Consolidation and Propaganda in the Andamans
While I worked on the ‘Kolu’ I had an opportunity of knowing much, not only of the condition of the political prisoners inside the jail, but also of the situation in the Andamans as a whole. In spite of a thousand obstacles in their way, those who had learnt to love and admire me put themselves into contact with me and gave me news about the islands. I, therefore, felt that even from this prison I could do some work of consolidating our forces in the Andamans. Of course, it demanded strenuous efforts and I was prepared for it.
The Work Begins
To rot here and suffer all kinds of hardship had become the part of our daily duty, and we had to bear that burden all our life. May we not, then, take this additional burden upon our shoulders which was an essential part of our service to the country? Why not then acquire the double merit for which Providence had marked us out? We would suffer gladly for her in this prison, and we would work strenuously for her outside. Inspired by this feeling, I set out on that larger work by first educating those whom I considered to be in my chaige.
Education of Political Prisoners
Within a fortnight I put myself in contact with such of the political prisoners as had come into our struggle by the force of driving whirlwind, as it were, and whose convictions were yet shaky about the means we had employed. They did not entirely favour our adoption of violent methods to reach the goal of independence. I explained to them the whole position; and, while the jailor had put me under the yoke to tame me down, I made these men take an oath to join us in the proposed work of consolidation. This was the beginning of my work for the Andamans. How that work developed and spread out, I cannot narrate in full in these pages. I will tell as much of it as I can during the course of this story.
About a fortnight had passed when I was relieved of my work on the oil-mill. I was put upon the work of weaving the strand. This was the easiest of all hard labour in this jail and it was considered a piece of good luck to have it. After a few days’ practice at it, I found it easy to weave the strand, and I felt that the strain on my body and my mind had considerably lessened. I had been taken back to my room on the top-floor of Barrack No. 7. But on this occasion, I had, for my neighbours, two to four political prisoners. They were there in spite of the jailor, it seemed, for the jailor and the other authorities of the prison had made it a point never to bring them into touch with me. But when all possible cells outside this chawl were lull of them, they could not but accommodate four of them in the building that I had occupied. The Superintendent and the jailor told me plainly, on more than one occasion, that if I would turn them into moderates, I could have the company of educated men to live with. Whenever a new recruit came in this prison, he was always locked up in a cell near to those of such ’educated’ political prisoners. But none was kept for a long time in one cell, or in the same group. To avoid risk, their place and their grouping were changed periodically.
That was a Holiday in this prison
Such a day was always marked in the prison calendar as a holiday for all of us. For this change of batches and places occupied the best part of the day, during which we had no work to do. Besides, prisoners, moving from one place to another, always jostled one another. Thence they could at least see one another and, at times, exchange a few words as well. But the best of it all was that we could know then who were the newcomers to this jail. We could make their acquaintance as well as secure their membership. Though I was invariably confined in chawl No. 7, and although, as a rule, no other prisoners were sent to this chawl, I found this day the best holiday of the month. For I could see on that day my elder brother going from one place to another. And if I could pre-arrange it, I could also exchange a few words with him on that day.
As this mode of exchanging prisoners and places, every one or two months, afforded us an opportunity of contacting one another and of exchanging a few words between us, so we had other means at our disposal to establish communication with one another. Each room in our chawl had a barred window at the top and an iron grating on the floor and in the side wall for purposes of ventilation. The seven divisions of the Silver Jail were built in the form of petals spreading out from a common centre. As such the courtyard of one opened on the back yard of another. And a man standing in the barrack of one division could see and communicate with a man standing in the barrack of another. One from the chawl of one division could communicate with the rear of another division, and one from the rear of another could carry on with another in the courtyard of another division. Each had only to hang up to the barred window at the top or peep through the trellised grating at the bottom.
