Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

Minutes later, we too were singing the verses with him and romping and hopping on the table, our arms akimbo in imitation of the birds in the song, all our depression and loneliness gone.23

  But this sort of fun was rare.

  Kallenbach. Gandhi’s acquaintance with Hermann Kallenbach, an architect ‘of strong feelings, wide sympathies and childlike simplicity’, as Gandhi would describe him (S 163), ‘ripened into very close friendship’ (A 293). Two years younger than Gandhi, Kallenbach had studied architecture in Germany and designed hotels and department stores in South Africa. But (as Martin Green says) he seemed keener on simpler, airier, sunnier structures, in using local materials, and in consistency with the landscape.

  These were Gandhi’s preferences too. As we have seen, in Johannesburg Gandhi now stayed with Kallenbach (for a while in a tent, while the architect built a new home in the Mount View suburb). The German Jew played provider, protector and follower. Kallenbach would insist that whatever he spent for Gandhi’s subsistence in his home was a tiny fraction of what he was saving thanks to lifestyle changes inspired by Gandhi.

  For some weeks after the attack by Alam, Kallenbach walked behind Gandhi with a revolver concealed from onlookers and also from Gandhi, which was put away after Gandhi discovered a bulge in Kallenbach’s jacket and the reason for it, and said to his friend, ‘You have taken over from God the burden of protecting me. I can now relax.’24

  Gandhi was in Pretoria jail in April 1909 when he heard that Kallenbach’s mother had died. Sending his condolences to his friend, Gandhi added: ‘Need I say that among those of whom I think daily you are one? I am not with you in body but I am always with you in spirit…’ (96: 6).

  Gandhi & Smuts. While in Pretoria jail Gandhi received a couple of books sent by Smuts, an indication of the unusual relationship between the jailed and the jailer. Each was skilled in law and politics, each had had problems with ‘the English’, each needed to carry his constituencies in any settlement with the other, and each seemed, by turns, to respect and suspect the other.

  If Gandhi felt betrayed by Smuts, the latter charged Gandhi with springing new demands (S 188-92). Yet even while attacking each other at meetings and in the media, the two negotiated a number of times during the struggle, face to face or through intermediaries, and kept channels open.

  When in May 1908 Yusuf Mian, the BIA chairman, and Thambi Naidoo were again assaulted by some Pathans, Gandhi wrote to Smuts regarding ‘the most violent member of the Pathan community, who has remained behind the scenes but who has been an active agent in having the assaults committed’.

  The letter (21 May 1908) did not name the man, whose identity the government knew only too well, but Gandhi called him a ‘fanatic’, speculated that ‘he possesses no documents’, and added, ‘I certainly think that this man should be deported’ (8: 332). But the South African establishment was not anxious to expel enemies of Gandhi, and the man—we do not know his name—was not deported.25

  Life in Phoenix. The settlement struggled for money but its flowers and vegetables made an impression. The tall, strong, and, to begin with, hot-tempered Maganlal proved as good at gardening (and in composing type for Indian Opinion) as he had been at running a shop in the Natal hinterland.

  His young nephew Prabhudas (Chhaganlal’s son) noticed that Maganlal also changed from a nephew-beating disciplinarian into a gentler person. ‘I was truly a human demon,’ Maganlal would say, ‘and do not know how many wrongs I would have committed in my angry blindness had [Gandhi] not changed my wild nature’.26

  Busy organizing the Transvaal satyagraha, Gandhi made only short visits to Phoenix. On these visits the settlement’s families were in their best clothes and spirits. Gandhi would call on each family, find out about everyone, and offer suitable words. Laughter rang out as much as advice, and there were rare and all-too-brief occasions when Gandhi’s boys and other children and youngsters ran and played with him.

  When, on one such occasion in a Phoenix grove, six-year-old Prabhudas, calling for Gandhi’s third son, nine-year-old Ramdas, said ‘Laamdaash’, Gandhi’s response was to ask Prabhudas and all the boys present to shout ‘hip, hip, hooray’ as often and as loudly as they could. Including Prabhudas, all articulated the sounds, raising their voices until the ground shook. Next asked by Gandhi to say ‘Hooray Ramdas,’ Prabhudas managed to repeat the sounds correctly.

