Review of Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924

By Vikram Sampath.

Let’s first be done with the infamous apology letters that Savarkar wrote to the British government for his release from the Andaman prison. The judgement of most of the people in India is clouded by these letters and petitions. Many wouldn’t even go to the trouble of reading the book mainly because of these.

I’m going to present two parts that show that he was asking for mercy from the British Empire. Also, the quotations from the book will appear in this color, and my notes will appear in the normal color. I had planned to color code the quotations from the book but on medium it is not possible. Here is one part:

I beg to submit the following points for your kind consideration:

1. When I came here in 1911 June, I was along with the rest of the convicts of my party taken to the office of the Chief Commissioner. There I was classed as ‘D’ meaning dangerous prisoner; the rest of the convicts were not classed as ‘D’. Then I had to pass full 6 months in solitary confinement. The other convicts had not. During that time I was put on the coir pounding though my hands were bleeding. Then I was put on oil-mill– the hardest labour in the jail. Although my conduct during all the time was exceptionally good still at the end of these six months I was not sent out of the jail; though the other convicts who came with me were. From that time to this day I have tried to keep my behavior as good as possible.

I will continue the letter, but you need some context.

He sent out this petition on November 14, 1913. He was sent to the Andaman jail somewhere in June 1911. He was to remain in jail for 50 years. It was assumed that he would not come out alive. This fact was drilled into his ears everyday inside the jail. A badge describing his date of release after 50 years was hung around his neck.

In two years, his spirits were completely broken because he was constantly tortured. Routinely his hands would be tied with chains to the roof, and he was made to remain in a standing position for seven days at a stretch, repeatedly.

You must have seen such tortures in the movies but there are many details that are not shown, such as while you are tethered to the roof for so many days, you cannot go somewhere to answer the nature’s call. Everything, everything happens at that place. Whether you’re vomiting, peeing, or pooping, you do it there itself, and nobody washes. As a human, you are divested of all your humanity.

“Put on the coir” means they had to make ropes out of the dried coconut shells. Even a day’s work would cause blisters on the palms of the prisoners’ hands and in a couple of days the hands would start bleeding. Despite that, no prisoner could refuse and often they had to do the same work for months.

Since they had to use their hands to eat food, the chilli laden food would cause further pain in the lacerated and bleeding hands, so, most of the prisoners couldn’t eat food, but when they couldn’t eat food, they were beaten.

This was not the difficult part. “Oil-mill” was called “kolu”, as in Hindi, you might have come across the phrase “kolu ka bail” — the ox that is tied to the oil press. Here is a small clip of what a kolu means.

In the clip, it is very big and it is being operated by multiple people, but in the jail, it was smaller and was operated by a single person.

Every prisoner had to produce a certain quantity of oil every day and if the target was not met, severe punishment was given.

He further writes, “still at the end of these six months I was not sent out of the jail”

— After six months the prisoners were allowed to work outside of the jail because there was no scope of escaping from the island. They could go out into the jungle to cut trees or gather coconuts or fruits and vegetables. Most prisoners looked forward to being sent out because then they would get a chance to work in the open sky and feel the fresh air. Of course, it was a misconception because the conditions were very hostile outside. Many prisoners would get bitten by vicious insects, snakes and leeches. There were gigantic mosquitoes everywhere.

Just like you must have seen in movies, there is a villainous jailer who takes extra pleasure in torturing the inmates. There was a similar jailer who made life hell for the prisoners, specifically Savarkar because Sarvakar would always speak up his mind and would always take up causes for other prisoners. This jailer remained there for eight years. He was responsible for the deaths of multiple inmates and multiple times he nearly killed Savarkar.

In the toilet, there were no partitions and the prisoners had to ease themselves sitting by each other’s sides in close proximity, in the presence of the guards who would often ridicule them for being in such a ridiculous position. There was no water for washing. They had to hold their trousers down and in that position, they had to go to the hand pump that was at a distance, to wash themselves.

