Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  The corps served only for six weeks, and during a phase in the war that saw British attacks repulsed by the Boers. When the commander-in-chief decided to postpone further forays until reinforcements arrived from Britain and India, the corps was disbanded.

  But it had achieved something. Though asked at first to remain outside the firing line, the corps was requested by General Buller, after a repulse at Spion Kop, to fetch the wounded within the line. On some days Gandhi and his fellows on the corps carried the wounded on stretchers for twenty miles or more; among those carried was General Woodgate.

  Camaraderie quickly replaced colour prejudice. On a hot and exhausting day, Gandhi and some other Indians marched toward Chievely Camp, where Lieutenant Roberts, son of Lord Roberts, had received a mortal wound. When, trudging together, thirsty Indians and whites eventually reached a tiny brook, the Indians asked the whites to drink first, while the whites asked the Indians to do the same.

  Vere Stent, editor of the Pretoria News, who ran into Gandhi early one morning after the latter had completed ‘a night’s work’ and British soldiers were ‘heartily invoking damnation on everybody’, found Gandhi ‘stoical in his bearing, cheerful and confident in his conversation’, and possessing ‘a kindly eye’. ‘He did me good,’ Stent would record.18

  Gandhi had in fact turned a difficult dilemma for the Indians into an opportunity. In Natal and in England, the press lauded the Indians’ work. ‘We are sons of Empire after all,’ ran the refrain in a poem in Punch.19 General Buller mentioned the Indian corps in his dispatch, the ‘leaders’ received medals and the Indians sensed a unity they had not felt before (A 188-90; S 62-73).

  Gandhi was near the entrance of his Mercury Lane office when, on a day in December 1899, Harry Escombe crossed over from across the street to have a word with him. Saying that he was really sorry about the attack of January 1897, Escombe added that he had not realized that ‘so much Christian charity was locked up in the Indian heart’. Three hours later, within minutes of Gandhi returning home, a servant from Escombe’s house hurried in to report that Escombe had just dropped dead.20

  Return to India. Boer defiance could not prevent a British victory, which seemed to brighten the Indians’ prospects. Fluttering over the Transvaal and Orange Free State, the Union Jack was expected to bring rights to Indians there. That and the goodwill won in Natal signalled to Gandhi that he could return to India, a decision apparently buttressed by a fear that ‘merely money-making’ might become his ‘main business’ in South Africa (A 192), and also, we may assume, by the appeal of law and politics in India. India had responded well to him in 1896, and his Durban time had made him confident in the law.

  Arguing that Miyakhan, Nazar and others would look after the work in Natal, Gandhi obtained in 1901 the community’s conditional consent to his departure. The rider was that if in a year’s time the community needed him, he would return. He accepted the proviso. ‘The thread of love that bound me to the community was too strong to break’ (A 192).

  This love was expressed in a series of farewell events and in costly presents: a gold necklace for Kastur, other gold chains, gold watches, diamond rings. Most were from the community, some from clients.

  After an evening occasion when the bulk of the gifts were given, a ‘deeply agitated’ Gandhi spent a sleepless night, walking up and down his room and debating the gifts. Should a public servant accept gifts? Since his clients were also helpers in public work, should he even take what they had given? The Autobiography is frank: ‘It was difficult for me to forego gifts worth hundreds (of pounds).’

  But he found it more difficult to keep the gifts. After all he was trying to simplify his life, and telling his children and wife that service was its own reward, and in fact urging the community ‘to conquer the infatuation for jewellery’. That night he drafted a letter placing the presents in a trust for the community, and naming trustees led by Parsi Rustomji.

  We can see this renunciation, as Gandhi may also have done, as a step both ethical and political, and capable of adding to his influence, whether in South Africa or India.

  In the morning he held a ‘consultation’ with Kastur, but only after securing (unfairly, it must be said) the boys’ agreement. Apparently, Harilal and Gokul (who were now thirteen) and Manilal, nine, not only said to their father that they did not need the presents; they also agreed to persuade their mother.

  This did not prove easy. Kastur fought with passion and logic both. The boys might dance to his tune, she told Gandhi, but ‘what about my daughters-in-law?’ The future was unknown, and she would be ‘the last person to part with gifts so lovingly given’. She cried, too.

