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

province live unless the Nation lives? They all—Maharashtra, Bengal,
Madras—are great and will live long but through Her-India! So let us not
say आंध्र माताकी but भारतमाता की जय of whom आंध्र is only a limb,
and let us sing not ‘वंग आभार’ इूहह ‘हिंद आभार’! All provinces and
petty languages, instead of asking to be separated, should try to get
amalgamated and remove the barriers that yet remain and destroy the
confusion of tongues and not to hug to it. Smaller nationalities! Is not
Belgium a sufficeint warning? The greatest good that the British
Government has done without meaning it, is to, melt and mould the
disintegrating factions of our Motherland and hammer us into one people.
Now instead of trying to remove whatever stands in the way of its
consummation, we are, on the one hand, hugging to the fetters that were the
necessary price of this boon and trying to turn the very boon into a curse, on
the other.
Now I think I had written all that I felt and wanted to ask about your letter
and the books you sent. Next time you please send me the books the list of
which I subjoin. Instead of sending a parcel, you may bring them with you
if you come before September 1st. If not, send a parcel. Please do answer
this letter as soon as you have carried the necessary communication with
our friends. I am extremely glad that you could see the gentleman, you
refered to in your letter. I knew you would like each other very soon, for
birds of the same feathers gather together. Please give my affection and best
remembrances to him. I remember him every now and then. How is our
dear Professor getting on? My heart gladdens at the thought that by this
time, one more bird must have come back to that dear little nest after
sustaining a night through dreary deserts of burning sands, where no drop
cools the thirsty heart and no dew vivifies the parched flower of hope. In his
release and the release of so many of them, I feel as if my own partial
release had come. If poor dear Sakharam too would have been there today!
Though foolish and almost dishonourable to feel he should have been
living, who has done better to die in such a cause—still the heart feels.
As far as we are concerned, I again assure you not to be anxious about us
at all. All the term-prisoners of our case had been sent back to India, and we
lifers (life-transportees) only remain. As long as the war is going on, I, on
principle, have made up my mind not to ask for anything so as to embarrass
the authorities here; and at present both of us are keeping good health and

Captain—now Major Murray is superintending the jail affairs. As long as
he is here, you may rest assured that nothing that evinces a personal rancour
will be done or said; no underhand pinpricks, beyond what the regulations
require. Every letter and every book you send will be duly delivered. As far
as our daily life is concerned, well, it is going on in the same even way as it
did last year. In a prison what happens on the first day happens always-if
nothing worse happens. In fact, it seems to be the essence of prison
discipline to avoid all novelty, all change. Like specimen and curios in a
museum—here we are each exactly in the same place and same position,
bottled and labelled with the same numbers with more or less dust about us;
and the guide book that I wrote to you in my last year’s letter may serve the
purpose of description as long as 1 am here. We get up early—work hard,
eat punctually—at the same time, at the same place and the same amount
and kind of food prepared with same match-less prison-skill and medical
care. I read much in the time that can be spared from work and sometimes
in the evening attack many flowers-now remembered only in names-and
flower-like themes with blank verse and then sleep. Here one thing must be
said. Although it is true that prisoners are not free to do or say what they
will, yet to the credit of the jail authorties, it must be admitted that everyone
is absolutely free to dream what he likes. And I assure you I take the fullest
advantage of this concession. Almost every night, I tell you, I break jail and
out by dale and down and by tower and town, go on romping till I find some
one of you—some one who somewhere had been held close to my bosom!
Every night I do it but my beneficient jailors take no notice of it. You have
only to wake in the jail, that is all they say.
I hope just at the end of the war, you send a public petition for the release
of us. The thing is this. Not only in India but even in any free and self-
governing country, the Government cannot release political prisoners unless
the Government are backed up and supported by the wish of the people to
that effect. An exercise of the right of amnesty cannot be made by the king
or the president unless the people are willing to have the prisoners back. If
Indians are willing and petitions to that effect go at the end of the war, we
may be released and if Indians are not willing to have us back, neither the
Government can release us nor it is worthwhile to have that release. Port
Blair is willing to have me, and I am here. I have no wish to thrust myself
on any people unwilling to have me back. At any rate you may ask for our
being sent out of this jail just as all other prisoners—even those who had

