Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

Indian labourers also found work on the Natal Government Railways and in the coal mines. While a steady stream returned home after the expiry of their indenture, others chose to stay on, to work as farmers, market gardeners, fishermen and household servants. By the time of Gandhi’s arrival, there were Indians in all parts of Natal, along the coast and inland, in towns and on plantations.

  From the 1870s, a rather different class of Indians started entering the colony. These were traders rather than labourers, and came voluntarily. Since they paid their way they came to be known as ‘passenger Indians’. They came chiefly from the west coast, and from Gujarat in particular. Many were Muslims; variously of the Bohra, Khoja and Memon castes. Some traders were Hindu, and there were also a few Parsis.

  The first Indian merchant in Natal was from Gandhi’s home town, Porbandar. A Memon named Aboobaker Amod Jhaveri, he had worked in Calcutta and Mauritius before moving to South Africa. In 1877 he became the first non-white trader listed in the Business and Residential Directory of the Natal Almanac. He ran stores in Durban, Tongat and Verulam, and chartered ships to transport commodities to and from India. Jhaveri’s success encouraged several of his cousins – among them Gandhi’s future employer Dada Abdulla – to come to Natal and open businesses there.

  These passenger Indians came to be known by the Natalians as ‘Arabs’, an inaccurate description they nonetheless avowed, for it helped distinguish them from their working-class compatriots. Some traders were based in Natal’s main city, Durban; others moved into smaller towns in the hinterland, servicing workers in the mines and plantations. Indian merchants worked longer hours and were generally more abstemious than their European counterparts. They also employed their own kinsfolk, cutting down further on costs. Over the years, they came to command an increasing share of the retail trade in the towns of Natal and beyond. In 1870, for example, there were only two shops owned by Indians in Durban; by 1889 there were as many as eighty-five. These merchants also invested in real estate, buying land and buildings which they then leased to tenants.

  Some 340 labourers had arrived on the SS Truro in 1860. By 1876, there were an estimated 10,626 Indians in Natal. The figure for 1886 was 29,589; for 1891, 35,763. By now, they were almost as numerous as the Europeans, who in 1891 numbered 46,788 (there were an estimated 455,983 Africans). The Indians in this part of Africa were very heavily concentrated in Natal. However, a sprinkling of labourers and merchants had also moved south, to the Cape Colony; and west, to the Boer-controlled region of the Transvaal, where the town of Johannesburg was experiencing a boom based on the discovery of gold.30

  The Natal Government had appointed a Protector of Indian Immigrants, whose job was to monitor their work and living conditions, and take account of complaints regarding their treatment. The report for 1892–3 noted that, as in earlier years, a large number of labourers had turned to farming and market-gardening on completion of their indenture. The Indians, wrote the Protector, ‘have, by industry and sobriety, succeeded in creating a very fair position for themselves in this Colony’. They formed a ‘prosperous, orderly, and law-abiding section of the population of the Colony’. Some 150 Indians were on the burgess rolls as taxpayers, and could vote in local elections.31

  Mohandas Gandhi arrived in Durban on 24 May 1893, exactly a month after he had left Bombay. His ship had called en route at Lamu, Mombasa and Zanzibar. He was met at the quayside by Dada Abdulla, the leading partner in the firm that had hired him, and taken to the merchant’s house. Abdulla lived in a small lane off Grey Street in west-central Durban, in the heart of what was an Indian, and more specifically a Gujarati, ghetto. Grey Street ran northwards from the Victoria Embankment and the harbour; whites lived on the stretch closer to the water, giving way to Indians further along the street. The lanes off Grey Street, on either side, harboured shops on the ground floor, with offices and homes above them. The names on the buildings – Jhaveri, Moosa, Mehta, Abdulla, Rustomji – indicated their owners’ origins in Western India.32

  In London, Gandhi had lived with the Christian Josiah Oldfield, in a breach of caste rules kept hidden from the Modh Banias in Bombay and Rajkot. His sharing a home with a Muslim family in South Africa was likewise a transgression of Hindu orthodoxy, made easier by the ocean that lay between where he now was and where those who would pass judgement on him remained.

