The salvation of man lies in dying in his own religion . . . We will no longer let any Hindu boy or girl, man or woman, however fallen they may be, pass into another religion, and we shall not fail to re-convert those whom you may have duped into embracing your faith . . . It is the duty of every Hindu to persuade a Hindu to remain a Hindu. It is a principle to be followed as vital to his community and culture for the preservation and progress of both. 50
Vinayak’s sangathan movement providentially got a boost in 1915 with the arrival of a large batch of deportees convicted in the first Lahore Conspiracy Case. The case represented the attempt by Sikh expatriates (who were part of the Ghadr Party) and Punjabis who led an armed rebellion against the British. One of them, Bhai Parmanand, had sailed to British Guiana as an Arya Samaj reformist. After a year, he set sail to the US, where for two years he attended pharmaceutical courses at Berkeley. 51 Here he became closely associated with Lala Har Dayal who had begun the Ghadr movement. He was to come back to India with about 5000 Ghadr volunteers and instigate rebellion in Peshawar and other parts of the North-West Frontier Province. But he was arrested and sentenced to death in 1915.
Viceroy Lord Hardinge commuted this to transportation for life and Bhai Parmanand was deported to the Andamans, along with seventy others who were convicted in the Lahore Conspiracy Case. The arrival of these Sikhs prisoners gladdened Vinayak, who had always wanted to integrate the community into the freedom movement. Many of these revolutionaries expressed their deep reverence for Vinayak and had read his works. They told him how his literature was inspiring thousands of young men across continents to take up armed struggle. Vinayak was surprised to hear from some of them that the atrocities he faced at Cellular Jail were publicized in newspapers even in America. This had inspired some of them and made them feel guilty about not contributing to the struggle while one of them was suffering, yoked as a beast to an oil mill. This warmed Vinayak’s heart. His toil had inspired others to take up the path of revolution. He writes:
For whenever I turned the kolu in the solitude of my room and was done up by the exertion, I always used to console myself by the thought that I would bear it all, if the knowledge of it to the world outside were only to pour oil into the flames of discontent that I knew were spreading all over the country. But I was in despair about it. For how was the story of my hardships to reach the ears of those who were so far away from me? . . . But when my Sikh friend told me the story, I said to myself, ‘Yes, I must bear it all, for it is never lost, it produces its effects in due time.’ That is the only way that one can put fat in the fire and make it burn. An agitation succeeds finally on the strength of tenacity and patience of its sufferers. Here was the proof of it. Every drop of oil that fell into the vat below, as I turned the wheel that ground down and crushed the dried coconut-kernels in the rut and the well, was a spark that had kept blazing the sacred fire of discontent already aflame all over the country. Here was a clear evidence of that influence. 52
The Punjabi and Sikh convicts were hardly the kind who would put up with Barrie’s atrocities. Many a time, Barrie would even get slapped for showering obscene invectives. This would be followed by a fierce caning of the prisoners. Upheavals like these became commonplace.
Vinayak makes a veiled reference to the support that Bhai Parmanand gave to the shuddhi movement that he had embarked upon in prison. Being a staunch Arya Samaji himself, Parmanand understood the shuddhi philosophy. Much later, after his release from prison, like Vinayak, he too strove for the eradication of caste and a unification of Hindu society through the formation of the Jat Pat Todak (association to break the caste system) in 1922. Vinayak therefore declared that the shuddhi movement was a success and that it ‘contributed greatly to the fusion of the people, and to minimise, if not altogether abolish, the distinctions among them, as Hindus, of province, caste and custom, and to their consolidation in these parts as one society’. 53
Between 1915 and 1916, Vinayak’s health deteriorated. The years of trials, jail sentences, emotional turbulence, physical hardships and unhealthy prison conditions took their toll eventually. His digestion was severely affected, and he suffered from perennial dysentery and fever. The unpalatable prison food worsened the condition. As was the norm, he was hardly attended to medically and was made to work despite his failing health. When Babarao was permitted to cook his food in 1914, he would smuggle some out for his younger brother in coconut shells.
