Miniature Hindu Raj
When I stepped into the Andamnnn there was in it, in prison and outside, what one may rightly call, Pathan Raj. Dressed in brief authority, the Pathan dominated the scone. It was overthrown, ns I Imvo described in thin story, hy the time that my stay in the prison had come nearly to an end. The Pathan raj was gone and Hindu Raj had taken its place. If that was no more than a span, this was no better than one and one-fourth that span. The capital of that Raj was the oil depot of the prison and an I have already mentioned before, I was its foreman and therefore the monarch of that Raj. I sat in my capital on a throne which was no other than the chair with a broken arm in front of that depot. Our story has been brought so far, and now we proceed in it.
The oil-depot being the main source of income for the Silver Jail, the man in charge of it was a person of great importance. In Mr. Barrie’s regime no other person than a Mussulman and Pathan was appointed to that office, for the Pathans were the only prisoners who ernjoyed his confidence then. This was more so after political convicts had begun to arrive in large number in the Silver Jail. Naturally the top man selected hin own man to manage the whole establishment. As such every one connected with the oil-depot from top to bottom was a Mussulman, and mostly a Pathan. An the prisonem were to moantire out every day their quota of oil to the foreman and to the officers under him, all of them were a terror to the prlnonern put on the Kolu to do their day’s work of crushing coconut for oil. The foreman could make the prinnner nhake In his nhoes hy the nimple words “ The quantity of oil is not up to your quota.” And the jamadar, the petty officer and all under him shuddered along with them. The foreman of the godown had the prescriptive right of beating the prisoners. If Mr. Barrie listened to any one without a demur, it was to the godown keeper or the foreman of that ware-house of oil. Hence he was the foremost person to carry tales against the prisoners. The wiliest, the intensely selfish, the most cunning and the most wicked person in the prison was often chosen for the job. During my seven to eight years of prison- life, an array of such men had adorned the seat. Now, in my ninth year, the seat had come to me.
All the Mussulman tindals, petty officers and warders who had still remained in that Jail, were fall of fear that I was appointed to that office. The demi-god presiding over the oil-depot could only be propitiated by offerings in gold and silver. If the prisoners desired not to be ground down in the oil-mill of that place, they had perforce to propitiate its deity Upto this time, the Hindu prisoners in that jail could not escape persecution by him whether thcy did or did not flatter the deity, for if the\ refused any offering to him, he was punished for the sin of omission, and if they subscribed to his wishes they came in for harsh treatment because they were Kafirs, Now the position had gone to a Hindu -one who was the most condemned in their eyes for movements like Shuddhi which were gall ami wormwood to them. This bespectacled man was now to boss it over them! Why should they not be alarmed and tremble m their shoes? Every single tindal began to approach me from now onwards with bated breath and in whispering humbleness. And these were the persons who had no scruples w hatever to thrash the prisoners enslaved to them! Nay, they had vied with each other in punishing and persecuting them. And they now began to say to me on bended knee and with folded hands, “Bada Babu, save us.”
Salute; to say Ram Ram is an offence!
I have deliberately referred to the fact that the Mussulman petty officers and tindals approached me with ‘folded hands’, thereby hangs a tale. When I went to the Andamans, I found the Hindu greeting the Mussulman with a salam, and the Hindus greeted each other in a similar fashion. The Mussulman however never hailed the Hindu with ‘Ram Ram’. A Maratha warder told me one day that when he had politely said ‘Ram Ram’ to Mirza Khan, the latter gave him a severe reproof. Said Mirza Khan to the Maratha warder. “Oh. Kafir, do not utter the name of Rama within my hearing. Say always ’salam’. There upon I made up my mind never to address a Mussulman with a ‘salam’ as long as he did not accost me with the name of Rama.+++(5)+++ If a Mussulman greeted with the name of Rama.- and there were many Mussulmans from Maharashtra, who, till then, had no objection to utter that word -I would salute him ten times with the word ‘salam’. But such fanatics as would neither hear nor utter that word, and compelled the Hindus to say ‘salam’ to them, I was determined to resist and I persuaded other Hindu prisoners to do accordingly. Of course this led to petty quarrels at the start, but many a resolute prisoner on our side invariably returned the Muslim’s ‘salam’ with the Hindu’s ‘Rama Rama’. The Mussulmans had been, therefore, fully aware, when I became a foreman, what I expected of them, that I was particularly proud of the Hindu way of greeting and of the words used along with that greeting like ‘Rama Rama’. ‘Namaskar’ ‘Bande Mataram’. so on and so forth. The Mussulmans full of tremor at my appointment as the head of the oil-depot were anxious to conciliate me at any cost. Hence they approached me with a greeting that was so long an anathema to them. They folded their hands before me and said ‘namaskar’ to me. For my part I had never insisted that they should not salute me with a ‘salam’ It was their right to say ‘salam’ as it was the right of the Hindus to greet them with ‘namaskar’ and ‘Ram Ram’ If the Mussulmans would utter ‘Ram Ram’, I would, of course, return the compliment with a ‘salam’.
They also tried their usual methods to humour me, in order that no harm should come to them through me. Prisoners, tindals and other persons in the jail were used as agents for that purpose, I wanted to put an end to such dishonest practices once for all. So I went to the oil factory and called all of them to meet me. In plain words I addressed them as follows:- “Give up the fear that I will give you the slightest trouble because you are Mussulmans. On the other hand you should not harm, or create trouble for, any prisoner because he happens to be a Hindu. I would not accept even a pie from you. Do your work well and as thoroughly as you can. I shall see to it that you are aot unnecessarily harassed for it. But if you conspire to give me less work than is your due because I am a Hindu, or harass, persecute or extort money from Hindu prisoners under you, then beware I am not the man to put up with such a conduct.”
