Political prisoners again flood the Andamans!
While these manoeuverings ofthe German submarine in the waters of the Andamans were in progress to attack the islands, I happened to receive a press-cutting from a friend which contained the heading “Mutiny at Meerut”, This cutting was thrown into my cell by a political prisoner employed as a writer in the office below.
About the month of May last, a plot was discovered in India to start a revolution with an army at Meerut rising in mutiny against the Government. Several arrests were made. Some were tried and sent to the gallows. As I read the headline, a thrill went through my heart and all over the body.
In 1857, in the same town of Meerut, and about the month of May, Indian regiments had broken into open revolt against their masters. That also was a spark of fire thrown up from the furnace of revolution that was preparing all over the country. What was to be the end ofthis recent mutiny at Meerut, I wondered. Was it a spark of a general revolution?
If it were confined to Meerut alone, the Government would not make such a mountain of it; it would not so broadcast it all over the country. What a difference it indicated, all the same, between India ten years ago and India now! Discontents, petitions, appeals, protests, censures, conspiracies, and riots, action and reaction, revolvers, bombs, fights, and the revolt of an army-the widespread rumours about it! What a change had the whirling of time introduced in India in these ten years!
Since the War of Independence in 1857, the word mutiny had been expunged from the political vocabulary of India. The idea had faded out of her political sky. In the conflagration of the European War of 1914, it had risen phoenix-like to inflame that sky, and the daring of the people had risen to its highest point in that thermometer.
On that day and during the week, the mutiny at Meerut had become the absorbing topic of discussion for all of us in that prison. Then came in its wake the news of conspiracy and revolt in Lahore and Punjab. Within a few days thereafter, the soldiers who had refused to go on the front and regiments of them, were being deported as prisoners to the Andamans; and we had first-hand proof of the agitation going on in India.
Our last strike had ended in the beginning of 1914. And, thereafter, we alone, some few on transportation for life, were detained here while all other political prisoners were sent back to India. Of that I have already written. But in the turmoil and confusion of this war, who was to follow that rule? All politicals convicted for conspiracies and revolutionary movements on the eve of the Great War were being sent for incarceration, batch after batch, to this jail, and this change had become, convenient for us to secure the latest reliable news of agitation all over the country, and of war in Europe.
The German submarines had, for some time, blocked the passage in the seas of the Andamans. They had captured and detained one or two merchant ships during the period; as such there was no communication by sea between India and the Andamans, and no prisoners from India could be sent to the prison in the Andamans. When these submarines were destroyed by the warships of Japan, Russia and Great Britain, the sea became a safe passage for traffic between India and the Andamans and the system of sending Chalans from India to these islands was resumed as before.
And one day we found a party of political prisoners entering the Silver Jail. This was the first batch of convicts in the Lahore Conspiracy Case and consisted, for the most part, of Sikhs involved in the ‘Gadar’ trial.
On seeing them, I exclaimed, forgetting for a while I their pitiable condition in the jail, “Behold these Sikhs, they have come here at last as I had predicted.”
When I was taking a leading part in the Indian revolutionary activities in England, I had a discussion one day with my Sikh colleague, Sirdar Harnain Singh, on the subject of national awakening among the Sikhs in India. There were at that time many Sikh students taking their education in England. Punjab being the centre of recruitment for the Indian army, it was easy for these young students on their return to India to spread the cult of nationalism from hut to hut, and village to village throughout the Sikh Community in the Punjab. I told my friend how to do it and drew up a scheme for that purpose. I emphasised the need of such work as I regarded the Sikhs as part of the Hindu community as a whole. My friend, Sirdar Harnam Singh, seemed to have no hopes about it. He said that the Sikhs as a community were extremely clannish, they had no vision and interest beyond their particular habitations in the Punjab. They had no national outlook, and he doubted very much if they could ever be persuaded to think and feel as nationalists. Their religious fervour on behalf of the Panth and the Sangha was a great obstacle to their being converted to the view that they were Indians, and they were one politically with the Hindus of India. I said to my friend, then, “Look here, you are a Sikh, you come from a Sirdar family of moderate views in politics. You take your education in England and you have become one of us, a nationalist, a revolutionary like myself, and ready to sacrifice everything for your country. If a Sikh like you can in such a short time be this, why not all other Sikhs? I have studied the history of the Sikhs closely and I know what type of men you are. If you agree to work up the scheme, I have outlined for you, and talk about it, discuss it with every Sikh whom you meet here and in India, I feel sure that within five years you will witness a great change in them, and they will all range themselves on our side. I have no doubt about it.” This was said somewhere between 1908 and 1909.
