Savarkar
was to be repatriated to India, but it was not good news! In Andaman he was
entitled by then to live a free life on the island. The British would never
have allowed that, of course, for Savarkar would surely have escaped. But they
didn’t have to expose themselves by doing so, for the Cellular Jail was closed
as a penal colony; they grabbed that excuse to send him back to mainland India
jails.
This
is Savarkar’s own account of it:
“The Andamans were all agog
with the happy news, for they knew not that my send-off from here was to be my
imprisonment in India. The people welcomed the news as an order of release and
freedom. Wish was father to the thought and they protested,
"Babuji, none is going to put you
back in the jail again. So soon as you step in India, you are free. That is a
certainty."
Taking the wish for the
deed, they showered on me messages of congratulations from all sides. But the
more I thought of it, the more indifferent I grew to that news. In the
Andamans, I had the consolation of staying together with my brother. In India we
were sure to be separated and housed in different jails, I had made intimate
friends in the Andamans during the last ten years. I had already secured the
ticket, and the chance was that before long, I could live here as a free man in
a home and a family of my own. In India I would again be confined in prison and
as asolitary man. I would lose my friends, the ties would be sundered. And I
felt the same wrench of separation that I had felt when I took leave of my
friends in India and was transported to the Andamans . . .
I
felt as miserable and unhappy as I was ten years ago when I left India. And now
that I was leaving the Andamans, I felt that I was being sent back on transportation
for life once again. I packed up my books. I gave many of them to the prison
library. I distributed others among prisoners aad friends. On the last day
there was a crowd of men to pay me their last visit They kept on coming to me
from mom till evening. Every moment I feared that the officers might
misunderstand the crowd and aught arrest
any one of them again. But all went off smoothly and the officers paid no attention
to the crowd. Everyone was free that day to go out and come in as
he liked. The prisoners
ceased to be afraid of the officers, and the officers in their turn did not over-do
their part as custodians of the place.
In spite of my repeated
protests, when many of them could not personally meet me, they brought to the
prison gate gifts of all kinds. Fruits, flowers, sweetmeats, soda water
bottles, tins of biscuits, there were in any number, heaps of them. And who
were they that showered these presents upon me? Free men in the Andamans as well
as prisoners. What was their worth? Most of them earned no more than ten rupees
a month.
But
what loyalty and what devotion there were in the act!
Unsought and
unrestricted they came with their gift of a plantain, a watermelon, and a
flower to deposit it near the prison-gate. I went in the afternoon to the door,
and I distributed them all among those whom I found near the gate. I only kept
such of them as none would take back from me. I administered the pledge of service
to a few of my choice friends who lingered behind. The pledge of our association
contained the following words:
“One God, one country, one goal”
“One caste, one life, one language.”
These
words were on my lips all along.”
To
be continued tomorrow . . .
Anurupa
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