So long as I was on the job, I treated them accordingly. One or two of the hardened ones among them made away with a quantity of oil and had intended to involve me in that affair. But I caught them on the spot and sacked them, and none dared do the same thing again. Thereafter all of them proved as submissive as lambs. I appointed Hindu warders in place of those I had to dismiss. The Kolu, which had come to be looked upon in the early years of my prison-experience as an engine of torture more terrible than the gallows, - for if one was to be persuaded to hang himself, the right way to do it was to put him on the Kolu - became under my supervision and control just an ordinary oil-mill. I had not put any one in handcuffs or even give a slap in the face, or offer any tip that it may be turned properly and yield its normal quantity of oil per day. The oil-depot was stocked well and the income had not gone down. This was the period when Mr. Diggins - Mr. Barrie’s brother- in-law-was the jailor in charge. Under his kind, civil and generous treatment, the normal work of the prison went on without a hitch, and the prisoners had nothing to complain of. Mr. Diggins was a great help to me in doing away with the many horrors of the Kolu in my charge. The Hindu prisoners were particularly grateful to me and words failed them to express what they felt. I was touched by their simple faith and by their devotion to me. What I had done for them? Nothing out of the way. They were drawn to me because I did not treat them badly. That was all. Pleased with that little, they expressed their gratitude to me; and that made me cry, betimes; and tears flowed from my eyes.
We had to drink water with nostrils closed
During the time that I was in charge of the oil-depot, the greatest satisfaction that I had was that I could do a good turn to those who in our direst days as prisoners had been so helpful to us. I could also render assistance to the fittest men and families among the free settlers of that island and made gratitude a thing of joy. None of them could be persecuted as in the past. The old and heartless method of sending prisoners to answer the call of nature in a row of eight standing in a queue, who were compelled to come out from the closet at the bidding of the jamadar whether they had done the thing and cleared the parts or not, or without water enough to clean them, had become an antiquity. This is only one instance of the many disabilities they had to put up with. From that bestial, savage and inhuman state of things we had been extricated for good. In those days, if a Mussulman warder saw a Hindu prisoner helping himself to water in the reservoir, he at once plunged his feet into it and if the Hindu used the dirty water, he would chaff at him to his heart’s content.+++(5)+++ He went about telling others what a fine thing he had done and often boasted about it. All this had stopped now. The Mussulmans ceased to be shamelessly insolent and every chawl got its supply of pure water.
And that reminds me of an eposide in our earlier years in this prison when water was not brought from a distance for drinking purposes in the prison, and we had to drink it from a closed well. The water was dirty and stinked so horribly that to be able to gulp it down we had often to close the nostrils with our fingers. All this was due to the sheer indifference on the part of Mr. Barrie. But the prisoners dared not complain against him to the Superintendent for Mr. Barrie was sure to deny it entirely. Once I stored up that water in my tin-pot and concealed the pot beyond discovery. When the Superintendent came, a complaint was lodged that we were made to drink water from a neighbouring well into which rubbish was being thrown and which had not been cleared for a longtime. Mr. Barrie as usual- denied the fact on oath, and no jamadar dared contradict him, and speak the truth in our favour. All of us were thus put in a false position with the Superintendent when I took out the pot from a corner of the room. Of course the water in it stinked horribly. The Superintendent censured Mr. Barrie in our presence and rated him severely in his own office. That kind of stagnant water was never given us for drinking after that episode. The prisoners who had to pass their lives in such horrid conditions found them remarkably altered during the regime of- Mr. Diggins, one indication of which was that there was not a single case of even attempted suicide in the prison after it, while not a month or two had passed without a case of suicide during the administration of Mr. Barrie both in prison and in the settlement outside. The change was the result of our persistent agitation for reform during the ten years that I was in that jail.
The officers of the settlement had realised by then that they must change their outlook on prison administration and that it would not do to carry on along the old lines. Another reason was that from the beginning of the great war of 1914, prisoners were looking forward to general amnesty and hope made them desist from putting an end to their own lives by suicide. The fall in the number of suicides was one of the items in my evidence before the jail commission and I drew the attention of its members to it giving reasons for the change.
Kolu was a school for scavengers
My office as the foreman of the oil-depot was, of course, of great use to me in furthering the movements of Shuddhi, Sanghatan and education started for an all-round improvement in the Andamans. I may give a few instances in point. A Hindu scavenger who had been converted to Islam had been taken back into Hinduism according to our Shuddhi movement. He had grown his tuft of hair, and, therefore, the Mussulmans would not let him dine with them. The Hindus would not sit for dinner in the same line with him because he was a scavenger, and an untouchable; One day I sent for him on business in the oil-depot. I had called him after his day’s work was over. I made him bathe and wash his body clean with soap. I gave him fresh and clean garments to wear and I made him sit down for food beside me. The example set by me and by other friends in the prison emboldened the untouchable to sit down for food in a line with other Hindus and they gradually ceased objecting to his presence. He was thus saved from compulsory reconversion to Islam. The untouchable recited every day the bhajans of Tulsidas. In days past, even high caste Hindus applied for scavenger’s work to save themselves from the exhausting labour of turning the oil-mill. And the Burmese outdid them all in such a demand. Hence the Kolu was nicknamed as the school for scavengers, and the whole prison recognised it by that name. And now that the Kohl had ceased to be a terror, these very people would not let the poor untouchable sit beside them!
The news of Lokamanya Tilak’s death
Just at this time news reached the Andamans that Lokamanya Tilak had breathed his last. The news came to us at night as floating rumour, and in the following morning it was definitely confirmed. My heart was deeply afflicted by the news and my soul found no peace. How were we to express the great grief that we felt? It was decided at eight o’clock in the morning that throughout the Andamans they should observe complete fast for the day, and they should hold condolence meetings in groups on the day following. I communicated the decision to my colleagues and workers. They passed it on all over the island and in the prison through our usual channels. The news and the resolution flashed like the wireless throughout the Andamans. At the dinner time it was found that every one of them had refused to take food, from the inmates of the Silver Jail to inhabitants on the far-off island of Ras. The officers could not make out what it was. But none would enlighten them on it. For to say that they fasted as a mark of mourning was to talk politics; and the prisoner in the Andamans has no politics as the cow- has no soul. The prisoner has no politics, that is, he has no national feeling. If he were to talk and act politics of absolute loyalty to Government he was allowed to do so; nay, he was often compelled to indulge in such politics. In the days of war he was asked to contribute his mite to swell the war-chest of his rulers, and to prevent that treasure of gold from going bankrupt. And after the war and in celebration of peace, the officers had compelled the prisoners to observe half-an-hour’s complete silence in the prison. But they had no right whatever to express their mourning openly for the death of Lokamanya Tilak. If they were to declare that they had gone on fast for the day to express their grief, that would be construed as treason and may lead to trial, and punishment for the offence.
