The First Week in my cell
The Jamadar led me to Chawl No. 7. On the way lay a big reservoir of water. The Jamadar asked me to take my bath there. I had not taken my bath for four or five days. My body was full of sweat and dirt. The sea-voyage had done it. I was delighted with the permission to bathe. But I had no garment to change. The Jamadar gave me a piece of cloth no better than a suspender. I had never entered my bath in that naked condition. What then? Was I not to wear it for bath and for my labour all my life here? The mind revolted, but then said, “Fool! did not a saint like Ramdas use the same apparel? The world knows what you carry within it. From whom are you hiding it now? Has not Milton described it as ‘honour dishonourable’?” There was a sect in Europe which considered it a sin to wear clothes. For Adam and Eve never wore any. Their followers adopted the same mode of life. And they called themselves Adamites. Even today, if not for religion, then for hygiene, colonies of men and women in certain regions of the world go about as nudists except in the cold season. They expose their bodies to sunlight as a matter of health. For, certain doctors in the West condemn the practice of excessive clothing as harmful to a man’s health. In Europe they wear too many clothes for fashion’s sake. They seldom expose their bodies to sunlight. From birth to death they wrap themselves up in clothes; and the health of these people had suffered. So doctors had opined, and the people had followed them. I was thinking all this over while I was donning the strip of cloth that was given to me by the Jamadar. The Jamadar had watched, with delight, the trepidation and shame of many a person here when he was called upon to take a bath in this dress or absence of dress. But he was disappointed in me and, perhaps, he set me down as the most shameless of them all! I went to the tank and was about to dip my pot into it, when the Jamadar cried out, “Not so here, you are
a prisoner, you first stand up; I will say, ’take the water;’ you will then bend down and dip the pot in the reservoir. I will then say, ‘rub your body clean’; then you will clean if with your hands. I will say, have one more’. You will dip your pot for a second round, and so on. The whole bath has to be finished in three pot-fuls of water.” This order of the Pathan Jamadar simply surprised me. I was a resident of Nasik, a place of pilgrimage where hundreds bathed freely on the banks of the Godavari. I was accustomed, however, to the ritual of the bath finished with scanty water, I laughed to myself and finished my bath here in the same mood. That was a pious act done within my sea; this I had to do when I was transported beyond it. One was white and the other was black water! That was all the difference between the two. The priest here was my bearded Jamadar and a Mohomedan ! As I poured the water on my person I felt a strange sensation. I shut my eyes and could see nothing. I felt like burning all over the body. “Was the Jamadar wrong in his recital?” I asked myself. Just then, I happened to gargle my mouth, and, instantly, spewed out the water. Was it salt water I was bathing in? The tongue tasted it as salt. I asked the Jamadar about it. He retorted, “Was ever seawater sweet?” It was then that I realised that I had a sea-bath here. Sweet water is scarce throughout the Andamans. They all use sea-water for bathing, for washing clothes, and for several miscellaneous purposes. And the water is conveyed in pipes and stored in the reservoir for such use.
The whole body had become sticky. The hair had become hard and stiffened. It was better I had not bathed in it. But I thought over again, and realised that it was to be my daily habit in this prison. In London and Paris I had enjoyed the luxury of a Turkish Bath. Should I not enjoy in India the pleasure of the “Andamanish Bath”, by way of change? The expiation of all my sins as a patriot and nationalist could not be done by washing in warm water and with soaps and fragrant oils and under shower-baths. It has to be done in pots of sea-water drawn from the reservoir, with the mantra of the Jamadar priest “Now dip the pot for water”, repeated by him thrice, and no more.
I put on my clothes and walked on till I came in front of a three stored building of stone and mortar- It was solidly barred from top to bottom fvery floor of it had separate rooms equallybarred. The building had no wood-work in it. It was entirely fireproof. It had broad steps reaching up from one floor to another. It was all white-washed and clean without. The stair-case and the symmetry of the rooms gave it the appearance of a big, roomy mansion. And the heart delighted at the sight. “This was then chawl number seven. It was here I was to stay on the top-floor, and in a room all to myself, and barred and bolted from without”, I said to myself. A fine place this, methought, I shall have free and fresh breeze to breathe in. I shall have plenty of light in it. If this tenement had been my own, I would have gone down as a rich man in my society. And for four months in summer I would have used it as a pleasure-resort, with this fine green court-yard around it. If I drive away from my mind the notion that it is a prison after all, I can still be happy in it. Speaking for its use alone, it is true enough that the pleasure or the pain of it, as the Vedantist puts it, arises from the fact that it does or does not belong to me. Let me then be entirely indifferent to the notion of mine and thine, which is the seed of all our miseries in this world, as far as in me lies, I shall try to be indifferent about it, and derive all the joy that I can from it. The building is mine so long as I occupy it. It is a fine building and I pay no rent for it. What if they call it a prison? Let me pass my days in it as happily and as long as I must.
