Category: The Cellular Jail

My Favorite Scene

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Hi, Everyone! There were a couple of scenes in the Cellular Jail that had actually taken place later. But I liked them so much, I added them in my novel. I thought it would add lighter moments to the story. I really enjoyed writing the scene below:

There came a day when a Chinese convict was brought here for drug trafficking. He had heard of Savarkar. At the first opportunity he asked, “You big man … Savalkal?” His eyes were huge with wonder.

“Yes, I am Savarkar,” replied Savarkar, amused.

“But you velly small!”

He apparently believed that a great man like Savarkar should have an impressive height and breadth.

He poked Savarkar in the chest. “You feel pain? Bullet bounce off your body, maybe?” he asked eagerly.

“Of course not! It will go through me just like anyone else.”

The man was deeply disappointed. “No … no! You gleat man! How many days and nights you swim in sea?”

“At Marseilles you mean? I was in the sea for only ten minutes or so!”

The man’s disillusionment in the greatness of men was complete. Here was this tiny man, quite vulnerable, trapped in this small cell—what can be his claim to greatness? Even his daring escape was only a ten-minute swim! Never again would he believe in the daring-dos of heroes! The man shook his head sorrowfully and took leave.

A few days later Keshu was before Savarkar. “Tatyarao, there is a Chinese man going around telling everyone how he was hoaxed into believing you were a hero,” said Keshu, gnashing his teeth. “I set him straight on a few points! I don’t think he will dare make such snide statements again.”

Savarkar laughed. “Keshu, I cannot hope to win everyone’s devotion. Alas, I am but a midget—not everyone’s idea of what a hero should be! But what to do?”

“Well, he is an ignorant one, certainly! Tatyarao, there is a lot of talk going around of us getting amnesty. Is it true, do you think?”


 “I hope so, Keshu. I hope so. Hindustan needs us all! Vande Mataram!”

The little Savarkar-Keshu scene just flowed out of my fingers. I felt so much a part of the character of both.

I had to share this with you all.

Anurupa

What’s this . . . ?

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Hi, Everyone! It is a documented fact that Hotilal Varma secretly wrote a letter and got it smuggled out of Andaman to Surendranath Bannerji, Editor of Bengalee, Calcutta, in end of August 1911. He signed the letter and put his cell number on it.

Hotilal Varma received great credit for it from others, and is lauded for his courage.

There is one significant point to note here (which will be clear later): why did Hotilal sign his name and give his cell number? Surely there was great danger of repercussion from the Andaman authorities? Was it not unnecessarily foolhardy? The publicity would have been just as effective without the name—so I think.

As I read Ramcharan Lal’s account of his Andaman experiences, I jerked straight up in my seat. On page 42, quite unambiguously he devotes a page plus to how he wrote and smuggled that first letter out to Calcutta . . . ! I read it over and over, not believing my eyes, thinking that my feeble Hindi was playing tricks on  me. But no. I was not mistaken.

 His account is very elaborate and there is no mention of Hoti Lal. How very odd.

Well, I could hardly leave such a stupendous mystery alone! I worried at it, like a dog going at a bone. Finally, I came up with what is my conjecture, my guess. It is not a confirmed or verified fact.

I just feel it explains the mystery:

It is obvious from reading Ramcharan’s book that there was some animosity between Hoti Lal and Ramcharan. Hoti Lal had let out a secret of Ramcharan’s in the Cellular Jail (even though Ramcharan had requested him to keep it to himself).

Would it be a possibility, I thought, that Ramcharan had written the letter (his account is so comprehensive), but to get revenge, out of mischief, perhaps, wrote Hoti Lal’s name and cell number on it instead of his own?

Surely, he was aware that once that name was published, that writer would be in deep, deep trouble with the authorities?

Is that what happened?

Unfortunately (if that is what he did indeed do) for Ramcharan, whatever trouble Hoti Lal got into for ‘writing’ that letter, it raised his credit immensely amongst his peers. He was praised and lauded! If Ramcharan intended mischief, it back-fired.

And so, was he now trying to set the record straight and get credit for himself for his brave act?

