Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  The praise of Dube revealed a certain broadening of the mind, for Africans – or ‘Kaffirs’, as Gandhi called them, following contemporary usage – had previously been treated with condescension by the Indian leader. Further evidence of this evolution is provided by an essay attacking the Johannesburg Town Council for compelling African cyclists to wear a large badge on their left arm, so that whites could avoid them. ‘May not a Native ask the question,’ wrote Gandhi: ‘has he no feelings?’10

  Indian Opinion featured Gandhi the social reformer and community activist, but also Gandhi the seeker and spiritualist, printing a series of talks by him to the Theosophical Society. He had been invited to speak by L. W. Ritch, who was by now not just Gandhi’s friend, but a clerk working in his law office. The lectures were on religion, a subject that had long fascinated Gandhi. Born a Hindu and mentored by a Jain, encounters with Christians, Jews, Muslims and Parsis had encouraged him to see his faith in broader, more comparative terms.

  These public talks reported the progress of his religious education. Gandhi began with Hinduism, which, he argued, rested on three pillars: the importance of caste in social matters; the importance of pantheism in religious matters; and the importance of self-denial in ethical matters. Gandhi referred in passing to the rise and fall of Buddhism in India, and also mentioned Jainism, whose ‘most remarkable characteristic was its scrupulous regard for all things that lived’.

  Gandhi’s second lecture was on Islam, whose keynote was ‘its levelling spirit’. Its ‘doctrine of equality could not but appeal to the masses, who were caste-ridden. To this inherent strength was also added the power of the sword.’ It thus won many converts in India. However, ‘in keeping with the spirit of Hinduism’, attempts were made to ‘bring about reconciliation between the two faiths’. Among these reconcilers in medieval India were the poet Kabir and the emperor Akbar.

  The third lecture dealt with the advent of Christianity in India. European missionaries, admitted Gandhi, had ‘pointed out some of the glaring defects in Hinduism’, such as caste discrimination and the subordination of women. The last talk observed that ‘there have been three assaults on Hinduism’, in the form of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, yet ‘on the whole it came out of it unscathed. It has tried to imbibe whatever was good in each of these religions.’

  The reaction of the white Theosophists in the audience is unrecorded. However, when the talks were printed, they provoked a torrent of criticism by Muslims, who said Gandhi had insulted Islam by suggesting its converts were of low caste origin. One critic claimed that the ancestors of the Bohras, a prominent community of Muslim traders in Gujarat, had been Brahmin priests. Another observed that ‘the statement that the lower classes of Hindus had been converted to Islam is not supported by any Urdu or Gujarati books on Indian history’ and are ‘figments of Hindu imagination’. A third charged Gandhi with laying excessive stress on the ‘bad deeds’ of Islam. His writings had ‘hurt the feelings of Muslims’; they were ‘unbecoming of a worthy person’.

  At Gandhi’s initiative, the critics had their views aired in Indian Opinion. He pointed out in reply that ‘no stigma attaches to Islam if the Hindus of the lower castes became Muslims. On the contrary, it shows its excellence, of which the Muslims should be proud.’ He insisted that ‘to me, personally, there is no distinction between a Brahmin and a bhangi [low-caste scavenger]. And I consider it a merit of Islam that those who were dissatisfied with the social distinctions in Hinduism were able to better their condition by embracing Islam.’

  The debate carried on for weeks, in public and in private. As the editor of Indian Opinion, Gandhi would have the last word. He had come across a piece in a journal called the Christian World, which argued that ‘religion, by a hundred different names and forms, has been dropping the one seed into the human heart, opening the one truth as the mind was able to receive it.’ Gandhi commented that this ‘growing spirit of toleration of all religions is a happy augury of the future’. To this spirit of ecumenism,

  India, with its ancient religions, has much to give, and the bond of unity between us can best be fostered by a whole-hearted sympathy and appreciation of each other’s form of religion. A greater toleration on this important question would mean a wider charity in our everyday relations, and the existing misunderstandings would be swept away. Is it not also a fact that between Mahomedan and Hindu there is a great need for this toleration? Sometimes one is inclined to think it even greater than between East and West. Let not strife and tumult destroy the harmony between Indians themselves. A house divided against itself must fall, so let me urge the necessity for perfect unity and brotherliness between all sections of the Indian community.11

