Savarkar, a hero of the schoolboys

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! Savarkar’s personality, his words, his books, his speeches, all had stirred Indians, young and old, into patriotic fervor. Today, I have an anecdote of Mr. P. L. Gokhale who as a young school boy had traveled from his hometown Baroda to Ahmedabad in 1937, just to get a look at Savarkar.

Meeting Savarkar was never an easy job for anyone! His hectic schedule and his insistence upon visitors making advance appointments practically guaranteed that. Upon descending casually upon him, many a visitor, important though he may be, had found himself returning home with neither a whiff nor sniff of Savarkar.

Generally speaking, grabbing an opportunity to meet Savarkar at conferences and meetings was a great idea. Gokhale and his friends did just that for their first meeting.

The Hindu Mahasabha Convention was being held in Ahmedabad in 1937. Savarkar, now free from British bondage, was to attend it. Upon hearing that, Gokhale and his three-four friends were tremendously excited. They had heard many stories of Savarkar from Gokhale’s father, who had been a member of Savarkar’s Abhinav Bharat Society in the bygone days in Nasik. The boys had also devoured a couple of Savarkar’s banned books, My Transportation for life and Mazzini. They found Savarkar inspiring. He was their hero. They had to meet him, and Ahmedabad was not so very far from Baroda. They managed to wangle an invitation to the convention. And now here they were in Ahmedabad, right outside the bungalow Savarkar was staying in.

Gokhale and his friends crouched against the wall, peeping over it. In the room beyond the yard they saw a small-framed man, a little bent over, engrossed in straightening out the folds of his dhoti with both hands. His light skin glowed, the golden frame of his glasses shone. Is this Savarkar . . . ? they all thought.

“Arre, Gokhale, that does look like Savarkar!”

“Yes, it does. If only he will lift his head . . . .” Gokhale snapped his fingers. “I know! Let us hop over the wall and take a closer look.”

There was a brief babble of “Do we dare?” and “Oh, yes, let’s!” Then the boys hopped over the wall and tiptoed toward the veranda door through which they could see the man.

Suddenly the man looked up, fingers still straightening the fold. Oh, yes, this was indeed Savarkar! The boys gazed speechlessly at their hero, tremendously happy and excited to see him in person. With all the stories Gokhale’s father had regaled them with, they felt they knew him well.

“Tatyarao! We schoolboys have come all the way from Baroda expressly to meet you!” cried Gokhale.

A slight frown marred Savarkar’s brow and a faint irritation flashed across his face—a typical telltale sign of his dislike of being accosted without appointment. Seeing that, the boys subsided nervously.

Then Savarkar smiled. Training his penetrating eyes at Gokhale he asked, “What, boys, haven’t you come to attend the convention?” Without waiting for an answer he added, “Come, tell me about yourselves, your names, the classes you are studying in.”

When all the questions were asked and answered, Savarkar asked Gokhale again, “Are you Gokhale from Baroda?”

“Tatyarao, my father works in Baroda now, but before we lived in Nasik and Pune.”

Immediately Savarkar exclaimed, “Arre, I knew it! You must be the son of a Gokhale from our Abhinav Bharat Society. You look very much like like him.”

Gokhale’s face flushed with pleasure. Oh, Tatyaro still, inspite of all the hardships he had gone through, remembered his father well enough to recognize him! Oh, he was a great man, indeed!

“But,” Savarkar was continuing, “He was such a well-built man, so very dedicated to exercise. You are just skin and bones. Hmm, don’t you exercise regularly? You must, it is very important.”

Gokhale didn’t know whether to stand tall and proud at being addressed so familiarly by Savarkar, or to cringe in embarrassment at having the slightness of his frame brought under such scrutiny!

This was Gokhale’s first meeting with Savarkar. He went on to become a close and trusted member of Savarkar’s entourage. He has written a book recording his many, many memories of Savarkar.

