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Andaman Penal Settlement and Mahatma Gandhi

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net;

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com

Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

 

 

Andaman Penal Settlement and Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

Mahatma Gandhi played an important role in Andaman Penal Settlement. He sent a telegram to Gurudev Ravindranath Tagore. He wrote a letter to viceroy. He told to congress to passed resolution on it.

This was in reply to the addressee’s telegram dated August 16, 1937, which read: Have wired Andaman prisoners give up hunger strike. Their lives must be saved. Hope you and Jawaharlal will also exert your influence. 1

I thank you for your frank and exhaustive reply to my telegraphic solicitation. I will not try to combat the position taken up by you which I understand. The incompleteness you see in the prisoners’ reply to my request had not escaped me, but I was very much struck by the frank and unequivocal manner in which they gave me satisfaction so far as terrorist methods are concerned. I shall not despair of enlisting your active co-operation in the pursuit of my mission of procuring a lasting and honourable understanding with the class of patriots whom the Andaman friends represent. 2

I have not forgotten the Andaman Prisoners. Where are they being treated as ‘C’ class Prisoners? So far as I know these class distinctions are gone. These friends should help the Congress Ministers for they have their difficulties. You may give them the assurance that I shall strain every nerve not merely to see that they are well treated but that they are discharged. But I must be able myself to give the assurance in every individual case. Their noble response to me has paved the way, but it ought not to be held as sufficient for full fruition of the common hope. The main reason for my going to Calcutta for the A. I. C. C. is to examine the whole position, and to see what I can do in the matter. 3

The Working Committee has learnt with the deepest concern of the hunger-strike of hundreds of political prisoners in the Andaman Islands. The Committee has long been of opinion that the use of the Islands as a penal settlement, more especially for political prisoners, is barbarous. Official enquiries and reports have already condemned such use and non-official opinion has unanimously demanded that no prisoners be sent there. Repeated hunger-strikes by the political prisoners have demonstrated their desperation at the continuance of conditions which they cannot bear, and the present hunger-strike has brought matters to a head and grave consequences are feared. Public opinion all over India is agitated and strongly in favour of the release of the political prisoners there as they have already undergone many years of imprisonment under conditions which is far worse than those prevailing in Indian prisons. The Committee’s attention has been drawn to the public statement issued by some ex-prisoners, who were till recently imprisoned in the Andaman Islands and have been now released, in which they have stated on their own behalf and on behalf of the other political prisoners there, their dissociation from and disapproval of the policy of terrorism. They have frankly stated that they have come to realize that such a policy is wrong and injurious to the national cause and they propose to have nothing to do with it. This statement has been confirmed from other sources also.

In view of all these circumstances the Committee is emphatically of opinion that the political prisoners in the Andamans should be discharged. The Committee is further of opinion that the non-political prisoners in the Andamans should be repatriated and the penal settlement in the islands closed. Any delay in taking adequate action is likely to lead to alarming consequences. The Committee appeals to the prisoners in the Andamans to give up their hunger-strike. 4

 

 

 

References:

 

  1. TELEGRAM TO RABINDRANATH TAGORE, On or after August 16, 1937
  2. LETTER TO VICEROY, September 8, 1937
  3. LETTER TO DR. GOPICHAND BHARGAVA, October 12, 1937
  4. Congress Bulletin, No. 6, September 1937. File No. 4/15/37

 

 

 

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