(From a letter to friend Dilip Kumar Roy written from the Mandalay Central Jail on 2 May 1925)
I do not think I could have looked upon a convict with the authentic eye of sympathy had I not lived personally as a prisoner. And I have not the least doubt that the production of our artists and litterateurs, generally, would stand to gain in every so many ways if they had some new experience of prison-life. We do not perhaps realise the magnitude of the debt owed by Kazi Nazrul Islams verse to the living experience he had of jails.
When I pause to reflect calmly, I feel the stirring of a certitude within that some Vast Purpose is at work in the core of our fevers and frustrations. If only this faith could preside over every moment of our conscious life our sufferings would lose its poignancy and bring us face to face with the ideal bliss even in a dungeon? But that is not possible yet, generally speaking. Which is why this duel must go on unremittingly between the soul and the body.
Usually a kind of philosophic mood instills strength into our hearts in prison surroundings. In any event, I have taken my station here and what little I have read of philosophy in addition to my conception of life in general has stood me rather in good stead here. If a man can find sufficient food for contemplation then his incarceration need hardly hurt him much unless of course his health deserts him. But our suffering is not merely spiritual there is the rub the body too has a say in the business, so that even when the spirit is willing the flesh might be weak.
Lokmanya Tilak wrote out his commentary on the Gita while in prison. I can say with certainty that he spent his days in mental happiness. But, alas, his premature death was as certainly attributable to his six years detention in Mandalay Jail.
But the enforced solitude in which a detenu passes his days gives him an opportunity to delve into the ultimate problems of life. In any event, I claim this for myself that many of the most tangled questions which whirl like eddies in our individual and collective life are edging gradually to the estuary of a solution. The things I could only puzzle out feebly, or the views I could only offer tentatively in days gone by, are taking clearer shape from day to day. It is for this reason, if for no other, that I feel I will be spiritually a gainer through my imprisonment.
You have given my detention the name martyrdom. This only testifies to the sympathy native to your character as also to your nobility of heart. But since I have some sense of humour and proportion I hope so, anyway I can hardly arrogate to myself the martyrs high title. Against hauteur and conceit I want to be sleeplessly vigilant. How far I have achieved this it is for my friends to judge. At all events, martyrdom can only be an ideal so far as I am concerned.
I have felt that the greatest tragedy for a convict who has to spend long years in prison is that old age creeps upon him unawares. He should therefore be specially on his guard. You cannot imagine how a fellow gets prematurely worn-out in body and mind while serving a long sentence. Doubtless a variety of causes are responsible for this: lack of good food, exercise and lifes amenities; segregation; a sense of cramped subordination; dearth of friends; and last, though by no means least, absence of music. There are some gaps which a man may fill from within, but there are others which can be only filled from without...
I should not omit to mention that to a detenu the goodwill and sympathy of his friends and relations and the general public can, indeed, be a source of sustenance. Although the influence of such imponderables is a subtle and subterranean one, yet when I look at myself I realise how it is not a whit the less real for that. There is here a difference between the hardness of a lot of a political prisoner and a common convict. The former is sure of his welcome back into the fold of society. Not so the latter...
Extracted from The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose; Oxford University Press; Rs 495; 338 pages