The prisoners were, therefore, enjoined to maintain silence on that point. But the officers learnt during the course of that day the reason for this observance. That the whole prison-world of the Andamans should, within two hours of the news, go on absolute fast in honour of Lokamanya Tilak filled the officers with surprise and anger. That it was a surprise was, no doubt, a fact. No prisoner in the Andamans knew even the name of Mr. Tilak nine years ago. Not one in a thousand prisons on hard labour could have been found then to go on a complete fast on a day of national mourning, in the same Andamans, the lapse of nine years had made such a difference. +++(5)+++ It had brought a tremendous political awakening and unity among the prisoners and free men throughout the settlement. So that within two hours the news could be carried all over the place and thousands of prisoners could observe a fast regarding the day as a day of national mourning.
The same was the case with our meetings. Some of the prominent prisoners among us used to hold meetings in the settlement outside to create an awakening and to educate people in politics by lectures and discussions. Of course, to do so was to run a great risk and we had to proceed cautiously. For prisoners were forbidden to go from one district to another, in these meetings about a hundred prisoners used to come together, and they came from all parts of the settlement. This was possible because the officers and the prisoners were in alliance with us. But, at times, the plan would fail and the whole batch exposed itself to be caught. And that was the occasion when the leaders were put on their severest trial. A stampede followed, and then rallying the men back was a matter of great tact and prudent management, I may quote one episode by way of illustration. There was one district in the Andamans known as Pinnsbeg. We decided to hold a meeting in that district. Prisoners came there from distant localities on one excuse or another. And we had to watch and ward at strategic points so that the meeting should pass off safely and without detection by the authorities. While the meeting was getting into full swing one of the men on the watch discovered a police officer, known to all, approaching the place. And the result was a root. Everyone tried to hide himself and escape from the place as he could. The speakers, the \hteners, and the national fervour-all vanished in a moment, Some hid themselves behind tell grass, others behind boulders of stone, some jumped across the fences and went into their respective chawls from their rear. Most of them had made their escape Only two of them were caught while jumping across, The officer was our friend. Me had come there because the higher authorities, informed of our projected meeting by interested persons, had tent him, Otherwise, of himself he would never have turned his steps in that direction or been found in its near vicinity. Those who happened to be caught by him belonged to the same district. He only rebuked them, and as it was af Sunday when prisoners could meet freely, he let them go with a warning He did not ask them for other names and reported to the headquarters that there was nothing like a meeting in fhe place where he was sent to look into the matter. But the episode did not end there. One Maratha prisoner who had attended the meeting and who was one of our leading men, was degraded from his job as a writer and put on hard labour by way of punishment. Within two weeks we were able to restore him to his old job through the influence we had with the authorities.
Inter-Caste Dinners and Dassera and Divali in the Andamans
As in India so in the Andamans the Hindus celebrate Dasaera, Divali and Holi with great eclat. There are three Hindu temples in that place well-known to all. One belongs to the Hindus, another to the Sikhs, and the third to the Arya Samajists. All prisoners have a holiday on these three days in the year. And they are allowed to move as free men from morn till eve in its thorough-fares. The prisoners in the Silver Jail had the holidays but were not allowed so far to leave the prison. I used these holidays and the fairs connected with them, for purposes of our propaganda among the people. Those outside used these occasions for organising lectures and conversations on subjects of national importance. In the temples, the priest and the Puranik were often persuaded to help us in the task. We arranged inter-caste dinners in connection with these celebrations. And the dinners always began with a national prayer. The prisoners were induced to arrange discourses on the Bhagvad Gita and to recite Bhajans composed by the Arya Samaj. Hundreds of illiterate and ignorant Hindu prisoner imbibed on these sacred days the spirit of nationality and came to know something of national politics. Seeds were sown on the occasion and curiosity was roused among them which did not all go in vain, I am tempted here to mention some names. They were those who had come first in the Silver Jail, and after serving their term had gone out as writers or factory inspectors in the colony where they carried on our mission with sincerity and zeal. I owe a tribute to them for the excellent public work they had done. But I must refrain, from naming them at least, for the time being, and as regards the first edition of this book, in their own interest. I may, however, state that some were educated men and political convicts from Dharwar, Akola, and Bihar. Others came from the class of thieves and dacoits and were ignorant at the start. These latter were, indeed, criminals with dangerous propensities. But through our propaganda and education they had been completely transformed and their souls were free from the taint of their former sins. It gave me great joy to notice this change in them, and, further, to record here, that they exposed themselves many times to trial and punishment while arranging and holding meetings and doing the constructive work that we had chalked out for them. As agitators, some of them had undergone a summary trial in this prison and sentences from six months to a year were passed on them, and they had to serve this sentence of hard labour in the prison itself, for which they were withdrawn from their appointed work in the settlement. But they bore it all, and their conduct in the prison since their transformation into public workers was honest and beyond all praise.
How bold and enterprising they were, will be clear to the reader from the following story. I have already narrated how risky it was to exchange even a word with a man known as a political convict. Some of the ordinary prisoners had to lose their jobs for such misdemeanour. Others were removed from their writing work and were put to work on the oil-mill. Yet when a large number of ex-soldiers had begun to come here as political convicts, these enterprising men entertained them with fruit on their way from the steamer to the jail, eluding all the police precaution against such course. And they did the same kind turn by political convicts on their release and on their way back to the steamer. They carried to them eatables from people in the Andamans, they brought them new clothes to put on, and they helped them with little money to be of use on the way. And all this they did in a secret, silent manner. For if the matter was known to the authorities, they were sure to be punished severely for the offence, and they were sure to be completely ruined. And all this good work they continued doing by subscribing for it from their own slender purses.
