Vinayak saw hopelessness writ large on young Indu’s face. In the few words they exchanged, Indu told him that life seemed meaningless to him. Vinayak tried to assuage him by saying ten years would pass soon; his sentence of fifty years was longer and he was bearing it with grace. Despite all his attempts to cheer Indu up, the latter continued to remain dejected. Dead tired with exhaustion, with drops of sweat dripping from all over him, and the chaff of the coconut sticking to him, he staggered back, crouching, to his cell one evening.
The next morning, on 29 April 1912, while all the prisoners came down for the kolhu work, Indu was nowhere to be found. Just then, a warder came rushing down the stairs screaming that Indu was found dangling from the top window. Indu had torn his clothes to make a noose of it. When the warder went to check his cell, he found his body with its neck broken, his tongue lolling out and feet dangling. A pall of gloom and desperation fell upon the prison. Such incidents were becoming far too regular.
Indu had tied a piece of paper around his neck—a suicide note, allegedly blaming the tortures in the jail as a cause for him ending his life. Barrie had cleverly destroyed this paper and sent a report to an inquiry commission probing his death that Indu had died of insanity and due to bitter personal quarrels with fellow prisoners. The jail officers were tutored to inform the commission that they had seen him cheerful and there was absolutely no inkling that he was contemplating ending his life. 52 Vinayak and several other prisoners testified that Indu was not insane and it was the miserable prison conditions that had led him to take this extreme step. They requested that an independent evidence be called forth to prove their deposition—one whom Barrie could not intimidate. This turned out to be the editor of Swaraj , Nand Gopal, who had been sentenced for sedition and transported as a political prisoner. He proved to the officers of the inquiry commission that Indu had been a victim of the tortures he suffered at prison. Barrie tried to peddle a fake note left behind by Indu where he allegedly blamed his fellow political prisoners and his fights with them as the only reason for his suicide. That evening, Vinayak spoke to Barrie, laying the blame squarely on him:
I know the conversation Indu had with me only two or three days previous to this happening. I know what he had said to other prisoners in the same trying circumstances. He had told me, and them, that he had no desire to live for ten years in such hard conditions. He had said so several times and yet you dare say that he committed suicide in a fit of insanity? Granting that it was so, the question remains how at all a man strong and young like him could suddenly go mad. He was an arch-conspirator; he had faced treachery, imprisonment, transportation for life, hardships of prison-life and at last death by hanging with calmness and indifference and with a smile on his face. He had never shown temper in hot discussion with his friends, and had not given even the slightest indication of an unbalanced mind. Political prisoners are accustomed to such discussions and to sharp difference of opinion among themselves, and yet none of them has shown such a sign of weakness. Why then should these affect the mind of Indu Bhushan? Indu Bhushan was a man of strong mind. What had made his mind so weak now? What was the cause of it? It could be no other than the harsh treatment that he received in this prison. He was treated here harshly; therefore, he chose to work outside; there also he had to pass through the same kind of torture and humiliation. He returned here sick and woe-begone. You put him in his cell and straightaway ordered him to work on the oil-mill. All this had contributed to his weakness. He openly said that he was tired of his life and would put an end to it. That is why he hanged himself. It was no case of suicide through insanity as you put it. If he has really written what you say, then there must be some reason for his insanity. 53
Barrie despised Vinayak for his fearless honesty. At the same time, he knew that Indu’s suicide had the potential to adversely affect his career. He, therefore, dropped the idea of the fake note, but imposed strict regulations on the flow of information to and from the prison
Despite the strictures imposed on prisoners, Hotilal Varma, who had been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, managed to get some paper and wrote a long article on the pathetic conditions in which they lived. He had the courage to sign the article with his name and also the details of the cell in which he was lodged. It was necessary that the outside world learn about the atrocities meted out to them. Except for two or three of his trusted friends, no one knew anything about what he was planning to do. Hotilal’s article was smuggled out of jail and reached India, specifically Surendranath Banerjea, the editor of Bengalee . Banerjea was aghast on reading the horrifying details outlined in the article. He published it in its entirety, creating quite a stir. For this ‘offence’, the Bengalee ’s press was confiscated by the government. The Tribune of Lahore and Amrita Bazar Patrika also carried the details.
