Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  X

  In the first week of May 1925, Gandhi commenced a long tour of Bengal, a province crucial in many respects: for its delicate demographic balance between Hindus and Muslims; for its (largely merited) self-perception as a leading centre of the national movement; for historically being less hospitable to Gandhi himself than Bombay, Madras or the Punjab.

  The pre-eminent Congress leader in Bengal was the barrister C.R. Das, popularly known as ‘Deshbandhu’. In June, Gandhi spent five days with Das at his summer home in Darjeeling. His host had thoughtfully arranged for five goats to be sent up from the plains to supply milk to the eccentric and demanding guest. The two spent much of the time discussing the affairs of the province, with Gandhi concluding from Das’s account that ‘Bengal political life is one of mutual jealousy and back-biting’.63

  In between these conversations, Gandhi gave Das spinning lessons, with the Bengal stalwart promising ‘that he would try to learn spinning and spin so long as his body allowed’. Watching him at the wheel, Gandhi concluded that Das found ‘spinning harder than giving defeats to the Government or winning cases for his clients’.

  After he had left Darjeeling for the plains, Gandhi wrote mischievously to Das reminding him of his promise to improve his spinning: ‘If the Governor [of Bengal] said “Spin and take what you want”, you will work at the wheel for twenty-four hours and master it. Well, it is not the Governor who is saying it; but one who loves you and loves India does say: “Spin and take swaraj.”’64

  Alas, C.R. Das had little time to put this advice into practice. On 16 June 1925, he died in Darjeeling, at the relatively young age of fifty-five. Gandhi was in Khulna, in the eastern part of the province; on hearing the news, he proceeded immediately to Calcutta, where Das’s body would be received and cremated. On reaching the city, Gandhi issued a public statement, asking citizens not to rush the train carrying Das’s remains when it arrived at Sealdah station, not to shout, and to clear the way for the coffin-bearers to pass, and likewise to be orderly at the cremation ground itself. As he pointed out, ‘respect for the memory of the deceased patriot demands not any outward temporary show of affection, but an inward determination to deserve the heritage the Deshbandhu has left us’.65

  Gandhi now decided to stay on for an extra month in Bengal. He consoled Das’s widow, Basanti Devi, protecting her from the rush of wailing mourners. He also started a public fund in memory of the deceased nationalist, for a ‘hospital for women irrespective of caste or creed’ as well as a school for training nurses.66

  Back in 1920, Gandhi was in Bombay when Tilak died in that city. Now, five years later, he was near Calcutta when C.R. Das passed away. On both occasions, Gandhi played a prominent role in the obsequies. His actions and words were no doubt sincere. Nonetheless, by being able to lead the mourning for these two leaders, Gandhi consolidated his own standing in two very important provinces of British India.

  XI

  In June 1925, Annie Besant wrote to a friend: ‘I hear that a strenuous attempt is being made to rescue the Congress from being strangled by Gandhi’s yarn.’67 The sarcasm owed itself perhaps to Mrs Besant’s feeling of being sidelined by Gandhi. But the Mahatma’s own loyal followers were despairing of their party’s future. In July 1925, C. Rajagopalachari wrote to a friend of how the Congress was beset with confusion and faction-fighting, its members squabbling over mandatory spinning, council entry, etc. ‘What a hopeless muddle we are in,’ wrote Rajagopalachari, adding, ‘and I am in a greater muddle than anyone else. I wish I had been a private gentleman pure and simple—and I should then have been less of a fool than I am now.’68

  Gandhi was having trouble holding together his party. In his private life, he was having trouble keeping control of his sons. In Calcutta, Gandhi had met his eldest son, Harilal. They talked for three hours, the young man telling his father of a fresh set of difficulties. He had lent his name to a Calcutta firm called ‘All India Stores’, which, by virtue of having the Mahatma’s son on its masthead, was garnering investors and investments from, as it were, ‘All India’.

