भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

the question of the reforms in India, they should not fail to recognise that if
they aimed at the establishment of any responsible Government in India,
they should thereby render it utterly futile to continue to lock us in jail. For,
if a real responsible Government be given and still the amnesty not
granted, then the latter fact would act as a millstone round the neck of such
a system as that. For, our presence behind the stone walls and cells cannot
fail to keep the memory of the old suspicion and embitterment between the
people and the Government living and would take away much from
whatever claims and confessions the Government might make, as to change
of angles & efforts for co-operation and mutual trust. For, even if Home
Rule be granted to the people unaccompanied by a general amnesty of the
P. P.s, how is it likely to touch the real roots of discontent in the land? How
can there be peace and contentment and trust in a land where a brother is
torn away from a brother, where thousands upon thousands are rotting in
cage cells and stand exiled and in jails, and where every other family has a
brother or a son, or a father, or a friend, or a lover snatched away from its
bosom and kept pining away his life in the parched and thirsty Saharas of
Separation!! While on the other hand, it would be as futile; I stated this for
the sake of entire honesty and truth, though it was against my personal
interest—to release the political prisoners unaccompanied with a sincere
and substantial effort to a responsible Government in India. For, it would
be intolerable for us to live in a land where all paths to progress are barred
by a ‘trespassers would be prosecuted’ or to move there without treading
on suspicious paths, where every step forward is an affront to the Sultans
ahead and every step backward an affront to one’s self-respect and
conscience, which is no less Sultanic in its exaction. Therefore, Home Rule
and Amnesty go hand-in-hand and in order that the one may be effective, it
should and must be accompanied by the latter. I also stated in it that my
motive and aim in sending the petition being the Grant of a General
Amnesty, I should be the last to be dissatisfied if that could be done by
omitting my own name, if that alone be a thorn in the way of its fulfilment.
If such view be ever taken by the Government and I see that the recently
published Draft of Mr. Montague’s Scheme has in a striking paragraph
expressed the hope almost in it—a way of answer to a corresponding
question—that the revolutionists would now find something to be
constitutionally done to the realizing of their hopes and aspirations and
would change their minds and return to useful paths of activity; and a