INDIA OFFICE RECORDS AND LIBRARY - LONDON

The India Office Records and Library, London, provides a detailed account of the rebellion of 1^st April 1859 by the first batch of convicts brought to the Andaman Islands. This information is extracted from the petition of Lalla Mathura Das who saved the life of Dr. JP Walker on the occasion of the rebellion and wanted some ‘Jageer’ (property) in return; and the recommendation of Walker in consideration of his loyalty and invaluable service. Lalla Mathura Das petitioned:

“During the outbreak of convicts on the 1^st of April 1859, I exerted myself so much to suppress it that I was severely wounded, my life having been despaired of for some time, and I was so far successful that I saved the life of the late Superintendent, and to preserve in proper order the arrangements made for the well being of the Settlement. For these services the Superintendent was pleased to recommend me for promotion. Several convicts who had aided us in suppression of the outbreak were ordered to be set at large as a reward for their good conduct; I beg therefore most humbly to express a hope that my humble services will likewise be rewarded by the grant of Jageers & c.”

Dr. JP Walker, formerly Superintendent of the Agra Central Prison and lately Superintendent of the Penal Settlement at Port Blair, wrote in his letter of recommendation:

“Lalla Mathura Das, aged 32, of the Khutree caste, was employed in the Agra Central Prison as Accountant and Cashier from 1847 to 1851, when I promoted him to be Darogha or Deputy Jailor, an appointment he held until transferred as an Overseer on the formation of the Penal Settlement at Port Blair… But it was during the mutiny and rebellion, when all other qualities unalloyed with active loyalty were worthless, that the sterling qualities of Lalla Mathura Das were conspicuous.”

“In March 1858, Lalla Mathura Das accompanied me as an Overseer to Andamans, and during eighteen months performed in a most zealous manner the multifarious duties, which from the want of establishment necessarily devolved upon him, and thereby contributed greatly to the successful organization of the Penal Settlement formed under extraordinary difficulties.”

“On the 1^st of April 1859, when a section of the convicts attempted to assassinate me in office as a prelude to the massacre of the Naval Guard, and the seizure of the Store and Guard Vessels in the port, the Lalla acted with great presence of mind, bravery and devotion during which he was wounded in the shoulder by a blow from a felling axe aimed at his head, and had his hand transfixed by a fixed bayonet in parrying a thrust at his belly. This momentary repulse of the assassins saved my life from the most imminent danger when unconsciously I was being aimed at from behind with a loaded rifle of the disarmed European Sentry, and enabled me to defend myself and receive assistance from well-disposed convicts in the neighborhood. As it was the crowd around the Naval Guard Barrack on the neighboring hill, waiting for the concerted signal of my death, was only kept off by a threatened discharge of grape; and had my death happened, which was considered the sine qua non to the combination of the whole of the convicts; the result would have been serious. The contingency, however, humanly speaking, was averted by Lalla Mathura Das.”

“Lalla Mathura Das is the only Hindoo, of any pretensions of caste that I am aware of, who has volunteered for service in the Andamans, and as might have been expected he was subjected to the obloquy of his friends and relatives for so doing, for on his return to Agra it was only after a successful defence before a Caste-Punchayut that he was able to enter his family residence. This useful precedence was obtained, however, at the cost of much anxiety and money.”

“In conclusion, as regards qualifications, I may state that from being well versed in accounts, and from having been employed more or less in judicial proceedings during the last nine years, he appears to possess the qualification for becoming a good Deputy Collector.”

It was the killing of Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, by a Wahabi convict Sher Ali, in 1872, murderous attacks upon Portman in 1879 and RC Temple in 1896 that prompted the British Government of India to begin constructing a Cellular Jail in 1896, which was completed sometime between 1906 and 1910.

Such organized resistance of the colonial state continued throughout the nineteenth century.

SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE IN ANDAMAN

Friends,

It is true that there is no other word in the human civilization which carries the depth and meaning equivalent to the word “Freedom”. This word closets a tale of intense physical torment and mental torture committed to suppress it. History has witnessed that those who were denied this right, registered strong resistance to achieve it. They were subjected to the worst barbaric brutalities, but it could never stop man’s endeavor for freedom.

Today let me tell you about the Herculean spirit of resistance of the convicts/freedom fighters who were sentenced and transported to the Andaman Islands by the British colonial regime in India. Let’s start with a little bit of insight into the very motive behind the penal settlement undertaken by the British Government here.

The idea of penal settlement had never been present in the minds of pre-British Indian rulers. It was an idea, which originated along with the beginning of colonialism in India; and abolished only after India achieved freedom from British imperialism. The sole purpose behind opening the penal settlement was to segregate the dangerous ideas detrimental to the very existence of colonial state.

The popular notion of the British colonial state of yesterday was that the hardened criminals, whether challenging the colonial state from within as colonial lawbreakers or from without as rebels, both, were not suitable for the well being of a civilized society, and therefore must be segregated and should be kept under strict vigil and surveillance. Even the colonial mindset of today’s India is not altogether different in their viewpoint while dealing with post-colonial criminals and rebels, the very creation of the society itself.

However strange it may appear, it is a fact that the society created by those so-called convicts is far better in comparison to the one created by the so-called civilized society, which ostracized them as outlaws. The Andaman society of today is completely free from the viruses of communal strife, caste divide and criminalization of politics, the evils vociferously eating the contemporary society of the Indian mainland. Unlike mainland, the people of Andaman & Nicobar Islands are by and large hardworking, honest, simple and helpful and strong believers in the values of equality of caste, creed and gender.

