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

Cornered thus on all sides, life for me and for other political prisoners in that jail
would sometimes become a burden too hard to bear. In order to save them and myself
from suicide, we had hatched up a secret plot among the most trusted and confidential
friends of our group. We had included in that dark conspiracy some of the ordinary
prisoners as well. Whenever we found that there was no hope whatever for this, that, or
the other of the political convicts in that jail, when the last thread of hope had perished,
then these convicts together were to.....
So a day passed, a long, lingering day! The bell tolled announcing the coming of
evening. A day of pining had gone by! Relief, rest, sleep, forgetfulness, and the approach
of release nearer by a day. But release meant death as well. A day that passed was one
day less from the sentence, sure enough. But it was one day less also from the lease of
life. That also kept on haunting the mind.
One of such days. The hour was evening; the bell had rung; and I had made ready
to return to my cell. I locked the oil-depot and had handed over the keys to the jamadar.
Though on ticket, every evening I had to return to my solitary confinement in the
appointed room. I gave the keys and was winding my way to the room for the night. A
warder came up to me and slipped a chit into my palms. He smiled full of joy and hinted
that it was good news. And he went away. I opened the note and I read that an order had
come from Indian Government in the head office of the Commissioner that day that
Savarkar brothers were to be sent back to India. The Government of Bombay had asked
for their recall!
Such news had been brought to me several times before, and had ended there.
And I had remained in the prison all the while. Hence I had never put any faith in these
reports. My friends knew it and, therefore, had added that they had seen the order with
their own eyes, and there was no humbug about it.
The news may be true, for aught I thought to the contrary. For where prisoners
had got their tickets after three years, I had got it after ten, and my ticket brought me no
freedom, but permit to rot in the jail for all time to come. I realised that this farce could
not continue for long and the shamelessness must end. There were only two alternative to
this dirty conduct. Either I must be free in the Andamans; or as the report went, must be
sent back to India. The authorities would prefer any day to take me back to India and put
me in jail there. They would not have me on them as a free man in the Andamans. What I
did not get for the asking, I was to get now from them without asking for it. For this
concession would enable them to detain me in the prison in India after ten years in the
Andamans. And that, in the name of mercy again, as an act of kindness towards me! For
my transportation to India would be hailed by all who did not know the other side of the
matter. They would regard it as an act of grace.

These were my night-thoughts on that date. Next morning the jailor sent for me in
the office and ordered me to pack up my things. I then felt sure that this was a prelude to
my departure for India.
The Andamans were all agog with the happy news, for they knew not that my
send-off from here was to be my imprisonment in India. The people welcomed the news
as an order of release and freedom. Wish was father to the thought and they protested,
"Babuji, none is going to put you back in the jail again. So soon as you step in India, you
are free. That is a certainty." Taking the wish for the deed, they showered on me
messages of congratulations from all sides.
But the more I thought of it, the more indifferent I grew to that news. In the
Andamans, I had the consolation of staying together with my brother. In India we were
sure to be separated and housed in different jails. I had made intimate friends in the
Andamans during the last ten years. I had already secured the ticket, and the chance was
that, before long, I could live here as a free man in a home and a family of my own. In
India I would again be confined in prison and as a solitary man. I would lose my friends,
the ties would be sundered. And I felt the same wrench of separation that I had felt when
I took leave of my friends in India and was transported to the Andamans. I felt as
miserable and unhappy as I was ten years ago when I left India. And now that I was
leaving the Andmans, I felt that I was being sent back on transportation for life once
again.
I packed up my books. I gave many of them to the prison library. I distributed others
among prisoners and friends. On the last day, there was a crowd of men to pay me their
last visit. They kept on coming to me from morn till evening. Every moment I feared that
the officers might misunderstand the crowd and might arrest any one of them again. But
all went off smoothly and the officers paid no attention to the crowd. Every one was free
that day to go out and come in as he liked. The prisoners ceased to be afraid of the
officers, and the officers in their turn did not over-do their part as custodians of the place.
In spite of my repeated protests and when many of them could not personally meet me,
they brought to the prison-gate gifts of all kinds. Fruits, flowers, sweetmeats, soda water
bottles, tins of biscuits, there were in any number, heaps of them. And who were they that
showered these presents upon me? Free men in the Andamans prisoners. What was their
worth? Most of them earned no more than ten rupees a month. But what loyalty and what
devotion there were in the act! Unsought and unretricted they came with their gift of a
plantain, a watermelon, and a flower to deposit it near the prison gate. I went in the
afternoon to the door, and I distributed them all among those whom I found near the gate.
I only kept such of them as none would take back from me. I administered the pledge of
service to a few of my choise friends who lingered behind. The pledge of our association
contained the following words :—
"One God, one country, one goal"

"One caste, one life, one language."
We stand by these.
I gave this mantra to him and explained to him deeper significance. For the
fulfilment of this hope, for the attainment of this goal, every Hindu, who is one with the
ideal, must be ready, if an occasion arises, even to HUI I his life fighting for it. I told him
in detail what and how to do it. Before every Hindu individually and collectively can
summon up strength for this supreme sacrifice and even during the process of it, he must
carry out in I In-present circumstances certain tasks in the Andaman s and I told him in
detail the tasks devolving on all of them severally in that connection.
Just then a warder came to inform me that tin Sahib was coming as also the party
of policemen that was to fetch me away from that jail.
I got up, and I had the unalloyed gratification that on the last day of my life here I
could convey to the men to whom I had just spoken the vow that I had taken when I was
but eleven years old. I had buried my hope alive in that prison for ten years and on the
day that its door was to open to let me out, my last act on the last day and at the last
moment was no other than the message I gave to the prisoner in that jail. I had to step into
this prison because I had given that mantra to young India, and now that I was leaving it
after ten years, God had spared me to leave the same message behind to inspire young
men in the Andamans.
"One God, one country, one hope,
"One caste, one life, one language."
These words were on my lips all along.
My brother and myself were made to stand before the prison-gate. The jailor
handed us over to the police party in order to take us on the steamer bound for India. The
kind jailor asked them not to put fetters on us. We were marched along and at last the
iron door of that horrible prison opened its jaws to let us out into the spacious atmosphere
of the world outside.
It had opened in 1909 and closed after swallowing up my elder brother. In 1911,
the same horrible jaw opened out again and shut so soon as it had gulped me down. We