Talking from the top-windows
But to hang on to the top-window was a dangerous experiment. Therefore, we put the plank, on which we slept at night, straight up beneath the window and, supporting ourselves on the edge, peeped through the window-bars to talk to a man who, from his window, was talking to us. But the hands and feet had a heavy strain on them in this process. We often talked to a person on the floor beneath ours. Sometime, in this brief talk, we exchanged thoughts and solved doubts on Politics and Political Economy. Suddenly, if we heard the footsteps of a jamadar coming in our direction, we had to throw ourselves down from a height of twelve feet, which meant falling sheer on our buttocks. The teacher and the disciple had to disengage themselves from common study without a minute’s notice, and both were hard put to it to escape unnoticed. Many a political prisoner received a severe shock to his nether part and even an occasional injury to his body in this unusual art of learning. The second way in which we carried on our communications was to talk through the trellised iron grating in the side-wall close to the floor. The grating was so fixed at the base of the wall, that none could see through it in the room beyond. It was a cleft in the wall, so to say, for pure ventilation and nothing more. Sometimes, on the other side of the grating, prisoners were made to sit for dinner. It was an opportunity for conveying messages to one another. The dinner was prolonged on their side, and, putting our mouth close to the trellis-work, we spoke on this side, it was a telephone call between the two
The grating was the machine, which, in prison-parlance, came to be recognised by the name of telephone. Only the trusted ones exchanged messages on this telephone. It began with ringing the bars with one’s dining plate; and that was the call which started the message. When the telephone would not work, we started the telegraph, of which presently.
Thus through several devices improvised on the spot, we kept our touch with one another; and the business went on more briskly, the more they tried to prevent it. They would detach and separate us; they would prevent us from talking by signs; and they would put all sorts of obstacles in our way. But, undaunted, we went on with our propaganda work in the prison. As I have said above, it began with the two or three political prisoners who had been lodged in the same chawl as I. Soon after, I was taken away from the work on the oil-mill. And I began to teach them. They were not all uneducated men; they had all passed their Matriculation Examination, and had spent some time in the F. Y. classes of their college. But they had no education in political science and constitutional history. When I started giving it, the first difficulty I felt was of suitable books.
Lack of Books
I was deprived, at Thana, of the few books that I had. The books, in possession of certain prisoners in the Andamans, were of an insignificant character. The books of Ramkrishna Paramahansa, of Swami Vivekanand, of Tolstoy like ‘My Religion’ and others, of Mrs. Annie Besant on Theosophy and her theosophical magazines, were all our stock-in-trade. Of these books, they could get to read only on Sundays. The warder carried them from door to door like vegetables in a net-like bag, and distributed them to the prisoners. In the evening he took the books back again. Every day a prisoner got one book to read from his own collection between the hours of four and six in the evening. It had also to be returned to the warder at a fixed time. The prisoner was prevented from reading anything during the working hours. And he could not read at night because it was complete dark then. Again, the strict regulation of the prison forbade one political prisoner from transferring the book that he was reading to his next door neighbour. Mr. Barrie had laid down the law that each was to read his own book, and no exchange of books was to be tolerated. An ordinary illiterate prisoner could not finish a small book during a week. But to ask a political prisoner to confine himself to one small book during the week was the height of tyranny. If any one broke the law so laid down, the warder and the Jamadar had the opportunity of their life to show him up. He was dragged to Mr. Barrie, tried by him, and the book, snatched from his hands, was evidence enough to punish him. The Jamadar exulted in the detection of this offence and Mr. Barrie was proud of his servant’s masterly vigilance.
“This fellow gave and that fellow received it!”
That was the howl they raised and the Superintendent was in extreme anger. The trial was enacted and those, guilty of the offence, were sentenced to be manacled for four continuous days. To read a book not his own for a few hours of the day got him the punishment of standing up for four days with the chains on his hands fastened to the ceiling above his head! The sentence was passed upon them no doubt to help them meditate on the sayings of Ramkrishna Paramahansa which he, or they had read in the book so purloined! Mr. Barrie was their greatest enemy in that respect. The great ‘pandit’ opined that the reading of books had turned the heads of these youths. About a certain gentleman he had said to-me distinctly that it was the reading of books on theosophy that had made him mad. He, of course, referred to the political prisoner who had defied all the prison orders about dining, resting and working on the ‘Kolu’. He objected to books of Ramkrishna Paramahansa and to books on Theosophy as hair-brained trash. May be, but what of books on politics, the hardheaded stuff that they were? No, he would allow them neither. He was a learned man, indeed, for he had not progressed beyond his fifth form. And he was to decide what books the prisoners were to read or not to read. Mr. Barrie opened a book, turned over its few pages; if it was not intelligible to him, he at once condemned it as “nonsense and trash”; a rigmarole he called it and threw away. On the other hand, a book may approve itself to him by its jejuneness and poor stuff; but if it contained a word like ’nation’, or ‘country’, it was at once put under lock and key by Mr. Barrie, segregated like plague germ, declared untouchable like high treason. Mr. Barrie used to say, “We cannot allow our prisoners to read this dangerous stuff, for these, with their frequent allusions to countries and nations, had turned these men into violent agitators.” What of books on theosophy and Yoga? His answer was, he would not let them in; but the Superintendent had allowed them and he had to submit.
