The “Shuddhi” movement in the Andamans
I was sent to the Andamans in 1911, and I soon found out that some Hindu prisoners had been converted to Islam and assumed Muslim names after their transportation to the Andamans. And when I traced the genesis of this change, I found that the Hindus in that place never found it worth while to think of, and took it as a matter of course. What was there in it, they felt, that one should look into its origin or trace it to its cause? The Andamans were in fact under the supreme authority of the British people, and if at all Hindus were to be converted under that rule to any faith, that faith was Christianity and not Islam. Till 1857, both in prisons and in the armies, the ruling authorities had encouraged the spread of Christianity. But after the terrible catastrophe of that war of Independence, the British authorities seldom interfered with religion and did not encourage conversion. However, even today the Christian missionaries try to convert the so-called criminal tribes in India to their own faith. At least, they exert considerable influence over their lives and social habits. But I dare say, with all my knowledge and experience about it, that prisons are never utilised by the authorities to convert Hindu prisoners into Christians by propaganda or by any other similar influence. Sometime a Christian missionary comes there to offer a prayer. But none of the prisoners are compelled to attend that prayer. With very rare exceptions, no concealed or open effort, either official or non-official, is made throughout the Andamans to convert Hindus to Christianity. And no officer was found to use his influence in that direction. The exception was brought home to me in a strange manner. And I shall mention it in its due place. But I can bear out, by my fourteen years’ experience, the fact that not even four examples can be quoted of forcible conversion of Hindus by Christian missionaries of that place. Nor was any temptation or bribe used by them for that purpose.
How strange is it, then, that under such a power and in the prison and the islands under its suzerainty, the Pathan and other Mussulman warders, petty officers and jamadars of that prison could convert the Hindu prisoners to Islam, by methods of conversion and coercion. Leave alone the prisoners who knew by their age what they were doing. But what of lads of tender age who were so forcibly converted to Islam by their Muslim warders? Is it not the duty of the British officers to care for their spiritual welfare as it is their care to look after their physical and moral well-being? Is it not, at least, their charge to guard them from such conversion till they come of age? It is as sacred as to protect the property of a minor from spoliation and misuse. But in the prison of the Andamans, this is a duty totally neglected by its officers. And I go further and say that in all the prisons of India such conversion to Islam is going on systematically under the very nose of the jailors themselves. And it is the Mussulman warder, jamadar and petty officer who are doing it without let or hindrance. Fourteen years of prison experience made me assert, without fear and favour, that prison-mosque converts in one year more Hindus to Islam than the Jamma Masjid of Delhi or Bombay is found to do it.+++(5)+++ The organised efforts of Hassan Nizami to catch Hindus in the net of Islam are not so dangerous as the insidious and wicked way of conversion practised in this jail-masjid of India and the Andamans.
The preliminaries of Conversion
There are no appointed persons to bring about conversion in jails, nor is there any organisation behind it. Every Muslim is trained from his very childhood to regard the conversion of a Kaffir to his own faith as his sacred duty. He is told that thereby he will be forgiven all his sins and abide in the heaven of Allah with all its pleasure and ease to be his, from eternity to eternity. This is, in truth, the mainspring of conversion of Hindus to Islam throughout the prison-world of India. The process begins in big cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Lahore and Madras in the gangs of thieves, robbers and dacoits with their own dens to lurk in. The Mussulman gang of criminals do not consider it a sin in the eye of God to raid a Hindu village and to loot and burn the property of a Hindu sowcar.+++(5)+++ Nay, it is a matter of pride to the gang to have successfully brought off the coup. I have met Maulvis who have condoned these crimes and declared their perpetrators as innocent beings. Those who know anything about this side of human life will bear me out when I say that in places like Bombay, every den of thieves and robbers has its ‘Mahant’ or high priest to propitiate its tutelary deity. Ostensibly each of these mahants is a decent shopkeeper doing his own particular trade. “Honest, decent and above- board” is his reputation in the ordinary world. Young boys as novitiates are given to work under him. And, in course of time, they turn out clever pick-pockets and cut-purses. Then they are promoted to the job of cat-burglars-those who enter people’s houses through windows by climbing over the pipes and by breaking open the doors. Then they are put upon the work of breaking safes, and finally in the highest standard of a highway man, stopping men to stand and deliver, with a knife pointed to their chest At last they are initiated into the gang itself which plans and executes organised raids and dacoities. It is these street-arabs that often go to jail. The mahant, the leader, the high-priest is ever safe, he never leaves his place and is never taken in. The profession lives and thrives on the continuous recruitment of these lads into the gangs.
The Dens of Hindu Thieves
In the dens of Hindu Thieves you will find a large number of helpless orphans and vagabonds belonging to many faiths. But these don’t dine together, eat together and mix together, for the Hindu religion does not sanction such practice and allows no conversion from one religion to another. Hence in the dens of Hindu thieves presided over by Hindu mahants, you will find but a sprinkling of Muslim lads. And those who are in it practise the usual trade of thieving, pickpocketing and street-hooliganism. But they are never decoyed from Islam. They retain their faith intact, whatever they do or become otherwise, in case the Hindu lads and the Hindu mahants mess with their Muslim fellows, it is the former that go down and are corrupted. The lads and recruits in Muslim gangs from the fold of Hinduism inevitably catch the faith of their Muslim fellows and mahants and gradually drift into Islam. +++(5)+++ They learn thieving and other crimes which take them to jail. They commit all sorts of sins from cheating, lying and pilfering to rape, incest and murder. As occasion demands, they assume disguises in which they have to cut their sacred tuft of hair and grow a beard. And if once or twice they are made to eat flesh and break bread with their Mohomedan companions, they are stamped as Muslims and swear by Muslim names. +++(5)+++ In order to cheat the Police in their track, they circumcise themselves and throw off their sacred thread. Once this change is achieved, they remain Muslims forever. Besides, in their own homes as Hindus, they are brought up to regard the slightest departure from these conventions as utter ruin of faith. In this way hundreds of Hindu lads and young men are becoming Muslims in the haunts of thieves and criminals in the city of Bombay. Their castes, if they learn of their breaking bread and eating meat with Muslims, excommunicate them. And the Moulvi-Mahant is ever ready to receive them with open arms into the fold of Islam. He tells them, “My friend, you are already a Mussulman; now do nimaz, get circumcised, you will have a fine girl for a wife, and I shall make you happy.” As the mahant has on his record these vagabond lads, he has also at his disposal a large number of girls who are as reckless as the boys. Thus, step by step, the vagabond thief climbs into Mohomedanism, and is lost for good to the Hindu religion. The way and the path is not only familiar to the Moulvi-mahant at the top, but also to his henchmen in the craft. And these often lure the Hindu lads into that way. The source of it all from top to bottom is the fanatical belief that to turn a Kafir into a Mussulman is absolution from all sins and the surest gateway to heaven. Those who are saved from the dens in this city, are converted to Islam in the prison that follows them. The Muslim warders and jamadars are adept in this art and other Mohomedan prisoners help in the process. The former do it openly with all the weapons of offence and defence available to them. Others proceed indirectly and tempt them into ways from which there is no going back.
If this is the situation in India, what can you say of the Andamans? There the warders, the petty officers, and the jamadars are double-distilled rascals and bigoted Mussulmans -the tribe of Pathans, Baluchis, Panjabis and Sindhees. The political prisoners, of all others, suffer most at their hands, because the bulk of them are Hindus. These officers subject them to the hardest labour, threaten them with the severest punishment and lodge false complaints against them. They thus make their lives a hell for them, and out-and-out tell them to become Mussulmans to escape from these throes. The young, the ignorant and the helpless easily succumb to them. How this is being practised I have already indicated in the first part of this book. As I began noticing this, I felt an urge within me to put an end to it. Every week or fortnight I had seen one Hindu prisoner at dinner sitting in the rank of his Mohomedan fellows. It was impossible for me to witness the scene. But I was only a prisoner here; what could I do to save them?
I tried hard to infuriate the Hindu prisoners against this act of sacrilege. But one and all of them I found so callous. Each one of them used to say, “What is it to me?”, and “What do I care?”
The opposition begins
Leave alone the ordinary Hindu prisoners, it was the same with the political prisoners as well. They dared not put a fight against conversion, and for obvious reasons. For they were already suffering enough, and they were not willing to put an additional strain on their patience. Having done the most ceaseless daring work in-the country, they were paying for it heartily in this jail. And in the prison again they had to struggle and fight for their very existence. How then can their mind and body bear the additional burden I was putting on them? This work had to be done by others and not by them. Hence they often used to say, “Leave alone this trouble, for the time being, it is already hard for us to be constantly fighting with the jamadar for our right to live. We are not willing to expose ourselves to his malice all the more by opposing him on the ground of conversion.” I did not blame them, but I certainly blamed three or four of them who dismissed the effort as a sheer waste of time, as a foolish action. For they were thus shielding their own cowardice, and their conduct deserved censure from me. Others went even further in order to insinuate themselves into the favour of the jamadar and save their skin. They used to show to them that they were themselves going to adopt the Muslim faith. How could they, then openly join a movement to resist conversion? The next step with them was, that when some of us tried to save the Hindu prisoners from the jaws of Islam and the battle was joined on that account, to denounce our action as foolish and to propitiate the jemadar by addressing their coreligionists in the following words: “What is pollution or purity in this? These are after all the dregs of fociety,-convicts, sinners, and the meanest of mankind, unredeemed and irreclaimable miscreants. What is it to Hinduism if they are in it or out of it? What difference does it make? Those who embrace Islam by threat or bribe, how are they better as Hindus? To keep them in Hinduism is utter folly and childish nonsense.” That was also the vein in which the Superintendent, the jailor and the Commissioner tried to argue with me on the point. And the self- conceited, hypo-critical Mussulman said the same thing to me. Those who are against the Shuddhi movement are often found to object to reconversion and purification on similar grounds. Not only those who are hypocrites but those also who are honest and sincere in their opinions. It is, therefore, imperative that I should clear all misconceptions on this burning question.
Is the Shuddhi Movement so childish ?
