Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  The house he rented, Beach Grove Villa, was a two-storey building on the beach in Durban. Escombe, Natal’s attorney-general, lived next door. Gandhi took the house ‘for the sake of prestige’ (A 142) and to refute white charges that successful Indians were stingy.

  The Law Society of Natal opposed Gandhi’s application for admission as an advocate to the Supreme Court, but the Court rejected the opposition, saying that the law made no distinction between whites and non-whites. Then, shortly after Gandhi took the oath, the Chief Justice asked Gandhi to take off his turban. Advocates in court, the Chief Justice added, had to remove their headgear.

  Telling himself that he should conserve energies for bigger battles, Gandhi acceded. A year earlier he had insisted on keeping his turban in the magistrate’s court. Now, in the Supreme Court, he removed it. Abdullah was not pleased, but Gandhi replied that in Rome it was often necessary to do as Romans did. Meanwhile, the Law Society’s opposition had given Gandhi ‘another advertisement in South Africa’ (A 127-9).

  Launching a party. Practice in the law courts was but a means for addressing the court of public opinion. On 22 May 1894 Gandhi, Abdullah and a number of friends met in Abdullah’s house and launched the Natal Indian Congress (NIC). Believing that the ten-year-old Indian National Congress (INC) was ‘the very life of India’, Gandhi, who became the NIC secretary, wanted a name that would also ‘popularize the Congress in Natal’.

  The constitution of the NIC was simple but its monthly subscription was a solid five shillings. A few like Abdullah committed themselves to two pounds a month, several others, including Gandhi, to a pound a month, and many more to ten shillings a month.

  Apart from collecting subscriptions, for which he and some others journeyed to different parts of the colony, Gandhi taught members of the NIC the elements of democratic politics he had learnt in London: how resolutions are moved, amended, voted on, spoken for, opposed and publicized; how minutes and accounts are kept, and receipts given. In the Autobiography he would claim: ‘Every pie was thus accounted for, and I dare say the account books for the year 1894 can be found intact even today’ (A 132).

  Two pamphlets written for the NIC by Gandhi were soon published: An Appeal to Every Briton in South Africa and The Indian Franchise—An Appeal. Requesting support from Dadabhai Naoroji in London, Gandhi wrote to him, ‘The responsibility undertaken is quite out of proportion to my ability.’ Yet confidence matched a sense of duty, and the twenty-five-year-old added: ‘I am the only available person who can handle the question’ (Letter of 5 July 1894; 1: 155).

  The five-shilling fee kept many Indians out, but for some of these an Indian Educational Association (IEA) was formed under the aegis of the NIC. Overseen by Gandhi, the IEA enabled its members, mostly Natal-born educated youths, to discuss issues and approach the merchants. This still left untouched the large number of unskilled wage-earners and indentured workers of Indian origin, but Gandhi was soon connected to them.

  An indentured labourer in tattered clothes, two front teeth broken and his mouth bleeding, turned up trembling and weeping before Gandhi. In his hands he carried his headscarf, which he had removed from his head, a practice that seemed required of every indentured labourer or Indian stranger visiting a European. Humiliated at being ‘respected’ in this fashion, Gandhi asked the man to don his scarf again, and saw the pleasure on his face as he did so.

  It was a mystery, Gandhi thought, that ‘men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings’ (A 135). The labourer, Balasundaram, was a Tamil-speaking Hindu. Translating his remarks, Gandhi’s clerk, a Tamil Christian, explained that the master under whom Balasundaram was serving his indenture had beaten him.

  After securing from a white doctor a certificate about the nature of Balasundaram’s injuries, Gandhi took the labourer to a magistrate, who obtained Balasundaram’s affidavit, issued a summons against the master and convicted him. Gandhi also found a new European master for Balasundaram, and other indentured workers heard of the relief that one of their number had received.

  That some of the indentured had become growers of vegetables and fruits and owners of land after completing their terms alarmed Natal’s Europeans. In order to send them back to India, the Europeans proposed, in 1894, an annual tax of twenty-five pounds on a labourer who stayed on in Natal after the expiry of his indenture, and similar taxes on his wife and grown children.