A Hater of Books
There were many reasons why Mr. Barrie hated books. One of them was that he had himself very poor education and was smitten with jealousy for the political prisoners who were better educated than himself.+++(4)+++ Secondly, these did not bend their knees to this demi-God of Port Blair, they burnt no incense before him. Some of the Superintendents also objected strongly to any kind of reading. A prisoner may chew tobacco before him and many times Mr. Barrie did not mind it, and he called it kindness and leniency. But if a prisoner was found with a slate or pencil or with a book, Mr. Barrie would fly into rage and burst out, “You scoundrel, you want to read and write. This is no school. Why did you not learn it at your father’s? Send him on to the oil-mill, put him on ‘Kolu’, confiscate his book, his slate and pencil.”
Their Effect
In a sense and from his point of view, Mr. Barrie was right. We know how in their exile, the Pandavas used to be down-pressed, how they would pity and condemn themselves. They were tortured by their minds for what they had brought upon themselves; despair and melancholy overcast their souls, and they forgot their own valour and greatness. Then Dhaumya and other sages narrated to them stories of Naia and Rama to put courage in their hearts and teach them to defy misfortune and cruelties of fate. And these stories from the past put a new hope in their hearts. Similarly, stirring acts of former heroes in history, poetry and romance, or discourses on the immortality of the soul from the Upanishads and the Bhagwatgita would prove a tonic to the shattered hearts of our political prisoners. That would imbue them with the spirit of defiance. That would fortify them against all onslaughts of the severest persecutions of prison-life. Was it for this that they were incarcerated in the Andamans? How could, then, the doorkeeper of the Silver Jail let in such incendiary stuff within its portals? Will he not be false to his charge? Will he be true to himself and his calling if he allowed such matter to spread among his prisoners and influence their minds?
But their argument against reading books was just our argument for reading them.
I began my work of teaching them without any books to start with. They learnt and taught by word of mouth. We used to gather every evening on the reservoir of our prison. I utilised this time to give them talks on history. Sometimes we were interrupted, sometimes punished for disobedience, and sometimes we could go on with these evening meetings with the connivance of our wardens. And on occasions, even if the political prisoners were caught in the act, they told the warders boldly that they were having some talk; of course they had to face the consequence of being hand- manacled. This way, week after week, we continued to meet and I discoursed to the political prisoners on the History of India from its early beginnings in the Vedas down to our own day. I drew their attention particularly to the heroic deeds of the past acquaint them with the lives of its outstanding personalities, and of epoch-makers in that history. I then took them similarly through a course of European history told them of heroes like Napoleon, Mazzini and Garibaldi and gave them an insight into the contemporary history of tottering Russia and the great revolution that was going on there against its monarchy. From that course in very broad outline, I took them in a course on the elements of economics, politics and theory of government. The lectures were followed by discussion and the political prisoners who would gather together for them began to take deep interest in the subject. As their number increased in the prison, and as the wave of strike and resistance, fight and opposition, spread like wild fire among them, the Officers, just to pacify them, allowed us to sit together for a longer time, read what we liked, talk as we chose, so that we may work and not trouble them any further. At this stage mere conversation of an evening took a turn into a regular meeting for settled study.