If it is a foolish waste of time and a childish pursuit to retain in Hinduism those born in it, may be, sinners, criminals and the miscreants of society, how can one explain the Muslim campaign, now going on for a thousand years, to win this riff-raff, condemned class of Hindu society for Islam? The Mussulmans have waged wars for it, they have put men and women to the sword, they have burnt and looted houses-in short they have declared Jehad-for effecting this mass conversion. Is this a childish game? May be the Mussulmans are a bigoted and fanatical race. But even the levelheaded, thoughtful Christians in Europe and America have raised - vast sums, sent their missionaries, not only to Indian cities and towns, but to the backwoods of India and the jungles of Africa to win the unregenerate and the heathens for Christianity. They have worked among savages, among criminal tribes and the depressed classes and sought, by fair means or foul, to bring them within the Christian fold. The missionaries have suffered for them, paid with their lives for them; spent their monies on them, flattered them, bribed them, coerced them and persuaded them. They have done all this for the sake of Christ. Is this also a childish act? Of what use are these sinners and criminals to them? Why not then should the Hindus seek to save them where they are? They are of as much use to Hindus as they are as converts to Islam and Christianity. I may as well ask the Christian missionary and the Mohomedan Moulvi why they should be so keen on their conversion. Why do they taint and tarnish their purer faith by assimilation of such wretched souls into it? Why not let us retain them? They are after all born Hindus and our kith and kin. Do not waste millions of your precious money on their conversion, and we shall not pursue the useless task of Shuddhi and reconversion.
Evidently, the Christian missionary and the Mohomedan Moulvi undertake the task as a religious duty. They convert heathens, the fallen, the criminals, and the derelicts-for the salvation of their souls. Why then do you blame us if we seek to keep them in their own religion and work for their uplift and redemption as Hindus? We believe fervently in the Gita doctrine that the salvation of man lies in dying in his own religion. And we seek to save their souls and redeem them for Hindu society on that principle. Hindu religion and Hindu culture have in them the power to work such redemption. That is our faith and we act up to it.
It is the sinful that need salvation
The individual whom you try to convert may be a wicked man, a sinner or a drunkard. But after deep thought you have learnt the social law that if you make him a Christian or a Mohomedan by means fair or foul, and if you change his name, you are really adding to your strength. In course of time children come into his family and it grows. The children become Muslims and Christians by name, birth and association. And they turn out better than their parents and add in number to the well-to-do, educated, well-behaved number of Muslim citizens. And, in that proportion, the Hindu society loses its good members. The history of Canada and Australia is an instance in point. England started deporting to those colonies her criminals and her unemployed families. Today the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of these first inhabitants have built up prosperous dominions and commonwealths and powerful self- governing nations out of these colonics. Where are those criminals and outcastes of society sent to Botany Bay in those days and where is the Commonwealth of Australia today? You arc dragging to-day by your shovels dregs of Hindu society into your soil, and you know how to use these dregs to manure and enrich it. And, in course of a few generations, the soil so enriched will yield you an abundant harvest. The fields will smile and wave with their dancing ears of golden corn.
We have come to realise this law of social growth and hence we arc following in your footsteps. We will no longer let any Hindu boy or girl, man or woman, however fallen they may be, pass into another religion, and we shall not fail to reconvert those whom you may have duped into embracing your faith. This is the rationale of the Shuddhi movement which we have resolved to launch, and no specious argument can divert us from our true path.
A Hindu thief is less harmful to Hindu culture than a Mohomedan thief. +++(5)+++ The former will only rob, the latter will break the temple he has robbed, he will break the idol in it and give a shattering blow on the head of a kaffir, while running away from the place of robbery. He will spill his blood to save his soul in heaven. This difference between the two has ever to be borne in mind by everyone as a probability. Hence persuading as we must a thief to give his thieving, a drunkard to give up his drink, and a greedy wicked man to give up his greed and wickedness, we must not give him up, as a Hindu, to any other faith or religion than his own. It is the duty of every Hindu to persuade a Hindu to remain a Hindu. It is a principle to be followed as vital to his community and culture for the preservation and progress of both.
But there is another valid reason why the cult of Shuddhi must be propagated throughout the Hindu society, and why, above all, our boys and girls, our young men and women, must be persuaded to adopt it.
It is well if a Hindu thief gives up thieving, but even if he does not give it up, he must be made to remain a Hindu. The theft is a sin no doubt, but to cease to be a Hindu is a greater sin, and a social and national sin. Persuade a Hindu thief not to commit that sin. Every one who calls himself a Hindu must impress it upon the most abandoned Hindu that it is not well for him to change his religion. He must strive his hardest to do it. For our ancestors committed the greatest blunder when they allowed such persons to go out of their fold, in pride of self-sufficiency and moral superiority. “Let them go where they choose”, said they, “We are sufficient unto ourselves”. He is, after all, a wretched being, let him be a Mohomedan, a Christian or whatever he will. It is nothing to us.” And what was the result? For one person whom they so neglected there arose, hundred years ago, hundred Muslims and Christians to be born enemies of Hinduism, Hindu society and Hindu culture. Aurangzeb was born to such an abandoned Rajput woman. The Moplas of Malabar are by blood and bone half-Hindus. They have forgotten the mothers who gave them birth, and today, they swear by their fathers and behave as bitter enemies of the Hindus. Whence this difference in one generation or two? The difference has arisen by their conversion to Islam, by “the childish play” of the Moulvi who cut their tuft of hair and made them grow a beard.
The Childish play of great men
Thus even for its name the meanest man or the most useless man must be kept a Hindu if he happens to be born a Hindu. We as Hindus have lost terribly for not playing the game which others have played. It has affected us detrimentally, as we should come to realise after the Malabar riots. We must not now, for our very existence and preservation, rclrnin from playing the “childish game” of pulling out a convert’s board, and making him wear a tuft of hair instead. We must change his Christian or Muslim name into a I litidu name; we must give him a Tulsi leaf to eat and we must declare that he is purified and accepted back into his own faith. Our leaders must play the game as the Christian and the Muslim leaders have played it in the past and are playing it today. We must admit these sinful men in our society not for themselves but for their progeny which, otherwise, will be lost to it. It is first, our social duty, and it is a religious duty as welt. Who knows that a Valmiki may not be born to any-one of these Hindu robbers, dacoits and highwaymen? You denounce and disown them today as being more holy, more pious Hindus than they are. This is a pride and self-righteousness highly injurious to the future of Hinduism and Hindu culture. A pirate robber and highwayman wrote the Ramayan which is the admiration of the world. Let, therefore, a Hindu however depressed, criminal and abandoned in character he may be, repeat the name of Ram, however wrongly he may utter it to start with. Make it worth his while to do it. Do not shun him, do not revile him, do not turn him out. Treat him as your own brother, make him love his religion. Then he will recite that holy name properly, and it is sure to be good for him.
Inspired by this conviction, I taught the Hindu prisoners of our jail, and chiefly its political prisoners, to rescue the worst of Hindu prisoners from the grip of Islam, to save them from the coercion and blandishments of their Pathan jamadars. For six or seven years these thoughts were passing in my mind and these words were dancing on my lips. In 1913, that is a year and a half or two years after my coming to the Andamans, the first complaint was lodged by me against a forcible conversion in our jail. This was the first resistance I offered. I carried on the campaign of resistance and Shuddhi which began in that year to the end of 1921 - 22, that is till the day I was transferred to a prison in Hindusthan. My friends, the political prisoners, and my friends, the ordinary prisoners, gave me considerable co-operation in that work, and gave the moment, the impetus, and the drive it had received. I did not give up even when I was a prisoner in India. For that, attempts were made on my life by Pathan Goondas from time to time.+++(5)+++ There were riots on that account in that jail itself. My brother was actually injured in such a strife. +++(5)+++ But we never gave up the movement. The movement went on and one appreciable result of it was that forcible conversion in the Andamans had become a thing of the past, and the reconversion of the forcibly converted by Shuddhi became an established fact.
Shuddhi in the Andamans
The usual way of conversion in the Silver Jail of the Andamans was as follows:-
As soon as the Chalan came in that prison or whenever, later on, a suitable opportunity was found for the purpose, the young and the simple-minded lads out of Hindu prisoners were taken in charge by the head of the Mussulman warders and jamadars, the notorious Mirza Khan, and at once put on hard labour. The Mussalman warder or petty officer, in their immediate charge, lost no time in browbeating and thrashing them on the one hand, and in offering them baits on the other in order to force them into Islam. He would give them, with that end in view, tobacco to chew and sweetmeats to eat. On such an occasion, he treated these gullible lads with extreme kindness. When these boys were beaten and worked to the point of crying, he would openly advise them to become Muslims and all their troubles would be over. Gradually these new victims were caught in his net, and at last the ceremony of conversion came to be completed, by making them, openly abandon their seats for meal among the Hindu prisoners and go into the rank of Muslim prisoners. They were then served Mohomedan food so that there was no more chance left open for them to rejoin their Hindu friends. The Hindu and the Mohomedan kitchens were kept separate in this jail and the cooks were Hindus or Mohomedans according to the kitchen they looked after. Once the Hindu lads were discovered dining with the Mohomedans, they were sure to be banned by the Hindus. This was, therefore, an effective mode and final stroke of absorbing them in the Islamic faith. They were at once baptised with Muslim names. If any-one called them by their former names, Mirza Khan would growl at them, and his myrmidons would threaten them with severe punishment. “He is now a musulman” they would say, “and you must call him by his new name, beware.” This was all the ceremony through which these poor lads were made to pass to be the followers of the new faith. No circumcision, no recital of the Koran, no Nimaz, was necessary in their case. Tobacco was their circumcision, hard labour their Koran, and dining with Muslims was their Nimaz.
The Hindu prisoners, themselves, against Shuddhi
Generally these were the means employed to convert them. Some of them were, later on, circumcised. When they passed from the prison, they registered their names as Mussulmans. None of the officers cared to enquire how they had happened to change their names. None asked them if they were converted by force and bribes or were converts through the intelligent study of the Koran. When they went out to settle in the colony, the officers to watch diem were also Mussulmans. The officers outside converted the Hindus by pursuing similar methods. And if, fortunately enough, they happened to be thrown into the company of Hindus and showed their desire to cast off their borrowed feathers, it was the Hindus themselves who threw the greatest obstacles in their way. If they tried to mix among them they shouted at them as polluted beings, and reminded them that they had lost their caste by dining with Mahomedans. And they at once turned them out as untouchables. I have seen that a convert Muslim takes on his own Hindu name and sits for his meal among his former coreligionists, whereas he is driven out by the Hindus with a hue and cry much worse than the Mussulmans would have raised against him. They make him sit down with the Mussulmans, at any cost. And this made the task of Mirza Khan much easier to accomplish. He had only to put a Hindu prisoner into a tight corner, he had to make him dine with a Mussulman, and all was done. He need not then keep the new convert under his eye, he need no more give him a pinch of tobacco; be need not make him do the Nimaz. For the rest was done by the Hindus themselves to keep the convert safe under his paw. Only one day he had to do his business thoroughly to make a Hindu convert, and for the rest of his life and generations after, it was Hindus themselves who detained him in that fold. If this was what happened in India, the same was the case in the Andamans also. For Hinduism was not better there than in the mother-country, and the shadow of the latter was bound to fall upon the former. In this manner, every-one or two months, at least three to four Hindus were found going over to Islam in this settlement. And when they had married and settled, whether in the Andamans or in India, their children were bound to belong to Islam. And after a generation or two they developed fanaticism that made them forget and disown that they had come of Hindu ancestry. Not only that, but they hated Hinduism as only converts could do it. If a Hindu woman married a Mohomedan, she became a Muslim forthwith. But if a Muslim woman married a Hindu, she could never become a Hindu. For who would admit her to the fold of Hinduism? The Hindus would, by no means, welcome her, and her Hindu husband was compelled to be a Mussulman! He was treated as Mussulman and was presently ex-communicated from Hindu Society. I resolved to put an end to this suicidal policy. And in 1910, when a Brahmin boy was hemmed in by Mussulmans, I openly tried to save him. As the instance is typical of many that followed, I may as well narrate it here in full.
