Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People
Page 19
Next Gandhi sent a wire to the attorney-general urging the assailants’ release. (They were let off, but Mir Alam and his companions were later rearrested on a new charge: committing a crime on a public street. Though Gandhi refused to offer evidence, Mir Alam and one other were given short sentences.)
A Dr Thwaites arrived at the Dokes’ home and found that Gandhi’s injuries were not serious. Stitching up wounds on the cheek and upper lip, the doctor enjoined liquid food and complete silence until the stitches were removed. As Gandhi would later write, though ‘speech was forbidden me, I was still master of my hands’. For the community he wrote out a message:
They should not prosecute Mir Alam and company, who had acted in the only way they knew against what they thought to be wrong. Hindus should not retain anger against Muslims. Except for those with scruples of conscience, Asians should give finger-prints. And satyagrahis should ‘fear none and nothing but God’.
Chamney returned with the papers. After Gandhi pressed his fingers first against an ink pad and then against the papers, he ‘saw that tears stood in Mr Chamney’s eyes’. Before closing his own eyes for a rest, Gandhi wrote out a note asking Doke whether his little daughter Olive would mind singing for him a hymn he liked, Cardinal Newman’s Lead Kindly Light. Doke ‘called Olive by signs and asked her to stand at the door and sing the hymn in a low tone’. She did so:
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
the distant scene;
One step enough for me.
All his life Gandhi would remember ‘the whole scene’ and ‘the melodious voice of little Olive’ (S 153-7); and ‘one step enough for me’ would endure as a guiding principle for him.
During the ten days that Gandhi stayed with the Dokes, hundreds of Indians of different classes visited Gandhi, including ‘the humble hawker, basket in hand with dirty clothes and dusty boots’ and prominent merchants. Though denounced among whites as black-lovers, the Dokes did not withdraw from Gandhi. Parting from them was for Gandhi ‘a great wrench’ (S 159).
Early in March, Gandhi travelled to Natal and explained the settlement at a meeting of the Durban Indians. The lights suddenly went off and a Pathan rushed with a big stick at Gandhi, but friends had formed a cordon around him. The next day Gandhi went to Phoenix, where Kasturba (as she was increasingly called, meaning ‘Kastur-mother’) and the boys were, including Harilal.
Discussing with his father the attack by Mir Alam, Harilal asked what he should have done had he been present: should he have watched his father being assaulted, or run, or hit the attacker? Gandhi’s answer was that unless Harilal saw a nonviolent way of defending his father, he should have used force.7
Sarvodaya. In May 1908 the Gujarati Indian Opinion began publishing Gandhi’s translation of Ruskin’s Unto This Last. To his Gujarati version Gandhi gave the title ‘Sarvodaya’, or the welfare of all. Dissatisfied with the goal of ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’, Gandhi said that like Ruskin he wanted ‘the advancement of all… not merely of the greatest number’, and of minorities as well (Indian Opinion, 16 May 1908).
Like satyagraha, the term ‘sarvodaya’ was destined to find wide usage, and not merely in South Africa or India.
Betrayal. By 9 May 1908, 8,700 Indians had applied for registration. A new law validated the voluntary registrations but there was no mention of TARA being repealed. Smuts, who was turning into South Africa’s most powerful politician, pleaded helplessness in the face of white opinion.
The crunch came with an official declaration that residents of Indian origin returning to the Transvaal after 9 May would have to register under TARA and not be allowed the voluntary path, and with the enforcement of another anti-Indian law, the Transvaal Immigrants Restriction Act (TIRA), which in effect made it illegal for any Indian newcomer, no matter how well educated, to enter the territory.
The Transvaal Leader, edited by Cartwright, asked for TARA’s repeal, as did Doke in a letter to the paper, and William Hosken also intervened, but Smuts refused to budge, even though both Cartwright and Hosken confirmed that Smuts had promised repeal.
