Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

"Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage"

–Lovelace

IT was as it were a wheel within a wheel, a circle within a circle, a play within a play.

The comedy of our trial was being staged within the world-play, and on the court-room stage itself we the undertrial prisoners had been doing our little private drama. The stage was set in the room of the Alipore Sessions Court. One corner of the room was fenced off so as to form a square enclosure but with wire netting that enabled us to see and breathe. They had also left a small passage through the netting for our entrance and exit, and a sentry had been posted with arms to watch that the tigers and wild beasts did not break through the cage. Inside, a few benches had been laid where we might sit, for we could not obviously be kept standing the whole day. We were some thirty-five in all. They used to take us from Alipore Jail in a carriage – by carriage I mean a horse-drawn vehicle, for motor-cars had not yet come. As we left jail, they would handcuff us in two's, the right hand of one being tied to the left hand of the other with the same pair of handcuffs. The handcuffs were removed before we entered our cage in the courtroom.

As the proceedings began in court, we would take our

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seats. But the court proceeded in its own way and we went on in ours. The pleaders and barristers and witnesses and spectators were all engrossed in the subject matter of the case. The barristers pleaded, the witnesses gave their depositions, the court made comments, everything went on as is usual in a court of law. But we remained perfectly neutral and indifferent as if it did not concern us at all. Our interests were elsewhere. We had come to sit together forming separate groups of four or five according to our respective tastes and temperaments. We could of course move from one group to another as and when we liked. Our topics of discussion ranged over all manner of subjects: religion and spirituality, literature and science, our work and our future, all this came within our purview. Our discussions sometimes grew so loud and hot that Judge Beachcroft – he had been contemporaneous with Sri Aurobindo at Cambridge – would shout at us like a schoolmaster, "Less noise there, less noise there!" If that did not stop all the noise, then he had to make this threat, "Unless you stop, your tiffin will stop." That was a deadly blow and made us perfectly still. For the tiffin they served us in court was our chief meal in the whole day, for its quantity and quality were such as to make it a charming oasis in that Sahara of jail. This tiffin came to us from outside, from friends and relatives and well-wishers. It included such items as luchis, potatoes and fritters and sweets. Once we had a taste of all this, it was no wonder that the jail rations came to be despised and grew untouchable.

In the midst of all this, Sri Aurobindo used to sit apart in his little corner. But we could approach him if anyone had anything to ask. One day we arranged a "general meeting", that is, requested him to give us a talk – of course in the court-room itself and during the proceedings! The court would go on and we would go on with our "meeting". Sri Aurobindo agreed to speak and he chose as his subject, "Nationalism and the Three Gunas (Psychological Types)."

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Afterwards, on coming out of jail, he wrote out the substance of this speech and had it published in one of his papers. It has since been included in his Bengali work, Dharma O Jatiyata.

Sri Aurobindo had to devote a great deal of his time in jail to his counsel, Chittaranjan Das, for whatever he had to say had to be given in writing. I found they kept him supplied with foolscap sheets and a pencil in the court room itself, and he went on wrting out his statements there. He wrote quite a few pages every day. In these statements he had to explain in lengthy detail his ideas and ideals, the aims and policy of the Bandemataram and Yugantar papers. Chittaranjan included all that in his speeches in court. Could the original manuscripts be recovered, they would be precious documents today.

One day I mentioned to him that I had not had a chance to read English poetry for a long time and would like to have some. Could he help me? The very next day, he wrote out a new poem and handed it to me. As he had no paper to write it on, he had scribbled out the lines along the margins of an old letter! I was particularly impressed by the last two lines; of the rest I do not recall anything now. I need hardly add that the poem is now among the lost treasures.