The condition of the Cellular Jail inmates also found its echo in Madame Cama’s Bande Mataram :
In jail there are various kinds of work to do, the most difficult being the oil-mill, whether by hand or by foot. The latter means that four men are tied to the mill and have to go round and round a centre post just as bullocks do. They have to press out 30 lb. of oil during the day . . . in the oil-mill work by hand you have to turn a handle round and round during the whole day, and thus press out about 30 lb. of oil . . . chopping cocoanut bark is another species of work . . . Ropemaking is the lightest work one gets in jail . . . the regulation about punishment for short work is handcuffs for seven days for the first offence; for the second offence a week’s handcuffs and four days’ ganji . For the next offence the punishment was fetters for a month or two, then cross-bar for ten days and for further repetition of the offence—fetters for six months or so and solitary confinement . . . the work outside jail is still more dreadful. Among such work may be mentioned felling large trees and piling them up in a large heap; running about with heavy lumps of clay and handing them to workmen; laying 1200 bricks in the day or hoeing a plot of tea-land 40 yards by 4 yards in area; and all this one has to do in all sorts of weather . . . the Indian Jail Code, it should be noted, recognizes no class of prisoners as first-class misdemeanants . . . Indu Bhushan Roy, one of the political prisoners in the Alipore Case, undergoing his sentence of transportation in the penal settlement in the Andaman Islands has committed suicide. 54
The panic the article created is obvious in the letters exchanged among various officials. In a letter dated 7 May 1912, M.S.D. Butler feared that since the Tribune was regularly read by the India Office critics in England, it was imperative to ascertain the facts immediately and have a response ready. He contended that ‘it is scarcely likely that the political prisoners are harnessed to an oil mill or are made to act as bricklayers’ assistants’. 55 In reply, H. Wheeler agreed and also feared that given the gross violations of basic human rights and dignity of the prisoners, as alleged in the article, ‘it is very likely to attract attention in the House of Commons’. 56 Sir Reginald H. Craddock, the home member of the Government of India was dismissive about the fuss that was being created. He believed that while there was no harm in knowing the facts as they might be, the revolutionaries could ‘hardly expect to escape hard labour in the Andamans subject to their medical fitness for the same’. After all, they were the ones who believed in anarchy, and those ‘whose objects are murder can scarcely be suffering for their opinions, any more than any other criminal’. 57 He merely wanted to know what forms of labour they had been employed in. In reply, the chief commissioner of the Andamans made light of the prisoners’ miseries. He even downplayed the most strenuous oil-mill labour, saying: ‘The statement in the article that the convicts are tied to the large mills is false. They are not confined in any way but merely walk round and round the mill pushing the bar, which is attached to the central post.’ 58 It was concluded that there was no reason to infer that the political prisoners were ‘being treated in any manner that could give rise to reasonable complaint’. He ended with:
I have no doubt that accord
ing to the Bengalee’s communicant the only labour for the ‘seditionists’ should be clerical work; this, however, it is obvious, could not be allowed. It is probable that none of these prisoners had ever done any manual labour or any other than clerical or scholastic work, and perhaps petty trading, prior to their arrival in the Andamans. 59
Barrie was wild with rage at these details being leaked out. He thundered at all the prisoners and issued a fiat that henceforth no prisoner be allowed to come within ten feet of another. Dining together too was to be severely restricted and scrutinized. He was all the more furious because the article’s author had been kept anonymous. The Indian press that published the article had intelligently used their discretion to not name the author though he had signed it, realizing it would jeopardize his future there.
The Mahratta , dated 28 July 1912, probed deeper into Indu’s suicide. It is evident from the amount of detail in the article that regular information was being smuggled out from the jail to the Indian mainland and the press.