But, then, how long and for how many days? Ah! there is the rub! According to prison regulations I may be free within six months. If the gaoler is particularly harsh to me, then, at the most, within a year. The wardens had told me that three years were the limit here. The Silver Jail knew not a single instance of a prisoner being detained within its portals for more than three years, Hence I concluded that I would be let off after three years. But facing the worst, as
it had been a rule of life with me, I took it for granted that, at the longest, they will confine me in this room for a period of five years. I, therefore, decided to accept the situation, stay in this fine building for five years, and spend the time in composing the epic that I had already planned in the jail at Dongri This I took as the Government order as well as a matter of personal choice.
I was revelling in this play of fancy when I climbed up to the third floor of the building, and stood near the door of my room. The whole of that chawl was emptied of its inmates because I was to come there. There were a hundred and fifty prisoners in that chawl. Only three wardens, the worst of their kind as being taletellers, sinners, men of evil propensities, dare-devils, and, for that reason, in the good books of their Officers, were retained in the whole building as guards on me. The rest of the prisoners who had denounced them were ordered to vacate the place. All three of them were Mussalmans-two Baluchis and one Pathan. All political prisoners had Mussalmans for their wardens. And myself was especially given in their charge. Those who were detailed to keep watch and ward on my room took great pride in that mission. For, thereby, they could boast all over the settlement that they were in the special confidence of their superiors. They were appointed to their place because the Officers wanted through them all the information that they could get about the political prisoners in their charge-their possible machinations and their secret communications. And the Officers could use the wardens as convenient tools to perpetrate any kind of cruelty, to trump up any kind of charge against the prisoners in their charge. They were apt for these nefarious deeds and, being of so much service to them, the Officers usually connived at their gross misdemeanour and their immoral action, if only they held in check their Hindu prisoners and succeeded in terrorising them. A large portion of political prisoners in that Jail being Hindus, and I being among them, these wards were regarded by us as the greatest terror of our lives. It was not unlike the visitation and influence of a malignant deity. We were Hindus and a Hindu warden may be kind towards us. Hence the authorities put upon us Mussalman wardens who reported our movements to them either in an exaggerated form, or invented stories about us and systematically and heartlessly maltreated us to curry favour with their masters. Since the time that the Silver Jail began to be filled with political prisoners, the Hindu wardens had fallen from the favour of their masters, and had, consequently, suffered in their rise and promotion.
Moreover, the Pathans, as a rule, were bigoted Mohomedans, and were especially notorious for their fanatical hatred of the Hindus. The Officers had pampered them to serve their own ends. To persecute the Hindus was natural to them. The result was that they began to harass them all the more and justified their action by reporting fibs against their fellow-prisoners-the Hindu wardens. “Barrie Baba”, as the gaoler was called, would never countenance or entertain any complaint against his own favourites. Consequently, the Pathan wardens had nothing to fear in that quarter. Not only did the Hindu wardens suffer in promotion and disfavour, but the Muslim wardens succeeded more and more in ousting them from their jobs and replacing them by their Pathan brethren. The Pathan always sides with a Pathan. This fact, if it had been a fraternity of good men, would have been a blessing. But here it helped them to connive at the persecution practised by prisoners of their own community against the Hindu prisoners in the jail. For the Baluchi, the Sindhi, and the Pathan prisoners had wardens belonging to their own religion while the Hindu prisoners were systematically denied that favour. So that the Hindus suffered doubly. First, from their fellow-prisoners, the Muslims, and secondly, from their Muslim wardern. Since our admission in that prison, the situation in this respect, had considerably worsened. The Hindu prisoners and the Hindu wardens had a hell of their lives in that place. How these happenings has their inevitable repercussions, the reader will know in the course of this narrative and in its proper place. We have barely referred to this matter here precisely because the reader may grasp their significance later on. The Pathans, the Sindhis and the
Baluchi Muslims, with a few exceptions, were, one and all, cruel and unscrupulous persons, and were full of fanatical hatred for the Hindus.+++(5)+++ Not so the Mussalmans from the Punjab, and less even than they, those of Bengal, Tamil province and Maharashtra. But the fanatical section always belittled and held up to laughter their co-religionists from other parts of India. It twitted them as “half kafirs.” And this constant jibe-compelled them, very often and perhaps inevitably, to follow in the foot-steps of their wicked brethren. That emulation did not help them, however, to ingratiate themselves into the favour of their masters, the European Officers. They were always inclined to favour those who were, according to them, their best servants, that is, tyrants and persecutors of prisoners in their charge.