  Even a pound a year per person would have been harsh on families that earned no more than fourteen shillings a month but often contained four taxable individuals. The NIC organized a fierce campaign against the tax, but the Viceroy of India agreed to a yearly levy of three pounds on every ex-indentured Indian in Natal. That is what was imposed, a crushing racial burden that for years would torment the Indians of South Africa and challenge the NIC.

  According to Martin Green, Beach Grove Villa had a drawing room, a lounge, a dining room, and five bedrooms.12 Gandhi kept photographs of Kaba Gandhi and Laxmidas in his bedroom, and biographies and religious books, including the works of Tolstoy, Maitland and Blavatsky, on a bookshelf. The Autobiography says that some of the furniture was given by Abdullah ‘in lieu of a purse he had intended to give’ on Gandhi’s departure for India (A 126).

  Gandhi walked to his office (14 Mercury Lane) every working day, wearing a lounge suit, a turban, a wing collar, a striped tie, and polished shoes. ‘English friends and Indian co-workers’ were constantly invited to the house for meals and discussions, and some of Gandhi’s clerks, usually Tamil Christians, ‘boarded and lodged’ with him. Though Gandhi offered ‘simple food’ to his guests, cooked by a servant ‘who had become a member of the family’, he also needed someone to manage the cook and the household generally, a task for which he himself had neither time nor ability.

  Mehtab again. For performing the task he selected Sheikh Mehtab, who had turned up in South Africa. Mehtab may have pursued Gandhi into South Africa, or, as Green speculates, ‘the reputation of South Africa as the site of a gold rush’ may have attracted Mehtab.13 Gandhi took him in as ‘companion and help’, as the Autobiography describes his role.

  We do not know whether it was for a few weeks or a few months that Mehtab functioned as ‘manager’ at Beach Grove Villa. In the Autobiography Gandhi does not tell us. Nor does he name Mehtab (he similarly avoids naming some others), but the person’s identity is not in doubt. The context also suggests that the year is 1895 or 1896.

  Still adept at plausible talk, and ‘jealous of an office clerk staying with [Gandhi]’, Mehtab ‘wove a tangled web’ and poisoned Gandhi’s ears against the clerk. The moment he felt suspicion from Gandhi, the clerk left ‘both the house and the office’.

  Gandhi felt that he may have been unjust to the clerk, but it took a more serious incident to open his eyes. At about noon one day, the temporary cook in Beach Grove Villa (the regular cook was on leave) ‘came panting’ to Gandhi’s office and said to him, ‘Please come home at once. There is a surprise for you.’

  Gandhi asked what the matter was but the cook merely said, ‘You will regret it if you don’t come.’ Accompanied by Vincent Lawrence, a clerk in his office, Gandhi walked quickly to his home, preceded by the cook, who took Gandhi to the upper floor and asked him to open Mehtab’s door. The Autobiography records:

  I saw it all. I knocked at the door. No reply! I knocked heavily so as to make the very walls shake. The door was opened. I saw a prostitute inside.

  Mehtab and the woman were asked by Gandhi to leave at once, ‘never to return’. He told Mehtab, ‘From this moment I cease to have anything to do with you.’ Mehtab threatened to ‘expose’ Gandhi, who said, ‘I have nothing to conceal. Expose whatever I may have done. But you must leave me this moment’ (A 143).

  When Mehtab resisted the demand, Gandhi asked Lawrence to go and tell the police superintendent that someone had misbehaved in Gandhi’s house and was refusing to leave. An unnerved Mehtab apologized, begged Gandhi not to inform the police and left.<
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  Gandhi’s fierce knocks on the door on the upper floor of his house were rebukes to himself as well. He had known what Mehtab was like but had been beguiled by the man’s promises of faithfulness and by imagining that he was reforming Mehtab.

  He tried to make amends to the clerk who had left but could not satisfy him fully. As also happened ten years or so earlier, his relationship with Mehtab had deprived him of a more reliable friend. The conclusions he drew are spelt out in the Autobiography:

  [Only rarely and] only between like natures, can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring… [I]n friendship there is very little scope for reform… [A]ll exclusive intimacies are to be avoided. He who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend (A 16).

  But he and the Indians of Natal had found a good relationship. He liked them and they seemed to need him. His practice was flourishing. His reading, including of a religious kind, was continuing. He had made a number of new friends, including Spencer Walton of the South Africa General Mission and his wife, devout Christians who never asked Gandhi to become a Christian.