been sentenced here additionally—are allowed to go and settle on the island
and bring their family here. In short, all the concessions that the prisoners
get under the regulations here in force. In this, we ask nothing special and
this by repeated petitions from you and us both, we in all probability will
succeed in getting.
Last year in the letter of our dearest Vahini, she had not written how the
little Dhondi was? Is She married? Please give my best love to our beloved
Yamuna—how is her health? Does she read? In what class or college is my
dear Balvantrao? And the other children? Give my best love and respects to
my dearest elder sister-in-law—whose life is a record of self-sacrifice and
noble enduring and calm and silent suffering for no fault of her and for the
good of others, and also to my younger Vahini whose kind remembrances of
me I got last year through our Mai’s letter. I remember them and all other
beloved friends every day. At every corner that my mind takes in its aimless
rambles, their dear image is sure to be met and then my mind is sure to stop
and build a new temple of a sweet and a sad tear and hold them there a
while and worship them, who made my life as it is and pray they do not
forget me. Whoever allowed, maybe for a minute—the right of loving and
being loved by me—I worship them all in the same temple and on the same
pantheon my petts and boomfriends, my comrades and chums!!
Well my dearest brother, I am glad your study of medicine is promising to
be fruitful. Do not injure health for the sake of study. Let me know your
weight. Now my dearest Bal with all my love and with my choicest
आशीर्वाद to you and our dear little Vasant and our sister Mai, will you
allow me to tear myself from your sweet mental communion.

Cellular Jail
6-7-1916
Port Blair
My beloved Bal and sweet Shanta,
Please accept my and my brother’s heartiest congratulations upon your
entering the second stage of life—the life of wedded love. Nobly hast thou,
dear Bal! fulfilled the first stage of your life—the stage of self-culture and
self-sacrifice. Thou possessest the golden keys to the treasured wealth of
knowledge, both ancient and modern, in the acquaintance with Sanskrit and
English languages. The final examination that you have passed in Medicine
is bound to stand you in good stead, in any part of the world and in spite of
any laws passed by a narrow misguided legislature; while your pen has
already made its influence felt in Maharastra in both the fields of prose and
poetry. On the other hand, the responsibilities and duties of that stage could
not have been better discharged and fulfilled. When the storm began to
gather over our Mother, it found you unmoved and firm at your post—it
burst and left you undaunted and true, and among the many faithless yet
faithful! The enthusiasm, to awaken which amongst their youth, Europe has
been holding before their eyes the glories of iron crosses and Victoria
crosses and unrolling rolls of honour—that enthusiasm and faith had been
displayed by you, who discarded even the reward of public acclamation;
nobly therefore hast thou completed the first stage of your life and now
enter ye-, dear Bal and beloved Shanta!—on the happiest and most exalted
stage of life, the life of wedded love. May thy path, dear Bal, be strewn with
roses and may thy youth, dear Shanta, blossom forth in Amaranthuses and
gold! Domestic happiness—the only bliss of paradise that has survived its
fall’ may bless your nuptial shed! ‘मधुनक्तमुतोषसि मधुमत् पार्थिवं
रज: (The dawn, the evening sweet and grateful be the Earth)!!
You perhaps remember that in one of my letters, I had just dropped a
suggestion to the effect that it would not have surprised me if some one
amongst the clever Bengalis had stolen your heart! After all, the expected
had very nearly happened. For though I long to see the day, when inter-
provincial marriages amongst the Hindus would throw down the artificial
and harmful barriers of castes and creeds and the Great River of Life—our
Hindu life would, having freed itself of all bogs and sands, flow in an ever
fresh and mighty current-uninterrupted and interruptible—still the first and

foremost thing to be effected in that direction is to restore to love her sole
privilege and right of presiding over the wedding rights. Indeed, we can no
longer be blind to the fact that we care more for the good breeding of cattle
and fowls than for the Eugenics of man. Centuries of child marriages and
marriages by proxies! Centuries of love banished from its legitimate sphere
of influence to attract and develop elements that tend to the betterment of
body and mind and soul; and the inevitable result is a race puny, debilitated,
all vigour and manhood sapped out of it. Thousand things have wrought this
and the marriage customs that prevail in us are one of the few important
factors contributing to it. Authorities should come in to sanctify but not to
silence love altogether. And glad was I, therefore, that the age, the
education, the part that mutual attraction and esteem played in welding your
hearts together and above all, the sanction of all those who feel drawn
towards us should have enabled you to have realized that in which I thought
our family should not lag behind. Or in short, when dear Bhau has
sanctified it with his blessings, it goes without saying that it must have been
just after my heart.
And now Doctor Saheb, where are you going to settle? Only yesterday, I
was told to write this second letter as the first had been lost in the post
office by accident. Although it must have cost you a lot of anxiety, to me it
enabled to know your present address. From that, I see you are in Bombay,
at present. Would you settle in that unhealthy and cramped in city! Would
not the rising free Baroda suit better where the enlightened prince Sayaji
rules? But all that as you choose and not I—for you are on the spot and
know how to judge best. One thing only I would insist upon and that is you
must not in any case risk your health and freedom personal freedom. This is
—depend upon me—perfectly not only permissible but positively
commendable in your case and the case of those who stand as you do. In
other cases, too much attention to personal considerations is undoubtedly
demoralizing; but you cannot pay too much attention to it. Be anywhere in
the world—in the forests of Africa—in the republics of America—the
medical knowledge that you possess is sure to serve a passport and a
safeguard to you. For, indeed, wherever death is, doctors also can be -(Ugh!
Seen very angry? Of course, I mention this with all due respect to the
Majesty of Medicines—in fact in order to exalt it.) Therefore, do nothing
that would do injury to your health and also, nay more so, health of Shanta.
She should, of course, be encouraged to read more and to write even if she

