My Transportation For Life

The story is told. The curtain has been brought down on it. Two life-sentences have been run. And I have brought together my recollections of them within the cover of this book. They are narrated in brief and put together within the narrowest.When I came into this world, God sent me here possibly on a sort of life-sentence. It was the span of life allotted to me by time to stay in this 'prison-house of life'. This story is but a chapter of that book of life, which is a longer story not yet ended. You can finish reading the book in a day, while I had to live it for 14 long years of transportation. And if the story is so tiresome, unendurable and disgusting to you, how much must have been the living of it for me! Every moment of those 14 years in that jail has been an agony of the soul and the body to me, and to my fellow convicts in that jail. It was not only fatiguing, unbearable and futile to us all, it was equally or more excruciating to them as to me. And it is only that you may know it and feel the fatigue, the disgust and the pain of it as we have felt it, that I have chosen to write it for you. —Excerpts from this bookThis is the story of Swatantrayaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar—a great revolutionary, politician, poet and seer who tried to free India from the British yoke!British policy was to torture and persecute the political prisoners/revolutionaries so that they would reveal the names of all their colleagues or go mad or commit suicide. My Transportation for Life is a firsthand story of the sufferings and humiliation of an inmate of the infamous Cellular Jail of Andamans, the legendary Kala Paani. The physical tortures inside the high walls were made all the more insufferable by the sickening attitude of the men who mattered—the native leaders back home. This is a running commentary on the prevalent political conditions in India and a treatise for students of revolution. It is a burning story of all Tapasvis who were transported to Andaman.___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ContentsPreface—Pgs.5PART—IThe Gaol at Dongri, Bombay—Pgs.15In the Gaol at Byculla—Pgs.30At Thana—Pgs.35On the Way—Pgs.48The Black Sea—Pgs.60The Andamans—Pgs.69We reach Andamans—Pgs.83The First Week in My Cell—Pgs.89Early History of the Political Prisoners—Pgs.107I See My Elder Brother—Pgs.131I am Put on the Oil-Mill—Pgs.135Consolidation and Propaganda in the Andamans—Pgs.142Correspondence with India and Means of Information—Pgs.156The Coronation Ceremony of 1911—and its shadow on the prison in the Andamans—Pgs.172The Prisoner's Food in the Andamans—Pgs.181Suicide, Mental Derangement, Arrests, The second and the third Strike—Pgs.192PART—IIConsolidation and Propaganda in the Andamans—Pgs.235The 'Shuddhi' Movement in the Andamans—Pgs.250The World War (1914) and Its Menace to the Andamans—Pgs.292(1914-1918) Political Prisoners Again Flood The Andamans!—Pgs.324The fourth Strike and My Ill-Health—Pgs.343On Death-Bed—Pgs.371Riots in Punjab and Gujarat (1919-1920)—Pgs.386Amnesty and Political Prisoners—Pgs.408The Spread of Hindi in the Andamans—Pgs.418Miniature Hindu Raj—Pgs.431I Meet My Family Again—Pgs.457Lock-up at the Alipore Jail—Pgs.467The Last Night of My Sentence—Pgs.491Dear Reader—Pgs.495