I remember the meeting and the conversation when I saw the Sikh prisoners pouring into the Jail of the Andamans. And I said to my friends, “They have come as I told they would.”
Now remained the Nepalese to be one with us. If the Gurkha along with the Sikhs were absorbed in the camp of Hindu Sanghatan, all Hindus would be one and would present a solid front to the rest of India.
These feelings would well up within me according to the changing phases of thought through which I was passing at the moment. After the batch of Sikh convicts, came in batches of political prisoners in the Punjab sentenced in conspiracy case in different parts of the province. Several batches of soldiers were transported to this place for refusing to go to Rangoon, Singapore, Basra and other fronts; and there were among them convicts in revolutionary conspiracies. Their advent in this prison surcharged the atmosphere with shades and differences of live political opinion. About a hundred and fifty political prisoners had gathered
in this prison as convicts for different kinds of offences. There were those who had mutineed at Singapore; others who had proceeded to Rangoon via Siam to spread sedition in the army and raise a rebellion; others again who were involved in Benares Conspiracy Case; there were some from Bengal charged and sentenced for political dacoit; and all sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. It is impossible here to give a full story of all their adventures, their daring exploits, their secret movements, and their mysterious plans. We cannot even mention their names in this edition. We have to leave that task for the future.
Among these recent arrivals, there was only one man whom I had known personally and he was Professor Permanand. However, I had referred to all of them in my previous talks with the prisoners, so that when they came in this prison, there was a complete change in their political outlook. They heard from these recent arrivals about their ideals, about their self-sacrifice; they heard stories of those who had been sent to the gallows or had died fighting; of their plots and conspiracies; they heard descriptions of battlefronts in France, and of the war as it was being fought. This first-hand information had worked such a revolution in their thoughts and behaviour. We had already endeavoured to educate them in these high matters and to make them capable of thinking about them and of playing their part in the political life of their country. But personal contact with these new men had helped considerably to widen their interest and deepen that knowledge.
Though I knew only Professor Permanand among them, most of them knew me. They had read my contributions to the press; they had studied my books. Their reverence for me made them eager to see me as soon as they had stepped into the prison. The prison officials took all possible measures to keep them apart from me; but, considering their strength of numbers, it was impossible for the authorities to detach them entirely from me; and soon myself and they could establish perfect communication with one another. They told me that newspaper. ‘Gadar’ in America had published translations in Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi, of my book on the Indian Mutiny of 1857. One of the prominent leaders of the ‘Gadar Movement’ in America, Pandit Jagatram by name, who, in the Lahore Conspiracy Case, refused to defend himself though the charge against him would have brought upon him the sentence of death, and who confessed that he had done what he was charged with, and further told me. “I was once an easy-going man; one who loved pleasure and knew nothing else of importance in life. I did not dabble at all in politics. But one day, I happened to get your book on Indian Mutiny to read. I sat out for one whole day and one whole night and finished the book. I set it aside, and, with it, I also set aside my former mode of life. I took an oath that I will work for the freedom of my country, and here I am today with you.” +++(5)+++ Just in a vein of humour I said, “Well then, that book of mine had obtained for you a ticket for the Andamans.”
Another, who had served long in the Indian army and had earned much wealth in business in the latter part of his life, an old Sikh gentleman, told me that it was the reading of articles in the ‘Gadar’, that had converted him to revolutionary movement for the freedom of India. He enlisted himself in that movement and gave all his fortune to it, though anonymously. And, as a result, he had achieved transportation to the jail of the Andamans. Speaking to me on the subject, he said, progressive people in China, who knew about India and her present struggle, always enquired- ‘Where is Mr. Savarkar? In which prison is he locked up?’ And, then, the old gentleman had told them about my hardships here and they expressed their bitter grief for my misery and suffering. When in England, I used to write on India in the newspapers connected with the Chinese revolutionary movement led by Dr. Sun-yet-Sen. Some of them remembered me as late as the years 1915 and 1916. And I had the consolation that my work had not all gone in vain.