  But the boys and the husband would not budge. Gandhi said that the boys would not marry young. When they did marry, their wives would be free from the lure of ornaments; if, however, ornaments were needed, Kastur could ask him.

  ‘Ask you? I know you by this time. You deprived me of my ornaments… Fancy you offering to get ornaments for my daughters-in-law! You who are trying to make sadhus of my boys from today!’

  Erikson’s translation of the last remark is, ‘You want them to be saints before they are men.’21 Saying, ‘No, the ornaments will not be returned,’ Kastur asked a proper legal question: ‘And pray what right have you to my necklace?’

  In a pitiless legal reply, Gandhi asked if the necklace was given for her service or his.

  ‘I agree,’ Kastur said. ‘But,’ she added, ‘service rendered by you is as good as rendered by me. I have toiled and moiled for you day and night. Is that no service? You force all and sundry on me, making me weep bitter tears, and I slaved for them.’

  ‘These were pointed thrusts, and some of them went home,’ Gandhi would acknowledge. But his mind was made up. In his own words, he ‘somehow succeeded in extorting’ her consent (A 192-4). The gifts received in 1896 and 1901 were all returned.

  In the Autobiography (the sole source for this discussion and our knowledge of it) Gandhi would claim that as the years went by Kastur saw the wisdom of the step, but the 1901 ‘consultation’ over the presents was not between equals.

  In October 1901, Gandhi, Kastur and the boys sailed for Bombay.

  Chapter 4

  Satyagraha

  India and South Africa, 1901-06

  The voyage this time was via the island colony of Mauritius, where the Gandhis spent a night as guests of Sir Charles Bruce, the governor. From Bombay, where Kastur and the boys were placed in the care of friends, Gandhi proceeded to the Indian capital, Calcutta, for the end-1901 annual session of the Indian National Congress, boarding the train taken by the leaders—Dinshaw Wacha, who was to preside at the Calcutta session, Pherozeshah Mehta, ‘the lion of Bombay’, Chimanlal Setalvad, the renowned lawyer, and others.

  He wanted to interest the leaders in South Africa and also to get to know them. At a designated station en route Gandhi entered the special saloon that Mehta had booked and talked with the leaders confabulating in it; at the next halt he returned to his compartment. Mehta’s response that ‘nothing can be done’ for South Africa’s Indians as long as ‘we have no power in our own land’ disappointed Gandhi (A 195).

  At the Calcutta session Gandhi played two roles. He sponsored, with Gokhale’s help, a resolution on South Africa, which was passed without discussion, though Gandhi managed, during a five-minute speech, to challenge Mehta’s view. Secondly, he tried to introduce some order at the site of the session.

  Picking up a broom, he started cleaning a verandah where delegates had answered ‘the call of nature at night’. It was however an example that no one else followed. Gandhi also disposed of a heap of correspondence that was overwhelming one of the Congress secretaries, Janakinath Ghosal. Still, Gandhi met most of the leaders and ‘came to know the working of the Congress’, a useful acquisition (A 199).

  But he also wanted to know Bengal and was glad when Gokhale, the Congress stalwart from Poona who was also a member of the Imperial Council that periodically m
et in Calcutta, asked him to stay on in his Calcutta residence. Invited by Gokhale to join all the discussions in his home, Gandhi was struck by his host’s commitment and civility, and Gokhale on his part came to esteem his eager, disciplined and persevering guest.

  During his weeks in Calcutta Gandhi met many of Bengal’s intellectual and political leaders and found a love for Bengali music. Eager to call on Swami Vivekananda, he walked ‘with great enthusiasm’ the long path to Belur Math, only to be told that the Swami was ‘in his Calcutta house, lying ill, and could not be seen’ (A 209). Yet this disappointment was nothing compared with Gandhi’s horror at the ‘rivers of blood’ beside Calcutta’s Kali temple where goats were sacrificed.

  The sight was unbearable and unforgettable, and he was again shocked later that evening when a Bengali friend argued that the animals felt no pain since loud drumbeating accompanied their slaughter (A 208).

  After a quick trip down the Bay of Bengal to Rangoon, where the irrepressible Pranjivan Mehta had now transferred himself, Gandhi decided to see Benares (Varanasi), Agra, Jaipur and Palanpur before rejoining his family in Rajkot. He had to know the India he intended to engage, and would educate himself by travelling by train in the third class.

