Some Did Not Seek Clemency : Pandit Parmanand of Jhansi

By Anil

Nauriya

During India's struggle for freedom a large number of persons was sentenced to transportation for life. This usually meant the infamous Cellular Jail in Port Blair, Andaman Islands. The dreaded black waters could break people. Even a man like Savarkar was, after spending some time there, soon addressing obsequious clemency petitions seeking release. Not everyone could be broken, however. Of the world's political prisoners in the 20th century, Pandit Parmanand of Jhansi had perhaps one of the longest prison spells lasting nearly 30 years and, in any event, comparable with Nelson Mandela's 28 years in Robben Island. It was at Lahore that he was arrested in the 1914-15 bomb conspiracy case. He was freed for the first time in 1937, and till 1922 was kept in the Andamans. There is a version that he once thrashed the Irish deputy superintendent of the prison, but for the most part he seems to have been in good cheer. With a knack for being where the action was, Pandit Parmanand was transferred to Yeravda jail, just when Gandhi happened to be there too. Next, he was taken to Ratnagiri prison and, in 1928, transferred to Sabarmati jail precisely when the Bardoli satyagrahis were entering Gujarat's prisons. He was kept here for six to seven years and thus found himself also with the prisoners who had broken the salt laws in 1930. Sabarmati put him together with the old patriarch, Abbas Tyabji, and, for a while, again with Gandhi. Pandit Parmanand did not seek British mercy. On the contrary he quarrelled with Savarkar over the latter's assurances in his petitions to the Raj. When Pandit Parmanand was released from Lahore he declined addresses of welcome. At a reception the Pandit said he was not ''worthy'' of all the praise as he looked upon himself as a ''defeated warrior'' who had not been able achieve his purpose. On this, Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have commented that he had found a ''real brother''. The Pandit made a speech at Banaras which contributed to his re-arrest. According to Pandit Parmanand's oral history transcript at Teen Murti, Mahavir Tyagi had organised a meeting in Pandit Parmanand's honour at Dehra Dun. The Pandit made such a fiery speech on that occasion that he was immediately placed under detention on reaching Delhi. Public protests and a committee of Delhi and Dehra Dun lawyers again brought about his release. During the 1942 movement, he was incarcerated yet again first in Hamirpur, then Allahabad, followed by Banaras and ultimately

Sultanpur jail from where he finally emerged in 1945-46. Pandit Parmanand spent his last years in the Freedom Fighters' Home at Gole Dak Khana, New Delhi. Born in Hamirpur district of Jhansi division in Uttar Pradesh in 1892, Pandit Parmanand had rebellion in his blood. His grandfather had fought the British in 1857 and had died after 20 years in prison. He was barely 16 when he was turned out of the Allahabad Kayastha Pathshala for his political activities in 1907. None the worse for the expulsion, he read and travelled widely. He started learning bomb-making and injured himself in the process. He did the ''revolutionaries' round'' of America, Japan and South-East Asia in some places inciting Indian soldiers again the British. When Pandit Parmanand passed away on April 13, 1982, the media did not take much notice. He does not figure in the Dictionary of National Biography, while there is an entry for Bhai Parmanand, an older namesake who belonged to the Hindu Mahasabha. Not many scholars of modern Indian history today know of him. Among historians, opinion-offering is privileged, while the documentalists remain the proletariat of the discipline of history. Much of the information we have on Pandit Parmanand we owe to the great documentalists, including one of the most distinguished of them Dr Hari Dev Sharma who died less than a year ago. [Published in The Indian Express , March 1, 2001]