WE
are all set to celebrate the 72nd INDEPENDENCE DAY of the Nation ~
the great day of 15th August when BHARAT was liberated from foreign
rule. .. .. often described in a terse statement, India achieved freedom ‘without
battle or shedding blood’ – Indian freedom struggle was far different perhaps –
thousands sacrificed and more number underwent innumerable difficulties for
that magic freedom, which we happily enjoy .. .. .. and, Indian History does
not have much written about those great martyrs.
Before Collector
Ash was assassinated by Veera Vanchinathan – there was this murder of a British
officer in Indian civil service - Arthur Mason Tippetts Jackson, Magistrate of Nasik, assassinated by a young
17 year old student.Anant Laxman Kanhere, student of Aurangabad,
shot Jackson on 21 Dec 1909 at a theater where a drama was tobe staged in his
honour on the eve of his transfer.The lesser
known of the Savarkars – Mr Ganesh Savarkar elder brother of Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar was implicated and sent to
trial.
Never
a great movie buff, I cried seeing this film in Kakinada – ‘Kalapani
(Chiraichalai)’ in Telugu.Mohanlal as
hero it was on the lives of prisoners in
British India sentenced to Kālā Pānī, the Cellular Jail in Port Blair, Andaman
and Nicobar Islands. Illayaraja’s music was lifting, yet I felt very gloomy
towards the climax. So I was looking forward to the opportunity of visiting
this historic place and when it occurred in June 2018, I was overwhelmed.The imposing cellular jails, to which the British exiled political prisoners and treated them
cruelly.It housed many great freedom
fighters including Batukeshwar Dutt, Yogendra Shukla and Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar, among others.
In the
dark hours of April 29, 1912, an alarm
went up on the ‘yard three’ wing of the Cellular Jail in Port Blair. Warden
Gulmir, stationed at the jail’s central tower, rushed to the wing and shined a
hurricane lamp through the iron-barred door of cell 82. He found the bed empty.
The prisoner, a young Bengali revolutionary called Indu Bhushan Roy, who had
completed two years of his ten years’ rigorous imprisonment, was dead. His body
hung from the window, a strand of torn kurta wound around his neck.The newspapers wrote : Kalapani had claimed one more tortured soul. Three
suicides a month had become the norm in Andaman.Roy’s death drove fellow Bengali prisoner Ullaskar
Dutt to madness. For the British, Dutt was a “known troublemaker”: as a student
in Calcutta, he stole chemicals from the university laboratory to make bombs.
One of his homemade bombs killed two British citizens—an act that landed him in
Andaman. Roy’s suicide had so angered him that he accused the jail’s medical
superintendent Dr F.A. Barker of aiding it.
At
Kalapani, it was madness to accuse a jail officer of anything, let alone of
killing an inmate. Dutt got the punishment of ‘standing handcuffs’: for seven
days, he hung by his wrists from a peg hammered into the wall. On the eighth
day, Barker ran a test on the prisoner. “I could feel the metal clips on my
body. The electric current passed through me with a force of lightning,” Dutt
would write in his memoirs years later. He was transferred to the island’s
lunatic ward at Haddo, where he was kept for 14 years.Both Roy and Dutt had been incarcerated
alongside a Marathi prisoner, a Chitpawan Brahmin from Nashik, described by a
British official as “a small man with an intelligent face and a nervous
manner”. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar had set foot on Andaman on July 4, 1911, but
his reputation had preceded him. His arrest in London in 1910, his subsequent
deportation to India and his attempt to escape to Marseille while being
transported on a ship had become a cause célèbre in Europe. It was said that
Savarkar had slipped through a porthole, leapt into the sea and swam ashore.
The
“architectural monstrosity” was a 698-cell jail—a massive, three-storey structure
with seven wings, or yards, of unequal lengths, radiating from a central watch
tower. The jail’s design was ‘panoptical’—all (pan) could be observed (optical)
from the central tower, without the prisoners being able to see anyone. The
buildings rose out of mangrove swamps on a promontory called Atlanta Point in
Port Blair. The cells, measuring 13.5x7.5ft each, had tiny, iron-barred windows
and wooden beds measuring 6x3ft. “I felt that I had entered the jaws of death,”
Savarkar wrote later. “The high wall was adorned with a festoon of manacles,
and several similar instruments of torture were hanging down from it.”