  It was winter, so Gandhi bought in Calcutta a long woollen coat that had been made in Porbandar. He also bought, for twelve annas, a canvas bag that would hold the coat, a shirt, a dhoti and a towel. Armed with the bag, a blanket and a water-jug that he already possessed, and a metal tiffin box presented by Gokhale, Gandhi left Calcutta. Gokhale, who had quite taken to Gandhi, insisted on seeing him off at the station, as did Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray, the scientist, whom Gandhi had befriended at Gokhale’s, an indication of their regard for the young ‘South African’ leader.

  Gandhi found the third-class compartments littered with trash and packed with people many of whom shouted and spat at all hours of day and night. In Benares he called on Annie Besant, who had made the holy city her home, took a dip in the Ganga, and was shaken by the din and dirt at the Kashi Vishwanath and Gyan Vapi temples. Engaging India was not going to be a picnic.

  Bombay, 1902. Desiring Gandhi’s assistance with Congress work, Gokhale wanted him to join the bar in Bombay, but, cautioned by memories of past failure in that city, Gandhi opened practice in Rajkot. When Gandhi quickly won cases in Kathiawar against reputed lawyers, his friend and successful advocate Kevalram Dave (whose father had urged Mohandas to go to England) insisted that Bombay was the place for Gandhi. ‘You are destined for public work,’ Dave said. ‘We will not allow you to be buried in Kathiawar’ (A 218).

  Agreeing, Gandhi hired chambers in the offices of Payne, Gilbert and Sayani in the Fort and a house in Girgaum, but just when it looked as though he and his family were settling down, ten-year-old Manilal came down with a severe attack of typhoid combined with pneumonia. The doctor, ‘a very good Parsi’, said that while medicine would have little effect, eggs and chicken broth were likely to help the boy.

  Gandhi’s vow would not permit the use of these foods, and for a few days he went through great torment while nursing his boy and giving him the Kuhne hip baths that he had studied and felt some trust in. When the high temperature persisted late one night, and Manilal grew delirious, Gandhi wondered whether he had any right to inflict his fads on his children.

  Torn between conflicting thoughts, Gandhi decided to give his boy a moist sheet pack. Wetting a sheet and wringing the water out of it, he wrapped it around Manilal, sparing only his head, and then covered him with two blankets. To the head he applied a wet towel.

  The boy’s whole body was burning like hot iron, and there was absolutely no perspiration. Sorely tired, Gandhi left Manilal in charge of Kastur and stepped out for some minutes by the sea at Chowpatty. Plunged in anxiety and prayer—scarcely looking at the few pedestrians who were about at that hour—he soon returned, his heart beating fast, to the Girgaum home.

  ‘You have returned, Bapu?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Yes darling.’

  ‘Please pull me out. I am burning.’

  ‘Are you perspiring, my boy?’

  ‘I am simply soaked. Please take me out.’

  Gandhi thanked God, for the temperature was clearly coming down. After managing to divert his suffering son for some more minutes, Gandhi undid the pack and dried Manilal’s body. Then father and son fell asleep in the same bed, and each slept like a log. Forty days of recuperation and nursing and a diet of diluted milk and fruit juices were to follow, but the boy had turned a corner (A 219-21).

  Settling down? The Girgaum house lacking enough light and air, Gandhi searched for a house in suburbs to the north. With the help of Pranjivan Mehta’s brother, Revashankar Jagjivan, he eventually hit upon a ‘fine bungalow’ (at an unknown address) in Santa Cruz.

  He also prospered better than he expected in his profession. Twice or thrice a week Gokhale would drop in at Gandhi’s chambers, often with friends he wished Gandhi to cultivate. A first-class season ticket eased Gandhi’s commute between Santa Cruz and the Fort. Frequently, Gandhi walked to Bandra to take the direct train to Churchgate. Later he would confess to an occasional feeling of ‘a certain pride in being the only first-class passenger’ in his compartment (A 222).

