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I
have just returned from a trip to the Andaman
Islands where nature has bestowed a lot of
beauty. Among so many beautiful things, stands
the Cellular Jail. This Indian Bastille of the
pre-Independence days now stands sanctified as
the symbol of India’s struggle for freedom.
India’s first war of Independence in 1857 forced
the British to search out for a suitable
overseas land where primarily the rebels,
mutineers and the criminal convicts in general
could be deported for life.
The jail looked like some giant grotesque star
fish with seven arms spread out from one central
tower. From the central tower a single guard
could supervise all the seven wings from his
vantage position. Another unique feature was the
total absence of connection between the
prisoners in the different wings. Each wing
faced the back of the other. Each cell measuring
13 and a half feet by 7 and a half feet had an
iron grill door well secured with sturdy iron
bolt and lock on a rectangular groove on the
outside of the cell wall and also a few inches
away from the entrance door making it impossible
to reach it from within. A 3 feet by 1 feet
ventilator fitted with iron rods provided some
light into cell. A 4 feet wide verandah ran all
along the front of the row of cells from end to
end of the wing and was sealed by iron railing
fixed into the arched pillars that supported the
roof of the verandah. All the seven corridors
culminated into the Central tower fixed by an
iron gate to the central entrance and exit. High
boundary walls bordered the whole compound with
the imposing administrative building at the
front. In those dark solitary dungeons, hundreds
of freedom fighters sighed their last for a
glimpse of the dawn of freedom of their
motherland
In the evening we saw the famous light and sound
show at the Cellular Jail. The narration is in
the form of a question and answer session.
Providing the answers is a very old Peepal tree,
which had managed to escape the deforestation
drive when the jail was being built, and stands
very close to the jail entrance. From what I
could make out, the great actor Om Puri had lent
his voice to the tree. In the narration, the
tyranny of the Jailor David Barry is described.
The man must have been a clone of Hitler. He
ordered, among many other inhuman forms of
torture, flogging on triangular iron frame, bar
fetters, cross bar fetters, neck ring shackle,
leg iron chains, gang chain, gunny bag uniform,
oil grinding, invalid diet, coconut coir rope
making, hanging by the leg in the sun, merciless
beating etc. The narration was so powerful that,
by the end of the program, people were brimming
with patriotism. In fact, as the show ended, the
person behind me got up and yelled "Bharat Mata
ki…", the entire crowd added a loud "Jai". It
was a great show.
The next day I went to visit the Cellular Jail
museum. The museum walls are lined with pictures
of people who had been held prisoners at the
jail. What caught my attention was a display
where a prisoner is shown tied to the triangular
iron frame and a guard is shown, with a whip in
his hand, flogging the poor guy. What struck me
here was that both the prisoner and the guard
were Indians. A brown guy flogging another brown
guy. Where was the white villain David Barry?
What was his role? He was a man sent on an
assignment which he was carrying out
mercilessly. For his own regime and his people
David Barry must have been a tough man with a
tough assignment – not a bad man. Who was the
villain then? To me it appeared that the man
with the whip was the villain – an Indian!!! Now
that was not what was described in the light and
sound show. Are we still being hypocritical and
not facing the truth? In the pre-independence
days a large chunk of the Indian population was
competing in pleasing the British and getting
titles from them. To such Indians the freedom
fighters were impractical, radical, upstart, and
if I may borrow a Hindi term, sanki people fit
to be removed from their quiet high class
societies and beaten up.
The very same population with a deeply selfish
mentality today robs and plunders India. To them
honest people are still impractical, radical,
upstart, and if I may borrow a Hindi term again,
sanki.
Today India’s biggest challenge is to change the
mentality of such selfish, unpatriotic people
who still constitute a large chunk of our
population. We all have to start with some
introspection who are we like - the man with the
whip or the freedom fighter? We can not go on
accusing some external force/person like David
Barry for all our misfortunes till eternity.
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Comments: |
The article was written beautifully.
My views on this subject are
slightly different. I’d say that the
man with the whip was another
‘sanki’ and not the ‘real villain’.
