The Heroes of Cellular Jail; Justice SN Aggarwal; Rupa Publications.
Justice SN Aggarwal has branched out as a full time author and historian, post retirement from the Punjab and Haryana High Court, chronicling the contribution of fiery revolutionaries and the horrors of the Cellular Jail, also dubbed the Indian Bastille by Netaji Bose, besides highlighting the Himalayan blunders committed by some of the ‘leaders’ of our freedom struggle. He considers his posting to the Andaman Islands as the highlight of his judicial career.
Justice Agarwal recalls an official letter being circulated by the Government of India to all the High Courts, inviting applications for the post of judicial secretary, to be based in the far off Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Justice Aggarwal duly received a copy of the letter, along with other members of the subordinate courts. But the thought of relocating to the distant shores did not appeal to him. When the missive had to be reissued in the absence of any takers, he had made up his mind to apply having heard that it was a developed city.
During the UPSC interview, asked why he had opted for Port Blair, after being well settled in Punjab, the young judge said that he wanted to be on the very soil hallowed by the presence of revolutionaries, who drove the last nail into the coffin of the British Empire. The response clinched his selection out of 26 candidates. He joined in May 1990, required to look after the court cases, as a judicial secretary, besides serving as the ex-officio inspector general of prisons and secretary of the Legislative Council.
The Morarji Desai government had declared the Cellular Jail as a national memorial in 1979. Four of the original seven wings were demolished after being hit by an earthquake in 1941. Mrs Gandhi wanted to raze the remaining wings in order to raise a hospital on the site. One of them was still being used as a jail. Alarmed by her decision, ex-revolutionaries, under the banner of Ex-Andaman Prisoners for Independence, opposed the obliteration of what had come to be known as ‘Kala Pani,’ symbolizing their defiance of British Crown, compelling the PM to reverse her decision.
As the new judicial secretary and IG Prisons, he took VIP delegations around the Cellular Jail,’ pointing out Veer Savarkar’s cell, secured with a double lock. It stood on the third floor, from which he could watch political prisoners being led to the gallows on the ground floor! What harrowing torments would he have undergone is beyond imagining. Atal Behari Vajpayee, once leading a delegation of MPs to the jail, remarked jocularly that Congress ministers should also spend a day in its cells. Justice Aggarwal recalls being horrified by some of the exhibits, reminiscent of the bestial treatment of political prisoners.
In October 1990, during the launch of a Light and Sound program at the venue, one of the many surviving rebels, invitees to the event along with the families and descendants of their late compatriots, told the lieutenant governor (LG) that common criminals should not be housed in the same Cellular Jail. It would amount to a sacrilege of what stood as a shrine to their sacrifices and incarceration. How could they ever forget the humiliation of being served gruel by hardened criminals, as drops from their sweating, unwashed bodies often mingled with the diluted concoction, full of dead insects and stones? The LG, as the chief guest, made a note of their objections.
The young judicial officer, who witnessed the exchange, returned to his office, shaken by the experience. He asked his staff whether common convicts could be shifted to another location, in order to protect the honour of revolutionaries. Told that it could be done, Mr Aggarwal approached the LG requesting finance to construct the new jail. Following assurances that funds would be forthcoming, he inspected the site the same day with the chief engineer, to finalize construction. After the completion, notification and inauguration of the new jail by the LG, the prisoners were shifted there.
Justice Aggarwal recalls observing open spaces on either side of the corridor of Cellular Jail also known as the ‘Black Terror.’ Upon entry, he writes, the prisoners were made to sit under the branches of a tree that stood to the right, where they were harangued by jail superintendent Barry. The sadistic jailor would loftily declare that only two gods existed, one in the heavens above and another upon earth, meaning himself. He warned warders that the slightest infringement of his orders would invite severe penalties such as flogging prisoners.
When he met President APJ Abdul Kalam in 2007 to present his book, ‘The Heroes of Cellular Jail,’ the latter pointedly asked him about the tree, mentioned in the previous paragraph. Later, the book so moved Prof Krishna Kumar, the then director of NCERT that he requested Justice Agarwal to bring out an abridged version, for senior school children. He felt they must know about the contribution of revolutionaries and prescribed it as a supplementary reading. The horrifying presence of the two exhibits, namely the flogging stand and the yoke that harnessed prisoners in place of bullocks to extract oil, was what prompted him to pen down his experiences.
The 45-minute Light and Sound show, organized every evening in the prison’s central courtyard, is conducted in English and Hindi. It virtually recreates the abominable conditions under which revolutionaries existed, namely starvation diets, solitary confinement and fiendish punishments such as coir twisting, oil grinding, backbreaking labour for long hours besides, whippings on the rack, etc. Even then the rebels, shackled in chains, remained as defiant as ever, sitting on hunger strikes and protests, communicating through coded taps on the walls of their cells. However, the travails of Veer Savarkar occupy pride of place in the show, whose fierce patriotic fervour never bowed down before the oppressors, but continues to inspire future generations, one which moved Justice Agarwal to tears whenever he watched the program.
Documenting the horrors of Cellular Jail in ‘The Tale of My Exile—Twelve Years in the Andaman,’ Barindra Ghosh, Savarkar’s co-prisoner, recalls his experiences: “It will unhinge any man even in ordinary circumstances, not to speak of a prisoner, to be so hunted and insulted all the 24 hours. It is quite an inevitable eventuality that many should try to find release through suicide. Those only whose hearts have turned to stone can bury their pain and count their days in the hope of a future.”
Initially only prisoners with life terms were to be deported to the Cellular Jail after it came into being in 1906. But then the reverberations of the Alipore Bomb Case in 1908, which shook the foundations of the British Empire, forced a change in the policy. Although Sri Aurobindo, named as the prime accused, was freed after a year, others involved in the conspiracy, including his younger sibling Barindra Ghosh, associated with Anushilan Samiti, ‘the nursery of revolutionaries,’ were sentenced to five or seven-year terms. They were the very first lot to arrive in the ‘Kala Pani’ in 1909. Justice Aggarwal recalls defusing an explosive situation during his two-year tenure, using tact and legal acumen. For instance, the Calcutta High Court’s quashing of quota in education incensed the residents of Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The education secretary, fearing riots in Port Blair, urged the LG to restore reservation, only to be told that he would first have to consult the judicial secretary. Justice Aggarwal recalls that soon after receiving the file, the bureaucrat virtually pressurized him to say yes. “I reminded him of the judgment and the possibility of his committing contempt. I consulted my deputy secretary, law officer and re-examined the Calcutta High Court decision and advised residents to file a review petition. The court considered their plea and restored quota. The LG was happy with my decision.”
Sudip Talukdar is an author, strategic affairs columnist and former senior editor