However, on 28 October 1916, Vinayak was ‘promoted’ to a second-class prisoner. This did not mean much, as he elaborated in a letter to Narayanrao:
You asked me in your last letter what facilities I had won by my promotion to class 2 in this prison. In the Andamans, a prisoner was usually put in class 2 after a term of five years and in class 1 after a period of ten years, when ticket was given to him to make an independent home for himself in the colony. Was I free to go out of prison? No. Was I free to do independent literary work? No. Was I free to talk with my brother or stay with him? No. Was I free from the daily routine of hard labour? No. Did they make me a warder; did they stop putting me in the lock up? No. Did they treat me better? No. Did they show me any respect? No. Did they give me freedom to write more than one letter home? No. Did they allow me to receive any parcel from home? No. All these concessions are made at the end of five years, to other prisoners in the jail. But to me, who is running my eighth year in this prison, none of these facilities are granted. What then is the meaning of the phrase that I am now in Class 2, you will ask me. To which my answer would be: I am in class 2 because I am in class 2. Nothing more and nothing else. No better and no worse. 54
In the same letter, Vinayak wondered why the Indian National Congress had adopted a steely silence when it came to political prisoners when the newspapers were calling for their release. Sitting in their own ‘spacious, airy and well-appointed pandal’ the Congress was fighting shy and was unwilling to even ‘pass a resolution of sympathy . . . they had not a tear to shed’. While their ‘hearts melted with pity’ and they passed a resolution to release prisoners interned in the war, who were anyway going to be released when the war ended, why was it that political prisoners never featured in the Congress’s scheme of things, he wondered. Postulating the reason for the laconic response from the Congress, Vinayak writes:
The members of the Indian National Congress were sticklers for prestige and tradition and were afraid of the rulers. And there was the rub. To talk about the interned is not so dangerous; but they would not utter a word about us who were revolutionaries. For that would bring them into ill odour with the rulers, and injure their prestige with the Europeans. It is the duty of the Congress to be the spokesman of the people and not merely the mouthpiece of a few tall poppies among its members. That when so many newspapers and Conferences in the country had demanded the release of revolutionary political prisoners like us, the leaders of the Congress should speak not a word about them does not become [of] an institution or a body that calls itself national. The world expects the Indian National Congress to pass a resolution demanding the release of its own leaders; the world expects that it shall exert for its country and bring about the release of its political prisoners, as similar bodies in Ireland, South Africa and Austria had worked for their countrymen. That the Indian National Congress should do nothing of the kind is not creditable to her. We must compel the Congress to be bold and aggressive. If the elder leaders tremble in their shoes at this prospect, let them absent themselves from the Congress at the time she passes a resolution in our favour. Because a few men are cowards, the whole nation should not be allowed to bear the stigma of this guilty silence. 55
During this time, one of the political prisoners, Bhan Singh, a Sikh convicted in the Lahore Conspiracy Case, had a bitter argument with Barrie and his men. An enraged Barrie ordered his battering to the extent that the man vomited blood. Hearing his cries, the other revolutionaries from Punjab came to his cell to save him. They decided that they would go on a strike. Vinay
ak could not participate in the strike due to his ill health but he told them that he would guide them through the process and also help in presenting a memorandum on their behalf. More than a hundred prisoners joined this unprecedented strike. By then Vinayak had to be moved to the prison hospital. Here, he met Bhan Singh. The pounding he had been given had caused him irrevocable damage and he was vomiting blood ever so often. Finally, he succumbed to his injuries and died at the prison hospital. This sent shock waves through the prison. A sixty-year-old Sardar Sohan Singh and a young man from the Punjab, Prithvi Singh ‘Azad’, went on an indefinite hunger strike. They demanded that their statements about the real cause of Bhan Singh’s death be recorded. Prithvi Singh carried on his fast for six long months, and even gave up clothes, like Nani Gopal had done. He was reduced to skin and bones. Vinayak, who was principally opposed to fasts unto death, had to convince him against such a suicidal measure and finally he gave up the fast. Many of the prisoners began contracting tuberculosis that was rampant. To fast in such a circumstance was suicidal according to Vinayak. Prithvi Singh mentions about Vinayak’s influence on him in jail:
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, whom I considered as my guru, wrote a long and stirring letter to me where he told me: ‘You are losing control over your heart and mind, you have become so weak that there is no hope of survival. What is the use of losing your life like this? So leave this hunger strike.’ I could not gather courage or words to reply to his letter. At this time a mosquito kept troubling me. I tried to squash it with my hands. But I was so weak that I could not even kill a mosquito. The message in Savarkar’s letter then made sense to me about my uselessness. I could not even squash a mosquito due to my weakness, how then do I assume I can drive the British away? I took a small pencil and wrote back to him that I will only die in a natural way, and in no other way can I be killed. Thus ended my fast that lasted for 5 months and 5 days. 56
The strikes eventually brought the authorities’ attention to the unrest going on in jail. Though Barrie was not held to account for his inhuman treatment of Bhan Singh, he was severely reprimanded, and a departmental inquiry was instituted against him. He had been disgraced thoroughly and the government began to view him with suspicion given the repeated upheavals in the Andamans.
~
The First World War was now entering its final stages. The Allied Powers emerged victorious. Monarchies collapsed, national borders were redrawn and Germany was parcelled among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four—Britain, France, Italy and the US—imposed their terms in a series of treaties. The War sowed the seeds of future conflict that was to erupt in a few decades on a larger scale.
