While climbing up to my cell in the Byculla prison I felt that I had to go one step higher in solitariness and dejection. For the cell here was more gloomy and far lonelier than the one I had occupied at Dongri. At Dongri I had no other person near about me, but the noise of the outer world fell upon my ears. I had, besides, a book or two to read, and some sundry articles about me. Here everything of that kind was gone. No noise was heard here of the humming world without. Not a soul moved here, and articles of daily use were not here, so that I had no companionship here of any kind whatsoever. For want of these, I felt here completely isolated in mind and body and hence more lonely and deserted than ever. I surveyed my room. There was nothing in it to see and inspect. I paced up and down. What must be the condition of my fellow-conspirators and of the revolutionary society we had formed? What plan must we work out for its future? - These thoughts occupied my mind at the moment.
The evening meal was served. A mind tossed on the stormy ocean of politics and full of conflicting thoughts on the subject found some relief in other kind of occupation. After the meals I cleaned my pots and washed them. I then came up to the door and stood behind its bars. The evening came to pass into night with its philosophic calm. The same day and evening and its thoughts ’too deep for tears’ have formed the theme of the second part of my poem - Saptarshi.
I submitted two petitions to-day to the authorities concerned. In one of them I had asked the Government to allow me the quantity of milk given me in the jail at Dongri. The stopping of it gave me pain in the stomach, as I had to eat my bread dry in the prison at Byculla. In the second I had requested the authorities to permit me the use of my books, one at least out of them, which they had taken away from me at Dongri. If none of them was to be made available to me for reading here, I should at least be permitted here to read the English Bible, I added. The answer to these was-“No milk, shall see about the Bible.”
Some days passed and I got a copy of the Bible. For a good long time now I had read nothing. Hence I opened the Bible so soon as I had it in my hands. The warder, thereupon, warned me that I was not to read during the day and in working hours. It was not to be kept in the cell; he would, give it to me for two hours after the day’s work was over. I handed back the book to the warden and resumed my work. As usual I composed my verses to keep company with the work my hands were plying. At last the day went down and the Bible came back to me.
The life of Jesus Christ and his Sermon on the Mount had always appealed to me, and I had cherished them both with deep reverence. In France, I had read the New Testament with close attention. I used to read it daily and to meditate upon the text. My verses on Guru Govind Singh had now been finished. Saptarshi was almost drawing to its close. I had not sufficient historical material with me to continue the former and I had no fresh subject in my mind to compose into verse. The life of Jesus Christ suggested itself to me, at this juncture, as a proper theme to weave into a song. The setting for it was furnished by me in the history of the Jews which I had studied with interest and appreciation when I was reading the Old Testament, especially in relation with the bitter struggle ofthe nation and its heroes for emancipation from the thraldom into which it had passed in its unfortunate history. Their helplessness and anguish and their efforts to set the race free had struck a sympathetic chord in my heart at the time……
But why do they not despatch me at once to the Andamans? If a prisoner bound for the Andamans were not sent there within six months from the time that he had begun to run his sentence, the period outside, I had heard, was not to be counted in the sentence itself. Further, I had read in the Andaman Regulations that within six months from the time he had spent in the Andaman jail, the prisoner was set free on the island itself to do the work he liked, and If he knew the three ‘R’s, he was given work to supervise over a batch of hundred prisoners, or some similar light and lucrative job to follow it. If there was any truth in what I had heard and read on the subject, then life there was anyway better than the life I was leading here. At least in the Andamans, under those conditions, I could sit on the sea-beach and watch the waves rolling at my feet. I could inhale draughts of fresh air, I could mingle in the crowd, and make contacts with the people. I could then do some work for enlightening the people and be of use to them in several other ways. Ten years more, and I could take my family there and set up a house for myself. Life for me would not then be so hard to endure. In this vein of thought, I suddenly remembered those who had suffered for me and had been sentenced for ten or fifteen years of hard labour. What of them? I thought. Are they not doomed to spend their lives in dark cells! Some of them were my friends from childhood; others my trusted colleagues; others, again, were my staunch followers. Most of them looked up to me, loved me and adored me. And I could do nothing for them or for their bereaved families! These calamities had befallen them on my account; they had suffered for me. Right or wrong, they had a clear grievance against me. Out of many such, I recalled those who had old parents to look after. Fate had taken from these parents the staff of their lives. For two out of them and their parents again, I felt deeply grieved. And last, what of that friend of mine, a hero indeed, who had suffered hardships that one could not bear narrating? He had not breathed a word of reproach against me for all that he had endured so bravely. And those young men, again, - O, it made my heart too full, to remember them all. What were my sorrows, what were my trials compared to these? I must forget mine in theirs. Again, the mind would recoil from these musings. Have I lingered behind? It would ask me. Have I not borne the brunt and faced the music? Why then should I brood over the inevitable and be lost in grief? My work was their work. And we must be all burden-bearers and burden-sharers. And the worst to bear was yet to come. It was but the beginning……… The end? Who knows of it, and who dared forecast it?
