At Thana
It seemed to be all bustle and noise in the prison at Thana. Every one was, as it were, on the tiptoe of expectation. A prisoner sentenced to fifty years’ transportation to the Andamans, a bar-at- law was arriving! The Officers in charge had issued the strictest orders that none was to look at me even with an eye askance. A part of the prison was purged clean of its prisoners and warders. It was kept apart for my occupation. But nothing could repress the curiosity of its inmates to have a look at me. My cell was guarded by the worst known warders of the place. They were, one and all, Mussalmans. and the wickedest of them, into the bargain. There was preternatural calm and solitude about me. My meal was served in due time, but I could hardly touch a morsel thereof. It consisted of hard-baked jwari bread and some vegetables ill-cooked and too sour to taste. I broke the bread, put the piece of it in my mouth, could hardly bite it and had to wash it down with water. Only a little of it I could eat. Then came evening, the door was closed, and I lay on my bed for sleep. It was now completely dark, for night had followed, when I heard gentle tapping on the door. I heard the voice of some one calling. It came from somewhere, I felt, as if in fear and trembling. I turned round and saw and discovered that the wickedest of my warders was beckoning on to me. I went to the door when, all eyes and ears" he whispered to me, “Sire, we have heard about your daring and valour, I am a slave to one so brave as you; I will do all that I can for you, no fear about it. Today I have brought you some news which I may pray you will keep strictly to yourself, for woe to me if it were to leak out. You are a hero, and I feel sure that you will never let me down. But I must warn you all the same.” So he carried on in a suppressed tone, and then coming up very close to me, whispered, “your brother is here.” “What brother”? I asked him. He replied that it was my younger brother. And he left precipitately as if he was anxious not to be caught in the act by any casual, observer. For my part, Iwithdrew inside.
The Younger Brother
My younger brother! A youth hardly twenty years old, and so many of the same age with him. A bomb was thrown in Ahmedabad at Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, and my brother was put under arrest as a suspect in that case. He had to undergo much persecution on that account but he did not flinch, though he was then but eighteen years old. He was soon after released as innocent of the crime, and returned home to rest. But hardly had he laid his head on the pillow when he was arrested for a conspiracy and crime of a political character, and was sent to jail as an undertrial prisoner. For one long year he had to pass through all the agonies of mind and body - intimidation, threats, torture and persecution. But he bore them all well with stern determination and, even in that tender age, did not fall from his vow. This was my younger brother. Orphaned from his childhood, I, his elder brother, was like a father to him. He never knew to live apart from me and cried like a child when I had to stay away from him even for a day. And this was so until very recently. To find him in the same place, in shackles like myself, and undergoing the hard labour of grinding corn, was an experience harrowing in itself. To add to it he was to learn from me today, as I had learnt about him, that I was here on a life-sentence and on my way to the Andamans. He had heard of that sentence no doubt, but they had all hoped that the Hague Tribunal would turn it down and order me back to France. In that expectation my brother, and others like him, would drown their own suffering. But now that the slender thread of hope had given way, and I was to be transported for life, how can I be the bearer of that news to him? Oh that I should be the person of all others to break it to him! One of his elder brothers had already gone to the Andamans. And now I was to follow him there! I was to meet him no more. Already orphaned in the loss of his parents, this brother of mine was to be doubly orphaned now. When he realises that the Andamans for me meant no sight of me for him any longer, what a blow it will be for him, and how it will break his tender heart! In case he is set free, to whom will he go for help and shelter? Who will shelter him? Who will look after his education? The lad shall have to go from door todoor, and every door will be shut against him. With contracted brows they will look at him and turn him out as a prisoner, a convict, an outlaw, and a man to be shunned.
On the rising tide of grief these thoughts lifted their heads to be drowned with the ebb tide that followed it. But they suffocated me all the same.
My Master, Have It
The warden returned. He came up very near to me. It was completely dark by this time and he whispered, “Master, take it”. He put a slate into my hands, and expostulated, “The Superintendent has warned the wardens against giving you any news of your brother on pain of ten years’ rigorous imprisonment across the seas. If you were to breathe a word of it, then I am finished”. So saying he instantly left me and went his way with measured steps and with creaking noise of his shoes in the corridor.
