Hi,
Everyone! One is awestruck by the courage and patriotism of the political
prisoners who were incarcerated in the Cellular Jail——not only did they bravely
face their ordeal there, but continued to fight for their motherland after
their release and wrote biographies
recording their experiences while still under
British rule . . . ! That is why a lot of valuable
material is available to us today.
·
In each and
every biography of these heroes that I read there was one common factor—despite
the grueling hardship they suffered in the CJ, they wrote with humor, recording
their situation but not wallowing in the pathos of it, even making light of it.
These
heroes would certainly have been totally obliterated from human memory
otherwise.
I
had a hard time finding out some information, even so. Pandit Parmanand of
Jhansi (not to be confused with Bhai Parmanand) was a volcano! I wanted to give
him a little role in my novel, but the sad truth is, I could not even locate
his name. His father’s name is to be found, but his—no. Pandit Parmanand from
Jhansi, that is almost the sum total of what we know of him. I did find this
link giving some info on him:
Savarkar
has recorded incidents of Nanigopal Mukherji. We know that he visited Savarkar
in Ratnagiri and that’s all.
Chatar
Singh: can you imagine being put in a cage—a cage! Not tall enough to stand up, barely long enough to lie
down—for two plus years, day in day out? You do this for your country, and
then, what? The country forgets you—just like that.
So
many of them were well-to-do; so many had their wealth and property confiscated
by the British. So many of them died as uncared-for-paupers in the country for
whose freedom they fought, for whom they sacrificed so much.
It
pained my heart as I researched and wrote that I could not write more of these
Sons of India, that I could not do more justice to them.
I
do fervently hope that someone somewhere has recorded a little more of all
these heroes.
“Remembrance is the only
paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.”
And yet we have driven away these brave men from the only paradise they
had?
Anurupa
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