Referring to the Kolu, I am reminded of a story of its publicity in America. Its publicity had induced some of the brave Sikhs, who had now come here as prisoners, to join our movement in America. They told me, “A cartoon, showing you yoked to the oil- mill, was published in one of our papers in America. I got the newspaper from a newsboy hawking it about in the streets of America. As we saw the cartoon, we were deeply pained by the sight and were full of tears. While men like you, we felt, were sacrificing their all for their country, we were wasting our lives in spending lavishly on drink and enjoying ourselves. And the thought made us ashamed of ourselves.” +++(5)+++ This revulsion of feeling made them take life seriously, join our movement, forego their wealth and suffer as others had suffered for the independence of India. They left America, came back to India and joined in conspiracies for the overthrow of the British Raj. And here they were now in the prison ofthe Andamans along with us, and sentenced like us to serve long terms of imprisonment across the seas.
Many were the episodes they told me of their own experience about the matter. I have narrated here only one or two of them. The last of these surprised me most though it was a pleasant surprise. For whenever I turned the Kolu in the solitude of my room and was done up by the exertion, I always used to console myself by the thought that I would bear it all, if the knowledge of it to the world outside were only to pour oil into the flames of discontent that I knew were spreading all over the country. But I was in despair about it. For how was the story of my hardships to reach the cars of those who were so far away from me? I have already referred to this mood and how I controlled it by the power of thought! But when my Sikh friend told me the story, I said to myself, “Yes, I must bear it all, for it is never lost, it produces its effects in due time. That is the only way that one can put fat in the fire and make it burn. An agitation succeeds finally on the strength of tenacity and patience of its sufferers. Here was the proof of it. livery drop of oil that fell into the vat below, as I turned the wheel that ground down and crushed the dried coconut-kernels in the rut and the well, was a spark that had kept blazing the sacred fire of discontent already aflame all over the country. Here was a clear evidence of that influence.
One of the Sikhs in the prison informed me that his copy of my proscribed book on the Indian Mutiny of 1857, had gone into the hands of a friend in Brazil. The book was so popular with Indians everywhere, that the copy in Brazil was sold for a sum of Rs. I50. In addition to this personal news, I got all the information I wanted of what had happened in Siam, Canada, Singapore, America, Europe, Bengal and the Punjab as the result of our secret movements and conspiracies in that part of the world, from the mouths of leaders and followers who had taken an active part in them from the incident of the Komagata Maru down to the violent uprising in the Punjab during the days of this war. Part of it was known to the world, and part of it had yet remained in the dark. I had planned to write a complete history of all these efforts and struggles in one connected narrative beginning with 1909 and bringing it down to the close of the first Great War. But I found it impossible to complete such a story in the prison at Andamans. And I had slender hopes to write it ever for I had never expected then to be free and to enjoy sufficient leisure and peace of mind to complete the task that I had proponed to myself My fellow-prisoners, the Sikhs, ever encouraged and always insisted that I should undertake the work, when I would tell them that the task of the present generation was to make history and the task of the following generation was to write it, which it may or it may not do. After all writing history was a secondary business, making it was the prime part.+++(5)+++
As soon as the first batch of convicts in the Lahore Conspiracy Case in the Punjab reached the Andamans, the jail authorities adopted all measures to keep it under strict control. Profiting by past experience, however, the work on Kolu was given only to those in the batch whom they found strong and able-bodied to do it. But we warned the newcomers that it was but the thin end of the wedge, and that they would be wise to refuse to do it from the very start. We know that the authorities dare not remain stubborn with these forty to fifty prisoners, with by far a larger total of prisoners at that time in the jail, than it was when we had resisted, struck work and finally won in banishing the Kolu from our daily ration of hard labour. The authorities proposed as a result of this protest, that they were to work on the Kolu for a week and no more. We suggested that the prisoners should agree to the compromise and get on to work. All our earlier struggles on behalf of political prisoners had thus proved of immense value to those who came after. But now the quarrel turned on the work of picking oakum. Many of the convicts in this batch were spirited young men, fire- eaters, most of them, and it was foolish to expect that they would prostrate themselves on the very first day before the petty officers and the jamadars put on supervising their work. When in the evening each one of them went to the jamadar to hand over to him his day quota of work, the tindal and the jamadar ventured to behave very rudely with him, for which these got from him and from all the reward they deserved. Of course the jamadar took the affair to the jailor, and as a result the boldest and the most spirited of them, one Parmanand by name, was sent for by Mr Barrie for personal enquiry.
