
the Punjab rioting, for what? Presently were drafted in this prison martial law convicts
from the Punjab and Gujarat. No Muslim political convicts had yet been reported to the
Andamans. But in this batch from Gujarat and Punjab there were a few Muslim political
convicts as well. All of them had sentences passed on them which ranged from two years'
rigorous imprisonment to transportation for life.
In 1911, when I was transported to the Andamans, on board a steamer, in a chalan
from India, I had said to the prisoners that a time would come before long when the
whole steamer would be full of political prisoners transported from India. They were then
mourning that I was transported for life, and the only political convict among them. I then
prophesied that India would win her freedom when prisoners with life-sentences like me
would fill the whole Silver Jail of the Andamans, and that increasing number of prisoners
like me was the thermometer of India's rising temper and living conscience. I
remembered those words now. For two steamers had now anchored in the harbour of Port
Blair, and they were all political prisoners who got down from them. The number of poli-
tical prisoners in the Silver Jail had gone up to two hundred. And most of them were here
on ten years' term of imprisonment or on imprisonment for life. And they were all
spirited men not to be cowed down by anything in the world. What a change in the
temper of my country during a period of ten years! Prior to that date if a patriot or
political leader were sentenced to a year or a year and a half's rigorous imprisonment, he
was reckoned as a martyr by the whole of India. And now men go in prison and suffer ten
years' imprisonment in the cause of their country as a matter of course, as if there was
nothing unusual in it.
And it has become such a common occurrence now, that nobody even thinks of it.
And what of one year's imprisonment? It is taken as if it was as good as free. "Only two
years!" has now become an expression to mean nothing.