The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (The Robert Payne Library)

by Robert Payne

  One problem that remained virtually insoluble was the education of the young. There were Hindu, Muslim, Parsi and Christian boys, and some Hindu girls. There was no question of importing special teachers for them; the teaching had to be done by Gandhi and Kallenbach. Vocational training offered few problems. Training in literature and language suffered from the fact that it was necessary to teach Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Urdu and English. Gandhi knew only the Tamil he had picked up from his Tamil prison companions, and he knew scarcely more of Urdu than the script, while his knowledge of Gujarati was nothing to be proud of, for, as he confessed, it was not above the level of a schoolboy’s. His Sanskrit was no better. With this inadequate knowledge he set about teaching his pupils, and seems to have realized that his experiments in education were largely ineffective. “The ignorance of my pupils, and more than that, their generosity, stood me in good stead,” he wrote later, remembering that he had mixed all age groups together, abandoned the use of textbooks, and reduced teaching to a series of discourses on everything that entered his mind. He had a theory that children learned far more from the spoken than from the written word.

  Spiritual training was closer to his heart, and he set his pupils to learning hymns by heart and made them listen to readings from books of impeccable moral authority. But in his view neither the singing of hymns nor the readings were half so important as the example of the teacher, who must show himself to be virtuous and spiritually superior, an example to be followed and imitated. “I saw, therefore, that I must be an eternal object-lesson to the boys and girls living with me,” he wrote. “Thus they became my teachers, and I learnt I must be good and live straight, if only for their sakes.” The inevitable consequence was that he was compelled to watch himself even more closely than before, examining all his actions at length, spending his nights in sleepless contemplation of all the events of the day, so that it often happened that he would fall half asleep while teaching his pupils and keep himself awake by sprinkling water on his eyes.

  Like the great masters of the medieval monastic establishments, he was continually faced with the problem of sin, which always flowers in monastic communities. Boys told lies, practiced sodomy, refused to obey orders. It did not happen very often, but whenever it happened, it provoked a crisis in Gandhi’s soul. Why had he failed? What had he forgotten to do? What could be done to bring salvation to a sinner? Once he was so infuriated by a lying and quarrelsome pupil that he was unable to contain himself. There was a ruler lying on his desk, and he suddenly struck out at the boy’s arm with the ruler, inflicting a light blow. The boy was so surprised that he cried out and begged for forgiveness. Gandhi, too, was surprised, for he had not thought it in his power to inflict physical punishment on anyone. The boy was seventeen years old, strong and well-built, and as Gandhi ruefully commented, it was well within the power of the boy to make mincemeat of him. He deeply regretted this act of violence, saying that it exhibited the brute in him, but he took some comfort from the fact that the boy never disobeyed him again.

  For the sin of sodomy there were no such simple solutions. When he heard the news—the incident took place at Phoenix during a temporary suspension of Tolstoy Farm—he went almost out of his mind with grief and misery. Kallenbach watched him carefully, afraid he would go mad under the strain. Finally Gandhi decided he must assume the burden of guilt and perform an act of penance. He therefore imposed upon himself a penitential fast of seven days and a vow to eat only one meal a day for four and a half months. At first Kallenbach objected strongly, but since he always ended by agreeing with Gandhi’s arguments, he decided to join the fast.

  Gandhi embraced this penance humbly, joyfully, almost in a state of happy delirium. He had discovered an instrument which ideally suited his purpose and was capable of infinite modifications. He did not yet know the full extent of the instrument, and he understood even less about its fundamental technique; he would learn later that fasting could be prolonged by drinking plenty of water, even though it sometimes induced nausea. Water was the safeguard, the one pure substance that held off defeat, the barrier against death. Since he took nothing but a few sips of water he suffered from a parched throat and general debility, and could speak only in whispers. He was able to dictate when his hands grew too weak to write, and he learned that fasting became more endurable when he listened to the recital of the sacred books. He especially liked to listen to the Ramayana.

  For some reason which he did not explain, the first fast was soon followed by another lasting fourteen days. All he was prepared to say was that the second fast “grew out of the first,” leaving it to be assumed that the penance had not had the desired effect and a double dosage was necessary to bring about the salvation of the two sinners.

  That Kallenbach should have joined in the fast was not in the least surprising. He had become Gandhi’s alter ego, thinking as Gandhi thought, believing what Gandhi believed. He was a rich man, accustomed to luxuries, living in a large hilltop house near Johannesburg with many servants to wait on him. A photograph shows a plump middle-aged man dressed in the height of fashion, with a stand-up collar and a pearl stickpin; he has characteristically Jewish features, and might be taken for a rich entrepreneur with a taste for fine food and women. But this photograph was taken before he joined Gandhi at Tolstoy Farm. Later photographs show him thinned down, rather drawn, the face growing progressively longer, the mustache more unkempt, no longer trimmed carefully, and the hair falling in wild disarray. Gandhi noted that after joining Tolstoy Farm he reduced his expenditure by nine-tenths. Previously he had spent on himself the equivalent of 1,200 rupees, and now he spent only 120 rupees.

