Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  As a lawyer in Natal, Gandhi had sometimes saved clients – rebellious indentured labourers or Indians out at night without a pass – from a prison sentence. He was the son and grandson of diwans, among whose responsibilities had been the management of prisons and prisoners. His forefathers had sent people to jail, whereas as a lawyer he worked to keep them out. The voluntary courting of arrest was foreign to his class and profession, as it was to the class and profession of the people he now hoped to mobilize. Gandhi knew that merchants, whether Gujarati or otherwise, were not the likeliest of volunteers for jail terms. Back in September 1906, carried along by the popular mood in the Empire Theatre, the traders had pledged to court arrest; now, several months later, were they really prepared to abandon their shops, their homes, their families, their businesses?

  In an article for Indian Opinion, Gandhi clarified the future course of action. Anyone charged or arrested for not taking out a permit would be defended by him free of charge. In court, he would say that the client had acted on his advice, in which case it was likely that ‘Mr Gandhi will be arrested and his client let off.’ Even if protesters were prosecuted and sent to jail, ‘the chances are that they will soon be released and the law amended suitably.’ The wife and children of anyone in jail would be maintained by public subscription. ‘There is no disgrace attached to going to gaol on this occasion,’ said Gandhi. ‘On the contrary, it will positively add to one’s prestige.’23

  Indian Opinion’s leader for 11 May 1907 was headlined ‘To the Gaol!’ Now that the Asiatic Act had been sent for royal sanction, ‘the goal for British Indians in Transvaal is the Transvaal gaol.’ The previous September, they had pledged to court imprisonment if the ordinance became law, with their resolution ‘flashed across the cable to the world. In the sight of God as well as man, they now stand pledged to the resolve, and by their deed they shall be judged by ever after.’24

  This editorial, though unsigned, was probably written by Henry Polak. Through May and June, Gandhi published a series of articles under his own name, aimed at strengthening the resolve of the Indians. He quoted a poem by Narmadashanker on the achievements of Columbus, Napoleon, Martin Luther and Alexander. ‘With such examples before them,’ commented Gandhi, ‘how can the Transvaal Indians lose heart even in the smallest degree?’ Another essay invoked the Prophet Mohammed, who was in a cave with two disciples when a hostile army came by. The disciples were overcome by fear and terror, until the Prophet told them: ‘We are not three. God, Who is a match for all, is also with us.’ In the end the army passed the cave without even looking in. A third essay referred the reader to the ongoing protests in the Punjab against oppressive land policies. The leader of the movement, Lala Lajpat Rai, was an uncompromising opponent of Western colonialism. Gandhi admired the method without endorsing the end. The Transvaal Indians should ‘show the same courage ourselves, but instead of desiring the end of British rule, let us aspire to be as able and spirited as the Colonists are, and demand and secure the rights we want’. A fourth essay rehearsed the struggles and sacrifices of Cromwell, Mazzini and George Washington, which showed ‘that one must pass through suffering before tasting happiness. For [the] public good, men have to suffer hardships even to the point of death.’25

  The exhortations had their effect. In late May, it was reported that Indians in the Transvaal ‘are quietly and persistently making all arrangements for carrying out the historic gaol resolution’. Indian Opinion began printing the names of those who had pledged to court arrest. They included Hindus and Muslims, Tamils and Gujaratis.26

  On 1 June, Gandhi wrote to the Prime Minister, General Botha, seeking an interview. The request was declined. The General and his Government were in no mood to compromise. They had received a reassuring letter from Lord Elgin, which said that since the bill represented ‘the general will of the Colony, clearly expressed by its first elected representatives’, he would advise the King not to disallow its passing.27 Later that month the Royal Assent was received. The Act would come into force from 1 July, when Permit Offices would open in various towns, to allow Indians to register. In his ‘Johannesburg Letter’ of 29 June, Gandhi observed that ‘The Government Gazette announces that Mr Chamney has been appointed Registrar under the new law. I hope the Indian community will see that he only sits and yawns. This correspondent’s name will never be arrested in the register. It is my constant prayer to God that the same may be true of every Indian.’28