Anurupa

A Schoolboy’s reminiscence of Savarkar

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! Every so often I shall be posting little anecdotes of Savarkar written by people who knew him. These give fascinating side-lights of Savarkar’s character.

Mr. Jaywant D. Joglekar is a well-known writer in Maharashtra, India. He has written about the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and the First Indian War of Independence, 1857, among other things. He has also written a biography of Savarkar, and it was upon reading this very biography that Savarkar was first revealed to me.

At the end of his book Veer Savarkar: Father of Hindu Nationalism, Mr. Joglekar has given lots of little what he calls “vignettes.” The one below records his first meeting with Savarkar. I loved to read about young teenage boys being so impressed and moved by Savarkar that they would play hooky from school when punished!

I first saw Savarkar at close quarters in Baroda in 1938. He had come to preside over the conference of the Marathi Literary Society. He was staying at the Baroda State Guest House which was located on the west side of the Baroda railway station, while the High School was on its east side. The distance between these two was about a quarter mile. Our teacher had asked four or five of us to leave the class for mischief-making. At the entrance to the school, there was a huge tamarind tree. We were sitting under its shadow when one of us said, “Let us go to see Savarkar.”

I had heard some stories about Savarkar from my elders. But the most important thing was that I had read his book ‘My Transportation’. The Bombay Government had banned this book. However, in Baroda, then a native state, the book was available in the Central Library. To read it was a thrilling experience. So when the idea of going to see such a great man was broached, we, at once, made a beeline to the State Guest House and were there in about ten minutes. There was a bearer in the waiting room. He went and told Savarkar that some boys had come to meet him. A few minutes later, he came into the waiting room. In my mind’s eye I still see the picture of Savarkar as I saw him that day.

He was small in stature and was wearing a white shirt and a fine white dhoti. His skin was very fair. He was wearing a pair of golden rim spectacles and had a penetrating look. His forehead was broad and his brows were a bit knitted and a smile was playing on his lips – such was Savarkar’s personality and he was standing before us. For a few seconds, he smiled and then asked us, “What brings you here boys?”

All were tongue-tied. No one could think what to say. Finally I summoned courage and said, “We want your sahi – signature.”

“You mean swakshari.” (Pure Marathi equivalent for the word signature) he said.

“No. I want a message and sahi”, I replied.

He then said, “Yes, that is swakshari.”

Having said this, he wrote in our notebooks: “Write in new script – V. D. Savarkar.”

Savarkar was a stickler for the use of pure Indian languages without words borrowed from elsewhere. When no such words existed, he coined them. So many of the words he coined are now an integral part of the Marathi language. But not many know the history behind it.

Anurupa

Oh Mother India . . . !

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! Could we have borne any of this . . . ? Hear what Savarkar has to say:

“These musings gave me a shock. In the whirring noise of the rolling steamer, in those offals around me, in the obscene chatter of the lunatics thereby, and in the fetid and oppressive atmosphere of the place, I felt my life choking within me.

I had often the fear and the feeling that this philosophic reverie may be the first intimation of lunacy creeping over my being and under it things visible may be rapidly melting away into illusion. I felt the weakness of my shattered nerves at the time as I had never felt them during the ten years of my life in prison.

The weak nerves were due to that life, no doubt, but I felt it overwhelmingly in the steamer and at that moment as I had never experienced them before. I appealed and protested to the officers on board the steamer to remove us from that place. There was a part of the steamer occupied by other Indian passengers bound for India, and they also interceded on our behalf. Their efforts and chiefly the persuasion of one who shall remain unnamed secured for both of us seats in the other half of the compartment, and somewhat detached from the space allotted to the lunatics.

But there was no breeze on that side.

There were other prisoners carried by the same steamer to India and among them were some consumptive, dacoits and robbers. These convicts were accommodated on the deck that they might get fresh air to breathe. My brother, who was more sick than any-one of them, had to rot in the cage on the lower deck – the cellar of the ship as it were – and in the cage I have already described. He was consumptive, his body was burning with fever, and I suffered from hard breathing due to chronic bronchitis, and we two were placed in that stuffy atmosphere.