The Sunday Meeting
Throughout the week We continued to meet every evening at our appointed place on the reservoir. But, in addition, on every Sunday morning till the hour of nine I used to sit together with nine or ten of them who happened to be in my immediate neighbourhood and gave them regular lessons in subjects which I have already mentioned. At nine we were taken out for weighing our bodies or cutting grass. I used to allot to each of them a particular subject for study. The student had just to tell me what he already knew about it. Then I carried on discussion with him. And we ended with the singing of our national song. This meeting was all a hurried business and not like an elaborate study in a class-room. For, in the veiy midst of it, some one would announce the arrival of Mr. Barrie, or we were afraid that a jamadar would appear suddenly on the scene. Then we were all told off to cut grass, and asked to disperse. As soon as we smelt a cat, we ran helter-skelter to our holes, like the proverbial mice. The lecturer and the audience had both to cut short the meeting, and distribute themselves, some on the field, some behind the iron-sheets and some to clean their pots and pans. And we met again as soon as the alarm was no more, as described in the famous lines of the poet, “Let the legions thunder past and plunged in deep thought again.” After their rout some faint-hearted individuals would point out in self-condemnation, the futility of it all, when I had to remind them of the prayers of the early flying Christians. When these had to follow Christ, in defiance of the tyranny of the Romans and the persecution of the Jews, they lived up to his Commandments by praying in catacombs, round thegraveyard and in prison vaults, whenever five of them could assemble and hearten one another. Sometime they had just knelt down in these secret places lifting up their faces to God, when they would hear the foot-falls of the Roman legion pursuing them, and instantly they had to disperse and hide themselves. But, when it had passed, by they would return and pray as before.
Such were our prayers also.
A Sudden Onslaught
The overseer picked it up and asked me what it was. I told him that it contained my notes. Whereupon he strictly enjoined me that I was not to make notes in this fashion from any book given me in this prison. But, anxious as he was to make a political capital out of this episode, he subjected that paper to the closest scrutiny. He held it up in light and against the just lighted lamp, and began to read it minutely. What did he find in it? Words like Pliocene, Miocene, Neolithic, which were abracadabra to him. “What cipher is this?” he questioned me and showed from his face that at last he had caught me. I told him in a light-hearted mood, “It was the language of geology”. He then muttered something to himself and calling the Jamadar, asked him to bring me to his office the following morning, and that he was going to prosecute me. Accordingly, I was taken to the office the following day, I was tried for the offence, but, it being my first offence in that prison, I was warned and discharged. And for two following weeks I was to get no book to read. The question then arose how I was to summarise and make notes of the books I was reading. The political prisoners must have summaries of the weekly The Sunday meetings had as their adjunct prayer and bhajan to end them. This addition I had made that our spirit may be sustained in the depressing atmosphere of our normal prison-life, so that our meeting and our prayer were of a like nature to that of the early Christians. I kept on this Sunday bhajan for years together in my prison-life. We had discussions; political, religious, literary, linguistic and scientific at these weekly meetings. I felt happy that what I had at our Sunday meetings at Nasik in my very early life, what I continued in Poona and later on in Bombay, and when I had gone abroad, in England and elsewhere, I could resume in the Andamans and in the Silver Jail presided over by a man like Mr. Barrie. I could thus keep up my resolution. I could offer my daily sacrifice, I could perform my daily ‘yadnya’ in the little space of the family pre-hearth (my prison) as I had performed it in the spacious spaces of the world’s altar. And that was how, by the grace of God, I could keep the fire burning. In addition to ‘flying meetings’, we had discovered other means for the propagation of knowledge. These were the high, spacious, white-washed walls of our apartments. With the pointed thorns of the cordage plant, we used these walls as our writing tablets. For in the prison-cell no political prisoner was allowed the use of a scrap of paper or the end of a pencil to write on it. The thorn was our writing instrument and the wall was the paper to write on. The prisoner, inspite of close scrutiny and strict vigilance, managed to have on his person pencil and paper to write on. He concealed them in his tuft of hair, in his mouth, from one hand to another, and, last of all, where they could least suspect to find them. Search them how you will, the things were never found out. But these were not enough for the propagation of knowledge. And I am not going to let you, besides, into all the secrets of our prison-life. Some tricks and stratagems and subterfuges one must always keep to oneself, perhaps, for future use! With all our handicaps, the prison-wall proved to us of immense use in writing out our notes and discourses on the subject of study on its spacious surface. The very first year a difficulty arose to damp our spirits. We were studying the elements of Geology from a book published by the R. P. A. Series. It was my habit from boyhood onwards to summarise a book and note its important passages in a separate exercise-book.+++(5)+++ And this habit proved of immense use to me. For I could draw upon my memory to reproduce the contents of the important books I had read and even to quote notable passages from them. Accordingly, I made an outline of geological time from that book on a sheet of paper which I somehow procured for that purpose. I returned the book on the following day and, when my room was locked for the evening, I took out the paper and began to read it, when, to my surprise, the overseer came up, stamping his shoes, approached my room and opened the door. He searched my room right through. It was not an unusual experience for me, for my room was searched like this three times previously and during the same day. Let any-one whisper into the ears of Mr. Barrie that “Bada Babu” had something with him, and ‘search’ was the order that followed. When he had found that not even in two per cent of such reports was there any substance, he gave it up. But this change came after seven or eight years. That day, however, when the overseer surprised me in the act of reading that paper, it became impossible for me to hide it.