It is a pleasant surprise for any visitor from mainland to find such a strange society growing within the very territory of the Indian Republic mostly replete with the innovated culture of criminality, corruption, and disgusting values of inequality of caste, creed and gender.

It is also not to be forgotten that the penal society of Andamans was created by transportation of convicts from all parts and sects of colonial India. Now, after sixty one years of emancipation from colonial bondage one cannot get rid of the burden of responsibility by shifting it to the colonial policies.

Does it not provide sufficient ground for academicians, scholars, administrators and politicians to cater about the grounds of such discrepancies in the development of two societies?

It certainly prompts us to arrive at a conclusion that the popular philosophy behind crime and criminality, whether against a colonial state or an independent state and society, itself requires to be redefined in order to understand the difference between a society created by the so-called convicts and one created by their abhorrers.

Philosophically speaking, the actual objective of history writing is self-knowledge i.e. developing knowledge about the process of all round development of the society itself. The history of penal settlement in Andamans should be studied in order to understand the coming up of a society altogether different from the one that came into being in post-colonial Indian mainland.

The present day Andamans are a creation of the convicts, both criminals and rebels, transported during the colonial regime. The transported hardened criminals indeed had no vision of their own regarding an ideal society but without qualms, they were the products of the social and economic disparity of their own society; and the rebels naturally had a vision of a different society and state to which they belonged.

The common trait among both of them was the spirit of resistance burning against British colonial state and its policies. In the history of penal settlement, we find continuity and maturing of this spirit of resistance throughout the existence of the penal society in the Andamans.

The resistance began simultaneously along with the beginning of the settlement. Captain Henry Man took control of the islands of Andaman on 22^nd January 1858 and the first batch of 200 convicts arrived at the Chatham Island of Port Blair on 10^th March 1858 accompanied by Dr. JP Walker, the first Superintendent of Penal Settlement.

The original nature of resistance resorted to by them were attempts to escape at the cost of their lives, attacks on colonial officers and even rebellion against the existing state at the Settlement. At present, we have very few details available about their attempts to escape in which majority of them were either killed by local tribes or vanished in the death trap of the surrounding jungles or engulfed by the roaring waves of the Andaman Sea or hanged to death by Walker after being recaptured, as I’ve illustrated earlier.

However, comprehensive information is available in the records of India Office Records and Library, London, which provides a detailed account of the rebellion of 1^st April 1859.

NELSON MANDELA - THE ANDAMAN CONNECTION

NOLITHA

In a solitary cell of the Robben Island prison, a tall, powerfully built man sat in front of his desk and gazed intently at the picture of a woman, nude except for a piece of red cloth tied round her neck. On the desk, neatly arranged, were thick books and writing materials. Behind him, on the wall were other photographs. The narrow cell had a barred door and a high ventilator typical of most colonial jails. The man has spent eighteen years in the cell. The man was Nelson Mandela.

Could there be a connection between Nelson Mandela and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands?

At the outset, it may appear preposterous. Mandela never came to the Islands. India was already a free country when he started the fight against the apartheid regime of South Africa. However, on second thought, some similarities do emerge.

Mandela, of course, was a freedom fighter of South Africa, much like the freedom fighters that were sent to the Andaman Islands. He too fought against foreign rule based on racial discrimination and exploitation of the majority by a small White minority regime. He too was exiled to the notorious Robben Island prison just as our own freedom fighters were sent to the Viper Island prison or the Cellular Jail. He too was subjected to the same kind of tortures meted out to our own freedom fighters – solitary confinement, hard labour, cruel punishment and humiliation.

But, did he, during his confinement on Robben Island, chance upon any reference to the Andaman & Nicobar Islands?

A reading of the epoch making autobiography of Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, throws up some interesting facts.

During the long years of incarceration on Robben Island, to beat the solitude and boredom, Mandela would read books, write letters, and fantasize about what he would do after his release from prison. Gazing upon the pictures of his loved ones and writing letters to them was one way of escape from solitude. In a letter to his wife Winnie, he writes:

“Your beautiful photo stands about two feet above my left shoulder as I write this note. … Nolitha stands on the table directly opposite me. How can my spirits ever be down when I enjoy the fond affection of such wonderful ladies?” - pp. 591-92

Nolitha

‘Nolitha’ was the name Mandela invented for the woman in the photo he kept on his desk. In a letter to his daughter Zindzi, Mandela writes:

“By the way, has Mom ever told you about Nolitha, the other lady in my cell from the Andaman Islands? … She regards the pygmy beauty as some sort of rival and hardly suspects that I took the picture out of the National Geographic.” P.592

Nolitha

The National Geographic referred was the July 1975 issue that carried an exclusive photo feature on the tribes of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands by the famous photographer Raghubir Singh. In one of the photos, Raghubir Singh captures a Jarawa (one of the six aboriginal tribes from the A & N Islands) belle in moment of spontaneous merriment. It was this photo that mesmerized Mandela and made him give her a name, and also a place in his cell along with the photo of his wife.

Mandela’s sudden transfer from Robben Island, his release and election as the first black president of South Africa is history. Nolitha was forgotten, till she surfaced again in 2004. Between the pages of one of the two notebooks Mandela used for drafting the letters he wrote while in Robben Island prison was found the same picture.

A prison guard on Robben Island who used to censor the letters of the prisoners took away the books and kept them with him for about 23 years before returning them. He could have sold them and made a fortune but his conscience did not permit him. Mandela recognized the books as his own and Nolitha too. When asked why he kept the picture, Mandela said he saw in the exuberance of the woman a “celebration of life”.

What could have been on Mandela’s mind when on December 26, 2004, a couple of months after the rediscovery of the photo, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands were devastated by the tsunami?