Again, I appealed for fresh air; again I wrote to them that we needed very badly some fresh air to breathe in. From the following day a sort of ventilator was improvised to let down fresh air from the deck above two times during the day. A heavy gunny bag was suspended from the top downwards open at both ends from which air passed downwards from the deck above. Later on we were taken on the deck, under guard, for half-an-hour every day to sit there and inhale fresh air. The passengers on the deck and officers, at times, came in the cellar below to have a talk with us on the sly. The Indians among them were full of sympathy for us; but even some Europeans treated us with respect. One educated Anglo-Indian gave me a living proof of it by presenting me a copy of my favourite book, “Thomas a Kempis’s ‘Imitation of Christ”’ which he asked me to cherish as a keepsake from him. They sent us by private arrangement good food to eat. I sent back out of it soda-water bottles, ice, and sweetmeat as not wanted by me. Some of them would force us to accept gifts in money which we refused with thanks. I told them that we were sure to be back in prison in India where we had no use for money. I distributed the sweet-meats among our fellow- passenger – the lunatics on board.

At night my brother would narrate to me the story of his prison- life. I left India for England, in 1906. And from that date till fourteen years after, we were not in one room for a single day or night, so that we could talk together and exchange our thoughts. He told me how the movement of Abhinav Bharat had spread in the country after I had left for England, the names of members enrolled in it, how he happened to be arrested, how he was persecuted by the police to force from him the information necessary to round up all of them, how he breathed not a word about them and their whereabouts, how, at last, he had fainted under the torture, so on and so forth. They tried to get out from him information about conspiracies in Maharashtra and Bengal, but they failed. I heard that thrilling narrative with rapt attention. While on that steamer, I constantly remembered the friends I had left behind in the Andamans! And the thought brought home to me the void in my life that their separation had made.I often had the yearning that I should go back to the Andamans and meet them! Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand!

On the fifth day as I was seated on the deck for half an-hour’s daily draught of fresh air, I saw a fortified wall right in front of me. A fellow-passenger told me that we were almost in India and the fortified wall was its boundary. I startled. The fortress of India. The embankment, sighing for which I had kept my body and soul together during all the hard years I had passed, in the Andamans; was right in front of me and I was soon to be landed on it!

This was Mother India whom I was seeing again with my eyes. Her holy feet I was touching with my head. In this very life, I was seeing and touching them. I turned round to my brother and ejaculated, “Dear brother, behold our dear Bharat once again! Behold her feet washed by the blue waters of the sea around”

We both got up from our seats full of adoration and worship We folded our hands with reverence and devotion. We felt a thrill passing through us, and we uttered the following prayer:

‘Victory to the Goddess of Freedom,

Bande Mataram!’”

Anurupa

Find the full book @

http://www.savarkarsmarak.com/activityimages/My%20Transportation%20to%20Life.pdf

And Into the Cage he went—again . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! Oh what a life . . . ! Read on what Savarkar has to say:

“As I climbed the ascent ten years ago from Port Blair to the Silver Jail, I had never imagined that time would come when I was to descend from that place and go back to India. But now I had climbed down and was stepping into the steamer that was to take me back to India.”

As the thoughts were passing in my mind, the steamer ‘Maharaja’ had arrived. She was bound for Calcutta. We went up and I felt a strange sensation coming over me, I was to lose the little freedom I was beginning to enjoy in the Silver jail, and, when in India, I may be put under severe custody as if I was to run my whole sentence once again beginning from it first day. As I stepped into the steamer, I was taken to the cage for prisoners on the ground floor. It was in the same cage

that I was locked on my first voyage to the Andamans. A shiver passed over my entire body as I remembered it. And my elder brother was to be with me now, a thin, emaciated scare-crow of a man hiccoughing without rest or relief. We were both put in together.