This boy hailed from the North of India and was about twenty years old. He was a thief and had undergone conviction for that offence. He was, in consequence, a thoroughly spoilt youth, though be was still proud of his Brahminism. The moment he saw the Andamans and the jail, and realised that he was transported to that place, he was in a fright. And, then, he was about to be put on ‘Kolu’. In this frame of mind, the Mussulman warders surrounded him. It was the slogan of this wicked gang that a Hindu boy was first to be crushed by hard labour- straightened out as they put it- then he was to be spoilt, and last, get him converted to Islam. The boy had already succumbed to pollution at the first temptation, and now he was to be taken for dinner with his Muslim prisoners. I sent him a word that on no account was he to submit himself to dine with them. He was not to give up his Hinduism thus. To this the boy answered that he had no other help than this, for, otherwise, Mirza Khan was sure to put him on the oil-mill. It was useless to preach that he should put up with that hard labour for the sake of his religion. For that was not going to influence a rake like him. I must help him against Mirza Khan and I could not do it from my cell where I was in solitary confinement. At last I carried the whole news to Mr. Barrie, at a private meeting with him. Not that Mr. Barrie was altogether ignorant of such happenings under his very nose, he did nothing in the matter. On the contrary, he turned round upon me and questioned me how I had come to know about it. He added, “Let alone these evil fellows, why should you bother with these derelicts?” He put me off with questions and cross-questions, and went away. I next took up the matter with the Superintendent. But as Mr. Barrie had primed him full on the topic, he gave me the stock answer that it did not matter if such evil persons were Hindus or Muslims. I argued with him in defence, in the same way that I had argued on the subject with my Hindu friends. Then the Superintendent clinched the point by asking me how I was going to prevent it. I answered that I had no objection to conversion if it happened as a free wish on the part of the convert. But the warders and the jamadars made converts by harassing the Hindus, by putting them on hard labour, by bribery and coercion. That was highly objectionable and must be resisted. The Superintendent informed me to catch them in the act, and then he would certainly resist it, and bring them severely to book for it.
The Superintendent left, and Mr. Barrie and Mirza Khan were very much angered. For in my conversation with him I had to expose many of their machinations. To ask me to catch them in the act was, in Mr. Barrie’s opinion, an encroachment upon his rights and the violation of his orders. Among the Mohomedan prisoners every one was gnashing his teeth at me. For to them Hindus were a negligible quantity. And the complaint was against their so-called individual privilege of a Mussulman to convert a Hindu. They had never heard such a thing in their lives. Barrie decided to teach me a lesson and ordered Mirza Khan and the angry Mussulman warders to tutor the boy to declare that he was embracing Islam of his own accord. Next day he was brought to our block, though his cell was in another block, and Mirza Khan gave him food along with the Muslim prisoners in our block. He went away after showering indecent abuse upon me without uttering my name. The Hindu lad was for the whole day called by his Muslim name. This was done to humiliate me by showing how helpless I was before them. I had, of course, to quietly pocket that insult. Next morning a Mussulman warder was giving two or three annas worth of tobacco to the Brahmin boy when I saw him; and I drew the attention of the Hindu warder to that act. He went down on his knees before me and requested that he should be spared the step of catching the Mussulman warder in the act of bribery, as that would mean Mirza Khan’s grudge against him. I then raised a cry and gathered together a number of persons, and, sending for the petty officer, asked him to search the boy himself. If the petty officer desisted, I warned him, I would take the matter to the Superintendent. He had to search the boy, when he found on his person the quantity of tobacco palmed off to him by the petty Mussulman warder. All this noise brought Mirza Khan on the spot. He questioned the lad as to who had offered tobacco to him, and he gave him the name of that warder. Mirza Khan kept me in the lock-up and took the boy to Mr. Barrie for - further disposal. On fuller enquiry into the matter I found that nothing had happened. I asked Mr. Barrie about it in the evening when he replied that he was the man to do anything that was to be done in that business, and I had no right to interfere in it. He added that I was only a prisoner like the rest of them, and could only say anything about myself, and, that, if I were to dabble in matters that did not personally affect me, I was liable to punishment for such interference. Two days after, the Superintendent came on his usual rounds, when I called out to him with the usual cry- “A petition please” The Superintendent was a man who used to be put out by any complaint lodged to him on any other day than he had fixed for it during the week. He at once went at me furiously, saying that I had no business to speak about others, and that I should speak only for myself. I answered straight to him: I am bent upon submitting the petition for the boy, do what you will with it. The political prisoners are reported to you by the ordinary warders on the charge of merely speaking to one another. Their notes are intercepted by them without any let or hindrance; as such I had the right to complain to you on a matter which I regard as the most serious, namely, bribing a boy in order to convert him from one faith to another.” These hot words of mine had their effect on the Superintendent whose duty it was to listen to every complaint we made to him. He came up to the door of my room, and asked me what the matter was. I said to him, “I caught the Mussulman warder giving tobacco to the Brahmin lad. I had a search made upon his person. I drew the attention of Mr. Barrie to it. And yet no step was taken by him against the warder in question.” The Superintendent was confused and angry. He asked Mr. Barrie petulantly what the matter was. He called for the Mussulman warder. In the meanwhile, Mr. Barrie winked at Mirza Khan, and the latter came forward and deposed, “Sire, the complainant had himself put the tobacco on the person of the lad in order to bring the Mussulman warder into scrape.” The Superintendent questioned the boy, who was honest enough to depose that I had not done it. The Superintendent understood how it was. When Mirza Khan tried to interpose, he silenced him with a stem rebuke and said to me, “What have you got to say upon the conversion generally?” I told him in brief, “If any man in this prison desired to read the Bible or study the Koran, I had no objection to it. He should get the permission of the superior officer for that purpose, and if he then felt honestly the urge within him to change from one religion to another, I would not interfere. But for such a conversion, either in the prison or in the settlement, he must have the sanction of the authorities concerned. And the authorities before giving such a sanction must convince themselves by proper investigation that there was nothing in the act like bribery or coercion by one party of another. And in the case of a minor no conversion should at all be permitted. This about the settlement generally. In the prison, conversion had to be banned entirely. The Superintendent assured me that about conversion in the Andamans, it was the Chief Commissioner who would decide, and he would speak to him. As for the prison itself, the matter stood as follows. If any one were to change his religion of his own accord, he cannot prevent it. He will not, however, permit any-one to effect forcible conversion. Mr. Barrie hotly interposed at this point with the remark that even to prevent that kind of conversion would be a hard task for the authorities, for they had pledged themselves to the policy of non-interference. I said to Mr. Barrie, “I am also fighting for religious liberty, that is, for no forcible conversion of any man by any other man in this prison. A free and willing conversion stands on a different footing altogether from conversion by coercion and bribery. The bulk of the warders, petty officers and jamadars in this prison being Muslims by faith, they can buttress up their action by any means they like. While the Hindus, on the other hand, have to go unheard. For instance, if I were found talking with a fellow- prisoner, he and I are at once punished for it. Hence Mr. Barrie’s non-interference reduces itself in plain terms to this: That his Muslim henchmen will be free to do what they like, while their Hindu victims will not be free to complain against them.” On this Mr. Barrie argued, “There are Hindu warders and tindals enough here, why do they not instruct the prisoners under them in their own tenets?” “Well,” I said promptly, “that was because you, Mr. Barrie, were not lost in love with them, as you are with the Muslim warders. You are partial to the latter, and severe on the former. And if this instruction in tenets was to be the ruling order of the prison, then the whole prison will turn into a mosque and a temple with endless controversies between the two about the truth of these opposing tenets. Further, according to the rules of this jail, not even a tindal or a warder was to exchange a single word with the prisoner except on business. Prison discipline demands, for this reason as well, no encouragement to talks on rival religions inside this building”. The Superintendent clinched the argument by a remark, the truth of which came home to me. He confronted me straight and asked, “Why don’t you, Hindus, convert Muslims to the Hindu faith? Why do you ever shout at others?”
This was no doubt a valid charge and it went home. I had to make a reply and I said, “Hinduism does not believe in conversion because it swears by the liberal doctrine, ’to each man his own faith’. Religion is not a matter of changing colour so that we may wear one religion one day, and a different one on the day following. But when it has to face today cults and powers wedded to spread their religion by sword or out of worldly considerations, Hinduism will not be wise to adhere to its liberal doctrine, for then the doctrine will either fail or be misrepresented. We have in past history instances of reconversion by Purification even in Hinduism. The Arya Samaj of India has been practising “Shuddhi” in modern days. Swami Vivekananda and his noble disciple Sister Nivedita are recent instances in point. He converted her from Christianity to Hinduism and changed her original name of Miss Margaret Noble into the Hindu name of Nivedita and accepted her as disciple and worker in his mission of Ramkrishna Paramahansa. We have her books in the library here and you may judge for yourself. Hinduism has forbidden conversion so far, not because if has doubts of its own worth, but because it feels sincerely that man can attain salvation through the gateway of every religion in the world, only if he remains true to it in life. It further maintains that Religion is one though religions are many in this world. Hinduism does not regard religion as a means of social cohesion, consolidation and power. I regard this attitude as a blunder in the world of today. But I cannot shut my eyes to the great principle which has inspired that attitude. And I must say that it is a noble principle and the most liberal attitude imaginable.”.