Feeling personally betrayed, but in order also to remain in tune with his angry base, Gandhi for the first time permitted himself the use of racial language (Indian Opinion, Guj., 27 June 1908):
When Japan’s brave heroes forced the Russians to bite the dust of the battlefield, the sun rose in the east. And now it shines on all the nations of Asia. The people of the East will never, never again submit to insult from insolent whites (8: 405).
Convinced that a mild response would only confirm Indian inferiority in the white mind, the Satyagraha Association declared that certificates of registration would be burnt if TARA’s repeal was not assured by the government. Certificates from Indians willing to burn them were collected, and a meeting was convened at 4 p.m. on 16 August on the Hamidia mosque’s grounds in Johannesburg. A large iron cauldron resting on four legs was installed in a corner of the arena.
In solidarity, the Natal Indian Congress sent a delegation. As Gandhi pointed out to Smuts, each person in this group belonged to ‘a different faith or clan of India’8—representing all of India was always Gandhi’s concern.
A volunteer on a bicycle brought a telegram from the government expressing inability to repeal TARA. When this was read out, the assembled thousands, now free to burn their certificates, broke out in applause. Gandhi said that any who wanted their certificates back could have them before the pile was burnt; there was no shame, and even a kind of courage, he added, in claiming them back. No one wanted them, however, and none stood up when Gandhi asked those opposed to the burning to rise.
A number of certificates were added to the more than 2,000 previously handed in. Mir Alam came forward and said he had done wrong in assaulting Gandhi, at which Gandhi took hold of Alam’s hand and assured him that he harboured no resentment against him.
Saturated with paraffin, the pile was set ablaze by Yusuf Mian, the chairman. Many a reporter covered the bonfire scene, London’s Daily Mail likening it to the Boston Tea Party. Gandhi said he did not find the comparison inapt.
Tactics. Nonviolent defiance of law was now practised in three ways: English-knowing Natal-based Indians entered the Transvaal. Transvaal residents went to Natal and returned without their certificates of residency. And hawkers traded without showing their licences.
A Parsi accountant in his twenties, Sorabji Shapurji Adajania, who was fluent in English, stepped into the Transvaal and asked for his English to be examined. This was not done but Adajania was ordered to leave. When he refused, he was sentenced, in a packed courtroom where Gandhi was his defence lawyer, to a month in prison with hard labour.
Also breaking the law, Daud Mohamed, president of the Natal Indian Congress, and Parsi Rustomji, both big traders in Durban, and a number of English-knowing Indians in Natal, including Harilal, entered the Transvaal and, in consequence, the colony’s prisons.
In ‘the last months of 1908 the campaign reached a peak of intensity’.9 The number of prisoners steadily grew, their ranks including traders, workers, hawkers and youngsters. But bigger traders stayed away, deterred by fines, prison terms and risks to business. Gallant roles were played by the Hamidia Islamic Society and the Tamil Benefit Society, and by a number of humble hawkers.
Gandhi took offence when he heard that an Indian in prison had objected to sleeping next to someone belonging to the scavenger caste. ‘This was humiliating,’ Gandhi wrote, adding:
Thanks to these hypocritical distinctions of high and low and to the fear of subsequent caste tyranny, we have… turned our back on truth and embraced falsehood… I wish that Indians who join this movement also resort to satyagraha against their caste and their family and against evil wherever they find it (Indian Opinion, 30 Jan. 1909; 9: 290-1).
During his nine weeks in the Volksrust prison, Gandhi and the other Indian prisoners broke stones, dug holes for trees and stitched caps on a sewing machine. The prison cap worn by black convicts and stitched by Gandhi would become the model in India for the white cap, pointed at the front and the back, that hundreds of thousands of freedom activists would wear after 1920, except that this Indian cap, known also as the Gandhi cap, would be made from cotton spun and woven by hand.
Because he was needed as a witness in a case in Johannesburg, a warder took Gandhi from Volksrust jail to spend a week at the Fort prison in Johannesburg. For this exercise Gandhi, carrying his luggage, walked to Volksrust station in convict clothes, ‘marked all over with the broad arrow’. He did likewise from the station in Johannesburg to the Fort jail. Doke and his children walked alongside Gandhi to the prison. Others, too, recognized the man walking in convict clothes and carrying a load as the attorney they knew and admired.