The origins of this
torture cell could be traced to that communication of Jan 1858, the most
faithful humble servants, Canning, Low, Peacock wrote to the Hon’ble Court of
directors of the East India Company, our rulers at that point of time (shortly
after the rebellion ~ the first freedom struggle of India) .. they wrote :
WE have the honour
to acknowledge receipt of ycur letter, No. 2436, dated the 20th November, 1857,
intimating that the Right Hon'ble the Governor General in Council had been
pleased to appoint us to be a Committee to examine the shores of the Andaman
group of islands (for finalizing a prison in that
forbidden land !) ~ they were mention among many important things instrumental
in raising the prison - The only vegetable food found in their
canoes or habitations was the fruit of the mangrove, a large leguminous bean
and some wild spinach. We did not ascertain whether they were eaten
cooked or raw. The inhabitants of the islands were all entirely naked; top of
head and anterior part of chest were clay which was found hardened in large
shells.Their bodies were found scarred
in lines by a cutting instrument and savage form of tattooing.
The natives like many parts of the global found that globalization
only meant that their habitats taken away, they called barbaric, enslaved and
subjected to harsh punishments .. .. sad for those inhabitants of Andaman – in fact
a chain of many islands stretching from Cape Negrais in Burma to Achin Head in
Sumatra.This line of
islands forms a single geographical system, as it were a submarine range of
mountains, the highest points rising here and there above the surface of the
ocean. Some 80 miles or so from Cape Negrais lies the first of the islands in
the chain, Preparis Island, between which and the mainland the sea depth does
not exceed 100 fathoms. Southwards of this the submarine ridge sinks to a depth
of about 150 fathoms, rising again to form the small group of islands known as
the Cocos, some 50 miles from Preparis. The
Andaman Group itself consists of the Great and Little Andaman with their
outlying islets, and occupies a distance approximately north and south of about
210 miles. Eighty miles to the south of the Andamans lie the Nicobar Islands, a
scattered archipelago occupying a distance of about 160 miles from north to
south. The sea between the Andamans and the Nicobars is over 700 fathoms deep.
Deep sea also divides the Nicobars from Sumatra, which is about no miles
distant from the most southerly point of Great Nicobar. On the west the
Andamans are separated from the coast of Madras, 700 miles distant, by the Sea
of Bengal. On the east the Andaman Sea, a depression with a depth of over 1000
fathoms, separates the Andamans and Nicobars from the Malay Isthmus and
Peninsula. Until the nineteenth century
the Cocos Islands were uninhabited. The Andamans and the Nicobars have for many
centuries been inhabited by two entirely different races.
Getting back to
that letter of the committee to the East India Company in 1858 – with advertence
to the 6th paragraph of your Honorable Coures Despatch No. 24 of 1857, we have the honor to state for your Honorable
Court's information, that on the 20th Nov last we appointed a Committee, composed of Dr.
F. 1. Mouat, the Inspector of Jails in the Lower Provinces, Assistant Surgeon
G. R. Playfair, Lieutenant J. A. Heathcote of the Indian Navy, to examine the
Andaman Group of Islands~ with a view to the selection
of a site for the establishment of a Penal Settlement for the reception, in the
first instance, of Mutineers, Deserters, and Rebels, sentenced to imprisonment
in banishment, and eventually for the reception of all Convicts under sentence
of transportation whom for any reason it may not be thought expedient to send
to the Straits Settlements.
The committee upon
returning to Kolkatta, communicated thatOld Harbour, henceforward to be distinguished by the name of "Port Blair," as the locality
of the proposed Penal Settlement; and they had directed Captain H. Man, the Executive
Engineer and Superintendent of Convicts at Moulmein, to proceed at once to the spot
with all the means necessary for cleaning a site, and otherwise preparing it
for the reception of the Convicts. For housing
the convicts, the built-up too was done by engaging the convicts, grouping them
in togangs of twenty five, named a
section, under a convict gangsman; four sections constituting a sub-division finally
a convict division and a free Overseer, accoompanied by a native doctor. Such convict
groups were to work together in hundreds to enable resist any attack by aboriginal savages. The aggressors were kind to allow a fair day’s
labour as wges which was multiplied by food, cooking utensils, working
implements, medicines and necessaries supplied by the Govt.when any convict worker suffered sick or was
maimed by an accident, incapacitated from actively employed – the supervisor
had the power to either permanently or
for a long time, transfer them to invalid gang or dispose of otherwise (! What !)
and draft another healthy prisoner in lieu.
