The day when Mr. Savarkar was to be extradited and sail for India to the intense grief and anxiety of his friends and comrades in arms, he received most touching letters from several Indians as well as European gentlemen. In response he wrote the following letter and managed through a private source to send it out to France from his prison on the eve of his extradition in 1910.
“Whose heart to by silken ties is knit of friendship sweet, that sweeter grows by far partaking of the Godly sacrament of mother’s creed Divine: Oh friends! Farewell! As tender and fresh as the morning dew that wakes the fragrance! Friends, adieu! Adieu!
“We part to play our God-appointed parts now pent and nailed to burning Rocks; now tossed on surging waves of Fame; now seen, now lost; or humble or exalted—Whether posted by the Lord of Hosts, yet posted best, as if that alone was mission of our life, thus there to act!
“As in some oriental play sublime, all characters, the dead as well as the living, in Epilogue they meet, thus actor we innumerable all-once more shall meet on History’s copious stage before the great applauding audience of Humanity, that would with grateful cheer fill and dale! Till then, Oh loving friends, Farewell! Farewell! “Wherever may my humble ashes lie: in the Andamans sad brook whose weeping course adds to its dreariness a tongue or stored by Ganga’s sacred crystal stream in which the stars their midnight measures dance - they will be stirred with fire and glow when Victory’s trumpet-blast will proclaim: Shree Ram has crowed his chosen people’s brow with laurels golden green! The Evil Spirit is cast away and chased back to the deep from whence it arose! And lo! She lordly stands, Our Mother land, a beacon light Humanity to guide! Oh martyred saints and soldiers do awake! The battle is won in which you fought and fell!
“Till then, Oh loving friends, farewell! Fare well!”
“Watch sleeplessly the progress of our Mother and learn to count it, not by so much work done or tried, but by how much they suffered, what sacrifice our people could sustain! For work is chance, but sacrifice a Law; foundation firm to rear a mighty Dome of kingdoms new and great! But only great if their roots be in martyrs ashes laid. Thus work for Mother’s glory, till God’s breath be rendered back the Godly mission done—a martyr’s wrath or victor’s crown be won!”
The Police and the Government, in the meanwhile, were trying to solve the question of how to take this troublesome rebel youth back to India to be tried there. The usual way was to cross the Channel and through France take him to Marseilles and then sail for India. But there were rumours afloat that Mr. Shamji Krishnavarma, the influential leader of the revolutionists, was likely to move the French courts to issue a writ of Habeas Corpus if ever the English dared to take Savarkar through France under custody on political charges. To avoid any further complications it was at last decided to drop the usual route, sail directly from the English shores via the Bay of Biscay avoiding so far as possible any stoppage at foreign ports. Accordingly a strong escort, specially deputed from India, strengthened yet further by picked officers from the Scotland Yard, took charges of the famous revolutionists, boarded the ship and sailed through the Bay.
Mr. Savarkar, when he thus left England in 1910, was nearly 26. He had arrived there when 22 years old. Within the short span of these four years he had transformed the crowed of nerveless ninnies and unprincipled dandies, that the Indian students in England were before generally reputed to be, into band of patriots who, apart from their dreadful methods and questionable tactics, did undoubtedly display a heroic fortitude, a reckless spirit of sacrifice in the interests of their motherland and did indeed win the esteem and enlist the moral sympathy of all European nations in favour of the cause of Indian Freedom. Before that, the European actually expressed his contempt as the sight of Indian as a slave, and worse, as a willing salve. Thenceforth, they looked upon them as men who could retaliate and dare and die for their nation.