The convict beats Mr. Barrie
This young Parmanand was a different type altogether from Professor Parmanand. Later on he became one of the most shining men and teachers who had studied deeply and read widely during the long years of self-education in this prison, which, for that reason, may be well compared to the University of Nalanda in Ancient India. They had not only qualified themselves for that high position by mere erudition, but by their spirit of sacrifice, by their sense of service and by their sterling character. Well, young Parmanand was made to appear before Mr. Barrie; and Mr. Barrie, as was usual with him, began by insulting young Parmanand. He first ordered him to stand erect Parmanand had stood before him as any ordinary decent man would stand. But Mr. Barrie would not be satisfied and, in fury, addressed foul words to him, for abuses were his ingrained habit. But the spirited young man was not accustomed to them. As soon as the young man had heard these words, he brushed aside his warders on either side, rushed forward, and gave a sharp slap in the face of Mr. Barrie right in the office where he was sitting to try the young man. Seeing him coming like a tiger. Mr. Barrie shouted and tried to rise from the chair, and the blow crashed on his hat the chair was upset and Mr. Barrie ran out crying, “Catch him, catch him.” Mr. Parmanand was overpowered, beaten all over the body with stick and fisticuffs, till his lips, his face and back began to bleed. Mr. Barrie hurriedly rang up the Superintendent. He reported that there was riot in the prison, and there was consternation all over the colony. The cry went round that a bomb- thrower had thrashed the warders and had beaten Mr. Barrie. The Superintendent arrived and ordered caning for Parmanand. He was tied to the frame-work and given twenty stripes with the cane. Every stroke made a deep cut in the body and blood spouted from the wound. His whole body was a mass of lacerated flesh. The cane cut the flesh and pieces fell out with each stroke of it. Yet Parmanand did not wince and uttered not a word. I have heard prisoners bellowing under the inhuman punishment, -the most hardened criminals and the goondas among them. But young Parmanand stood still. Mr. Barrie went on, “Beat him, beat him with all your strength.” The caning was done and Parmanand bore it unperturbed.
It has to be noted that he was not taken to the hospital for dressing the wounds but marched straight to his cell and locked up. This was the first occasion for a political prisoner to be punished this way.
Young Parmanand felt nothing; nor did the other political prisoners feel for him. For they knew that Parmanand was the aggressor and had beaten Mr. Barrie. They did not think it a heavy price to pay for Mr. Barrie’s disgrace throughout the prison and for the fear it had engendered in the hearts of them all for political prisoners as a class. The spirited action of Parmanand was a lesson to them all. Parmanand had defied prison-regulations and he was caned for that defiance. There we were quits. But Mr. Barrie was not entitled to abuse Parmanand. And he had abused him and, therefore, we had a right to show our resentment for that action. So there was sympathetic strike in the prison. The Superintendent and Mr. Barrie went round pacifying the strikers. The Superintendent pledged his word that Mr. Barrie shall no longer abuse the prisoners. The strikers were requested to resume work, no matter how much they did it or did not do it. After this the strike, of course, came to an end.
The resistance offered by the first batch to the high handedness of Mr. Barrie made life easier for those who came after it. Even then, Mr. Barrie would, now and then, try to exercise his authority and extract additional work from one or another minor political prisoners. Sometime he would ask them to weave four pounds of coiled rope instead of three, and sometime he would exact more quantity of picked oakum from them. Sometime he would slyly seek to put some one on the Kolu, so on and so forth. But these political prisoners would not tolerate anything from him. And if he threatened caning they would straight tell him, in that case, they would all stop work at once. The spirited and the daring among them beat Mr. Barrie on all scores. These daily scuffles always led some one or another of these political prisoners to resist Mr. Barrie. They never gave Mr. Barrie more work than what the prison- regulations had laid down for them. And, sometime, they gave much less. Every day they had to put up on the prison-gate the roll of those present and absent in their record of daily work. Since the entry of political prisoners in that jail the absentees on the roll were never marked as zero. The resistance in some form or another had continued from day to day and, therefore, neither Mr. Barrie nor the Superintendent dared continue their policy of repression any longer, or carry things in their usual high-handed manner.