had no hope then that we could come out of it alive. The iron portal that had shut upon us
in 1911, turned on its hinges with a grating sound in 1921, the jaw opened and we came
out of it.
The iron threshold of that iron gate, as we crossed it, made us aware that we were
leaving the Andamans alive. I said to my brother, "This little threshold is a borderland
between life and death. From death we are crossing into life only by stepping athwart the
threshold. Yes we have crossed it and stepped into the land of the living. And now? We
do not mind very much. Let the future take care of itself."
A garland of white Champaka flowers
The outside of the prison was strictly guarded against the crowd that had gathered
to give me a send-off. A large number of people had come there only to have a sight of
me. The) prisoners scattered over the settlement were scrupulously kept at their work
that day. And yet many had come under some excuse or another and lay in hiding to have
a look at me. We had walked only a few steps on our way to Port Blair and under an
escort when a Maratha prisoner by name Kushaba who had been raised to the position of
a jamadar and who was shortly to receive his ticket of freedom, suddenly rushed forward
and defying the escort that guarded us put a garland of Champaka flowers round my neck
on behalf of all the prisoners present. While the police party was about to raise a cry, he
had already left after cheering my name and prostrating himself at my feet. He was liable
to lose his job and be punished for such a sacrilege. But he seemed not to mind it.
I still visualise the scene. The Maratha prisoner intent on garlanding me, and the
baffled police-officers straining to pull me off and handcuff me. The police officer was a
symbol of twenty years' effort on the part of the authorities to blot me out from the
memory of the people, to prevent one and all of them from having any photograph or
book in their houses, or any relic to remind them of me and my work. All these years they
had branded these actions as punishable offences. And now the police officer taking me
to the steamer was making his last effort to prevent the prisoners from honouring me. On
the other hand, the garland of Champaka flowers and the jamadar who gave it to me,
were a token of the love and veneration in which thousands of my fellow-countrymen
still continued to hold me. My life and life-work had all along been the battle-ground
between these two contending forces and of their action and reaction. And the
manifestation in my life constituted so many symbolic expressions of the whole story.
That was how I felt about the scene before me, and I expressed it in so many words to my
brother beside me.

More precious than a jewel necklace
This garland of flowers was an invaluable recognition of our efforts during the
last ten years for uplift of the Andamans. We felt our efforts rewarded by this token of
love and reverence. It was dearer to us than any necklace of jewels. As he garlanded me,
the crowd expressed its joy by clapping. These plaudits betokened loving gratitude that
went home to my heart. It was a conclusive answer to the efforts of the authorities to
inspire fear and disaffection about me among the settlers in the Andamans.
I found some time to talk confidentially to my friends and chief co-workers before
being taken up into the steamer. Through them I gave my parting advice to the dwellers
in the Andamans. I told them, "Stay in the Andamans, cultivate the soil, inter marry,
multiply, and add to the growth and expansion of the Hindu culture in those islands." I
also chalked out for them the work they were to do. As I climbed the ascent ten years ago
from Port Blair to the Silver Jail, I had never imagined that time would come when I was
to descend from that place and go back to India. But now I had climbed down and was
stepping into the steamer that was to take me back to India.
As the thoughts were passing in my mind, the steamer 'Maharaja' had arrived. She
was bound for Calcutta. We went up and I felt a strange sensation coming over me. I was
to lose the little freedom I was beginning to enjoy in the Silver Jail, and, when in India, I
may be put under severer custody as if I was to run my whole sentence once again
beginning from it first day. As I stepped into the steamer, I was taken to the cage for
prisoners on the ground floor. It was in the same cage that I was locked on my first
voyage to the Andamans. A shiver passed over my entire body as I remembered it. And
my elder brother was to be with me now, a thin, emaciated scare-crow of a man
hiccoughing without rest or relief. We were both put in together.
Put in the cage of maniacs
The cage in which we were locked up was packed full of lunatics. The insane in
the Andamans were all being despatched to India by the same steamer. And in their
company we were bound for voyage to India and in the same cage with them! The
lunatics were pouring forth foul abuses on one another and were crying aloud in turns.
Some were holding their throats in the grip of their hands as if to throttle themselves. The
man put in charge of these madmen was one of themselves, who had recovered from that
ailment. He used to hammer them all one by one. There was not even moving space for
us two in this medley. And my brother was burning with fever and so emaciated in body,
and he was herded among this pack.