  In India, too, the question of Hindu–Muslim unity was in the fore-front of political debate. In October 1905, the Bengal Presidency was divided. The eastern part of Bengal was predominantly Muslim; by making it a separate province, the British hoped to wean Muslims away from the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress. The partition provoked a great outcry – especially among the middle classes in Calcutta, angry that their province was cut in half. Protests to undo the partition took on an increasingly anti-British cast. A movement known as Swadeshi, meaning ‘of and for one’s land’, urged the boycott of foreign goods.

  Watching from South Africa, Gandhi gave the protests his support. The movement against the partition, he said, ‘has in it the germs of the unification of the different communities’. As for the economic boycott: ‘What can be more natural than for the people to wish to clothe themselves, to feed themselves, and to supply their luxuries out of home-grown products and home manufactures?’ The events in Bengal were compared to the democratic upsurge under way in Russia. ‘The movement in Bengal for the use of swadeshi goods is much like the Russian movement,’ remarked Gandhi. ‘Our shackles will break this very day, if the people of India become united and patient, love their country, and think of the well-being of their motherland, disregarding their self-interest.’12

  In between work and writing, Gandhi snatched time away for the family. In July 1905 he wrote to a friend in Bombay suggesting that he send Harilal to South Africa. The funding of Indian Opinion had cut into his savings; besides, with Kasturba and the other children now in South Africa, it made little sense for one son to stay back in India. ‘The burden on me here is so heavy that it is difficult for me to meet the expenses there,’ wrote Gandhi. ‘Nor do I see that Harilal’s interests are served thereby.’13 But Harilal did not want to leave India. Unbeknownst to his parents, the boy had fallen in love with the daughter of the Rajkot lawyer Haridas Vora.14 With Harilal out of reach, Gandhi turned his attention to his second son, Manilal. In September the thirteen-year-old was sent for a spell to Phoenix, where he was supervised by his cousins. Gandhi told Chhaganlal to put Manilal to work with his hands. ‘The main thing is to clear the big plot of land and water the plants. He will get to know more by himself if he looks after the trees.’15

  Two sons were temporarily away from the Gandhi household; meanwhile, two friends were welcomed in. Henry Polak had persuaded his family to permit him to marry Millie Graham. Gandhi played a hand here: when Polak’s father claimed that the girl was not robust enough for marriage, Gandhi wrote that if Millie was indeed fragile, ‘in South Africa, amidst loving care, a beautiful climate and a simple life, she could gain the physical strength she evidently needed.’16

  To Millie herself, Gandhi offered some advice and instruction. In the time left to her in London, she should pay her ‘respects to the Honourable Mr Dadabhai Naoroji, who is the G. O. M. [grand old man] of India. He represents the highest ideals of the Indian patriot.’ Then she should go to the Lady Margaret Hospital in Bromley, where Gandhi’s former flatmate and fellow vegetarian, Dr Josiah Oldfield, treated the patients to – or with – a ‘strictly fruitarian diet’. She should study the conditions of patient care in the hospital, as ‘in Phoenix, we are going to have a Sanatorium and any experience you may gain there in such matters
will be most valuable.’ He had heard of a Tolstoy Farm somewhere near London; perhaps she should visit it and study the principles on which it was based. ‘I have,’ said Gandhi, ‘given you enough hints already as to what might be usefully studied there before you come out to South Africa.’17

  Millie Graham arrived in Johannesburg in the last week of December 1905. The next day, Henry and Millie went with Gandhi to be married by the Registrar of European Marriages. The Hindu hoped to bear witness to this union of Jew and Christian; the Registrar thought this was not permitted by law. He asked them to come back the next working day. But the next day was Sunday, and the day after that, New Year’s Day. And Millie and Henry had waited long enough already. So Gandhi went across to the office of the Chief Magistrate, to whom the Registrar reported. He convinced him that nothing in the law debarred a brown man from witnessing a European marriage. The Magistrate, remembered Gandhi, merely ‘laughed and gave me a note to the Registrar and the marriage was duly registered’.18

  The deed done, the couple moved into the lawyer’s home on Albemarle Street. Millie began teaching the boys English grammar and composition, and helped Kasturba in the kitchen. The two women became friends, with the newcomer’s buoyant nature overcoming the matriarch’s natural reserve and her lack of familiarity with the English language.

