Letter 3

Best beloved Bal,
And once again, my pen after a Ripvanwincle’s sleep is wakened and hastens to acknowledge the receipt of your letter received some 7-8 months ago. To have a letter from you is like to see you: for partly owing to the cinematographic flashes with which your letter abounds and partly owing to the wonderful faculty, with which the solitude of a Prison, endows the power of hearing in man- faculty, which enables one to visualize the thing heard, as in the case of those born blind. Whenever I hear from you , I succeed in almost seeing you and all those dear faces and dear scenes that constitute our happy little home on the banks of the musical Godavari. Our dearest brother Baba and myself are happy in seeing you doing well and as long as you take care of your health and try your best to lead a life, at once noble and happy and healthy, you need not be anxious about our health, mental and physical. The books which you sent last year were 16 and this year’s 13 (4 English 2 Oct. 2 Nov. The rest Sanskrit and Vernacular)Please do write whether this is correct. Next time you send a parcel, please to send a list with it in your own handwriting, so that we may be able to check the postal delivery. I was glad to read ‘समाजरहस्य’ (why you sent two copies of it ?) It is a very good Novel. One thing more – among the social institutions – the greatest curse of India is the system of castes. The mighty current of Hindu life is being threatened to parish in bogs and sands. It is no good saying ‘we will reduce it to four caste system first. That would and should not be. It must be swept away, root and branch. The best means to that effect is crusade against it, in all forms of literature, especially drama and novel. Every true patriot should cease to have double dealing and speak out his mind clearly and act up to it. The only care to be taken being not to pay so much attention and not to create so much fuss in this side-issue and our internal relation as to forget and hamper and thwart the Issue – our Relation with the world –but for the right adjustment of which, no internal questions can be satisfactorily solved, or solved to any substantial purpose. So, I shall like to have a number of goodly written novels, like the ‘समाजरहस्य’, which would attack this effect and unjust social curse. It had done much good in the past, but it is dead now: So let us bury it, -with tears if you like. I am glad to here that the Government is going to allow you to see me this year. Please to thank the authorities for it. But I am firmly of opinion , that dear Vahini should not be put to troubles of the voyage this year. You should come alone and when you see all the facilities or otherwise here and know the best way to bring her, then the next time you come to see me, you may bring her, and dear Mai too. I feel it a duty to forgo the inestimable pleasure of seeing those dearest once this year, for the sake of their convenience. So, please come alone this year.

It sent a thrill of delight in my heart to hear that the Indian troops were allowed to go to Europe, in their thousands to fight against the best military power in the world and that they had acquainted themselves with such splendour and were covered with military glory. Thank God ! Manliness after all is not dead yet in the land! And a funny thing! We have been trying our best to encourage foreign travel and used to congratulate ourselves if a dozen could be sent a year! And now Providence has done what we could not – thousands of Hindus, orthodox like the Gurkhas and Rajputs and reformed like the Shikhs have crossed the sea and under the Government patronage ! Now let our Pandits sit hatching over the eggs of ‘शास्त्रार्थ’ to see if foreign travel is permissible to the Hindus or not? Permissible or not, the Hindus have crossed the sea, and in crossing it they have crossed an epoch! What the crusades have done for Europe by bringing it in contact with the superior civilization of Asia, this conflict with the Europeans of our Hindu troops across the seas, will do for India – for Asia.

As for the petition, that is made for the release of Political prisoners in the Punjab we can hardly thank them sufficiently for this their charitable deed. You may be knowing by this time that some of us have already volunteered, to go to the front of the War and I am glad to inform you that Government have made a special note of it, though no answer could come as yet.

By the by , please to write of the rumour that some M.P. had asked a question in the Parliament about me, or some of us before the war broke out, be true and if so the particulars of it. Did you get the poems on Guru and Ravi?

It pained me very much to hear, that Hon. Gokhale was dead. He was after all a great patriot. True, at times, especially in panics, he used to say and do things, which he himself must have been ashamed of a few months after, to own. But then his life was dedicated to the service of motherland and there was very little personal and selfish about him. All along his life, he served Her and for the good of Her, as he saw it. How anxious I was to see him, before death parted us; and to compare notes as he had said to me in London when we saw each other for the last time. We could not agree on certain points and he said ‘well Mr. Savarkar, come! We will see each other after some six years and then would compare notes’! Maharashtra must send some one –worthier than he – to his place in councils. If every Indian could do at least as much as he did!

Next time you send books please sand the novels ‘जन्मभूमि’ and ‘गौतम’ which brother is very eager to read. I was very much afraid that owing to the invasion of France you would be unable to hear from Madam Cama- who had been ever since my coming here a second mother to you and who had so nobly and so faithfully stood by us in the darkest hour of our life . But I was very glad to be assured that she, even in the midst of this world – hubbub, remembered you and had regularly been sending letters to you. At the touch of one such faithful, noble, unshaken loving hand, one’s heart recovers its belief in Humanity-belief rudely shaken by the disappearance of the closest and by the treachery of the truest and by the indifference of the dearest. It is a pity I can not write to the dear lady and tell her How I esteem her noble life and her solicitude for the needy and the distressed- and love and long to see her once more : but as it is please to give her all my esteem and respects before you give them to any of our relatives: for what wonder they do something for us? Wonder is how she does and does so much.