The first primary school in the jail
I decided to utilise my comparative freedom and power as foreman ofthe oil-depot, towards the systematic spread of education among the prisoners. I had always striven for it against tremendous odds as the prisoners had but known too well before. And when I wanted to launch upon a new endeavour they openly came out to support me. f discussed the project with them and decided to start a school in the prison itself for the instruction of its juvenile offenders. I appointed an educated political convict as a teacher above them. I knew from my knowledge of prison administration in other countries of the world, that, under proper training, the juvenile class of criminals turned out into good citizens. The teacher carried out his task with great efficiency. He was not content to teach them merely the three R’s, but instructed them, according to the programme drawn by us, in subjects which made them sound in their morals and well-grounded in all that concerned national education. A sloka from the Gita, some important extracts inculcating sound principles of religion, drawn from our religious books, political news-these were the daily items of education in the class-room. They were to read and write in Hindi and in Nagari script. They were made to repeat and recite some ofthe national songs which I had specially written in Hindi for the use of free people in the Andamans. They were also taught many other national songs in Hindi which had a vogue in these islands.
After the establishment of this primary school for juveniles. I arranged for a similar school in the depot itself for the instruction of other class of prisoners. What I had done so far only secretly I now began to do openly for them. I had some 150 prisoners detailed for work on the coconuts directly under my supervision. I gave them two hours’ leave during the day for attendance in the school. There they learnt in small batches and by turns. On Sundays, according to the new order of things, all of them could freely come together and attend the school at the same time. Hence our Sunday- classes became a regular and accepted feature of prison organisation. We had no fear now, and we had not to be on the run. Did this free atmosphere make the prisoners insolent and disobedient? Did they neglect their regular work or do less of it? Did it interfere with or spoil the discipline of the place? By no means. What, before, had to be enforced on them as compulsion, they now performed as a part of their duty. If one in ten among them showed the slightest tendency for breach of discipline or an inclination to come to blows, others would check them instantly saying, ‘O you fool, how dare you behave thus under the mild regime of Mr. Diggins and the kind treatment of Babuji, meaning myself. Have you so soon forgotten Mr. Barrie and how he treated us? And everything began to run normally again.
We celebrate the birth-anniversary of Guru Govind
Whatever public work I could do under the new prison- regulations I did openly. For the rest we did it in our own secret way as before. For instance, we decided this year to celebrate in prison the birth-day of Guru Govind Singh. I intended that the anniversary celebration should be on a grand scale so that the Hindus and the Sikhs might come closer to one another and the bond of unity among them might be strengthened, by the understanding and appreciation by them both of their common culture. The day fell on Sunday, and the prisoners in each wing of the jail could assemble together for the celebration. But as the prisoners in one wing could not go to prisoners in another wing, every school had to arrange for the celebration at different hour. All of them were. however, equally eager to hear my speech on Guru Govind. So I found occasion to visit two or three chawls by turns and delivered in each place a lecture on the great Guru of the Sikhs. In these anniversary celebrations of different chawls of the same prison, the Sikhs and the Hindus participated as brothers. They sang bhajans together, they heard lectures on the life of the Guru together, they listened to various anecdotes from his life together, and they pleaded for solidarity among them with unanimity and fervour. On that day I had in the depot puja and prasad. This prasad known as ‘Kada Prasad’ was distributed among all the prisoners of the place without distinction of caste and creed. According to the common practice on Sundays the prisoners had to go back to their respective cells and be locked in it at a particular hour. That day I managed that they may be sent to their room, but the door be kept open. And when all the higher officers had left the place. I assembled them in the open courtyard and addressed the meeting. Prisoners from different chawls had come out to hear me and petty officers and others who had now been converts to our views watched all about to warn us in time against the surprise visit of any higher officer of that place. A hundred of them had spread themselves out to keep guard. Others were at the meeting. We sang national songs on the occasion and then they heard my speech with rapt attention. The thing to note is this: We celebrated the birth-day of Guru Govind in a place where a few years before it was an offence for one prisoner to meet and talk to another.+++(5)+++ To swear by India as mother land was, of course, then out of question. And it has also to be admitted that not one in a hundred could have understood us then, if we were to speak to them of one country, one nation and one mother-tongue.
To encourage the prisoners in the training and development of their mind I would always. Put such of them on easier work in the prison as showed themselves apt pupils and as would regularly attend our meetings. When we started the classes, the pupils were given slates, pencils and readers from the funds at our disposal. But when an educated man and a lover of learning like Mr. Diggins became the head of the institution, I approached him with a petition that Government should provide slates and books for our pupils. At last, after considerable correspondence and repeated petitions, Government issued orders and they got slates and books at Government expense. I drew the attention of the officer to the zest with which the prisoners were using books and slates supplied to them. I also obtained permission for other prisoners to obtain books from the political prisoners’ library. I then suggested that Government should purchase books and stock them in the prisoners’ library. The task of making a list of such books being entrusted to me, I chose as many books of national views as I could, and included in the list a large number of Hindi books. Some of them were marked as undesirable when the list was finally approved by the authorities. Such books I included for purchase in our own collection. Thus I kept on working for national ends either by the help of Government or through our secret organisation till the end of my period in the Andamans. I included in the library, a large collection of books in Tamil, Andhra, Malayalam and Canarese languages, as I regarded them as essentially of Hindu stock, and as helpful to the promotion of national solidarity and national sentiment among the people.
Eighty percent literacy among the prisoners
An officer of the prison once asked me what was the fruit of it all. And in order to ascertain results I went into prison statistics, counting the total number of prisoners, and the percentage among them of those who knew reading and writing, and those again who had learnt it after they had been admitted into this jail. I knew from this investigation that eighty per cent of them were literates, while out of these ninety per cent had learnt to read and write only after they had entered this prison. +++(5)+++ I conveyed the information to the officer in question, who, in order to test it, paid a surprise visit to our chawls one Sunday morning. And what did he witness? When he went over the Chawls room by room he saw the prisoners absorbed in reading books on various subjects or in singing national songs. +++(5)+++ Ten years ago, he had seen prisoners in the same place on a Sunday playing at dice, gambling or quarrelling with one another or whiling away their leisure in similar degrading pastime. He was an officer who had spent years in that jail and he was simply surprised to notice the change between the past and the present.