Sometimes Savarkar and other inmates were made to bathe in dirty water, like sewer water. Remember that Savarkar was a Brahmin and all his life cleanliness to him had been a divine practice.

It goes without saying that no hygiene was practised by the cook when cooking food, mainly because when the cooking started at 4:30 in the morning it was very dark and there was no light. Cockroaches, rats, and other insects and small animals were often found floating in the food. They couldn’t refuse the food. It had to be eaten, no matter what.

As a result, many would get sick. Even during sickness like severe diarrhoea and loose motions, they were forced to work. There were set times to visit the washroom and once they were inside the cell, locked, no matter what, they were not allowed to come out. So whether one was vomiting all night or passing stool, they had to make do in their 7x11 foot cells.

Beating and being tied to a single place for multiple days was a routine. Sometimes such acts were carried out for the simple pleasure of the guards and the jailer. They were made to wear clothes that would cause blisters on the whole body and make the skin bleed. The guards would cane the prisoners even when they were happy about something and just needed a little entertainment. Most of the guards were Afghans and Muslims and they took extra pleasure in torturing Hindu and Sikh prisoners.

Savarkar was often the subject of extra tortures because he would often take a stand no matter what. He was tortured regularly to such an extent that he was contemplating committing suicide.

Add to this the fact that his elder brother, Damodar Savarkar, was in the same Andaman jail, and was going through worse tortures. It was only after coming to the Andaman jail did Savarkar find that his brother was there too. More than his own tortures, what troubled Savarkar was the condition of his brother.

The physical torture is one thing. It’s the mental torture that is inflicted to break the human spirit. One is devoid of all human traits. Jail inmates were often, literally, made to wallow in their own vomit and excreta, for days.

I have just given a small glimpse. In the book, almost 100 pages have been dedicated to the torturous time he spent in the jail, so keep this in mind when reading the mercy petition.

Now I’m jumping to another part of another petition that he sent out after having spent 7–8 years in jail. This is the part where people claim that he showed his cowardice.

Therefore, if the government in their manifold benevolence and mercy release me, I for one cannot but be the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English Government…As long as we are in jails they cannot be real happiness and joy and gratitude to the Government, who knows how to forgive and correct, more than how to chastise and avenged. Moreover my conversion to the constitutional line would bring back all those misled young men in India and abroad who were once looking up to me as their guide. I’m ready to serve the Government in any capacity they like, for as my conversion is conscientious so I hope my future conduct would be. By keeping me in jail nothing can be got in comparison to what would be otherwise. The mighty alone can afford to be merciful and therefore where else can the prodigious son return back to the parental doors of the Government?

If you read this letter or petition in isolation (for example published on a random website) there is a 100% chance that you will assume that Savarkar was begging for mercy and he was a coward.

Vikram Sampath writes in his book that

“While writers like A.G. Noorani consider this as a sign of Vinayak’s ‘cowardice’ and that he had become a pawn in the hands of the British, biographers like Dhananjay Keer point out that this was a tactical move, quite like Shivaji writing pliant letters to Aurangzeb to secure his release and cannot be taken literally. Both sides might be hugely exaggerated in their censure or eulogy of a historical character, who needs to be judged by the yardsticks of his time and the context in which he operated. Most often, those inimical to Vinayak quote these petitions partially and almost never in a historical and situational context, framing an argument around them to suit a contemporary political narrative which is plainly historically disingenuous.”

When I was trying to find additional material on Savarkar I came across a comparison of Bhagat Singh and Savarkar explaining how valiantly Bhagat Singh embraced his death and even advised the British on how he should be executed and how Savarkar groveled in front of the British. I’m not going to publish the link because it’s an extreme leftist publication and I don’t want to provide a platform for such publications.

