The Andamans
The group of islands, including the Andamans and the Nicobars, constitute a link not only with the past history of India but also with her development in the world of tomorrow. As such no Indian can afford to be ignorant about this group of islands. India of today is bound to have cultural contacts with other parts of the world; and the Andamans are a part of it that she is bound to influence.
This group of islands is six hundred miles distant from the city of Calcutta, and spreads like a long range in the Bay of Bengal. It is not an unbroken range of land. The islands are dotted and scattered along the entire area of the Bay interspersed with the waters of the sea flowing between them. Of this group the Andamans constitute the largest range. In the map you will notice the group divided into three parts- the northern, the southern, and the middle or the centre. It has the shape of an elongated circle- of an ovum or an egg. Hence its name- the Andamans. Some have traced the origin of that name to Hanuman, the monkey-god of the Ramayana. But there is no reason to believe in its authenticity. The North Andamans is 5I miles in length; the middle portion is 59 miles; and the southern part of it is 49 miles. The island of Rutland has the length of II miles. The whole is known as the Greater Andaman. At the top of its southern territory there is a portion of land known as the lesser Andaman with an area of 30 by I7 miles. This last is a long stretch of dense forest which remains uncolonised to this day. The forest is so dense that the rays of the Sun cannot penetrate it during the best part of the day. It rises sheer from the sea-beach into a height of mountain wall that protects it on the rear, and has in the mid-area dark, thick jungles yet untrodden by the feet of civillised man. The forest officers of the place have, however, succeeded, at tremendous cost and labour, in making a survey of this portion and marked the spots and the trees in it which they are now to indicate on the chart of these islands. The highest mountain peak in this range is three thousand feet above the sea- level; and the point is known as Sandal Mount. There are no big rivers crossing the forest; only streams and rivulets trickle down from the mountain into the valley below.
The hot-bed of Malaria
As the place is full of jungles, rainfall there is continuous throughout the year. Even in autumn it rains a drizzle. But, in between, the sun glares fiercely overhead. In the part ofthe forest, where spaces of the jungle happen to be cleared for cultivation and residence and gardens of coconut trees are found planted, the climate and the seasons have changed to conform to the tropical parts of our own country. The main seasons, however, are the summer season and the rainy season, with winter only peeping in to disappear. The sea not only engirdles the island group on all sides of it, but rushes between the range so as to cover and divide it into several portions of two islands each. The islands have greater length than breadth, and are thus full of creeks and marshy places. The dry leaves of the jungle trees accumulate in these watery marshes. They lie upon them in thick layers and become breeding places for malaria, all over the area. In addition to malarial mosquitoes, the jungle is full of a variety of flies which make the spot a nuisance to its stray inhabitants. The flies hum and spread over the place in thick swarms, and cover it with their regular network. The big ones stand up on their wiry and long legs and swing in the air to the humming tune. They appear to the onlooker, as they swing, like a black long line, and one wonders whether it is one big fly or a continuous row of them.
Leeches and Serpents
Besides the flies that are carriers of malaria all over the region, there is a pest of leeches that are found in this part, here, there and everywhere. In mud, on leaves and underneath the layers of dry leaves, they lie in thick masses, as they are also found hanging on trees, clinging to their branches, and stuck to their foliage. In the hot sun they go into their hiding; with rain drizzling, they emerge on the top. The smell of human flesh is a joy to them, and they fall from trees and leaves like a shower of continual rain-drops. They stick to the soles of your feet; they stick fast to your calves and thighs; and they suck blood from wherever they glue themselves. The hardened badmashes, the most unashamed criminals, who defy the worst punishment in jail, quake and shiver when they are sent out into this forest to cut and clear the jungle. It is the fear of the leeches that makes them quail. When they return from their work at sunset, one finds their bodies bathed in blood. For leeches have pierced them; and through the holes that they have bored into their bodies, jets of blood are found flowing. And there are not one or two of these that invade them thus. They come in swarms. While one catches them in handfuls and throws them off his body, leeches drop down upon him in a heap from trees above his head, or crawl up his feet from the earth below him. From all sides they stick to his body like limpets and suck his blood all right.