What the madmen saw and spoke they believed for the time being as gospel truth.
Some imagined that the mice were running all over their body and mounting up their
chests. Some believed that all the people around were shouting out abuse towards them,
and they would wake up at night, sit on the neighbour's chest, each one of them, and were
about to belabour them with fisticuffs. Others were rolling pell-mell in their own vomits
and urine. And we were planted ourselves in their midst!
Who are mad, whom can you call mad?
For a moment I could not help asking myself the question, who is really mad and
who is not. How do we know that what our senses apprehend is really the truth?
Perhaps, what the senses of these madmen perceive may be the reality! On the side of the
sane as on the side of the insane, the senses alone constitute the witness. And some one
sense alone is to determine that the other sense reports correctly. If the senses of us all
were like the senses of these lunatics, we should have felt like them the mice running
over our bodies. Why then should we take it that we are right? Perhaps, they may be right
and we, seated in the midst of their vomitting and discharges, are deluded that we are in
that foul and dirty place! For aught we know, we are mad and they are in their senses!
These musings gave me a shock. In the whirring noise of the rolling steamer, in
those offals around me, in the obscene chatter of the lunatics thereby, and in the fetid and
oppressive atmosphere of the place, I felt my life choking within me. I had often the fear
and the feeling that this philosophic reverie may be the first intimation of lunacy creeping
over my being, and under it things visible may be rapidly melting away into illusion.
I felt the weakness of my shattered nerves at the time as I had never felt them
during the ten years of my life in prison. The weak nerves were due to that life, no doubt,
but I felt it overwhelmingly in the steamer and at that moment, as I had never
experienced them before.
I appealed and protested to the officers on board the steamer to remove us from
that place. There was a part of the steamer occupied by other Indian passengers bound for
India, and they also interceded on our behalf. Their efforts and chiefly the persuasion of
one who shall remain unnamed secured for both of us seats in the other half of the
compartment, and somewhat detached from the space allotted to the lunatics.
But there was no breeze on that side. There were other prisoners carried by the
same steamer to India and among them were some consumptives, dacoits and robbers.
These convicts were accommodated on the deck that they might get fresh air to breathe.
My brother, who was more sick than any one of them, had to rot in the cage on the lower
deck—the cellar of the ship as it were—and in the cage I have already described. He was

consumptive, his body was burning with fever, and I suffered from hard breathing due to
chronic bronchitis, and we two were placed in that stuffy atmosphere.
Again, I appealed for fresh air; again I wrote to them that we needed very badly
some fresh air to breathe in.
From the following day a sort of ventilator was improvised to let down fresh air
from the deck above two times during the day. A heavy gunny bag was suspended from
the top downwards open at both ends from which air passed downwards from the deck
above. Later on we were taken on the deck, under guard, for half-an-hour every day to
sit there and inhale fresh air.
The passengers on the deck and officers, at times, came in the cellar below to
have a talk with us on the sly. The Indians among them were full of sympathy for us; but
even some Europeans treated us with respect. One educated Anglo-Indian gave me a
living proof of it by presenting me a copy of my favourite book, "Thomas a Kempis's
'Imitation of Christ' " which he asked me to cherish as a keepsake from him. They sent us
by private arrangement good food to eat. I sent back out of it soda-water bottles, ice, and
sweetmeat as not wanted by me. Some of them would force us to accept gifts in money
which we thankfully refused. I told them that we were sure to be back in prison in India
where we had no use for money. I distributed the sweet-meats among our fellow-
passengers—the lunatics on board.
At night my brother would narrate to me the story of his prison-life. I left India
for England, in 1906. And from that date till fourteen years after, we were not in one
room for a single day or night, so that we could talk together and exchange our thoughts.
He told me how the movement of Abhinav Bharat had spread in the country after I had
left for England, the names of members enrolled in it, how he happened to be arrested,
how he was persecuted by the police to force from him the information necessary to
round up all of them, how he breathed not a word about them and their whereabouts,
how, at last, he had fainted under the torture, so on and so forth. They tried to get out
from him information about conspiracies in Maharashtra and Bengal, but they failed. I
heard that thrilling narrative with rapt attention.
While on that steamer, I constantly remembered the friends I had left behind in
the Andamans! And the thought brought home to me the void in my life that their separa-
tion had made. I often had the yearning that I should go back to the Andamans and meet
them! Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand!
On the fifth day as I was seated on the deck for half-an-hour's daily draught of
fresh air, I saw a fortified wall right in front of me. A fellow-passenger told me that we

were almost in India and the fortified wall was its boundary. I startled. The fortress of
India. The embankment, sighing for which I had kept my body and soul together during
all the hard years I had passed, in the Andamans, was right in front of me and I was soon
to be landed on it! This was Mother India whom I was seeing again with my eyes. Her
holy feet I was touching with my head. In this very life, I was seeing and touching them. I
turned round to my brother and ejaculated, "Dear brother, behold our dear Bharat once
again! Behold her feet washed by the blue waters of the sea around."
We both got up from our seats full of adoration and worship. We folded our hands
with reverence and devotion. We felt a thrill passing through us, and we uttered the
following prayer:
"Victory to the Goddess of Freedom,
"Bande Mataram!"
End of Chapter XI

CHAPTER XII

As we alighted from the steamer and touched the port at Calcutta we were put in
the lock up at the Alipore Jail. The fear that I had felt on leaving the Andamans in the
morning had but proved too true. Myself and my brother were put in different cells.
Wearing our prison-garments and holding our bedding under the arm-pit and our pots and
pans in one hand, we were both marching together like thieves directed by our escort of
sepoys, when my elder brother was directed along a side passage by the sepoy in charge,
and I was taken in a different direction by another. Then I felt that I and my brother were
parted for good one from the other.

I heard him coughing hard as he was being moved away from me, and for a good
long time after. Wearing his long coat of coarse wool and carrying his bed under the
armpit, he was walking on groaning under the pain. "Whatever will happen to him? Who
will care for him?"—'that was what kept me thinking. When he turned into the side pas-
sage, I felt that he had not merely left me, but that he was taking the road to death while
leaving me back on the road of life, and that I was having the last sight of him.