If there is someone who can shed more light on this, I wish they would, for I don’t like unsolved mysteries, really.

It is a small miracle that Ramcharan’s book saw the light of the day. Ramcharan had handed over his precious manuscript to Dr. Yudhveer Singh for safekeeping that the British police would not discover it. Dr. Singh could not even remember who it was that had given the manuscript to him! One day, he unearthed the forgotten manuscript from his bookshelf, and the book has now been published.

Anurupa


Follow the Clues . . .

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Hi, Everyone! As I had written, I had research material on the Cellular Jail written by the political prisoners (PPs) themselves. But there was one peculiarity about it—an almost complete absence of dates or sequence of events!

It was all written under hush-hush circumstances and from memory. With their horrendous situation they had no way of keeping dates or a diary. So there is a certain amount of confusion. Savarkar has made it a point to be ambiguous in some places, for the British were watching him like a hawk. He has mentioned no names, unless the person had passed away. His narration, though very thorough, is not sequential.

What to do now—was the dilemma I faced.

 Well, I told myself, what I have is essentially a ‘mystery’. I shall gather all my clues and fit them into a pattern. (I haven’t devoured Hercules Poirot’s books for nothing!)

For a base I copied the calendar for the years 1913-21. Then marked the fixed dates I had for events on it. I padded it out with each incident and event, the best I could. So now I had created an Andaman diary.

This was what I referred to throughout. The whole process was not unlike being a detective—an intuitive one.

·        Savarkar had mentioned a Hindu warder devoted to him. In Ramcharan Lal Sharma’s book I found that warders name! Bajira.

·        In Barin Kumar’s book I found lots of descriptions of various people, which was precious for me.

·        But Barin Kumar has made a mistake in the name of Superintendent. So I realized I cannot blindly follow everything I find in the PPs books. I must need double check all information. I had a hard time finding the correct names of the Superintendent. But I did do it (I very much needed the help of Google. There were all kinds of documents on the Cellular Jail chronology.)

I should also say, most of the PPs books are written from their personal point of view and reveals their own bias, imperfect understanding of some situations (so I felt). So I didn’t blindly follow what they wrote, either. I crossed checked again and again.

I found Savarkar’s writing to be very impartial. But he makes it a point to refer to a ‘traitor’ among the PPs, who snitched on him many times to get concessions from Barrie. I have identified this ‘traitor’ to my satisfaction—by pouncing on obscure but revealing clues—but didn’t use this information in the novel. Let it be, I felt. Savarkar had a right to write of his experiences. I don’t have the same right to write so of one who went through hell for his motherland. So no traitor or even a whiff of one in my book. 

I came across a very peculiar circumstance in Ramcharan Lal Sharma’s book. I shall write on that tomorrow.

Anurupa

Take not their only paradise . . . !

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Hi, Everyone! One is awestruck by the courage and patriotism of the political prisoners who were incarcerated in the Cellular Jail——not only did they bravely face their ordeal there, but continued to fight for their motherland after their release and wrote biographies recording their experiences while still under British rule . . . ! That is why a lot of valuable material is available to us today.
·        In each and every biography of these heroes that I read there was one common factor—despite the grueling hardship they suffered in the CJ, they wrote with humor, recording their situation but not wallowing in the pathos of it, even making light of it.
These heroes would certainly have been totally obliterated from human memory otherwise.
I had a hard time finding out some information, even so. Pandit Parmanand of Jhansi (not to be confused with Bhai Parmanand) was a volcano! I wanted to give him a little role in my novel, but the sad truth is, I could not even locate his name. His father’s name is to be found, but his—no. Pandit Parmanand from Jhansi, that is almost the sum total of what we know of him. I did find this link giving some info on him:
Savarkar has recorded incidents of Nanigopal Mukherji. We know that he visited Savarkar in Ratnagiri and that’s all.
Chatar Singh: can you imagine being put in a cage—a cage! Not tall enough to stand up, barely long enough to lie down—for two plus years, day in day out? You do this for your country, and then, what? The country forgets you—just like that.
So many of them were well-to-do; so many had their wealth and property confiscated by the British. So many of them died as uncared-for-paupers in the country for whose freedom they fought, for whom they sacrificed so much.
It pained my heart as I researched and wrote that I could not write more of these Sons of India, that I could not do more justice to them.
I do fervently hope that someone somewhere has recorded a little more of all these heroes.
 “Remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.”
And yet we have driven away these brave men from the only paradise they had?