That was one of the reasons for placing me under the close supervision of the most seasoned of these Pathan wardens. He wore the designation of Jamadar or Petty Officer, that is a warden, who was himself a prisoner, promoted to a higher rank in the settlement. There were three such Jamadars appointed to the task of keeping a close supervision on my movements. The Jamadar who had brought me to my quarters in this chawl, handed me over to these wardens, closed the room, locked it, and went away.
Next morning these wardens presented themselves before my room and announced that the Sahib was coming and I was to stand up. I came to the door, which was nothing but a barred entrance into my room. Mr. Barrie had come up with his European friends. He had acquired a special importance with them since my arrival in this goal. The Europeans in the locality, men and women, were naturally curious to see me and talk to me. And for that purpose they had to bum incense before the demi-god, Mr. Barrie. Mr. Barrie pretended that he was taking them to my room under great risk, and they had to request him, again and again, before he would accede to their importunities. He brought them here under great secrecy, and showed me to them from a distance and, sometimes, allowed them to approach me closer, all the while making a show that he had done them a great favour and that he was indeed anxious how to explain it to his superiors or how to get over the hurdle. With a solemn air he marched them away always ending with the expostulation: “That will do! That will do.” The intending visitors had to go to Mr. Barrie’s bungalow fifteen times over, before he would yield to their cajoling. I know many a European sergeant and his wife and daughter who had to flatter him thus.
The word “Sarkar” made me wake up and stand before the door according to prison regulations. The first thing I could see through the barred entrance was not Mr. Barrie but the protruding part of his nether region-the stomach. For it bulged out defiant of the world, and ran before him, as it were, to display its circumambient rotundity, not dissimilar to the spherical apparatus in the class-room to explain to the school-children the size and shape of mother Earth. Over this circumference, Mr. Barrie had tied his leather-belt. And it marked faithfully the equatorial line on the Earth’s surface.
The Indian Mutiny discussed
Mr. Barrie began his talk with me in the following words:- “They may be telling you that I am your jailor. Is it not?” I only smiled. He added, “And I assure you I am your friend.” The European friends who had accompanied him remained silent. For Mr. Barrie never allowed any-one to talk to me directly, except some like him, and to whom he could not deny that privilege. “I like to converse with an educated man like you. Therefore, I come here, sometimes, without any particular reason to do so. They say that you have written an account of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Am I right in it?” While he was uttering these sentences, I simply listened, with a smile on my lips and an eye upon his countenance. I found out that he had
opened the conversation to sound my mind upon the subject, to press the key and start the music. I was inclined on my side to let him go on and listen, as I felt that the talk may afford me relaxation from the very dull time I had in the solitude of this room. However, I intervened, “I have read a number of books on the Indian Mutiny. That is a-fact.” “Don’t you feel fed up with those monsters of cruelty? Can you put up with their monstrosities? What horrors have they not committed? My father was himself a victim of that Mutiny. He used to tell us that the wicked Nanasaheb had personally tortured English women and put into their mouths XXX. Will you not call them monsters? What else are they?” I asked him if his father was an eye-witness of the scene. He replied, instantly, that a colonel was an eye-witness when such things happened in Lucknow, and he had reported them to his father. “Then, it must be a downright lie, for Nanasaheb was not then at Lucknow. He was in Cawnpore when English men and women were imprisoned at Lucknow.” Pretending not to hear me, Mr. Barrie continued, “A thousand instances like this have happened.” I replied, “Very true, but there are also a thousand canards to keep them company. And as the instance you have quoted has proved to be a hear-say, so it may be with others as well.”
