In the struggle for freedom...
When I visited the Cellular Jail in Port Blair, I was already aware of the atrocities and the sufferings of the freedom fighters at the hands of the British. However I wasn't prepared for the thoughts and emotions that left me numb and terribly scared. The photographs in the museum and the life like statues were a stark reminder of the hardship.
That hit me really hard and for the first time in my life, I felt as if I was travelling back in time. I wouldn't trade my freedom for a day there. I would have perhaps joined the thousands who would have preferred to be subservient to the colonial Lords. What a pity !
The dingy dark cells are not just proof of what could have happened then. They remind us of the high cost of freedom. May we never take our precious freedom for granted🙏
How cruel could the British be ? Was I ignorant of the struggle ? No I wasn't but I wasn't totally aware of the reality too. What I did not learn or know from history was playing out in front of my blurred eyes....
Heart wrenching to say the least. While the freedom fighters struggled to stay alive, other fellow Indians sold themselves to the British in order to stay alive...
We say that the freedom fighters laid down their lives fighting for the independence of Bharat, as if they did it willingly. In reality they would have wanted to live. They escaped, fled and stayed hidden. But ! Every single freedom fighter who threatened the existence of the British was hunted down, dragged out of hideouts and sent to prison at the dreaded Kala Pani. They were tortured, demotivated and forced to give up their lives. In other words, the chosen ones were killed mercilessly.
As I walked through the prison corridors, the words of the cruel jailers seemed to echo in my ears. Every action taken in the jail premises was an order for a harsh punishment. No prisoner could escape the wrath of the jailer. The construction of the jail itself is proof of how British feared the courageous freedom fighters. Even if a prisoner managed to scale the walls to escape, there was no land in sight for miles and no means to cross the waters. Surrounded by sea on all sides, the island was the perfect place to keep the revolutionaries away from the mainland...
While the jail housed the revolutionaries who existed in dire conditions, the other parts of Port Blair and nearby islands were designed as residential townships offering luxury and recreational facilities for the British and their families. Neither the revolutionaries nor the Britishers live to tell the saga but the ruins of the buildings, clubs, churches paint a grimy picture of the colonial rule that had opulence all around with Kala Pani in the centre ..
Personally, I don't have any grouse against names of places. However, if you encroach my home and name it as you please, I will fight and seize the opportunity to make it mine again and will rename it also. This is the story in a nutshell of how entire Bharat was encroached. Long after independence, finally, as a mark of the untold sacrifices that lead to the freedom of Bharat, Port Blair was renamed as Sri Vijayapuram and rightly so....
Seemingly scary beyond imagination, an authority that becomes a dictatorship will be resisted in one's own country ruled by one's own people. However, when those at the helm are a foreign power and the subjugated, the real owners of the country, the resistance becomes a freedom movement. In such a scenario, when almost the entire country supports the fight for freedom, the civil disobedience movement becomes more terrifying than the rule of the dictatorship itself....
Punishments were the only means to break the morale of the freedom fighters. By ensuring that fellow Indians executed and implemented the cruel orders, the Britishers were carrying out a psychological warfare. However the world including the British were unaware that a silent rebellion leading to freedom would begin in the jail itself...
Not all sacrifices are known to the world. Not all names are glorified except as a memory in the form of photographs in the jail museum & in the cells. It's been 6 decades since independence & only now the common Indian knows a few facts about Shri Veer Damodar Savarkar. Inspite of hustling tourists & the chatter, there is an eerie silence inside the cells & the long corridors, each cell now symbolic of the sacrifice & pain.
An iron grill door at the entrance of each cell fortified with a double way iron long handle latch, a narrow window at the top of each cell & a tiny opening on the outer wall that enables passing a plate with unpalatable food are the only connect to the outside world....
The visit to the cellular jail was an eye opener. Today we live in a free country and yet complain over small difficulties. I shudder to even imagine the plight of the prisoners wearing coarse unwearable cloths, toiling day and night in chains and fetters. Their hands bled & yet they had no choice but to continue to remove the fibre from coconuts & work manually to produce oil at the mill inside the jail premises. They were flogged & thrashed to keep working until they dropped dead or became unconscious. The most severe of punishments entailed hanging unto death. The intention of the colonial government was to serve a stern warning to the revolutionaries & prevent Bharat from becoming free.....
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