The ‘practical’ and ‘smart’ ones
never went to Andaman. They were
rarely caught and never punished in
the real sense. They were friends of
all and none. This was a class with
exceptional brains but had neither
guts nor morals. This class has
existed in all the periods
everywhere. And finally, they are
‘sanki’ as well, just that they have
their own ‘sanak’. Everyone is crazy
about something in this world; just
the level of craziness varies. -
Kumod Jha - Jan. 22, 2007
The underlying principles of life of
British India were the same as they
are today. There was greed, there
was sycophancy, there was
exploitation, there was the servile
mentality to comply and even try to
partner with the exploitation.
It is known to most that the British
came to India as traders and when
the feeding became sweet, they tried
to remove obstacles to trade. In
doing so, they realized that they
could hire local people and dress
them up in 'company uniform' and use
them as a small force to help one
king against another. Soon it dawned
upon them to get a regular army
going. Today's East India Company
has other names, but the dynamics
are the same. In the occupied land
there is no shortage of people who
will try to align themselves with
the occupiers and try to become
their agents. These, usually are the
rich people, who stand to lose their
wealth by opposing the occupier. The
freedom fighters, therefore,
naturally come from the people on
the lower economic rung of the
society. The rich basked in the
glory of being called Rai Bahadur. A
lot of poor people out to make a
living also joined the British
agenda and became the hands and feet
of both the British mentality of
greed and the Indian mentality to
coddle the British.
The Indian Policemen reveled in the
immense power they had under the
British Administration. The were the
'licensed goondas.' They used their
muscle to rape and extort poor
farmers and there was no redress as
they themselves were the 'law in
town'.
Given that there are such people in
every society, we must look at the
freedom fighters as people who would
have been seen as lawless elements
who would not obey the 'law of the
land' and would interrupt the
economy and try to throw a spanner
in the works at every occasion they
got. It is no wonder that they were
not only seen as trouble by the
British but also by the brown (so
called) elite and the brown forces
who were on British payroll.
Colonialism is plunder in disguise.
There are two ways of doing it. You
can send in your people to colonize
another land (e.g. India), or else,
you can go in, usurp power of the
existing ruler and replace him with
a tyrant who agrees to be your dog
and who will rape and plunder his
own people as long as he can stay
rich and wield power. While there
are very few of the former types of
colonies anymore, the latter are
still abundant and thriving.
The true villain, therefore, is not
so much the mercenary but the
mindset of the society that accepts
alien powers as the Masters of its
destiny. I see the same mentality
today when I see people discarding
the established and time tested
traditions of our culture to ape
broken values of other cultures
which result in the destruction of
the traditional stable society.
While I firmly believe in women's
rights, I also hold that some women
use it to justify breaking
marriages, a life of promiscuity and
single motherhood. It is a delicate
balance. While on one one end women
should not be exploited by a system
like our Traditional Indian social
system which mistreated widows and
treated women like merchandise, we
should not allow an alien system of
reckless emancipation replace it,
because it will produce horrors that
have resulted in social collapse
wherever they have been imported
from. While there should be a
measure of freedom for both men and
women, annulment of marriages should
be made very hard - especially if
young children are at risk because
of the break up. - Aarcee - Jan.
22, 2007
Your article is a masterpiece
example of excellent coordination
between brain, heart, and hands. The
words written by you really take us
virtually to the site of the most (in)famous
hell of pre-independence era. The
jail seems to be a great engineering
work done after lot of requirement
analysis.
Some funny thoughts!!! Did you
inquire whether the jail has a
mobile jammer? Did you find
country-made pistols and bombs
hidden in a corner of a cell? Did
you come across a five-star medical
ward used for the purpose of
safeguarding politicians when arrest
warrants are issued against them?
Did you see the small hole in the
walls of the prison from where the
prisoners escape on a regular basis?
I am sure you would not have found
those things there. Because that was
built by the British, despite all
the negative things, were honest in
their work and thoughts. - Ravish
Kumar, Hyderabad - Jan.
23, 2007 |
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