  For the Gandhis and the Polaks, the day began early. At six-thirty, the men and boys assembled to grind wheat. Before breakfast, Gandhi would do some skipping, a form of exercise at which he was apparently quite adept. After the men went off to work, the children were set to their lessons, supervised by the women. In the evening the family sat down for dinner, an extended meal where the day’s happenings were discussed. Afterwards, if there were no guests, passages from religious texts (the Bhagavad-Gita being an especial favourite) were read out loud.

  Living with the Gandhis, Millie concluded that with regard to marital relations at least there was a fundamental difference between East and West. Indian husbands were allowed periods of rest and contemplation, but their wives had to work, work, work. ‘The East has made [woman] the subject of man,’ Millie told Gandhi. ‘She seems to possess no individual life.’ He answered that she was mistaken: ‘The East has given her a position of worship.’ As proof, he mentioned the legend of Satyavan and Savitri. When Satyavan died, Savitri wrestled with the God of Death for the return of her beloved. ‘She had a hard battle to fight,’ said Gandhi, but after showing ‘the highest courage, fortitude, love and wisdom’, eventually won her husband back to her side.

  Millie answered that this story actually proved her point. In Indian mythology, it appeared ‘woman is made to serve man, even to wrestling with the God of Death for him’. In myth and in reality (seeing how Gandhi treated Kasturba), Millie found Indian women ‘always waiting on the pleasure of some man’.19

  There were also arguments between Polak and Gandhi. The Englishman thought the Indian too even-tempered – when he was slandered in the press, he should write back polemically rather than ignore the matter. Polak, an ardent socialist, found Gandhi to be wholly without interest in economic theories; and far too absorbed in questions of religion. Polak also thought that rather than spend so much time teaching his children Gujarati, Gandhi should make them proficient in English, the language of the world.20

  Once, after a particularly intense debate between Polak and Gandhi, Kasturba drew Millie aside and asked what the fuss was about. The Englishwoman tried to explain, as best she could, the intricacies of the political problem that so exercised the men. Millie remembered that as she outlined the argument to Kasturba, ‘a suspicion flitted through my mind that she was not altogether cross that Mr Polak was cross with Bapu [as Gandhi was known to his family]. She was vexed with him sometimes, and the anger of another person who, she knew, cared very much for him seemed to justify her own.’21

  Polak was now working part-time on Indian Opinion. His involvement increased when, in January 1906, the editor, M. H. Nazar, died in his sleep at Phoenix, a copy of the Gita by his side.22 The next month the Hindi and Tamil sections of the journal were dropped. While Chhaganlal saw to the production of the Gujarati pages, Polak took charge of the English columns, editing and reading proofs, and regularly contributing articles himself. He was an enthusiast for the Swadeshi movement, seeing echoes of the search for dignity in Ireland, Poland, and other oppressed nations. Polak had not yet visited Gandhi’s homeland; even so, reading the reports in the Indian press, he saw – or thought he saw – how

  a new Indian literature is springing up, hot with the fervour of a new national aspiration; new leaders are coming to the fore, earnest with the mystic idea of a united India before their eyes. ‘India for the Indians’ is the watch-word, and the Motherland is now hailed by those whose minds but yesterday refused to contemplate the union of warring sects, exclusive castes, and striving peoples. To-day, however, an immense fillip is being given to every national hope. National industries are springing up on all sides, and the demand is all for indigenous products and home-manufactured goods.23

  The fervour was also Henry Polak’s. In so wholeheartedly embracing the Indian cause, Polak was acting as a ‘non-Jewish Jew’, who fought not for the equality of Jew and Gentile, but for an end to all varieties of ‘dogmatic narrow-mindedness and fanaticism’. Like Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and Sigmund Freud, Henry Polak believed not in the emancipation of his own race or tribe or sect but in ‘the ultimate solidarity of mankind’.24