  But if Kallenbach had become Gandhi’s alter ego, he was not in the least a cipher. If he no longer possessed any will-power of his own, he was in full possession of his senses, knew exactly what he was doing, and enjoyed himself more than when he was living in the lap of luxury. Indeed, he had thrown away luxury as a man throws away an old and ill-fitting coat. He was one of those men who realize in middle age that they have nothing to live for. Gandhi had given him a reason for living and he was childishly grateful.

  The Voice from the Mountaintop

  DURING THE last years of his life Tolstoy wielded an extraordinary moral authority. With his long white beard, his rugged peasantlike features and his simple peasant dress, he resembled an ancient sage. People who had never read his novels or his devotional works were continually writing to him about their moral problems. Tolstoy regarded their questions with the utmost seriousness and he would spend two or three hours every morning attempting to answer them, saying that these letters kept him in touch with the outside world and that he owed a great debt to his unknown correspondents.

  Gandhi’s feeling for Tolstoy was such that he genuinely desired to avoid importuning him. He wanted to write often, but wrote very rarely. He had written Hind Swaraj very largely under the influence of Tolstoy’s Letter to a Hindu, and it had appeared in an English edition in Bombay in January 1910. It was immediately banned, but a number of copies remained in Gandhi’s hands and he sent one to Tolstoy early in April with a letter asking for the master’s blessing. “I am most anxious not to worry you,” he wrote, “but, if your health permits it and if you can find the time to go through the booklet, needless to say I shall value very highly your criticism of the writing.”

  A month passed before Tolstoy was well enough to reply. He wrote from Yasnaya Polyana on May 8,1910:

  Dear friend,

  I just received your letter and your book “Indian Home Rule.”

  I read your book with great interest because I think that the question you treat in it: the passive resistance—is a question of the greatest importance not only for India but for the whole humanity.

  I could not find your former letters, but came across your biography by J. Doke, which too interested me deeply and gave me the possibility to know and understand you better.

  I am at present not quite well and therefore ab
stain from writing to you all what I have to say about your book and all your work which I appreciate very much, but I will do it as soon as I will feel better.

  Your friend and brother,

  L. TOLSTOY

  It was a gentle and kindly letter written by a man who already had one foot in the grave. In these last months of his life, badgered and humiliated by his wife, in desperate pursuit of those certainties which always seemed to vanish the closer he came to them, Tolstoy was no longer in full possession of himself. There were quarrels with his children, sudden reconciliations, moments of strange calm followed by terrible outbreaks. In the summer he was dreadfully ill, but in the autumn his spirits revived, and he celebrated his eighty-first birthday quietly. Then the floodgates were opened, and his last days were filled with despair and self-loathing and feverish efforts to escape from the stranglehold of his family. Age had hardened him and made him almost unrecognizable to himself. Yet he could sometimes summon the energy to write with great simplicity and kindliness. On September 20, shortly after his birthday, he wrote a long letter to Gandhi in which he announced once more and for the last time his absolute belief in the law of love, his absolute detestation of violence in all its forms. It is a long letter, but it should be quoted at some length because it was Tolstoy’s last testament, his laying of hands on the head of his young disciple. He wrote:

  The longer I live, and especially now, when I vividly feel the nearness of death, I want to tell others what I feel so particularly clearly and what to my mind is of great importance, namely, that which is called “passive resistance,” but which is in reality nothing else than the teaching of love uncorrupted by false interpretations. That love, which is the striving for the union of human souls and the activity derived from it, is the highest and only law of human life; and in the depth of his soul every human being—as we most clearly see in children—feels and knows this; he knows this until he is entangled by the false teachings of the world. This law was proclaimed by all—by the Indian as by the Chinese, Hebrew, Greek and Roman sages of the world. I think this law was most clearly expressed by Christ, who plainly said, “In love alone is all the law and the prophets.”

  But seeing the corruption to which this law may be subject, he straightway pointed out the danger of its corruption, which is natural to people who live in worldly interests—the danger, namely, which justifies the defence of those interests by the use of force, or, as he said, “with blows to answer blows, by force to take back things usurped,” etc. He knew, as every sensible man must know, that the use of force is incompatible with love as the fundamental law of life; that as soon as violence is permitted, in whichever case it may be, the insufficiency of the law of love is acknowledged, and by this the very law of love is denied. The whole Christian civilization, so brilliant outwardly, grew up on this self-evident and strange misunderstanding and contradiction, sometimes conscious but mostly unconscious.

  In reality, as soon as force was admitted into love, there was no more love; there could be no love as the law of life; and as there was no law of love, there was no law at all except violence, the power of the strongest. So lived Christian humanity for nineteen centuries. It is true that in all times people were guided by violence in arranging their lives.

  The difference between the Christian nations and all other nations is only that in the Christian world the law of love was expressed clearly and definitely, whereas it was not so expressed in any other religious teaching, and that the people of the Christian world have solemnly accepted this law, whilst at the same time they have permitted violence, and built their lives on violence; and that is why the whole life of the Christian peoples is a continuous contradiction between that which they profess and the principles on which they order their lives—a contradiction between love accepted as the law of life and violence which is recognized and praised, acknowledged even as a necessity in different phases of life, such as the power of rulers, courts, and armies. The contradiction always grew with the development of the people of the Christian world, and lately, it reached the ultimate stage.