No sooner was he taken on board the steamer than Mr. Savarkar began to devise plans of putting into practice the latter part of his programme which we saw him framing in Paris. He did not shirk, he risked, he was now in the very thick of the fight, not only side by side, but even at the front of all those comrades who stood braving prisons and gallows and tortures in India. If now he could effect his escape and regain his liberty—not by avoiding the foe as it would have been the case had he not faced him at all-but by defeating him, he could spare himself for further work without sowing the seeds of demoralization in the revolutionary party; but on the other hands by frustrating the machinations of foes, he would raise the revolutionist cause in the esteem of others and themselves. He knew that all sorts of rumours were being given credence in the English press as to the cause of his sudden and deliberately return to England from Paris. Some attributed it after the fashion of the celebrated Irish hero, Robert Emmet, to an interview he was to have with a girl that had fallen in love with him: others to economical difficulties. Mr. Shamji silenced many of these conjectures by his letter in the Times. Nevertheless the Police sedulously went on encouraging the belief that Savarkar was duped by their clever tactics and fell a victim to a false letter they sent him in the name of his intimate friend. But nothing of that sort ever happened. We have Savarkar’s word for that. The working of his heart is laid bare before us in the previous chapters and he voluntarily and deliberately re-crossed the Channel. Now he thought, if by some extraordinary deed of clever daring he could effect his escape, these stupid boasts of the English police as to their ingenuity and smartness would be mortified as never before. Even while he was in Brixton serious schemes of effecting his rescue were under consideration. They all failed even though he had friends and money to back him up then. Now he was alone, penniless, befriended by none, a prisoner under the closet and the most circumspective watch and ward of the English escort.
For the officers in charge of him were in no way unguarded. They knew he was a dangerous and reckless prisoner and backed up by a powerful and devoted party who would risk even their lives to effect his rescue, So they neglected no precaution and kept him under the most rigorous isolation and watch.
There is no space here, nor, do we know enough, to describe how cleverly he devised his plan, how every now and then he was disappointed, how everything seemed to go against him. Why, it looked on very face of it childish to escape from the steamer where ten picked and armed officers and men and hundreds of European passengers guarded him, and when he could not even exchange a word or stand a minute by the side of any other passenger or alone. These details would come to light only when Mr. Savarkar himself chooses to tell his story. The Steamer, it was given out, was not to touch Marsailles. But somehow or other it suddenly changed its course, when past Gibralter, towards the French port. A faint hopes rose in the mind of the prisoner that some of his friends in Paris might come to his rescue, at least afford some help.
The steamer anchored at Marseilles-but no one could be discovered as far as his strained eyes could descry. The only change was a change for the worse. His guard would not allow him to move away from them anywhere even for a minute and kept annoyingly close by him. Only at the time of the bath or the closet they allowed him to go alone—but even there they managed to watch him by a big reflex glass that was kept hanging outside the rooms. Even then twice he tried to scale out by night, but twice he was thwarted in his attempt, though none knew it himself.
The night passed away. It was about to dawn. Within a few hours of daybreak the steamer would leave the port. The last chance of his escape would slip out of his hand. But what to do! both the English officers were asleep, the sepoys keeping awake and amidst these sleeplessly watched, Mr. Savarkar slept all huddled together in that small cabin of a steamer. Mr. Savarkar had weighed all the consequences of an attempt to escape in his mind. He knew that failure was almost certain under the most unfavourably and hostile circumstances: with not a soul to sympathise or help, and with hundreds of foreigners keeping strict watch on his movement, how on earth was he to shake off the armed guards at his heels and sides? And if failure was almost certain how terrible would be the consequences! He had read harrowing accounts of the cruelty that these very officers were capable, of when in their calmer moods. To what demoniacal fury and tortures would they not subject him if thus they got exasperated by his attempt to break off from their custody? Then any such attempt was bound to lay him open to far more serious charges and was bound to prejudice his first case in a most damaging way. For as the case stood there could have been no substantial documentary or other reliable evidence strong enough to sustain all the charges against Mr. Savarkar, so cleverly had he worked throughout that otherwise reckless agitation. Even the best legal opinions, in spite of the confessions of his former comrades that were wrung out by the Police in India, were one on the point that if he chose to defend and if no further complications took place he could not get more than seven years or so in any ordinary conducted trial. But an attempt at such daring escape would doubtless furnish that much dreaded complication. Yes: true it was that thus the price of failure would be most exacting.
