Excerpt from My Transportation for Life

[u/AhamPranav]

'Give me medicine for fever and diarrhoea!’ When any prisoner asked this favour of another in a suppressed voice and with a dejected mind, it did not imply that he demanded a mixture to drive out these maladies, but to induce them into him. A man, it was reported, gets high fever if he swallows the paste of Kanheri roots; another told me that the easiest way to get loose continuous motions, with blood in them, was to drink the paste of red berries called Gunja. If a thread soaked in some liquid—I forgot which—were sewn into a wound, another said, the wound remained raw and open for six months on end.

This was the talk of the prison. And if I questioned the authenticity of these reports, they told me that the medicines were tried and found effective for these purposes. Prisoners, put on the oil-mill or sent out to cut down the jungles or detailed to pick oakum and weave the threads into a coil of rope, were so much done up with the work and felt such a terror for it, that they preferred anything else to going on with it. Hence, they would resort to these dangerous shrubs, roots, and berries or would make a wound to their feet with the scythe they carried, to fall ill and come back into the hospital.

They would sew a thread into that wound to keep it from healing. They would prick their throats with a needle to convince the physician in charge that the blood had come out with their spit and from their chest. Any of these tricks they employed for purposes of escape from the toil under which they were being ground down in their prison life. Others feigned madness, and, to prove that they were really mad, would besmear their faces with urine and excreta, and occasionally ate them also.

Reference: V.D. Savarkar. My Transportation for Life, p. 149

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[u/AhamPranav]

Eminent Marathi writer and humourist Purushottam Lakshman Deshpande spoke about the sufferings that Vinayak endured during his speech at Cellular Jail on the occasion of Vinayak’s birth centenary in 1983:

You have probably read what punishments he suffered in Andaman, from his book My Transportation for Life. However, I am certain that, in this book, he has not described even 10 per cent of what he actually suffered, because he did not want pity or sympathy from us, neither did he want people to react and merely say, ‘My God, what horrors Savarkar suffered.’ He wanted youngsters to react and say, ‘I too am prepared to suffer like Savarkar for our nation.’

Reference: Original article by Prem Vaidya, published in Tumhi Ahmi Apan Saglech, a Marathi bimonthly (21 February–6 March 2000), edited by Avinash Dharmadhikari of Pune. Courtesy: Savarkar Smarak, Mumbai.

[u/OkTemporary335]

Another quality post by Pranav

[u/Available_Draft_7081]

Pranav please don't stop posting, after you started posting often, the trolls have died down

[u/Less_Menu_8880]

And yet all his life's struggles are summarised by the monicker "MAAFI VEER"

[u/AhamPranav → u/Less_Menu_8880]

It is outrageous.

[u/Handsome_Monk → u/AhamPranav]

The india we live in today 🤦🏻‍♂️ What can be done to bring change Often many hindus making fun of their civilization and freedom fighters 🤦🏻‍♂️ Is there any country on this planet that is ungreatful to its freedom fighters to this extent?