One of the visitors who appeared to be a polite gentleman intervened to remark, “But, on the whole, don’t , you think that Nanasaheb, Tatya Tope and other mutineers like them were selfish men? Will you not recoil from them with contempt?” To him my answer was, “If you desire to discuss the Indian Mutiny with me in this place and when I am a prisoner here, I am ready to do so. You must forget, however, for the time being, that I am standing before my jailor, and concede that I am your equal. Otherwise it will be like shutting up my mouth while you indulge in criticism against my country and its past history in a manner insulting to her. That will be entirely a one -sided affair to which, as gentlemen, you will not subscribe. It will be not only despicable conduct but an act of utter cowardice.” Mr. Barrie said, “By no means, Mr. Savarkar. I have already told you that I have come here as a friend. Discuss the matter freely.”
“Then, I express my opinion without any reservation. I know that you regard me as an extremist. As such you will find my views altogether one-sided and unpalatable. I open this discussion to make you think if they are really so. I have never concealed them and I find no reason to conceal them now. This is purely a question of history and if I am to suffer for my opinion on it, I shall not hide it, for I shall never tolerate any-one distorting the histoiy of my country and misrepresenting the principal characters in it. For to put up with such distortion I regard as timidity and a sin. The British Government had itself appointed a Commission to review a report on the actions of Nanasaheb in this. Mutiny. And the report has completely exonerated him. The charges made against him, in the particular episode you have mentioned, have been found by the Commission to be baseless and exaggerated statements. They were declared to be emanations from the wicked brain of some soldiers in the English camp at the time.”
Who, pray, is not selfish?
“You have described Nanasaheb and Tatya Tope as selfish men.” “Yes, for Nanasaheb wanted back his Raj, and Tatya wanted to pass for a hero”, said the visitor. I replied, “Yes indeed, but is it not true also that Victor Emmanuel wanted to be the King of Italy, that George Washington desired to be the first President of the American Republic, and Garibaldi wished to be a hero? But strictly speaking they all fought for the independence of their own country!” “Then, you also raised the revolt to seek independence”, Mr. Barrie interposed. “That is a different issue altogether. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 does not necessarily justify any revolutionary activity today. Nor are we precluded from any such action on the ground that nothing of that kind had happened in 1857. The inference on either side is not only absurd but foolish as well.” The visitor, it seemed, had read a book or two on Indian Mutiny. He retorted, “Then you mean to say that the slaughter of English women at Cawnpore by the mutineers is a concocted story.” “I have never said that” I answered. “It is a fact and it is a deplorable fact. But the issue is who was responsible for the carnage, and how did it at all happen? The women in that prison-camp were first treated as prisoners of war. And this is proved from the evidence of the survivors, and of those who had independently testified to the fact. I have reproduced that evidence in my work on the subject. When the British army marched on Cawnpore, it set fire to the villages round about Allahabad and kept them burning. And in that fire were destroyed the females of those who had participated in the Indian Revolt. The news inflamed the Indian regiments that had joined the Mutiny. Meanwhile, the English women who had been confined as prisoners of war, had sent secret missives to the army marching on Cawnpore. Their messages happened to be intercepted by soldiers in the Indian Camp. All this had contributed additional fuel to the fire that was already burning, with the result that you describe as the wholesale slaughter of English women by Indian soldiers.
Both are equally guilty or not guilty
If we are to regard these acts as blameworthy, we must blame in an equal measure the excesses of the British army, which were partly responsible for these actions. Do you regard Cromwell’s action in Ireland, the massacre he carried on at Drogheda, as an act of monstrous cruelty? Are you ashamed of it? In times of fierce national crisis and revolution, such things are bound to happen. And however regrettable in themselves the incidents may be, they do not justify the perversion of the motive behind such struggles and revolts. Nanasaheb’s forces may have put to the sword many an English woman without his sanction or knowledge. But what of ten times as many women burnt to death in the campaign of fire and loot that the British army had carried in the villages round about Allahabad? Statues have been erected to the Generals of this army in England. Neile writes in his diary about it, ‘It was my duty to follow this policy of cruelty for the good of my country.’ Cannot the same words be used in defence of excesses perpetrated by the army of mutineers? If at all there is guilt in these actions, both the sides are equally responsible for it, more or less; or we must exonerate them both from such a charge. The visitor said on this, “I grant that the revolt was a War of Independence. I also admit that allegations made by one side against the other in that struggle are mere fabrications. The Indian soldiers may not have committed all the indecent acts that are being attributed to them. But what is the moral that we may derive from it now? What is the lesson we are learning today?”
