Sharma : Could you give us some idea of your reading in jail, books, authors?
Chavan : When we went to Yervada camp jail, we were the first batch. Then there were nearly 1,200 to 1,300 prisoners. There used to be barracks. In each barrack there used to be 100 prisoners. A large number of students and educated persons were there.
Acharya Bhagwat, who was an aggressive Gandhian, was also in that camp. He was a born teacher. he wanted to do something about the school-going children who were there. So he rearranged the people and found a barrack which was later known as barrack no. 12. I became a member of that barrack.
Acharya Bhagwat, Raosaheb Patwardhan were there for few months. S. M. Joshi came to that jail later. H. R. Mahajani, who became very famous as a marathi editor, was also there. V. M. Buskute, formerly a non-coperator, became a communist in that jail.
Sharma : He did a book on Mulshi Petha Satyagraha.
Chavan : Yes, V. M. Buskute. Acharya Bhagwat Started practically a class for us. He used to read to us sanskrit poetry, Shakuntals by Kalidas and Savarker's poetry. Raosaheb patwardhan and other managed to see that new books came to the jail. Mahajani, S. M. Joshi were all socialists. They were in different groups and had different political approaches. Every day we had the opportunity to listen to everybody and came in contact with everybody. Then a large number of books started coming in and we read a lot about Gandhiji. Ina nearby barrack, Ramdas Gandhi, Sumitra's father, was with us in jail. There I read Bertrand Russell's Roads to Freedom, for the first time. I read his book with difficulty because I was just in matriculation class. But with the help of people there and a dictionary, I could read that.
There were lectures on socialism. Acharya Bhagwat used to give lectures on Gandhism a very powerful teacher. He read Tagore to us. It was such an intense intellectual life. Books were lying all around.
We used to ask others what they were reading and to tell us about that. They used to arrange reports and evening lectures. So somebody used to come and communicate to us what he was reading. It was a very interesting thing. I recall having read Radhakrishnan's Kalki…