The warders earn complaints against me
I have narrated in the last chapter with what suspicion and severity they treated me in this prison. And when these new hatches of prisoners had begun to come in, their rigour towards me was even greater, for they knew that the the newcomers would look up to me with reverence and affection, and. therefore, they must keep me isolated from them as lay m their power to do. Mr. Barrie took the lead in the matter And when he found that he had fai led. he set his henchmen-our political renegades-to do that dirty work for him. He and they left no opportunity to damn me in their eyrs; he left no stone unturned to destroy their faith in me, and to divide them from me by poisoning their minds about me. That continued till the end of the chapter, and he chafed that he could not succeed. He used to tell all the prisoners. “Do not run after Savarkar. you will unnecessarily incur the wrath of your superiors by depending upon him. He is a clever fellow and a shirker, do please listen to me. I shall give you all the comforts you need here. I will make your life easy. And if you don’t believe me, ask these fellows, they are also political prisoners, they will convince you of my good faith. How very modest and gentlemanly they are. I have given them responsible offices in this jail while your Savarkar still rots in his cell picking oakum.” White Mr. Barrie went on talking in this vein to the prisoners he reported about me to his superiors in the following terms. He said, “This man is, indeed, the source of all our troubles. He praises Germany-, he gives news to the prisoners about the reverses of England; he incites them to plots and conspiracies; he dares not take the lead himself for he is afraid of his own skim he fears punishment, but he is behind the scene, all the time. He will inflame the Sikhs against us counting upon their respect for him. Nothing that I may do will diminish his hold upon all the political prisoners here. He is, indeed, a dare devil.” He had a motive in thus misrepresenting me to them as an irreclaimable and confirmed revolutionary . For then, it was easy for him to saddle me with every disturbance in the jail, and show himself as an innocent being to his masters. “This was due to the instigation of Mr. Savarkar.” was always the burden of his song.
Though Mr. Barrie considered himself a wily fellow and an expert in the art of lying, he was, indeed, a shallow minded officer and a fool. When he tried the same arts of deception upon us, political prisoners, that he had tried upon others, it made me simply laugh at his self-delusion. Once it came into his head to show me but a portion of what he had written about me to his superiors. He wanted thereby to cow me down, and make me give up the leadership of the party I had built up in the prison. With this object in view one day he sent for me in his office. He started with praising me lavishly for my intelligence and scholarship, and for my fearlessness in public life. And the same Mr. Barrie had been representing me to my friends as a shirker. Then he began reproving me for the misuse I was making of these high qualities. He, then, pretended that he had all good wishes for me and yet was bound to report against me as he had reported. If I were to see these reports, he added, I would wake up in time and mend my ways. He was showing those reports to me against all prison regulations, because, indeed, he loved me, he concluded. And then Mr. Barrie took out his diary, and read to me a portion of it from day to day. What I have quoted above are the sentences from his daily diary as I could recall them. I must state here that every petition, that I had sent from here to the Government of India, bore Mr. Barrie’s inevitable comment that “it was all a lie and that Savarkar was not a man to be won over by any facilities or concessions that Government might grant him. He was not to be intimidated either by the severest punishment it might think of meting out to him.” Mr. Barrie was foolish enough to show this to me and to tell me that I was not to reveal it to any-one else.+++(5)+++
Mr. Barrie’s gentility in harshness
In this record of my experiences in the Andamans I had to expose so frequently the wicked disposition of Mr. Barrie. But there was another side to it which I must not omit to mention in this narrative, for I regard it as an act of justice to give every man his due, and not to blame him except when he deserves the blame. In the position of a jailor as he was. and of a prison in which the worst class of criminals in the whole of India was sent for custody and proper management it was but natural for a man like Mr. Barrie to be stem and severe, and to come down with a heavy hand, sometimes, on the rebellious mob that he was called upon to rule. And I often told him that if he did so, he was not to blame for it. Years of contact with such a class of people had developed that temper into an ingrained habit of his mind. At least, that was true enough about his prison administration. He was hard, cruel and autocratic in that office. He could not discriminate good and bad. He really believed that he was the demi-god of Port Blair. And that was a blemish, a defect in him. The bother and fuss of prison administration were both the amusement and the concern of his solitary life. Yet out of prison and in the midst of his friends and family, he was not a cruel