  Recalling the story in his Jeevan-Prabhat, published five years after Gandhi’s death, Prabhudas would remember that at the time of the incident he was fascinated by the gold gleaming from two of Gandhi’s teeth and by Gandhi’s airy shirt.

  After the Indians started courting imprisonment, Phoenix was used for housing dependents of the ones arrested, each Phoenix family taking in as many as they could. Gandhi personally persuaded the women in each family to accept the newcomers.

  Taking Muslim or Christian children into their homes was a difficult decision for the families of Phoenix’s orthodox Hindus. Though they accepted Ibrahim, a Muslim boy, Chhaganlal and his wife Kashi would purify over a fire the utensils in which food for Muslims had been cooked, their son would later write.

  For newcomers of different faiths and ages, classes were started in Phoenix, taught by those producing Indian Opinion. The presence of the newcomers underscored the need for multi-faith prayers and prayer-songs, which became a permanent feature from 1908-09.

  Hearing the bhajan or prayer-song, ‘Dear to me is Rama’s name,’ Parsi Rustomji exclaimed joyously, ‘Say Hormazd instead Rama.’ ‘The ‘suggestion was readily taken up’. Husain Daud, who often stayed at Phoenix and ‘enthusiastically joined’ the prayers, taught others to sing a Muslim devotional, Hai Bahare-e-bagh (‘Fleeting is the bloom of this world’s garden’); and Joseph Royappen’s suggestion that ‘Christiana’ should at times substitute ‘Vaishnava’ in Narsinh Mehta’s oft-sung Vaishnava Jana was ‘accepted with alacrity’.27

  Gandhi probably first heard Vaishnava Jana in his boyhood. Perhaps it was sung to his ailing father. In any case, the opening line of this song by the Kathiawar-born fifteenth-century poet had become, and would remain, his favourite religious and social truth:

  He alone can be called a Vaishnava (devotee of God) who knows the Other’s pain.

  Changes in Gandhi’s lifestyle were reflected in Phoenix. Spicy and tasty snacks and meals, which all including Gandhi enjoyed, gave way to simpler non-spiced food which was increasingly eaten in Indian style by the Indian settlers, with fingers rather than with knife and fork, and on Sundays in the open air in one of the choice spots that Phoenix offered.

  To live like the poor and yet be efficient and scientific in the kitchen, on the farm and in the press was accepted as the goal. ‘Through Phoenix we can find our soul and serve India,’ Gandhi wrote in 1909 to Manilal.28

  Africans and Indians. Though located in the heart of the Zulu country, the settlement did not interact much with the surrounding population. And though Gandhi would in all spend about eighteen years in South Africa, and write of that period in two books, he would relate few conversations with Africans and offer only brief descriptions (S 7-12) of their appearance, homes, languages, food and lifestyle.

  On occasion a few Zulus joined the multi-faith prayer sessions at Phoenix, and, as Albert West would recall, Zulu passers-by ‘frequently call[ed] for a drink from our water-tank’.29

  Nonetheless, as Prabhudas would remember, Kasturba and the wives of Chhaganlal and Maganlal at times spoke in low tones about possible Zulu attacks on Phoenix.30 They were influenced by stories passed on by indentured Indians working in white-owned plantations about their assegai-wielding Zulu warders.

  The fears were baseless. The Zulus seemed to respect Phoenix and Gandhi. One of their leaders, John Dube, running his Ohlange Institute only a couple of miles from the Phoenix settlement, was friendly to Gandhi. The two had met in 1905, and in Indian Opinion Gandhi had written (2 Sept. 1905) of Dube, who would become the first president of the African National Congress, as an African ‘
of whom one should know’.

  A few months later Gandhi praised the efforts of Tengo Jabavu (the founder of Native Opinion) to establish a college for Africans, writing of ‘an awakening people’ and of ‘the great Native races of South Africa’ and adding that ‘British Indians in South Africa have much to learn from [Jabavu’s] example’.31

  Yet Gandhi himself was often biased and ignorant in respect of Africans. In 1894, shortly after arriving in South Africa, he had objected to attempts to drag Indians down to the level of ‘a raw Kaffir’, employing the pejorative expression for an African that many, including Africans, used at the time (1: 410). In a petition in 1899 he said (2: 270) that Indians ‘were infinitely superior to Africans’, and in 1902 he wrote of Zulus as a ‘fine’ but ‘lazy’ body of people (2: 464).