An education enough for a voter
I have only mentioned the percentage of average literacy in the prison, but considering the method of education we had followed and the subjects included in our scheme, I can say that as he was taught everything about his country and of current politics, he was so widely-read and well informed that he was capable of understanding how to exercise his right as a voter. Of such there were at least forty per cent, in our prison. In any European country a voter does not generally know more than this. Our prisoners had been rendered fit by our training to be included in any Electorate for a Legislative Council, or to cast his vote correctly in the election of any village panchayat.
With my elder brother in the moonlight
My post as a foreman had enabled me to enjoy personal freedom at least to some extent. I could come out of my room not only in the morning but long before day-break. It was then that I stood out in the open with the flood of moonlight all around me. After nearly ten years of buried life, what an exhilaration of spirit it brought me. Though I enjoyed the right immensely it was not without its shadow upon my soul; for, was it not, after all, moonlight behind the prison-bars as good as the moonlight in a burial ground or at a burning ghat?
A few days after, I had for my companion under such moonlight my elder brother. I could sit with him thus for hours under the moon, but only to talk over the sufferings he had to pass through and weep for these sufferings. For his consttution had been thoroughly undermined, he was coughing all the while and T. B. had already come near him. For an hour when the fit came he had absolutely no respite. I see him before me even now seated on a tattered ratten chair with his long coat of coarse blanket on him, a tall, thin, worn-out man, a true patriot and devoted worker, a prisoner piteous to look at, yet himself unbent under the blows that had fallen on him.
Enjoying the moonlight, and this limited freedom in jail, I had determined not to pine for what was not, and to go on persistently with my self-imposed task. As I was living my life thus, one morning my elder brother hurriedly came up to me and put a cutting from a newspaper on my table. I had to read it unnoticed by any one else. I read it and found in it the news that the Government had resolved to close the Andamans as a colony for prisoners, that no fresh prisoners were to be sent in its Silver Jail, and the old ones were to be transferred to prisons in India in case they would not agree to stay in Andamans on some specific conditions.
Andamans closed as prison-colony
The news, of course, gratified me for it was the fulfilment of the work we had started and carried on for the last ten years. I had stated before the Jail Commission all the grievances of the prisoners at Port Blair; and the manner in which I had championed their cause before the Commission, I had no doubt, had cost me my freedom from this jail, and was the main reason of my exclusion from the general amnesty that was proclaimed subsequently. Therefore, I had the self-satisfaction that, though I had not won my freedom, I had done all I could in the best interests of all other prisoners in that Jail, and was instrumental, at least partially, in die success that had come to them.
Hundreds of prisoners in the jail showered their gratitude upon me. All of them knew one thing very well, and it was that during ten years of my association with them, I had carried on incessant agitation in the Silver Jail and outside for giving them an organised existence. I had carried on agitation in the press, through petitions, through civil resistance, through questions asked in the Imperial Legislature at Delhi, through protests, correspondence and personal letters, to draw the pointed attention of India and its Central Government to their condition in the Andamans. And it was my persistence at it that had made the matter a live issue before the Jail Commission. To those who would felicitate me I said, “At last the Andamans as a prison-colony is no more, the Silver Jail is dismantled. This change is not the result of any single-handed endeavour. It is the reward of ten years of continuous and all-sided agitation, to the success of which all of you, and especially the political convicts, have made a tremendous contribution by your trials and tribulations throughout this period And if it has succeeded even partially, the credit is yours.” I told them so and offered my sincerest felicitations to them in return.
I added how fine it would have been for Mr. Barrie to be alive that day. Mr. Barrie used to taunt me that all my efforts were to go for nought and add that I was dashing my head against a stone- wall, that was not the wall that would break, but that my head would break. I could have told him that day as follows: “Mr. Barrie. my head had received many bruises by my dashing it continuously against your prison-walls. No doubt about it But behold! The wall of your prison has now been cracked and will soon crumble down. And I am here alive with all the bruises I have received in the fight.”
I spent the whole night in thinking over the news, and made up my mind as to where I would oppose the Government in that move, and where I would support it heartily from the standpoint of India’s interest in that affair. I at once realised that the stand I was going to take would cost me at the start in popularity with my own people. But I must be prepared for this opposition if I was to serve them well. Had I not passed through a similar experience of adverse criticism when I first launched the Shuddhi movement in the Andamans?
I was in favour of prison-colony
I was, from the start, against breaking up the prison-colony in the Andamans. What I had insisted upon breaking was the administration of it by harsh, hard-hearted, reactionary, and unsympathetic prison-regulations, so harmful to the prisoners coming under its jurisdiction. The colony and the settlement should have been continued on the lines of Canada and Australia, where England had sent its prisoners who made those colonies into thriving dominions. The worst felons were deported from England to Canada. And the fierce qualities of the criminals sent to Canada proved useful in conquering that land for cultivation and development from the aborigines of that country and the wild animals that had infested it. These fierce qualities tamed by proper discipline and control have many times helped the convict settlers to turn the land by proper cultivation into a dominion smiling with plenty and power peace and progress. The colonial policy ought to aim at making the prisoners useful and honest citizens and not to kill their spirit or destroy their usefulness. The policy should not be that of revenge but improvement all round. In Canada, partly in America, and to a larger extent in Africa the convicts sent from England were kept free, though under severe discipline, and their enterprise and daring were utilised to good purpose. They colonised and brought under cultivation the wild and barren places of those continents. The human material that was running to waste in the old country grew in these new countries to hundred times its strength, and the growing population had turned these dominions into independent nations. England’s man-power and its power as an empire grew with their growth and expansion. I felt from the point of view of India as a nation that the Andamans, instead of being abandoned, should be developed through its prisoners along similar lines.