This jungle contains a species of serpents only less hurtful than the leeches. But their bite is fatal to the life of man. This species is one foot in length and an inch or more in thickness. They are so venomous, that a man bitten by them is struck down with paralysis, and the pangs that they give are simply unbearable. The ordinary variety of serpents is not to be found here. There is, here and there, a kind known as the viper which is extremely poisonous, and there is an occasional specimen of the python. Uninhabited by man, the species has grown into an enormous number. That they devour one another, is the only control upon their abnormal growth. Tigers, lions, bears and other carnivorous animals are not here. Now and then you come across a wild boar. There are no Indian birds in this jungle. The British Government has tried recently to import and naturalise in these parts the cuckoo, the parrot, the peacock, the squirrel, the baj and the maina. It has even introduced here the ubiquitous crow. They have brought here the deer, the dog, the jackal, and other tamed animals. Hence, today, the jungle resounds with the sound of Indian birds and beasts.
The wonders of the sea, in this part of the world, are as boundless as those of the jungle. Conches, shells and hailstones, of variegated shapes and colours, convoluted and lined, strew its sandy beach in overwhelming proportion. The Creator here proves himself a wonderful artist and painter. His handiwork is simply marvellous. Who can describe its beauty and grandeur? The shells and conches are arraved within and without with lines of shaded colour that excel the beauty of the rainbow. If a human artist were to transfer to his canvass a fraction of this glorious display in line and colour, he would make himself immortal. He will furnish forth a specimen of art worthy to find its place in any museum of the world. Nature, as it were, is behaving like a prodigal in lavishing her plenty, in minerals, stones, reptiles and other creatures, on the foreshore of this bell of sea round the islands. The procession of as emperor goes along the road of a busy thorough-fare, and leaves the whole path behind him strewn with flowers of gold and pearl, which his admirers shower upon him in the passage. So do the conches, shells and hailstones lie here like sprays of colour thrown off the brush of a master artist. Fishes, crocodiles, alligators and sea-snakes rise and fall on the sea-shore with the ebb and tide of its rolling billows. Of how many shapes are they indeed! Some with a sword- like pointed tail, ready to cut our feet and flesh with its lash; others with the mouth of a horse; others, again, with tails that flash with the charge of electricity; others having human faces;-an endless variety of them which only a few travel lers in these regions have enumerated and described in their works. Many and varied are these creatures to be seen rolling on the sea-beach or sorting on its waves in the vicinity of these islands.
Andaman and Hindustan
A reference to this range of islands is found in the works of Marco tPoloandMcolo. asalso in the earlier writings of Arabian and Burapean-travellers. But India must have had contact with them far earlier than this There are allusions in India’s ancient history to sea-voyages dram Magadha kingdom in the north to Ceylon in the south. Similarly the Andhras, the Tamils and other peoples in the south had carried invasion into the heart of Burma, Siam, Pegu and Java, as we know from their ancient history. The conclusion cannot, therefore, be escaped that the Indian travellers of those days had some personal knowledge of those islands. The specific mention of their names is found in the annals of the Pandya kings, and in the description of a naval war in the 11th century A. D. The sea-faring monarch of this dynasty invaded and conquered Pegu; and while returning home with his naval forces, he landed on the Andaman and the Nicobar islands to plant his flag and establish his rule over these regions. This account finds its mention in the contemporary records of that monarch’s rule. However, we do not find in these islands today any traces or landmarks of these visitors either as travellers or conquerors. An Officer had told me, while I was in the prison of that place, that excavations in these parts had discovered relics of ancient palaces. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of that report, and I have had no time since then to investigate personally into that question. So much, however, is beyond dispute that Indians knew something of these islands and that they ruled and stayed on them for some time in their past history.
The condition of these islands
However that may be, it made no change whatever in the life of the aborigines of that place. As the natural condition of these islands shows no traces of the agricultural and other cultivation of the soil by its early colonists, so the life of its natives reveals no effect of the cultural influence of India upon it, either in the field of religion or in intellectual and moral life.
The Andamans is a small island engirdled by the sea. It demanded a long and continued influence of India to reclaim it for civilisation and progress, from its wild and savage environment. The wilderness of nature and the wildness of man could only be conquered by permanent impression in that soil of civilised life, with all the accompaniments necessary for the stabilisation of suci a life. As soon as the contact and influence are withdrawn, the island relapses into its state of barbarism. And this law holds . oat only for the natives of the soil, but also for others who have to dwell there, for some reason or another, for a good long time. In the Great War of 1914-18, steamers could not ply between India and the Andamans for four months at a stretch; and provisions of all kinds were entirely cut off during the period. The result was that the irihabitantsof this island had to go without clothing: had to feed on flesh for want of cereals and rice; and agriculture perished for vant of necessary implements and seeds. The suspension of civilised life took fhe island back to fifty years. Imagine then how the Hindu colonists of that island, in its remote past must have suffered a setback for want ofany communication with the outside world. In those days, crossing the seas was regarded as a sacrilege. No wonder if the civilised Hindus themselves had turned into savages during the period that they had dwelt among them, in order to civilise them. Having lost all touch with their own countrymen, they must have either withered away, or been absorbed in the people with whom they had come to stay.