In the Fort prison, a night in a cell with hardened criminals—‘wild, murderous-looking, vicious Bantu and Chinese prisoners’, as Gandhi would describe them—proved difficult for him. Two of the prisoners appeared to threaten Gandhi with sexual assault. They ‘exchanged obscene jokes, uncovering each other’s genitals’, and ‘jeered and laughed’ at Gandhi.10 To fight his fears Gandhi recalled verses from the Gita, and he remained awake all night, alert to the possibility of assault.
In this Fort prison Gandhi was grabbed, lifted and tossed out of an open lavatory seat he had just occupied by ‘a strong, heavily-built, fearful-looking Native’ who wanted to use the seat. Gandhi saved himself from a nasty fall by catching hold of a door frame.11
Kasturba. A wire arrived in Volksrust from Albert West in Phoenix: Kasturba was seriously ill. West suggested that Gandhi should seek parole or release, if need be by paying a fine, and join Kasturba. Soldiers did not leave the battlefront, Gandhi answered. Fighting in the Boer War, Lord Roberts had not gone to his son’s funeral. He too would remain on his battlefield.
To West, Harilal, and others in Phoenix, he sent suggestions for Kasturba’s treatment, and in a tender yet hard letter to ‘Beloved Kastur’, he said that though his heart had been ‘cut’, the satyagraha prevented him from joining her. If she kept her courage and took the necessary nutrition, she would recover.
But if to his ill luck the worst were to happen, she should not think that dying in separation was different from dying in his presence. ‘I love you so dearly that even if you are dead you will be alive to me.’ Gandhi added what he had told her before, that he would not marry again if she died before him (9 Nov. 1908, 9: 210).
Kasturba survived. Later (10 January) she underwent surgery in Durban without chloroform. Gandhi, who was present, marvelled at her ‘wonderful bravery’ but after a few days her condition worsened, and her doctor, a friend of the Gandhis, declared that without beef tea she would not recover.
Asked by Gandhi whether she would take beef tea (he on his part had disliked the idea), Kasturba said she would prefer to die in his arms. The doctor’s response was to withdraw responsibility for her. Gandhi took her by rickshaw to Durban station and carried her in his arms to the train, which took them to Phoenix station, where, instructed by Gandhi, West had brought a hammock, a party of six, a bottle of hot milk and another of hot water. In Phoenix Kasturba slowly gained strength under ‘Doctor’ Gandhi’s hydropathic treatment.
But from 25 February to 24 May 1909 Gandhi was again in jail. Arrested along with Polak, he was kept in Volksrust for a week and then transferred in handcuffs to Pretoria, where he was placed in a dark narrow cell next to cells holding men convicted for attempted murder, sodomy and bestiality.
The government’s idea was to break Gandhi’s spirit, for he was also handcuffed and marched on foot to a court where his evidence was demanded. But his spirit seemed to emerge stronger from these tests.
Scrubbing floors or sewing together worn-out blankets week after week, sitting on the floor and bending over his work, Gandhi developed severe neuralgia and his lungs were affected. But he ‘read voraciously, whenever he could, even standing below the dim bulb, snatching whatever light he could. In three months he read thirty books.’12
Equation with Harilal. Among the 3,000 or 4,000 Indians who entered jails in 1908 and 1909 was Harilal. After a week’s imprisonment in July 1908, Harilal continued his satyagraha. He was jailed for a month in mid-August and again, in February 1909, for six months.
This spell was followed almost immediately by another half-year term starting in November 1909. Harilal’s cheerful personality and his readiness to endure prison terms earned him the sobriquet ‘Chhote (Little)’ Gandhi and his father’s admiration, but the lad was unhappy about gaps in his education and dissatisfied with Phoenix.