It was not the policy of our agitation to denude and destroy the Andamans. It was, we felt, to lose all the labour and money that had been spent on that soil for so many years in the past. It should be developed along national lines. For prisoners deported to the Andamans on a long or a life-sentence were bound to rot for fourteen years in the jails of India. Life would be a misery for them in these new conditions as bad as that in the Andamans, if not worse than that. And society would get no benefit whatever ofthe better part of their criminal propensities like courage, enterprise, daring and recklessness of life. From the national point of view, the very qualities that stink in our nostrils as criminal, furnish rich manure for the soil where the prisoners are transplanted as free men; or are like explosives which, if wisely handled, become powerful weapons of defence: And the greatest harm of it all was that the seed falling on rocky soil, was run to waste, while cast on fertile soil might multiply a hundredfold. The nation loses immensely from the disuse of this potentiality for man-power when a prisoner is condemned to rot in the jail; whereas as a free man in a new settlement, he could marry, prosper and multiply to the immense advantage of the country from which he hails.
Crime is hereditary only in a limited sense
In my opinion heredity and crime were not so inviolably bound up as scientists had tried to make it. If there was any truth in this proposition, it was nothing better than half-truth. Not every criminal sinner transmitted his sin and crime to his children as heredity would seek to prove. A man or woman became a criminal not as the result of heredity alone. That may be attributed to many other causes. Education, circumstances, associations, and several other causes act upon a person to turn him into a criminal and develop or kill the instinct of crime he might inherit from his parents. If virtue and vice were invariably to pass from father to son, there would never have been a son like Sambhaji to a king like Shivaji, or the political convicts deported to Canada would never have been able to give us a nation like Canada as from generation to generation. As a poet does not necessarily beget a poet, so a criminal father does not necessarily give birth to a criminal son.
Prisoners on life-sentence should be allowed to marry
Therefore, to put a ban upon prisoners transported for life against marriage was virtually to punish the nation. It is not only to punish them individually but to penalise the country, for it is a distinct set-back to the growth of her population. Instead of this policy of cruelty and castration, it would be wise to continue the settlement as a free colony of prisoners who, under strict discipline, may be allowed to make a home in it, marry and multiply; and turn the settlement into a thriving and prosperous concern. From generations born of them, men who grow up in social virtues should be made entirely free so that the settlement and the country to which it belongs may both reap the rich benefits flowing from such policy.
My work of awakening in the Andamans had been all guided by this far-sighted aim. To improve the life of the convicts to make their children good and capable citizens by education and association, must be the policy of the Government charged with the administration ofthe Andamans. The regulations ought to be so framed as would contribute to this self—sufficient development This was the purpose of my mission in the Silver Jail, my self, imposed task during the ten years I had been there. And I had definitely formulated it, in my oral evidence as also in my written statement, before the Jail Commission. And I had strongly emphasised the need for action accordingly.
But the Government Resolution on the subject had altogether brushed aside the constructive part of my evidence and statement, though it had fully accepted the damaging criticism I had made upon the existing method and scope of administering the Andamans As such it had proposed the closing down of the colony for prisoners from India and Burma. It had proposed to transfer the prisoners in the Andamans to the respective jails in India. This was a way of doing things which was no remedy at all for the existing evil, and did not provide in any way for future good of the colony, as well as for the good of the present prisoners in it I had, therefore, decided to open a campaign against it in the Andamans and in India.
Unfortunately this time it was clear to me that those who were against me formerly would be out to support me while those who had all along gone with me would be against me. For, the British officers who had settled in the Andamans thought like me that the colony should not be broken up; at least, they felt that thousands of prisoners who had settled there should not be dislodged from that place. The reason might be different with them. The British officers, from the overseers right up to the Chief Commissioner, did not want to lose their jobs, did not desire to be unsettled in life; they felt that their removal from the Andamans meant that they could no longer rule as they had ruled in the Andamans with unquestioned authority over thousands of prisoners, and, perhaps, would have to be content with positions much inferior to those that they held in these islands. Hence, these high officials were trying to bring pressure upon the authorities in India, with the consent of the prisoners concerned, not to put that resolution into effect. I also began working in my own way that the present prison-settlers in the Andamans should not be sent out of the colony into India. In the same cause, yet for different reasons, myself and the officers went on well together.
But this strange ailiance created suspicion in the minds of those prisoners who had so long worked hand in glove with me. It must be admitted that our agitation and activities against the Government had created in them a frame of mind that regarded everything coming from the official side with great suspicion and as having some sinister motive behind it It is ever true of ignorant persons that such a prejudice in them makes them incapable of judging an action as good or bad on its own merits. They hesitate to accept even a good thing from those against whom they are prejudiced, and they ever suspect something sinister behind it. Common people take their politics as a young and untried wrestler faces a practised man in it. The latter holds forth his hand and the novice would not catch it ever suspecting some dodge behind the proferred hand.+++(5)+++ He knows not how to meet a move with a counter- move to checkmate it. The ordinary man in politics and similar affairs misses much and perhaps loses a great deal by such over- suspicion. And exactly similar was the attitude of many prisoners in the Andamans towards me because they felt that I was siding this time with the officers instead of opposing them. The more the local officers persuaded them to stay on in the Andamans, the more eager they became to leave that place. They felt that their interests lay in abandoning the place because the officers, who often deceived them, now importunated them to stick to it. And when I joined my voice to theirs adding, that going back to India was not desirable, that staying there was more advantageous to them because of the new concessions, they were surprised and puzzled in mind, and went the length of suspecting me as they had so long suspected the officers, And in this way those who were my staunch friends and devoted disciples till then, prepared themselves to lend rtn open opposition to my advice and action on this particular question, albeit they did it most reluctantly.
Those who strive for the good ofthe people arc ever ready to sacrifice for it their properly and even their life; hut they dare not sacrifice popularity for it; they often shrink from such a sacrifice H I have found from many instances in my own experience of public life Not to forego popularity at any cost has been the grave of many a good cause in this world. Knowing as I did this side of public lite but too well, I have striven to the best of my power, never to succumb to this temptation, and have sacrificed popularity as I have sacrificed myself whenever I found it necessary to do so. I know that it has caused me a severe wrench of the heart. But I have borne the agony of it for the sake of what I was convinced to he my duty. As to that, there was no doubt in my mind.