Long before this I had submitted an appeal in which I prayed that the sentences passed upon me should run concurrently. Among the reasons I had given to support my plea, I had quoted relevant sections of the Penal Code which had laid it down that a life- sentence meant a period in a man’s life which was the period of his active work. In England, it was reckoned, at the longest, to be no more than fourteen years. In India, commensurate with the offence, it could not extend beyond twenty-five years. Here I was sentenced to run a full period of fifty years’ hard labour. According to the Penal Code then and its interpretation of what constituted a life- sentence, I must take two lives to finish up my sentence, if it were to run consecutively. That was, on the face of it, ridiculous. If I were to survive these fifty years across the seas in the Andaman islands, it would really mean, my rebirth……. being dead once, and being born again legally speaking to put through my second sentence of twenty-five years. And what a horrible death-in-life it was to endure the first twenty-five years in the prison-house of the Andamans! So I appealed to them that the two sentences passed upon me should be made to run concurrently. The year of my discharge should not be I960 but twenty-five years earlier. That would save them the ridicule of the step they had taken.
I got to-day a communication from the Government saying that the decision of the Court that my two sentences shall run consecutively was final and the Government saw no reason to alter it. A gentleman had come to me personally to report the contents of the communique. Adopting
its technical language he remarked jocularly, “My dear Savarkar, the Government had, at last, decided that you were to run your first life-sentence first, and your second life-sentence after it, that is, you have to take a second life to run it full.” To which I replied in the same vein, “Yes, indeed, but I have, at least, the consolation that for this purpose it has subscribed to the Hindu doctrine of re-birth, and had disowned the Christian doctrine of resurrection.”
The dinner so early to day? How was it? The prison meant the strictest regimentation. Everything was to happen there punctually upon the hour. Not a minute too early, not a minute too late, even if a prisoner were at the door of death itself. If the prisoner were to starve and die, none could give him a morsel to eat before the prescribed hour. Death, if it so chose, may wait for its victim, the dinner shall not wait upon death. How can I account, then, for its arrival earlier? Yes, it may be the shadow of some coming event. The European Officer in duty upon me - I looked at him with expectant eyes. He pretended to push his hat backwards, and taking his hand behind it, waved it twice. It was a sign to me that I was to be removed from here to some far-off place.
I finished my dinner. The verses that I had scrawled on the prison-wall with the help of a pointed stone, I read rapidly, and treasured them up in my memory. I rubbed off the scored lines as hurriedly as I had read them. I did not desire to leave any trace of them behind me. Hardly had I finished the job, when the Havildar at the door called out “Come away”. He opened the door and let me out. The gaoler handed me over to the European sergeant as if I was some goods or chattel to carry over. Motor, station, railway, and station once again! That was all I knew of it. The station where they got me down was Thana. And my destination from there was to be the gaol at Thana.