The slate was a letter to me from my dear brother, my younger brother, Bal as we called him. A lantern was burning at a distance, and the writing was dimly visible in its light. I read the letter with feeling of affection welling up in my heart. It contained not a word of sorrow, repentance or defeat. On the other hand, it breathed an assurance that come what may; he would never budge an inch from the vow that he had taken. He was prepared to face the worst in fulfilment of that vow. I decided to indite an answer. In the Andamans we can send only one letter home during the year. But sometimes that opportunity even is denied to us. I felt, therefore, that this was the last chance I had to write to my dear Bal. I beckoned to the warden who was patrolling in the corridor. He came up with stealthy steps. Let the night fall, and then he would do what he could, he said to me. and went away.
I must have completed half the period of my sleep when I was awakened from it by some noise near my door. Startled from my sleep, I got up, and, behold, ’the warden was taping with his staff against the bars. He signed me to write on, and brought his lantern close unto me. I was amazed to find him so sympathetic to me, knowing as I did, what risk he was running for his life if he was found communicating with me. And who was he? He was a notorious and hardened dacoit with not a spark of kindness in his cruel heart. I simply wondered then as I have wondered since when I had a similar experience in my later life. And I had no small measure of such happy surprises. I tried to thank him, but he stopped me, adding that the first thing I was to do was to finish the letter forthwith.
Do or Die
And yet I doubted that the man might deceive me. Who knows, he may hand over the written slate straight to the gaoler and would then put me in a fix. I had passed years of my young life dodging the detectives set on me. Therefore, I put no name in the letter that I wrote. I mentioned no names and referred to no places. Nor did I write about any specific plan for the future. I pointed out that I was going to the Andamans by putting the necessaiy asterisks to indicate the name. And I added, “If, according to regulations in that quarter I could take the members of my family to that place after five or ten years, then I would spend the rest of my life in the acquisition of knowledge. If it were not given me to step my foot once again on the soil of India, my projected epic, like that of the sage Valmiki, will announce me to the world through the mouths of my disciples, my Lavas and Kushas, who would sing it throughout the length and breadth of my dear motherland. This service was enough to fulfil my life’s work. But if they were not to release me even after the completion of my first life-sentence, then? I shall try to escape by any means available to me or perish in the act. This was my firm resolve and there was no relenting from it. Do not think of me, and do not shed tears of sorrow that you have failed in your life. Some fuel had to burn in a steam-engine that the steam may rise up from it and the engine begin to move. Are we not that fuel that the fire may burn and the flames rise up and spread far andwide? To burn thus is in itself a great act……..” The warden coughed and warned me to finish up in time. I put the slate near the door and withdrew inside. I said to the warden while he was about to leave, “I do not wish that you should suffer the least for me. Do this bold act if only you feel like doing it. Don’t risk it.” “What boldness is there in this?” he replied with a smile, “Sir, I am no ordinary thief, no coward soul is mine. I have attacked a whole village with open eyes. I have plundered it in the teeth of them all. I have escaped fighting while they had pursued us. I am fearless, and hence I am out to serve one like you. Where is daring here? I know not. It is only two months from now and I am free. The daring is on your side; for you laugh in the face of adversity.”
He Delivered The Letter
He went and gave the letter faithfully to my brother. I had not forgotten the definition of valour he had given me. The dacoit considered the thief as his inferior and despised him even as, among the untouchables, the mang does not touch the domba. Next day I sought to bring the truth home to him that pillaging and loot may involve daring of a kind, but, as it was selfish, it was by no means either laudable or meritorious. I did not put it so to him directly, but by means of a parable I set him right on the matter. He seemed to understand me all right. Never since then did he boast to me of his exploits as a dacoit.
It was not even two days after my arrival at Thana when my brother-now Dr. Savarkar-was removed elsewhere. The Officers knew that we were never to meet each other thereafter, but they did not arrange for our meeting together here and behind the prison- bars, when only the partition on a wall separated us, one from the other. For years together after this event, I did not know where he went, when he was set free, and what he did in life. No information was given to me about him by the authorities or by any-one else who knew him.