The Superintendent was a man of culture, and, as far as lay in him, he ever tried to be fair to all. I have referred to this trait in him before, and I shall have occasion to mention it again. He listened to my explanation with perfect composure, and seemed to be impressed by it. He became at once serious and replied in a calm tone, “I will think over the matter; for the present I order that the Brahmin boy has to sit with the Hindus for his morning and evening meal, and that he shall not partake it of the Muslims. And if any Mussulman were to tempt him or offer him his own food, let that man remember that he shall not go scot-free.” He addressed the latter straight to Mirza Khan by fixing his eyes straight upon him. Mirza Khan trembled in his shoes, and made a low bow to him. The Superintendent left the prison.
The threat was all right, and it no doubt went home. But the real difficulty came in after. The Superintendent may order that the boy shall take his meals with us alone.
But how were the Hindu prisoners to be made to admit him to sit in a line with them? +++(5)+++ Had he not dined, if only for a day or two, with the Mohomedans? We had defeated the Mohomedans, but how were we to win over the Hindus? That was the crux of the matter. Mr. Barrie had seen through it and kept quiet on the first day. For the Superintendent himself had lectured to him on that business. I sent message after message to my Hindu brethren that they should now agree, and admit the boy in their line. But there was suppressed opposition to it throughout the rank and file. In the Andamans all Hindus dined together irrespective of their caste distinctions. They sat in the same line, and the Mussulmans alone were seated in a row separate from them. I, therefore, expostulated with them that here was an opportunity, the first of its kind in this prison, to rescue a foolish Hindu lad, from the grip of the wicked Mirza Khan who had never before winced for anything he did in the world. Mirza Khan was out to use him and convert him. And the Hindus must now show their mettle to save him, If they were to forego their right on that occasion, Mr. Barrie was sure to make a capital out of it. He will send a counter-report to the Superintendent and make him look small for deciding in their favour. Mirza Khan will then dance upon their chests and be more impudent and overbearing than ever before. He was crestfallen today; but will strut like a cock tomorrow. So I argued with them endlessly but they would not make a definite answer. I and two others literally folded our hands to them, and personally appealed to them. At last, one or two of them were stricken with shame: And almost all agreed that the boy should sit at the extreme end of the line, and myself and two others be seated close to him. And, further, this was to be accomplished by eluding the lynx-eyed Mirza Khan. What a trouble it was to all of us! But it had to be done at any cost.
At last the boy began gradually to sit with us for dinner and the Hindus who agreed with us also reconciled themselves to it. Mr. Barrie had lost the game. Yet insidiously the Muslims went on with their work, for there was no fiat to the contrary from the Superintendent upon the policy as a whole. But there was a difference in position, and that was an important difference. The Mohomedans had ceased to bully and to brow-beat the Hindus on this particular matter. They behaved with caution. But that had deepened their hatred for us. Mr. Barrie kept going on with his incitement work in favour of conversion.
The news went round the whole of the Andamans that I had put an effective check upon the machinations of Mussulman warders in this prison to bring about forcible conversion of Hindu boys to Islam. Some of our prisoners were from Northern India; they had heard Arya Samajists and they started helping us. Before my going to the Andamans, some enthusiasts had already opened a branch of the Arya Samaj in that settlement. But they were unable so far to do any organised work there for the propagation of the Arya Samaj doctrines or to do any kind of Shuddhi movement. They had not even a notion of what could be done in this direction and in that place. They were gratified to learn of our efforts and began to help us. Later on some of them took the most enthusiastic part in the propagation of Shuddhi tenets. Some independent officers also joined us in that work.
A prisoner who had imbibed the principles of the Arya Samaj in his own country and who was for some time working on the settlement was sent back to the Silver Jail just at that time. He was himself a goonda and defied the Muslim goondas in our jail. He had served his sentence of transportation in the jail, was sent out to settle in the Andamans when again he entered on a terrible career of crime, and was, on that account, sent back to this prison. He was a terror, all over the place, to the Mussulman goondas. He was a seasoned jail-bird, expert in every form of crime from ordinary theft to breaking open prisons, smuggling narcotics like opium, street brawls and similar anti-social crimes. The Mussulman dared not look at Hindu boys whom he had once taken under his wings. For whosoever harassed those whom he had regarded as his protegees and friends, came in for a severe thrashing from him indefiance of all prison regulations. And he effaced the man completely by exposing some of his secrets. And, curious as it was of note, he had a fanatical faith in Hinduism, as his Muslim rivals had a fanatical faith in Islam. That had lent a sharp edge to his attack on them. He was gratified to behold the frustration and disgrace of his Muslim opponents as the result of our Shuddhi movement, and he promised to give us his utmost help in that agitation. I was now resolved not to take things meekly. For we had to deal, every day of our lives, with persons who were typically wicked and low-minded. It was impossible for us to cope with them in their abuses, thievish tendencies, beating and in their mean and devilish actions. Their ways were not our ways and I decided henceforward to carry out the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, of confronting a scoundrel with a scoundrel and an insolent man with insolence incarnate. I set this Hindu goonda his first task to save a Hindu youth of twenty-five back to Hinduism. The young man always expressed his desire to be reconverted to Hinduism. I put this man on him to accomplish the task.
I remembered the words of the Superintendent who had admonished me for mere talk and had exhorted me to convert Muslims to Hinduism. As soon as I caught hold of this man, I had made up my mind to begin the work; and to take that youth back to Hinduism. The prisoner I had chosen for that work took it so seriously, that he succeeded before long in preparing the man’s mind for reconversion, as also of a younger person who was an intimate of that youth. He never bothered who knew it; he began his work openly. He was, as I have said, a seasoned jail-bird, but, not being a political prisoner, he was appointed a ‘Mukadam’ in charge of ten persons. I was myself in solitary confinement. I, therefore, advised him to carry out the purification and reconversation within the precincts of his factory. This was the first experiment in Shuddhi in the jail of the Andamans.
On Sunday while Mirza Khan and the Muslim warders under him were busy attending to the prisoners washing their clothes on the reservoir, my man, the Hindu Mukadam, quietly took the two persons aside-the young convert of 25 and the boy who was his friend-he made them bathe, put on fresh clothes; and he brought them round to declare that they had made up their minds to return to return to Hinduism. These two made the declaration before three Hindus. The mukadam made them eat leaves of the sacred Tulsi plant, recited to them some slokas from the Bhagvatgita, and he read to them a chapter from the Ramanaya of Tulsidas. And the purification ceremony was done. He then distributed as “Prasad” the “shira” he had specially prepared for the occasion. Before Mirza Khan could realise what had happened, every one had repaired to his room as if nothing was the matter. The two persons, thenceforward, gave up doing Nimaz, and all of us began calling them by Hindu names. When the Mussulmans still hailed them as converts, they never answered them. They began to read the Ramanaya of Tulsidas and sat with us for dinner.+++(5)+++
This reconversion and Shuddhi created a great sensation in the Andamans. For a few days after the incident, Mr. Barrie and his creatures said nothing about it. He knew that if he were to complain about it to the superitendent, we may rake up the whole past against them. Moreover the Mussulmans had hopes that the whole show would end soon, and the Hindus themselves would oppose me.
And it did turn out as they had predicted. For, one of the Hindu tindals gave vent to the suppressed feelings of resentment for my action among the Hindu prisoners, and punished me by not allowing me to touch their water. As they always feared political prisoners they did not take their protest further and did not ventilate it too much, though they did not give up harassing me. They constantly twitted me, by openly hailing me as ‘Bhangi-Babu.’+++(5)+++
I must say, however, that much as they insulted me and continued their pin-pricking me, the party of ‘Bhangi-Babus’ began to grow in number and to gather in strength so that, at last, the leader of these tindals was himself compelled to join it. And in two or three years time this ‘Thakur’ himself became the most enthusiastic champion of Shuddhi, and reconversion to Hinduism, and he gave us his strong support in pursuing the campaign. The appellation ‘Bhangi-Babu’ was bestowed upon me as a title to signify one who had scruples to dine with a Mussulman who reconverted to Hinduism.
I did not convey the story of this Shuddhi to the ears of the Superitendent. For if Mr. Barrie would permit us to carry on our propaganda of Hinduism in the prison, and did not obstruct us as he had not obstructed the Mussulmans, there was no point in informing the Superitendent about the event in question. For I did not like to pick an unnecessary quarrel with Mr. Barrie. Mr. Barrie was, indeed, indifferent to the future of Islam or Hinduism. He favoured the Muslim warders and jamadars because they proved ready instruments in his hands to harass and torture the prisoners, and, especially the Hindu prisoners, and to keep a strict watch over us as political prisoners. If he were now to oppose openly the Shuddhi movement, he knew but too well, that we shall not fail to report him to the superitendent, and, as the letter had been on our side, he was not sure that he would not get a scolding from him for such interference. For all these reasons, Mr. Barrie did not say a word about our latest activities to the superitendent.
And I had kept the movement going on Just at this time, some three or four prisoners from Ceylon had come to our prison on the charge of rioting and similar violent action. They were sent on transportation for life. They became friends with us, and they were duly registered as members of our organisation. One of them had been already a convert to Christianity. We talked to him about the matter once or twice, and requested hiम् to be converted back to to Hinduism. Two out of three, who were more competent, soon got work as writers outside the prison. We assured the Ceylonese Christian that we would our best to secure a similar job for him too. This practical offer induced him to become a Hindu. In the Silver jail, occasionally, a clergyman paid a visit to offer prayer for those who were Christians. ःe came to us just after we had converted a sheep from his flock. The ceylonese Christian told him frankly that he was no more a Christian and the news astounded him. He carried the matter to the Superintendent and the latter started an enquiry. And our activities became a subject of discussion among the authorities. It must be said to the credit of the officers that they showed no temper over the matter. The investigation was conducted in a judicial frame of mind.