  Realizing that he was ‘in for a long stay’ in South Africa, Gandhi decided to go home for a while and return with his wife and children. He would also inform people in India of conditions in South Africa. At Gandhi’s suggestion, Adamji Miyakhan was named to substitute for him as the NIC secretary. A dedicated and well-liked Muslim from the merchant community, Miyakhan knew English and also Zulu.

  Since a sailing for Bombay was not near, Gandhi boarded (in the middle of 1896) the Pongola, which was bound for Calcutta to pick up a new lot of indentured labourers. During twenty-four days at sea he learned something of two languages he could use with Indians in South Africa: Urdu, taught to him by a Muslim passenger, and Tamil, which he studied from a Tamil Self-Teacher. An hour of chess a day with an English officer of the ship was also part of Gandhi’s life on the Pongola, as was interacting with her friendly captain, a Plymouth Brother.

  From Calcutta, the capital of British India, Gandhi took a train for Bombay but was left stranded en route in Allahabad, thanks to an impulse, during a forty-five-minute halt, to see the city and buy some medicine. The train steamed away as Gandhi returned to the station.

  Luckily, a thoughtful stationmaster had removed Gandhi’s luggage from it, and Gandhi decided that Allahabad was a good place to commence talking about South Africa. The British editor of The Pioneer gave him an appointment, heard him patiently, and promised ‘to notice in his paper’ anything that Gandhi wrote, adding that he would also ‘give due weight to the viewpoint of the Colonials’. That was fine by him, Gandhi said.

  What Gandhi produced in response to the editor’s remark soon became known, because of the colour on its cover, as the Green Pamphlet. The writing and printing, done in Rajkot, took about a month. Gandhi claims in the Autobiography that the pamphlet ‘drew a purposely subdued picture of the condition of Indians in South Africa’.

  Five thousand copies were printed and sent ‘to all the papers and leaders of every party in India’. To save money, children and youths related or known to Gandhi wrapped the pamphlets and stuck stamps. Gandhi rewarded them with used postage stamps he had collected and brought.

  The Pioneer was the first to write an editorial on the questions raised in the pamphlet. Soon ‘every paper of note’ in India commented on it, a summary was cabled by Reuter to England, and a summary of that summary was cabled from London to Natal.

  The Autobiography does not describe Gandhi’s reunion in Rajkot with Kastur and the two boys. Once more there had been a separation of three years during which Kastur could not have had an easy time. As the wife of a younger brother, she was the ‘junior’ housekeeper in a joint family with several children apart from her own, and lots of chores. Her husband’s absence had made Kastur’s position weaker still. We can glimpse some eagerness in Gandhi’s remark: ‘I went straight to Rajkot without halting in Bombay’ (A 148).

  Victoria’s diamond jubilee was only some months away, and Gandhi taught God Save the Queen to his boys—eight-year-old Harilal and four-year-old Manilal—and to other youngsters in the joint family. He had learnt the anthem ‘with careful perseverance’ in South Africa, where, at NIC meetings and other occasions, it was frequently sung. The twenty-seven-year-old Gandhi was a believer still in the Empire, and thought that South Africa’s colour prejudice was a ‘temporary and local’ flaw (A151). We know that his picture of Empire included images of British bravery, of opposition to slavery, and of at least a verbal commitment to protect the weak.14

  While in Gujarat he met up again with Rajchandra and was struck by the latter’s views on the beauty and effectiveness of brahmacharya, or celibacy, even for a married person, a Hindu and Jain concept (similar in some ways to the quality of the pure in heart celebrated in the Bible’s Sermon on the Mount) that went far beyond Mohandas’s 1888 vow to his mother (A 179-80).

  Plague, meanwhile, had hit Bombay and threatened Rajkot. Gandhi offered to help with the city’s sanitation—we can see this as a social-cum-political initiative—and was taken on a committee to inspect latrines and suggest improvements. Gandhi and the committee found that rich citizens resisted scrutiny far more than poorer ones. The untouchables’ quarters were discovered to be the cleanest, but only one other committee member had joined Gandhi in visiting these. The rest thought such a visit ‘preposterous’ (A 150).