While I am reading the books you sent I see that in the Telagu provinces the new life that is struggling to find expression all over India, has been sweeping over our bretheren there. The Andhra Sabha ‘आंध्रसभा’ is a great and grand movement but the question of getting that province separated from the Tamil one is not enobling. But what pained me most and what was but a natural corollary from the desire of petty provincialisms was that the national shouts were ‘आंध्र माताकी जय’! in this little thing and straw we see the direction of an ominus wind to come. This is one of the unhealthy reactions of the grand Swadeshi movement and must be corrected before it is too late. The Swadeshi connected in Bengal with the little partition question brought in this reaction. Every province wants to be separated, and shouts and invokes long life to itself! But how can the province live unless the Nation lives? They all-Maharashtra, Bengal, Madras- are great and will live long but through Her-India! So let us not say ‘आंध्र माताकी’ but ‘भारतमाताकी जय’ of whom ‘आंध्र’ is only a limb, and let us sing not ‘वंग आभार’but ‘हिंद आभार’! All provinces and petty languages instead of asking to be separated, should try to get amalgamated and remove the barriers that yet remain and destroy the confusion of tongues and not to hug it. Smaller nationalities! Is not Belgium a sufficient warning? The greatest good that the British Government has done without meaning it, is to melt and mould the disintegrating factions of our Motherland and hammer us into a one people. Now instead of trying to remove whatever stands in the way of its consummation, we are on the one hand hugging to the fetters that were the necessary price of this boon and trying to turn the very boon into a curse, on the other.

Now I think I had written all that I felt and wanted to ask about your letter and the books you sent. Next time you please to send me the books the list of which I subjoin. Instead of sending a parcel you may bring them with you if you come before September 1st If not send a parcel. Please to answer this letter as soon as you have carried the necessary communication with our friends. I am extremely glad that you could see the gentleman you refered to in your letter. I knew you would like each other very soon for birds of the same feathers gather together. Please to give my affection and best remembrance to him. I remember him every now and then. How is our dear Professor getting on ? My heart gladdens at the thought that by this time one more bird must have come back to that dear little nest after sustaining a fight through dreary deserts of burning stands, where no drop cools the thirsty heart and no dew vivifies the parched flower of hope. In his release and release of so many of them I feel as if my own partial release had come. If poor dear Sakharam too would have been there to day! Though foolish and almost dishonourable to feel he should have been living who has done better to die in such a cause – still the heart feels.

As for as we are concerned I again assure you not to be anxious about us at all. All the term –prisoners of our case had been sent back to India, and we lifers(life-transportees)only remain. As long as war is going on, I, on principle, have made up my mind not to ask for anything so as to embarrass the authorities here; and at present both of us are keeping good health and Captain-now Major Murray is superintending the jail affairs. As long as he is here, you may rest assured that nothing that evinces a personal rancour will be done or said ; no under hand pin-pricks, beyond what the regulations require. Every letter you send and every book will be duly delivered. As for as our daily life is concerned, well, it is going on in the same even way as it did last year. In a prison what happens on the first day happens always-if nothing worse happens. In fact it seems to be the essence of prison discipline to avoid all novelty, all change. Like specimen and curios in a museum –here we are each exactly in the same place and same position, bottled and labelled with the same numbers with more or less dust about us; and the guide book that I wrote to you in my last years’ letter may serve the purpose of description as long as I am here. We get up early work hardly, eat punctually – at the same time, at the same place and the same amount and kind of food prepared with same matchless prison-skill and medical care; - I read much in the time that can be spared from work and sometimes in the evening attack many flowers-now remembered only in names –and flower like themes with blank verse and then sleep. Here one thing must be said. Although it is true that prisoners are not free to do or say what they will, yet to the credit of the jail authorities it must be admitted that every one is absolutely free to dream what he likes. And I assure you I take the fullest advantage of this concession. Almost every night I tell you I break jail and out by dale and down and by tower and town go on romping till I find some one of you –some one who somewhere had been held close to my bosom! Every night I Do it but my beneficient jailors take no notice of it. You have only to wake in the jail, that is all they say.

I hope just at the end of the war you send a public petition for the release of us. The thing is this. Not only in India but even in any free and self-governing country the Government can not release political prisoners unless the Government are backed up and supported by the wish of the people to that effect. An exercise of the right of amnesty can not be made by the king or the president unless the people are willing to have the prisoners back. If Indians are willing and petitions to that effect go at the end of the war we may be released and if Indians are not willing to have us back neither the Government can release us nor it is worth while to have that release. Port Blair is willing to have me. And I am here. I have no wish to thrust myself on any people unwilling to have me back. At any rate you may ask for our being sent out of this jail just as all other prisoners-even those who had been sentenced here additionally –are allowed to go and settle on the island and bring their family here; in short, all the concessions that the prisoners get under the regulations here in force. In this we ask nothing special and this by repeated petitions from you and us both we in all probability will succeed in getting.

Last year in the letter of our dearest Vahini she had not written how the little Dhondi was? Is she married? Please to give my best love to our beloved Yamuna- how is her health? Does she read? In what class or college is my dear Balvantrao? And the other children? Give my best love and respects to my dearest elder sister in –law – whose life is a record of self –sacrifice and noble enduring and calm and silent suffering for no fault of her and for the good of others, and also to my younger Vahini whose kind remembrances of me I got last year through our Mai’s letter. I remember them and all other beloved friends every day. At every corner that my mind takes in its aimless rambles their dear image is sure to be met and then my mind is sure to stop and build a new temple of a sweet and a sad Tear and hold them there a while and worship them who made my life as it is and pray they do not forget me. Whoever allowed, may be for a minute –the right of loving and being loved by me –I worship them all in the same temple and on the same pantheon my petts and boomfriends, my comrades and chums!!

Well my dearest brother , I am glad your study of medicine is promising to be fruitful. Do not injure health for the sake of study. Let me know your weight. Now my dearest Bal with all my love and with my choicest आशिर्वादऽ to you and our dear little Vasant and our sister Mai, will you allow me to tear myself from your sweet mental communion.