  Among those who had sent money to the new enterprise was a Muslim from Lyallpur, in the Punjab. Receiving no replies from the firm, the investor feared that this was ‘a bogus affair’. He asked his lawyer to send a notice to Young India, whose editor was the father of one of the directors of the All India Stores. Gandhi answered the lawyer and his client in the columns of the journal, for the ‘important principles’ that were involved called for a public reply. Harilal was indeed his son, wrote Gandhi, but ‘his ideals and mine having been discovered fifteen years ago to be different, he has been living separately from me and since 1915 has not been supported by or through me’. Harilal, said the father, ‘chose, as he had every right to do, a different and independent path. He was and still is ambitious. He wants to become rich and that too, easily.’

  Gandhi then came to the matter raised by the Lyallpur lawyer. He pointed out that Harilal had ‘started the Stores in question without the least assistance of any kind whatsoever from me. I did not lend my name to them. I never recommended his enterprise to anybody either privately or openly. Those who helped him did so on the merits of the enterprise.’

  Having made clear his personal and professional distance from his son, Gandhi said those who have invested in Harilal’s firm ‘have my sympathy, but beyond that, nothing more….If he [Harilal] is honest…he will not rest till he has paid all the creditors in full.’69

  XII

  As a biological son was going out of Gandhi’s life, an adoptive daughter was coming in. Her name was Madeleine Slade. She was born in 1892, the daughter of a British admiral who had served in India. While her father was away on foreign postings, Madeleine grew up in the English countryside, riding, hunting and playing the piano. Her first real interest was in music, particularly German music and still more particularly, the music of Beethoven. After reading Romain Rolland’s little book on the composer and his big novel, Jean-Christophe, she went to Villeneuve to meet him in the autumn of 1924. She found the writer scanning proofs of his latest work, the short but entirely appreciative study of Mahatma Gandhi. Miss Slade had not, at this time, heard of Gandhi. She bought the book when it appeared, and knew at once that the ‘call was absolute’. She decided to prepare by practising spinning and weaving, and giving up eating meat and ‘the drinking of all wines, beers or spirits’.

  In May 1925, Miss Slade wrote to Gandhi of her ‘fervent’ desire to join him, to ‘learn to live’ his ‘ideals and principles’, to become a ‘fit servant’ of his cause. She sent Gandhi samples of wool she had spun. Gandhi replied that it was ‘excellent’, and asked her to come ‘whenever you choose’. Sailing from Marseille on 25 October, she landed in Bombay on 6 November, and took the night train to Ahmedabad.70

  Gandhi gave the new entrant an Indian name, Mira. The name was short and simple, and easy to pronounce. Mira was the name of a medieval poetess of royal blood, who had refused to get married, turned her back on a life of privilege, and instead spent her time composing songs in praise of Lord Krishna. This upper-class Englishwoman would be Mira to Gandhi’s Krishna, although her devotion was fulfilled in more prosaic terms, by preparing her master’s meals, screening his visitors, and spinning alongside him. The ashramites called her ‘Mira Behn’, Sister Mira.

  Among the first to befriend Mira was Mahadev Desai. Always keen to expand his knowledge, Mahadev began to take lessons in French from the well-bred Englishwoman. When Gandhi learnt of this, he asked Mahadev to discontinue the classes, because in his view much of the best French literature was available in English translation, and because when he toured with Gandhi the lessons would be interrupted anyway. When ‘we are engaged in a life and death struggle’, asked Gandhi of his secretary, ‘how could you think of learning French? You may read as much French as you like after swaraj.’

  Gandhi suggested that Mahadev instead teach Mira Hindustani
to ease her transition into life in India.71

  In early December, with both Mahadev and Mira in tow, Gandhi left for a vacation in Wardha. The home town of his merchant-disciple Jamnalal Bajaj, Wardha was in the very centre of India. It was boiling in summer but crisp and dry in the cold season. For some years now, Gandhi had been spending a week in December with Bajaj. It was from there that he made another annual pilgrimage, to the Congress session, convened as always in the last week of December.