  His overtures to the Government spurned, Gandhi was now in a combative mood. In a letter to the white-owned Rand Daily Mail he adopted an unusual, or at any rate untypical, tone of sarcasm. The Secretary of State had apparently stated that thumb and finger impressions were all the same; and that their intent was not to offend or degrade the Indians. ‘Lord Elgin may certainly, sitting in his cushioned chair,’ remarked Gandhi,

  see no distinction between making a mark with the thumb instead of a pen, but I know that he belongs to that nation which would rise in rebellion from end to end to resent an attack on personal liberty, and that he would be the first person to cry out against even a forcible tracing of his signature. It is the compulsion that stings, not the digit-impression … That in the mind of the Government there is no desire to degrade is true only on the assumption that my countrymen are already sufficiently degraded [not] to feel any further degradation in this land of freedom for people other than Asiatics.29

  A week later, Gandhi wrote once more to the Rand Daily Mail, to correct the newspaper’s claim that the passive resistance now being planned by the Indians was a ‘new way’ of protest. Gandhi clarified that

  picketing is by no means a new thing to the Indian mind. The network of castes in India simply illustrates the use and value of that weapon, provided it is rightly used. Ostracism and excommunication are the most powerful instruments resorted to today in India, in unfortunately trivial matters, and, if the Registration Act now enables my countrymen to realize the use of that terrible weapon for a higher purpose, both Lord Elgin and the Transvaal Government will have deserved their gratitude.30

  In writing this, Gandhi had in mind his own boycott at the hands of his fellow Modh Banias when, as a young man, he had chosen to study in London. On his return to India he had to dip into rivers and throw feasts to gain readmittance. His caste mates had boycotted him for a ‘trivial’ matter; whereas he and his fellows were now boycotting the Permit Offices for a decidedly higher purpose.

  Pretoria was the first town designated for the registration of Indians. A white newspaper praised the Government’s decision to issue permits district by district. If the Ordinance had been introduced simultaneously in the whole colony, ‘there might have been a movement to ignore the Act upon something like the large scale hinted at by Mr Gandhi.’ ‘Pretoria is notoriously the weakest spot in the organisation of the Indians,’ said the paper, ‘and we do not think that the resistance movement there will make any headway.’31

  The Permit Office was to open in Pretoria on 1 July. The previous day, 30 June, several hundred Indians met in the town’s mosque. The meeting lasted for four hours. The mood was defiant. Gandhi spoke, but the star turn was an imam, Maulvi Mukhtiar, who ‘created a sensation’ by producing a letter from the South African Railways to the effect that Christian and Jewish ministers were allowed concessionary travel. The privilege was not extended to holy men of other faiths. ‘This information added fuel to the fire and showed Indians that a death struggle underlay the Act.’32

  The Permit Office opened the next morning as scheduled, but no certificates were issued. Encouraged by Gandhi, groups of Indians converged outside the office, ‘courteously’ persuading those who wished to go in to return home instead. The town was plastered by posters in Gujarati and English, reading: ‘boycott, boycott permit office! by going to gaol we do not resist, but suffer for our common good and self-respect. loyalty to the king demands loyalty to the king of kings [namely, God].’ In its issue of 20 July, Indian Opinion reported with glee that the Per
mit Officer, a Mr Cody, had in effect enjoyed a fortnight’s paid holiday.33

  The reports of the protests in the Transvaal reached Natal. In an inspired show of support, the Durban Indians staged a play in eight acts to raise money for the struggle. In Act I, a Parsi gentleman, two Muslim merchants and several hawkers expressed their readiness to defy the law and court arrest. In Act II, the women were seen supporting them; in Act III, the Permit Office in Pretoria was shown, with its officials ‘sitting yawning and smoking cigarettes’. In Act IV, native policemen came and arrested the resisters. In Act V, the Indians trooped into gaol in batches, ‘greeted with loud cheers’ by those already inside. In Act VI the prisoners were released by the Colonial Secretary and given fifteen days to register, to no avail, as the Permit Office was shown deserted once more.

  Act VII presented, so to speak, a counterfactual alternative – a depiction of events as if the Indians had been so foolish or so weak as to have submitted to the Act. ‘All the miserable details of finger-impressions and the giving of names were gone through in the presence of the registration staff, an interpreter and the Kaffir police. Cries of “shame!” greeted this realistic performance.’