I cast my glance to have the last look of him, and walked silently on, though,
within me, I was crying for the loss. I was taken to a lonely room in the prison's wing
which was entirely vacated for me, and I was locked up therein. How sad and woe-
begone I felt then!

Along with the sepoys appointed to keep guard over me, there used to come a
warder, who was convicted for fourteen years' transportation for life, but was promoted to
the place of the warder after serving only three years of that sentence and had thus
become relatively a free man. How I envied him for that freedom! I had served my term
of nearly twelve years and all the while in solitary confinement, and had not been free
from restrictions of prison- life yet. Nor was I relieved of hardships bound up with that
life. On the other hand, they threatened to be all the more oppressive now. I was standing
near the door holding its bars. The evening was passing into darkness and , night. A
sepoy was speaking something in an undertone. I gathered from one remark in that talk a
partial proof of the foolishness that had run rampant in the politics of the day. Expressing
his own notion of political agitation in Calcutta and other part of the country, he had
remarked, "We are going to have Swaraj in two months. For a powerful Yogi of the name
of Gandhi has begun his fight with the Government. The British are helpless against him.
For a bullet-shot does not hurt him. If put in prison, he knows how to come out of it. Such
superhuman powers he possesses. He vanishes from his cell and is seen standing beyond
the outer wall. Such is the magic he wields. This has happened several times. Mahatma
Gandhi had gone into prison several times, and, time after time, after short sentences, he
had been let off. This fact had reflected itself in the mind of this man and in the minds of
several persons like him in this queer fashion. I said to the sepoy smilingly, "What you

say is correct. For when the Mahatma is seen standing outside the prison wall and near its
gate, it is precisely the time when he is released after running his sentence. He thinks of
coming out and showing himself on the day when the Government lets him out of the
prison.
A young Chinaman was later put in a cell near my own on the charge of selling
cocaine. He danced, sang and frolicked for he imagined that within two days he was to be
free. I had not the good fortune like him of cherishing that hope.
Does a shot wound you?
The Chinaman knew the name of Sun-Yat-Sen. As I talked to him I knew that he
was not unfamiliar with my name. He could not believe his eyes when I told him that I
was that Savarkar of whom he had heard. How could a big man be contained in the
ordinary cell of a prison! His idea of a big man was that he must be a man of abnormal
size. Ordinary people have always similar notions of greatness and when they see that the
great man before them does not come up to their notion of him, they are often shocked
and disillusioned. So the Chinaman put me the question, "Does a gun-shot pierce your
body?" I answered, "No doubt, it will." And a deep disappointment was visible on his
face.
Another sepoy asked me, "How many days and nights were you swimming in the
sea?" Of course he meant at Marseilles. I answered, "What of days and nights? I swam
only for ten minutes before I reached the shore across." This reply gave a rude shock to
his admiration for me, and to the miraculous powers he attributed to me. If I had bragged
and lied to him, he would not have received any shock, but the barest truth that I told him
seemed to put him out. My habit of reporting correctly what happened at Marseilles had
lost me many friendships in life and their reverence for me.
Within a week I was despatched from Calcutta elsewhere. I did not know to what
prison I was being taken. In the train I had the same experience that I had on my way
from the Silver Jail to Port Blair. People used to put in my compartment fruit and
newspapers from station to station and quietly went away. Sometime they would gather
in large crowds to have a look at me. From the scenes I witnessed as I passed through, I
could not help thinking that the news of my departure from Calcutta must have been
communicated abroad by wire. As our train reached Nagpur and beyond, I saw
newspapers with big headlines announcing my release from the Andamans and
expressing their joy for the event. I also saw leaders and articles written upon it. A person
sitting on a bench behind me in the same compartment had held a newspaper open and
was reading it. He held it deliberately in a manner that I may also be able to see it. The
writing was in Marathi and the Anglo-Indian officer in charge could not make any head
or tail of the writing. The impression gathered from what I read in the newspaper was

that the report indicated that I would be released within a week. But I knew how the
matter stood at the time. The gentleman in question was travelling by the same
compartment out of deep sympathy for me, and helped me the best he could, without
being noticed by the officer-in-charge. He read the news items aloud that I could follow
him.
The Anglo-Indian officers in charge gave me no trouble on the way and at last I
reached Bombay. Our train reached Nasik at night, as I learnt from the words 'Nasik',
'Nasik' falling upon my ears. The shutters of my compartment had already been let down
and I was seated in the centre between officers on either side. In the next compartment
some passengers from Nasik got in. Twelve years had passed since I had left Nasik and
now I was passing it in a train! A new generation had grown up during the interval, and
who was there that could know and recognise me after such a long interval? And yet the
word 'Nasik' itself raised such a flood-tide of thoughts in my mind. So many send-offs
and entertainments on that very station; journeys to college and back, and packets of fried
grains mixed together; water-melons, faces of friends lit up with joy, friends who had
come on the station to see me off to England, and their tears of leave-taking; their cries of
"Victory to the Goddess of Freedom"; and now their transformation into prisoners in
fetters; and some of them sent to the gallows,—these pictures passed rapidly before my
mind not unlike the moving pictures of today in a cinematograph.
In Bombay I was put straightaway on a steamer. At the end of the voyage, I was
again locked up in jail at about ten o'clock at night. This was no other than
The jail at Ratnagiri.
I can no more describe in detail and one after another my experiences in the jail at
Ratnagiri. Circumstances prevent me from doing it. The main reason for my reticence is
that they are very recent matters and concern a jail in our own province. I shall finish the
whole by stating what I have to say about the matter in the briefest outline.
The first two or three weeks in the jail at Ratnagiri passed away very badly for
me. In the Andamans during my last days I was given well-cooked food and milk along
with it which had helped to improve considerably my digestion and my general
constitution. I was just looking up and had recovered from serious illness, when, sent to
Ratnagiri jail, milk was denied to me, even in the small quantity that was allowed to me
in the Andamans. And I had to fall back once again upon the usual ration of prison-life
which was hard and ill-baked bread. This bad food had brought on continual illness to me
for two years in the Andamans, and I was almost dying. The most experienced doctors
had therefore prescribed for me milk and well-cooked food, as I have already told my
reader in a previous chapter. But now my representation proved of no avail.

