The Kala Pani story

Baba Gurmukh Singh, convicted in the first Lahore Conspiracy Case, arrived in this hell in 1916. After the royal amnesty to selected political prisoners announced in December 1919, Gurmukh Singh was sent back to the mainland but managed to escape from captivity. Undeterred by the horrors he had faced in Kala Pani, he continued to be part of the national liberation movement, was caught in 1937 and sent back to Cellular Jail. There, he played a central role in educating the bulk of 8216;8216;revolutionary terrorists8217;8217; in the then nascent ideas of scientific socialism.

Shiv Kumar, a member of Bhagat Singh8217;s Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, was 8216;8216;transported8217;8217; to the Andamans after Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged in Lahore Jail in 1931. As was Subodh Roy 8212; the youngest member of 8216;8216;Masterda8217;8217; Surya Sen8217;s Indian Republican Army that conducted the famous Chittagong Armoury Raids on April 18, 1930. Touching 90, Roy remains a steadfast worker of the CPIM in its Alimuddin Street headquarters in Kolkata, his palms still bearing the scars of rope-making in Cellular Jail.

Kumar and Roy were not alone. From 1910 to 1937, hundreds of political prisoners 8212; a large majority of them drawn from the 8216;8216;revolutionary-terrorist8217;8217; groups active in Bengal, followed by freedom fighters from Punjab and a sprinkling from other states such as Maharashtra in the early phase 8212; were imprisoned in Cellular Jail. The aim was to keep them away from the mainstream and the mainland, and break, over time, both their body and spirit.

The saddest part of the raging controversy over the Swatantrya Jyot 8212; first designed under the instructions of former petroleum minister Ram Naik and then redesigned under the instructions of present petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar 8212; is that caught in the crossfire of contemporary politics, the real heroes and martyrs of Cellular Jail have once again been denied their place in history.

For Ram Naik and the sangh parivar as a whole, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is the only memorable hero among the thousands who lived and died in Cellular Jail. For Mani Shankar Aiyar, the alternative to Savarkar is Gandhi. The Mahatma may have been the greatest leader of India8217;s freedom movement but he had always stood against those who believed in an armed struggle against the British Raj and who, without exception, peopled the dank cells in the Andamans. After the historic collective hunger strike inside Cellular Jail in 1937, Gandhi played a signal role in the negotiations that led to a general amnesty for all detenues and political prisoners and their repatriation from the island. Yet, to replace Savarkar with Gandhi does little justice either to him or to the 8216;8216;revolutionary terrorists8217;8217; who leavened with their blood the mainstream Gandhian freedom struggle.

The choice of Savarkar is a much greater travesty. True, Savarkar in his early years was a radical who organised students, first in Pune and then in London. His daring escape from the porthole of a ship at Marseilles while he was being brought back to India to face trial has also passed into Marathi folklore, not least because of his skilful penmanship. But as far as Cellular Jail is concerned, Savarkar8217;s eleven-year spell there did not enhance or deepen his early anti-imperialist inclinations; it ended it.

The conditions in jail, testified by numerous less-celebrated accounts than that of Savarkar, were inhuman. But unlike Savarkar, few of the Ghadr revolutionaries or Bengal 8216;8216;terrorists8217;8217; pleaded with the British authorities for mercy. Nor did they agree to give up their struggle for India8217;s liberty in exchange of their own personal liberty.

Savarkar did both, and what is more, he kept to his promise. On being freed from prison, Savarkar repudiated his past and devoted himself to preparing the blueprint of a Hindu Rashtra. His earlier anger against foreign rule was replaced by a pernicious thesis of 8216;8216;punyabhoomi8217;8217; and 8216;8216;pitribhoomi8217;8217; that rendered all non-Hindus 8216;8216;alien8217;8217; to India. And unlike Khudiram Bose or Surya Sen, Asfaqulla Khan or Bhagat Singh who inspired generations of youth to join the freedom struggle, Savarkar, post-Andamans, is known to have inspired only the Nathuram Godses of this land.

For the BJP and RSS, Savarkar is a hero because of what he did after he came out of Cellular Jail. The premier ideologue of Hindutva, he has also become a useful icon because he is possibly the only 8216;8216;freedom fighter8217;8217; that the sangh parivar can lay claim to.

But that does not make him representative of the hundreds of young men who turned prematurely old in Cellular Jail, men who suffered together, who organised hunger strikes and bitterly fought for better conditions; who set up their own library and even a 8216;8216;university8217;8217; against great odds.

The BJP-led NDA government sought to wipe out the memory of that struggle by making Savarkar the sole hero of Cellular Jail, erecting his statue and naming the Port Blair airport after him. It is time to change that 8212; not by naming it after Gandhi or Nehru but simply by calling it 8216;8216;Shahid8217;8217; or 8216;8216;Balidan8217;8217; in the collective memory of the faceless heroes of Kala Pani.