“That is none of my business. I have discussed the whole position in the spirit of history. I am not going to descant here on its present-day applications. I think I have said enough on the point consistent with my position today. I cannot go into that question further at the present moment.”
“Well, we shall leave it here today. Some other time we may open it again,” Mr. Barrie concluded, as if spontaneously, and left the place, after enquiring sympathetically about my health.
An experiment in verse
For two days after, I had no work to do in my cell. I asked for books to read, and I was told that I would get them only after a month or two of observation of my conduct as a prisoner. Not a
soul moved here with whom I could exchange a word. I resumed my originally planned work of composing poems. I continued with
what I had already done elsewhere. But I had no means with me in this place to do the kind of literary work I had intended to complete. It taxed my mind to the utmost to keep it going. For a single date and a single right word, I had to scratch my brain for weeks together. However brilliant the fancy, I had to abandon it for want of material to translate it into beautiful and apt imagery in words. I had to draw exclusively on the stores of my memory for anything I could think or write. For years this was the only capital I could use.
The first secret missive
It was the fourth or the fifth day of my residence here. No other prisoner was let into the whole building from whom I might gather any news. I had just finished my morning meal and I was resting in my room. It was afternoon. Suddenly I heard a stone knocking against the bars of my room. The stone fell on the ground. It was again hurled at me. It came through the bars and fell right in front of the door. I was standing and went forward to see what it was when the warden, who had thrown it at me, directed me to pick it up. He at once disappeared from the scene. I picked it up and found a piece of paper bound up to the stone. It was a missive to me. I opened the note when I heard a hue and cry in the compound below. I got up considerably startled. I came forward and saw my warden calling out the petty officer above him. I at once concluded that it had something to do with the stone. Evidently the Pathan warden must have seen another warden throwing the stone up to me. And he was calling the petty officer either to catch him or to search my room to find out what it was that he had thrown. In a moment the officer was near my door. I could not make up my mind to destroy the missive. For he who had brought it to me at such a great risk must be knowing that it had some important news to convey. But I could not conceal if either, for there was no place to do it. In a minute they will open the lock and if they discover the letter all those implicated in the act were bound to suffer. The warden who had brought it, the man who gave it to him, and myself, its recipient, will all be involved in the crime. I resolved, while I stood in the corner of the room with my face turned to the Jamadar, and yet hiding my body from him, to secrete it on my person where the Jamadar could not find it. I had no other alternative in the matter. I turned it in in a manner that the writing on it might remain clean and intact. The petty officer came in. He questioned me in a high and insolent tone about the letter. He asked me who had picked up the stone. I answered that I knew nothing about it. The Pathan warden at the door was lost in brown study as he feared no danger whatever, when the stone was being hurled at me. The noise of the stone had roused him from his day-dream, and he saw the warden below beckoning on to me. Suspecting something amiss, he raised the cry that had brought the Jamadar to my room. The warden was a Hindu, and anything that could damn him was a gain to the Pathans, for one of them could easily take the place of the dismissed man. That was another reason for all this hullabaloo. The petty officer was also a Mussalman. He searched me through and through. He searched my shorts and my waist-coat. He pressed them all over with his hands. And at last he found nothing. Nor did they discover anything on the Hindu warden. And the matter ended there.
A warning
After they had left the place and after I had assured myself that everything was normal, I took out that paper and read it. The note described to me the situation in that prison, and warned me to be very cautious. Convicts in the Manik Tola Bomb Case in Bengal and three or four editors of Swarajya at Allahabad were all the political prisoners in the jail at that time. The man who had sent that note to me was one of that number and an old Bengali friend of mine. He specially warned me to trust none for the mere reason that he was a political prisoner. He had hinted that some of them had turned into Government spies whose only business was to propitiate the gaoler in order to save themselves from the hard labour of turning the oil-mill, They had not only communicated to him the names of the conspirators who were out, but had started backbiting those who were in. Such men should by no means be trusted, and no confidence should be given to them. That was what the paper conveyed to me.
