Savarkar

by Vikram Sampath

  It was now time for the demigod of Port Blair to return to his home in Ireland. So petrified was he by the rumour that on his setting foot on Indian shores, some revolutionary would throw a bomb at him for his excesses that he planned a separate route back home. He even asked Vinayak about the bomb scare from his fellow revolutionaries, to which the latter replied: ‘I don’t think so. They don’t waste their bombs in killing crows and sparrows. I don’t think there is such a fool among terrorists there who would waste his powder on these poor birds when he can kill a tiger with it.’ 79

  Bearing the albatross of the curses, wails and agony of thousands of prisoners whose lives he had ruined, Barrie made his way out. His condition was so bad that he had to be lifted out by two people to the steamer leaving from Port Blair. But Barrie never made it home. He breathed his last on the steamer. Thus ended the tyranny of one of the cruellest jailors the islands had ever seen.

  Shortly after Barrie’s departure, his fanatical lieutenant, Mirza Khan, too decided to retire. He too was afflicted by severe pain in his limbs and he attributed this to black magic done on him by Vinayak. He kept beseeching mercy from Vinayak for his sins and that he should cure him of his pain. His attempt to convince him that he had done no such thing and that he did not even believe in black magic of any sort fell on deaf ears. Eventually, Mirza Khan left Cellular Jail a broken man.

  After a few temporary appointments, Mr Diggins, Barrie’s brother-in-law and an Irishman too, was appointed jailor. Despite being a strict disciplinarian, he was a level-headed theosophist and a man of culture and learning. He never allowed himself to forget that the convicts were human beings after all.

  Even as the jail administration was passing through this phase of transition, there was news of an Indian Jails Committee (1919–20) being formed by the Government of India to visit Cellular Jail and also ascertain the future of the penal settlement. On receiving a petition from the political prisoners, the Committee at once granted two privileges—writing a letter once in three months and keeping one’s sacred thread and other symbols of religion. For over an hour and a half, the committee met Vinayak, who gave a detailed account of the experiences that he and several other political prisoners had faced right from the beginning. He also submitted the same in a written statement to the Committee. He believed that the administration’s purpose should be to improve the prisoner and not merely punish him. The punishment must be a deterrent rather than vengeance. Caning and hanging should be the rarest of punishments, not a norm. He postulated that prisoners, up to the age of twenty-two, should not be regarded as beyond redemption, whatever be the nature of their offence in the eyes of the law. The aim of punishment should be to reclaim them as future citizens. All discipline should be directed to that purpose. They should be trained vocationally, so that they might have some useful occupation to fall back upon when they were released. By way of recreation, every prison should be provided with amenities like cinema and music, which would make them both human and responsible citizens.

  Of course, the prison ought never to be, Vinayak argued, a place for an easy way of life. The prisoners needed to be segregated from the world not for ease, indolence and enjoyment, but for inculcating severe self-discipline so that they realized that the kind of life that they had led was not desirable or worthwhile for them to continue. If they wanted freedom, they must deserve it; and the sooner they learn the lesson, the better it would be for them. Prisons are penitentiaries and not places of inquisition and torture. Prisoners who were exceptionally cruel in their propensities and whose acts constituted grave antisocial behaviour must be compelled to settle in the Andamans and work towards the development of both the settlement and the islands as a whole. A constructive work of this nature would play an important role in their reformation. Vinayak was not in favour of closing down the prison colony of Andamans for this reason. From the current savagery and slavery that were the norms in prison, a more reformatory line could make the process vastly successful.

  The committee in its report expressed grave dissatisfaction about the state of affairs at Cellular Jail. They regretted that ‘absolutely no attempt whatever to provide any kind of reformative influence on the convicts had ever been made’. 80 In particular, they pointed to the lack of education, absence of religious teaching, prohibition from installing places of worship or community religious observances. ‘The moral atmosphere,’ of the jail, they noted, ‘has been thoroughly unhealthy.’ 81

  Thus, one of Vinayak’s most significant contributions during his incarceration at Cellular Jail was to attempt a change in the conditions there despite the resistance of the authorities. He had managed to organize the library, instil the habit of reading and discussions and striven to make it a model even for Indian jails when it came to prisoner reform. The same was also postulated to the government as part of executing a well-structured policy of prison reforms.

  By the end of the momentous year 1919, Emperor George V ratified the Government of India Act (Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms) through a royal proclamation. Clause 6 of the proclamation stated that the emperor desired that as far as possible, traces of bitterness between his government in India and the people must be obliterated. He hoped that those who had broken the law in the past, respect it in the future. At the same time, he hoped that it would become possible for those tasked with the maintenance of peace and order to curb any excesses. Given the dawn of a new era, he earnestly wished to see greater cooperation between the governing and the governed towards a common goal. He stated:

  I therefore direct my Viceroy to exercise, in my name and on my behalf, my Royal clemency to political offenders, in the fullest measure, which in his judgment is compatible with the public safety. I desire him to extend it, on this condition, to persons who, for offences against the State or under any special or emergency legislation, are suffering imprisonment or restrictions upon their liberty. I trust that this leniency will be justified by the future conduct of those whom it benefits, and that all my subjects will so demean themselves as to render it unnecessary to enforce the laws for such offences hereafter. 82