  On the day Gandhi landed, 24 May, Durban’s leading newspaper reported the swearing in, for the third time, of Paul Kruger as President of the neighbouring South African Republic (SAR). The paper reproduced his inaugural address, where Kruger said it would be his ‘special duty’ to see that

  nothing is done by which our independence can be damaged or be brought in danger; that no rights are conceded by which our independence will in any way be endangered, for even the heathen must acknowledge the hand of God in our history, and that it was God that granted us our liberty.33

  The SAR, also known as the Transvaal, was ruled by the Boers. They were a farming people, devout and dogmatic, convinced that those who were not white and Christian had no claims to citizenship in their land. The British in Natal were interested rather more in trade and commerce, and were less committed to the Book. But they were not without prejudices of their own. In his first week in Durban, Gandhi was taken by Dada Abdulla to the magistrates’ court, a short walk from Grey Street. The two men were wearing turbans in the Kathiawari style. Their appearance occasioned some comment, with a report in the Natal Advertiser claiming that a ‘well dressed’ Indian who was an ‘English barrister’ had entered ‘the Court without removing his head-covering or salaaming, and the Magistrate looked at him with disapproval’.

  Gandhi immediately wrote to clarify that ‘just as it is a mark of respect amongst the Europeans to take off their hats, in like manner it is in India to retain one’s head-dress. To appear uncovered before a gentleman is not to respect him.’ In the Bombay High Court it was not the custom to bow before the magistrate. Still, he would ‘beg His Worship’s pardon if he was offended at what he considered to be my rudeness, which was the result of ignorance and quite unintentional’.34

  The claims case of Dada Abdulla and Company was being heard in Pretoria, the capital of the Boer-controlled South African Republic. After a week in Durban, Gandhi proceeded to Pretoria, by train. He was booked on a first-class coach. Two hours later, when the train was at Pietermaritzburg station, a railway official asked him to move to a third-class compartment. When Gandhi protested that he had a valid ticket, a constable was summoned to take him and his luggage off the train. From the station he sent two telegrams, one to the railway authorities, the other to Dada Abdulla. The latter sent word to the Indian merchants in Pietermaritzburg, who came to the station to comfort Gandhi with their own stories of being discriminated against in the past.

  The next evening, Gandhi resumed his journey westwards. He reached the end of the line at Charlestown, and took a stagecoach on to Johannesburg. The white coachman refused to let him sit inside, on the padded seats reserved for paying passengers. When he protested – for he had, again, a valid ticket – the man boxed his ears. Gandhi hung on dangerously to the rails, before getting off, voluntarily, at the first stop, Standerton, where he was – once more – met and consoled by the town’s Indian merchants. He reached Johannesburg the following evening, where he had some difficulty getting a hotel room because of his colour. The troubles continued – on the last leg of his journey, by train from Johannesburg to Pretoria, he was asked by the guard to shift from the first-class to the third-class compartment. However, a fellow passenger, himself English, said he was happy to share the cabin with an Indian.

  This trip was recounted by Gandhi in his autobiography, written many years after the events it describes. Being a retrospective account, it has a certain moral clarity – as when he writes that even as he was being ejected from one coach to another, he came to the conclusion that ‘the hardship to which I was subjected was superficial – only a symptom of the deeper disease of colour pr
ejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process’.

  But it must have been a harrowing experience nevertheless.35

  The morning after he reached Pretoria, Gandhi called on the lawyer in charge of Dada Abdulla’s case. This man, A. W. Baker, turned out to be an active lay preacher. Through him Gandhi met other Christians, with whom he began a lively debate on their respective faiths. Gandhi wore a necklace of beads gifted him by his mother; a Christian friend dismissed this as mere superstition. The Indian gave as good as he got, saying that he could not accept that Jesus was the only son of God, for ‘if God could have sons, all of us were his sons’.36

  A. W. Baker was a colourful character, who had been a carpenter before he became a lawyer. His real passion, however, was taking the Word to the Native. He published a magazine, Africa’s Golden Harvest, which promoted ‘scriptural and missionary enterprise’. Preaching in mines, prisons and hospitals, Baker converted some Africans, who then went out into the north, further spreading the Word. Before accepting Africans into his church, Baker insisted they renounce the amulets used to ward off evil spirits. He vigorously promoted temperance and asked his followers to give up snuff and tobacco.37