man or a martinet. And he allowed himself to be flattered and fooled by any-one who chose to do so. He was not a learned man and yet desired to show off his learning by repeating some stock quotations from English poetry. He knew only a few of them and when one pressed him, he repeated these five or six poems with the pose of a bom actor. Occasionally he had a fit to dazzle me by his erudition. And then he would repeat them all to me in one breath. Leaving aside his behaviour with me as a jailor, I must say that he cherished a sincere regard for me. Whenever some merchants, editors or military men visited the Andamans on business, they often visited the prison to see me. In the days of war, the naval officers on submarines came here to enquire after me and exchanged a few words with me. That also may be the reason of his high esteem for me. Among the members of his family his wife was a saintly woman and his only daughter of seventeen had been to Rangoon where she had passed her Matriculation and was reading for the Teacher’s Diploma. Mr. Barrie’s wickedness was considerably softened by the influence of these two women. The prisoners often told me that they often restrained him in his hard conduct towards them. Both the wife and the daughter felt deep personal sympathy for me. Miss Barrie from her very childhood till Mr. Barrie’s death, whenever she happened to be in the Andamans during her holidays from Rangoon, used to visit the prison, talk with me for half an hour or so on topics of general interest. And she left always with a word of sympathy for me. Individually and on such occasions I behaved with Mr. Barrie with perfect familiarity and good will. On occasions Mr. Barrie sent me fruit from his own garden, and he did so with a wish that I should be on good terms with him. I accepted the gift with sincere gratitude, and I keep it on record in these pages. But whenever he found that I would not give up my political friends in that prison, or abandon activities like Shuddhi and the spread of education which I had undertaken for the uplift of prisoners in his jail, he repented for his kindness towards me. And for some days after, he used to be very harsh on me. Those of our political prisoners who had been won over by such kindness and those who desired for nothing but selfish ease, were always invited by him for a personal talk with him. But strange as it may seem, he always invited me along with them. The only difference he made between them and me was that while, giving them some writing work he seated them in chairs, he made me stand in front of him like an ordinary prisoner. It was done deliberately and with a motive to humiliate me before them, to make me repent for my obstinate conduct with him, and for my refusal to give up public work as a concession to his kindness.
Mr. Barrie and the members of his family as also the friends read the poems I used to compose for them, would listen with interest to the story of my life, and it must be said to their credit, that they showed due appreciation for it. On the whole, they regarded me with a feeling of respect and I. often wrote some English poems for them. On one day in the year, Mr. Barrie had made it a rule of his life to be on terms of perfect cordiality with me. And that was Christmas.+++(5)+++ It was impossible for him on that day to shake off completely the traditional influences of the religion of Irish Roman Catholicism on his mind. The demi-god of Port Blair, the autocrat and tyrant of the Silver Jail, came out that day an extremely different man -a man full of kindness and warmth for all. On that day the political prisoners, with all their efforts to annoy him, did not disturb the calmness of his face. No scorn or contempt or anger was visible on it, even to the extent of raising an eyebrow. He invited them for christmas in his office and treated them to tea, milk and other sweets. I would say to him at that time that he had better give us a newspaper of or two to read rather than entertain us to tea and sweetmeats. Mr Barrie, to be fair to him, gave us the newspapers & sent us sweetmeats to follow them. If I could not go to his office that day, he sent the sweets to my room. That day he never treated any one harshly, and, as possible, heard no complaints against him.
Who were these tale-tellers?
Mr Barrie’ shrewdness was as defective as his kindliness, He was ever crooked in his kindness as he was foolish in his shrewdness. For he had in his temperament that trait of foolishness which disqualifies a man knowing his limitations. The shrewdness he boasted of may have served him very well, perhaps, in dealing with the ordinary class of prisoners in his jail. And he imagined that it could work effectively in all cases & with all persons. That he should have shown and read to me his diary in the office was, in his view, an act of remarkeble shrewdness to trap me in. But it was I who scored against him in that business because I knew, in spite of myself, what he had been writing against me to his superiors. It was he who was exposed and not I. And I had the further advantage of glancing through his diary, though he did his best to hide those pages from me in which he had been writing in praise of those among us who had gone over to his side. After he had finished with it, Mr Barrie said to me with an air of self- importance. “Well now, you have seen my diary, what do you think of it?”