To add to my misery, I was kept here all alone, segregated from other prisoners
and locked up in the solitary cell assigned to me. All the concessions granted to me after
twelve years of imprisonment at Port Blair were now withdrawn. They had given me in
the Silver Jail at the end of that period full clothing, freedom from hard labour, mere
writing work to do, paper and pencil to write with, and liberty to mix with others. Here I
was made to wear the prison uniform which was given me on the first day of my
sentence; I had on my chest the iron plate marking the year of the completion of my
sentence—1960—, and I was put in solitary confinement. This change from the
Andamans to Ratnagiri was so unbearable to me, as I felt that I was made to start
running my sentence from its very first day.
Again, I could get no news here of my elder brother. Methought that he must have
been passing through the same ordeal as I. My condition here made me remember my
friends in the Andamans with greater poignancy. The work given me was that of cotton-
spinning. Not being habituated to it, I could not finish it in time. I was not allowed to
read and I found time dull and heavy.
The last impulse of suicide
You may wonder, 0 Reader, but every moment in this prison was an agony of
mind. For twelve long years—nay, since the time I went to England —life had been for
me a series of unexpected, unendurable mishaps and dangers, a continuous torture to my
body and soul, with the result that my mind had been stretched on a rack all the time, and
my nerves were completely shattered. And this new and additional strain on them was
like the proverbial straw. I feared that it would end in utter collapse. One day I felt so
dejected that my second thoughts could not come to my rescue. How long should I bear
such life? What was the use of such a life? It was no use rotting thus now. Suddenly in
this mood of mind I got up. High up in that cell was a barred window as in the jail of the
Andamans. I thought out in my mind how to reach my hand to that window and how to
put an end to my life by hanging myself by a rope to its bars. The thread of my life was to
be snapped by straining it from the bars of the window above my head. The cord tied to
the one was to break the thread tied to the other. My mind was overcast with complete
darkness. And every moment that passed deepened the gloom and added to the darkness.
I am writing these pages in imprisonment at Ratnagiri. Only within call from that
place is the jail where I experienced the most tragic moment of my life, very similar to
one or two experiences during my fourteen years' stay in the Andamans. This was the last
and the darkest of these moments.
But it was day when this last fit came upon me. And I had to wait for the night to
act accordingly . And during the interval, I gradually recovered the usual balance of my
mind. I argued with myself as follows, "In the Andamans, from Indu Bhushan to

Professor Parmanand, you had dissuaded several of the Bengali, the Punjabi and the Sikh
political convicts, who had suffered as many agonies as you do now, from committing
suicide. For the same reason you must desist today from putting an end to your own life.
According to your own precept, you must exact cent per cent compensation for such an
act. You must at least kill one enemy of the country as an exchange for parting with your
own life. But is it possible now for you to act up to that precept?
The night came and. I spent the whole of it in reviewing my whole life and its
outcome. I was completely absorbed in that task. I scanned minutely with as much
detachment and concentration of mind as was possible for me, the steps I had taken one
by one towards reaching the supreme ideal of my life, and other minor goals subservient
to it, and dictated by particular circumstances through which I had to pass. I definitely
visualised my duty in relation to them, and I outlined the course I was to follow in the
light of that duty.
I must bear it all
Therefore, I decided to suffer all, to endure all as a supreme national duty in the
situation of the moment. I was also to continue doing what little I could, while bearing all
that I could not possibly avoid. What cannot be cured must be endured.
That was my final resolve. From the following day, I took up the thread of the poem that
I had begun in similar conditions of loneliness years ago, and I planned the writing of the
story of my life from the day of my arrest in England down to my removal to Ratnagiri. I
brought together all its threads in my mind and working-out its outline in my mind, I
divided it into parts and chapters and headings and committed the facts, recalling them
one by one, to memory as if I was immediately putting them down on paper. I repeated
the process page by page, concentrating my mind fully on the events as I recalled them. I,
then, recorded them, with a piece of pointed brick, on the walls and stones of my prison-
house using all my leisure from my usual work for that purpose, and according to the
opportunity I got for executing the task. These jottings of the principal topics in my story
occupied me for successive months, and I accomplished the work full of zest and
earnestness.
This work is the outcome of that task
Those writings on the wall and those jottings from memory have given birth to
these printed pages. During the three months that I was busy with the task a great change
came about in my circumstances. I got better food to eat. The Calcutta weekly 'The,
Capital' had written an article connecting my name with the German plot of the
submarine Emden. My brother having threatened the Paper with prosecution, it