  The 1925 Congress was held in the northern industrial city of Kanpur. The president this year was Sarojini Naidu who, in her address, termed the Hindu–Muslim question ‘the most baffling and most tragic of all the problems before us’.72 Also present at the Kanpur Congress was the British writer Aldous Huxley. Huxley had heard much about Gandhi, and expected to see someone whose appearance matched the legend. In his mind’s eye he had visualized the saint of popular imagination to have ‘a large intellectual forehead, expressive and luminous eyes, and a good deal of waved hair, preferably of a snowy whiteness’.

  But the Gandhi whom Huxley saw in Kanpur did not look like this at all. Anyone who saw Mrs Naidu in her gorgeous silk sari, or Motilal Nehru with his erect bearing, would know at once that these people were ‘somehow intrinsically important; their faces proclaimed it’. But, wrote Huxley, the casual observer who came to the Congress looking for its leaders

  would never even have noticed the little man in the dhoti, with the shawl over his naked shoulders; the emaciated little man with the shaved head, the large ears, the rather foxy appearance; the quiet little man, whose appearance is only remarkable when he laughs—for he laughs with the whole-hearted laughter of the child, and his smile has an unexpected and boyish charm. No, the casual observer would probably never have even noticed Mahatma Gandhi.73

  Not the casual foreign observer perhaps. But all the Indians present in Kanpur knew exactly who Gandhi was and why—his unprepossessing appearance notwithstanding—he was the most important man or woman among the several thousand Congress workers in the pandal. The rush to meet Gandhi and have his darshan was terrific. As Mira Behn wrote to Devadas Gandhi from Kanpur, ‘the crowds of people have worn poor Bapu to a shadow…He is right down to the bottom of his strength.’

  At Kanpur, Dr M.A. Ansari checked Gandhi, and concluded that his body and nervous system needed an extended period of rest. He asked Gandhi to take a break from editorial work, get others to attend to his correspondence, and add bread to his mostly fruitarian diet. ‘How glad we shall all be to get back to Sabarmati!’ wrote the adopted daughter (Mira) to the favourite son (Devadas), adding: ‘And you have heard, no doubt, that Bapu has decided to stay at the Ashram for a whole year! Is that not the best of news!’74

  It was, for Mira at any rate. She looked forward to an uninterrupted stretch of devoted service, where—with no meetings or travels or other distractions—she could focus on peeling her master’s oranges, mixing his milk, filing his correspondence, taking out and putting away his spinning wheel.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Spinning in Sabarmati

  I

  In Young India’s first issue for 1926, Gandhi made public his sabbatical from travelling as mandated by his doctors. He would stay put in Sabarmati, he wrote, for three reasons: to rest his ‘tired limbs’, to give ‘personal attention to the Ashram’, and to put the affairs of the All India Spinners Association in order.1

  The Satyagraha Ashram in Ahmedabad was built on both sides of a public road. Gandhi’s cottage was one of seven on the eastern, or river-facing, side. The cottage had several rooms, but the occupant himself favoured the veranda. Unless it rained, he slept there at night. During the day he did his writing there too.

  In front of Gandhi’s cottage was a large open space with a clear view of the river. It was here that the prayer meetings were held, once just before sunrise and a second time just after sunset. Verses from various religious texts were read, and hymns sung.

  Spinning was Gandhi’s main preoccupation during this sabbatical year. In an article for his Gujarati weekly Navajivan, he presented a succinct description of all that the activity involved:

  Spinning does not mean drawing out bits of yarn of any sort as if we were merely playing at spinning. Spinning, in fact, means learning all the preliminary processes—sitting down properly, with a mind completely at rest, and spinning daily for a fixed number of hours good, uniform and well-twisted yarn, spraying it, measuring its length and taking its weight, rolling it neatly, and if it is to be sent out to some other place, packing it carefully and sticking a label to it with details of the variety of cotton used, the count, the length and weight of the yarn, and tying a tag on it with particulars of the contributor’s name and address in clear handwriting; when all this is done, one will have completed the spinning-yajna for the day.2