When Harilal complained, Gandhi replied: ‘If you feel that Phoenix smells badly, it is your duty to act in such a way that it gives fragrance. If your fragrance mixes [with it], the bad smell will decrease.’13 The clever answer did not, however, address Harilal’s desire for personal expansion and normal schooling.
The father on his part wanted the son to be more open. Shortly after the Mir Alam attack, hoping to obtain an account of Harilal’s life, Gandhi supplied details of his own day. He was living, Gandhi wrote, with Kallenbach, riding on a bicycle to work and back, working in the office from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., waking in the morning between 6.30 and 7, taking the Kuhne bath, taking milk in the morning, fruits at noon, and milk and cherry, etc., in the evening. Kallenbach was his companion at every meal, the fruit lunch being eaten in the architect’s office. And so on.
But the gambit failed: Harilal did not provide the information sought by the father. Later Gandhi wrote to him about the Pathans still angry with him: Harilal was not to worry and should keep any disturbing news from his unwell mother. Added Gandhi: ‘What if they kill me?.. Most of the teachers had such a fate.’14
When the son was in jail, Gandhi sent detailed notes to Gulab, Harilal’s wife, who had given birth to a girl, Rami. Gulab was to act as the mistress of the Gandhi home in the Phoenix settlement, look after Harilal’s young brothers Ramdas and Devadas (keeping their nails clean), continue to breastfeed Rami for some more time (and take a good diet after supplying the feed), take from Kasturba good books and good poetry to read, and take in plenty of fresh air.
Her moral character was Gulab’s finest ornament. Piercing the ears and the nose and thrusting something into them was not civilized, though a ring on the hand would stop gossip. However, she should follow his suggestions only if convinced.15
Softer side. On another occasion, writing in appreciation of Harilal’s jail-going, Gandhi said to his son: ‘If I only talk about your shortcomings or always give you advice, do not think that I am unaware of your virtues. But these do not need to be sung.’ Then he expressed a father’s longing: ‘Write to me at least sometimes…’16
Once when Gandhi was courting imprisonment while Harilal, free at the time, faced a difficult decision—perhaps on whether or not to defy a law again—the father wrote: ‘On leaving you alone, the heart of a father is on fire. But I will have to go for the struggle. I leave all [to] your discretion.’17
His widowed sister Raliat’s only son Gokuldas, who had spent several years under Gandhi’s roof, died in 1908 in India, shortly after marrying. He was only twenty and had been close to Harilal. Gandhi wrote to relatives in India that he wanted to cry.18
Manilal. He softened similarly when writing from Pretoria prison in 1909 to his son
Manilal, who was seventeen: ‘As I write I want to draw you to my chest, and my eyes are wet because I cannot.’ But in the same letter he had also written quite sternly about Manilal’s career, about which the son had asked anxious questions: ‘This much is clear that you are not to work as a barrister or a doctor. We are poor and wish to remain poor… Have faith that since you are serving others, you will not suffer privation.’19
Another letter from jail to Manilal, written in English, tried to assure the son that character-building was not going to be his sole exercise. ‘Instruction in letters’ was also taking place. The letter ended with ‘love to all and kisses to Ramdas, Devadas and Rami’.20
In this letter (already looked at in the opening chapter) Gandhi added: ‘Amusement only continues during the age of innocence, i.e., up to twelve years… Let me tell you that when I was younger than you are, my keenest enjoyment was to nurse my father. Of amusement after I was twelve, I had little or none.’21
In the autumn of 1909, when he was in England, Gandhi was delighted to learn from Manilal in Phoenix of the assistance he was giving to Albert West, who was unwell: ‘I was extremely glad,’ the father wrote. ‘I read the letter twice. I felt proud of you and thanked God that I had such a son.’22
Devadas. When he was ‘eight or ten’, the youngest son found himself without Harilal and Manilal (who apparently were both in prison) and required to cheer up other Phoenix children, all younger than he was, whose elders too were in jail. ‘All felt very lonely and depressed.’ Devadas’s father, who was in Phoenix at the time, seated the children on a table and sang to them poet Nazir’s lines about birds who chirped at dawn and dusk.