The goondas so encouraged began to frame up some thing against me, of which I shall give here an instance or two. One of the ragamuffins, a Christian prisoner, concealed a knife in the urinal of my chawl. And he tutored another of his tribe, a Hindu, to depose that I had concealed it there to stab an officer of the jail. Fortunately enough this Hindu prisoner knew of me because I was the leader of the Sanghatan movement. And he came to me and told me all about it. I exposed the plot to Mr. Barrie and threatened to take the matter to the Superintendent if he sought to hush it up. Of course, Mr. Barrie had to submit and I came safe out of the matter
The second instance of the kind was as follows:
A Mussulman convict who was an out-and-out ruffian and who was caned and placed in an iron cage right near my cell had managed to induce a Muslim warder to partially saw overnight the two iron bars of the main entrance to the block right in front of my room. It was his plot to escape from the cage and the Chawl, if he could, by breaking the bars, or to say to the authorities that I got them partially broken to make my own escape. A Burmese prisoner was also involved in the plot. If the ruffian could not escape, then reporting against me would win his pardon straightaway. A tindal on his evening round noticed that the bars were slightly bent, and that very night the culprit had plotted to make his escape. Thus the conspiracy proved abortive, whereupon the prisoner in the cage reported that it was I who had contrived to get the bars partially bent and broken. In the investigation on the matter, the Burmese was also implicated in the plot, the two Mussulmans having suspected him to have broken the secret. But his arrest led to an evidence by him which brought the whole truth in the daylight. The ruffian in the cage and his Muslim accomplice were thoroughly exposed in the trial and I was saved. I told the Superintendent without mincing words how these frame-ups against me by the worst elements in the prison were due to the incitement of Mr. Barrie who had told all of them to keep a strict watch on me.
Mr. Barrie did not rest there. He tried to involve me in a plot of a different nature than the one indicated by the two instances I have given above.
In the batch of Punjabi prisoners who had been recently deported to the Andamans, there was a political prisoner Chatarsingh by name. He was a teacher in a Sikh High School. When a high European official had come to inspect the school, this man had attempted to stab him. The prisoner belonged to a revolutionary society in the Punjab. On that offence he was tried and sentenced to serve his life-sentence in the Andamans. Chatarsingh was a short-tempered and irascible person. The Sikhs grew long hair and beards. And they wanted soap to wash them clean, but they were not given this or any ordinary facility in this prison, and they were subjected to constant persecution and abuse by the warders in charge. Infuriated by this harsh treatment, Chatarsingh one day attacked the Superintendent, who had come to the prison to supervise the prisoners that were being weighed that day. The Superintendent rolled over the chair and therefore no harm was done to him. But a cry went round that the Superintendent was attacked and the tindals, warders and jamadars gathered round, overpowered Chatarsingh and gave him a sound thrashing. It was the Superintendent himself who came to the help of Chatarsingh and freed him from the warders. Mr. Barrie, so soon as he got the news, reported that it was I who had set Chatarsingh on the Superintendent. Only one day before this incident. I had a conversation with the Superintendent in which I asked him if he favoured Home Rule for India. Taking advantage of this question, Mr. Barrie had said that it was evidence enough to prove me as an instigator of Chatarsingh. Some four political prisoners had openly denounced Chatarsingh for this cowardly attack and I had spoken nothing about it. Mr. Barrie questioned me for the silence and I replied, “You had yourself given orders that no prisoner shall meddle in the doings of another. When my brother was ailing and I told you in his behalf that he should be removed to the hospital, you had warned me that it was none of my business; you may be brothers outside, but you come here as prisoners, you said then, and. therefore, none was to speak for another. Why then should you expect me to intervene in this affair?” The third thing was that when it was known thnt Chalarsingh was to ho lulminls to rod caning, I had interposed along with other prisoners that lie had been sufficiently punished lor the violation of the prison-regulations by the sound drubbing that the tindals and warders, rushing on him, had given him. The Superintendent had escaped without injury; hence there was no need or justification for caning Chatarsingh. Mr. Barrie pieced these fuels together to frame up a charge that I was at the bottom of the whole mischief. Chatarsingh was locked up In a cage since that day for a number of years. A slip that came into the hands of Professor Parmanand made him deduce and publish: “Mr. Barrie had worked up the whole matter. He saw in the incident his chance to inflame the mind of the Superintendent against the political prisoners as a class, and he simply rejoiced over it, And, therefore, casting all the blame on Savarkar brothers lie wanted to pluck out the very root of the discontent in thnt prison. He, therefore, gave it abroad that Suvarkars were very glad to foment such spirit among them, and his officers were not without being a party to it.” (See Professor Parmnnand’s Reminiscences.)