  His aims at this time were to do ‘public work under the advice and guidance of Gokhale’ and, ‘side by side with public work’, to make a living for himself and the family (S 74). Appearing to ‘settle down’ in ‘normal’ and admirable fashion, and flourishing, he even took out an insurance policy for Rs 10,000. An American insurance agent—‘a man with a pleasant countenance and a sweet tongue’—convinced barrister Gandhi that it was almost a religious obligation to get insured.

  Thinking of Kastur and the children, Gandhi told himself, ‘Man, you have sold almost all the ornaments of your wife. If something were to happen to you, the burden of supporting her and the children would fall on your poor brother. How would that become you?’ (A 230)

  This comfortable period in their Santa Cruz home was probably the one to which, years later, Kastur was referring when, in response to a remark from Gandhi about spiced food that women in his ashram seemed to enjoy, she hit back, saying:

  You had better keep quiet on the subject. Remember when every Sunday you would ask me to prepare some delicacies for you and you would gulp them down lustily?1

  But Gandhi’s life was not designed for comfort or pleasure. A cable arrived from South Africa: ‘Chamberlain expected here. Please return immediately.’ Soon, funds for his fare also arrived. Remembering the promise he had given, Gandhi gave up his Fort chambers and in November 1902 went again to South Africa, even though Pherozeshah Mehta ‘strongly advised’ him ‘not to go to South Africa’, as he would be able to do nothing there (S 258).

  In the belief that he would be back in some months, he retained the Santa Cruz house and left Kastur and his children there, under the care of a twenty-two-year-old relative who in 1896 had helped Gandhi with the Green Pamphlet, Chhaganlal (son of Khushalchand Gandhi) and Chhaganlal’s wife Kashi. Chhaganlal’s effort was supported by Revashankar in Bombay and supervised, from Rajkot, by Laxmidas.

  Accompanying Gandhi to South Africa were four or five young men from his clan, including Chhaganlal’s younger brother Maganlal: for all its harshness to Indians, South Africa was still a land of opportunity. On Gandhi’s part it was not an easy decision to leave again, terminating a rare spell of stability and security:

  The separation from wife and children, the breaking up of a settled establishment, and the going from the certain to the uncertain—all this was for a moment painful, but I had inured myself to an uncertain life (A 223).

  Rebuff and response. It was in the Transvaal, now under the British flag, that Gandhi’s help was most needed. Though the maltreatment of Indians in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State had been cited as a reason for Britain’s war against the Boers, British victory had in fact worsened the Indians’ position in the two states. Many of their hardsh
ips were connected to a new Asiatic Department in the Transvaal, largely manned by British officers who had migrated during the Boer war from India and Ceylon.

  Indians who had left the Transvaal during the war were required to apply to this department for permits to return to their homes, jobs or trade; and bribing seemed necessary to obtain the permits. Also, unlike South African officers who had acquired ‘a certain courtesy of manner’ while serving a European public—a courtesy also extended at times to Indians—white officers imported from Asia, used to lording over dark-skinned subjects, thought it below their dignity to be courteous with Indians (A 225).

  Gandhi led the delegation of Indians in Natal that called on Joseph Chamberlain, the Empire’s secretary of state for the colonies, and found him polite, but Chamberlain’s mission was to win South Africa’s white hearts, Boer and non-Boer, and to collect thirty-five million pounds that South Africa had promised to Britain, not to satisfy the Indians of Natal.

  From Natal Chamberlain hastened to the Transvaal. Gandhi, who had prepared the case of the Transvaal’s Indians and had earlier lived for a year in Pretoria, was asked to lead a deputation there as well. But Indians in Pretoria and Johannesburg were unable to procure a permit for Gandhi’s entry. However, an hour before Gandhi’s train was to start from Durban, his old friend Alexander, still the police chief, secured a permit for him from a Transvaal representative.

  The men at the Transvaal’s Asiatic Department were furious. Thinking at first that Gandhi had arrived without a permit, they planned to arrest him. On realizing that he carried a permit, they resolved to prevent him from leading the deputation.

  Tyeb Sheth, who explained to the assistant colonial secretary, a man called W.H. Moor, formerly of the Ceylon Civil Service, that he and other Indians in the Transvaal had sought Gandhi’s assistance, was ordered by Moor to fetch Gandhi. When Gandhi, Tyeb and some others arrived at Moor’s office, no seats were offered.