Just before this incident, report reached my ears that the Mussulmans had plotted to catch a Bengali prisoner into their net. He was a young boy and an addict to ‘ganja’ and, in the intoxication, had stabbed a person. He was 18 years old and was sentenced for that purpose. As soon as he was admitted into the jail, Mirza Khan took a fancy for him and managed to keep him under his Mussulman warders. Having felt that they had assimilated him completely with them, they made up their mind to convert him to Islam. So soon as I got the news I set upon him a young Hindu prisoner to dissuade him from that course. This young man was a goonda of goondas in the Andamans. Having served his sentence for ten years in this prison, he always had about him plenty of money. He always carried from ten to twelve guineas in the pouch of his throat. Four times he had run from the settlement to be in hiding in the dark jungles of the Andamans. Though he was a dare-devil and had committed horrible deeds to survive in the adverse conditions of prison-life, he was not a man of wicked heart. He was a man inclined to virtue and with deep faith in God. He was loyal to his friends. He was prepared to run any risk to save a friend. We decided that this Hindu should stay just where they had kept that boy and, at the proper time, expose the whole plot. Although the political prisoners were forbidden to move from one place to another without the permission of Mr. Barrie, the task of transferring ordinary prisoners was assigned to a Munshi. The Hindu prisoner in question tipped the Munshi to the tune of two rupees and got himself changed to a room adjoining the room of this young boy. Within eight days of his stay in that room the boy became his intimate friend. The elder man talked to him seriously on religion, country and caste, and completely got him under his influence. As a result, the boy unfolded to him the whole story of their dealings with him and their future plans to capture him for Islam. The boy further added that he hated Mirza Khan bitterly, but could not resist him and his like openly for fear they would persecute him all the more for such resistance. It was for his older friend to protect and save him from them. The Hindu friend had made up his mind about the matter and consulted me about it. With my consent and approval, he finally decided that he was to lie low till the last day, and to catch them in the very act of conversion. One Sunday, the Muslim tindal in charge of the block, and, who had taken the lead in the boy’s conversion to Islam, approached the boy and asked him to wait outside his room, when others were properly locked up in their respective cells. Thereafter, some five or ten of them involved in the plot seated themselves beside the reservoir and opened a packet of sweets (Jilebi) from which they were to ask the boy to partake with them. Everything was ready for the ceremony-water, jilebi and men who were to partake them from one pot and one packet. The boy was brought down, he was made to recite ‘Kalma’, and he was told the occasion and the importance of their coming together that day. He was plainly warned, that, if that day, he declined or hesitated to be a convert to Islam, he would lose all the facilities they had given him so far, he would be regarded as ungrateful wretch, and no further mercy would be shown to him. He would be subdued by the hardest labour that would fall to his lot thereafter, While the threat and the initiation were going on together in a sequestered spot near the reservoir, a European Officer suddenly appeared on the scene, and saw with his own eyes the plight of the boy before them. Our Hindu friend was with the officer to witness the deed.
Early in the morning, while the Muslim tindals were engaged in their business, he had quietly slipped out of his cell. Nobody hindered him on the way, as the other warders were beholden to him for the tips and other favours he had occasionally passed on to them. As soon as he had left his own block behind, he directed his steps to the office and informed the officer on the spot that he was catching a thief red-handed, and the officer should accompany him. The officer at once got up and went with him, to ascertain for himself the truth of the report. As I had known the exact time of the ceremony, they were all caught in the very act, with all the material they had brought together for the proposed conversion. The Mussulmans, the young lad who was to be their prey, the pot of water, the packet of sweets, and last of all, the Kalma, the Nimaz and everything else, the officer saw in the process of the initiation ceremony. The Hindu prisoner had timed his arrival so well that none could escape, and all should be caught in the very net they had spread for their intended victim.
The Mussulman tindal collapsed on the spot. His former acts were enough to condemn him. For he was the man who had made himself familiar with the boy, had smuggled the sweets into the prison, and had gathered together the Mussulmans for the initiation ceremony. And now he was caught in the act of conversion itself. So that the cup of his iniquities had filled to the brim. The elder Hindu prisoner told the officer the whole story as he had known it. The Muslim tindal was charged with the offence and a suit was launched against him. Even Mr. Barrie dared not to defend him. The lad, in his evidence before the court, put the whole case, as it had happened to him, to the Superintendent in charge. The Superintendent was fully convinced that what we had told him all along about conversion in this prison was not at all a fib. The Mussulmans sought to implicate me in the trial by deposing that the Hindus were doing the same by the Mussulmans in that jail, like the preaching and propaganda of their faith and conversion of Muslims to Hinduism. I was called, therefore, to put in my defence, I, of course, closed with it as an opportunity to explain to the Superintendent, once again, the whole position on the issue in question, I re-minded the Superintendent of his retort to me that I was always complaining against the Mussulmans but was doing nothing myself in favour of Hinduism, that I was not converting Mussulmans to Hinduism as they were converting Hindus to Islam.
The challenge implied that the Muslims were not weak minded enough to embrace another faith whereas the Hindus had not even the power in them to retain the adherents in their own faith. How can they convert the Muslims when they cannot keep their own? But it was a mistaken view of the whole position. If the Hindus mean it, they can absorb others in their own faith and I had proved it by my Shuddhi movement in this prison. Both the Muslim prisoners and the Superintendent, I averred, must have realised the fact by what they had seen. Formerly in this prison, the Hindu prisoners had complained that the Muslims forced them into conversion. +++(5)+++ Now the Muslim prisoners have begun to shout that they are worse sufferers in that respect. If the Superintendent desired to put an end to this mess, I concluded, the only means for it was to stop conversion altogether by ordering that the authorities will not sanction it, and that the mere dining together or the change of names shall not be accepted as the test of conversion.
Consulting the Commissioner, the Superintendent soon issued an order to the jailor that he shall not countenance conversion. The prison was not the place, it declared, for conversion in any form or shape, either by common dinner or by mere change of names. They were not even to think or discuss about the matter. This put an end to the Mussulman petty officers or their underlings in this prison trying by every means to gather Hindus into their fold. The Hindus had never been keen on it, and had not started the propaganda with that aim in view. So that within the jurisdiction of the prison, at least, the fanaticism of the Muslims to convert Hindus had come to an end. It had been definitely checkmated and “Othello’s occupation was gone.”
I had another wonderful experience in this affair. It was that I could touch the heart of the so-called goonda and rouse his social sense and patriotism more quickly than of the so-called decent- minded people in Hindu society.+++(5)+++ The other educated people showed little courage to plunge in this struggle and work with the sacrifice and the spirit of service evinced by these fallen and sinful creatures. And the reason for it was plain enough. The goonda is by habit a dare-devil and he is tenacious in the line he chalks out for himself. I think that his tenacity and devilry are but perversions of courage and will which are signs of manliness and virtue. +++(5)+++ These qualities of the heart are running to waste in the goonda, but they could be used, as I found out in the Shuddhi movement, to noble ends if the incentive to them came from love of one’s own religion, and pride for one’s own culture—in short, of love of one’s own country and community. It was I who had given them the objective to work for, but gradually, as they had proceeded in that work, they began to love that work for its own sake; their instinctive daring gave them the spur to devote themselves to the cause with pride and selflessness all their own. No further incentive was needed to goad them on in that work. What a change it had made in their lives! Some of them began reading Tulsidas’s Ramayana, and they did it regularly. +++(5)+++ Others took to learning and self-education. Others, again, gave their money for the Shuddhi movement. Those who had been typical hoarders gave liberally to the cause. A Hindu boy— a new arrival in the prison- could be safely put in their charge. These boys got all that they needed from these workers. Hence no longer could the Muslim warders tempt them, hoodwink them, or take them under their wings.
The more the Hindu prisoners came to be impregnated with love and pride for their own faith, the more did the Mussulmans began to chafe against them. And as Mr. Barrie was ever ready to instigate them, we had to suffer much from them. It was not a mere physical suffering but mental torture as well as torture to the soul. How much I suffered from them, I cannot adequately describe. Sometime showers of indecent abuse was poured over my head from their quarters. Mr. Barrie had detailed some of them to harass me thus throughout the day. These were the worst of their kind and had a free run of all the wards in that prison. They stood for hours together before my room or my chawl, and flung at me their choicest epithets of abuse. +++(5)+++ And the officers stood nearby to enjoy them, and giggle in laughter. I was no match for them in this contest. And even if I could improvise similar abusive language, it would not heal the bruises on my soul, and it could inflict no pain on them. For such vulgarity was their usual pastime. I had however to bear it with patience. My cause was, however, taken up by the Hindu goondas, and they succeeded in silencing them. For in that jargon of abuse and vulgarism, these had proved their masters. They did not complain against the Mussulman Goondas, for they knew that Mr. Barrie would not entertain any complaint against them. But one Hindu warder devised a more effective plan to damn them. He secreted in the bedding of a Mussulman warder, knives, tobacco, money and other articles which he was not allowed to keep with him. And one day when the Superintendent came on an inspection tour, he quietly placed the bedding with its contents before him. In consequence the Muslim warder was dismissed from office, discharged from his duty, punished and sent out on hard work outside the prison. There he was caned for some dispute with the Hindu prisoners. They dealt in a similar fashion with other members of the gang with the help of the political prisoners in the jail, catching them somehow upon the hip and beating them at their own game. In course of time the whole gang was completely routed and there was an end to all our troubles. The Muslim goonda infuriated by our Shuddhi movement, had at last come to his senses.
The Shuddhi movement outside the prison
As the political prisoners, trained in the organisation that I have already described in previous pages, went out in increasing numbers in the settlement of the Andamans, they carried with them the torch of Shuddhi to the locality in which they were called upon to do their normal daily work. And the movement gathered in strength and volume as these mixed and moved among the people. This agitation, all round, deepened the people’s love for Hinduism, and their resentment for those who had persecuted the Hindus or tried to convert them to their own faith. The suffering and the awakening contributed greatly to the fusion of the people, and to minimise, if not altogether abolish, the distinctions among them, as Hindus, of province, caste and custom, and to their consolidation in these parts as one society. Let there come news of some one converted, and the whole community of the Hindu prisoners in that settlement was alive to the need of retaining him. In this manner even the Hindus who had embraced Islam eight or ten years before I had reached the place, were, by this Shuddhi movement, reconverted to Hinduism. These dined freely with their Hindu brethren and without any objection by the Hindus themselves. I may give here only one instance to point the moral and to adorn the tale. There was an old man of fifty by name Tulshi. This fellow was a veteran in all kinds of vices. He was a first class thief and a first class gambler. Realising that in the Andamans the Mussulman was in power everywhere, and hating the taboos in Hinduism on food and drink, he had embraced Islam. But when he knew by our Shuddhi movement that one did not cease to be a Hindu by food and drink with his fellows of any caste or creed, or religion, and when public opinion of the community concerned had veered round to the view, Tulshi found it impossible to continue as a Mussulman, and felt keenly that he must be a Hindu as before. He was so steeped in his borrowed habits that he had even forgotten his old Hindu name, and one had to remind him of it. Every one took him for a Muslim and he wrote and signed as a Muslim. But the stir and excitement of the Hindu revival around him awakened his deep- seated love for his own faith, and made him throw off his borrowed garments. Continuing to be a Mussulman for a period of fifteen years, he reverted at the age of fifty to his own religion. We christened him Tulshi, and as Tulshi he is now known throughout the island. Every day he reads his Ramayana, and wears as a mark of Hinduism, the usual ’tilak’ on his forehead, and they do not forbid this reconverted Hindu from dining in a row with them. As this difficulty disappeared, it became easier for us to retain those whom we had reconverted and correspondingly more difficult for the Muslims to convert Hindus to their faith.