The wall-a paper; the cordage plant-thorn-a pencil
… lectures I had given them. How were they otherwise to remember and make progress in their knowledge? Where was I to get so much paper and writing material? And, if at all I could procure it, where was the place to hide it? Suppose I were to write sheet after sheet who will be able to read them under the veiy nose of the supervising warder and jamadar? All of a sudden and while I was cudgelling my brains, I suddenly happened to look at the wall and there I found the paper to write on. A whitewashed wall-a paper-a broad sheet to write on! What a relief the discovery gave me.
I had already tried an experiment of that kind in the jail at Byculla when I wrote on the wall with the sharpened point of a stone. I sought to perfect it in the Silver Jail of the Andamans. And I made a full use of it till my release from here after a full period of fourteen years’ imprisonment. I used to hide a pointed nail in the bolt of my door. And as soon as I was locked up inside the room and the door was shut, I would begin to write on the wall with that pencil in columns which I drew upon it. All the walls of the 7th chawl were thus scrawled over and each constituted for me a book by itself. For example, the cell in which I was confined to weave the stranded cord was written with a full outline of Spencer’s ‘First Principles.’ My poem ‘Kamala’ was composed and copied in full on the walls of this seventh division. In another cell I wrote all the definitions of political economy as I had learnt from Mill’s Work on the subject. My object was that when I was changed from that room to another, a political prisoner, brought in there, may learn those definitions as he was learning that subject from me. With a little management such a student could succeed being put up in this lock-up. He could then learn them off in a month before his turn came for transference elsewhere. As I was being changed from division to division I saw to it that every division and every cell in that division had its writings on the walls from my improvised pen. And the political prisoners who had turned students took the fullest advantage of these written tablets-their books of study in this lonely place of a prison-house.
I utilised in this manner all my opportunity to train them. Three means I employed in that laborious task of self-education. These were lectures delivered at Sunday meetings, oral instruction on every other occasion of personal contact, and, lastly, the use of the prison-walls for purposes of writing.
One great draw-back
But the life of these writings on the wall could not be longer than one year. They could not last for centuries like inscriptions on the bricks of Babylon. Every year the walls were being white- washed, and, as the process went on, the writings on the wall began to perish. They were completely effaced. Hence, the month before this operation was my month of serious and intensive repetition, not unlike the time-honoured recital of the Rig Vedas. I had to recall all the verses that I had composed in my mind and scribbled on these walls, and learn them by heart during this transition period. But there was one advantage in using this wall as a sheet of paper to write on. For, though the writing lasted only for a year, the fresh wash on it gave us a new blank sheet of paper to write on for a whole year once again. The paper as such was subject to the processes of time. It was bound to get old and worm-eaten. But these walls for fourteen long years furnished a broad sheet that was ever new and ever white to write on. Sometime, while the white-wash was proceeding, our secret would come to light. But such a thing rarely happened. For the writing was carefully rubbed out before the process and the faint lines that survived made any deciphering an impossibility. Besides, I wrote in Marathi and onabstruse
subjects like political economy. This made the task of deciphering a hopeless job altogether. Mr. Barrie could not read the writing much less could he decipher it. He was so learned and wise after all, that he finally opined that it was a wicked attempt to spoil and disfigure government property. My brother was caught in this prison using the thorn of the cordage plant and was punished for it. His offence was to write comments on Vivekanada’s lectures on Vedanta in which he had raised some doubts and answered some objections. The book was his own and he had marked certain passages in it and written some marginal notes, These markings and annotations he made in the margin of the book with thorn. And this was his cognisable crime according to the prison’s penal code. Mr. Barrie’s words were, “This is a jail, this is not a school; if you wanted to learn why did you not learn when at home? Why did you come here? Don’t fight, don’t read, only work-yes work. I know nothing else here.”
