A Personal Note
After compulsory absence for over nine months, it is no small pleasure to find myself back in the midst of dear old associations. The life-breathing columns of the Light and the small community of kindred souls, they have succeeded in inspiring and rallying around the standard of Truth—what a wholesome change from that gloomy atmosphere of bolts and bars made gloomier by the cheerless faces of Jailors, Warders, turnkeys, and the rest of that unenviable brood! Jail life may be a rather bitter experience, but it is certainly not an unmixed evil. It affords ample compensation for the hardship it inflicts. It gives you an entirely new outlook on life. It overhauls conventional standards. It places new values on things. It exposes vanity. It unmasks sham and hypocrisy. Prison bars are perhaps the best glasses to see things not as they seem but as they are. During the nine months that I was privileged to survey the various fields of human life through those glasses, I was able to form impressions which, I believe, it would be worthwhile for me to tell and the reader to hear. There are thus many things that I would fain share with the reader. For the present, however, it would perhaps be in the natural order of things to give an idea of my predominant mood, as I look back upon the whole thing. This I could not sum up better than in the words:
On the whole I come out a happier man.
Happier for all those troubles, all those worries, all those insults, that are the miserable lot of a poor convict! Yes, indeed, for all these, I come back with a heart filled with sweet sensations unknown to me before and this for good many reasons. In the first place I feel satisfaction in the thought that God Almighty vouchsafed me strength in the face of official fury to stand by what I considered to be truth. The articles under prosecution, as the reader would recollect, breathed a spirit of undisguised manliness and called upon the Muslims, especially the rising generation of Islam, to be up, to consolidate their strength, and to take an honourable part in the struggle of life. But a spirit of manliness is the last thing that an alien Government would allow to foster in a slave people. It came to the authorities that be as a veritable red rag to a bull and from the very first day that the prosecution was launched, conviction was a foregone conclusion.”The man must go to jail ”, said one highly placed responsible official to a respectable gentleman, even before the first prosecution witness appeared in the witness-box. And this attitude manifested itself, in the shape of many a pinprick to which I and my two fellow accused were subjected during the protracted trial for about four long months. My heart is therefore filled with gratitude to Him Who sustained us in this little fight.
A yet greater source of satisfaction and pleasure is the enthusiasm with which the numerous friends of the Light rushed to uphold the cause for which the paper had incurred official wrath. Not only did they keep the flag flying, they united to keep it flying with greater glory. From a Fortnightly, the paper was converted into a Weekly. Funds were spontaneously provided to meet the expenses of the trial. From students with their little contributions, the savings from their pocket-money to wealthier men with their princely donations—all ranged themselves on the side of Right. This is no small moral victory, no small pleasure. From far-flung parts of the country and at a great personal inconvenience came several admirers of the paper to appear as defence witnesses. And heaps were the letters of sympathy received from India and abroad. To all these friends, ladies as well as gentlemen, who have helped in any shape and form, I tender sincere gratitude. One British sister went the length of approaching the King with a protest against the injustice. I must not omit to acknowledge the continued sacrifice of time, labour and money with which the Ahmadiya Anjuman Ishaát Islam Lahore backed me up. Were it not for their moral and material support I am sure I would have had to face great difficulties. Nor can I think without a sense of deep gratitude, of the prompt and valuable legal assistance without any remuneration by such distinguished luminaries of the profession as K. B. Sir Sheikh, Abdul Qadir, Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal, Malik Barkat Ali and Sheikh Muhammad Din Jan. The Malik Sahib’s searching cross-examination in the court of trial and Sir Abdul’s argumentative discourse in the Sessions and the High Court must indeed have cost them a great amount of time and labour.
As I look back on all this spontaneous outburst of sympathy I cannot but feel a thrill of satisfaction at the thought that after all the Light has stood and fought for a cause just and righteous. My thanks are also due to Mr. D.G. Upson, who came forward on my arrest with all the might of his pen to embellish the columns of the Light with his scholarly articles as well as to Maulvi Abdullah who has ever since devoted himself at considerable strain at his frail Bengali constitution, to editing the paper with courage and ability.
In this retrospective mental picture, I also see loom large familiar faces of fellow denizens of prison whom long and close association and common rigours of Jail life knit together into a small brotherhood. This brotherhood was above caste or creed and Hindus and Muslims formed equally dear members. My two associates of the Light, Chaudhry Rahmat Khan and Sheikh Miraj Din, Syeds Habib and Inayat Shah of the daily Siyasat, Syed Lall Shah, Makhdum Zainul Abidin and Messrs Ramchandra and Sham Lall – I must confess each one contributed not a little to the comfort and happiness of others and many were the moments of pleasure and anxiety that we shared in common. From the unanimity and sympathy that prevailed among Hindus and Muslims behind those walls, it often struck us that the best way to consummate Hindu-Muslim unity would be, that instead of holding unity conferences in the glimmer and glitter of Shimla or Delhi in an atmosphere of unreality, a few of the prominent leaders from both communities must be locked up in the same cells just for a couple of nights in the month of June or July with swarms of mice and mosquitoes dancing and singing about, reminding them of the hard reality that a nation of slaves deserves no better fate. For it is there that an atmosphere of reality prevails, the scales are cast of men’s eyes and the truth comes home that after all we are fellow slaves under a common yoke. The fortitude of Syed Brothers of the Siyasat under the heavy heap of cases got up against them by Govt. was admirable. As to Ramchandra, he is a young man of whom any great nation might well feel proud. A patriot to the very back-bone – not of the canting garrulous school of armchair patriots—he has the broadest of sympathies and if there were many more of Ramchandras in the Hindu community, I may safely prophesy that Hindu-Muslim unity would be an accomplished fact before long.
Asking the readers’ pardon for indulging in these personal reminiscences, I hope to be able to tell some of my Jail experiences and draw attention to some reforms urgently needed in the treatment of prisoners in subsequent issues.
(The Light – Thursday, June 28, 1928)