apologised and withdrew its statement. This affair laster for a few days since my arrival
at Ratnagiri, and I also received parcels sent to me by members of my family.
The trouble of the Khilafat
Some convicts from Sindh and other parts of the country, involved in the Non
cooperation movement and the Khilafat agitation, both Hindus and Mussulmans, came to
the Ratnagiri jail soon after my arrival there. Their notions of the Khilafat movement, of
Hindu-Muslim Unity and of politics in general struck me as vitiated and eccentric. And I
had to carry on endless discussion with them on these topics and vigorously attack their
misconceptions. A few days after, I arranged in that jail for talks and for weekly lectures
and meetings on the line I had followed in the Andamans. We were together at Ratnagiri
for a year and a half. When I happened to meet them for the first time, I happened to hear
one of them shouting that "the Mussulmans had not done the atrocities in Malabar that
were being fathered upon them." Another friend echoed loudly that "it did not matter in
the least if they had done them; whatever had happened should be treated as dead past;
Hindus may convert themselves to Islam; what mattered most was Swaraj and it must be
won." There was no end to the perversion of the definitions of truth and non-violence
among them. I may narrate here an episode of a political convict in this prison as a
specimen of the mentality of almost all the non-cooperating and the Khilafatist patriots I
came across in this jail during that time.
The confusion of Gandhism
We used the devices that we had employed in the Andamans to get at news in the
jail at Ratnagiri. We could thus procure scraps of newspaper from outside carried to us
through dust bins or by prisoners sent on work outside the prison. My friends among the
non-cooperators often used to read these scraps as I read them also. Twice or thrice some
of them were found reading them while moving about in the open court-yard. One of us
warned them against this practice, as we were forbidden to read newspapers in prison,
and if noticed by officers., our secret would be out, and all means of getting them would
be instantly stopped. To this a non-cooperator replied, "Do you mean to say that I should
read this in secret? I am a non-cooperator. Whatever is done secretly is against the
doctrine of truth and I will not do it." We did not argue the matter with him. We only
stopped giving him any scrap of paper to read. He was in rage with us. And he told us
that he would report the matter the next day to the officer, telling him that they were
smuggling newspapers in the jail in the same manner that some prisoners were smuggling
tobacco. To hide a fact was sin, which no non-cooperator, as a follower of truth, would
commit.
We told him that he knew when he was reading those scraps that he got them
from a secret source. Why did he read them then if he felt that it went against his concep-

tion of truth? Why did he not say he should have nothing to do with such a course? And
was it not a betrayal of confidence on his part to tell the officer the name of the prisoner
who had rendered that service to him? If this were truth, then Narendra Goshen must be
worshipped by him as a sincere non-cooperator.
No doubt the man was taken aback by this counterargument. He did not act as he
had threatened. But he kept on maintaining that getting news in a secret manner was a
sin, that founders of secret societies like Mazzini were all sinners. He asserted that
whatever a non-cooperator did, he did openly, and there was no secrecy or cowardice
behind his single action. He went about spinning long yarns on the subject.
One day, in order to make a fun of him, we adopted a plan just when we were
dining together. The gentleman in question always managed to eat a 'Chapati' by
flattering the cook in charge, while all of us were being served at dinner with rice. On the
day in question, while the gentleman was eating his 'Chapati' as usual, one of us raised an
alarm that the Superintendent was coming. The man instantly concealed the 'Chapati'
under a dinner plate near him and began quietly eating his rice. There was a roar of
laughter raised around him, and all began cross-questioning him. "0, fellow, is it not a sin
to conceal the 'Chapati' as you have done it? Is it following truth, according to your
article of the creed, to eat the 'Chapati' stealthily?" Another answered on his behalf, of
course, ironically, "A non-cooperator lover of truth does not regard it as a violation to eat
a small 'Chapati' even stealthily, to feed his stomach. For that is an act of necessity, while
your getting news surreptitiously and reading it is violation of truth as harmful to the
national cause. "Surely it is no cowardice to eat forbidden food in order to live; that is not
a lie or an evil act. To lie for the sake of a nation is, surely enough, an unpardonable sin,
and an act of down-right cowardice."
I would not have referred to the story if it were an isolated and exceptional
incident. But I found this attitude but too common among the non-cooperators and
Khilafatists I met in this jail. Hence I found it worthwhile to mention it in this narrative.
That they may take in correctly the situation in Malabar I spoke to them in several
lectures on that momentous topic, dealing at large with the whole history of the question.
Our friends in that prison were dead against my Sanghatan movement. I convinced them
of their inconsistent attitude in the light of the unity they were working after. For the
larger unity was impossible so long as we were weak and divided among ourselves as
Hindus. As to discussion on politics there was no end to it here.