If a Muslim or a Christian does not lose his caste by taking his food with a Hindu; why should a Hindu alone lose his caste and religion by dining in the company of Christians and Muslims or eating the food that they set? Was it because the Hindu had lost his power of digestion? How did it happen I wonder. A Hindu must now eat and drink with the Mussulman and the Christian, and digesting his food, survive as a Hindu. The whole world has been feasting on you and you are the only people starving! We must now learn, O, my brothers, to feed on the food of the whole world and yet remain staunch Hindus. That is the only way of our salvation! That constitutes the salvaging of Hindu culture, Hindu religion and Hindu civilisation. I have been preaching this all along and in different contexts. I have sought to impress this one truth on the mind of my co-religionists. I may quote only one instance to illustrate my argument.
There come to the Andamans, as it is a coaling station, steamers laden with coal. Coal is stored up in the harbour to provide passing ships and steamers the coal that they need occasionally for their voyage to and fro. Once when a ship with the cargo of coal in her happened to be at anchor in that port, thousands of prisoners were put on the labour from day-break to empty the coal and to stock it in the appointed ware-houses. The prisoners could get no food during the day as they were so busy with the work. So usually they were given four handfuls of gram each, as a substitute for their morning meal. They worked like this from early morn till three in the afternoon when alone they were sent back to the settlement to have meal. Sacks full of gram were ordered for the purpose on the day of such work. Hindus and Muslims did not take from the same sack but separately. On that particular day, the Hindu prisoners, dead tired with their work, their bodies full of perspiration, and their faces and hands besmeared with coal dust, returned to the spot where these things were being served to them. It was I2 noon and they were very hungry. And what did they find?. They found that the Muslim prisoners who had preceded them had already opened the sacks reserved for Hindus and had been making a full meal but of them! These Hindu prisoners belonged to the Thakur caste in Hindusthan, who would not eat the food touched by the Mussulmans. Here were sacks full of grams and parched rice. But they would not touch a particle because the Mohomedans had touched them. The officer in charge of them all was a Mohomedan. And when he saw the Hindu prisoners so starving themselves he burst into a fit of laughter. He did not attend to them, he made no arrangement for their food, and the Mohomedan goondas had their full feast and fun out of it. For they ate their own ration all right, and finished that which the Hindus would not touch. So these had to toil and starve for the whole day without a particle out of the sacks meant for them. The same thing happened to them on the following day. The Muslims had touched two sacks of gram reserved for the Hindus, and the Hindus had to go without food in consequence. The European officers did not bother to know what was happening near them. They would not care and pitied the starving Hindus for such ludicrous nonsense and folly.
I knew the incident in the evening of the first day. I rebuked them severely, such of them as were the inmates of my prison, for this foolish and suicidal custom. “Look here,” I told them, “how this way of yours is going to harm you. Suppose, you Thakurs prepare ‘Jilabi’ one day; and the whole of it is touched by the Muslims; they eat it all and you go without it. Another day, you bring Pedhas and a Christian touches them. You throw them and the Christians feast upon them. Where is this going to take you in the end. This foolish notion of purity and impurity, of pollution by touch, has landed the Hindus into misery and starvation. They remain poor because they would not cross the seas; they would eat from nobody and eat with nobody, and they starve in the midst of plenty. They don’t do business and others steal a march over them and exploit them. It is no sin to let others carry your riches away from your own country; to let others devour your food. It is no sin or pollution to let others fatten on you. But if you eat your own food touched by others it is a great sin. Do not eat another man’s food, I grant it. But do not allow any-one else to eat your food; that is merit and not sin. Simple touch does not desecrate it. And the eating of food so desecrated is no sin before man and God. Do not be so foolish, so asinine. If the gram and the parched rice handled by the Muslims became muslim-tainted food, then why should not your touch make their food Hindu food and purified food for you?+++(5)+++ Go, you fools, tomorrow when your work is done, rush, some of you, to the sacks reserved for Muslims, and devour the gram in them. If they cry and complain, say to them that your touch had polluted them because it had turned the grains into Kafirs! Our grains do not get polluted by the touch of the Muslims, remember it well, and their ration is certainly polluted by our touch, don’t forget it. So eat both and don’t starve. Your sin, if it is any sin, beupon my head, I assure you. Why, on earth, do you let yourselves starve?”
As I thus brought them round by harsh and plain speaking words, some hundred and fifty of them agreed to do as I had bidden them to do. On the third day, these men, without waiting for their fellows, ran straight to the bags of grain reserved for the Muslim prisoners, and began to feed full upon them. The Muslim, of course, were angered by this act. The Hindus reminded them of what they had themselves done on two previous days. “You felt then, that you had polluted the thing and we would not touch it. Now we touch the bags and they are ours, and we eat the contents as food of the Hindus.” This talk the European officer overheard, and could not help laughing over it. He did not punish the Hindu prisoners. On the other hand, he congratulated them for doing away with the foolish notion which had kept them from that food for two days before. When others saw how well they had fed themselves, they also began to have their share in that feast. From the following days, the Muslims never dared open the bags reserved for the Hindus, for they knew that it would no longer serve them to play that dirty trick.
I thus succeeded largely to drive away from their minds the silly notions about food, and drink, sleeping and sitting, which, in the name of pollution and non-pollution, had done so much harm to the Hindu society. As a result the Hindu way of life became as convenient for us in prison as was the Christian and the Muslim way to its followers. Life became easier and we, as Hindus, were enabled to face our hardships with better courage and greater fearlessness. This had one other effect as well. Many a Hindu in this prison, who had gone over to Islam disgusted with these taboos, was converted back to Hinduism by this change of outlook on fife and religion. And many a Hindu who was inclined to that faith naturally remained in his own religion.
Occasionally I succeeded in converting a Christian to Hindu faith. Let me mention in this connection the story of a Telangi Brahmin warder. This prisoner was forty years old. He had come from Telangan. He was a Christian by descent. His parents, or grand-parents, a generation ago, had accepted Christianity. I saw him reading Ramayana in his native tongue and since then I began to take interest in him. I kept an eye on him and began to know more of him. He had also learnt English and knew it tolerably well. I promised him the post of a Munshi if he would improve his English and teach it to other prisoners in the jail.
That offer made him come to me to learn English. Of course he had to meet me for that purpose warily. Soon he became my staunch follower. I told him about our country, its history and its national leaders, and how it was the duty of every one of us to work for her. This drew him more closely to me and he expressed his earnest wish that he should be taken back into Hinduism. He was a man of strong will, and, though I tried to dissuade him from it, he would not listen to me. At last I agreed to perform the Shuddhi and convert him back to Hinduism. So he became a Hindu and also adopted a Hindu name. He wrote to Government that, in the register of prisoners, his name should be entered as a Hindu. When the priest came, he did not attend his prayers as a Christian. Mr. Barrie was very angry with him and threatened that he would take him off from the duty of a warder. But the Superintendent paid no heed to Mr. Barrie. After his conversion, the Brahmin went to the Hindu temple on holidays like Dussera and Divali taking special permission for that purpose. He wore a tilak on his forehead and began the study of Vivekanand’s writings. He read stories of great valour from Indian history, and contributed regularly to our organisation the monthly sum of four annas out ofhis slender purse of twelve annas a month.
From the prison the Shuddhi movement began to spread outwards among the free inhabitants of the Andamans. There was in it an independent Hindu world of merchants, tradesmen, soldiers and children of prisoners who had settled in that land. There were in the Andamans Hindu temples built by these permanent settlers; and these were not so far open to the outcastes. It was difficult to get converts to Hinduism admitted into them. But, in the process of time, that custom fell into abeyance and on big holidays they were open to all who called themselves Hindus or were Hindus by conversion. These entered the temples without restriction; participated in the recital of the Ramayana, took darshan of the idol, and were admitted to public dinners.
With all this progress in the Shuddhi movement we had clashes with the Muslims, from time to time, which sometimes resulted in open riots. Just about 1920, a shameless and insolent goonda among Muslim prisoners had kept a Gujarathi boy as his paramour, +++(5)+++ and, in due course, this relationship between the two would have led to the boy’s conversion to Islam and the corresponding funeral of Hinduism in his soul. My brother came to know about it and managed to detach the boy from his goonda friend. At my instance, the Hindu Munshi transferred him from that ward to a room in another, near the room of a trusted Hindu prisoner. Enraged by this transfer, the Mohomedan goonda came up to my brother when he had just finished his bath and was wiping his face with a towel, and attacked him. He gave a severe blow on his nose which made him faint on the spot. Blood began to stream down from his nose and he fell senseless on the ground. The prisoners around him came running up to him from all sides and at last caught the goonda. What did Mr. Barrie do to him? He openly complimented the goonda on his brave action. And he said to others, “How fine it would be if some one was to handle Savarkar in a similar fashion.” But one who was not cowed down under the shadow of death, was not to be put down by the curses of a man like Mr. Barrie. Savarkar’s movement suffered no set-back by this threat, but the goonda was soon brought to book for his nasty act. He was caned twice for similar other offences, and was finally put into solitary confinement in a room near my own. He then became meek as a lamb. He then confessed that it was Mr. Barrie who had set him on to attack my brother. Otherwise he would not have done it; he dared not do it. How much of truth there was in that story either he or Mr. Barrie alone could say.
I had to undergo personally so many hardships in these matters that I felt at times, that I should stop all these movements and mind my own lot in this prison, a lot that was already so hapless, helpless and hard to bear. Yet the urge within would not let me rest on my oars; it would not let me do nothing for those around me. To be doing something for the uplift and education of my countrymen had been the breath of my nostrils; to give up the struggle was simply not to exist Yet I felt betimes, that to suffer thus personally in jail, was in itself a sort of expiation and service for my motherland, and I should desist from anything outside the sphere of such service and such expiation. Let others take up the burden from me, and let each one of them share it and carry on. But I saw before me a Hindu prisoner caught in the meshes of this mood of pessimism did not last long, for whenever Mussulman intrigue or any prisoner mercilessly handled by the jail authorities, I could not repress the overpowering impulse in me to plunge into the fray and help these helpless creatures out. I thought the injury and insult to them as personal injury and insult And further that I could not take it lying down. I used to control my surging emotion by meditation. I am inclined to believe that, when a man feels keenly the insult ofhis community, nation and religion, and his helplessness to retaliate; when his position is no better than that of a tiger in the cage; some such expression as the Sant Ramdas uttered in similar circumstances, cannot help escapiAg his lips. Ramdas admonished himself as follows:-
“The self is already torn to pieces; let the burden of the world be the self for you: wake up my soul and be ready for repeated sacrifice.”