Behold My Tiger!
The head of wardens in this jail was particularly appointed in charge ofthe lonely part of it, where, for the time being, I was kept in custody. He was stout in body, light-hearted and funny in disposition, ever smiling, but the most secretive of all the wardens in that gaol. Naturally the European Officers of that place confidedin him. He always tried to draw me into conversation. Real or apparent, perhaps it was a mingled feeling, he was full of compassion for me. He tried to give me as much good food as possible. He never gave me the slightest trouble. He ever connived my talking with any-one else. He discussed politics with me and sought to impress me that I had ruined my life by following the wild goose chase. Coming and going, he called other wardens near my door and pointing at me would exclaim, “Behold my tiger. A man should be like him.” Then he would sing a skit- “Marvellous is thy deed, O Fate, marvellous thy play. Thou hast trapped a tiger in a spider’s net I say.” And then he would eye me significantly and go into a dance while he chanted those lines again and again. Sometimes he raised a discussion in which he put a question and answered its pros and cons, all by himself. “How mighty is this Government”, he would say, “how funny that these few brats who would beat it! And, look here, these aspire to take the raj back from the British Government!” Then with this argument on his lips he would flourish his stick around him, take a few steps forward, and whirl himself round in a dance. Suddenly he would put a question to the company of wardens he had gathered round him. He would ask one of them, “Why, O, Ramya, do you think that the wind is cut to pieces by my passes at him?” And the company would burst into a peal of laughter. They could not but laugh, for was it not their Havildar, their chief, who had cracked the joke? Perhaps, they would suffer if they showed reticence. But the chief would turn round on them and ejaculate, “Fools, why do you laugh? Do not these few brats do the same to the British Government? I beat the wind with my stick. My lord, here, would blow up the Government with his daring conspiracy. Am I so ridiculous after all? Is not his venture as foolish as mine?
The Coquette
Some time, as I was bathing, he used to stare at me, and calling out the wardens under him, would address them, “Oh Gondya, behold his body! It is like the bar of pure gold. How well-knit the arms, how full-developed the chest! Evidently he must be a fine wrestler in his day.” +++(5)+++ Suddenly he would change the tune. In a piteous tone he would say to me, ‘Sire, what a splendid young man you are, and what the devil have you done with your youth? This was your time to serenade with some fine girl abroad and be lost in her embraces. Instead of spending your time in England in such pleasure, here you are, hardly turned twenty-five and with but a fringe of moustache on your lips, embracing these heavy iron chains and shackles. How do you love to fall into their arms, I wonder.” At other times, he would burst, “No, indeed, these are not your deeds. Some big men have made a cat’s paw of you, that is all. They have feathered their nest and lined their coats very well, indeed, and at your expense. How they must have duped you with fine promises and then, in the nick of time, let you down! O, Sir, I am so happy, I am far happier than you are. I draw my wages all right. I have my pension as a retired servant. I get fifty to sixty rupees every month. Ijingle the coin in my pocket and am carefree. While you, with your fine appearance, your youth, your noble profession, high status and with the daughter of a minister for your wife, you have shattered your life completely, and have forfeited the bliss of paradise on earth. All for the country, you say, Pooh! I bore it all patiently. But sometimes it became too much for me to put up with this nonsense. With folded hands and in a sneer he would say to me. “Tell me verily, my master, how you were going to win the raj. When do you think you will be set free? There is going to be a big Darbar at Delhi in coming December (he evidently referred to the coronation of King George V); do you think that it will bring you amnesty and pardon?” To which I would reply calmly, “What is that jubilee to us? Yet I hope to get out ten or twelve years hence, if times prove propitious.” Then he would make a wry face and say, “No, they will never release you. They will torture you and make you rot in the gaol and they will take you out with your corpse, not a minute earlier.” It became impossible for me, at times, to save myself from this harsh man’s cruel badinage. Whenever he would call some five or ten wardens to gather round him, and would address me in their presence as “behold, my hero”, and would jig and dance and jeer at me with the flourish of his stick, I felt I would die of it, so piercingly it went to my heart to watch him. He was, as it were, taking out a caged tiger for show round the circus ring. This show, for children to laugh at and to enjoy, was so much painful to me. I chafed at it and felt that being sent to the gallows was better than life in that condition. This was like piercing red-hot iron into a heart already lacerated with grief.