  The final act, an anti-climax perhaps, showed an Indian charged in court with having a false permit, actually a legal document with some trifling defect, for which he was sent to jail.

  After the performance, Parsee Rustomjee came on stage and thanked the actors. A sum of £50 was raised for the passive resisters.34

  The play was staged in the Indian Theatre on Victoria Street on 13 July. A week later Gandhi visited Durban himself. Speaking to the Natal Indian Congress, he observed with some pride that in India, ‘the Government succeeds by setting the two cats – Hindus and Muslims – against each other. Here it is not so. Both the communities are united, hence our courage will bear fruit.’ He asked his friends in Natal to ‘join us in our sufferings … When all Indians in the Transvaal are prepared to suffer any loss in the struggle, you should not lag behind in giving monetary help.’35

  As the end of July approached, the rumour gained ground that the Government would begin arresting the resisters. To those worried by the prospect, Gandhi offered this spine-stiffening advice:

  I recommend that, on and from August 1, no Indian whatever should carry any money with him and certainly not gold in any case. Temptation is a very bad thing. Not being used to the idea of gaol, on hearing the sentence of fine, the accused may find his hands unconsciously straying into his pocket or he may cast an imploring glance at his friends. When this happens, he should mentally ask for God’s forgiveness, remove his hand [from his pocket], stand erect and, clearing his throat, declare that he will not pay the fine but go to gaol.36

  On the evening of 24 July, Gandhi was in Pretoria for work. He was met at the train station by a group of merchants, who told him that one of their fellows, named Khamisa, had broken ranks and decided to register. He was coercing his customers to do likewise. Gandhi and his companions went at once to Khamisa’s shop, where they ran into a detective. Sharp words were exchanged, the policeman telling the lawyer, ‘you know the law, do what is proper’. They were told to leave the premises at once. That same night, at Khamisa’s shop, some twenty men registered, and thus ‘blackened their hands and faces, and brought a slur on the good name of the Indian community’. Gandhi termed it a ‘ghastly betrayal’; the culprits knew they were doing a ‘shameful thing’, which is why they had taken out permits secretly, at midnight.37

  Meanwhile, a betrayal of another kind had been committed by Gandhi’s colleague H. O. Ally. He had written to Justice Ameer Ali in London, insinuating that the struggle in the Transvaal was motivated by the interests of Hindu hawkers rather than Muslim merchants. The Justice was an important member of the South Africa British Indian Committee. ‘We take it as a disgrace to the Indian community that Mr Ally should have penned such words,’ wrote Gandhi. ‘The Transvaal struggle affects Hindus and Muslims alike.’38

  To mark a month of continuous protest, some 2,000 Indians met in the grounds of the Pretoria Mosque on 31 July. A special train was chartered to ferry protesters from Johannesburg. Others came from the smaller towns of the colony. A reporter from the Pretoria News found the scene one of ‘intense interest’; ‘in the background, the Mosque with its deep verandahs, its suggestion of solemn worship’, and ‘in the grounds outside, the great concourse of Indians of all castes and religions, very much in earnest’. Their leader, Mohandas Gandhi, was described as a ‘learned Doctor of Laws, scholar and philosopher, to whom the Municipality of Pretoria deny the right to use the footpath, and who may not occupy a seat in the Municipal trams.’

  The meeting passed three resolutions. The first chastised the Indians who had applied for certificates of registration. The second congratulated those who had refused to succumb. The third urged the Government to accept, even now, the offer of voluntary registration. Afterwards, the liberal white politician William Hosken spoke. Originally from Cornwall, a Methodist by faith, Hosken had migated to the Transvaal to work as a manager in the mines. He was a friend of Gandhi and sympathethic to the Indians, frequently lobbying for them in the Johannesburg Town Council and the Transvaal Assembly. But now he urged the protesters to recognize that there was, as he termed it, ‘a dead wall of opposition against them’. He considered the new law ‘inevitable’, and saw no difference between voluntary and compulsory registration. Hosken called the decision to defy the law a ‘mistake’, and hoped they would recant. He recognized the spirit behind their opposition – that they did it to retain their dignity as free men, because they believed it to be their duty. But, said Hosken, ‘he considered it even a greater call of duty to submit to the inevitable.’