  True, he had also written—on 25 October 1894, in a letter to the Times of Natal—that ‘the Indians do not regret that capable Natives can exercise the franchise. They would regret if it were otherwise’ (1: 410). But his political goal was dignity for South Africa’s Indians, not justice for the country’s Africans, though he acknowledged that ‘children of the soil’ could eventually claim full political rights, something he did not demand for the Indians, who were ‘settlers’ (Indian Opinion [Guj.], 24 March 1906, 5: 135).32

  Gandhi was at his most derogatory when he wrote in Indian Opinion (7 March 1908) of African prison-mates convicted for crime who had appeared to threaten him: ‘Many of the Native prisoners are only one degree removed from the animal and often created rows and fought among themselves in their cells’ (8: 183).

  Two months later, however, in a rare articulation, Gandhi offered a vision for all the races of South Africa. In a speech on 18 May 1908 at the YMCA in Johannesburg, he said:

  [I]n studying the Indian question, I have endeavoured to study the question as it affects the Africans and the Chinese. It seems to me that both the Africans and the Asiatics have advanced the Empire as a whole; we can hardly think of South Africa without the African races… They (the African races) are still in the history of the world’s learners. Able-bodied and intelligent men as they are, they cannot but be an asset to the Empire…

  If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races commingle and produce a civilisation that perhaps the world has not yet seen? (8: 323)

  Gandhi’s understanding of Africans was growing, and after leaving South Africa for good he would recall times when, evidently, he held private talks with African leaders.33 But these talks did not feature at the time in Indian Opinion or in his public utterances, and we do not know what was discussed. Any revelation of Indian-African confabulations while he was in South Africa would have triggered white hysteria and demands for expelling Indians.

  At forty. We should take in what Gandhi had taken on as he neared his fortieth birthday. He was commanding, on behalf of a small and not always united minority, a nonviolent battle, making sure that it remained nonviolent, defending satyagrahis in law courts and taking care of their dependents. He was conducting Indian Opinion week by week, supervising life in the Phoenix settlement, cultivating his links with friendly whites in South Africa, keeping sympathizers in India and England informed, and observing the Indian scene, which he hoped before long to influence.

  He was writing numerous thoughtful letters a day and carrying out experiments in food and health. Finally, this now celibate ‘father’ of an expanding family was striving to retain the loyalty of his biological sons and others in his large family. Many in this family desired a less demanding, less risky and more normal life, even while admitting that their ‘father’, whom they loved despite the sudden changes he introduced from time to time, had involved them in a great enterprise for the soul and for India.

  He seemed remarkable to more than his Phoenix followers. In 1908-9 Doke worked on a short biography, published first in November 1909, for which Gandhi described his Kathiawar background, his youth, including the London phase, and some of his South African experiences. And though the idea did not take off, the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee proposed in July 1909 that Gandhi be considered for the presidency of the Indian National Congress.

  Deportations. The struggle in South Africa became harder once the government started deporting satyagrahis to India. Earlier deportations across the Transvaal border into Natal, Orange Free State or Portuguese East Africa had not caused the same upheaval—deportees could return across the border, even if it meant re-entering prison. Being sent to India was another matter for men who had families and property in the Transvaal, including, in some cases, land.

  Most deportees were ex-indentured men bound for south India with few known relatives there. Gandhi had scant resources to assist them at the Madras end, but obtained the help of G.A. Natesan, whom he had met on his visits there. At Gandhi’s instance, a young associate in the satyagraha, P.K. Naidoo, escorted the first batch of deportees. ‘See first to their comforts and then to your own,’ Gandhi instructed Naidoo (S204).

  As a result of the deportations, ‘many more fell away, and only the real fighters remained’ (S 205). At one point Gandhi wondered whether he would be deported himself. ‘Where they will deport me to, I cannot say,’ he wrote to Harilal.34 But deporting him to India was not really on the cards. The prestige surrounding Gandhi ruled it out.

