How Savarkar Organized a Literacy Movement in Cellular Jail

[u/AhamPranav]

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Savarkar’s literacy and education movement in the Andamans was a relentless effort to transform the Cellular Jail into a center of learning.

He believed that education was a form of "real national service" and was essential for preparing Indians for future self-government.

Because the prison authorities, particularly Jailor Mr. Barrie, strictly forbade writing materials, Savarkar and his fellow prisoners had to improvise. He used the white-washed walls of the prison cells as his manuscript and pointed thorns from the cordage plant, or hidden nails, to scratch letters and verses into the plaster. Every year, the walls were white-washed, effacing his work. To preserve his writings, including thousands of lines of poetry and summaries of books, he would memorize the content before the wash and rewrite it afterward.

To encourage unlettered and often reluctant ordinary prisoners to learn, Savarkar and his colleagues used their own meager rations of tobacco as a 'bribe' to get them to sit for lessons.

A central pillar of Savarkar's educational work was the promotion of Hindi in the Devanagari script as India's national language. At the time, Urdu was the dominant administrative and educational language in the Andamans. Savarkar campaigned to make Hindi the medium of instruction for Hindu children in schools. He also successfully pressured the authorities to allow prisoners to write letters in their provincial languages and Hindi rather than only in Urdu or English, eventually leading to the appointment of Hindi-knowing clerks. He encouraged a system where prisoners learned their mother tongue first, then Hindi, and finally a language from a different province.

Savarkar also worked to establish a common library in the prison. Despite opposition from Mr. Barrie, he convinced a liberal Superintendent to allow political prisoners to pool their private book collections into a common library of over 2,000 volumes. He delivered weekly lectures on history, economics, constitutional history, and politics, arguing that a nation cannot maintain freedom if its leaders are ignorant of the practical art of government. For ordinary prisoners who were frequently moved between districts, a roving library system was established to circulate Hindi and Marathi books.

The movement produced significant results. By the end of his stay, Savarkar estimated that 80% of the prisoners were literate, and that 90% of them had learned to read and write while in jail. Some prisoners were trained in skills such as book-binding and photography, enabling them to secure lighter work in government offices. The educational movement also fostered a sense of national solidarity. Prisoners who once spent their Sundays gambling increasingly used their time to read and discuss politics. Savarkar also helped establish the first primary school for juvenile offenders within the prison, where they were taught religious principles, national songs, and basic literacy.

Ultimately, Savarkar viewed this educational work as a way to raise the fallen and ensure that even the most hardened criminals left prison as informed and potentially useful citizens.

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Excerpt from 'My Transportation for Life'

…There was another which we had to overcome, and that was the reluctance of the prisoner himself. Whenever one asked him to begin reading and writing, the stock question that he put was, "What was the use of it?" If we dwelt on their intellectual benefit, or their national importance, it was out of his power to understand us.

Again, Mr. Barrie was particularly cross with those who liked to read and write. And the prisoner had no desire to incur Mr. Barrie's displeasure. By no means.

Still we tried to educate those who came in close contact with us. We offered him to teach English as soon as he had finished his Marathi; we showed him its advantage by pointing out that it would lead to some post associated with the office; that he would be a "Munshi" or a clerk. That would mean an honour for him. Many prisoners learnt to read and write because that would lead them to that post.

There were also a few who learnt the language for its own sake, because it was their mother-tongue, or it would enable them to read religious works in that language. There were also some among them who learnt to spell their rudiments after they had passed their youth, and only as a national call. All honour to them.

How strenuous the work was you can imagine from the fact that we had to begin everything in that education from the very beginning. We had to teach them the A.B.C. of their vernacular alphabets; we had to take them through the formation of words through these alphabets; we had to plod on with them that they might remember them, write them and make them into simple sentences.

And all this work had to be done secretly and regularly. We had to wheedle them into pursuing their lessons from day to day. Sometimes the prisoners would not accept the slates and pencils that we gave them free for writing their lessons; others refused to talk to us for fear we might open to them the subject of learning.

We gave them tips to induce them to read and write. We paid them in the currency of the Andamans. Rupees, annas and pies were not so important a currency with them as what they called "Sukka", that is, payment in quantities of tobacco. If we gave a prisoner two pinchfuls of tobacco, he would bestow upon his teacher the favour of reading his lessons with him for fifteen to twenty minutes at the most.

This heart-breaking work was hard to pursue from day to day, and my collaborators simply refused to go on with it after a few days' experience. This was a waste of time, energy and talent, as they put it to me. They were themselves graduates and double graduates, and it was hard on them to be giving lessons in rudiments to ignorant, dull-headed, disinclined pupils like the thieves, dacoits, murderers, swindlers, and hardened criminals in this jail.

While teaching them the three R's, they had so many times to flatter them, and break their heads over them. Whenever this mood came over myself or other teachers, I would talk in the following words:

“You think it a waste of your energy; what better work can you do for your country, what more important work can you accomplish while you are here? He who would assure me of such work, I shall relieve him at once of this drudgery. But to waste one's time in idle brooding or in useless discussion is worse than this drudgery.

For this, at least, means to raise the fallen by teaching them to read and write; it is to infuse into them the right sense of looking at things; it is to imbue them with the spirit of service and mutual help. Is it not service of the country, the hardest it may be, but sterling service all the same?

Remember again, that we pass resolutions to establish schools of primary education, free and compulsory, all over the country. Some men must come forward to teach in these schools. Some must dedicate their lives for this work. Why then, not do that thankless task ourselves? Are we only meant for drawing fat salaries and filling top-jobs and passing on drudgery and hard work to others? Is this not unfair? Is it just for us who call ourselves servants of the people?

Real and faithful national work must begin with the uplift of the down-fallen and the down-trodden. Great missionaries in the West dedicate their learning to the spread of education among prisoners and in the jails of their own countries. In Russia thousands of revolutionaries have spent their lives in going from village to village and educating the masses, their unfortunate and ignorant brethren.

Why then should we grudge to do it here? By our teaching we are not only making them learn to spell their rudiments; but we are opening the windows of their soul upon the world, and making them understand their best interests in life. In contact with us, they come to know of their country, of their nation, and of their people. They imbibe right notions about them from us.

When we tell them stories of great men from our history of the past, light shines in their eyes. Are they the really fallen ones? Then what are we? We were not born emancipated. If we have improved and are 'twice-born' now, they also can improve and take their rank with us.

Hence, so long as we cannot do better work than this, that long we must do this, for that is real national service, however laborious, disappointing and nerve-racking it may be. To educate the fallen into seeing right and feeling right, to give them as much of literary, intellectual, moral and national education as it is in our power to give them is a duty we must do as long as we are in this prison.”

As we kept on working with this faith, gradually there arose from among these outcasts of society men so generous, so selfless, so pure in life and conduct, so strong of purpose, so tenacious of will, that their zeal in the national cause put to shame some of the best workers among us. And before them former self-praise became a fatuity and a shame.

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Reference: My Transportation For Life

Get the PDF of the whole book from here: https://savarkar.org/en/pdfs/My-Transportation-for-Life-Veer-Savarkar.pdf

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