The aborigines in the Andamans today resemble in life and habits similar aboriginal tribes in other parts of the world. The groups of islands round Java contain savages who look like monkeys. One or two savages from the Nicobars, brought here as prisoners, had a three-inches long bone, at the lower end of the spinal cord. They found it impossible to sit comfortably in a chair. The doctor of the place drew my attention to them. That bone had no hair on it and no tuft of hair at the end of it. Their faces and chins exactly resembled those of the monkey. Such savages, with the tail and appearance of a monkey, are occasionally to be seen even in the Andamans. The only difference between them and their originate is the latter’s want of speech and the former’s use of some kind of language. The tribe of savages in the Andamans known as Javra, have men and women from four to four and a half feet tall. They have a coal-black complexion, hard, short hair standing on their skulls, which they tie in tufts on the top of their heads, like the Negroes of Africa. They have no hair on their chin and upper lips; they move about stark naked; and wear not a rag upon their person. They besmear their bodies with red earth, like Some Sadhus in India, and thus satisfy their lack of clothing. The women-folk, the most ostentatious of them, wear as a piece of additional ornament a leaf round their waist. The Javras live a kind of austere und simple life of which the ascetic, scorning every kind of pleasure n this world as sin. vet only may dream to realise. They are primitives. remote from any temptation natural to civilised and human existence. They know no match-boxes, no clothes, no bullock-carts, much less, therefore, do they know vicious habits of railways, ocean-liners, aeroplanes and mills. They know no chairs to sit on, and no shoes to wear; no
house to live in and no art of agriculture either. They do not cook their food and use no machine, neither the Charakha, nor the spinning wheel. Civilisation and its accompaniments, which are considered by a certain school of devotees as the enemy of plain living and high thinking and a clanger to mankind, the Javras know not and desire not. They are not only strangers to it, but they dislike it. The simplest and the most ascetic among us have, at least, the need of a loin-cloth round their body. But the Javra not only does not wear it, but is not even tempted to wear it. Are they, therefore, contented and happy? By no means. They cultivate no soil; hold no plough and use no bank-notes. But for a fish in a creek, or a little space in it that he may call his own, he will fight like any other human being; he will jealously guard it; and be full of anxiety lest he might lose it. Not even the Kaiser of Germany, or the Czar of Russia will, as jealously, guard his possessions, as the Javra will guard his own. The Javra has to struggle for his edibles every day of his life, - which are roots underground, fruits on the top of trees, fish in the waters, and flesh of the hunted animal on earth. He works and fights for it as hard as a civilised man fights hard for his daily subsistence. He has to hunt and angle; pluck and dig, as much as we have to plough the soil, sow the seed, and reap the corn. He has to depend upon chance more than we have to depend on it, for his daily subsistence.
A hail-shower of arrows
There is another tribe in these parts as savage as the Javras. The men of this tribe are taller than the Javras, and, in some respects, more progressive than they. Perhaps, this tribe is a cross-breed between the early colonists and the aborigines of the place. The Javras are monogamous and know the use of the bow and arrow to perfection. The bow they use is six feet in length. They are fine shots with the bow. With the help ofthis weapon they have still maintained their freedom. Of course, they cannot hold their own against the rifle and the aeroplane. Even then, they are still free: and the Englishman has failed to conquer them. The Javras come out from the forest, lie in ambush, and attack Government camps or the policeman’s cabins, or stray prisoners. They are, of course, driven back to their haunts in the dark recesses ofthe forest, but the Government forces do not pursue them further, for it is so very dangerous to do so. It is not so easy to beat and conquer a brave people like the Javras, to stand the hail-shower of their arrows, as it is to conquer and subdue a province of India. That question is not urgent at the present moment; and the Javras roam about unmolested in these jungles. They settle in batches, in the empty spaces of their jungles, and they lead a life as their ancestors had lived it centuries ago. They go about naked; they hunt after wild boars; they eat raw flesh; they worship ghosts and dead bodies; and they enjoy the life that they live. If one were to denounce them to their face that they are barbarious, the eldest ofthe tribe will not scruple to flay the person alive on the spot, and consume his flesh as his choicest morsel of food.