What avails it to learn?
These obstacles to learning were external; but there was one great internal obstacle, and that was that some of the prisoners themselves were averse to learning. Being political prisoners they cared nothing for knowledge. Their motto was action. What do we want with pure knowledge? - they would say. Action and sacrifice, that is what we need. I had to make them realise that many of them, when they were released after seven or eight years, shall have to play their part in the Indian world. Let them not read anything then, if they felt that it was no use reading. But here they must add to their knowledge even for the sake of their ideals, rather than rot without knowledge as they were bound to do, if they did not make a special effort to keep their minds active. I further brought home to them the fact that if winning freedom was difficult enough, retaining it after it had been won was more difficult still. And until their minds were trained perfectly, they would never realise this fact of politics and political advancement. In a free nation no constructive work can be undertaken by those who were ignorant of subjects like history, economics and science of politics and government. I cited to them the instance of Persia. Revolution in Persia set the people free. But because the political revolutionaries were ill-equipped in the art of government, in the essentials of good government and of reform and progress, when power came to them, they had to depend upon foreign experts in finance and economics, in the knowledge of trade and business organisation, and to carry on with the help of these experts. It led to chaos and confusion, all over the field, in the economic, industrial and public life of Persia; it led to maladministration, indiscipline and nepotism in public servants. Want of knowledge was the root of all these evils. Mere destructive action, leading to anarchy and the reign of terror, and resulting in dictatorship, benefits no nation. On the other hand, it sets back the clock of progress. This has been ever the lesson of history. And its best illustration is the French Revolution of I789. Blind fury is ever national suicide; and if it is not controlled in time it exposes a country to danger from without as well as to danger within its own domains. That is the lesson of that revolution for all time to come. The story of the Chinese Republic from its early beginning down to this day conveys the same lesson. That was because the leaders of the Chinese Revolution were inept in the art of government. And they had to import administrators from, abroad to establish peace, order and good government. These were naturally interested in their own countries and exploited the anarchy in China to serve their own ends; and China remained as backward as it was in the pre-revolutionary era. Hence, no political revolutionary, if he really loved his own country, can afford to be ignorant and to trade on the ignorance ofhis own countrymen. The more they know the practical art of good government, sound administration, and of the management of their country in every walk of public life, the better it is for them and their country when they came into their own. In this respect, the so-called ‘moderates’ were better equipped than their friends, the extremists. And political prisoners must learn to follow in their footsteps. The moderates can claim among them economists, administrators, and statesmen of the highest rank like Gokhale, R. C. Dutt, Ranade and Sir T. Madavrao. I asked them frankly, “Have you any-one to rival them? Hence to waste their time in idleness in this prison was sheer folly and shortsightedness. It was equally useless to be rotting and despondent. They had better keep their minds well employed and active by study and hard thinking on problems they shall have to tackle hereafter. And the subjects indispensable for future equipment were
Constitutional History, Politics and Economics.
I said, “Every one who presumes to think of his own country, to dabble in politics, and to aspire to political leadership, must needs possess full and deep knowledge of subjects like politics, economics and constitutional history. To be wanting in such knowledge is to spell yourself inefficient and unfit for responsible self-government, or for high administrative offices in it. As in religion so in politics, action with knowledge is the key to salvation. At present you are working out the nation’s destiny by self- immolation and service which are apparent failures. But if this service and self-immolation are to fructify in success and commonwealth, then here it is: when you have plenty of time before you, a number of years to be passed in enforced idleness, you must add knowledge to service and vision to self-sacrifice. Heroism, to do or die, is not enough. It must be illumined by deep learning ripening into wisdom.” I exhorted them finally to cast off gloom and despondency, and apply themselves to knowledge which was their proper work there.