chooses; but the first and foremost consideration of a young lady should be
her health. It is a trust she holds for others, a debt she owes to generations
not yet born. Every atom of health that a young lady dissipates is so much
that is taken away from the strength of souls that are yet to rise. She is a
golden link that joins the yesterday to tomorrow; a promise that holds in it
the possibilities of her race. Therefore, the first care of a wife should be her
health that would harmonise the beauties of her body and mind and soul. So
neither study nor pleasure should entice her away so as to tax her energy too
much, but both should be indulged in only so far as to render that health
perfect and that beauty transparently pure.
Now something about me; and yet I wonder what that something is! For
there am I, as you left me after you finished the last letter you got from me.
Change is a word that is not found in prisoner’s dictionary—especially in its
Port Blair edition. The great war that you say has shaken your hemisphere
has left totally untouched me and my Port Blair. This, our little kingdom
here, is about the only state that can with a justifiable touch of egoism claim
in its yearly speech from the Throne of having maintained its interests intact
in this world-earthquake. Our imports and exports are unchanged. We keep
our lights all night up. While our international communications are as
peaceful as they had been ever since this little kingdom rose out of its
Oceanic Night! Mr. Asquith has every reason to be jealous of us. Our
citizens have not been forced to subsist only on a reduced scale of meal and
potatoes as the Germans are said to die for the simple reason that we never
ate any! Whatever we eat, we grow—grass and such other edibles, while
these solid and aspiring walls of my jail have reduced the very walls of
China to a mere heap of debris. Those walls could, and that too not very
effectively, stop the outsiders from rushing in but these walls while doing
that can also effectively prevent anyone inside from going out. No! On pain
of death, no! Thus we, like a little world organized to serve as a prototype
and a foretaste of the hope of the Humanitarians, when the war shall have
been banished from the realms of man, live—I beg your pardon—exist—as
peacefully and quietly as to put to shame the very realm of death.
As to the interview, I think it is best to wait till this war be over. For, to a
certain extent, we can understand the hesitation of the Government in
granting it now. And even after the war, the letters that you may write to
them for the interview should be only on the ground that every other
prisoner is allowed a visit, so should I after five years and not on the ground

of any anxiety of our hearts to meet. For, in that case, even if they do not
grant it, we shall at least have the manly satisfaction of not having
displayed the most sacred and the most human of all wounds—the wounds
of separation—to an alien and unsympathetic eye. Again, whatever you
wish to write in amelioration here should be written directly to Delhi. For
almost nothing lies in the hands of the authorities here as far as change,
especially for the better, is concerned in my case and whatever they can do,
they are doing and I would request them to do if possible, when it be left
undone. I know that some of you, though sure and certain that I shall not
break down under this imprisonment, are still grieved to think that I should
have been suffering all this and should have been forced to desist from all
work, social or political or even literary. But brother just think—is suffering
no work? Who worked more for Christianity—they who suffered in silence
and unknown or they who worked? Surely both; but I suspect that those
who work for a good cause outside, work much—but they who suffer for it
in prisons and fields work more. At bottom, work, if true, is suffering and
suffering, if true, is work. Suffering is the motor, the power that moves, and
goads and propels a people. Unless the best amongst them suffer, the rest
cannot work. Both are grand, both are indispensable, and if both be
indispensable, then what grief if we be chosen and ordered to guard this
post rather than that? I bless myself that—this fell to my lot! Do not grieve,
brother, that I sit in darkness and simply waiting, while everyone else is
lighting his or her lamp to shed light on the path of man.
Do you not remember that ‘Her State’, is queenly thousands at her bidding
post—they also serve who only stand and wait!
And how much more then do they who not only wait but suffer and yet
stand!! The worker is great for he puts stone upon stone and chisels and
moulds; but then the cement of the Church?—is the sufferer! The martyr
that bleeds!!
And indeed, Bal! You can hardly believe how happy I feel from moment
to moment—strange breezes of bliss pass and repass, kissing all the
inevitable physical worry and weakness into ever fresh and ever blossoming
joy of the soul at rest. I feel just as I used to feel in the college days after
some final examination had been satisfactorily gone through and went to
stay home quietly but confident by expecting the welcome news of passing.
This Great Trial, This Test, to achieve the deliverance of the Mother!—and
so satisfactorily gone through as far as I was concerned! and now I have