I lose my health
Between the year 1915 and 1916, my health begun to fail in this prison. My constitution had held up aguinst all hardships it had to bear since my arrest in London in 1910, I had to pass my life since that date in British prison, in the many prisons of India until in the Andamans. I had to endure all sorts of inconveniences, of mental and physical suffering added to my family cares during the period. My constitution had already been undermined by my exertions and worries in regard to my political activities and the constant risks and anxieties imposed by these activities. Bad food, insanitary mode of living, and hard labour in this prison had brought it to the breaking point by the year 1916. But from that year my digestive power had been interfered with by the unnutritious and ill-cooked food it had to swallow and assimilate. I had, many times, drawn the attention of the Superintendent to the stale of my fulling health; but none seemed lo pay any attention to it. Once or twice during the period I had high fever, but I was not sent to Ihe hospital for any treatment.
And as soon as the fever had subsided, I was made to do my usual work and to eat the same food. I developed dysentry out of this, but I was not given a drop of milk which was given to the ordinary prisoners as a reward for their good work. Hence I had to live on on ill-cooked rice and dal of the prison ration. The bread served to us being almost raw, I gave up eating it and suffered from loss of weight. In course of time, my stomach refused to digest dal. So I had to do without it and ate rice with water as my curry on it. I continued on this diet for days in order to avoid an attack of dysentry, The dysentry gave a griping pain in the stomach, made me go for stools at odd hours, and it was a great trouble to me in the cell where I lay confined. The fever had become almost chronic, I had temperature every day, and the attacks of dysentery were more frequent, at last I could not take rice even, for it was served hall-raw every third or fourth day. The doctor was to be sent only if dysentry proved to bo acute. And the measure of that acuteness was left for the jailor to decide. There were occasions in my malady, when I literally prayed to God that it may be given me to discharge the whole fluid right in front of the doctor that he might be convinced that I was really suffering from dysentery! For if he made me sit for stools when I had no discharge or not a drop of blood in it, suddenly the decision would go against me that there was nothing the matter with me and that I was only feigning. This experience I had many a time in this my chronic ailment, that often at night I felt griping pain in the stomach followed by high fever, I discharged blood and had stools. But when the doctor came all those symptoms had disappeared, and the doctor declared me to be a doubtful case with no treatment to follow. So when very rarely, these symptoms synchronised with the arrival of the doctor, I really thanked them. For then I was put on a different meal and given milk along it and I recouped quickly. But then I was instantly put to work and relapse followed. The same food, the same work and the same malady-this followed unbroken for months together.
At this time, my brother got Ihe concession to cook for himself according to the settlement of the political prisoners’ general strike in 1914. My brother got his own ration and after his morning work prepared his own food in a corner of the kitchen set apart for him. Soon after Mr. Wamanrao Joshi of Nagpur was given the same concession and joined him. As they began to cook their food together they felt much better and improved in health. Similarly all the convicts in the Manik Tola Bomb C ase were clubbed together for their own food. My brother used to send me some vegetable and bread out ofhis own food, he managed to send It unnoticed to me. I was not given that facility at the time to cook for myself. When I got it, I was given no partner to cook along with me. And I used to get fever as soon as I had cooked for myself. Even these exertions were too much for my poor health. So I depended entirely upon what my brother could smuggle on to me, served in coconut shells. I relished the curry and the chapati very well, but when any day, the expert cook, my brother, was unable to send it, I had to eat my rice with water. For the prison curry was unpalatable and there was no milk given to me to mix with my rice.
All this brought on a rapid decline in my health while my general work and the hardship of prison life multiplied correspondingly. Every night I began to have high temperature. But as it declined or disappeared in the morning, the authorities took no notice of it, and I had to pass day after day without medicine to cure it. My brother declined in health because he had attacks of hemicrany and suffered from the effects of the poor foodstuff given to him. After a time both of us were given a little quantity of milk. But we could no longer digest it for want of health.
Just then a Bengali prisoner, an M. A. of the Calcutta University, honest and intelligent, had to strike work for his delicate constitution did not enable him to complete his daily quota of two pounds of picked oakum, while the authorities insisted that he must complete it. He suffered punishment for it from time to time and at last it came to caning him. The University graduate bore the caning with patience and fortitude as the officers gave it with obstinate and contemptible ill-will. This tussle went on for months and though it was unsupportable for the individual, other political prisoners benefited by it, for, deterred by his example, the officers could not compel them to do excessive work, much less put them on the Kolu. Just then matters came to a crisis and we had all to go on the fourth strike.