While on the subject of Sri Aurobindo's writings in jail, I cannot help divulging a secret, namely, that he had written a whole series of essays on the subject of the bomb. The terrorists had been subjected to bitter attacks in the press and they had been falsely accused of all manner of things. It was as if Sri Aurobindo took up his pen to defend them against these accusations. In this series of four essays he discussed in detail the cult of the bomb. I can still recall the titles: (I) The Message of the Bomb, (2) The Morality of the Bomb, (3) The Psychology-of the Bomb, (4) The Policy of the Bomb. The series was not completed, but what was written could serve the purpose very well. The writings had been left in my custody and I passed them out of jail to a

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friend of mine. But in order to save them from the vigilant eyes of the police and such every-day hazards as a house-search, this friend of mine had them shoved inside a hollow bamboo stem and buried underground. When he looked for them again after a little while, he found they had been reduced to a dust heap, thanks to the white ants' benign touch.

Let me then give out another secret in this connection. Just as Sri Aurobindo had taken up his pen – or shall we say his pencil? – on behalf of the bomb, similarly Nivedita at a later date once took up the cause of Swadeshi dacoits. The ideas and motives of these patriots, what impelled them to take up this particular line were explained with such fine understanding and sympathy in Nivedita's writing that it read almost like poetry. Here too the manuscript had come to my hands and was in my custody. That was about the time when Sri Aurobindo on coming out of jail had taken up his work again and started the two weeklies, the English Karmayogin and the Bengali Dharma. At that time, Nivedita maintained rather close contacts with Sri Aurobindo and ourselves. She used to write for the Karmayogin, and when Sri Aurobindo went into retirement, it was she who edited the last few issues of the paper almost single-handed, with the sole exception of news-items. She continued all the features which Sri Aurobindo had begun. Thus she too wrote a few "Conversations" on the lines of Sri Aurobindo's "Conversations of the Dead". I translated them into Bengali and have included them in my Mriter Kathopakathan (Conversations of the Dead) in Bengali.

While in jail, we had the good fortune to read some unpublished writings of Sri Aurobindo's. Each of us had been furnished by the authorities with a printed brochure containing a report of the exhibits – that is to say, all the documents: letters, notebooks, etc. – which concerned us in that case. These included portions of an unfinished article from Sri Aurobindo's notebook, entitled, "What is Extremism, Nationalism?"

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But there was another article, one that was ready for the editorial columns of the Bandemataram and was to be published the next day; but instead of going to the Bandemataram office, it found its way into the hands of the police as a result of the arrests. This article was so beautiful and perfect from the point of view of both style and substance that I read it over and over again and committed it to memory and would often repeat it aloud when I found myself alone. Hear how it begins, with what calm and majestic periods! I record them here not from the book but from memory:

"Ages ago there was a priest of Baal who thought himself commissioned by the god to kill all who did not bow the knee to him... At last, a deliverer came and slew the priest and the world had rest..."

How simple the words, almost all monosyllabic (except five) – how easy in manner! Absolutely unadorned and still most effective! The movement is that of an arrow, strong and firm and straight. There is an epic quality about it, what Matthew Arnold calls the "grand style simple." This piece fortunately has not been lost; it has found a place in one of Sri Aurobindo's works, in his The Doctrine of Passive Resistance, under the heading, "The Morality of Boycott." You might read it for yourselves. You will be delighted, I can assure you.

Now I am going to divulge to you yet another secret, perhaps the most important of all, concerning our life in jail. I have said that I had Sri Aurobindo's essays on the bomb slipped out of jail by handing them over to a friend. But how was this done? By what means did we carry on this kind of secret interchange with the outside world? How we could manage to import pistols into jail remained a major headache for the police. The police invented so many theories and there was no end to the conjectures indulged in by the public.

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They must have been packed in biscuit tins, or in the bellies of fish, or in jack-fruit, and what not. Finally, the Police Chief could contain himself no longer and decided to ask Kanai. Kanai was already under sentence of death and was biding his time. "Now that all is over," said the Police Chief "where is the harm if you confess it? Why not show some courage and tell us where you found the pistol?" Kanai grew serious and said in measured tones, "It is the spirit of Khudiram who gave me the revolver." Khudiram had been hanged for his attempt on the life of Kingsford.