come Home here and am confidently expecting the Great News that must
come! Oh! how I sleep soundly—how sweet the thing; for I worked so
strenuously in the day and while I was required at Her headquarters that as
soon as this night came, sleep fell as gently on my eyelids as dew. There are
moments when ugly dreams trouble desire to shine and see light—but at the
first touch of analysis, the self stands revealed and the dreams melt away,
are swept away—and calm once more sets in. Oh, when some times after
such a sleep, I wake in my cell and hear the waves idly breaking on the
beach just outside my little, high-placed and barred window, I remember the
lines of Kalidas प्रासादवातायनदृश्यवीचिः। प्रबोधयत्यर्णव वं सुप्तम्
and fancying myself like that king, I laugh and play and joke—all with
myself! Such thoughts are suggested by that consciousness of a rest, that is
at the same time the intensity of work—and they in their turn guiling away
the mind from the too real hideousness of a prison, strengthen that
consciousness of that rest. And thus, it is a fact that on the whole, I am and
so is our brother happy, satisfied and willing to live as long as that must be
in the atmosphere of frowns and frettings and harshness, of constant clash
and constant discipline, every step in which reminds you that you belong to
a race of slaves.
The account of your marriage ceremony was very graphically written. As
to the writer—he is indeed a very gifted man but with him, self-diffidence is
a great drawback. I think he should first try to write small popular stories
and short novels and get them published in some of the magazines, for that
would give him confidence in himself. Take, for example, the question of
caste system. Let him by suggestive stories paint the harm it is now doing,
how it is retarding us from the great goal, to which all mankind is moving.
Then let him write bigger works and so on. To him and to the Sahodar
Yamaraj and to all of them, give my most affectionate remembrances—my
companions of childhood and chums of the college days and comrades in
the field, all they whomever I called mine and to whom I pledged my word,
I remember them all with fresh affection and esteem. I was glad to know the
whereabouts of my dear Rishi! Is he still in the ‘Service’; holds the same
office? And my new friend! I remember him so much; for he had been so
considerate and kind under—even under these circumstances, even when he
himself had been undergoing the same trial! And then he is so intelligent
and active. I have missed the name of our Professor in the account of your
marriage ceremony? All my best wishes for him, and my dear and very

esteemed Madame Cama! She must have suffered a lot of worry owing to
the war! Give her my best and freshest love and tell her that those whom I
saw in Paris while I was with her then, are ever foremost in my memory—
especially the Sannyasin! The photos that you sent have been a constant
source of happiness to us. My dear Yesu, Vahini looks so calm and ever
bearing and ever true ‘like a Devata,’ as one of the officers had said to me
when she came to see me in the Bombay jail! My deepest love to her and
my Tai and my Shanta. I am proud of them all! Next time do not forget to
forward the translation of my beloved Yamuna’s letter—Noble girl! poor
girl! a thousand pities! and yet a thousand glories for her silent and yet
intense fixity of purpose. Do not press her to come to Bombay if her parents
object. Their judgment and love must be respected. How are all her
brothers? My most humble Âý‡æx to my mother and aunt मावशè.
With all love
I am yours—TATYA
❑

Cellular Jail
5-8-1917
Port Blair
My beloved Bal,
I was extremely glad to get your answer to my last letter, which I sent to you
in July 1916. How grateful we felt to hear in your latest that you with all our
friends are getting on well, and are healthy and happy. Thus, it has pleased
Providence to spare for you another year of bliss and especially of that tender
and pure bliss, which is only to be found in the bosom of a devoted and dear
family life. You see, my Bal, the times and the climes, in which the lot of our
generation has fallen, make it so imperative for all noble and honest hearts to
choose the path that leads through sorrows and sighs and separations which is
the path of duty, that the heart so hardened and accustomed to the hard and
merciless blows of fate comes to look upon disasters and disappointments as
the very order of nature at any rate of our part in the nature’s scheme, and
when a delighting event takes place, its attention is more fixed on how
temporary such a good luck must be than how good that luck is. To me, a joy
is ever a solution of tears. Well, any how the days are changed and with
changing fortune, friends too are returning. When I left you in the dock in
Bombay High Court, and had a last look of you not being allowed even to
shake hands, waved my hat and parted, my child, at that time the sting of the
whole scene was in the thought that we—Dear Baba and I—could not do
anything for you, our nearest and dearest charge. So young, so humble and
having already suffered more than a man in his whole life does, you, my
brother, were cast adrift, befriended by none, hated by many, suspected by a
powerful Empire! The family hearth seemed extinguished for ever, the family
gods broken to pieces. And although even all that could not deter us from the
right nor make me ally myself with the wrong, yet it was with a bleeding
heart that I wrote ‘जो वंशबाग उध्वस्त झाला। संततपुष्प तोचि क’
(the garden that has shed all its flowers for the garland of the Gods, is in
blossom for ever.) Even the evergreens of hope stood withered and blasted.
Only dear Vasanta, that was the bud, a melancholy memory of the past. But
now a few kindly touches of the spring have revived the sap and the creepers
are putting forth new buds. We had dear Vasant, and we have our Ranjan and
God willing, we may be blessed with one more messenger of new life. The
lamp of love is burning cheerfully under thy roof, and its warm and kind
reflections have lightened the utter darkness of my cell here. And the new

