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

by Robert Payne

  As he grew older, he was becoming gentler and more feminine. There had always been a strain of femininity in him, but now he was coming to terms with it, accepting it, even rejoicing in it. In 1926, while expounding some verses of the Bhagavad Gita to the ashram sisters, he said: “A man should remain man and yet should learn to become woman; similarly a woman should remain woman and yet learn to become man.”

  During his days of ill health he would return often to this theme: his spiritual life colored by the need to acquire the virtues of womanhood. His doctrine of brahmacharya drew him more and more to women, and the long series of letters he wrote to the ashram sisters shows him developing the traits of a mother superior in charge of a nunnery rather than those of an abbot in charge of monks. He is all solicitude and gentleness. The sisters quarrel among themselves, tell tales and seek for his favor, and there is not the least doubt that he has favorites among them. In the world of women he is completely at home.

  In politics, too, he was developing a strange and deliberate waywardness. He did not arrive at his conclusions by any known process of reasoning; he would listen to the voices that spoke in the early dawn, in the pure hours before the sun rose. His preference for intuitive knowledge rather than logic, his disconcerting belief in the absolute rightness of these God-given commands often frightened his followers, who wanted to know the steps of his reasoning. There were no steps. He was a law to himself, and so he would remain to the end of his life.

  The Simon Commission was greeted with black flags and a general boycott. Lord Irwin acted heroically in an attempt to draw the antagonists together, hoping against hope that the Congress leaders would meet the British halfway, only to find they were more determined than ever to achieve purna swaraj, complete independence. The British attitude hardened; the breach between the Hindus and the Muslims was growing wider; the Congress was riding high, with young men like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose in the ascendant. The possibility of a rational and peaceful settlement of differences had vanished by the beginning of 1930. On January 26, 1930, Gandhi proclaimed that all over India people should fly the flag of independence, and on that day he announced a Declaration of Independence:

  We believe it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities for growth. We believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them, the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it. The British Government of India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. We believe, therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or Complete Independence.

  Only a few years before Gandhi had been busily recruiting Indian soldiers for the British Army; now he was determined upon the immediate overthrow of British power. Once more, as in 1921, there would be a great non-violent upheaval calculated to reduce the government to impotence. The first ritualistic act would be performed by Gandhi himself—he would gather salt from the salt flats and sell it in contravention of the salt laws. In itself it was a small act: at any ordinary time it would pass unnoticed; but Gandhi counted on the fact that his long march to the coast from Ahmedabad and the gathering of the salt would fire the imaginations of the Indians. He knew the value of symbols, and he knew how to use them.

  On March 2, 1930, he wrote a long letter to Lord Irwin, which was at once a peremptory demand for full swaraj and an indictment of British rule over the centuries. He did not mention what action he proposed to take, though he made it clear that the full resources of the Satyagraha movement would be thrown into the battle against the British. He wrote:

  DEAR FRIEND,

  Before embarking on civil disobedience and taking the-risk I have dreaded to take all these years, I would fain approach you and find a way out.

  My personal faith is absolutely clear. I cannot intentionally hurt anything that lives, much less fellow human beings, even though they may do the greatest wrong to me and mine. Whilst, therefore, I hold the British rule to be a curse, I do not Intend harm to a single Englishman or to any legitimate interest he may have in India.

  I must not be misunderstood. Though I hold the British rule in India to be a curse, I do not, therefore, consider Englishmen in general to be worse than any other people on earth. I have the privilege of claiming many Englishmen as dearest friends. Indeed much that I have learnt of the evil of British rule is due to the writings of frank and courageous Englishmen who have not hesitated to tell the unpalatable truth about that rule. . . .

  I know that in embarking on non-violence I shall be running what might be termed a mad risk. But the victories of truth have never been won without risks, often of the gravest character. Conversion of a nation that has consciously or unconsciously preyed upon another, far more numerous, far more ancient and no less cultured than itself, is worth any amount of risk. . . .