Stay here even if you are free
The prisoners sent to me, under one pretext or another, their respective leaders, one after another, to know my real mind on the subject. To one and all of them I gave the same advice.
I said to them, “Most of the prisoners in the settlement are drawn from the lowest and the most poverty-stricken strata of society, If they were taken back to India and were but set free at once, without being made to rot in the jails of India, how will they be the better for such freedom? that they shall not he so set free was a certainty, for they were hound to serve out their fourteen years’ term of imprisonment in India, if not in the Andamans. The breaking up of the colony in the Andamans hy no means implied such a pardon for them, Granted that they were free they will inevitably go back to poverty which will hold them in its grip, If they happened to have a small piece of land, they will find that their kith and kin had already swallowed it. Homeless they will either tight for them in the law-courts, or, worse than that, quarrel with them and heat them And if they did not do so, they shall have to beg for their subsistence and at last lapse into a career of crime. This state of things was good neither for them, nor for their country. On the other hand, to settle in the Andamans, and to make the fullest use ofthe new opportunity opened out to them to own and cultivate the land and to earn an independent living, was to bring Into existence n prosperous colony which would he both an individual and a national gain. I he greatest drawback in the past life of the Andamans had been the dearth of females, and, therefore, little or no scope, whatever, for marriage and home life. But if in years to come- say in five years - the officers permit and encourage prisoners to marry and make a home for themselves, then the difficulty on that score was bound to disappear. Many of them would, in that case, bring their families from India or marry women of the Andamans, So long the prisoners were forbidden from having any contact with free men and their families in these islands, but that ban would not he there under the new order of things. Would ft not he better, in these circumstances, to stay here and improve their social and economic position than uy go hack either to rot in the jail, or to carry on litigation for a small piece of land and thus quarrel with their kith and kin? Here was free land open for their occupation. They had better settle on it, cultivate it, reap a new harvest from it, live and be happy. The so called free men here were the progeny of prisoners who had come to the Andamans a generation hack. They were their blood and bone. To establish marriage alliance with them would be addition to that progeny. To live here in contentment was better than anything they were going to do In India, It would be hard for them to win any status there, to settle, to marry, to make a home for themselves, have children in the family, and make a little money on their own. Why! In India their caste would shun them as pariahs, those who had returned from Fiji to India in similar circumstances preferred to go hack, far in India conditions were hard tar them to endure. They were labourers, while the prisoners will go hack branded as convicts or ex-convicts. Was it not better, therefore, for them lo obtain their freedom a I for ten years in the Andamans, which in farmer days cuine lo them after twenty years of penal servitude? Was it not better to use that freedom to improve their lot by settling here, for which they would gel a ticket an mere application? Now the ticket was being given only after three years of imprisonment in the jail here. Turn farmers, cultivate the soil, be independent, earn your living and be happy. Take it that you have come to this foreign country to make your fortune.
You will thus not only serve yourselves, avoiding all the hardships of imprisonment, but you will be helping to add to India, if you make full use of your opportunities and work as an organised unit, a colony as prosperous and enlightened, in the course of a few generations, as Canada or Cape Colony. That will mean Greater India, not unlike Greater Britain, though an a smaller scale. For your stay in the Andamans ultimately means to keep the flag of India flying on these shores. It will be the expansion of India from the cultural and religious point of view.”
“Look at Nicobar. It originally was an off-shoot of India. Now it belongs to the Burmese and the Malayans because the Hindus refused to settle and colonise it. It is lost for good to Hindu culture. And the same thing will happen in the Andamans as soon as the Hindu prisoners are removed from it, and their settlement here is broken up for good. The Burmese, and the Malayans are sure to put themselves in possession of it. And the three generations of Hindus which had sown the seed and spilt their blood in its development will disappear in no time. It will be lost to their children and the toil and sweat of their ancestors shall have been in vain. Lost to Hinduism and Hindu culture by such expropriation the Andamans may remain a possession of India, yet its soul will belong to the Chinese, the Malayans and other races of Mongolian stock and culture.
You already know the political importance of the Andamans to India. These islands are to be the fortification line of India in the future, a base for her navy and air-force to guard her from foreign invasion. If the Hindu prisoners remain in occupation of these islands their children will be Hindus by blood and social heritage and it will be theirs, as coming generations, to guard this island fortress of India.”
That is the glorious future which awaits you all. Today you are fallen, outcast and condemned but this heritage is a golden opportunity that you should not let go. Hence the few among you who aspire in India to attain a higher status, must stay here, in order to lead and guide you, and make you raise these islands to the status of a great colony and attach it to mother India. This is a service they owe to their motherland, for which they must make this sacrifice. This is a task which is indeed the fulfilment of a life time. Every land demands leaders who would stick to the Spot and carry on propaganda, and who would work to realise the ideal. They spend themselves for the cause that it may fructify. Why can you not be the conquerers of Andamans for India in a similar manner?”
I talked to them repeatedly in the same strain. I used almost the same words and language over and over again till all my former co-workers and colleagues came over to my side as the result of these private talks. They at last realised that to be sent back to India did not mean freedom for them. It was to be taken to prisons where they would be under stricter confinement. Some of them caught from me the fervent spirit of nationalism and the sense of duty that went with it.
Yet in order that the Government be compelled to give as many concessions as possible to them, I made all of them say to it that they would stay in the Andamans only under certain conditions or else they should be sent back straight to India. I wanted them to take up that position in their own interest. The authorities allowed us to hold meetings to express our opinion on the subject. Taking advantage of this facility I began to speak at these meetings to the fullest extent on Sanghatan and general politics of the country.
If going to India means no freedom we prefer to stay here.
In order to set an example to the rest I sent a petition to the Government of India that “if I was not to be set free on my stepping into India, I preferred to be kept back in the Andamans to serve my whole term of imprisonment. Only as I had finished ten years in the jail, for the rest of my time I should be allowed to settle in the Andamans as a free person with my family, or alone on a ticket granted for that purpose.”