name of little Ranjan brings do mind the all suffering, the all loving, mother,
his grandmother, my dear Mavashi. What a joy it must have been to her!
Please to give my love to that dear little child, whom perhaps I may never
see! And tell me whether it understands it or not! And why did you not write
to me about Shanta herself? You left it to Vahini to do it for you. It is typically
Indian but in your next, you must write to me directly about your child and
everything else. It is this extreme modesty that makes the generality of Indian
babes grow rather in the shade than in the full light of their parents' eyes. No,
No! you must look upon it as a special and a sacred charge. It was a pity that
our dear Vahini should have been suffering from plague. I thought that this
dire epidemic had at last, by this time, left our shores but it seems that it rages
there still. Please be very careful of it. Is it a little less rigorous than it used to
be? Has not medical science as yet been able to find some reliable cure for it?
You should better leave Bombay as soon as it appears there. Nothing can be
too costly to avoid its dire claws, if indeed we cannot blunt them.
The last parcel that I got was in January 1916 and our dear Baba in March
1916, so neither of us has received any parcel for the last eighteen months or
so when we ought to have received two. Now this was the reason what made
us very anxious about your safety and I had to ask the permisison of the
Superintendent, who so kindly gave it, to wire to you. But I think we should
take as much care as it is possible to avoid any such necessity. The best way
would be that letters and parcels should be posted by you in fixed months, if
not dates, ...
This much, so far as we are considered. But then there is the other party in
the game-the post or the Government, and we cannot help suiting things to
their pleasure. In your last letter, you have written of a parcel lost in the post
and last year, my letter also was lost. Now what is the meaning of this?
Thousands of parcels and letters come all right to this place; only our letters
and parcels should be so mysteriously spirited away! Is it the post? If so,
please do leave no stone unturned till they give some definite explanation for
the loss of this parcel. You must have registered it; then it would be clear
whether and through whose indulgence or malice, my letters and parcels are
tampered with. This much for the post office. But if not the post—It is the
Government! Well; if so, then, mum!!! Mum is the word!! As I have learnt to
do without so many things which make life worth having, so also I shall and
can learn to do without a yearly parcel too! But one should have thought that
when a dozen censors have followed a book from the printer's office to the

clearance house and when powerful microscopes have searched the very
anatomy of the pages, the books, at least, those that are found
unobjectionable, should have been returned to their owner!
The Nasik conference was really a success. The resolution about the release
of the political prisoners has delighted even us, the forlorn and forgotten, and
our deep gratitude to those who dare to remember us still. One wonders why
the Congress should fight shy of any such thing even after its union. Perhaps
the leaders of that body are too much weighed down by the sense of self-
importance. Perhaps they think themselves too immaculate—far more
responsible a band of statesmen and patriots than General Botha whose
Government has released the leaders, the rank and file of the Boer rebellion
or Redmond, whose nationalists have never ceased to try for the release of
the Irish prisoners till they succeeded in having it. Nor can it be said that
‘that was a general participation in a rebellion’, as Mr. Bonarlaw has
attempted to state; for firstly in the Indian political prisoners also, the
overwhelming majority are convicts of general participation and secondly,
the suffragists though admittedly and case for case had been convicted of
‘individual’ charges, were released by Mr. Asquith long ago. But leave the
Congress alone! At any rate as soon as the war ends please do see if a public
Petition for our release could be sent. Such petitions and resolutions do not in
themselves bring such a release, but they at any rate make it more acceptable
if it ever comes. For, I for one would indeed feel it a shame to go back to a
people which dares not, or for all I know wills not to remember those who
loved and love and will never cease to love the land of their birth and rightly
or wrongly but fell fighting for Her! See, see if the petition could be sent.
That would be far more significant than any resolutions or meetings.
While together for a minute or so, I said one day to our dear Baba, that
there is said to be a पितृऋण Pitrarina and देवऋण Devarina and
ऋषिऋण Rishirina & C. So, also there is Putrarina पुत्रऋण (debt due to a
son). After the receipt of your letter, I felt myself fully acquitted of it! For,
after all, you are now fully educated and fully fledged. Now come what may,
at least two years of joy have been bestowed on you by the kind Providence
and through you on us. No day can shine forever. The life on this earth is like
a three petalled flower; one is coloured with pleasure, the second with the
colour of pain, the third mixed or colourless. Now the petal of pleasure and
then that of pain gets wormed and thus this vain round of recurrence goes on.