This division in the Bengali revolutionary camp did not surprise me. For I knew that their leaders’ arrest had dispirited them and the convicts were busy exposing one another and betraying the cause even in the jail at Calcutta. This was, indeed, an unpardonable action and disgraceful apostasy. All the same, it was folly to tar them all with the same brush. There were many among them who still showed high courage and were staunch in their loyalty to the cause. And even those, whose unbearable hardships had made them fail, must be given their due for past service, for sterling patriotism, and for their sincere sacrifice for the side they had taken. None can forget their solid qualities, and, yet, be just to them.
The spies at work
The ring leaders in the Bengal Conspiracy Case who, as convicts, had been transported to the Andamans, found it hard to bear the trials of prison-life and thought, naturally enough, to somehow escape its harrowing experience. Some of them, therefore, conspired to spy on the movements of their colleagues and disciples, and even on me, who had some there but lately and who knew them not. They reported us secretly to the prison authorities. They had no scruples about their doings. They did not hesitate to carry on this nefarious business. But we must remember that they were led on to it by the horrible sufferings, the insults and humiliations, and the physical tortures that they had to endure in this prison. Those, who do not bend or bow under these bludgeonings, have, alone, the right to cast any stone at them; not a Tom, Dick or Harry, who comfortably sits in his arm-chair, and keeps on barking at the world.
I had known similar backslidings among political prisoners and conspirators in Ireland, Russia and Italy, and in similar circumstances of physical pain, mental agony, and moral disgrace. And in some instances the backslidings and apostasy were more disgusting than I had known in my own country. Not only politics but religion also had such examples to show and to hold up to shame. It was, therefore, unwise to brand a community or a province as particularly guilty of that crime. And it was worse still to let oneself be depressed by it.
“Say it out”
Hence I was not shocked by what I had read. On the other hand, I pitied those who had been frightened by it. I may give here a specific instance in point. A prominent Bengali conspirator, who was not more than thirty at the time, used to discourse to his loyal disciples on the Bhagvatgita in order to impress upon them the mortality of the body and the immortality of the soul. He would quote in support the famous text: “No weapon can slay it, no fire can bum it.” The young men who heard him had become fearless of death and were ready to face the worst ordeal for the cause they were championing. But when the leader and fiery writer was himself sentenced to imprisonment in this jail and saw its stonewalls, and had to faint one day under the grinding labour of running the oil- mill, which even two powerful bullocks could not go round easily, then the body avenged itself upon the soul by trampling it underfoot His courage failed him and he could no longer bear the hardships of that labour. Again, it was not a question of a day or two. It was a prolonged agony of a life-time. To refuse to work meant added labour and increased agonies. In this dark despair, life cried hoarse to be spared that labour at any cost. What was the way out of it? Where was the outlet from the enclosing walls of these unbearable calamities? There was only one way and one gate. The way was filth and the gate narrow. That was to report against one’s fellow- conspirators. That board- “Say it out”- was ever hanging on the road and pointing to the gate. And who, do you think, carried tales about this man’s despair to the authorities? A friend and no one else. And that friend again, who had himself desired a similar escape! The matter was reported by the gaoler to the authorities in Calcutta. At last, fine promises were made him in order to trap him completely in the net. A drowning man is known to catch at a straw. So our Bengali writer and preacher went in jail and fell. To enact the drama, the gaoler one day brought in that jai I the highest officer of the island. The political prisoners were busy going round the mill. The Officer came to the entrance of this man’s cell. The man shouted, “a petition, Sir.” The Officer echoed, “What do you want?” He proceeded a few paces, returned and awaited the prisoner. The latter knelt, folded his hands, and prayed: “Do what you will, Sir, but free me from these tortures; that is all I beg of you.” The Officer replied: “You may report to the goaler.” The curtain was rung down on the scene, and the drama ended.
The betrayal
After the Officer had gone, the gaoler sent him ink and paper as pre-arranged. The man started reporting on the Calcutta Conspiracy Case. He gave all the information about it, right or wrong, true or false, as suited his purpose. Naturally, all the other persons involved in the Conspiracy regarded the action as a cruel betrayal. And the man himself had the conscience to feel that he was doing a bad act, though he was too enfeebled in mind to desist from it. He wrote a letter to his friend as follows:- “I can no longer bear the suffering. The only alternative to it is suicide. I attempted it, but dare not attempt it again. You may kill me as you have killed other. betrayers of the cause before this. I will not blame you. I must propitiate the Officer by betraying you. I must give him all possible information in order to save myself from the tortures of the body. I have lost control over my mind.” He sent this strange epistle to his friend and passed the other letter, with the names and information in it, to the jailor.