Even as the War was coming to an end, the British government was contemplating reforms in the government and administration in India. Edwin Samuel Montagu, who became the Secretary of State for India in June 1917, put before the British cabinet a proposal for the gradual development of free institutions in India with a view to ultimately introducing self-government. Lord Curzon, the controversial former Indian viceroy who attempted the Partition of Bengal and who was now a parliamentarian in the House of Lords, put a dissenting note to the effect that instead of too much emphasis on self-government, the need of the hour was to focus on increasing association of Indians in every branch of administration that would eventually lead to self-government. Towards the end of 1917, Montagu travelled to India to meet Lord Chelmsford, then viceroy of India, to ascertain his views on the proposed reforms of limited self-government. Montagu solicited views from different sections of Indians, including prominent political prisoners such as Vinayak, on the matter of reforms.
Accordingly, on 5 October 1917, Vinayak sent his petition to Montagu outlining his thoughts on the subject. He refers to his 1914 petition when Lord Hardinge had stated that it was ‘impossible’ to grant him any mercy. But things had substantially changed during the long years of the First World War. He stated that a new spirit had manifested itself in man, new visions and hopes were roused in nations and these had been articulated by their heads of state. In such a scenario, Vinayak hypothesized that neither India nor the British Empire could have remained unaffected by this great democratic upheaval in the world which meant that the old order of race domination was slowly giving way to one of cooperation and commonwealth. His justification for the marked change in circumstances were:
The nucleus of an Empire-Cabinet; the presence in it of the ministers of the colonies and two representatives though nominated, of India; the permission to be enrolled as volunteers to the Indian youth; the throwing open of Commissions in the army; the great speech of the Premier in which he declared that the supreme test of the British Statesmanship would depend on the extent to which it succeeds in making the millions of Indians feel—not a sense of dependence, but that of “real partnership”; and to crown it all the most important, definite, and determined declaration by the present Secretary of State, not only as to the goal but even as to its immediate, though partial, realization in Indian administration. 57
He rationalized that if this was the stated position of various organs of the government, it could not be achieved by durbars, royal manifestos, elephant processions and fireworks but in the release of political prisoners lodged in various jails across India. ‘Confidence,’ he said, ‘can only be evoked by showing confidence.’ 58 Citing examples from other countries, Vinayak mentioned that in Canada revolts and rebellions had been the order of the day. But it took a visionary statesman like Lord Durham 59 to show confidence and the grandsons of the revolutionaries were now leaders who were fighting in Flanders on the British side. The British had shown similar confidence with the Boers whom they conquered in war. Can India be suspected of being less worthy of confidence, whereas her fault, as history shows, was that she was too generous and confiding? In the petition, he strongly advocated the grant of home rule to India and her people as an important step in this direction.
Vinayak argued that if India was allowed to become an autonomous partner in this commonwealth and if in the immediate future Indians secured a majority in the viceroy’s council, they could embark upon the much-needed social work, purging and cleansing of society. He explained that it was not a fanatical or anarchic opposition to the Empire that had led him and others on the path of militant revolution. ‘When there was no Constitution,’ he postulated, ‘it seemed a mockery to talk of constitutional movements. But now if a Constitution exists, and Home Rule is decidedly such, then so much political, social, economic, and educational work is to be done and could be constitutionally done that the Government may securely rest satisfied that none of the political prisoners would choose to face untold suffering by resorting to underground methods for sheer amusement.’ Hence, the release of political prisoners would not only evoke confidence in Indians about the British government’s sincerity in instituting a change in the administration of India, but also help the government with more patriotic hands that would work to effect this change. ‘How can there be peace and mutual confidence,’ he questioned, ‘in the land in which thousands of families are literally torn to pieces and every second home has either a brother or a son or a husband or a lover or a friend snatched away from its bosom and kept pining in the prison? It is against human nature for blood is thicker than water.’
Once again invoking international precedents to present his case, like a good barrister, Vinayak mentioned that political prisoners were being released all across the world. One had seen this in Russia, France, Ireland, Transvaal and Austria where amnesty was becoming the general principle. This had caught momentum after the War broke out. The suffragists in Britain, who had been convicted of individual acts of arson and riot, had also been immediately released with the outbreak of the War. How then could one rationalize that a move, which was beneficial across the world, would prove disastrous only in India?
He believed that as long as those who were revered by thousands of people in the country were kept imprisoned, opposition t
o the authority that bound their liberty would continue. Whereas if some of these heroes were to participate in the process of governance, it would set a role model for many who looked up to them as icons, and thereby deter future uprisings.
Importantly, Vinayak concluded the petition with the following plea:
If the Government thinks that it is only to effect my own release that I pen this; or if my name constitutes the chief obstacle in the granting of such an amnesty; then let the Government omit my name in their amnesty and release all the rest; that would give me as great a satisfaction as my own release would do. If the Government does ever take this view of the question then the amnesty should be so complete as to include those also who are exiles from India and who as long as they are proclaimed strangers in their own land are likely to be bitterly antagonistic to that Government in India but many of whom would, if allowed to come back, work for the Motherland on the open and constitutional lines, when this new and real constitution is introduced there. 60
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