Take any letter or any life or even History itself, it is more or less a book of
mere statistics of so many births and so many deaths, so many weddings and
so many mournings, so much colour and so much shade. So, while there is a
brief respite, a passing ray of joy, a single touch of the spring, let us not
forget the hardship of the winter or foolishly depend upon and get addiction
to these wines of spring, while they are dancing in the cup. No, No, our, ...of
those who are born in India in this age ...our constant companion is winter
and not spring! Let us not forget that our life is a vast Sahara, unbearable and
still to be borne, sandy, burning. And while we are keeping to the path of
duty that passes through this parched desert, if the grace of God places in our
path such an ‘oasis’ as this, with which we have been recently blent, then let
us not forget that it is an accident, an art of grace; and without haste and rest,
must continue our way on this holy pilgrimage of life. Let us pray in all
humility as the old saints prayed: ‘Give unto us what thou wilt and when
thou wilt and how much thou wilt! And also take away from us what thou
wilt and how much thou wilt.’ After all, the fine ideal for a young man is not
to acquire but to sacrifice, not to rear but ‘the garden that sheds all its
flowers for the garland of the Gods and thus is in blossom for ever.’
How is my dear Mai getting on? What a silly idea that I could forget my
only sister! I may as well get angry and cease to speak with myself. While
the day lasts, try to save something and invest in some safe form in the name
of dear Shanta or dear Ranjan for we can never tell when winter may come
again!! Nothing could match the ideal constancy of affection of our dear
MadameCama. Even the war has not made her forget you! Thus, it is that
many a time the blood is not thicker than choice and there are affections,
which noble hearts alone can know, of which neither the lack of blood nor of
interest can cool and which growing up in an ideal land flourish and are
nursed on forces so subtle that the every day and matter of fact world fails to
see or comprehend.
How are also my beloved Mai (Yamuna) and Vahinis, getting on? My love
to them all. How is dear Balu? When I saw him in the Bombay jail he
seemed so upright and so loving a boy! Now he must be quite a respectable
gentleman? And so also Anna. I expected him to be a clever and able youth
and shall be very glad to know how far my guess has been correct. I wish I
could know everything about all my brothers, including dear Dattu and Nana
and what they do. But it is not and cannot be owing to my forgetting them as
my dear Yamuna seems to think, but for other reasons, which she can well

understand by her past experiences that refrained me from mentioning in my
previous letters. If there be any man or any famity next to dear Baba, to
whom I owe that is best in me, and owing to whose noble patronage and
winning solicitude I had unusual chances and facilities of assimilating the
noblest things of this world and even of doing something for our common
Motherland, then that man and that family is theirs: (Chiploonkers). But the
sense of having been the cause of so much worry and loss and pain to them
with whom the dearest ties of blood and love and mutual respect have bound
me, has already been so keen a source of sadness and mental unhappiness to
me that I do not dare to add an inch more to it all. And so have denied myself
the gratification of expressing my thankfulness or love. Otherwise, who
cannot be proud of those fine youths such as my own brothers-in-law are—at
any rate promised to be? And of him who brought me up as dearly as them?
and of that saintly dutiful mother!! The same thing is true of all my friends! I
remember them all! But for their own sake and not for my own sake, dare not
acknowledge them all. I could not understand who the pleader was, who
came to you as my contemporary but if really so, please do thank him on my
behalf for remembering me still. By the by, be very careful of men who may
come to you as acquainted with me or even claiming to have seen me here or
having had talk with me here. You are too experienced to be cautioned but
nevertheless, I assure you, I send no word or message through anyone to you.
Hear all but believe none, except what stands to your reason without my
recommendation and on its own merit. Now the time is over and I must
finish. I am all right, the details you asked would be sent in dear Baba's
letters. Love to all from both of us. Do not worry for our health. As far as
possible, take care of your own health. If in spite of all human efforts, the
worst comes to the worst, well then we are quite ready to face it all! Do not
worry.
Yours affectionately
TATYA.