I meditated upon these verses of Ramdas to restore to my tortured mind the poise it needed so badly. For, my mind was inflamed by what I had to bear of the daily insult to my religion and nation in this prison.
My temperament was averse from the kind of detachment which would allow me to abstain from pursuing any activities for the resuscitation of Hinduism, for doing away with the foolish customs which had dragged her into the mire. I had to inspire the Hindus with a new faith and with a spirit of nationalism calculated to restore Hinduism to its high status. No doubt it was an uphill task, for, in its pursuit, I had to face the opposition not only of the officers and their Mussulman henchmen but ridicule and contumely of men belonging to my own religion. And this exposed me to terrible mental worry, physical exertion and irrational opposition from the people themselves.
Within a short time, I had won for the cause the active cooperation of some of the political and ordinary prisoners in this jail. I am not permitted to give their names here as I do not know if they will like it, and if it is safe for them as well. At the proper time, I will mention them, for I must not fail to pay the debt of gratitude I owe to them. Among the political prisoners from the Punjab, there were many who proved themselves bold and resolute in the defence of their own religion and culture, in the promotion of education and in the cause of Shuddhi and conversion. It did not matter to them, in the least, who the person was to whom they imparted instruction, whom they saved from conversion, or whom they converted to Hinduism. He may be the lowest of the low, the very dregs of society; it was enough for them that he was a Hindu or he was willing to be converted to Hinduism. But till I had thoroughly instructed these willing workers in the principles of ‘Suddhi’ and ‘Sangathan’, I could not but bear the whole burden myself. The only persons who came forward to help me were some from the ordinary prisoners in this jail.
In this self-imposed task of mine, I had to face the same kind of disputes, quarrels and fights between Hindus and Muslims in the several districts of these islands, as I had to face them in the jail itself in our earlier struggle for Shuddhi and conversion. I have described some of the latter in my narrative earlier. Let me give an instance or two of such fights outside the jail. In the district of ‘Hardu’, the quarrel between the two parties was taken up to the officers when they told us that they would not officially recognise conversion or reconversion within their own jurisdiction, which meant that a man’s religion shall continue the same that he had at the time of entering the Andaman Islands. This ruling gave a blow to the Muslims who had converted Hindus to their faith after the latter had stepped into the Andamans. Their change of religion and change of names had gone for nothing, and they were not liable to be sued in a Court of Law by their Muslim friends for return to their own religion and to their own names as Hindus. Much less did they fear for it the displeasure or anger of the officials concerned.
The change in these circumstances compelled the Muslim converts to look up their original names and caste in the prisoners’ resister. I had also to search up in the register the real names of those boy-prisoners who had been reported in their personal tickets, without any let or hindrance, as belonging to Muslim faith. I had noted the Mussulman clerk of the Jail writing out tickets under such false names and religion. I, therefore, decided to scan the entire register of prisoners in the Andamans and prepare the census of Hindus among them.+++(5)+++ I had to search up for that purpose all the papers giving a full and faithful record of these prisoners, such papers as they had particularly brought with them from their respective prisons in India for purposes of entry into the Island and the prison of the Andamans. For then alone I could make out who were Hindus and who were Mussulmans, and who had been turned into Mussulmans by conversion and who were again reconverted from Islam to Hindu faith. I could trace those who were passed off as Muslims on false tickets issued to them by the clever Munshi of that jail. But how and where and from whom I was to procure these papers dating back, in many cases, to several years?
A Golden Opportunity
Fortunately enough, chance favoured me miraculously in my projected work. In the last census of the Andamans, following the census in India, the bulk of the work was done through the prisoners themselves. And many of these men happened to be my trusted friends. In that census the authorities had entrusted to me the task of preparing the whole record and allowed me to sit in the office for that work. That story I shall narrate in its own place later on. I make a mention of it here in connection with the Shuddhi movement.
The last census in India was taken during the days of the acute differences among the Hindus in all parts of the country. And the Andamans were not without its repercussions of those differences. When we began the census work In the Andamans, It was my ambition to make it an accurate and full record of its population according to caste, creed, race and colour. I had made up my mind to remove from it all the discrepancies and errors of the past, and all the misrepresentations in it about conversion and reconversion. I wanted to give a true and complete picture in that census of the existing Hindu population in the settlement of the Andamans. I and my co-workers on that task sent messages to that effect throughout the districts of the settlement. The most important part of the work had to be done in our own office. The census-forms, properly filled in, had to come to this central place. We had to compare them with the corresponding original records of all the prisoners in that island. We had to check them as regards name, village, religion, and caste from their original warrants kept in the jail-record. So many political prisoners came forward to help me in that strenuous task, and the jail authorities permitted them to assist me in it.
One difficulty arose at the start to interfere with that work. The Arya Samajists resolved that they would mark themselves in the census-forms as ‘Arya’ instead of as ‘Hindu.’ This was in consequence of their past misunderstanding about Hindus and Hinduism. And the Sikhs followed the Arya Samajists for the same reason. The obstinacy of both was bound to affect the census record of the Hindu community as a whole. I need not discuss here the comprehensive term ‘Hindu’ as it covers our whole history and culture from the remote past to the recent present. I have written about it in a separate book called ‘Hinduism’ in Marathi and the issue is settled for the Arya Samajists by the writings of leaders like Lala Lajpatrai, Swami Shraddhanand and Bhai Pannanand. The comprehensive movement of Hindu Sangathan has given a quietus to-day to this wrangle between Hindus, Sanatanists, Aryasamajists and Sikhs. Suffice it to say here that the definition of Hinduism and Hindus which I had arrived at in England to prevent further divisions in our society, and to consolidate the Hindus as one community of the people of India, was my beacon light in the disputes over the question in the prison. I taught in the Andamans political as well as non-political prisoners to prevent disintegration, and to integrate the mass on a higher level of synthesis and understanding. My definition of a Hindu is simply this: A man who recognises our country as the land of his birth and religion is a Hindu. +++(5)+++ And I impressed it upon all whom I welcomed as true Hindus, namely the Arya Samajists, the Sikhs and the Jains. The book containing the exposition of this definition is in the market to-day. And there the reader who wants to know its fuller treatment, may find it. The definition as stated by me in Sanskrit in my work on ‘Hinduism’ is;
“from the ocean to the Indus the whole land of Bharata
Is my fatherland, is my sacred country
And that makes me a Hindu.”
That is the definition of a Hindu which I have given in my book on Hinduism. All thoughtful men and all members of the Hindu Mahatabha, in all its branches, have accepted it. In the Andamans it was put forth but recently, and it took so much of my energy and power of persuasion then to convince people of the truth and the utility of that definition. I had to argue with every man whom I met there to bring it home to him. One instance, however exaggerated it may he, I must give here to show how sectarianism is apt to destroy our essential unity as Hindus. The Sikhs have among them various sects like Akali, Sahajadhari and keshadhari. In the census movement that I have already mentioned the Keshadharis insisted that in the forms supplied to them they would mark themselves as Keshadharis and not as Sikhs. I pointed out to them how it was detrimental to the interest of the community as a whole that, though belonging to it, they should fill the form as Keshadharis. The tendency was bound to divide and destroy the community inch by inch, when what we needed most in India, bothpolitically and socially, was not minute sub-divisions and disintegration but fusion and integration. This weighed with them somewhat, and all my Sikh workers succeeded in effecting a compromise. The Sikhs were to make a representation to the authorities and fill in the census-form as Hindus though within brackets they were to show themselves as Sikhs. This was a fair compromise. For their prison-warrants had followed the same procedure. First the prisoner’s name, then his sect, then his particular caste, like the Jat and the Mahajabi-that was the order in which they were noted in their warrants. The mention of caste made them Hindus without distinction, whatever may be their sect and name. Every Sikh possessed his prisoner’s sheet. And not one of them had claimed in it that he was not a jat and was only a Sikh. And the nomenclatures ‘Jats’ and “Sodhis” were clearly Hindu nomenclatures because they belonged to Hindu castes. And these had no objection, besides, to dine along with other Hindus. This procedure helped a great deal to spread and popularize my definition of Hindu and Hinduism throughout the community of Hindu prisoners in our settlement. Even the officers interested themselves in the discussion and gave it a serious consideration.
At last when all forms were received in our office and were duly classified and tabulated, we found to our satisfaction that men of all castes and sects in Hindu society in which the Sikhs were also included had noted themselves by no other nomenclature but that of the simple Hindu. We had to spend days and days in the careful inspection of the prisoners’ original warrants. These revealed to us many funny things. An originally depressed class man had changed his caste so many times in these warrants as he passed from prison to prison that ultimately he came out in them as a Brahmin. The Bhangi had effected the gradual change with a distinct motive. As a Brahmin he had a good chance of being selected for the cooking department ofthe prison. That a Bhangi should rise by this process to be a Brahmin was curious enough.+++(5)+++ But what was more surprising and insulting in the revelation ofthe records, was the fact that so many Hindus came out ultimately as Muslims in them: and it was due to the fact that thereby they had set themselves free from all the horrors and tortures of the prison-life. There was evident in them fraudulence and coercion all along the pages. I drew the attention of my friends to that fact, and showed what a change the Shuddhi movement had effected in their condition within but two years. In the final copy of the report, we had counted all as Hindus who were originally Hindus, including in them reconverts from Islam to Hinduism. It showed us clearly the triumph of the Shuddhi movement and the stopping of all efforts to convert Hindus to Islam. We could note from it the number of Hindus so converted as also of those taken back to Hinduism. And we could also count those who yet remained to be reconverted.
If the agitation in the Andamans had not done all this, but had only awakened the conscience of the Hindus to the possibility that a Mussulman can also be converted to Hinduism, I would have achieved a great deal. For up to that time the question that was always put to us was, “A Hindu can become a Mussulman, no doubt; but how can a Mussulman be admitted into Hinduism ?” Hundreds of Hindus had asked me that question and sincerely believed that there was no answer for it. But none put such a Conundrum before us any longer. For the Shuddhi movement had shown that it could be done, and we had done it. The food touched or prepared by the Muslims could be eaten by the Hindu without tarring his stomach and making him lose his caste and religion. Hinduism was not so anaemic as that; and the Hindus in the Andamans had realised the fact as they had not done it before. This was a great achievement of the Shuddhi movement in that part of the world. For there are in the so-called wise and liberty- loving Hindus of India bigoted champions of Hinduism who, seriously enough, still seek to confound us by the same conundrum. This awakening in the Andamans was not confined to the few but had spread all over the place and the roots of the new feeling had gone deep down into the soil of the Andamans, in illustration whereof I quote one or two incidents which happened there after I had left the Andamans.