Cannibals
For the Javras are still cannibals. Daring European travellers have penetrated into these parts, have made friends with the Javras, and left behind them interesting records of their dialect and their manners and customs. Some of the prisoners in the Andamans have succeeded in making themselves intimate with these cannibals, and have enjoyed hospitality at their hands. They have returned alive to tell us about them. The story is conclusive on one point and in favour ofthe Javras. They never kill those who surrender themselves to them. However, they regard British Officers and civilised men as their natural enemies, and, coming out, of their jungles to
pry, they kill them if they catch them. They eat man raw, or roast him by hanging his body on the fire, and thus devour him. They start out for hunting with the dawn of day. Every one carries his bow and arrow across his shoulders. The women go out for fishing and catching small game. The tribe usually settles under one roof. The big game belongs to all. They share it all in common. The fruit and the honey each one keeps for himself. At sunset they light fire and keep the big game hanging on it. The roasted part is cut into pieces and ail make a common meal on it. Occasionally, after the meal, they indulge in a common dance: males and females mingle and dance together. They appoint a king to rule them and they hold him in high reverence. After the dance, pell-mell and stark-naked, they sleep in a circle around the fire that they kindle at sunset.
Some runaways from our prison tell us that when they treated the Javras to some preparation of vegetables which was the product of their own cultivation, the latter were wonderstruck by it. When any-one dies among them, his dead body is kept hanging on a tree for some days. Then they pelt it with stones and drop it down. Nobody knows how they dispose it off subsequently. Nothing is yet known about their religious beliefs and practices. Yet, they fear dead bodies; are afraid of ghosts; and fear is the prime element in their faith and worship. Beyond that stage they seem to know nothing of God and Religion. One of their tribes, many years back, had gone over to the British and had sought their shelter and protection. The members of that tribe have incurred the hatred of the aborigines as much as any civilised man. Though the Javras pass their lives in seclusion, and in isolation from the rest of the world, country liquor and foreign brandy have begun, slowly but surely, to penetrate their hearths and homes.
Their Occupation
The Javras that made friends with the British Officers in the Andamans, have learnt some kind of trade and business as a result of their contact with the outside world. They gather beautiful conches and shells and other stones on the sea-shore, and bring them to English Officers in their cabins. They also sell these articles in exchange for glass toys and trinkets, sugar and tobacco. They stay for a while in the adjoining chawls built for that purpose, and again return and disappear in the dark regions of the dense forest that is their home, Occasionally, they also sell honey. The Government collects all these things from them for export to foreign countries. The conches polished and set in silver or gold fetch a fancy price in the markets of Europe. These Javras, as a result of their contact with the Europeans, are domesticated enough to put a piece of cloth round their loins. And their women cover their parts with a single big leaf or with a garland of leaves round their waists. Their contact with the settlers has produced a generation which is the hybrid of two races. The Javra women are found to cohabit with soldiers and other Europeans in the settlement and their children show a distinct mark of this fusion in their white complexion and European features. The Hindus in that settlement have also taken to wife the Javra women, and the children bom of that union are fairer in complexion than their parents. These children, when they grow into young men and women, are given a sort of education wh ich finds employment for them in Government service. A woman or two have turned nurses, and become governesses, in private families. The wife of the Chief Commissioner of the Andamans had for her companion in the family, one of the trained Javra women.