Put in the cage of maniacs

The cage in which we were locked up was packed full of lunatics. The insane in the Andamans were all being despatched to India by the same steamer. And in their company we were bound for voyage to India and in the same cage with them!

The lunatics were pouring forth foul abuses on one another and were crying aloud in turns. Some were holding their throats in the grip of their hands as if to throttle themselves. The man put in charge of these madmen was one of themselves, who had recovered from that ailment. He used to hammer them all one by one. There was not even moving space for us two in this medley.

And my brother was burning with fever and so emaciated in body, and he was herded among this pack. What the madmen saw and spoke they believed for the time being as gospel truth. Some imagined that the mice were running all over their body and mounting up their chests. Some believed that all the people around were shouting out abuse towards them, and they would wake up at night, sit on the neighbour’t chest, each one of them, and were about to belabor them with fisticuffs. Others were rolling pell-mell in their own vomits and urine. And we were planted ourselves in their midst!

Who are mad, whom can you call mad?

For a moment I could not help asking myself the question, who is really mad and who is not. How do we know that what our senses apprehend is really the truth? Perhaps, what the senses of these madmen perceive may be the reality! On the side of the same as on the side of the insane, the senses alone constitute the witness. And some one sense alone is to determine that the other sense reports correctly. If the senses of us all were like the senses of these lunatics, we should have felt like them the mice running over our bodies. Why then should we take it that we are right? Perhaps, they may be right and we, seated in the midst of their vomitting and discharges, are deluded that we are in that foul and dirty place! For aught we know, we are mad and they are in their senses!”

Anurupa

Find the full book @

http://www.savarkarsmarak.com/activityimages/My%20Transportation%20to%20Life.pdf

More precious than a jewel necklace . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! What love and adoration the people in Andaman had for Savarkar . . .

Here it is in his own words:

“My brother and myself were made to stand before the prison gate. The jailor handed us over to the police party in order to take us on the steamer bound for India. The kind jailor asked them not to put fetters on us. We were marched along and at last the iron door of that horrible prison opened its jaws to let us out into the spacious atmosphere of the world outside.

It had opened in 1909 and closed after swallowing up my elder brother. In 1911, the same horrible jaw opened out again and shut so soon as it had gulped me down. We had no hope then that we could come out of it alive. The iron portal that had shut upon us in 1911, turned on its hinges with a grating sound in 1921, the jaw opened and we came out of it. The iron threshold of that iron gate, as we crossed it, made us aware that we were leaving the Andamans alive. I said to my brother,

“This little threshold is a borderland between life and death. From death we are crossing into life only by stepping across the threshold. Yes we have crossed it and stepped into the land of the living. And now? We do not mind very much. Let the future take care of itself.”

A garland of white Champaka flowers

“The outside of the prison was strictly guarded against the crowd that had gathered to give me a send-off. A large number of people had come there only to have a sight of me. The prisoners scattered over the settlement were scrupulously kept at their work that day. And yet many had come under some excuse or another and lay in hiding to have a look at me.

We had walked only a few steps on our way to Port Blair and under an escort when a Maratha prisoner by name Kushaba who had been raised to the position of a jamadar and who was shortly to receive his ticket of freedom, suddenly rushed forward and defying the escort that guarded us put a garland of Champaka flowers round my neck on behalf of all the prisoners present. While the police party was about to raise a cry, he had already left after cheering my name and prostrating himself at my feet.

He was liable to lose his job and be punished for such a sacrilege. But he seemed not to mind it. I still visualise the scene, the Maratha prisoner intent on garlanding me, and the baffled police-officers straining to pull me off and handcuff me.

The police officer was a symbol of twenty year’s effort on the part of the authorities to blot me out from the memory of the people, to prevent one and all of them from having any photograph or hook in their houses, or any relic to remind them of me and my work.

All these years they had branded these actions as punishable offences. And now the police officer taking me to the steamer was making his last effort to prevent the prisoners from honouring me.

On the other hand, the garland of Champaka flowers and the jamadar who gave it to me, were a token of the love and veneration in which thousands of my fellow-countrymen still continued to hold me.