On the third day he was taken off from the hard labour of turning the mill and given the lighter work of picking oakum. He was neither removed from his cell, nor let off from the prison.
The man had, at least, the honesty of feeling that he was doing a reprehensible act, and of acknowledging the fact. Two of his other partners in the act had parted company with their conscience. These found, in my coming to that prison, an opportunity of their life-time. To report everything about me to the jailor, to invent stories for that purpose when truth had proved of no avail; anyhow to compass the end of ridding themselves of the hardships of the prison-life, though they trembled in the act; to prove false to themselves-all this they achieved without the least compunction of the Soul. So much were they lost to all sense of shame and decency.
It was thus that I was caught between these two inescapable alternatives. I continued my life here on the horns of a dilemma. Whosoever reported against me at once became the favourite of the jailor, and got some facility or another in this prison. So to carry tales about me had become, with some of them, a regular and fashionable business. It was no surprise to me that mean and wretched fellows should ply this trade. But that these decent men, coming from respectable families, should have stooped so low in order to make their lives easy, and to get some concessions, here and there, was, indeed, a surprise and degradation beyond my imagining. But they did it, making hay while the sun shone! Every facility that they had won by this means was an added burden to my suffering in the jail. But that story I shall unfold, as I go on, in this narrative.
The note sent on to me had a reference to all intrigues of prison- life. One section was reporting against the other, and the warning was conveyed that I should be on my guard against the traitors. The letter was couched in a spirit of sincerity and earnestness. I, therefore, decided that until I had convinced myself of the facts, I was to cherish no suspicion in my mind about those who, in the past, had proved themselves bold, fearless, sincere and devoted servants of their country. And even if I knew that they had fallen now, I was- to cast no aspersion upon their character and on their former service. The only thing I was to do was to walk warily in my contacts with them and throughout my stay in this prison.
Pardon me, please; enough of it
A day or two after this incident, I saw a crowd of prisoners, excluding political prisoners, gathered in the fore-yard of my chawl. Two hundred in number, they were employed in the work of peeling, breaking and cutting to pieces the coconut fruit gathered, in a heap, before them. From his sequestered place on the third floor of my chawl, the Pathan warden was looking on with eager eyes. He felt a hungering for a coconut or two from that heap. His mouth watered to drink the water and to eat the luscious sweet inside it. His appetite was whetted by what he saw right under his nose. He was a favourite with his master, and who will not fear him? Who dares deny him what he asks? The Pathan went down into the court yard, and slapping a prisoner in the face, charged him of eating a coconut. “Look at his mouth, it is too full of it,” he fired. By this threat at the outset, he had created an atmosphere, as he felt, favourable to his game. For he was confident that none could say no to him, if he were now to ask for the choicest fruit from that heap. The king of fruit is known in the producer’s parlance as “Dahi-Naral”- that is a coconut fruit full of curd-milk-sweet inside it. Presently, he saw the fruit secreted in the hand of a Madrasi man who was a recent arrival in that prison. Straightaway my Pathan warden went up to him and said, “O, you scoundrel, hand over that fruit to me,” But the Madrasi man seemed to be recalcitrant. He was the most notorious dacoit in his part of the country. He was a Tamil and, before being sent here for transportation, he had seen life in many a prison and many times in his own province. He was sentenced here for only ten years’ imprisonment which he treated as a trifle. He did not know Hindusthani and could very well put off the importunate warden by pretending not to understand him. He faced up to him and ejaculated “Ille, Ille” -meaning that he had no fruit with him. That was his peculiar way of putting off any one who happened to press him. He had secured the particular fruit by palming off an anna worth of good tobacco to the prisoner whose business it was to break the coconuts. How can then a hardened criminal like him part with his booty to this Pathan Warden? But the haughty warden was sure in his self-importance, that a mere Hindu dare not deny him what he had asked. The warden abused the Madrasi prisoner and ordered him to part with the coconut forthwith. The Tamil man at first proceeded on the principle of discretion being the better part of valour. Piteously he wailed, “I have not it, surely, I have not it”, pretending ignorance and feigning madness. The Pathan was furious. He flew into a rage. As the quarrel was with a Hindu, it soon turned into a question of religion, and fanaticism put the fat into the fire. He showered abuse after abuse upon his victim. He called him names. “Kafir, scoundrel, let me uproot his tuft of hair”, were some of his choicest epithets. “A Hindu, a villain, yes, I must pull it out”, so he went on. And he put his hand to the Tamil man’s sacred tuft of hair. Being ignorant of Hindustani, he seemed to be confounded by the Pathan’s ejaculations and outburst. He thought that the Pathan was asking him to do some good piece of work, and that he was angry because the latter was not doing it. But when the Pathan tried to wrest the fruit from him, the Madrasi prisoner came to close grips with him. It was a veritable wrestle and tug of war between the two. None of them cried out halt after it had begun. For both of them had fastened their attention on the bone of contention which was the “curd-milk- coconut”.
