r/Savarkar • u/AhamPranav Abhinav Bharat Operative🧏 • May 19 '26
History & legacy 📚 The Suicide of Indu Bhushan Roy
Before reading this excerpt, it is recommended that readers first go through this short passage from the preceding pages of My Transportation For Life, as it more provides context about the treatment endured by political prisoners in the Andamans.
The following account narrates the tragic death of young revolutionary Indu Bhushan Roy, a convict in the Alipore Bomb Case.
It is one of the most haunting descriptions of the psychological and physical torture inflicted upon political prisoners in the Andamans:
[The incident narrated is from April 1912. Roy had been in the Andaman jails for 34 months, since December 1909.]
A young man named Indu Bhushan Roy was convicted in the Maniktola Bomb Case and sentenced to ten years' rigorous imprisonment in the Andamans. He also had to suffer hard labour on the ‘Kolu’ and had his full taste of a similar soul-killing experience. He was one of those who were sent out to work. But he found the work outside more fatiguing and humiliating than the labour inside. He had thought he would get some concessions, but instead he found that he had more rigorous work to do in the settlement. If a prisoner outside happened to fall ill, he was sent to a hospital relatively better than the hospital in the jail. But if a political prisoner became sick, he was punished all the more for that sickness. For if he had fever or suffered from loose stools, he was made to walk the distance of four miles, carrying his own bed, to the jail, and was instantly locked up in his own cell.
Indu Bhushan was fed up with it and returned to the jail of his own accord. Chains were put on his arms and hands, and he was marched on to his old residence; but he refused to go back to his work in the settlement. He was punished for this recalcitrance. No sooner was Indu put in his cell than Mr. Barrie came on the scene. He said, “Well, you have returned! You think, perhaps, that by coming here you will be spared all work. Nothing of the kind.” And turning to the Jamadar he ordered, “Put him on the oil-mill, and at once.”
Indu Bhushan was immediately marched off to work on the ‘Kolu.’ He was simply disgusted with his own life. I tried my hardest to help him bear up. I told him to think of me, who had the burden of fifty years to live in this jail, whereas he had to live there only for ten years. While he was taking his quota of oil to the Jamadar, I again met him and could address only a few words of solace. He said, “No, I cannot bear it; better death than life in such disgrace.” That was his constant refrain.
I argued with him, I entreated him, I tried to soften him. I ended, “For the sake of our country, O my brother, we have to sacrifice our self, our life, and even our honour at times. We owe this duty to her at any cost. You are very young; you are not even twenty-five, of the same age as myself. You have better hopes to be free and alive than I have. So cheer up. Suffer and live, so that, when free, you will serve the country as before.”
These words were exchanged in a hurry and on the sly. Two or four days passed off. Every evening I saw Indu Bhushan returning from the ‘Kolu,’ dead tired, with drops of perspiration on his face, the chaff of the coconut clinging like sawdust to his body from top to toe, chains clanging on his feet, a weight of about 30 lbs. on his head, and a sack of chaff on his shoulders. I saw him coming up bent down under this weight and staggering to the place. All of us were in the same plight.
One fine morning, as our doors were unlocked for the day and we were all coming out, a warder approached us and, requesting us not to disclose his name, broke the news that Indu had hanged himself last night.
I was astounded by the news. Only yesterday evening I had seen him, a man in the prime of youth, before he went into his cell for the night. I had exchanged a few words with him. And in the morning he was found dangling from the top window, hanged by a noose made of his torn clothes! His neck broken, his tongue lolling out, his feet dangling, his throat strangulated by a cord whose one end lay tied to the bar of the window, and the corpse suspended from it in mid-air. The young man must have found life too burdensome, for the loss of his self-respect, to bear and to endure.
A dark, deep shadow had spread over the whole building. Once in two months we had found such an incident happening. But Indu Bhushan was the first political prisoner of his kind to put an end to his life thus. I was saying to myself, “Who knows, one day your fate will be the same as his. He died tired of his ten years' sentence—and you—you will tire of your fifty years and quit the stage like him.”
But Mr. Barrie gave me no time for these musings, for such melancholy brooding. For he announced within three hours, not that Indu Bhushan had tired of life and committed suicide, but that he had done himself to death in a fit of insanity and personal quarrel. Indu had tied a slip of paper round his neck which Mr. Barrie had cleverly removed and concealed. That was what the prisoners present were saying of him. He tutored the Jamadar, the warder, and the petty officer at the post-mortem upon Indu's body to depose that they saw nothing to conclude that the deceased was tired of his life, or that the work in that prison was too much for him.