Anurupa

My Pilgrimage to the Cellular Jail . . .

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Hi, Everyone! In July 2011, I was lucky enough to visit Port Blair for a precious two days. Hardly had I checked in into the hotel, and I was hotfooting it to the Cellular Jail.

I was all choked up as I stood in the entrance hall. This was where Savarkar stood. This was what he has described so well in his My Transformation for Life. I had poured over so many youtube videos of the CJ, but it doesn’t prepare you for the reality. As I stepped out into the yard from the entrance hall, the incredible length of the arched wings converging far, far away to almost a point, swamped my senses. And it seemed as if I was walking and walking, but getting no closer to the central tower, gomati.

To call the gomati a tower is a total misnomer! One expects a round building. It was nothing of the kind! At the ground level it is only a space and the above levels, it was a central room with passage around it, into which the walkways from the wings opened. No staircase . . . ! If the gates to the wings are locked, you are stuck in the gomati area.

Every night the warders patrolled on the roofs of all wings—were they marooned there when the wing gates were closed?

Then I noticed that wing 7 had two gates, one on either side of the staircase block. So perhaps the warders used this as the staircase to go up and down?

Savarkar’s cell was lit up; to get a feel for how it had felt to be shut in there, I shut myself in into one toward the staircase. It was so dark, so gloomy. I stood at the barred door just as I described my Keshu doing.

Horrors! There was nothing to be seen! Just the barred arch of the passage and beyond that the brick wall of block 1. I felt crushed by the isolation in the two minutes I was in there.

I stepped out of the cell hurriedly and had to take big, gulping breaths to calm my thumping heart.

I had read and studied so much on the CJ. My mind was crowded with questions. But there were no answers—until I met Dr. Rashida Iqbal, the curator of the CJ, that was. I shamelessly invaded her space and appropriated her time.

Oh she was so knowledgeable! And with the sweetest, friendliest smile. I was so relieved, so grateful.

From her I learnt about the peepal tree in the yard. I had been puzzling over the hospital and she told me that the plinth on which the memorial torch was placed was the actual plinth of the hospital. I asked questions to my heart’s content and she answered so willingly. I had been wondering about the whereabouts of the toilet block in the CJ. She told me where to find one that was extant. I actually walked through tall, tall grass—it was a bit creepy, that! I felt quite like a jungle explorer—to find it!

There was one thing that is unanswerable today—lost in the mist of time. The kitchen, which served all seven blocks, seemed like a tiny little room to me.

How did the two kitchen areas (one for the Muslims and the other for the Hindus) fit in here? Where was the cooking area for the prisoners who were allowed to cook? Where was the area for the vegetable patches they maintained? Mysterious!

Savarkar has described his first view of the CJ. I wanted to experience what he saw the way he saw it. That was easier said than done!!

There are several coconut trees planted in front of the CJ today, making it practically invisible from the jetty. I made my driver take me to all kinds of vantage points, popped out of the car and squinted up at the CJ, but no luck. What to do?

Well, then I just brought my imagination into play and mentally removed all the trees and had a good look in my mind’s eye.

There were one or two things I wanted to experience in Port Blair (though with a nervous, palpitating heart!) and didn’t. I had wanted to see the one foot long centipede and experience the flies and mosquitos. But (perhaps very fortunately) I came across none of these in my stay there.

When I got back, I revised my manuscript by pouring in all that I had absorbed. Months later, one day I just sat down and dashed off a write-up with illustrations to record whatever I saw and felt. I wished I had done it immediately, or that I had had thought of doing this before I went there, so I could do it full justice.

Perhaps someone else will do it in a professional way, one day. Everyone needs to know and realize what a mammoth torture chamber the Cellular Jail was.

Anurupa