But if it succeeds? Succeeds even partially? What grand tradition of heroic fortitude would it not leave behind to raise the prestige of the Indian revolutionist party in the esteem of all mankind? It will take Europe by surprise. It will wash away the stigma that the leader of Abhinava Bharat was trapped by the Government as easily as one would trap a mouse. No! His arrest must cost them much more than the arrest of any single private individual had ever done. It must tax the utmost ingenuity of the English Government and force them to stand mortified and humiliated before all Europe. If no help, well he would individually do it at any rate. It was worth risking worth doing. Failure or success, he will have the satisfaction of having played his own of Indian Independence. But if, in pursuit and hunt, they shoot? Well, it would be far more in keeping with his position as the president of the Abhinava Bharat, the leader of young Indian, to die in that fashion, to get shot in the struggle than to live to rot in the Andamanese dungeons or end his life on the gallows. He must risk.
But the steamer was to sail just after day break. These guards are all closing and tightly pressing on both sides. Still, if at all, this is the time. Now or never! He actually repeated to his mind “Now or never!‟ he turned to the guards and in his usual smiling and pleasant way persuasively asked if they would take him to the closet. The guard assented. But to his surprise they wanted to wake up the chief officers. He woke and, to the embarrassment of Mr. Savarkar, accompanied him to the closet with the guards. The door of the water closet was set up with a glass pane. A looking glass just opposite to it was kept hanging outside in which all movements inside the closet were reflected. There the guard stood watching, though outwardly he had turned his back to the closet. Mr. Savarkar knew it all. He entered the closet. There he saw the port-hole at the top a little opened. But how to reach it? The guard was there. Mr. Savarkar had a dressing gown on him over his sleeping suit. He sharply took it out and threw it on the hook against the pane. That sheltered him a little. He jumped, but failed to reach the port-hole. A curious misgiving and fear of the ridicule he would lay himself open to in case he was now caught there and then dispirited him a bit. But in the twinkling of an eye he came to himself once more, censoriously repeated to his mind, “Now or never!‟ and clambered up again.
This time the guard marked this queer movement, looked back, but before he could understand what he saw, Mr. Savarkar had caught the port-hole: he was in it. The guard shouted “Treachery!‟ Mr. Savarkar surveyed the sea. The guard panicstruck rushed at the door of the closet closed from inside by Savarkar and began to kick at the pane and shout and howl. Mr. Savarkar had managed to slip half his body out of the port-hole and jumped into the sea. The guards broke the door, a crowd rushed, they reached the port-hole. Mr. Savarkar heard a pistol shot, thought they were shooting at him and dived under the water. The guards saw him, but dared not to jump down out of the same port-hole at his heels. They returned and raised the alarm on the steamer and a number of persons including some officers of the steamer threw the drawbridge and landed on the shore. In the meanwhile Mr. Savarkar was swimming for his very life, now diving, now riding the waves. He reached the shore first, but to his dismay found a steep dock-wall facing him. Nevertheless he touched the wall with a view to secure the protection of the French law; for the touching of the dock-well was tantamount in law to landing on the soil.
He touched the French coast and then finding a great uproar was raised behind him he began to scale the steep dockyards. The discipline of the secret societies in Nashik required members to scale steep rocks and according to rule Mr. Savarkar too used to train himself to it in his boyhood. That practice now saved his life. Once he slipped and fell in the sea; but the top, actually landed on the French soil and knew that then he was a free man. This consciousness of having at last shaken off the fetter of his powerful foe and the consequent feeling of exaltation almost relieved him of the exhaustion that the strain of all this sensation had brought on him. He stood a couple of seconds, breathed the air, knew it was free air he was breathing and actually felt it exceptionally fresh and sweet. The stirring stories of the escape of the Russian revolutionist rushed to his memory and sustained him in his determination by assuring him that he too was acting an equally heroic part.
All this did not take a minute: just then the chase was on him! He looked back, found a number of excited men and officers shouting and raising a cry “catch thief! catch thief!” were running after him form three sides so as to completely surround him. Their attitude showed him that it was no longer safe to depend upon mere legal technicalities. They did not seem to be the men who would honour the French Law for the mere asking of it. He must fight to the last and seek the protection of the French Police to save himself from the rowdy violence of his pursuers. So instantly he galloped off. He was exhausted by the swimming and the scaling and the nervous strain of the marvellous venture. But he ran on. Not less than a mile the hunt continued. The tram cars were running up and down, he passed them by. But he had not a pie on him. Otherwise he would have jumped in one of them, while his pursuers were yards away from him and in a few minutes would have shaken them off. Nor could he espy the face of any of his Indian friends who could lend him a helping hand by calling in the French Police to his rescue! If but anyone would lend him a penny he might jump in the tram cars and vanish off in a minute.