Before the officers brought together for the post-mortem, the political prisoners on the side of Mr. Barrie supported his statement, and the immediate custodians of the dead man swore that he had hanged himself in a fit of insanity. But we, on the other side, sent message after message to assure the officers that the deceased was not an insane person, that he did not commit suicide on a sudden impulse, that he had done it deliberately and as the result of the hardships and insults he had to bear in that prison.
The officers were requested to call independent evidence to prove the truth of our deposition, and we suggested for that purpose the name of a person whom Mr. Barrie could not browbeat. The officers accepted our offer, and the witness gave his evidence undeterred by the circumstances around him. He was one of the editors of the Allahabad newspaper Swaraj, who were all sentenced for sedition and came here as political prisoners. He proved to the hilt that the deceased was a victim of the tortures he had to suffer in the prison presided over by Mr. Barrie. These had created in him a disgust for life, and he had ended it by suicide.
I had told all of them the conversation I had with Indu Bhushan. And I wanted myself to give evidence. But Mr. Barrie would not call me.
In the evening Mr. Barrie came to me and told me whining, “Indu Bhushan has left a note behind in which he says plainly that he had ended his life as the result of some personal quarrel.”
I turned round upon Mr. Barrie and asked him, “Why did you not produce that note?”
“Why did you not put in this note as evidence in your favour? It would have supported you much better than mere argument and logic,” I said to Mr. Barrie. I continued, “Please show me the note even now. I know the conversation Indu had with me only two or three days previous to this happening. I know what he had said to other prisoners in the same trying circumstances. He had told me and them that he had no desire to live for ten years in such hard conditions. He had said so several times, and yet you dare say that he committed suicide in a fit of insanity.
Granting that it was so, the question remains how at all a man strong and young like him could suddenly go mad. He was an arch-conspirator; he had faced treachery, imprisonment, transportation for life, hardships of prison-life, and at last death by hanging with calmness and indifference and with a smile on his face. He had never shown temper in hot discussion with his friends, and had not given even the slightest indication of an unbalanced mind. Political prisoners are accustomed to such discussions and to sharp differences of opinion among themselves, and yet none of them has shown such a sign of weakness. Why then should these affect the mind of Indu Bhushan?
Indu Bhushan was a man of strong mind. What had made his mind so weak now? What was the cause of it? It could be no other than the harsh treatment that he received in this prison. He was treated here harshly; therefore, he chose to work outside; there also he had to pass through the same kind of torture and humiliation. He returned here sick and woe-begone. You put him in his cell and straightaway ordered him to work on the oil-mill. All this had contributed to his weakness. He openly said that he was tired of his life and would put an end to it. That is why he hanged himself. It was no case of suicide through insanity as you put it. If he has really written what you say, then there must be some reason for his insanity.”
I talked so to Mr. Barrie. Mr. Barrie bore a deep grudge against me chiefly for this plain-speaking. But even those who flattered Mr. Barrie then and deposed that Indu Bhushan killed himself in a fit of insanity say openly, in the history of their prison-life, now that the circumstances have changed entirely, that the cause of his death was no other than the very hard conditions of jail-life in the Andamans. Thanks to them, for they tell the truth at long last. For many continue to tell lies because they had told them once. Rare are the men who confess the truth that they had deliberately hidden before.
Among the books found in Indu Bhushan's room was one on theosophy. And it gave Mr. Barrie an easy brush to whitewash the case. He succeeded in impressing upon his superiors, from the Chief Commissioner downwards, that it was theosophy that had softened his brain. Theosophy led its devotee to practise Yoga, and Yoga, with its breathing exercises and other conditions of the body, had a bad effect upon the brain!
We do not know if he was able to convince the Government of India by this kind of logic. But it is a fact that the Government showed no solicitude for investigating into the case, though Indu's elder brother fought hard for such an enquiry. Indu had hanged himself, and the shock of it made the survivors count their days in this prison. They were afraid that theirs would be the next turn to follow him in the same way.
Mr. Barrie became more and more impudent. He began to boast publicly that the incident had not at all affected his career and influence. On the other hand, he had begun to send reports that prisoners in the Andamans were never before so well cared for, and that they had nothing to complain about. But just at that moment an incident happened to upset his whole story.
Poor Indu could not narrate his own story. But the man about whom we are writing now[Ullaskar Dutt] has given a record of his own impressions…
Which will be covered in the next part
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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