  In accordance with the general amnesty granted by the emperor, most of the political prisoners, including Barin Ghose, Trailokya Chakravarti, Hemchandra Das and Parmanand, were released from Cellular Jail. The prisoners had to sign a pledge that they would abstain from politics and revolutionary activity for a certain stipulated number of years. If they were found guilty of treason again, they would be sent back to the Andamans to serve the remainder of their life sentence. There was a great deal of discussion and difference of opinion on signing such a clause. But Vinayak prevailed upon them to sign it and secure a release first before planning any future course of action. All, except around thirty political prisoners, were repatriated to Indian jails or permanently released. Unfortunately, Babarao and Vinayak were excluded from this amnesty under the pretext that its clauses did not cover their case.

  Consequently, Vinayak submitted a petition to the Government of India on 20 March 1920. 83 He invoked the emperor’s royal proclamation that, given the eagerness for political progress, they had decided to provide amnesty to all political prisoners, and that the offences booked against him and Babarao were under the same category. It was not an individual grudge that they had but a political cause for which they adopted the revolutionary path. He argued that the proclamation did not make any distinction of the nature of offence or a section of the law, beyond the motive. Hence, it became necessary to underscore that their motive was political and not a personal enmity against anyone in the government. He was unable to fathom why the same yardstick that the government had applied to release Barin, Hemchandra Das, Sachindranath Sanyal and others who were charged with exactly similar offences was not applicable to them. Their behaviour in prison had been no better or worse than the rest, and hence there was little case to single them out for this disadvantage. He drew attention to his earlier petitions of 1914 and 1918 where to protect the country from the ‘
fanatic hordes of Asia threatening to invade via the North West’ 84 he had offered himself as a volunteer in the War.

  With the wide range of administrative reforms put in place, he had already expressed his willingness to join a constitutional line of political activity, for he hated ‘no race or creed or people simply because they are not Indians’. He was willing to pledge, like the other political persons, to abstain from political activity for a period of time. This had become necessary too for them because their health was in tatters due to the long period of incarceration. The brothers were okay to have their movements confined to a district too if that was what the government pleased. Given the wide support that the demand for their release had elicited from different cross sections of society and prominent leaders, it would defeat the very purpose of the proclamation, i.e., to remove bitterness between the ruler and the ruled, by not granting their release. On similar grounds, Vinayak requested the release, even if conditionally, of all the remaining political prisoners who had been languishing in jail for long. The release would grant him a new birth, after his bright career had been regretfully extinguished and this would make him grateful to the government and politically useful in future. ‘For often,’ he concluded, ‘magnanimity wins even where might fails.’

  What seems remarkable is that while in prison Vinayak, through his petitions, declared his support for ‘constitutionalism’, ‘non-violence’ and ‘reforms’. But in his memoirs, My Transportation for Life , that was written a few years after his release, he expressed completely different political notions. In these writings, he revealed his disapproval of the non-violent mode of struggle that was being propagated by Gandhi. Even as he dismissed the Mahatma’s approach based on non-violence, he appealed to the colonial regime for amnesty release or remission of sentence based upon his conviction that ‘violence’ was a thing of the past and ‘constitutionalism’ was the only political ideology left to pursue. In his memoir, he favours Tilak’s approach of ‘responsive cooperation’ that the latter had advocated in the wake of the reforms. The petitions, however, have no mention of this approach or his belief in them. These seemingly contradicting stands lead one to believe that the petitions were a mere tactical ruse to secure a release and thereafter plan a future strategy. Nothing substantial could be achieved by being holed up in jail.

  The chief commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands submitted the petition and jail tickets of both Babarao and Vinayak to the Government of India (Home Department). As per the records in the jail tickets, during their first five years at Cellular Jail, their conduct was hardly that of model prisoners. This was the peak period of the numerous strikes at jail in which the brothers took the lead on several occasions. Babarao’s conduct in jail until 1914 had been recorded as being ‘bad and he was frequently punished, chiefly for refusal to work and for possession of forbidden articles’. From 1914 through 1919, Babarao’s ‘conduct has been very good’—except for a non-disclosed minor offence for which he received a warning in November 1917. 85 Vinayak’s jail ticket was similar: ‘Punished eight times during 1912, 1913, and 1914 for refusing to work and possession of forbidden articles.’ For the five-year period after 1914, Vinayak’s behaviour was ‘very good’. 86 This was when reforms had been ushered in after Craddock’s visit and the library programme had begun. As for their ‘present attitude’, the letter mentioned that the brothers had now become model prisoners. Babarao was noted for his ‘submission to authority but he never shown [sic] any disposition to help in the work of the jail the way that the three Bengalis have done’. The chief commissioner stated that he was unable to ascertain Babarao’s (Ganesh Savarkar) personal opinions and whether he had renounced his former political views as he was not very communicative. Vinayak’s ‘present attitude’ was similar to that of his brother: ‘He is always suave and polite. Like his brother, he has never shown any disposition to actively assist Government. It is impossible to say what his real political views are at the present time.’