The Shuddhi Movement at Ratnagiri
Before long I discovered in the jail at Ratnagiri that the Pathan and the Muslim
convicts sent there from Bombay were practising the same methods of converting the
Hindu juvenile offenders to Islam that were current in the Andamans. The officers of the
prison had no inkling about the matter. As I knew their ways and means of doing this
business I at once forestalled it. I started the Shuddhi movement to reclaim such converts
for Hinduism. Two old prisoners from U. P. and some juveniles I reconverted into
Hindus. I gave all the monetary help they needed. In course of time a high dispute arose
over the matter. The controversy was carried up to the Superintendent of the jail. There
were at the time too many Muslim prisoners in the jail including Pathans and Sindhis.
They made things hot for the Maratha warders and their superior officers. I had to join
battle with them. Some of them were my immediate neighbours in that jail and they
threatened to give me a sound thrashing. I give here one instance in point, to show how
they harassed me.
Some of them started proclaiming "Bang" at dawn just to annoy their Hindu
brethren. All of them were worse characters and notorious thieves and robbers, and they
never did their Namaz and never uttered the name of Allah. Yet they shouted out early in
the morning inviting Muslims for prayer and disturbed the sleep of the rest of us. It
became a great nuisance and when the Superintendent remonstrated with them they
pleaded that it was a matter of religion and he dare not object to it. The superior officers
could do nothing to stop them. Then I tried my own remedy against the nuisance. I took
in hand two of the worst Hindu convicts, the ring-leaders of dacoits and thieves in that
jail. One of them had passed his whole life there. Four or five times he had been heavily
sentenced on charges of theft and had at last come to regard this prison as his home. He
had lost his one tooth and was advanced in age. I tutored him to utter the name of Ram
with a loud voice so soon as the Muslims began to cry "Bang". He sang couplets from
Tulsidas and in uttering Ramanama, raised his voice louder than the Muslims. The
warders would rebuke him sternly when I would intervene and say, "why should you
object to his prayer? Either stop all of them or let every one be free to pray as he likes." If
a Mussulman prisoner was found doing his Namaz at night, the Hindu followed suit with
his Bhajan. The Mussulmans were full of fury but they were helpless to prevent us. As
they disturbed the sleep of the Hindus, the Hindus paid them back in their own coin. So
the whole dispute ended by itself. One nuisance cancelled the other. What punishment
could not stop, counter-goondaism had silenced. I silenced a Khilafatist editor-prisoner
by a similar counter-move. He used to touch water for the Hindus on the plea that
Muslims were as much human beings as they. I entirely agreed with him on the point and
I called upon an untouchable and scavenger to dip his pot and take water from a vessel of
water for the Muslims. And the Khilafatist who was preaching broad humanitarian
principles at once went at the untouchable and would not touch the water as being unholy
for the Namaz. When I had exposed them two or three times they quietly took their water
from a Hindu water-carrier and stopped touching the water reserved for the Hindus.

Riot in the Ratnagiri Jail
During this period a great quarrel arose between the insolent Pathans and the
cunning Sindhi Mussulmans on the one side, and the Jail Superintendent on the other.
The point in dispute was about the strict enforcement of prison-discipline. And the matter
came to such a pass that these goondas decided to break into a riot to checkmate the
Superintendent. In the riot they had conspired to beat all the Hindu prisoners in the jail,
including the sepoys, the warders and the political convicts like us who were leaders of
Sanghatan in that jail. One day after our usual meal was over, the Mussulmans suddenly
kicked up a row and began attacking the Hindus. Having already warned the Hindus
beforehand against this onslaught, they were ready to meet it though it had come on
sudden. Some Hindu warders got a beating to the point of bleeding, but the Mussulman
goondas did not go unscathed. They also got their share of sound hammering. They began
to leave out and to flourish their sticks and fisticuffs, and in order to attack us sought to
force their way inside the chawls. I stood ready near my room to meet them and all along
incited the Hindu prisoners to take the offensive against them. In the meanwhile,
somebody sounded the alarm-bell. A regular fight ensued between the two sides along
with the usual cries to accompany it. The Superintendent came on the scene followed by
a posse of soldiers. He threatened to give order for shooting. The Mussulman goondas
were in a fright. They were all rounded up. Most of them had received sound thrashing
from the Hindus and were bathed in blood. Prosecutions were launched, trials followed,
and the rioters were duly punished. The Hindu warders who had saved their fellow-
prisoners and themselves from the attack and had fought on the side of law and order,
received their due meed of praise.
This incident and its sequel made those who were considering me an outcast
because I was the leader of the Shuddhi movement, converts to that movement. And soon
we succeeded in converting a Mussulman to Hindu faith. Of course, for this sacrilege, the
Mussulmans dragged me into a suit. After the usual argument and counter-argument, the
court decided against forcible conversions on either side. Thus ended the Mussulman's
game of converting Hindu lads to their faith. I was always on my guard against those who
had designed against my life. The prisoners who had before this worked for the Khilafat
movement as its partisans and had subscribed freely to its funds, now became champions
of the Shuddhi and the Sanghatan movements. Their eyes were opened to the truth of
the matter by what they had witnessed with their own eyes in this prison. And as they
began at last to examine everything through the insight given them by the Sanghatan
movement, their politics changed from non-cooperation into responsive co-operation. Out
of this jail and free, they became in their respective provinces staunch supporters of
Hindu Sanghatan.
As in the Andamans so at Ratnagiri, I went on with my work of instruction for the
ordinary prisoners in that jail. Some of these I taught myself. I gave from my own purse
prizes and scholarships to encourage them to read good books. The prison library had no
books worth the name. I petitioned to the Bombay Government for the sanction of books

and at length succeeded in getting from them a grant of five hundred rupees for the
purchase of books for the library. I made a list of books, and I sent the list through the
Superintendent for approval by the educational department of the Government. And after
the list was approved of by that body, the books were at once purchased and kept in the
library. The prisoners developed great fondness for reading them so that during the
course of a year and a half the Superintendent had to make a special mention of it in his
report as the main cause of the remarkable decline in that jail of the propensity of the
prisoners to quarrel, fight and come to blows.

A public holiday for the Muslims on the day of Id, was marked in the jail by the
permission to them for general prayer. The prayer was led on such an occasion by a
Moulvi from outside. The Christian prisoners had a similar privilege on their great
holidays. Only the Hindus were without this right. The political convicts therefore
petitioned to the authorities that the Hindu prisoners be granted a similar concession to
celebrate their public holidays. The Government granted the permission asked for, and
we decided to celebrate the Gokulashtami day as a great Hindu holiday. We fixed upon
holding a Kirtan that day, and the Government did not object to it. They gave us things
to eat suitable to the fast that we observed and the Kirtan was done in the jail as a public
function.