  In his book, Hind Swaraj, written in 1909 on the boat from London to Cape Town, Gandhi had asked middle-class Indian men to take to spinning and to promote handmade cloth. After his return to India he led by example. Spinning was for him many things: a breaking down of the barriers (so integral to the caste system) between mental and manual labour; a demonstration of self-reliance at the most basic, or individual, level; a renewal of indigenous skills and techniques that had atrophied or been destroyed under colonialism. Social reform, personal uplift, economic self-sufficiency, national pride: the making of khadi symbolized, and contributed to, all these.3

  II

  By taking a year’s break from travel, Gandhi sought to shut out the world, yet the world came looking for him. In the first weeks of 1926, he was visited by, among others, Swami Shraddhananda, Jamnalal Bajaj and Motilal Nehru. A little later came two American women representing the ‘Fellowship of Faith, League of Neighbours, and Union of East and West’, and then another American woman with an agenda more focused than merely fostering fellowship and unity. This was Katherine Mayo, a journalist and writer who wished to write a book presenting a more favourable picture of the British Raj than was appearing in her country’s press. To that end, she had got His Majesty’s Government in London to smooth her way, by introducing her to provincial governments in India who could assist her with travel, translation, and the like.4

  Katherine Mayo visited the Sabarmati Ashram on 17 March. She asked Gandhi a series of questions about his work, and then asked him for a message for her compatriots. Gandhi answered: ‘My message to America is simply the hum of this wheel’, adding that ‘untouchability for me is more insufferable than British rule’.5

  Although Gandhi had never visited America, the interest in him in that country was growing by the minute. In April 1926, a cultural entrepreneur based in New York wrote to Gandhi suggesting he undertake a speaking tour of the United States. He was assured of ‘large and genuinely interested audiences everywhere’. The terms were generous: with Gandhi to get 75 per cent of the income from ticketed events, in addition to travel and local hospitality. The visitor would be in safe hands; for, as the correspondent assured him, he had ‘managed very successfully the tours of people who have been under political difficulties, without the slightest annoyance to them, and am expert in the management of the newspaper publicity’.6

  Gandhi’s doctors had prescribed an extended period of rest; but even if he had been allowed to travel, it is unlikely that he would have been interested in this audacious American proposal.

  III

  Based in Ahmedabad, having temporarily quit travelling, and with the momentum of the political movement noticeably waning, Gandhi had time to answer letters from friends and strangers on Hindu–Muslim relations, celibacy, untouchability, and spinning. And on more mundane matters too, as in this reply to a query from a certain S. Mehtah of Grey Street in Durban:

  Dear Sir,

  You have enquired of me whether your brother Sheikh Amir Khan was a fellow passenger with me in 1896 on board S.S. Courland w
hen I returned from India to Natal during that year. I have to state in reply that your said brother was a fellow passenger with me during that year.

  Yours truly

  M.K. Gandhi7

  Among the more important letters written by Gandhi in the first half of 1926 was one to his son Manilal. Still based in Natal, running the Phoenix Ashram, Manilal had fallen in love with a girl named Fatima Gool, whose parents, based in Cape Town, were also of Gujarati descent, but Muslim rather than Hindu. Fatima loved Manilal too, and was even amenable to the idea of converting to Hinduism. When Manilal wrote to his father about the relationship, Gandhi conveyed his strong disagreement, writing to his son that

  what you desire is contrary to dharma. If you stick to Hinduism and Fatima follows Islam it will be like putting two swords in one sheath; or you both may lose your faith. And then what should be your children’s faith?…It is not dharma, only adharma if Fatima agrees to conversion just for marrying you. Faith is not a thing like a garment which can be changed to suit our convenience. For the sake of dharma a person shall forgo matrimony, forsake his home, why, even lay down his life; but for nothing may faith be given up. May not Fatima have meat at her father’s? If she does not, she has as good as changed her religion.

  Gandhi continued: ‘Nor is it in the interests of our society to form this relationship. Your marriage will have a powerful impact on the Hindu–Muslim question. Intercommunal marriages are no solution to this problem. You cannot forget nor will society forget that you are my son.’