  Baker sent native preachers into the bush, and sometimes travelled into the country himself. On one trip he took Gandhi. They met a Dutch Salvationist, who disapproved of a white man and a brown man travelling together. Baker was undeterred: he was completely free of racial prejudice, if not of religious certitude. His hope for his Hindu friend was that he would soon emerge ‘into the full light of the glory of God which is radiant on the face of Christ!’38

  Gandhi resisted the Word and the Light; at the same time, he could no longer accept that Hinduism was perfect either. For if the Vedas were the inspired Word of God, why could not the Bible and the Koran claim to be likewise? He began to read Christian and Islamic texts, furthering his knowledge, and perhaps also his confusion.

  In between his religious studies, Gandhi worked on the legal case that had brought him to South Africa. Dada Abdulla was suing his cousin, Khan Mohammad Tayob, for defaulting on payments previously agreed upon. Gandhi had to translate many letters from Gujarati into English, as he went through the correspondence between the disputants, preparing briefs for the attorneys to present in court.39

  Living in South Africa, and reading the newspapers, Gandhi could see that the boundaries between different social groups were very clearly marked. In Johannesburg, white traders resentful of competition were seeking to move Indian merchants to locations outside the city.40 When one newspaper wrote of how European merchants were being driven out of business by ‘wily wretched Asiatic traders’, Gandhi wrote in to defend his compatriots. ‘If one editor edited his paper more ably than his rival, and consequently, drives the latter out of the field,’ argued the lawyer, ‘how would the former like to be told that he should give place to his crest-fallen rival because he (the successful one) was able?’ Should not the European trader, asked Gandhi, ‘take a leaf out of the book of the Indian trader, if that be not below his dignity, and learn how to trade cheaply, how to live simply?’41

  In Natal, the Colonists would soon have ‘responsible government’, with their own legislature and ministers elected on the basis of a limited franchise. In September 1893 an Anti-Asiatic League was formed to disallow Indians from voting. There were, at this time, a mere 10,729 eligible voters in Natal. All but a handful were European. To maintain white dominance, the vote had to be restricted to the ruling race. As one newspaper wrote: ‘It is preposterous that a semi-barbarous horde should be allowed to come here and to claim the franchise on the same terms as it can be claimed by Europeans.’

  A few Indian merchants were on the electoral rolls, by virtue of the property they owned. The white League asked judges to disenfranchise them, since ‘the Asiatic population of Natal is already larger than the European and if the former are to have access to the franchise, then it will only be a few years until the latter are completely out-voted. Then our children will have cause to curse us for our enormous folly’.42

  When these newspapers reached Gandhi in Pretoria, he was moved to reply. He reminded white Natalians that Indians were High Court judges in India; and that an Indian, Dadabhai Naoroji, had recently been elected a Member of the British Parliament. Indians in Natal were surely ‘civilized’ enough for the vote. Nonetheless, he assured the Colonists, his countrymen were ‘too much taken up with their spiritual well-being to think of taking an active part in politics … They come not to be politicians, but to earn an honest bread …’43

  Through the latter half of 1893, as he worked during the day for Dada Abdulla, Gandhi spent most evenings writing a book he hoped to publish. It was a ‘how to’ guide, aimed at students who wished to go to London. A man who had successfully and smoothly acquired a barrister’s certificate from the Inner Temple would help them ‘discover the mystery and lay bare the movements of Indians in England’. The book’s first chapter asked: ‘Who Should Go to England?’ Not those who had ‘a weak chest or a tendency to consumption’; nor those who were older than twenty-five. For Indians young enough and fit enough, wrote Gandhi, ‘England is the best place for getting an insight into different trades’. To enter the Civil Service, to qualify as a barrister, to study medicine or engineering, a man – any man – would ‘learn more during the same time in England as in India’. The quality of education was ‘far superior’; and there were less distractions too. Drawing on his own experience, Gandhi wrote of the Indian student that

  while in England, he is alone, no wife to tease or flatter him, no parents to indulge, no children to look after, no company to disturb. He is the master of his time. So, if he has the will, he can do more. Moreover, the invigorating climate in England is by itself a stimulant to work, the enervating climate of India is a stimulant not to work.