  Hosken’s speech was translated by Gandhi, who then added some comments of his own. He ‘thought and felt most deeply that neither Mr Hosken nor any member of a Western race … was capable of understanding what an Eastern mind understood by the inevitable’. Himself ‘one of the most peacable men in South Africa’, Gandhi had ‘not embark[ed] upon this crusade without mature thought and deliberation’. The Act was ‘most despicable’, and had to be opposed. For the policy of passive resistance now in place, the lawyer ‘personally took full responsibility’. The man from the Pretoria News thought Gandhi’s gloss had the effect of ‘cleverly discounting and weakening the effect which [Hosken’s speech] might have had on the less resolute brethren.’39

  On 8 August, Gandhi wrote to Smuts’ secretary disputing the Government’s contention that he alone was ‘responsible for the agitation against the Asiatic Law Amendment Act’. If the imputation meant ‘that my countrymen do not resent the Act at all but that I unnecessarily inflame them,’ he remarked, ‘I venture to repudiate it altogether. On the other hand, if it means that I have voiced their sentiments and that I have endeavoured, to the best of my ability, to place before them accurately what the Law means, I beg to accept the entire responsibility.’ After this combative opening, Gandhi softened his tone, saying, ‘I am as anxious to serve the Government as I am to serve my countrymen and I feel that the question is one of very serious and Imperial importance.’ He suggested an amendment to the Act, making registration voluntary, exempting children under sixteen years of age from registering, and deleting the clause asking that the certificate be produced whenever required. This would meet the requirements of the Government while removing the stigma attached to the law in the eyes of the Indians. Smuts, however, rejected the compromise; he and his Government were determined to ‘carry out in full the provisions of the Asiatic Law Amendment Act and if the resistance of the Indians residing in this country leads to results which they do not seriously face at present, they will have only themselves and their leaders to blame.’40

  The struggle continued. In Pietersburg, where the Permit Office had now moved, Indian sources claimed the boycott was 100 per cent successful. Even the white papers admitted that fewer than 10 out of 200 residents had registered.41 The high rate of success ma
y have been influenced by the fact that Indian Opinion had printed the names of the renegades in Pretoria who had ‘applied for the title-deed of slavery’. The terrible weapon of communal ostracism had also brought poor H. O. Ally to his knees. In the second week of August he sent a statement to the press clarifying that he supported passive resistance in the Transvaal. At the same time, he announced that he was shifting back to Cape Town. Indian Opinion commented that the harm done by his earlier letter had been ‘partly undone’; it asked Ally to ‘render patriotic service’ and ‘infuse vigour’ into community organizations in the Cape.42

  The conflict was now escalating. In August 1907, the Star of Johannesburg wrote of Gandhi that ‘he has certainly marshalled his forces well, and the Indians as a rule are prepared to follow him to the extreme.’ The lawyer was ‘now the recognised leader of the Indian community in South Africa’. He had ‘an attractive personality,’ said the Star, ‘and infuses his utterances with that dynamic force that carries conviction. In conversation he has a forcible manner. His eyes brighten with enthusiasm when discussing the subjects uppermost in his mind, and one cannot wonder at the hold he has over the Indians.’43

  Back in 1895, a reporter in Natal had stressed the stammer in Gandhi’s speech, his slow, hesitant delivery when making submissions in court. The next year Gandhi was too shy to read out a text before an audience in Bombay. Now, a decade later, he had clearly matured as a public speaker. His voice was still soft, but the conviction (and courage) it carried was manifest both to dogged follower and to impartial observer. The lawyer had become a leader, indeed, the recognized leader of the Indian community in South Africa.

  The Transvaal Government had now introduced a new bill, making it mandatory for immigrants or returning residents to fill in a form in a European language. Yiddish was classified as a European language under the Act, whereas Indian languages of greater antiquity and literary sophistication (such as Tamil) were excluded. The insult was compounded by the company the Indians were being made to keep. For the bill had specified various categories of ‘prohibited immigrants’, which included prostitutes, indigents, lunatics, lepers, spies and convicted criminals.44