Can there be a comparison? Nobody knows. Nobody knows how Bhagat Singh would have spent years in the Andaman jail daily being dehumanised and insulted and forced to bathe naked in sewer water in front of laughing Afghan guards. Or having to walk naked every morning to the tap after passing stool, along with scores of other prisoners walking by his side. Or eating food mixed with animal and insect parts. Or collapsing multiple times while working on the kolu and then being tied for successive weeks to the roof for not being able to work on the kolu due to a worsening health.

If you ask me, embracing the gallows is much easier than enduring physical, mental, and spiritual torture for years. You die almost daily.

After all, when Savarkar was captured by the British police he was ready to die, and he even refused to defend himself because he didn’t consider the British court a legitimate court. He believed that if he defended himself, he would be according legitimacy to an occupier. He thought dying for Motherland was the most natural thing to do. So, had someone else been in a similar situation, it is but a conjecture how they would have reacted or how they would have conducted themselves.

Vikram Sampath says that Savarkar was a compulsive petitioner, being a lawyer. For every petition that he sent for himself (mostly asking for his basic human rights while being a political prisoner) he sent 50 petitions for fellow prisoners.

In one of the petitions he wrote “If the Government thinks that it is only to effect my own release that I pen this; or if my name constitutes the chief obstacle in the granting of such an amnesty; then let the Government omit my name in their amnesty and release all the rest; that would give me as great a satisfaction as my own release would do.”

All the pliant statements that he has made in the petitions were a part of the format during those days. In fact, even these days when you write applications and letters you use expressions like “your good self”, “it would be an honour to work with you”, “yours sincerely”, “your honour” and “yours faithfully”.

When you read the book you find that the primary motivation behind writing such “mercy” petitions was his change of heart. When he was in jail, he realized that the bigger problem than the British occupation was the divided Hindu society. The division was at the root of every problem, including British occupation. Even in the extremities of the Andaman jail, Hindu prisoners, especially upper caste prisoners, were still shackled in their older beliefs. This kept Hindus divided.

Since childhood Savarkar had advocated abolition of the caste system. Going against his family and upper caste friends, he befriended boys from lower castes and even ate at their homes.

He believed that many ills had infiltrated into the Hindu society such as untouchability, extreme superstitions and the fear of losing purity if one ate beef or travelled abroad. Savarkar believed that such beliefs were holding the Hindu society back while other societies were marching ahead because they didn’t have such constraints.

In the jail he observed that people would lose their faith simply because they ate with a Muslim inmate, or they were forced fed meat. They were immediately declared outcast and there was no way for them to get back into the fold. This way, he thought, the Hindu society would perish. There had to be a way to get the people back into the faith. Many upper-caste Hindu prisoners became his enemies because of his views.

He started giving education to the inmates. He relentlessly sent out petitions to start a library, which was eventually granted after 4–5 years.

Therefore, when he started seeking pardon it was because he strongly believed that instead of following a violent revolutionary path, he would be more effective working for the Hindu society, bringing them together and ridding them of the rigid caste system.

The book starts with Vinayak Savarkar’s childhood. From a younger age he was inspired by Shivaji, Rani Lakshmi Bai, Nana Saheb, Tatya Tope, Mangal Pandey and Guru Gobind Singh. He was deeply moved by Sikh religious books and writings such as Adi Granth, the Panth Prakash, the Surya Prakash, and Vichitra Natak.

He was a Chitpawan Brahmin, direct descendants of the Peshwas. Early on he was inspired by Italian, French and Irish revolutionaries. In his early teens he formed a group of youngsters who would meet every day and discuss how to free the country. It was called Mitra Mela. It’s bigger and more well-known version was Abhinav Bharat whose branches were in multiple cities.

He regularly gave lectures and speeches on topics such as the dynasties of ancient Iran, the Moors of Spain, the Dutch Revolt in the Netherlands, and the lives of Italian revolutionaries such as Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi.

He would maintain a diary of all the books to be read by himself and by his peers. He would also create his own essays on topics such as Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianism.