My life and life-work had all along been the battle-ground between these two contending forces and of their action and reaction. And the manifestation in my life constituted so many symbolic expressions of the whole story. That was how I felt about the scene before me, and I expressed it in so many words to my brother beside me.

More precious than a jewel necklace

This garland of flowers was an invaluable recognition of our efforts during the last ten years for uplift of the Andamans. We felt our efforts rewarded by this token of love and reverence. It was dearer to us than any necklace of jewels. As he garlanded me, the crowd expressed its joy by clapping. This applause betokened loving gratitude that went home to my heart. It was a conclusive answer to the efforts of the authorities to inspire fear and disaffection about me among the settlers in the Andamans.”

Anurupa

Find the full book @

http://www.savarkarsmarak.com/activityimages/My%20Transportation%20to%20Life.pdf

Savarkar’s last day in Andaman . . .

Posted on by Anurupa

Hi, Everyone! I was not able to write re Savarkar’s last day in my novel since the story moves to Calicut by that time. It occurred to me I can blog about it and that too in Savarkar’s own words.

Savarkar was to be repatriated to India, but it was not good news! In Andaman he was entitled by then to live a free life on the island. The British would never have allowed that, of course, for Savarkar would surely have escaped. But they didn’t have to expose themselves by doing so, for the Cellular Jail was closed as a penal colony; they grabbed that excuse to send him back to mainland India jails.

This is Savarkar’s own account of it:

“The Andamans were all agog with the happy news, for they knew not that my send-off from here was to be my imprisonment in India. The people welcomed the news as an order of release and freedom. Wish was father to the thought and they protested,

“Babuji, none is going to put you back in the jail again. So soon as you step in India, you are free. That is a certainty.”

Taking the wish for the deed, they showered on me messages of congratulations from all sides. But the more I thought of it, the more indifferent I grew to that news. In the Andamans, I had the consolation of staying together with my brother. In India we were sure to be separated and housed in different jails, I had made intimate friends in the Andamans during the last ten years. I had already secured the ticket, and the chance was that before long, I could live here as a free man in a home and a family of my own. In India I would again be confined in prison and as asolitary man. I would lose my friends, the ties would be sundered. And I felt the same wrench of separation that I had felt when I took leave of my friends in India and was transported to the Andamans . . .

I felt as miserable and unhappy as I was ten years ago when I left India. And now that I was leaving the Andamans, I felt that I was being sent back on transportation for life once again. I packed up my books. I gave many of them to the prison library. I distributed others among prisoners aad friends. On the last day there was a crowd of men to pay me their last visit They kept on coming to me from mom till evening. Every moment I feared that the officers might misunderstand the crowd and aught arrest any one of them again. But all went off smoothly and the officers paid no attention to the crowd. Everyone was free that day to go out and come in as

he liked. The prisoners ceased to be afraid of the officers, and the officers in their turn did not over-do their part as custodians of the place.

In spite of my repeated protests, when many of them could not personally meet me, they brought to the prison gate gifts of all kinds. Fruits, flowers, sweetmeats, soda water bottles, tins of biscuits, there were in any number, heaps of them. And who were they that showered these presents upon me? Free men in the Andamans as well as prisoners. What was their worth? Most of them earned no more than ten rupees a month.

But what loyalty and what devotion there were in the act!

Unsought and unrestricted they came with their gift of a plantain, a watermelon, and a flower to deposit it near the prison-gate. I went in the afternoon to the door, and I distributed them all among those whom I found near the gate. I only kept such of them as none would take back from me. I administered the pledge of service to a few of my choice friends who lingered behind. The pledge of our association contained the following words:

“One God, one country, one goal”

“One caste, one life, one language.”

These words were on my lips all along.”

To be continued tomorrow . . .

Anurupa

Find the full book @

http://www.savarkarsmarak.com/activityimages/My%20Transportation%20to%20Life.pdf