In former years I had submitted representations for the transfer of prisoners from the Andamans to India. I had done so, as the reader will notice from what I have written about them in the pages of this book, on grounds of health and other facilities they would get in India. But today the whole aspect had changed in the Andamans and hundreds of prisoners stood to gain from residence in these islands. And their colonial development and expansion was sure to benefit India as a whole politically and nationally. I, therefore, had make up my mind to pass my days in the Andamans to help that process of expansion and development. My example inspired others to stay there along with me.
My strenuous efforts to stabilise the Andamans as a prison colony filled the free inhabitants of the place with gratitude for me. These were only a handful and owned lands and plantations. They were farmers and their living depended on the existence of prisoners in that colony. If all the prisoners were turned out from these islands, they would suffer most. They began to submit petitions to Government on the lands they cultivated and on the rights of ownership about them. They complained about the taxes levied from them and the irregularities about thenm. They protested against arbitrary eviction from these lands, and they tried to organise a regular campaign in support of their grievance. The prisoners often used to say and suggest as if they would be none the better for freedom in the Andamans. In order to bring home to them the advantage of such freedom, the Government was bound to treat those, who were already living as free inhabitants in these islands, with consideration, adopt a well-thought out policy of action towards them. But in order that they may be enabled to take full advantage of the policy, continous agitation was indispensable. Their leaders used to see me often and I used to see the representations they submitted and even improve them.
T### he repercussion of jejune Indian politics on the Andamans
The main topic of politics that year was the Khilafat and the Non-cooperation movements in India. In our discussions of that topic, I condemned them outright. I said, “The death of Lokmanya Tilak in India gave a fillip to these movements. It is a belief current among us that when a great man dies, nature herself is unable to bear the shock and she erupts in hurricanes and typhoons, in pestilence and epidemics full of evil portent to the world. The exit from the Indian world of a powerfull personality like Lokmanya Tilak ushered in the mad intoxication of Khilafat agitation conspiring with the cult of the Chakra as a-way to Swaraj in one year. It is to be won by the perverse doctrine of non-violence and truth. The non-cooperation movement for Swaraj based on these twin principles was a movement without power and was bound to destroy the power of the country. It is an illusion, a hallucination, not unlike the hurricane that sweeps over a land only to destroy it. It is a disease of insanity, an epidemic and megalomania.”
I was the first to protest against the Khilafat movement in India. I denounced it as dangerous to the nation. I did not style it ‘Khilafat’ but ‘aafat’ a menace to the country. Every house in the Adamans knew it as ‘afat’ or a calamity. And that definition of non-violence which was nodefinition but its perversion! And what shall we say of truth but that it was downright falsehood, a cant, a sham and a bunkum! I discussed the movement and its everyday incidents and exposed its hollowness before hundreds of my listeners in spite of their strong prejudice in its favour and, therefore, of their bitter opposition to me. I calmly bore it all, and gradually convinced them of its useless hair-splitting and its unreality and hollowness all round. It was bound to do more harmthan good to the country and could never bring in swaraj in one year as it was pledged to do. That I was speaking to them the barest truth was brought home to me by many an incident that followed. I may mention here only one of these.
Two terrorists and political convicts, whose names I may not mention, had just been sent to the Andamans. They had warrants issued against them as involved in the riots in Punjab, but they had gone underground and the police had no clue about them. For six months they moved freely in the country carrying on their usual work, but no trace was found about them. And like Babu Guru Datta Singh they could have gone on for years defying the C. I. D,, to catch them. But they went and saw Gandhiji, the leader of the Non-cooperation movement, and as ill luck would have it, narrated to him the story of their life. The great leader was in rage and denounced them. He said, “It is sheer cowardice to be in hiding and to evade warrants against them. Go instantly and deliver yourselves in the hands of the Magistrate. I cannot countenance such untruthful conduct.” They asked him plainly if that action was not cooperation with Government. They said to him, “We are making the law inoperative, we are practicing civil disobedience in the right way. As we are carrying on our work, you cannot say of us that we are in hiding and elude the law out of fear. To act as you would have us act is to help the Government and help the law to have its own course,” Before they had finished the argument, Gandhiji reprimanded, “That will not do, I order you to appear before the Magistrate and surrender yourselves. Do it instantly.” Poor men! They returned to the North at their own expense and appeared before the Delhi Magistrate. After arrest and trial they now find themselves on life-sentence in the Andaman jail.+++(5)+++
And now they censured Gandhiji and had repented for their ever having committed the blunder of seeing him. I plainly told them that he alone was not to blame in that affair. Those who had the weakness to obey him implicitly, were as much to blame and deserved as much censure as he. Why did they listen to him, why did they not exercise their reason, and think, and act for themselves?
I add only two sentences to this disquisition without referring in detail to other incidents and episodes to give the reader a picture of my notions at that time and of my line of work then. Summing up the discussion, I said, “We revolutionaries ought always to remember one thing and guide ourselves by one principle. That politics worth the name is neither cooperation nor non-cooperation, ft is responsive cooperation, and morally it can be no other. If we win a step by cooperation, then let us cooperate with the opposition. If we feel certain that cooperation is useless, then let us resort to non-cooperation. Sometime non-cooperation has to be non-violent At another time, it cannot help being violent. And even violence or resort to terrorism ought to be only a temporary measure. Non- cooperation cannot be a principle, it is only a remedy for the time being.. Co-operation with all and in the best interests of all is a positive doctrine. And when it works for all and promotes the good of all, and is acted upon, according to time and circumstance, it is rightly described as responsive cooperation.
I had pointed out even then to my fellow-prisoners how far this chameleon would go, what would be the extern of its jump. I had warned them how the alliance of non-cooperation with the Khilafat agitation was bound to end in disaster, that it was sure to raise in the country a wave of fanaticism and plunge the whole movement into conflagration, with its consequences to the country too terrible to imagine. I continued impressing the fact upon my colleagues and fellow-prisoners as long as I was in the Andamans.