  This letter is not in any way intended as a threat but is a simple and sacred duty, peremptory on a civil resister. Therefore, I am having it specially delivered by a young English friend who believes in the Indian cause and is a full believer in non-violence and whom Providence seems to have sent me, as it were, for the very purpose.

  Your sincere friend,

  M. K. GANDHI

  The young English friend was a Quaker, Reginald Reynolds, then staying at the ashram. He left the same day for Delhi, wearing shorts made of khadi and a Gandhi cap, and on the following day he presented the letter to the Viceroy’s private secretary at Viceregal Lodge. Gandhi had briefed him so that he could answer any questions raised by the letter, but no questions were asked of the young Quaker, who then returned to Sabarmati ashram. The Viceroy’s reply was an expression of regret that Gandhi proposed to embark on a course of action which would inevitably bring him in conflict with the law and disturb the public peace. In his most reckless mood Gandhi replied: “I repudiate the law, and regard it as my sacred duty to break the mournful monotony of the compulsory peace that is choking the heart of the nation.”

  From many years of semi-obscurity Gandhi emerged once more as a leader of men. He would march to Dandi on the seacoast, and thousands upon thousands would join him in the long march. He had found the magic formula, and like all magic formulas it was fantastically simple.

  He proposed to overthrow an empire with a pinch of salt.

  The Attack Renewed

  A nation of 350 million does not

  need the dagger of the assassin,

  it does not need the poison bowl,

  it does not need the sword, the spear,

  or the bullet.

  It needs a will of its own.

  The Salt March

  AT THE evening prayers on March 11, 1930, Gandhi developed the ideas behind the march in a long speech to his followers. What he wanted above all was a total act of protest, a complete end to the domination of the British in India. The march was to be merely a symbolic gesture, which might or might not have some influence upon the government, but the symbol he had chosen would remain as a sign of non-violent resistance to all government power. Beyond the march there was the threat of the breakdown of the machinery by which the British ruled India; and he confidently expected that Indian officers in the government would simply abandon their jobs, lawyers would refrain from litigation, taxpayers would refuse to pay taxes, and the teachers in government schools would walk out. The march was to be far more than a deliberate violation of government orders; it was to be the signal for a non-violent uprising against government power in all its forms. “Our cause is just, our means are strong, and God is with us,” he declared at the conclusion of his speech. “There can be no defeat for Satyagrahis, unless they forsake the truth and non-violence and turn a deaf ear to the inner voice.”

  Early in the morning of March
12 the small group surrounding Gandhi, numbering altogether seventy-nine volunteers, set out in the direction of Dandi on the seacoast near Jalalpur, where he intended to break the salt law, which provided that all salt should be taxed. The youngest of the volunteers was sixteen, the oldest was Gandhi himself; at sixty-one he was still amazingly lithe and vigorous. He wore a simple dhoti with the cloth drawn up between his legs and carried a thick bamboo, iron-tipped staff. The seventy-nine volunteers were merely the core of the procession, which swelled out until it was nearly two miles in length. Ahmedabad had never seen such a huge procession in living memory.

  Gandhi marched at the head of the procession like a conqueror. Green leaves were strewn across his path, and every wall and rooftop and every tree seemed to be crowded with excited onlookers who hoped for his darshan. Whenever he stopped at the villages, he would call upon the people to take to the spinning wheel, to treat the untouchables with brotherly affection, to improve the sanitation in the villages, to abandon alcohol, to break the salt monopoly, and to join the ranks of the Satyagrahis. At Aslali, where he spent the first night, he told his followers he would either die on the way or else refrain from returning to his ashram until swaraj was won. For some reason he was haunted by the thought of dying during the journey, and he would refer to his coming death as something he calmly expected. After his death or arrest the procession would be led by his old friend, Abbas Tyabji, a Muslim. He felt certain that he had set in motion a movement which would not be ended by any individual deaths or by any temporary reversals. Whatever happened, some of his disciplined Satyagrahis would reach the sea and gather salt, and so make themselves liable to arrest.