Why did Indu Bhusan commit suicide? If he was tired of prison life, one would expect that he would have committed suicide long ago; for he had already been in the Andamans for over three years. Was there nothing in anything that had happened recently in connection with him to account for his taking this fatal step? Was it not rather the act of a desperate man to whom life had become insupportable in the condition in which he found himself? Is it or is it not the case, that on the afternoon of the 28th April, only a few hours preceding his suicide, Indu Bhusan desired to see the Jailor and was taken to his office, and there did he not in the most entreating terms request the Jailor to change his work, as he was engaged in making white flax out of ‘rambash’ plant? Did he not say to the Jailor—or at any rate addressed words to that effect—‘See, my hands have become so blistered by the juice of the “rambash” that I cannot move my fingers freely and it is so painful that I cannot get a wink of sleep the whole night. I cannot take my food to my mouth. The touch of “dal” causes me so much pain that tears come to my eyes and my food is left untouched. I will die of pain and starvation. Kindly change my work or allow me to go to hospital for a few days to get my palms healed.’ Saying this, he stretched his hands to the full, but met with a rebuff from the Jailor. We will not reproduce the language, which the Jailor is reported to have used. Is it not the case that Indu Bhusan pleaded again, begging to be allowed to report himself personally and show his hands to the Medical Superintendent? But the Jailor shouted: ‘You must carry out my orders.’ Then after thinking for a couple of minutes, he again said, ‘All right, I will change your work.’ And ordered the warder in charge to engage Indu in ‘Kolu ’ oil mill from next morning. Indu got so frightened that he told the Jailor that he would simply die if he had to work in the Kolu mill with those hands of his. The Jailor was obdurate and our information is that Indu was dismissed amid a shower of abusive language. This was the last straw on the camel’s back and before many hours Indu was found hanging in his cell . . . the political prisoners, we learn, are scattered over the entire settlement. In case they fall ill they are not taken to the nearest hospital within whose jurisdiction they live and where in the ordinary course they should be taken. They have to be taken to the Hospital of the Jail District where Captain Barker is the Medical Superintendent and also District Officer. 60
Unknown to the prisoners, the government had set up a departmental inquiry into Indu Bhushan Roy’s suicide and the general prison conditions in the wake of all the news articles. The chief commissioner sent a report to the government refuting all charges of cruel treatment. Concocting the entire sequence of events, he noted:
On the early morning of the 29th of April, Indu Bhushan Roy committed suicide in his cell by tearing his coat into 3 strips, tying the pieces together and hanging himself from the bars of the cell ventilator; and inquest was at once held by my orders by the Deputy Superintendent at which it was clearly proved that the deceased Indu Bhushan Roy had developed the hallucination that two others of the seditionist prisoners, Nonigopal Mukherjee and Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, intended to murder him under the impression that he had informed against them to Government and that it was on this account that he killed himself; that this was the true cause of the deceased’s suicide is further corroborated by the fact that the deceased hanged himself on the very morning of the day on which his punishment of separate confinement expired when in the ordinary course he would have been relegated to associated confinement again. The punishment of 3 months separate confinement was the only punishment Indu Bhushan Roy had received during the 2 years and 4 months he had been in the Settlement . . . Roy is the man who wrote the letter, which was published in the Calcutta papers. 61
It was a bunch of well-manufactured lies to hush up the case and whitewash Barrie’s misconduct. As expected, ‘the official version in this case, which fully exonerated the authorities was accepted and no further step was taken in the matter’. 62
But there was more to come. Ullaskar Dutt had been sentenced to imprisonment in the Andamans as a conspirator in the Maniktala Bomb Case. After thirteen years of hard labour, he was released. He wrote a detailed account of his experiences during this long and traumatic period. After a harrowing stint at the oil mill for over six months, he had been transferred outside as a labourer at a factory of bricks where he had to work in the full blaze of the sun. A junior medical officer had reported that Ullaskar was unfit for working in the sun, but this was disregarded by the European officer.