  The question now evidently stands thus: either to admit that we do not recognize any Christian teaching at all, arranging our lives only by the power of the stronger, or that all our compulsory taxes, court and police establishments, but mainly our armies, must be abolished.

  Therefore, your activity in the Transvaal, as it seems to us, at this end of the world, is the most essential work, the most important of all the work now being done in the world, wherein not only the nations of the Christian, but of all the world, will unavoidably take part.

  During the remaining days of his life Tolstoy wrote very little except the diary entries in which he recorded the events of each passing day. It was his last long letter, the last prolonged effort to communicate with the outside world, and he seems to have realized that of all his disciples Gandhi was the one who was most likely to carry on his work. Yet there had been very little communication between them: four letters from Gandhi, and only two from Tolstoy until this long last letter was written. When Gandhi received it in Johannesburg, Tolstoy had only a few more days to live.

  In the following years Gandhi would have time to ponder Tolstoy’s influence on him. This influence was so deep, so pervasive, that Gandhi could scarcely tell where his own ideas began and Tolstoy’s ended, for they seemed to come from the same mold. He would call himself “a humble follower of that great leader whom I have long looked upon as one of my guides,” but elsewhere he declared that there were very few he counted as his guides. While Rajchandra remained his model in pure devotion, Tolstoy was his model in the application of spiritual ideas to the world around him. During the centenary celebrations of Tolstoy’s birth, in 1928, Gandhi wrote that his discovery of The Kingdom of God Is Within You was the turning point of his life, for he had come upon the book at a time of severe inner crisis when he was being plagued by doubts. “I was at that time,” he wrote, “a believer in violence,” and he went on to declare that the book had cured him of his skepticism and made him a fervent believer in non-violence. But this was to grant Tolstoy more credit than he deserved; Gandhi had never doubted the uses of non-violence for more than a few minutes, and all his religious beliefs and all his early upbringing had made his devotion to non-violence unalterable.

  But it was not only Tolstoy’s ideas that influenced him; there was the example of the man himself, his way of looking at life, his passionate intensity, even his willfulness. Even when professing the utmost humility, Tolstoy remained the grand seigneur, proud and intolerant of all opposition. Tolstoy’s aristocratic temper found its equal in the aristocratic temper of Gandhi. They were kindred spirits, and saw life in very much the same terms. Though they were both essentially humble, they were both possessed of a towering pride.

  So deeply had Gandhi studied Tolstoy’s writings that he seemed to have modeled his style on Tolstoy’s prose. There are many passages in Tolstoy’s works which could be inserted in the works of Gandhi without anyone detecting a change of mood or pace; the ideas are expressed in the same way, and they are the same ideas. Nevertheless there is a great difference between the two men, for while Tolstoy contented himself during his later years with writing sermons and edicts, rarely descending into the marketplace, speaking like a disembodied voice from a mountaintop, Gandhi spoke with the far greater urgency of a man determined upon action at all costs, and it was always necessary for him to write in such a way that his words would become acts. Tolstoy could afford the luxury of being the pure moralist; Gandhi could not.

  The Revolt of Harilal

  LIKE MANY MEN who devote themselves to moral principles, Gandhi was a bad father to his sons. On occasion he could be affectionate toward them, but the occasions were rare, and as they grew older he regarded them as an encumbrance, and did not like to have them near him. Of his four sons, Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devadas, the most troublesome in his eyes was his firstborn.

  Harilal’s full name was Harilal M
ohandas Gandhi. He grew up to be leaner, taller and more handsome than his brothers. In 1910, the year when the Gandhi family settled on Tolstoy Farm, Harilal was twenty-two, Manilal was eighteen, Ramdas was thirteen, and Devadas was ten. Ramdas and Devadas were too young to be concerned very deeply about their education, but Harilal and Manilal both resented the fact that they had been denied a proper schooling, and Harilal was especially disturbed because he had been refused permission to go to a university or to study for the bar.

  Gandhi had a horror of university education and called all schools “citadels of slavery.” In his view children should be taught at home, and no harm would come to them if they grew up in a well-ordered household under strict parental care. He taught his children to read and write Gujarati, to be familiar with the legends and stories of ancient India, and for the rest left them to their own resources. “Where a choice has to be made between liberty and learning, who will not say that the former has to be preferred a thousand times to the latter?” he wrote. He was not thinking of their liberty so much as his own. He was certain that children should be raised in a Spartan manner. At another time he wrote: “It is an important part of children’s training that they should be taught to bear hardships from their earliest years.”

  He was not cruel, but he was stem. He was not unthinking, for he spent a good deal of time debating with himself whether he had pursued the proper course. He would tell himself that by denying them schooling, he had preserved their innocence, and that by not sending Harilal to a university, he had prevented him from becoming one more of those useless young Indians who regard their B.A.’s and M.A.’s as badges of authority. He would argue at great length that dignity, self-respect and understanding were destroyed by academic training, while fidelity, resourcefulness and wisdom were gained by studying at home.