  Yet now the struggle was no longer being ‘joined by any highly educated men’, except for the indefatigable Adajania, who was willing to be arrested any number of times (S 206). Dissuaded by the stakes, most big traders too kept themselves out. Yusuf Mian in fact resigned as head of the TBIA and of the Satyagraha committee. He was replaced by Ahmed Cachalia who liquidated his business in order to free himself for the struggle. Another trader, Ebrahim Aswat, did likewise, but most merchants were not ready for such a bold step.

  The ex-indentured comprised the satyagraha’s backbone. Since they were either Hindu or Christian, and the traders mostly Muslim, a Hindu-Muslim rift was a strong possibility at this juncture, but Gandhi, supported ably by Cachalia, took energetic steps to prevent it.

  In July 1909, an eighteen-year-old prisoner from an ex-indentured family, Swami Nagappan, who had been made to work and sleep in a road-building camp at the height of winter, died of double pneumonia. Nagappan thought of the struggle till his last breath, his companions said (S 205).

  MISSION TO ENGLAND

  Though martyrdom was hardly a widespread wish, Indians ready to give in to the government failed completely when they made a bid to oust Gandhi and his colleagues from the TBIA leadership. They also failed in their attempt to exclude Gandhi from a TBIA delegation sent to England at the end of June 1909.

  An effort in England at this point was unavoidable: leaders of South Africa’s whites were visiting England to secure a merger of all four colonies—the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal and Orange Free State—into a Union of South Africa. London’s intervention in defence of Indian rights had to be sought before the merger; a united dominion would be stronger vis-à-vis London.

  In June 1909, accordingly, the TBIA decided to send Gandhi, Ahmed Cachalia, Haji Habib and V.A. Chettiar to England, and another delegation of four, including Henry Polak, to India to mobilize opinion there. Cachalia and some others chosen were, however, arrested before they could leave. In the end Gandhi (who was travelling out of a sense of duty, not hope) and Habib went to England; and Polak, alone, to India. The Natal Indian Congress (NIC) too sent a delegation to England.

  The Kenilworth Castle carrying Gandhi and Habib landed in Southampton on 10 July. The two stayed in England for over four months. Though he again worked extremely hard (‘there was hardly a journalist or member of either House whom it was possible to meet whom we did not meet’), the mission failed (S 209).

  There were several reasons. One, British politicians were preoccupied with a budget crisis and summer holidays. Until Gandhi told him, Morley, the Secretary of State for India, had not even known that Botha and Smuts we
re in London to finalize the South African union and dominion.

  Two, while Dadabhai Naoroji was no longer in London to help (he was back in India), the two who were assisting Gandhi, Lord Ampthill, the president of SABIC, and Sir Muncherjee Bhownugree, did not see eye to eye.

  Three, the image of India and Indians had taken a beating following the murder, eight days before Gandhi landed in England, of Curzon Wyllie, political aide to Morley and a man Gandhi had seen three years earlier. Wyllie was shot by a young Indian, Madanlal Dhingra, at a reception offered by the National Indian Association in a South Kensington hall. Some Englishmen even imagined a link between extremist violence and satyagraha.

  The main reason, however, was that the whites controlling the rich resources of South Africa were more important to London than the Indians of South Africa. Though Gandhi tried all he could, and though Ampthill secured for Gandhi the goodwill of other influential Englishmen, including Lord Curzon (India’s Viceroy from 1899 to 1905), British ministers were reluctant to press Smuts and Botha.

  For much of his time in England, heeding advice Ampthill had given, Gandhi lobbied privately. To be able to receive callers, he took a suite with a sitting room in the Westminster Palace Hotel. In the end, however, Ampthill informed Gandhi and Habib that Botha—influenced by the views of his white supporters—was opposed to repealing TARA, amending TIRA or letting even six educated Indians a year migrate to the Transvaal. Smuts was of the same view. But they were prepared to offer minor practical concessions.

  To remove the colour bar from South Africa’s laws, Gandhi was willing to restrict new Indian immigration to a mere six a year and to accept stringent educational tests for them, but Botha and Smuts, who were urging whites in Britain and Europe to move to South Africa, refused to modify the total ban on new Indians. The colour bar would stay.

  Translated by Gandhi, Habib told Ampthill that he would accept the terms and the tiny concessions. The Indians had suffered enough. He spoke, Habib added, for a majority of the Transvaal’s Indians and for those holding the major portion of Indian wealth.