A penny! A penny! His life a penny!!
But who was going to pay him there a penny, where thousands of miles away from his people and his Motherland the brave Indian youth, was being hunted like a wide beast by the armed crowd of foreigners for the heinous crime he had committed to free his nation! The French people—a lot of workers were passing in groups to their daily calling. They heard the cry “catch thief”, “catch thief” saw a young, poorly clad West Indian—must be some lascar from the steamer trying to scamper off and pursued by English officers who bore gold and silver stripes and instinctively took the side of the latter and joined in the chase. Still the brave youth have not in. He continued the race at top-speed, loudly calling out “Police Police!” for he knew that the only best thing he could do under the circumstances was to deliver himself up to some French official before the crowd that was raised on all sides eventually closed on him and the English kidnapped him without allowing any formal complaint to reach the French authorities. Just then he saw a French gendarme—a French policeman to his great relief. He walked up to the policeman, informed him in broken French that he was not a thief but an Indian political prisoner whom the English were trying to arrest on French soil and demanded that, as he was free no sooner he touched the French coast, he had a right to claim the protection of the French Government. “Take me before a Magistrate!‟ he kept insisting on. But the ordinary policemen could not make out anything of these learned claims, was naturally inclined to listen to the high English officials and gentlemen, and at last, when the most powerful argument that could influence a poor street police like him was supplied by them in the form of a heap of glittering golden coins, whatever misgivings he had disappeared, he handed over Mr. Savarkar to the English authorities. But he was not likely to go back for mere asking. He kept furiously resisting till overpowered, held fast by dozens of men. He was almost dragged on to the steamer. There one of the guards suddenly dealt a blow from behind on his head. Lightening-like he got him extricated from those who held him might he was not likely to be killed before he knocked at least one of them down dead. That fury put a stop to all further assaults. The crowd dispersed. Mr. Savarkar was once more locked in the cabin.
He was utterly exhausted. His breath grew heavy. It seemed as if the trouble would reappear. The failure naturally began to tax his nerves. It seemed as if demoralization would set in. the English officials kept vowing vengeance against him for the trouble he had put them to. The boat sailed. All hope of escape was lost. The night came. His guards that night had a sword unsheathed and hung before his in the cabin. He was handcuffed day and night; even at the water closet the guards accompanied him holding him tightly by their hands on both sides. In that little cabin he was to remain all time. Only four feet of space was allowed to him to stand, to move and to take his walk, the electric light was constantly kept burning, making the crowd cabin intolerably heated and close. Sunlight too became a luxury and he could not see it for days and days. To make matters worse some of the furious guards and officers who lost their temper did not scruple to use foul language and hold terrible threats of tortures hanging on his head. As night came on, the passengers in the cabins leaving in that corridor began to shift and that part of the steamer was vacated thus showing that perhaps the threats of physical assaults held out by some of the policemen were very likely to come out true.” Prepare thyself now to face the worst that befalls a victim!‟ said Mr. Savarkar to himself and kept devising what he could do if they actually torture him. He must bear it all. Doubtless the attempt at escape had made his position immensely more miserable than ever. But then he had tried his best and did all that a brave man ought to have done and could have done. “Do thy duty and leave the rest to God.” These lines kept automatically rising to his mind. The sword was hanging naked before his eyes just within a hand’s distance where the sentry sat. He had moreover observed that a loaded revolver was in the trouser pocket of one of the officials and he had hung those trousers when going to bed on the hook opposite to him. All night he kept deliberately awake, though with close eyes. Once the officer in charge kept gazing steadily at the face of the dozing prisoner and suddenly ejaculated, “What a breed these Savarkars are!” “Kya awalad hai!” Savarkar heard it, but replied not. Only he opened his eyes and steadily gazed at the officer. Construing his silence as a sign of Mr. Savarkar’s getting cowed down, the official vented out his fury and threatened Savarkar in the foulest term with physical tortures. At this, Mr. Savarkar got up and solemnly replied “Look here: you talk of tortures. The day when I raised what you call a revolt I first set my own house on fire and then began setting fire to those of my neighbours. I am now dead to myself while living. Desperate recklessness is now my only friend. But your case is quite otherwise. You have yet to live and enjoy the pleasures of a sweet home. Therefore think twice before you subject me to any such foul treatment or tortures. For I know I cannot defend myself against you all. But one thing I will do I will not die unless and until I have killed at least one of you.” Nor were these words of Mr. Savarkar a mere brag. He had resolved to snatch down that pair of trousers that one of the officers had hung by the hook, take out the revolver it contained and fall on the assailants at a bound at the slightest attempts on their part to put the threats of torture into practice.