  One route for Jews in the South Africa of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been laid out by the entrepreneur Sammy Marks. Fabulously wealthy owing to his investments in diamond and coal, Marks worked energetically to become part of the ruling elite. He patronized scientific societies and Christian causes, and sought membership in gentlemen’s clubs, all ‘part of a personal drive towards assimilation into the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture’. In wishing to become – so to speak – an honorary Englishman in South Africa, he simultaneously distanced himself from immigrants from Asia. When a new law considered placing Jews on a par with Indians, Marks successfully petititioned his friends in Government to avoid administering to ‘my people’ the ‘same treatment as is meted out to Coolies’.25

  The assimilationist path of Sammy Marks was followed, with varying degrees of success, by most Jews in South Africa. But there were significant exceptions, among them Henry Polak. Polak’s identification with the Indians was part philosophical, part personal – the latter owing to his admiration for Mohandas Gandhi. Still, his deference was slight compared to that of Gandhi’s other Jewish friend, the architect Hermann Kallenbach. Living alone, and removed – in all senses – from his family in Europe, Kallenbach looked to Gandhi for succour and support. A letter written by Gandhi in about 1904 or 1905 bears testimony to the closeness of their relationship. Kallenbach had been beset by nightmares, and asked his Indian friend to help him cope with them.

  You must not [on] any account despond [counselled Gandhi]. By degrees you would get out of the horrible dreams. Just now your mind being in a state of ferment these dreams come to warn you of the secret enemy who may attack you without notice and when you are least prepared to meet him … [Y]ou may turn these dreams to good account by keeping an ever present watch on yourself.

  This gloss on Kallenbach’s nightmares was Gandhi’s own; it owed nothing to Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, which was then available only in German. From matters of the mind the letter then turned to matters of the body. ‘My diet yesterday,’ wrote Gandhi to his fellow food faddist, ‘was 4 bananas, 3 oranges, 1 lemon, ½ lb tomatoes, dates, 2 ½ oz. p[ea]nuts, 12 almonds and a paw paw. Two motions in the day. Retired last night after 11, woke up at 4 & left the bed at 5. Eyes have begun to cause a little trouble.’26

  The Gandhis of Porbandar had stayed away from meat and fish for generations. But this particular Gandhi was now moving towards an extreme elaboration of a vegetarian diet. One of his favourite authors, the anti-vivisecti
onist doctor Anna Kingsford, claimed that a fruit-based diet was man’s genetic inheritance. It also helped cultivate kindness towards others. Her Indian disciple seems to have been taking her theories very seriously indeed.

  In 1905, for a coloured couple and a white couple to live together would have been unusual in an English city like London, or in an Indian city like Bombay. In the context of South Africa it was revolutionary. The prejudice against the mixing of the races was perhaps greater there than anywhere else in the world. For Gandhi to befriend Polak, Kallenbach, West and company was an act of bravery; for them to befriend Gandhi was an act of defiance.

  How very singular this mixed-race household was is revealed by the diary of Chhaganlal Gandhi. In January 1906, Chhagan travelled to Johannesburg to brief his uncle about Phoenix and Indian Opinion. This is how he saw the next few days:

  January 4, 1906: Arrived at Johannesburg station. Rama [Ramdas], Deva [Devadas], Bhai [Gandhi] and Mrs. Polak were there to receive me. Reached home at 7 o’clock with them. After a wash went to the table for dinner. Found the westernized style very odd. I began to wonder, but could not decide whether our ways were better or theirs … Before the meal Bhai recited a few verses from the Gita and explained their meaning in Gujarati …

  January 5, 1906: Getting up at 5 a.m. was ready by 6.30 … Everyone went out to work without any breakfast. I walked with Bhai to his office, about two miles [sic] away. Talked about the Indian Opinion on the way. Bhai started work in his office exactly at 9.30 a.m. Seeing a girl working in the office made me wonder. In the afternoon Bhai and others had a meagre meal of bananas and groundnuts. The accounts of the press were then carefully gone through. Returned home with Bhai at 5.30 p.m. I began to wonder again when I found the English friends, the Polaks, mixing freely with everyone.