The Crown of Thorns
Often and often did I repeat to myself the text from the Yoga Sutra which enjoined that a man must be as much prepared, while in prison, to pass through agonies of the mind as he had to suffer tortures of the body. If that suffering were to damp his courage and his ardent spirit, then he must conclude that the courage and the spirit were but a momentary phase. If they enjoy the show, why should you not as well enjoy it? You do not do so because you do not possess that detachment of mind which makes a man rise above personal considerations. When you know who you are, what you did, and why you did it, what do you care if they parody you? How do you lose anything thereby? Do you not know that long before you, others, who were messengers of God, had to wear their crown of thorns. The notorious criminals rotting in jails had not spared them from jibes and jokes. The world worships them today as saints and seers, as “prophets, priests and kings”, in spite of those jibes. It touches their-feet and bows its head before them. Thoughts like these reconciled me to the conduct of that man. It is now sixteen years since that day, and I cannot yet say if the man, as some persons used to say of him, was deliberately put upon me to torture my soul and damp my courage, or he was merely a fool who had sincerely felt for me and had expressed that sympathy in such an outrageous manner. Whatever that be, the song that he was singing then still rings in my ears: “Marvellous, is thy deed, O, Fate, marvellous is thy play. Thou hast trapped a tiger in a spider’s net, I say.”
“What news?” I asked him one day. To which he replied, “What news can I give you, Sir? You have well-nigh perished for them and you cannot still forget them. What kind of people are they? And what is their service to the country? You are arrested, and they have gone into hiding, they have covered their faces; not one of them bothers the least about you. What news, then, can I give you? ‘After me the deluge’-that is all I can say about it.”
A Confirmed Rogue
The coronation ceremony in England had come and gone. Dame rumour was busy saying that many a prisoner was to get his release presently. The Havildar had just talked to me about it when the officer, who occasionally conveyed the news to me of the outside world, came up to me and hurriedly said, “A brahmin in Madras of Shakta persuation had killed Collector Mr. Ash by a rifle shot. The Officer, it is said, had something to do with the trial of Chidambaram Pillay. What is your opinion about it?” When the Havildar saw me that afternoon, he pointedly put to me the same question. “Well, have you any friends in Madras?” he asked. “I do not know, I cannot say, I am confined within the four walls of this prison. How can I then know anything about them?” I answered. “Besides, you had just said, don’t you remember, that they had all gone underground, they had covered their faces and spoke not a word about me.” The Havildar nodded to his friends significantly, and, pointing at me, uttered “What a confirmed rogue, a double-distilled essence, is he”. I have not yet caught the import of his observation. Perhaps he thought that I had already known what he was saying to me, and my reply to him made him realise that I was not to be drawn out so easily.
My Spectacles On Sale
All my belongings here were a pair of spectacles and a miniature copy of Bhagwatgita. This morning the Havildar demanded them of me. - “The Saheb wants them”, he observed. I knew not what it meant. Presently the Superintendent followed, and I asked him why I was deprived of my pair of spectacles. To which he gave the following explanation. I was a conspirator; the rule was that a convict of that type lost all his property to the State. Government had, therefore, confiscated all my belongings. My trunks, clothing and books had already been taken in possession on my arrest in London. And presently these articles were to be sold by public auction. The money so recovered will be appropriated by the State. That my anna-worth of gita andmyspectacles, thelast things I had with me, should also be taken away from me, grieved even my fellow-prisoners. And some of the wardens resolved that they would not purchase a single thing of mine to be sold by public auction. I had to expostulate with them so that they might change their mind. I told them, “Look here, in that baggage, there were costly clothes. Lest any-one else get them for a trifle, I would be very pleased that you should go in for their purchase. If you desisted, a foreigner might have them practically as a loot. I would prefer that they fall to the lot of my own countrymen. I feel if you and your children used my clothes and other articles, they would be put to good use.” I persuaded some of my wardens, the sensible ones among them, to go in for them. On the following day my copy of the Bhagvatgita and my pair of spectacles were restored to me with the understanding that I was to use them as property belonging to Government.