  Later chapters described, in meticulous and almost wearying detail, the clothes an Indian student in England would need, the furniture and stationery he would have to buy, the food he could or should eat. Against every item its price was listed (thus, for example, mother-of-pearl studs cost a mere eight annas, but a morning coat, also indispensable, cost Rs 20).

  Several pages of Gandhi’s Guide outlined the best way to get wholesome and nutritious food at a reasonable price. Those looking for English friends were helpfully told that ‘the people of the London Vegetarian Society are always kind and hospitable towards Indians and a more genial man than the editor of The Vegetarian it would be difficult to find’. Those with more orthodox, less experimental, tastes were told that contrary to the impression that Englishmen rarely washed, most modern homes had bathrooms – otherwise, too, ‘there is nothing to prevent you from leading a purely Hindu life’.

  One chapter was addressed to the ‘would-be barristers’. The strengths of different Inns were itemized. The books they would read were described, as also the clothes they would wear, the dinners they would attend and the fees they must pay. A monthly visit to the theatre was recommended, as a window into ‘the modern habits and customs of England’.44

  This was Gandhi’s first really substantial piece of writing, unpublished in his lifetime, but covering some fifty-five pages of the first volume of his Collected Works. His motivations were several. A book under his belt would make him better known in Bombay, where he still hoped to establish himself as a lawyer. The book may also have been an exercise in self-justification, aimed at the Modh Banias who tried to prevent him from going to London. He defied them and went, and now he would encourage others to go there too. From the care with which the book was constructed, and the ease with which the prose flowed, it was evident the young lawyer liked writing, and liked writing in an exhortative vein even more.

  In the spring of 1894, the case between Dada Abdulla and his cousin Tayob Khan came up for arbitration. The judge ruled in favour of Gandhi’s client. Tayob Khan had now to pay Dada Abdulla £37,000, with costs. Bankruptcy and socia
l humiliation beckoned, until Gandhi suggested a compromise – that he pay the amount on a fresh instalment system.

  In the third week of May, Gandhi left Pretoria for Durban. The return journey seems to have been relatively painless, for it is not mentioned in the Autobiography. (Perhaps he prudently chose not to travel first-class.) His case successfully concluded, he prepared to return to India. Dada Abdulla threw a farewell dinner, at which the discussion turned to a bill before the Natal Assembly, that would prohibit Indians from enrolling as voters. Abdulla’s guests wanted the legislation to be fought, and Gandhi, the lawyer and English-speaker, to stay on and assist them. The ‘farewell party was turned into a working committee’ to plan the resistance to the bill. So long as Gandhi stayed in Durban, said the merchants, they would pay him an annual retainer.

  The chapter on the dinner-party-turned-campaign-committee in Gandhi’s autobiography ends with this sentence: ‘Thus God laid the foundations of my life in South Africa and sowed the seed of the fight for national self-respect’.45 The biographer, however, is tempted to invoke the workings of (white) men rather the ways of (a transracial) God. For some time, Indians in Natal had been irked by acts of discrimination. In 1884, they asked the Governor to repeal a law whereby all except Europeans had to carry a pass when out in the streets at night. Traders complained they were not permitted to sell goods on Sunday – the day their main clients, the indentured labourers, were off work – and not allowed to open shops in the city centre.

  Before Gandhi arrived, Indian protests against harsh laws were led by a merchant named Hajee Mohammed Hajee Dada, his name denoting a multiple visitor to the holy city of Mecca. In 1890 and 1891, Dada convened meetings urging a more generous treatment of his fellows by the Government of Natal. Dada wanted the Protector of Indian Immigrants to know Tamil and Hindustani, and ideally be an Indian himself. He asked for a ban on the term ‘coolies’, and for Indians to be allowed to own freehold property and to use the Town Hall in Durban for their gatherings.46