Well, let me now explain how the pistols came. They came precisely the way Sri Aurobindo's writings went. When the police found that we were not such ferocious beasts after all, they gave us permission to have a chance sometimes of meeting our friends and relatives. These meetings took place in a room next to the entrance through the main gate of the jail. They erected a partition of iron bars through the middle of the room. On one side of this barrier stood the visitors and friends and we stood on the other: No doubt there were some sentries about, but they did not particularly bother to watch, for on the whole there had grown up an amount of confidence in our good faith. But it wets very easy to pass on anything across this barrier, for with a shawl or heavy chuddar on, one could easily touch the person on the other side of the bars – out of an excess of feeling, one would normally imagine. I remember how my uncle once burst into tears on meeting me in this manner. Anyhow, the pair of revolvers used by Kanai and Satyen had changed hands through the bars in this manner.

I referred just now to our good faith. In fact our laughter and fun, our mirth and play, and our sweet simplicity had astonished them all. We had a Court Inspector, an elderly Muslim gentleman, who would almost burst into tears as he looked on us. "How dare you laugh and play?" he used to say, "you have not the least idea of the terror you have to face. You do not know what kind of life it is in the Andamans.

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You are not the only ones who read the Gita. I too have gone through the book repeatedly and still read it." For this show of sympathy, the gentleman had to suffer punishment. His promotion was stopped or perhaps he was dismissed from the service. The man who was captain of the English guard used to say, "You are strange specimens. You look so tender and soft, and so simple and sweet in your manner! How could you ever commit such heinous crimes? I have lived in Ireland and have seen the Irish patriots, I have had to deal with them. But they were poles apart from you in their looks and their manner. They were harsh and rude and hard; one could know at once what kind of people they were." Most of us were boys and young men of 16 to 20, except for a few like Barin, Upen and Hrishikesh who were of about the same age, all nearing thirty. But within the very precincts of jail we made them understand how one "softer than the flower", mrduni kusumadapi, could turn into something "harder than diamond", vajradapi kathorani. I refer here to the assassination of our good friend Naren Gosain the approver. That makes another drama.

I have said we used to keep ourselves fully preoccupied with our own discussions, as we sat within our cage in the court-room, and never paid much attention to what was going on outside in court. But if something new or interesting or sensational cropped up, then of course we would just turn round to see. There was something sensational that happentd one day; it concerned myself. They produced an important witness against me; it was the cabin-man at the railway level-crossing near Deoghar, a poor old man. Were he to identify me as the person who had been passing to and fro near his cabin – we had several times been to Dighiriya hill across the railway line – that would prove my complicity in the bomb and get me the Andamans without fail. But who can die whom the gods protect? Our Sudhir-da – I use the title in an honorific sense, for I am actually one month his senior – got suddenly an idea into his head. They

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had made us line up within the cage for an identification parade. The poor old man was brought in to identify Nolini Gupta. Sudhir-da whispered to me, "You stand in the front line with a quiet nonchalant air. I shall be just behind." Sudhir-da stood behind, with his head down and showed by his fumbling and nervous manner as if he were trying to hide himself. The old man was in a fix; he got so confused that he finally shouted, "That was the man over there, I have seen him." This settled the point. The entire court-room rang with laughter. Norton was flabbergasted, for he had been conducting the case for the prosecution. He was known as "Madras Norton": he had earned quite a name as a formidable, almost ferocious barrister at the High Court in Madras. Through this fiasco the path to my release was made clear.

Now let me conclude this story with a description of the last scene. We had all just sat down to our usual discussions as on any other day, when all on a sudden the court-room seemed to grow silent and still. Chittaranjan's voice rose slowly in a crescendo of measured tones. We all stood up and listened intently attentive in pin-drop silence as Chittaranjan went on speaking, as if divinely inspired and like one god-possessed:

"He stands not only before the bar in this Court but stands before the bar of the High Court of History…. Long after this turmoil, this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India but across distant seas and lands."

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