Before we started the Shuddhi movement and the Sangathan movement in the Andamans, a Hindu woman who happened to many a Mussulman had to become a Mussulman. She dared not ask the Mussulman husband to be a Hindu and she could not remain a Hindu after marrying the Mussulman. The Hindus, having very squeamish notions of marriage as handed down by custom and tradition, no Hindu prisoner ever offered himself to marry a Mussulman woman. On the other hand, the Mussulman was ever ready to have a Hindu woman not only as his wife but even as his keep. He never let go such an opportunity, for it was his faith that to spoil a kaffir woman in that way was his sacred duty, for it added, in her children, to the number of Mussulmans in the world.+++(5)+++ To him a woman was nothing but a breeding ground and an object of enjoyment. As the Hindus in the Andamans began more and more to realise this state of things, they became more and more vigilant not to let a Hindu woman pass into the fold of Islam. A woman of the Thakur tribe had spoilt herself in matters of food and drink in the company of a Mussulman. Later on she made up her mind to marry him. And she threatened to embrace Islam and marry her Mussulman companion if the Hindus did not take her back purified, and find for her a Hindu husband. The Mussulmans were only too willing to accept her. In this critical situation a Hindu decided to marry her, just with the object of saving her and her children for Hindu society.+++(5)+++ But against his fair offer of marriage to her, the Muslims raised a cry that the woman was, for all practical purposes; a Mussulman, and cannot marry a Hindu man. The Hindus had to report the matter to the officers against this claim of the Mussulmans. A Hindu woman and a convert to Islam could marry a Muslim; but though unmarried, she cannot be reconverted to Hinduism and cannot marry a Hindu! That was the position and the issue raised. This outrageous and absurd claim of Muslims had its justification in the foolish and ante-dated custom and tradition of Hinduism itself. This fact no Hindu can afford to forget. But in the Andamans the Hindus in a body protested against the claim, and, as a result, the officers decided that as the woman was a Hindu when she came in the Andamans, and change of religion was not allowed during her continuance in the islands as a prisoner, she was a Hindu and free to choose a Hindu husband. This silenced all opposition to her Shuddhi and to her marriage in Hindu society. The Thakur woman was married to the man who had offered to take her, and they remained Hindus thereafter.
I may mention here another instance in point. As a matter of fact, there are thousands of Mussulmans who do not do their Nimaz even once during the day. But just to spite the Hindu prisoners they insist on that practice in this prison-and these Mussulmans are the worst dacoits and criminals of that place. If a party of prisoners were sent out for work on the islands, the Muslim section in it did the Nimaz five to seven times during the day, for that obtained respite from the officers in their day’s work on grounds of religion, and the Hindus were hard put to it to finish the day’s allotted labour; while the Muslims safely escaped all the rigour of it.+++(5)+++ It is very interesting to note on such an occasion what apparent absorption in prayer these Muslim miscreants put on. They spend a good deal of time in washing their hands and feet, they slowly clean and stroke their beard; they sit long with eyes shut after the Nimaz is done; and they assume an air of quiescence and deep contemplation. One may feel, as he looks at them, as if they had passed in all yogi practices like “Pranayam”, “Karma”, “Japa” and “meditation”, leading up to final ecstasy or beatitude. There were only two items wanting in it to complete the show-either a pot of milk or line of fishes in front of them, and hard labour in the prison itself! For, in the first item, their attitude will be no better than that of a cat or crane watching for its prey, and, in the second, that of the miscreants silent and lost in prayer to evade the work before them.
They resorted to another trick in order to harass their Hindu brethren in prison and to defy the prison regulation in the spirit of a goonda. That was to cry ‘bang’ early at day-break.+++(5)+++ The term ‘bang’ meant a call to prayer from the top of a minaret to the faithful ones in Islam. And it is to be uttered with the topmost note of one’s voice. In the prison this was definitely an intolerable nuisance, for, at that hour, all were fast asleep after the day’s exhausting work, and it was liable to censure and interdiction by the authorities. The man who, for years, opened the prison gate with the utmost reluctance and straightaway lapsed into sleep at day time, had, sometimes, the frenzy in him to get up and utter this piercing cry, and disturb the peace of the entire prison. Who can then say that it was all well-meant, and not an action just to tease and harass the Hindu Section of the Jail? Nimaz may be a solemn duty of every Muslim under the sun; but to cry ‘bang* at an odd hour and in prison is not enjoined, surely enough, by his religion. But to shield themselves behind a religious sanction and be able, at the same time, to make themselves a nuisance to others was a chance too tempting for them to forego. It was an intoxication with ‘bang’ which they were not prepared to miss.
The Conch-blowing by the Hindus
The Mussulman prisoners were stricken with this frenzy in the prison-house of the Andamans. Each one of them, from his respective cell, began one early morning to cry ‘bang’. The Whole prison was roused by this clamour. The Burmese and the Hindu prisoners suffered the most by this uproar. The officers rebuked the Mussulmans for creating the noise but they did not stop it. On the other hand, they maintained that it was a religious act and they must perform it. The Burmese prisoners were hand-in-glove with the Hindus in their Shuddhi and Sangathan movements. And the Mussulman could not convert a single Burmese in the Andamans. For the Burmese do not regard inter-dining as loss of caste and religion. They are the followers of Buddha and they feel that they are much nearer the Hindus than the Mussulmans.+++(5)+++ They do not object to meat in any form and style, and they will take it from Muslims, Christians and Jews and yet remain Buddhists. Hence the Mussulmans could not prevail upon the Burmese in this respect. Only two means were open to the Muslims to convert the non- Muslims. One was the sword which had, long ago, broken in their hands. And the other was persuasion and argument of which they knew nothing; the Muslim community as a whole is at cross- purposes always with the method of persuasion.+++(5)+++ Hence they could not convert the Hindus in the Andamans by these two weapons. Their only resource was goondaism and commensality.
But in these two matters, the Burmese were powerful enough to beat them at their own game, or even one better than they. For the Burmese ate hog’s flesh which was an anathema to the Muslims, and they ate mice and other flesh which would make the Muslims shudder. We would deliberately talk to them on Buddhism and praise it, and would listen to their reciting verses from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. We observed their holidays and our holidays together. Hence they were drawn closer to our Sangathan movement. Moreover, the youngsters among them were always exposed to the coarsest jests and the hardest treatment of the Muslims. Hence they were convinced that if any thing could save them it was the Sangathan of the Hindus alone and nothing else. And it was a fact that the strength of the movement had saved them from that cruel treatment and drawn them still closer to us by ties of love and mutual devotion.
The incident of the ‘bang’ had been as much an annoyance to them as to the Hindus. The Hindus were in rage because by that act the Mussulmans desired to flaunt the Muslim religion in their faces. The officers would not give them any protection. In these circumstances and as a counter-blast the Hindus started their prayers early in the morning. Once I had checkmated the Nimaz by confronting it with a Hindu devotee and his bhajan. And the Hindus adopted the same method to silence the Muslims. It was not a question of one or two Mussulmans. It was a dispute between one community and another. As the Hindus began their prayers in a loud tone, the officers who had maintained silence towards their rivals, launched prosecutions against the Hindus. One by one they were charged and punished for the act. Their plea was that to offer such morning prayers was not an essential part of Hindu religion. To which the Hindus answered that if not prayer, at least blowing on the conch early in the morning was an essential part of the Hindu worship. Therefore, one of our enthusiasts, who had taken a leading part in this affair and who was a prominent member of our organisation, procured a conch and secreted it in his cell. The following morning at dawn Just when the Muslims had begun their ‘bang’, this member began to blow vociferously upon his conch. The Kafir conch in its sound and volume proved more powerful than the Muslims cry of the bang. The tomtom of the drum was lost in the sound of the kettle-drum. The ‘bang’, the Muslims felt, was desecrated by the conch. They were angered and shouted abuse. The enthusiast was punished for the offence. Thereafter the Burmese and the Hindu prisoners began to blow on their several conches. At last, the united and bold action made the bang withdraw into its shell. Their protest with the officers had gone in vain. The Hindu’s right to blow on the conch as an act of worship was recognised and they were asked to stop the ‘bang’ before the Hindus could be asked to cease blowing on the conch. Thus the bang came to an end and the conch ceased to blow. What was impossible for reason to do, that the sound of the conch could do for us. The goondas were subdued by the conch, as they would never have been subdued by an appeal to commonsense.
It is our sad fortune to refer endlessly to the misdeeds of our Muslim brethren in this record of prison-life, and of the Shuddhi and the Sangathan movements as part of that life. It is because they formed the most fanatical and the most mischievous element in the entire colony of prisoners in the Andamans. With the rest of the good and honest Mussulmans whom I met with in the islands I was always on the best of terms. They respected me and I respected them, as I enjoyed the respect of all other prisoners in that colony. Minus the particular question of coercive conversion I always tried to see that justice was done to all of them and I took the side of justice against tyranny and oppression in every case and about eveiy person, irrespective of his caste, creed and religion. If I succeeded in changing the hell of the Silver Jail into a habitable place on earth for all its inmates, and that by incurring the wrath of its authorities, the advantages of the change went as much to the Muslims as to the Hindus, and both of them showed equal gratitude to me for it. That I was throughout just and fair to all is borne out by the fact that if I blamed the Muslims for the conversion of the Hindus I did not conceal the fact that most of it was due to the foolish notions about religion entertained by orthodox Hindus themselves. Conversion followed as a natural consequence from the obscurantism of Hindu society about purity and impurity, touchability and untouchability, conversion and reconversion.
I always used to assert, while engaged on these activities, that both the Shuddhi and the Sangathan movements in Hindu society were not the means of antagonism between the two communities of India; but of their abiding unity on the basis of right knowledge and right under-standing.
This was the motive inspiring my agitation in the Andamans. I began my work of Shuddhi in the year 1913 and fought my first battle in its favour in the same year. From that date to 1920-21, I did that work in the Andamans; from 1921-24 I continued it in my prison-days in India; and from my release in 1924, I have been pursuing it to this day. And I have invariably carried it on in the interests of freedom Justice and fair-play for all. I have no hatred in my heart for the Christian, the Mussulman, and the heathen, or for those whom they style as primitive barbarians. I do not look down upon any one of them with scorn and contempt. I only oppose that section of it vehemently, which is oppressive and violent towards another. For I believe firmly that the Shuddhi movement itself will build a bridge of permanent union between the Hindus and the Muslims, and will bring good to both and lasting advantage to India as a whole.