Kala Pani's horror stories revisited
TNN | Jul 25, 2013, 01.00 AM IST
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BANGALORE: Pitch-dark hellholes teeming with mosquitoes and scorpions, and aweful food for survival... the history of Indian Independence will never be complete without the Cellular Jail in Andamans, said Pramod K Srivastava, professor of history at Lucknow University, on Wednesday.
Srivastava was speaking at the first ever public talk organized by the Oral History Association of India. "Without the oral history of Cellular Jail, the history of India's freedom struggle is lopsided, as no history book contains information on the prison," he said.
Recalling the information he had gathered from interviewing 19 prisoners in 1985, Srivastava said these interviews revealed unknown horror stories about the famous Kala Pani.
Quoting Achyut Ghatak, an associate of Bhagat Singh, who was transported to Cellular Jail, Srivastava said, "None of us ever imagined of returning to the mainland alive. I was transported in the third batch and the first two batches were already waiting for us to start the hunger strike of 1933. The condition of prisoners there was so deplorable that they preferred to die of hunger rather than dying a slow death in the prison".
Shiv Verma, another associate of Bhagat Singh was taken to the jail hospital when he complained of pain the eye. The doctor put alcohol in his eye, resulting in loss of vision, said the professor. He also recollected some of the prisoners telling him that the cell was full of scorpions. "Scorpion bites caused high fever, but no medical care was provided," he said.
"The treatment meted out by the colonial government to revolutionaries was inhuman. The other side of the story is available only through oral history," said the historian.
BANGALORE: Pitch-dark hellholes teeming with mosquitoes and scorpions, and aweful food for survival... the history of Indian Independence will never be complete without the Cellular Jail in Andamans, said Pramod K Srivastava, professor of history at Lucknow University, on Wednesday.
Srivastava was speaking at the first ever public talk organized by the Oral History Association of India. "Without the oral history of Cellular Jail, the history of India's freedom struggle is lopsided, as no history book contains information on the prison," he said.
Recalling the information he had gathered from interviewing 19 prisoners in 1985, Srivastava said these interviews revealed unknown horror stories about the famous Kala Pani.
Quoting Achyut Ghatak, an associate of Bhagat Singh, who was transported to Cellular Jail, Srivastava said, "None of us ever imagined of returning to the mainland alive. I was transported in the third batch and the first two batches were already waiting for us to start the hunger strike of 1933. The condition of prisoners there was so deplorable that they preferred to die of hunger rather than dying a slow death in the prison".
Shiv Verma, another associate of Bhagat Singh was taken to the jail hospital when he complained of pain the eye. The doctor put alcohol in his eye, resulting in loss of vision, said the professor. He also recollected some of the prisoners telling him that the cell was full of scorpions. "Scorpion bites caused high fever, but no medical care was provided," he said.
"The treatment meted out by the colonial government to revolutionaries was inhuman. The other side of the story is available only through oral history," said the historian.
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