Mumbai, Dt. 10
Freedom hero Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was given the inhuman punishment of extracting oil from Kolu in the Andamans. Today I experienced what they must have suffered this time, Pramod Naik, a 72-year-old retired senior engineer from Tata Power Company, said here on Sunday.
A replica of the Andaman Jail and a replica of Kolu have been placed on the façade of the Freedom Fighter Savarkar National Memorial in front of Dadar’s Shivaji Udyan. Independence hero Savarkar was sent to Kolu in Andaman by the British to extract oil. This punishment was given in sun and rain. To experience this, Naik had requested that the Savarkar memorial be allowed to rotate the Kolu.
This kolu is located where there is no direct sunlight. But still, the current summer and the action of Kolu not only make one sweat, but apart from that one has to exert strength, one has to go round and round. Naik also said that I tried this by stopping occasionally but then I got tired and fell down there.
After that the staff of Savarkar Smarak took me inside and arranged for me to rest. After rest I came to drive the Kolu again but my legs were stuck and this stopped the work. An oil professional who came there told me that one needs to use red peanuts and not white peanuts to get the oil out of it. After that Kolu could not pull. Naik said that it is difficult to even imagine the terrible and terrifying suffering that freedom fighter Savarkar must have endured in the Andamans.
Naik first tried to drag the Kolu by wearing shackles, but as the shackles pulled from his pants, he removed the shackles and dragged the Kolu. For that he had bought 5 kg of peanuts. Two and a half kilos of groundnuts were put in the kolu. They realized that even lifting the pole of Kolu was difficult and required two men. Then for about two to two-and-a-half hours, they ground the groundnuts by running the colu.