The work however involved an entitlement to milk, but the tindal at the jail would end up snatching away the hard-earned milk each time it was offered to him. When he protested mildly, Ullaskar was transferred to a labour that did not have the milk incentive. He had to ‘climb up a steep ascent, draw two buckets of water out of a well, tie them at both ends of a pole, and carry the buckets with the pole’ on his shoulders to the bungalow of an officer. This had to be done continuously for the entire day. After several days, Ullaskar was exhausted and refused to do this work. Charges of disobedience and shirking duty were framed against him. The magistrate tried to persuade him but he had made up his mind against it. Ullaskar writes:
We, political prisoners, who do what we will to conform to the rules of the prison and the settlement, were shown no consideration by the jail authorities. Why should we then bend down to their wishes? The more we toiled, the more they made us toil. Let them do their worst to our bodies, let us at least keep the soul free. They may rule over my body, but I am master of my soul. I shall not, of myself, enslave my soul to them. 63
And so Ullaskar was sent back to the prison under Barrie’s command. On his return, Barrie roared, ‘If you go against the discipline, I will thrash you with my cane. I will give you thirty stripes of it, each of which will go deep into your flesh.’ To this, Ullaskar replied defiantly, ‘You may cut my body into pieces. I am no longer going to work here, for I think that to work according to your orders is a crime against my conscience.’ An infuriated Barrie ordered that chains be put on his hands and he be suspended by them in his own cell continuously for a week. Ullaskar started hallucinating. He had images of Vinayak being ordered into a duel with Barrie and how the former had managed to beat the latter black and blue in a spirited fight. Ullaskar had gone insane. Vinayak notes about the episode:
Heart-rending cries, one after another, had filled the whole atmosphere. I saw some of them dragging a man from block No. 5. There were ten of them trying to lift him up and carrying him to the hospital. The cry was coming from him. He cried, he fell on the ground; they were all in an uproar! I saw this from a distance when the warder came running to me and whispered that, ‘Ullaskar had gone insane.’ Yes! Burning in the hot sun with fever of 107 degrees; manacled and tied up, what else could happen to him than the loss of his brain? The brain and the body, which had been both outraged by excessive pressure upon them, had suddenly gone to pieces. Already he was so weakened in mind that he would easily pass into delirium. He saw hal
lucinations and visions. The brain was out of gear and the body was out of joint. The latter had repeated fits and convulsions, and ten persons could not control it. 64
The entire prison reverberated with the heart-wrenching cries of Ullaskar beseeching his mother. ‘Amma, Amma,’ he would call out. The jail authorities decided to administer shock to him to ascertain if he had really gone insane or was faking it. In Ullaskar’s own words:
Even in this semi-conscious state of mind and under severe pain of the body, I could clearly feel that the medical Superintendent had played his electric battery upon me, the shocks of which it was impossible for me to withstand. The electric current went through my whole body like the force of lightening. Every nerve, fibre and muscle in it seemed to be torn by it. The demon seemed to possess it. And I uttered words such as had never passed my lips before. I roared as I had never done before, and suddenly I relapsed into unconsciousness. I was in this state of unconsciousness for three continuous days and nights. And my friends told me about it when I awoke from it. 65
After eight or ten days when he recovered his senses, Ullaskar began hearing the voices of his relatives calling out to him piteously. He was overcome with guilt that he was responsible for their sorrow and had brought disgrace to the family. Overwhelmed with grief, he tore his garment and made a rope out of it and like Indu Bhushan Roy tried to hang himself from the rear window. Fortuitously, the watch and ward man detected this on time. Noticing his condition deteriorate by the day, the jail authorities shifted him to a mental hospital. He continued to have fits and convulsions and occasionally regained his senses. After a few weeks he was shifted to an asylum in Madras where he was admitted for nearly twelve years.
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