The modem history of the Andamans begins somewhere from 1766 A. D. Prior to that date, convicts from India were sent to Singapore, Penang, Malacca and Tenasserim islands to serve their term of transportation. Engineer Colebrooke and Captain Blair were the two Englishmen who, in 1766, tried to turn the Andamans into a regular settlement. Before that time many a British boat foundered and was stranded on the shore of these islands. We can still read the
horrible accounts of these mishaps. When Captain Blair selected this spot for settlement, its climate and temperature were altogether detrimental to the health of settlers in that place. The first convicts brought to settle there perished almost to a man. Port Blair, the present harbour of the Andaman islands, derives its name from its early founder, no other than Captain Blair himself. The captives in the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58, soldiers to be counted in their thousands, were also sentenced and despatched to this place to serve their term of imprisonment. And this was the beginning of settlement in the Andamans. When I was in the prison of the Andamans, an did man who was one of the surviving convicts of the place and captives in the Indian Mutiny, sent me a message of congratulation for my incarceration in this prison for an attempt to overthrow the Raj similar to the one-they had planned in their day I heard, later on, that the old convict had been released after serving sixty years of transportation, on the occasion of a durbar or some similar celebration. The settlement began with imprisonment, in this place, of soldiers involved in the Indian Mutiny of I857. And here I am today to end it as a convict in the conspiracy case of 1907-08. What a strange coincidence this! Some persons involved in the conspiracy and revolt of Wasudev Balwant Phadke were also sent to serve their imprisonment in the Andamans. One or two of them happened to be discharged from this place about the time or some time after I had reached the settlement. Some Hindu culprits involved in the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1893 had also been here, as I was told. The Manipur Conspiracy Case had contributed its quota to this prison. And members of the Manipur Royal Family had been put on parole, and lived their lives in a place on the settlement, set apart for that purpose. Such is the story of these islands since they were selected for the imprisonment of political prisoners or prisoners involved in similar trials. Hundreds of them, before me, had passed their lives under hard labour in the jail of the Andaman island. But none had so- far recorded the story of their imprisonment as I am led to do it now. None had tried so far to stamp it on the heart of India. It is, indeed, a peculiar conjunction of events that impels me to narrate that tale. Thousands of Indians in that place have their claim for consideration, sympathy and duty on the whole of India. They belong to no one province and owe allegiance to Mother India alone, in spite of their difference in caste and creed, in party and other persuasion. The fact is being realised today, however dimly, more than at any time in India’s previous history. It is principally the political prisoners of India who have brought this home to the heart of her people.
Port Blair
Port Blair is the name of the harbour and the main island of this settlement. The Andamans contain, by far and large, a collection of Burmese and Indian prisoners. As such, during the last sixty or seventy years its population happens to be mainly composed of Indians. In the Nicobar Islands, on the other hand, the Burmese and the Malayans form their naturalised and settled population.
These islands, therefore, are lost today to Indian culture and to contact with Hindu Society. The Andamans are having less and less of Indian prisoners now. So there is every fear of their being cut off from contact with India, and the settlement itself being denuded of its Indian population. I, therefore, think it to be my duty to write a few words here on this question in order to draw the attention of the Indian public to a matter of such vital importance. I take upon myself all the blame of having neglected it before.
So soon as the number of Indian prisoners being sent to the Andamans had begun to decline, the Officers of the place planned to divide the whole island into plots, and to put out for sale, the right of Government plantation in coconut and betel-nut trees, to intending purchasers.
They intended by this ruse to purchase the whole settlement for themselves and turn it out into a personal estate. As a result the best part of this land with its gardens and plantations is gradually passing into the hands of European and Anglo-Indian settlers on the island. There are almost no Indian merchants in the Andamans rich enough to bid for the purchase of these estates. The merchants in India know nothing about the deal. So the land is going cheap to the settlers mentioned above, with the result that the islands, before long, will be completely lost to India. Such of the local merchants as have purchased a few of these plots and plantations are without resource in proper men from India to develop them, and to enrich themselves with the wealth they contain. A golden opportunity for possessing these lands and developing them as fruitful economic projects is being thus denied to India. The jungles also, out here, are being let out on cheap rent for clearing and colonisation. And Christian missionaries and their societies are taking full advantage of this facility. They have prepared a scheme to transplant Santa! and other tribes in India to the Andamans, convert them to Christianity, and settle them in vast colonies on the jungles made available to them for clearing, cutting and exploitation. No Indian or Hindu merchant ever thinks of utilising this opportunity. None of them has even so much as paid attention to the immense possibilities of such a project.