Port Blair
Cellulars rekindles the memories of Savarkar... .. before leaving for England to study law, Savarkar had been a
member of a secret society, Mitra Mela, which was subsequently renamed Abhinav
Bharat. Its goal was to overthrow the British through violent methods.Savarkar’s older brother, Ganesh, alias
Babarao, was an Abhinav Bharat member too. The police nabbed Ganesh Savarkar
and stumbled upon a stockpile of bombs. Ganesh Savarkar was sentenced to
transportation for life on June 8, 1909. His comrades decided to retaliate. On
December 29, 1909, Anant Kanhere shot dead AMT Jackson, district magistrate of
Nasik.Jackson had committed Ganesh
Savarkar to trial, and another Judge had banished him to the Andamans.
the cell where Savarkar was confined solitarily for 10 years +
The accusation was
that group mentored by Savarkar had started manufacture of bombs on a small
factory scale. “ Reliable members were called from different districts to learn
the preparation of Picric and fulminate, and the teaching was mainly done in
specially hired rooms in mill area by
Karve and Nagpurkar ~ and this had
started the next day of Tilakar’s arrest in 1908.This group manufactured bombs and distributed
them to their workers. After the Jackson murder, the bombs and the factory were removed or destroyed before they
were arrested 33 Browning pistols were sent to India in an appreciable number
in 1909 by V. D. Savarkar. Jackson
murder was planned and executed by Karve group.The Nasik murder shocked
Government and practically all the
underground activities were traced and suppressed.
Veer Savarkar made
that bid to escape from the ship at
Marseilles through port hole.Savarkar
was chased and rearrested and brought back to his cabin. The extracts on Savarkar’ s case show how the
Governments of Bombay and India were anxious to punish him as early as possible
without coming in conflict with their
International obligations. However, the Hague Tribunal was in favour of the
British Government. The Judgment stated “H. M. Britanica is not required to
restore the said. V. D. Savarkar to the Government of French Republic”. The
French evidence shows that Savarkar was arrested by the French gendarme ….
(will conclude this lengthy post on : Savarkar, & more on the cellular prison of Port Blair –
Andaman with heavy heart now – this is perhaps only part 1 – desirous of
writing more !)
Most prisoners of
the dark cruel Cellular Jail were
independence activists. Some famous inmates of the Cellular Jail were Diwan
Singh Kalepani, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Yogendra Shukla, Batukeshwar Dutt,
Maulana Ahmadullah, Babarao Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Sachindra Nath
Sanyal, Bhai Parmanand, Shadan Chandra Chatterjee, Sohan Singh, Subodh Roy,
Vaman Rao Joshi and Nand Gopal. Several
revolutionaries tried in the Alipore Case (1908) such as Barindra Kumar Ghose,
Upendra Nath Banerjee, Birendra Chandra Sen too were lodged there. It is
written that though Savarkar brothers Babarao and Vinayak were lodged there for
two years at the same time, they would not know of each other’s presence.
the gallows of Andamans
In March 1868, 238
prisoners tried to escape. By April they were all caught. One committed suicide
and of the remainder Superintendent Walker ordered 87 to be hanged ~ a visit
over here would haunt you for those patriotic souls, who were tortured, grieved
to chill penury, and died when cruelty in its worst form was meted out. .. ..
now honestly think, have we ever read of a Anant Kanhere, Yogendra Shukla,
Batukeshwar Dutt, Savarkars, Sachindranath Sanyal and innumerable others !! ~
and we studied history in schools !!!
With heavy heart –S.
Sampathkumar
Eve of Indian
Independence day 2018.
Inspired by the movie Chiraisalai ~ moved to tears during my visit to the Cellular jails .. biblio :
o
History of Indian freedom movement vol 11 – 1885 – 1920 –
Govt records, Bombay
o
Andaman islanders – Anthropology – A Brown
o
Selections from the records of Govt of India (Home
Department) no. XXV – Andaman Islands, Calcutta 1859
o
Tale of my exile – Barindrakumar Ghose.