4-8-1918
Port Blair
My dear brother,
I was very glad to read your letter. This year owing to the regularity with
which your parcels and letters had been despatched, we could get them all
at the expected time and were, thus, able to get rid of a lot of anxiety and
trouble and petitioning. The answer to my letter, then the parcel to brother
and then his letter—all these enabled us to get your news almost every three
months. Please do follow up this plan as regularly as possible. The news
that the Maharashtra provincial conference had passed a strong resolution
and that with greater unanimity in favour of the release of all political
prisoners was very welcome! In fact, the Bombay provincial conference has
been doing its duty with greater vigour, consistency and persistence than
any other P.C. in India. Last year, so far as I could know, the provincial
conference of U.P. and especially the Andhra Conference had also passed
resolutions in favour of this release. The resolution of the Andhra
Conference was very definitely and comprehensively worded and showed
that the heart of the Andhras beat in thorough and honest sympathy with
those who, with the means they thought best to effect the Great Deliverance
had, maybe rightly, maybe wrongly but in utter sincerity and indisputable
selflessness, offered themselves to pine away in prisons. You write that
many of the papers write constantly for the release and magazines too press
on do the point that the release of all political prisoners is one of the
conditions, under which the removal of Indian discontent is possible. If all
this be true, then I really fail to understand why the Congress, so far as I
know, should still be fighting shy, should still be trembling to utter a
syllable that might smell of sympathy, nay even of ordinary humanity for
the political prisoners, of the people in whose name it poses to speak! Last
year, they passed a resolution for the release of the interned, forgetting
totally and very conveniently that the sufferings which brought tears to the
eyes of the patriots sitting comfortably in the well-aired and well-decorated
pandal had been indefinitly multiplied and incessantly faced by other men
—not one not two, but thousands of other men whose services or sacrifices
cannot, at least, be less than our interned brothers and who, because their
misery cannot automatically end with the war as in the case of the interned
and therefore demand a greater and more persistent agitation on the part of
those who are pasing as responsible leaders of the people! ‘Responsible’

that is the thing! They talk of the ‘interned’ only, because they know that it
is safer to do so and they dare not talk of the rest because they might be
losing their responsible positions in the eyes of their boss! Otherwise, when
the different provincial conferences have so clearly and so often made it
obvious that the majority of the provinces heartily wish to effect the release
of the political prisoners, one fails to understand why the Congres should
fail to do so. The business of the Congress is not to voice the sentiments of
the few that dominate its proceedings but of the many, who give it its
weight and support and in whose name ought to derive its right to be a
‘Congress’ at all. When so many provinical conferences have passed this
resolution and so often, when the leading papers and magazines have
incessantly pressed this point, when many of the leaders of the Congress
itself, when it was their turn to be rotting behind the prison walls had
expected and had thought they had a right to expect the sympathetic
mention of them by the people for whom they fought, above all or rather
least of all when the very Austrian people, not to mention the Irish, the
Boers &c. had been bold and honest and grateful enough to agitate for the
release of all their political prisoners and succeeded in getting it done, when
all these things are known and admitted, then I think that the Congress
could be and should be immediately forced to pass as bold and as
comprehensive a resolution as that of the Andhra or Maharashtra
Conferences this year. If some old hags tremble, let them absent themselves
from the sittings that adopt this resolution. Why should you all share in this
guilty silence because a handful of ‘Responsible’ are shaky about it?
Secondly, one or two precautions should be taken in case of any such
resolution or movements, if to be effective. Many papers write about
‘political prisoners’ but the language is so conveniently dubious that the
Government and even the people are quite likely to fail to understand what
is meant by that omnibus term, ‘political prisoners.’ Some times it means
interned, at others the detenue, then deported or the state prisoners, but
hardly it ever means those also who are convicted for offences of political
nature. I pointed out to you last year that Mr. Bonarlaw himself made a
distinction in Irish cases that the rebels were not guilty of ‘individual acts’!
Now that gentleman knew well that suffragists were all ‘convicted’ for
‘individual acts’ including arson! Yet they were released as soon as the war
broke out by the very Government Mr. Bonarlaw works in. Then I don’t see
why the word ‘convicted’ should be a bogey to the Indian ‘Responsibles’

and the ‘individual acts’ a screen to hide the Government anomalies in the
hands of Mr. Bonarlaw. Botha is a prime minister and Redmond the
constituted Leader of a Parliamentary Party and yet they released their own
opponents and actual rebels, against their Governments. But the
Congressmen think they are ‘responsible men’! The pariah that stands
begging at the city gate is more responsible citizen and belongs to a higher
caste than the Sheriff and the Chairman of the city itself! So, in the future
resolultion and articles, this point should be clearly and definitely pressed
that ‘political prisoners means all those undergoing imprisonment whether
convicted or not, whether for individual acts or acts in general’ (I indeed
fail to understand it altogether!)—for actions which proceeded from purely
and admittedly political motives.’ The term political can be distinguished
from private only by the criterion of the motive of the act and not by the act
itself. No act is or can be by itself political. For, even a rebellion if that
proceeds entirely for my own bread and butter is not political and ought not
to create any sympathy in others, unless indeed my cause was only a case in
hand and was fought out for establishing a general privilege or in
vindicating of a general right. The thugs fought battles and were not political
in the sense of sacrificing for the general good. But even the arson cases or
flogging the prime ministers by a suffragist in England had been recognised
by the British Government itself as political because the motive was neither
personal aggrandisement nor revenge but the advancement of some social
good. The means may be wrong, even criminal or not, the motive counts so
far as the moral value, and here national aspect of the act is concerned. I
write this with special stress for the reason that in case of an amnesty being
granted—which I expect not—this point will be a stumbling block in our
path, for the Government might adopt some anomalous distinction and
interprete the term in any sense convenient to them but not just in itself. Try
your best to make this clear to all you can approach and let our journalists
and leaders keep this constantly before them.
(a) Please do write to me in your letter whenever any of the provincial
conferences have passed any resolution to this effect, whether last year’s
Congress had deliberated on it in the subjects committee; how many papers
write wholeheartedly about it, and if something could be done in this year’s
Congress. When you write about it only mention those cases in which the
general amnesty is asked and not only that of a few interned etc.

