Special
Feature – I-Day 2017
Cellular
Jail – An Embodiment of Sacrifice
*S.
Balakrishnan
“Oh,
my dear Motherland, why are you crying?
The
rule of foreigners is about to end!
They
are packing up!
The
national shame and misfortune will not last long!
The
wind of freedom has begun to blow,
Old
and young are yearning for freedom!
When
India becomes free,
‘Hari’
will also enjoy his freedom!”
Who
is that ‘Hari’ who wanted to enjoy his freedom?
Shri
Babu Ram Hari was from Qadian, Gurdaspur District of Punjab, and Editor of
‘Swarajya’, who was awarded sentence of transportation to Cellular Jail in
Andamans for 21 years for penning three editorials considered ‘seditious’
by the British colonizers.
Lives
were thus mercilessly plucked by the British rulers as offerings for upholding
the cause of India’s independence. The dreaded Cellular jail was one such
sacrificial altar. Equipped specially for solitary confinement in individual cells
(hence aptly named Cellular Jail), this jail is indelibly linked with India’s fight
for freedom.
Indian
Bastille
Netaji
Subhas Chandra Bose rightly described it as the ‘Indian Bastille”. In a
statement issued on 8th November 1943, after the Andamans were won
by the Japanese during World War II, Netaji remarked, “Like the fort of Bastille
in Paris which was liberated first during the French Revolution setting free
political prisoners, the Adnamans, where Indian prisoners suffered, is the
first to be liberated in India’s fight for independence”. (Later, however, the Islands
were recaptured by the Allies.)
Penal
Settlement
For
prisoners convicted of high crimes in colonial India and Burma, the British
established penal settlements at Benkoelen (the first ever in 1787), Malacca,
Singapore, Arakan and Tenasserim. The Andamans was the last in the
series and also the first to be established on Indian soil. However, much
earlier in 1789 itself such a penal settlement was started in Port Cornwallis,
North Andaman, but was abandoned after seven years.
The
idea was revived in the wake of the First War of Indian Independence (1857)
which the British chose to call the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’. To deport and imprison the
so-called mutineers, deserters and rebels, the far-off Andamans was chosen. On 10th
March 1858, the first batch of 200 ‘grievous political offenders’ touched the
shores of Chatham Island within Port Blair harbour in South Andaman. The
second batch was of 216 from Punjab province. As on 16th June
1858, the settlement position was - Total received-773, Died in
Hospital-64, Escaped and not recaptured-140, Suicide-1, Hanged after
recapture-87, Left-481. By 28th
September 1858 about 1,330 prisoners had landed. Between
1858 and 1860, about 2,000-4,000 freedom fighters had been deported to Andamans
from different parts of India. Sadly, many of them perished under the most
agonizing living and working conditions. Neither of those who escaped into the
jungle could escape death. Later, criminal convicts were also sent there for penal
servitude. A century later, on 15th August 1957, a
Martyrs’ Column was dedicated in Port Blair to commemorate those
heroes who died unsung and unknown.
Cellular
Jail
Fearing
that political prisoners would spread revolutionary ideas among other prisoners
and also mingle within their group, the British rulers decided on solitary
cells in a far off place. Thus was completed the notorious Cellular Jail in
1906 whose solitary cells finally rose to a total of 693! As the
freedom movement picked up, 80 revolutionaries from Poona were deported in
1889. As the freedom struggle saw a resurge, 132 were deported (1909- 1921),
followed by 379 (1932-38). Political prisoners involved in various conspiracy
cases were deported to Cellular Jail. Some of such cases include Alipur Bomb
Case (also known as Maniktola Conspiracy Case), Nasik Conspiracy Case, Lahore
Conspiracy Case (Ghaddar party revolutionaries), Banaras Conspiracy Case,
Chittagong Armoury Case, Dacca Conspiracy Case, Inter-Provincial Conspiracy Case, Gaya Conspiracy
Case and Burma Conspiracy Case, etc. Besides these, Wahabi
rebels, Mopllah agitators of Malabar Coast, Rampa revolutionaries of Andhra,
Manipur freedom fighters, Tharwardy peasants of Burma were also located to the
Andamans.
Life
in the jail
Life
in the Cellular Jail was most inhuman and barbaric, especially for the early
prisoners. With little food and clothing, the political prisoners were
compelled to do gruelling manual work. Unused to such hard manual labour, they
failed in their daily work quota resulting in further severe punishments. The
intention was to humiliate them and shatter their will power. They were set
upon to manually press oil, dehusk coconuts, pound coir, make rope, cut hills,
fill up swamps, clear forests, lay roads, etc. The most feared was ‘picking
oakum’, the ‘art of rope making’ out of Ramban grass with high acidity content
that caused continuous itching, scratching and bleeding!
Hunger
strike
When
Congress ministries were formed in seven provinces of India in July 1937, the
demand of Cellular Jail political prisoners for repatriation to mainland gained
momentum. As their repeated appeals and agitations did not yield result, 183 of
them went on a 37-day hunger strike from 24 July 1937. This created a wave of
support and their counterparts in the mainland jails also went on hunger strike.
Demonstrations were held all over India. The British bowed down and the first
batch of freedom fighters left Andamans on 22 Sept. 1937. The last batch had also
left by 18 January 1938. Criminal convicts, however, were deported till the penal
settlement was abolished in 1946.
National
Memorial
Many charismatic personalities were imprisoned in
this Jail. Savarkar brothers, Motilal Verma, Babu Ram Hari, Pandit Permanand,
Ladha Ram, Ullaskar Dutt, Barin Kumar Ghosh, Bhai Parmanand, Indu Bhushan Roy,
Prithvi Singh Azad, Pulin Das, Trailokyanath Chakravarthy, Gurumukh Singh,
among others. The list is long and distinguished. To
remember and venerate the invaluable sacrifice of our freedom fighters interned
in Cellular Jail, this was dedicated as a National Memorial on 11 February 1979
by the then Prime Minister, Shri Morarji Desai. The
museum and the Sound & Light show there depict the hard life which, in
essence, is their sacrifice so that we could live in independence and peace. Cellular Jail is in UNESCO’s tentative list of World Heritage
Site as there are no sites comparable to it at national level.
Once a dreaded place, Cellular Jail is now a
national monument, an embodiment of sacrifice, a place to remind that freedom
does not come that easily.
****
*Author is a Chennai
based independent journalist.
Views expressed in the
article are author’s personal.