  His sister Raliat’s husband, who belonged to the Modh Bania branch that continued to ostracize Gandhi, lay seriously ill in Bombay. Gandhi brought him to Rajkot, installed him in his own room, ‘and remained with him night and day’ for many days, no doubt remembering an earlier nursing, in the same house, of Kaba Gandhi. The latest nursing could not, however, save the brother-in-law (A 153).

  Gandhi went with copies of his Green Pamphlet to Bombay, Poona, Madras and Calcutta. In Bombay he met Pherozeshah Mehta, Justices Ranade and Tyabji, and Mehta’s ‘right-hand man’, Dinshaw Wacha; in Poona he met Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Tilak’s political rival Gopal Krishna Gokhale. These influential figures arranged meetings for Gandhi to address.

  In Bombay, however, Gandhi’s voice did not reach all who filled a large hall, and his speech, fortunately written out, was read out first by Keshavrao Deshpande, known to Gandhi from their days together in London, and then, on popular demand, by Wacha. Its contents made an impact, Mehta liked them, and Deshpande and another barrister, an unnamed Parsi, said they would accompany Gandhi on his return to South Africa.

  In Poona, both Tilak and Gokhale took part in the meeting, which at Tilak’s suggestion was chaired by a non-political personality, Dr Bhandarkar. But it was to Gokhale, only three years older than he, that Gandhi felt instinctively and compellingly drawn, a sentiment apparently reciprocated in Gokhale.

  A public meeting in Madras ‘was wild with enthusiasm’, not least because of Gandhi’s references to Balasundaram, a son of the Tamil country. In Madras Gandhi printed 10,000 more copies of the Green Pamphlet, the newspapers, including The Hindu, covered his speech at length, and one of them, The Madras Standard, asked Gandhi to fill its columns, which he did.

  Calcutta was slower to respond. Surendranath Banerji, known as ‘the idol of Bengal’, told Gandhi that Bengalis faced too many local problems to be interested in South Africa, an assessment confirmed by the indifference of the editors of Amrita Bazar Patrika and Bangabasi, on whom Gandhi called.

  But the editors of two British-owned papers of Calcutta, The Statesman and The Englishman, published long interviews with Gandhi. After finding in ‘a searching cross-examination’ that Gandhi was unwilling to exaggerate, Saunders, the editor of The Englishman, wrote an editorial on Indians in South Africa and asked Gandhi to make ‘whatever changes’ he liked in it.

  A public meeting in Calcutta too now seemed likely, but a cable arriving from Durban asked Gandhi to ‘return soon’, in time for the January opening of the Natal Parliament. Abdullah, who had just purchased the Courlan
d, said that Gandhi and his family could travel free on it to Durban.

  Accepting the offer, Gandhi went to Rajkot, collected Kastur, Harilal, Manilal, and Gokuldas, the only son of the recently widowed Raliat, and, in early December, boarded the Courland in Bombay. The barristers who were to accompany Gandhi to South Africa, Deshpande and the unnamed Parsi, pleaded difficulties and did not join.)

  Kastur and the boys were excited at the prospect of a voyage, but it was Gandhi who decided every detail for it, including their shoes, stockings and clothes, the food they should eat and their manners. His family had to approximate to ‘the European standard’ without quite copying it. Gandhi ruled that Kastur’s sari and the boys’ coat and trousers would be worn in the style of the most Westernized Indians of the time, the Parsis, and that the family should wear stockings and shoes and eat with knives and forks.

  Recalling in the Autobiography these aspects of the journey to Durban, ‘my first voyage with my wife and children’, as he terms it, Gandhi is both amused and contrite. He smiles at the hybrid identity he had prescribed for his family and regrets ‘the force of authority’ that lay behind his prescriptions, which were not easy for Kastur and the boys to carry out. But in 1896 he was not amused or contrite and thought that a ‘practically unlettered’ wife required teaching from her husband (A162).

  Accompanying the Courland on a non-stop voyage to Durban was the Naderi, for which Dada Abdullah & Co. were the agents. The two boats together carried about 800 passengers, half of whom were bound for the Boer republic, the Transvaal, and the other half for Natal, many of them, like Gandhi, returning to the colony.