There was something so stern and overpowering in those accents that fell from Savarkar’s lips, and in the very fact that they fell from Savarkars lips, that the official and the guards by his side could not help the official and the guards by his side could not help being impressed and felt as if disarmed. In a much milder tone the official continued: “No, no; I am not given to use foul language and you need not fear on that score. You see how polite have I been to you throughout these days. But was it not ungrateful on your part to put me in this terrible fix now? You have thus snatched away the morsel of food from the mouth of my wife and children by making me lose my job. It was under this excitement that a few angry and foul words escaped my lips.” Savarkar said: “To a certain extent you are right. But you see, have I not, just like you, wife and family to love? Then did the consideration as to the pitiable plight in which they would find themselves by my arrest deter you from receiving a warrant against me and undertaking to execute it and drag me on cuffed and helpless to the scaffold? True you have been polite to me, but I too never played the rowdy, nor ever allowed an unpleasant word to escape my lip personally against any of you. The fact is that relations and circumstance under which we meet are the real cause of this inevitable estrangement. As long as you deem it your duty to convey me to the scaffold fettered and hand- cuffed, so long I too must deem it my duty to frustrate your design and slip out of your hands if I could—and so neither of us can blame the other for the inevitable consequences. If you feel yourself justified in killing me, you must, man to man, feel me too justified in struggling to the last either in saving or avenging myself.
There the whole mental atmosphere changed, the officials ceased to talk of tortures. The naked sword that was hanging disappeared. Only the restraint under which Savarkar was put grew almost inhumanly strained.
To add to this misery caused by external distress Mr. Savarkar had to feel a mental distress far more awful than the first. He had to aim in attempting the risky adventure at Marseilles. One of the chief was to frustrate the design of his enemies and mortify them before the eyes of the world by slipping out through their hands. Secondly, even though he had failed in doing that, at least the news of the attempt itself could not fail to advertise the cause of Indian Independence all over Europe and raise the prestige of Indian manhood in their moral estimation. But as it was, neither of these hopes seemed fulfilled, he was back in the hands of his foes, while the news of his thrilling adventures seemed to be suppressed. The only difference that his adventure made was that he found himself faced by immensely more unbearable hardship without effecting any benefit that would strengthen the national cause.
One consolation only remained: hast thou tried thy best? Struggled manfully to the last in a noble cause! Well then; success or failure matters not— thou hast done thy duty well. He constantly kept lisping that line and somewhere near Aden when once the sea grew extremely rough, strange hopes rose and he sang this wild song which we render in English:-
“The steamer sailed on, the heat became unbearable. Life seemed a burden. What is now the use of living—only to be bound down to the wheels of the chariot of the exulting foes—to adorn his triumphs? Come oh Death! Rise, oh sea, in a terrible storm and gather me up in the mighty folds of thy waves! I pressed thee once to take me back to my native shores: and thou hast heard my prayer—but in such a way that thy blessing hast proved worse than thy curse! Now, pray help me at least to die! Be angry with me! And I pray, rise in fury and swallow me up in thy mighty wrath! So that thus at least may the foe be deprived of the unholy satisfaction of having wreaked his vengeance by subjecting me to cruel humiliations!