The Party Bound For The Andamans
The prison to-day is all agog. A party bound for the Andamans is to arrive here. The party is known in prison parlance as ‘chalan.’ Of all the convicts in the presidency, those who are branded as hardened criminals are always sentenced for transportation. Out of those the worst are picked out and detailed to confinement in prisons scattered all over the province. After a few days they are roll-called and inspected. Such of them as are unfit to be stayed in their own country and in local surroundings, are then dispatched to the gaol in Thana. Here they rally and reside for some time whence they are put on a steamer bound for the Andamans. These are designated as ‘chalan’ for they proceed from here for their destination across the seas.” The thief, the murderer, the incendiary, the prisoner, the heartless dacoit and the cold-blooded killer - all downright cruel and fiercest of the fierce-a troop of these, a veritable procession of them was to march today into the prison at Thana. Hence this stir and excitement inside.
The arrival of this gang was a signal for holidaymaking and mirth within the prison-walls. For it relieved them for a day from the hard routine of their normal life. They pine for such relaxation. The slightest change from it is enough for them to forget the monotony of their dull existence. A crow flying up in the air meets with an accident and drops down one of its wings. Sparrows peck at sparrows with their beaks. And the prisoners look up, feel interested and, lost in that contemplation, forget the worries of their hard lot in this house. To-day it was the chalan coming. Every-one, from the Jamadar down to the lowest in the rank, was full of the news. Every one seemed to be in a hurry. A set of rooms was kept apart for the confinement of these prisoners from abroad. It was located in one of the eastern wings ofthe old fortification. Today the rooms were swept clean, the provisions were arranged for and clothes were counted and put together. Every other arrangement for the accommodation of the chalan was well-nigh complete. Half of the prisoners were pre-occupied in this work, others loitered about as busy-bodies and none of them had eyes or ears for anything else about them, so completely were they absorbed in expectation ofthe show that was coming.
The Party Arrives
It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Everyone in prison asked of his neighbour why the chalan had not yet arrived. Just at the moment there was stir and bustle near the main gate of our prison. Every inmate was seen moving to and fro. “Has the chalan come?” “What’s it that is coming?’ “Yes, right near the gate.” “How many are they?” “How do they look?” There was a shower of these questions and there was trepidation and movement, confusion and excitement all over the place. It affected not only the prisoners but the wardens as well. For the latter felt as tired of their job as the prisoners themselves. On a sudden we heard the sound of measured foot-fall and of clanging chains and shackles every moment approaching nearer and ringing clearer. The prisoner and the warden, one and all of them, were seen gathered in small crowds and by the passage, forgetful of or ignoring their normal life, and with eyes alert to witness the procession coming in. They seemed to be crouching low lest any-one may detect them off duty. At last it came in-the chalan came in. How hideous to behold! There was in it a type of every kind. One looked veryfierce, anotherhardandcruel, a third an incarnation of terror, a fourth thick-set and firm, a fifth coal-black in complexion -the rest a miscellaneous crew of varied features, some, indeed of presentable appearance among them. How they walked-some of them in the party! One walked upright and with chest in prominence, another strided with a heavy tramp as if he was returning as a hero of hundred battles. A third treaded as if he was bent to make mother earth fall at his feet, a fourth proceeded with a hang-dog look, nervous and ashamed to look up. The party was moving to its quarters in a row of two each. It was guarded by armed sepoys on either side of it. Between the measured paces of the regular soldiers and the clanging foot-falls of the prisoners, it was a sight full of fun, nay, of grim humour.
The Master-criminal.