  Government watched the march with alarm, but with no real understanding of the forces at work. The Viceroy’s estimate of Gandhi’s character was largely based on the opinion of Srinivasa Sastri, who described him as a “philosophical anarch” who could not be swayed by rational arguments, a man who must be wooed like a capricious woman, and whose dominant characteristic was an unconscious but real vanity. Such a man could not be tempted by any known stratagems; he could only be silenced. The Viceroy, half hoping that the salt march would simply peter out through lack of enthusiasm, gave orders that nothing should be done to impede Gandhi’s movements and waited on events. For a few days the noninterference of the government matched the non-violence of the marchers, and all over India people were holding their breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

  Gandhi insisted on marching the whole way, though a bullock cart rumbled behind him in case he should be exhausted. He marched ten to fifteen miles a day in the broiling sun, taking frequent short rests, and sometimes taking a whole day’s rest, for he was in no hurry to reach the sea. In the evening or at night he would write up his diary, examine the diaries of the Satyagrahis, prepare speeches, and give the orders for the next day’s march like a general preparing a plan of campaign. When discipline was relaxed, he tightened it, and when he heard that his followers were receiving gifts of milk, oranges, guavas and grapes—a milk truck had been sent from Surat by the workers—he wondered aloud who was paying for these things, and whether the marchers had the right to accept gifts. These were stolen goods; no good could come from a movement that lived on stolen goods. The government was living on stolen money, with the Viceroy receiving an income five thousand times as large as the average income of an Indian, and therefore it was incumbent on the Satyagrahis to live with a proper modesty. In a speech at Bhatgam he said: “We are marching in the name of God. We profess to act on behalf of the hungry, the naked and the unemployed.” The theme of the necessity of poverty was continually repeated, and sometimes he carried the argument to strange conclusions. “Imagine me,” he said, “writing a letter to the Viceroy with an easy conscience if I use costly glazed paper and a fountain pen which is a free gift from some accommodating friend! Will this behove you and me? Can a letter so written produce the slightest effect?”

  Logic was his plaything, and he was never bound to it. The villagers knew the cost of glazed paper and fountain pens, and they could understand his argument even though it went beyond logic. In his speeches he urged the village headmen to abandon their positions, because they were acting as representatives of the government, and some two hundred patels are said to have resigned. This, too, was illogical, for it left the villagers without leadership, without anyone they could appeal to, and at the mercy of government officials.

  Gandhi and his followers were playing for the highest possible stakes— swaraj in a few weeks or months. Non-violence, which had been aimless, without focus, now at last possessed a definite aim and a single overwhelming focus. It was aimed at the destruction of British rule not in some remote period in the future, but now. The march to the sea in order to pick up a few grains of salt was wholly illogical, but it possessed an imaginative grandeur and coherence, and a dramatic force. Gandhi was frilly aware of the drama, and his own leading role. “For me there is no turning back, whether I am alone or joined by thousands,” he declared at Bhatgam. “I would rather die a dog’s death and have my bones licked by dogs than that I should return to the ashram a broken man!”

  The torch was turned inward; he was constantly seeing himself as a man broken by the weight of destiny, to be shunned and despised, or as the divinely appointed leader, who must be instantly obeyed. He swung between self-castigation and self-adoration, the manic and depressive moods following quickly upon one another. Never before had he lived under such an extreme tension, for never before had so much been at stake.

  To some women who had given money to the movement he said: “I admit I have not well used the money you gave me out of the abundance of your love. You are entitled to regard me as one of those wretches depicted in the verses sung at the beginning of the prayer meeting. Shun me!” Speaking to some Parsis a few days later he said: “Either I shall return with what I want, or else my dead body will float in the Ocean!”

