The story is told. The curtain has been brought down on it. Two life-sentences have been run. And I have brought together my recollections of them within the cover of this book. They are narrated in brief and put together within the narrowest.
When I came into this world, God sent me here possibly on a sort of life-sentence. It was the span of life allotted to me by time to stay in this ‘prison-house of life’. This story is but a chapter of that book of life, which is a longer story not yet ended. 
You can finish reading the book in a day, while I had to live it for 14 long years of transportation. And if the story is so tiresome, unendurable and disgusting to you, how much must have been the living of it for me! Every moment of those 14 years in that jail has been an agony of the soul and the body to me, and to my fellow convicts in that jail. It was not only fatiguing, unbearable and futile to us all, it was equally or more excruciating to them as to me. And it is only that you may know it and feel the fatigue, the disgust and the pain of it as we have felt it, that I have chosen to write it for you. 
—Excerpts from this book

This is the story of Swatantrayaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar—a great revolutionary, politician, poet and seer who tried to free India from the British yoke!
British policy was to torture and persecute the political prisoners/revolutionaries so that they would reveal the names of all their colleagues or go mad or commit suicide. My Transportation for Life is a firsthand story of the sufferings and humiliation of an inmate of the infamous Cellular Jail of Andamans, the legendary Kala Paani. The physical tortures inside the high walls were made all the more insufferable by the sickening attitude of the men who mattered—the native leaders back home. This is a running commentary on the prevalent political conditions in India and a treatise for students of revolution. It is a burning story of all Tapasvis who were transported to Andaman.

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Contents

Preface—Pgs.5

PART—I

The Gaol at Dongri, Bombay—Pgs.15

In the Gaol at Byculla—Pgs.30

At Thana—Pgs.35

On the Way—Pgs.48

The Black Sea—Pgs.60

The Andamans—Pgs.69

We reach Andamans—Pgs.83

The First Week in My Cell—Pgs.89

Early History of the Political Prisoners—Pgs.107

I See My Elder Brother—Pgs.131

I am Put on the Oil-Mill—Pgs.135

Consolidation and Propaganda in the Andamans—Pgs.142

Correspondence with India and Means of Information—Pgs.156

The Coronation Ceremony of 1911—and its shadow on the prison in the Andamans—Pgs.172

The Prisoner’s Food in the Andamans—Pgs.181

Suicide, Mental Derangement, Arrests, The second and the third Strike—Pgs.192

PART—II

Consolidation and Propaganda in the Andamans—Pgs.235

The ‘Shuddhi’ Movement in the Andamans—Pgs.250

The World War (1914) and Its Menace to the Andamans—Pgs.292

(1914-1918) Political Prisoners Again Flood The Andamans!—Pgs.324

The fourth Strike and My Ill-Health—Pgs.343

On Death-Bed—Pgs.371

Riots in Punjab and Gujarat (1919-1920)—Pgs.386

Amnesty and Political Prisoners—Pgs.408

The Spread of Hindi in the Andamans—Pgs.418

Miniature Hindu Raj—Pgs.431

I Meet My Family Again—Pgs.457

Lock-up at the Alipore Jail—Pgs.467

The Last Night of My Sentence—Pgs.491

Dear Reader—Pgs.495

Swatantrayaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a great Indian revolutionary and a politico-military strategist, who tried to build India militarily in order to drive out the British. 
The word, ‘Savarkar’ is synonymous with courage, bravery, might and patriotism. Inscribed on golden pages of revolutionary history, freedom fighter Savarkar’s overall personality was full of matchless qualities—a revolutionary who put his life at stake for liberating his motherland; a visionary who raised his voice against social evils, such as casteism, untouchability and superstition; a karmayogi who followed the principles of the Gita in his life; a philosopher who suffered atrocities at the Cellular Jail of Andaman with forbearance while experiencing pulsation of the ageless and endless divine soul inside him; an orator who shook and left his audience spellbound with his fiery thoughts. Freedom-fighter Veer Savarkar was a gifted writer who wrote high-quality poems, novels, stories, biographies, history, essays etc. in an engaging and convincing style.
It is rarely seen that a person engaged in the freedom struggle and social reforms is an excellent author as well, and Savarkar is a living example of such rarity.