Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 28th August 1909 — No.10
Facts and Comments
Political Prisoners
We extract elsewhere some very telling criticisms from the pen of the well-known positivist Mr. Frederic Harrison on the treatment of political prisoners.
This is a subject on which a Nationalist writer is naturally somewhat shy of dilating, as any stress on the brutality and callousness of the treatment to which not only convicted but undertrial prisoners of gentle birth and breeding are sometimes subjected in Indian jails, might be misinterpreted by our opponents as an unwillingness to face the penalties which repressive legislation inflicts on those who cherish great 
aspirations for their race and country.
But two instances have occurred recently which compel attention.
One is the death of the convicted prisoner Ashok Nandi of consumption brought on by exposure and neglect during fever in the undertrial period of the Alipur Case.
We exonerate from blame the jail authorities who were exceptionally humane men and would have been glad to deal humanely with the prisoners.
But their blamelessness only brings out the barbarity of a system which allows of the confinement of a delicate ailing lad in a punishment cell exposed night after night to the dews and cold of an unhealthy season, and that without his having committed any fault or shown anything but the mildest and most docile of characters.
The other case is that of Mr. Achyutrao Kohalatkar1 of Nagpur, editor of the Deshsevak, a gentleman of distinguished education, ability and character, who was convicted for the publication in his paper of the reports of Sj. Aurobindo Ghose's speeches delivered at a time when Mr. Kohalatkar2 was absent from Nagpur.
The Sessions Judge of Alipur declared on the police reports of these speeches that so far from being seditious or violent they told in favour of the speaker and not against him.
We find it difficult to believe that the newspaper report of speeches from which the police could extract nothing that was not in the speaker's favour, could be at all seditious.
Be that as it may, Mr. Kohalatkar3 was convicted and perhaps, according to the “strong man” code of ethics, forfeited claim to generous treatment by his refusal to apologise.
We have heard rumours of treatment being meted out to him which can only be described as studied brutality and the evidence of eye-witnesses who have seen the condition to which he was reduced, do not encourage us to reject these reports as fabrications.
Finally, the refusal of the Central Provinces Government to face independent medical inspection and so dispose of the serious allegations publicly preferred put a very ugly aspect on this case.
If the allegations are proved4, they amount to a treatment which would evoke the loudest indignation and reprobation in England if applied under the same circumstances in another country.
But we cherish little hope of redress.
The prison system of the European nations is only a refined and systematised savagery perpetuating the methods of ancient and mediaeval 
barbarity in forms that do not at once shock the eye.
Besides, the account of the recent starvation strike of the Suffragettes has shown what callous and brutal treatment can be inflicted by English officials in England itself even on women, and women of education, good birth, position and culture, guilty only of political obstruction and disorderliness.
Yet this is the civilisation for which we are asked to sacrifice the inheritance of our forefathers!