Go and colonise
When the Andamans were an entirely prison settlement, others found it difficult to open it for trade and business. But now this difficulty will not arise. Hence it is up to the merchants in India to purchase land and plantations in that part of the world, and they should not fail to turn this opportunity to advantage. Full information about it cannot be given here for obvious reasons. They should write to the Chief Commissioner of Andamans for the information they need. It is profitable by far to purchase acres of land in the Andamans that are being sold for a song, than to enter into endless litigation forover a span-worth of land in Indian courts. That is a policy of mass ignorance and perversity, not unlike that of the frogs in the pond. They may exclaim, “Oh, we are fighting for our ancestral property.” But these foolish and stay-at-home persons should remember that it is a foolish and idle boast to swear by our ancestral inheritance; it is credible to be proud of what we have earned by our own efforts. The latter win the blessing of their God and their country as well. God and the country smile on those who earn by the sweat of their brow. The Indian legislatures discussed the problem of the Andamans only so long as Indian prisoners were being deported to that place. But our councillors seem to have forgotten the Andamans with the discontinuance of that practice. It is regrettable that they should do so. For there are yet in the Andamans ten thousand people who are Indians in blood and religion. Besides this, four generations of Indian political prisoners have sacrificed their lives, and the ashes of some of these have mixed with the soil of that country. The islands which have thus witnessed the hardships of so many Indians cannot be considered as negligible. Apart from these patriotic and political considerations, the soil is rich in natural products like tea, rubber, sugarcane, coconut and betel-nut, and is undergoing rapid development in the shape of tea plantations, rubber cultivation, the growth of sugarcane and gardens of coconut trees and betel-nut trees. And it admits of still more intensive and wider cultivation and development. Shall India have no share in this process? Should the foreign European settler be allowed to have the monopoly of it? During the last fifty years, only a small portion of these islands has been brought under cultivation. Its vast jungles still remain to be cut, cleared and explored for human habitation. The jungles are capable of giving us twice the yield that they are giving now. It is up to the members of our central legislature to demand full information on the existing condition and growth, and the future possibilities of these islands, as also about the future plans of the Government as regards their parcelling out the cultivable soil for sale. They must insist on knowing if there is behind these plans a policy of exploiting the islands for the exclusive use and permanent domination of foreign settlers on the soil, and whether they will put the soil out for open sale and advertise it in India. It is also necessary that some members should visit and tour the islands to see their condition firsthand and to ascertain the economic condition of ten thousand of their own countrymen who happen to be its permanent residents. They must become the mouth-piece of those who cannot speak for themselves, and exponents all of India’s interest in these islands. Let a member of the Arya Samaj visit the place to give them proper knowledge of their mother-tongue and religion. The Indians have tried hard that the mother-tongue that their children should learn shall be Hindi, but Urdu is being forced upon them. And the medium of instruction in these schools is Urdu and not Hindi or Hindustani. If preachers, leaders and organisers go there to agitate, organise and educate the Indian population in their own rights, and if officials come to be properly informed and guided in these matters, many things will be set right which are now subject to the policy of drift and let-alonism, or of exploitation and monopoly in favour of those who happen to be its present masters-the men on the spot. In the present chapter I have drawn the pointed attention of the reader to certain outstanding factors of the present situation, other matters, equally vital, being left for consideration in the narrative of the story and in their proper place in the course of that narration.
Indianise the European names
The many divisions of the Andaman Islands are known today by their English names. But the Indians domiciled in those parts use their Indian equivalents in Common parlance. And if an expert were to go into them, he can know for himself how effectively they have converted them into thorough-bred Indian names. For instance, “Shore-point” has become “Suvar Peth”, “Dundas point” is “Danda peth”, so on and so forth. Gokulban, Baratang. Kalatang are some Indian equivalents that are worth noting. New and unknown things are always best known and expressed through the familiar and the well-known. As in knowledge so also in the evolution of language and its expression, the law is well illustrated by the equivalents that we have quoted. Indianisation of foreign words proceeds along natural lines and its spontaneous development takes place as the foreign words pass from lip to lip of the common man.
In every division of this island, barracks are built and a factory is attached to each barrack, where the prisoners are confined and made to work. Thus Phoenix Bay barracks accommodate four hundred prisoners who are skilled artizans in metal work. Iron, brass and tortoise shell are turned into beautiful articles by skilled prisoners in the factory attached to these barracks. Chatham division has a saw mill for sawing planks of trees felled in the surrounding jungles. Kalatang is famous for its tea plantations. The prisoners are so much overworked and sweated on these plantations that they shudder to be detailed there for labour. Cutting down a jungle is a task still more exhausting and arduous than work in these plantations. In the earliest stages of prison-life in the Andamans, it was a practice to set the prisoners free so soon as they had landed on its soil. Later on, they came to be confined in prison-cells and had to undergo hard work under Government control and supervision. The free ones had applied themselves to the cultivation of land, and they grew rice upon it. When they had multiplied from generation to generation, their progeny was designated as ‘free’, to distinguish it from their immediate and
remote prisoner-ancestors. Today these later generations contain some well-educated and decent persons. The last stage was to build a big and self-contained prison-house where prisoners from India could be straightaway confined for a stipulated period and freed or not freed in live their own lives on the island, according to the sweet will of the Officers in charge. The local criminals were also confined in this jail. This prison has come to be known all over the place as Silver Jail or Cellular Jail wherein it was meant that Political prisoners should spend their long term in solitary confinement, and not a sound of their groans and agonies was to reach from it to the world without. But providence had willed it otherwise. And today it is the political prisoner’s cry that is heard resounding on the shoresofIndia.