  Reports on the march reached the Viceroy every day, but he was in no hurry to act. He knew he would have to act eventually, because all of India was seething with excitement and with every passing day the legend of the heroic old man marching along the dusty roads, armed only with a bamboo staff, and doing battle with the British Empire, kept growing. Newspaper correspondents attached to Gandhi’s staff were feeding the world’s press with news that was rarely favorable to the British. Quite suddenly Gandhi had come to represent India. He had become the symbol of a nation’s desire to throw off the rule of the oppressors.

  Lord Irwin was more inclined to rely on the reports of his agents and advisers than on the reports in the world’s press. “The will-power of the man must have been enormous to get him through his march,” he wrote a few days later. “I was always told that his blood pressure is dangerous and his heart none too good, and I was also told a few days ago that his horoscope predicts that he will die this year, and that is the explanation of this dangerous throw. It would be a very happy solution.” This was a harsh verdict, and thoroughly unworthy of the Viceroy, who regarded himself as a man of principles. Gandhi’s blood pressure was no higher than it had been for many years, his heartbeats were regular, and the horoscope was the work of his enemies. Lord Irwin’s sources of information were grotesquely inaccurate.

  At last on April 5, after a march of 241 miles in twenty-four days, Gandhi reached the seacoast at Dandi. He looked thin and strained, but he was in a mood of elation. The first act of the drama had been completed, the second was about to begin.

  Asked what he hoped to accomplish by breaking the salt laws, he answered: “I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might,” and he wrote out the words in handwriting which was unusually vigorous.

  Everything had been carefully planned to the last detail. Even the date of his arrival in Dandi had been planned, for it coincided with the eve of the anniversary of the Amritsar massacre. On the following day he would break the law by gathering salt.

  Through the whole night of April
5 the Satyagrahis prayed, and the next morning Gandhi, accompanied by his followers, walked into the sea for a ceremonial bath of purification. At 8:30 A.M. he solemnly bent down, picked up a small lump of natural salt, and heard Mrs. Sarojini Naidu shouting excitedly: “Hail, Deliverer!” The lump of salt was carefully preserved, and later sold at auction for 1,600 rupees, to become the most expensive lump of salt ever sold in India.

  On that early morning in Dandi no policemen were present, and there were no arrests. As the Satyagrahis wandered along the shore on a clear April morning, there was almost a sense of anticlimax, of emotions pent up and unfulfilled. They had summoned the lightning, but there were only clear skies and the people of Dandi were going about their usual business.

  During the following week the storm swept across India. For a few days there was a pause, as the initial shock wore off; then it seemed that everyone was busily gathering salt, or picketing liquor shops, or burning foreign cloth, or in other ways acting in disobedience of the government. The members of the Congress who had viewed Gandhi’s march to the sea with bewilderment and distaste were surprised by the abounding enthusiasm and excitement of the people. Salt manufacture had become the topic of the day, but no one in the Congress knew very much about it, and soon they were busily reading it up and producing leaflets with drawings of salt pans showing exactly how it should be collected and stored. “We ultimately succeeded in producing some unwholesome stuff,” Nehru wrote later, “which we waved about in triumph, and often auctioned for fancy prices. It was really immaterial whether the stuff was good or bad; the main thing was to commit a breach of the obnoxious Salt Law, and we were successful in that, even though the quality of the salt was poor.”

  The word “salt” had acquired a magic power. Young girls and women in purdah threw themselves into salt-gathering as though they had spent their lives waiting for this moment. Crowds assembled on the beaches to watch salt being gathered, and they would do their best to prevent the police from coming close to the salt-gatherers. Gandhi watched and waited, expecting arrest hourly, for the fact that he had broken the law was well publicized. At Aat, a small village near Dandi, he broke the Salt Law again on the morning of April 8. Since he expected to be arrested that day, he delivered a parting message to his followers: “Let not my companions or the people at large be perturbed over my arrest, for it is not I but God who is guiding this movement. At present India’s self-respect, in fact, her all, is symbolized as it were in a handful of salt in the Satyagrahi’s hand. Let the fist holding it, therefore, be broken, but let there be no voluntary surrender of the salt.”