(b) Then again what had come of the movement of sending a general and
mob petition—of which you did not speak in your last. That idea should not
be dropped at all. I believe you have only postponed it in order to put it
foreward more effectively at the end of the war. If it is so, all right. In the
meanwhile, I saw in one of the letters here that a petition for the release of
P.P.s had been forwarded to Montague, while he was in India. How far is
this correct? (c) The campaign of the meetings of which, once you spoke,
should be kept in view and not only once but almost every year, it should be
carried on. (d) The Congress, the P. conferences, the petitioning of the
individual members, families, special series of meetings arranged for this
purpose, the constant attention of the press, questions in the Viceregal and
Provincial Councils and in the Parliament: all this and each of this must be
systematically and persistently carried year in and year out till, the amnesty
question becomes a necessity of the politics there. In each of your letter,
please give me a summary of what could be done in each of these
directions, and forget not to make clear the meaning of the ‘political
prisoners’ whenever resolutions and articles talk about it to the people and
the Government as well.
Throughout the discussion, I must frankly admit, I have aimed not so
much at the result of the agitation as to the moral effect of it. I know and
have clearly written to the Government in one of my petitions last year that
the question of a general amnesty of the political prisoners is closely and
inevitably bound up with the question of the establishment of a progressive
and really constitutional Government in India. So, the chances of such an
amnesty being actually granted are not and cannot be immediately and
primarily expected. But though, thus, we should fully realize the
impossibility of any actual results being attained, yet we should not lose
sight of the moral ones, which would reward our efforts immediately by an
elevation of the national tone and character and which, by reminding the
nation of the sufferings of their martyrs and soldiers and victims that fought
for the success of the common cause, and more enthuse the people to see
the fight continuned and fought out to its ultimate victory. Gratefully
remembering the soldiers, who fell, is the most effective way of recruiting
more soldiers to continue the fight.
In the petition, to which I referred to above, I had put before Mr.
Montague and the Viceroy, a frank statement of the case of such an
amnesty as this. The main points being that while they were considering

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

really Responsible Government meaning thereby at least a substantial
majority in the Viceregal Council—without of course the fetish of a
Council of State kept presiding over it and mixing a curse with every
blessing the first may confer on the land—if I say a substantial majority of
the elected be granted in the Viceregal Council, and such a grant be
accompanied with a graceful and general amnesty of the P.P.s, including
the Exiles in other lands such as America and Europe—then I for one and
many whom I know, would consciously accept such a constitution as that
and would, if thought fit by our people and given a chance to do so by the
Government, work under it and try to fulfil the Mission of our life through
the council chambers, which have up to this time been bearing nothing but
ill will towards us and have spared nothing to embitter our hearts against
them and their policy. Where is the man who would run the ordeals of fire
or would tread the paths of furies with bleeding feet-for sheer amusement!
That is rare, and rarer it is to find true patriot and humanitarian, who would
indulge in reckless and bloody and necessarily outrageous revolutions—if
but and even when a safer, nobler, more certainly moral because entirely
effective and employing least resistance, if but such a path, the path of
constitutional progress be open and accessible to him? It is a to talk of
constitutional agitation where there is no constitution at all; but it is worse
than a mockery—a crime to talk of revolutions as if it was a work of Rose-
water even when there is as elastic and progressive a constitution as say
there is in England or in America.
This word for word, I wrote in October last to the Government and the
recent changes give me a hope that if properly and organisedly pressed, the
bill when it comes before the Parliament would grant us acceptable scheme.
And I would like to bring this to the notice of the Viceroy once more and
ask whether the Indian Government have come to any definite decision as
to my petition.^2 I received an answer on 1-2-18 from the Viceregal
Government that the ‘petition for the Amnesty of political prisoners’ is
being considered by the Government. After that I have reason to think that
the Government mentioned to submit the question of such a release
immediately after the war. Please do enquire directly yourselves, as it takes
a lot of cajoling—the Red Tape System for me—to enquire often.
You asked in your last letter about the advantages we reap in being
promoted to the second class; Well, going out of the jail? No! Being
allowed to keep writing material? No! Being allowed to live with or even to