He was constantly in touch with revolutionaries of the time such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

When he was 16, he formed the Rashtrabhakta Samuha, or The Society of Patriots, near the end of 1899. Many of the ideas for the organization were borrowed from Thomas Frost’s work Secret Societies of the European Revolution, 1776–1876. It is quite amazing that at such a younger age he was reading about revolutions and revolutionaries from other countries.

Even for comparatively well-off families, they were difficult times. The scourge of plague would hit every few months. Both mother and father succumbed to the plague. Three brothers and a sister had to fend for themselves, sometimes in extreme poverty. They moved from relative to relative, town to town.

His brother and sister-in-law would go without food to make sure that Savarkar and his younger brother were fed, and they were able to go to school to get an education.

Despite his revolutionary activities, Vinayak Savarkar was very serious about his studies. Three months before the exams, he would lock himself up and study and ace his exams. Through recommendations from prominent personalities such as Tilak, Savarkar received a scholarship to study law in England.

When in London, he started another version of Abhinav Bharat in India House, regularly frequented by revolutionaries such as Madam Bhikaji Cama and Madan Lal Dhingra. It was Madan Lal Dhingra’s execution of a British police officer and his close association with Savarkar that gave the British an excuse to arrest him along with another assassination back in India by the members of Abhinav Bharat.

Strangely, despite his attitude towards the British, somehow, while in Britain, he believed in the righteousness of the British legal system and for that, he paid a heavy price. Fearing his imminent arrest, his friends called him to France and he stayed there for six months. There he felt bad that his friends in India were facing great difficulties while following his directions, and he was living a relaxed and luxurious life in France. Without telling his friends he came back to England and immediately got arrested. From then on, the sordid saga began.

The book talks in detail about the international controversy that erupted after his unceremonious arrest after his attempt at escaping in France where the ship carrying him to India from England stopped for a few hours. He had gained such an international reputation that when he was spending his time in Andaman, a German warship was sent to rescue him during the First World War, but was intercepted by the British.

Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 is an objective book. After having read it, I realized that it is Book 1. There is also Book 2, which I haven’t yet read.

The book covers the time from his childhood till the day he was released in 1924, having spent 13 years in jail, almost 11 among them in the Andamans and 8 under a psychopathic jailer.

Undoubtedly, Savarkar was a great patriot. He didn’t believe in dying recklessly. During incarceration and living under the most horrible conditions, he counselled many prisoners who had lost the will to live. My personal take is that he petitioned the British to release him because he believed that he could do a lot more outside of the jail than being inside. He didn’t believe in wasting life.

Also, after spending years in jail among other inmates, he realized that the fissures in the Hindu society were a greater problem than the contemporary British rule. In later years he wrote about the destructive caste system. He wrote against the belief that you lose your purity if you go abroad. He ate beef, not as a preference, but matter-of-factly. He was against the divinity of the cow among Hindus. He said that it was very important to make it possible for Hindus who had somehow left the faith, to come back and be accepted with open arms.

You will need some patience when reading the book because there is lots of detail, especially the articles that were published and the letters and petitions that were exchanged. In fact, you can skip some sections. They are important; they create a context and give you a complete picture of what was happening during those times.

I recommend reading it if you want to rise above the current vitriolic political opinion about Savarkar, and want to know exactly what happened during those tumultuous years. Of course, there are some opinions by Vikram Sampath, but the book mostly contains references to existing materials from Savarkar and his other contemporaries.

History is written by the victors. In terms of politics, victors were those people who assumed power after independence. After the British left, it was the Nehru coterie and the Congress that assumed power and they controlled the narrative. They decided which freedom fighters people remember, and which were relegated to the annals of oblivion. Through selective talk and twisting of historical facts, freedom fighters like Savarkar have been unjustly vilified just to make some selected politicians more haloed. It is nice that books like Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past are being written and published.