  In response, on 29 May 1919, Sir J.H. DuBoulay, Secretary to Government of India, noted that their case could be considered for remission with one of the sentences of transportation commuted, provided this had the Bombay government’s concurrence. 87 Babarao’s case too fell under the same consideration and the Government of India would have no qualms suspending the rest of his sentence, provided the Bombay government agreed. 88

  But the Government of Bombay was adamant in its refusal to consider the approval of remission for the Savarkar brothers. In a telegram sent on behalf of the Government of Bombay to the superintendent of Port Blair, Morrison stated: ‘Bombay Government does not recommend any remission of the sentences passed against Ganesh Damodar Savarkar and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.’ 89 Two internal notes in the file conveyed the reasons for their refusal. In the first note, Morrison remarked that he did not know Babarao, ‘. . . so I can’t say whether he is likely to have been sufficiently broken by his punishment . . . But I do know Vinayak and I should doubt whether he will be moved to revise his opinion of Government by any extension of clemency’. 90 In a second note sent on 31 May 1919, Morrison stated that the Deccan was quiet now and with an imminent return of Tilak from England, where he had filed a libel case against Times of London reporter, Valentine Chirol, releasing the Savarkars could be potential trouble. The Government of Bombay agreed with the Government of India, Home Department’s earlier recommendation that dangerous convicts must be excluded from the amnesty scheme and given that they fall clearly under this category ‘the Savarkar brothers be excluded from the Royal Clemency’. 91

  It was clear that even by 1920, after serving close to ten years in Cellular Jail, the Government of India and of Bombay considered Vinayak extremely dangerous to public safety, law and order to be released. In a communication between the secretaries of the Government of India and of Bombay—H. McPherson and J. Crerar respectively, the former writes:

  There is probably no doubt that he [G.D. Savarkar] was one of the young men who first started the seditious movement of the melas in the Deccan which eventually merged into an anarchical movement with its headquarters at Nasik; but the real father of the movement was his brother Vinayak. The latter possessed the qualities of leadership and courage, which his brother lacked though he would not allow anybody to dispute his authority as supposed leader of the movement in the absence of Vinayak. Plans were laid by the superior brain of Vinayak while Ganesh helped him in preaching hatred of Government by the dissemination of seditious literature, and by corrupting the minds of young students. 92

  In another communiqué from McPherson, it seemed that the government was mulling options for clemency only to Babarao as Vinayak was ‘really the dangerous man, the objection to whose release lies, no doubt, not so much in the seriousness of his offence as in his temperament’. It observed that if Babarao was released and Vinayak withheld in custody, the latter would be a hostage for the government. This fear would force Babarao to adhere to the law and not indulge in any seditious activity, lest it jeopardize his younger brother’s release. 93

  A young revolutionary, Sachindranath Sanyal, had founded the Patna branch of the Anushilan Samiti in 1913 and was extensively involved in the Ghadr plans as well. He had been sentenced to life and imprisoned at Cellular Jail. He was released after a brief period and he returned to his revolutionary ways. However, in a conversation with one B.C. Chatterjee, he wondered that while he had given an exactly similar assurance, as Vinayak had done, of cooperation with the government in the wake of the Reforms Act, he had been released but not Vinayak. He hypothesized that after the arrests of Vinayak, Babarao and other members of Abhinav Bharat, the revolutionary movement in Maharashtra had practically fizzled out and peace established. The government was wary that releasing Vinayak at such a time might set Maharashtra ablaze yet again. To preclude any such possibilities, they indulged in excuses and legalese to prevent his discharge from prison. 94

  Around this time, the Bombay National Union and some of i
ts leaders organized and signed mass petitions for the release of Indian political prisoners, especially the Savarkar brothers, lodged in the Andamans. No less than 75,000 people signed this. Writing about this to his brother Narayanrao in a letter dated 6 July 1920, Vinayak states:

  That must have put an immense though unacknowledged pressure on the Government. At any rate it elevated the moral status of the political prisoners and therefore of the cause for which they fought and fell. Now indeed our release, if at all it comes, is worth having; as the people have expressed their desire to have us back. We cannot sufficiently thank our countrymen for sympathy and solicitude for us all . . . For although we two have been declared to fall outside the scope of the Amnesty and are still rotting in the cells, yet the sight of hundreds of our political comrades and co-sufferers’ release makes us feel relieved and repaid for all the agitation that we have been carrying on for the last eight years or so through strikes, letters, petitions, the press, and the platform, here and elsewhere. 95

  Despite all these efforts, it was to be a long route to liberation for Vinayak—the struggle seemed to have just begun.

  10

  Political Potboiler

  Bombay, January 1920

  From his clinic in Girgaum, Bombay, Narayanrao decided to do the unthinkable. He picked up his pen and wrote a letter to a man who was ideologically opposed to his brother, but nonetheless was fast emerging as a major political voice in the country—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. In the first of six letters, dated 18 January 1920, he wrote to Gandhi, Narayanrao sought the latter’s help and advice in securing the release of his elder brothers in the wake of the royal proclamation.