The whole crowd was enjoying the scene and the Pathan was having the worst of it. The crowd began to titter and jeer, and the game was getting too hot for my warden. Instantly, he lifted his bludgeon and gave a heavy blow on the Tamil man’s head. He also wrenched his turft of hair and had almost uprooted it. The Pathan kept on raining blow after blow, and showering abuse after abuse. ‘Kafir, scoundrel” was the constant refrain. All of a sudden, the scene changed: The prisoner had lost his temper. Without uttering a word and putting his hand straight to his antagonist’s beard, he lifted him bodily off the ground and dashed him down in the dust. The Pathan measured his full length upon the earth and the Hindu; prisoner sat firmly on his chest. He planted his knee upon it, and gave slap after slap into his face. The crowd watched the fight with gaping eyes. It did not raise any alarm, for the Pathan man was extremely unpopular with one and all of them. I was watching the whole show from my room, and I was nearly bursting into laughter. The Fez which the warden wore, his turban thereon, all lay in the dust on the ground. Muttering within his lips, the Tamil prisoner was still belabouring him. He had held fast his beard, and was slapping him in the face. The Pathan broke down completely. No more abusive words danced on his lips. The coconut? There was no more of it. Instead was the rider belabouring his mule under the stride. Two or three minutes had thus gone and the Pathan, while the slaps were still hot in his face, begged ofhis opponent to halt. “Enough, enough, my man, enough, I beg of you, enough”. These were the words that trembled on his lips, so done up was he by the hard drubbing that the Madrasi had given him. But this exasperated him still more. Showering abuse for abuse, the prisoner rained fisticuffs on the head of the Pathan. It was the dialect that had made confusion worse confounded. The Pathan had said in Hindusthani-Maph karo-pardon me. The Madrasi caught only the first letter of it Ma, which in Tamil meant mother. He took it as the most insulting abuse that one man can utter to another. And so he attached the Pathan all the more vehemently, never understanding that the fellow was all along begging for mercy. “Ma”, “Ma”, replied the prisoner, and at every repetition felled him with bludgeoning blows. At last the inevitable had happened. The petty officer had arrived, the crowd rushed on the scene, and the combatants were separated. The Madrasi kept on gibbering-Saheb-hum-tum-mar- with gesticulations, which indicated that if the Pathan were to take the complaint to the gaoler, he will not stop short of throttling him. The Pathan is-constitutionally a bully and a coward; the threat of the Madrasi, one better than him, completely unnerved him. Again he had broken the law himself, for he had left his post on the top- floor, and gone down into the crowd to purloin a coconut. That must go against him. So he ended the quarrel there, and, adjusting his dishevelled hair and turban returned to his place on the top- floor of my building. So was his greed satisfied. For three or more of the sweet coconuts, he had received blow after blow on his mouth and had to swallow them quietly.
“What’s the matter? Why this hulloballoo?” I asked him. The warden replied haughtily, as if I had not witnessed the scene, “O, Sir, there was a man there, the rascal that he is, who wanted to
steal the curd-milk- coconut.” I gave him a sound thrashing." “Well done”. I answered, “a thief, and, at that, one who would thieve again, and also in prison! He deserved what he got”. The Pathan and myself knew well who the thief was, and who gave the thrashing.