Look at that Mussalman from Sindh. He is the super- dacoit. Behold him, stern of face with a jungle of thick hair crowning his head and hanging down his neck. He wears thick and pointed moustaches and a beard to match them. He rolls his protuberant eyes all around him. He flaunts his prisoner’s garb, and wears the chains of his shackles like a girdle round his waist, as if he was decked out for a Kingship. He does it all nonchalantly. He has put his bedding under the arm-pit. He is calling out some one uproariously. He laughs and sports and walks along as if he was a victor returning home in triumph. The wardens say of him that it is his third turn to go to the Andamans. He was twice there before, each time sentenced to hard labour and transportation. And now he is transported for life. He boasts and brags that he had worked there as a Jamadar, and that he was a terror to other prisoners in that colony. As an instance he tells, so the wardens report to me, that in a fit of rage he knocked down a young fellow with the bludgeoning blow ofhis stick; The blow had broken the skull and the victim had expired the day following. The dacoit-Jamadar had felled the lad for being too intimate with his enemy. And he had taken no permission from the Jamadar to talk to him. The Jamadar had reported that the boy had fallen from the edge of an embankment where he was detailed for duty; hence the accident and the death. And he had escaped scot-free! The new recruits to crime he flabbergasted by telling that all the Officers in the gaol at the Andamans were his friends. His return there meant his sure reinstatement in the old post. In support he referred to them as this and that and the other Mr. So and So. So much did he impress the youngsters in the party by this tall talk, that, ever after, they attended upon him as his minions and propitiated him by flattery and service. Of course, the youngsters did this to save themselves from shame, and from the rigours of their punishment in the horrible prison to which they were being transported. The party on its way to Thana was regaled with plantains, coconuts, sweets and money-gifts by the passers-by on the route. These young recruits passed on the money to their future Jamadar, and champooed his feet on the way. He, on his side, promised them cushy jobs, with the influence he had with Mr. Diggin or Mr. Montford. So he spun yarns and thoroughly enjoyed himself. The gullibles in the party had to pay the price.
This One Stabbed His Sister
Observe in the same gang this boy who is yet in his teens- not more than nineteen at the most. What did he do to deserve the company of that master-criminal-the dacoit we have described above? Well, one day he kicked his sister for abusing him as she found him in the company of moral rakes- those who indulged in bhang and took to evil ways. He killed her under the intoxication of that narcotic. He stabbed her in that frenzy and she died. Now he walks in that line bent under the heavy load he carried on his head. He limps for the heavy weight that binds his feet. He cannot bear the shackles on his feet and the load on his head. And he fears that once in that prison beyond the seas, he can never more see his kith and kin, his land of birth and his intimates at home. Between these two extremes-the dacoit at the one end and this boy at the other-one saw in this procession a variety of fierceness, shame- lessness and cruelty. Behold this rank and file marching on-one by one, one after another- with their chains ringing to rhythm. It was a hideous sight to see. Indeed, it was a spectacle that none looked on without humiliation and disgust.
At last the procession passed through the main gate. The gaoler came forth to inspect it. The news ofhis arrival on the scene made the onlookers run helter-skelter. Each of them escaped as he could, and pretended to resume his work. The wardens on the scene cried out, “No more noise, get on with your work.” As if they were unaware of what was happening only a minute before! As if they themselves had not shared the sight and the fun with those whom they now presumed to reprimand! As if everything then was being carried out according to law and discipline!
A Kindly Officer
On the following day, I was ushered into the presence of a Committee which was to examine me. It was to say if I was fit in body and mind, by age and several other things, to be transported to the Andamans. A kindly Officer said to me at the time, “If you would really not go there, I shall try my very best, use all my influence, to keep you here. I shall not fail you.” I said to him, “I am very grateful to you for your kind wishes. But it is not in the power of the Government of Bombay to keep me back in India. And I would not trouble you and you need not trouble yourself where we know we are helpless.” I was then examined by the Committee. The Officer was present at the examination. I had high fever; nevertheless, I was weighed and the board reported that I was fit to be carried over. And I was ordered to proceed to the Andamans. I took my bedding under the arm-pit, I carried my utensils in my hand, and I walked on to the place reserved for the chalan. I crossed the threshold and entered the eastern wing of the old fortification. This was the threshold of my entry into the Andamans. India lost me and I lost India. I was definitely bound for the Andamans.