The practice overthrown

As has been already pointed in another place the manner of sending prisoners to
answer the call of nature in prison administration was extremely barbarous and highly
objectionable. There was no partition and no door to the latrines arranged in a line, and
the prisoners were made to sit down rubbing shoulders with one another. There was no
roof overhead either in the rains or in the hot seasons. No water was allowed to be taken
into the latrine. All were to get up after the function and to go to a water-tap at a distance
to wash and clean their parts. The political prisoners agitated for reform in these matters
with the result that this hideousness and dirt disappeared for good and the prisoners began
to lead a clean and disciplined life. There was improvement in food and the general mode
of living, and order was strictly maintained as laid down by the prison regulations.

One more thing was being carried out in the jail at Ratnagiri. It had remained
unfinished in the Andamans. When I knew that I could no longer do any national work I
had resolved upon, as the reader may remember, to finish a poem and had begun
composing it in my own mind. But as other work grew upon my hands, this project lay in
abeyance. At Ratnagiri I resumed the task and completed the poems that I had proposed
to write. I gathered together the smaller poems previously composed by me. I wrote
longer poems and gave a complete notion of what I meant by 'Hinduism'. Some of the
writings I had already despatched home from the Andamans. My brother brought out
from these writings complete editions of three poems which were.

Kamala, Saptarshi and Gomantak.
These three poems were published anonymously. The fourth was a miscellany of
my minor poems which had also gone to the press but it contained so many misprints as I
was not on the spot to see it through, and I stopped its publication altogether. The
miscellany was entitled 'Virahoswasa", the sighs of separation. I had to withdraw the
complete edition of that book from the market. 'Kamala', 'Saptarshi' and 'Mahasagara'
were portions of the epic which I had contemplated to write. These survive as
independent poems themselves, but the main tree of which they were to be branches is
not yet even in the process of creation. It was been so with me—work that is undertaken
under duress is often part finished and part destroyed.
After the completion of these poems I wrote my work on Hinduism in English
which my friend Mr. Kelkar of Nagpur was kind enough to publish.
In the early days of my stay in the Ratnagiri jail I was not given a single book to
read. After a time I got the works of Ramdas to read. Of these 'Dasabodha', and
miscellaneous poems I had already perused in my younger days. But as my edition of
Ramdas contained only these, I read them over and over again in the jail. Later on they
gave me other books and also writing material so that I could do both reading and writing
to my satisfaction. I read many great books from beginning to end during this period, like
the life of Prithvirai, Puranas like 'Bhavishya Purana', and Vedic India by Das.
One day I casually enquired after the health of my elder brother when I learnt that
his condition was serious. My brother after being separated from me at Calcutta was put
in the jail at Bijapur. My younger brother had gone to see him, when he was told that he
could enter the prison and see his elder brother only if he would change his Khadi
garments.
My brother, of course, refused to accept the condition as highly insulting to
himself. He carried the matter up to the Governor and got it cancelled. My elder brother
suffered terribly in the jail at Bijapur. He was confined in a dark, damp and deserted
room all by himself. I heard later on that a political convict had been seized with madness
in that very jail. The room had a very bad reaction on my brother's mind and he was
removed thence to Ahmedabad. Here he suffered less from solitariness, but he received
no treatment and nursing for his growing disease. And at last his hardy constitution and
his equally strong patience broke down under its terrible inroads. He was then removed
from the jail to the prison-hospital. We got information about it through the daring of a
political convict in that prison. So my younger brother visited the place and found my
brother almost on his death-bed. But his fortitude was remarkable. Nothing could shake
it.

When I learnt the news I felt definitely that my elder brother was passing away
without being helped, that he was slipping from our hands. Well, all of us were sojour-
ners here and all had to leave the place sometime. Life was no better than a halt in a
caravansari for a day or two. But my brother was dying inch by inch, having suffered and
toiled and wasted himself for others, and there was none beside him at the last hour to put
an affectionate dropful of water in his mouth. It was the jail that had admitted him, and it
was the jail that was swallowing him up.
Alas! methought, it was the enemy that, at long last had done him to death! He did
not kill him with one stroke, but by a process of slow torture. These had finished him. I
could not contain myself. I could hardly breathe, so overwhelming was the feeling of it
all.
At that bitter moment, as was the habit with me, I sat up and composed myself. I
maintained a quiet frame of mind, and recollected myself. And then I put to myself the
question, "Where was the use of all this fretting and storm? My brother dies of hardships
imposed upon him by our enemies. He is a victim to the enemies of our country! What
help was there now but lamentation over individual loss? Can I avenge myself for it?
Nothing but wailing and enquiry!
I had made up my mind as soon as I was free to avenge myself on those who had
victimised my brother, and then I would celebrate his death anniversary. That would be
an example to others to do likewise. I felt calm in my mind after I had taken this solemn
vow. The perturbation was gone and I was my former self again.
But Baba was released .
A few days after this incident, news came that my brother had been let off from
the prison. I was full of joy at the news. He got his discharge but had to be brought home
in a senseless condition. But that was of no account, methought; the Government had at
last saved the expenses over his funeral, by setting him free. And the members shall have
at least the consolation of paying for it when he dies in the midst of them. Because that
was also a matter of doubt. Hence his release was better than his death in that jail, any
way. It was not release only. It was a rebirth for him from death-in-life in the prison. By
the grace of God and as good fortune for the country that lover of his country began
gradually to improve in health, and a wave of joy passed over the whole country.
That very year, I believe—though I do not remember correctly at the moment—
the Congress session at Coconada adopted a resolution demanding my release. The
resolution was moved from the chair and was passed nem con. It was a moral gain for all
the efforts of my younger brother and for similar agitation of patriots in full sympathy