Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  The British Indian Association now had a new chairman – Essop Mia, who had replaced Abdul Gani. On 4 November, Mia posted a letter (written, naturally, by Gandhi) to the President of the Indian National Congress. The annual session of the Congress was to meet the next month in the Gujarati port town of Surat. Mia/Gandhi urged that their struggle be ‘in the forefront of the subjects to be dealt with by the Congress’. For, in opposing the Asiatic Ordinance in the Transvaal, they regarded themselves as ‘the representatives, in this country, of our Motherland, and it is impossible for us, as patriotic Indians, to keep silence under an insult that is levied against our race and our national honour.’

  This was heartfelt, and also true. But then Mia/Gandhi went on to make a larger claim.

  We hold that our movement of passive resistance merits the approval of all religious men, of all true patriots, of all men of commonsense and integrity. It is a movement so potent as to compel the respect of our adversaries by virtue of our very non-resistance, of our willingness to suffer; and we are the more firm in our determination to offer this opposition, because we consider that our example, on a small scale in this Colony, whether successful or unsuccessful, may well be adopted by every oppressed people [and] by every oppressed individual, as being a more reliable and more honourable instrument for securing the redress of wrongs than any which has heretofore been adopted.8

  ‘A more reliable and more honourable method of fighting injustice than any which has heretofore been adopted.’ This was a daring, even reckless claim. Not a single Indian had yet courted arrest in the Transvaal. On the other hand, Indians in several provinces (Bombay, Bengal, Madras, Punjab) had been jailed during the Swadeshi movement. Gandhi had attended a solitary Congress (in Calcutta in 1901), giving one of the minor speeches. But here he was, telling Gokhale, Tilak and other nationalist stalwarts that, among a small group of expatriates in South Africa, he had forged a patriotic spirit that equalled theirs, and invented a political technique that they would do well to emulate.

  In the second week of November 1907, the case of the first Indian to be prosecuted under the Asiatic Law came up in court. This pioneering offender was a Hindu priest based in Germiston, a railway town some ten miles from Johannesburg. Named Ram Sundar, he was born and raised in the holy city of Banaras, where he learnt Sanskrit, and in time became a priest (and hence acquired the title ‘Pandit’). He migrated to Natal in about 1898, married a local Indian girl, and they had two children. In 1905 he moved to the Transvaal to take charge of a temple run by a Hindu trust, the Sanatana Dharma Sabha.

  Ram Sundar stayed in Germiston on a temporary permit, which was extended two months at a time. On 30 September 1907 his request for renewal was refused. Asked to leave the colony, the priest said he would not obey the order, ‘as he had to remain [in Germiston] to perform his religious duties, there being no one to take his place, and he was quite prepared to suffer the consequences of his disobedience’.

  October was the grace period granted by Smuts to the Indians. At the beginning of the next month, the Government decided to act. The recalcitrant Ram Sundar was its first target. On 8 November he was placed under arrest. One of his first visitors in Germiston jail was Henry Polak. As a token of support for Ram Sundar, Indian stores throughout the Transvaal were closed for a day. Indian hawkers went off the roads, and Indian newspaper boys did not do their rounds.

  On the 11th, the priest was produced in court, and Gandhi had him released on bail. As he came out of the building, Ram Sundar was received by a shower of flowers. A congratulatory meeting was then convened in the premises of the Sanatana Dharma Sabha. It was chaired by a Muslim priest, Moulvi Saheb Ahmed Mukhtiar, who said it was the duty of holy men of all faiths ‘to take the lead in such times of difficulty’. The Tamil activist Thambi Naidoo added ‘that the fight would become more exciting only when Punditji went to gaol’.

  Ram Sundar’s case came up for hearing on 14 November. The first witness for the defence was a Muslim, Imam Abdul Kadir. Prodded by Gandhi, he said that ‘the whole of the [Indian] community – both Hindus and Mahomedans – felt very bitterly about the prosecution of the accused.’ The next witness was a Hindu from Germiston, Lala Bahadur Singh. He said the Pandit ‘had preached against the Asiatic Act purely on religious grounds, because it was against their religious scruples’. The priest observed in his own testimony that their religion prohibited their giving their wives’ names, and he objected to giving impressions of his ten fingers.

  The courtroom was packed, with a mixed audience of Indians and Europeans (some 300 others were turned away at the door). They heard Gandhi subject Montford Chamney to an intense cross-examination. The Protector of Asiatics said that he had received complaints from white and Coloured people that the Pandit was inciting people against the Government. Addressing the court, Gandhi insisted his client was arrested not because he did not hold a permit but ‘because he had dared to hold strong views about the Asiatic Act and had not hesitated to place them before his countrymen.’ If ‘that was a crime,’ Gandhi went on, ‘then the majority of Indians were guilty equally with the accused’. At this stage, the magistrate, C. C. Gillfillian, interjected to express the ‘hope that Mr Gandhi would not burden the records with too much evidence’.

  Summing up, the magistrate congratulated Gandhi on his ‘very able’ handling of the case. He himself felt a ‘great deal of sympathy’ with ‘persons who had to suffer from acts performed from a purely religious point of view’. However, he had to administer the law as it stood. It was not for him to judge whether it was right or wrong. As an act of leniency (or compassion), he would inflict the ‘minimum punishment’ possible, which in this case was one month’s imprisonment without hard labour. This magnanimous speech from the Bench added to the lustre around Ram Sundar. As he left the court, the priest shook hands individually with all present. When he came outside, escorted by policemen, ‘he was greeted with loud cheers by the Indians who had assembled.’9

  Gandhi was greatly encouraged by the cross-class and cross-religious support for Ram Sundar Pandit. A week after the priest was consigned to jail, three delegates left Transvaal to attend the forthcoming Surat session of the Indian National Congress. They were carrying, among other things, a letter from Gandhi to his mentor, Gopal Krishna Gokhale. This stated that

  the struggle we are undergoing here has resulted in making us feel that we are Indians first and Hindus, Mahomedans, Tamils, Parsees, etc. afterwards. You will notice, too, that all our delegates are Mahomedans. I am personally proud of the fact … May I ask you to interest yourself in them and make them feel perfectly at home? A Hindu–Mahomedan compact may even become a special feature of the Congress.10

  Once more, a lowly lawyer in South Africa was lecturing his more exalted compatriots in India. Gandhi had already told Gokhale about the worldwide relevance of a small passive resistance movement then still unfolding; now he was suggesting that the religious harmony forged in the diaspora might serve as a model for the overcoming of sectarian differences at home.

  With the protests continuing, General Smuts wrote to the Transvaal Governor, Lord Selborne, complaining that ‘the Indians, headed by the lawyer Gandhi and certain other agitators, seem to think any concession made to be a symptom of weakness.’11 The Governor now asked two liberal-minded whites, William Hosken and a Justice of the Peace named David Pollock, to try and reconcile the warring parties. Gandhi once more suggested that the Government withdraw the Act and allow Indians to voluntarily take out certificates of domicile, which would contain ‘full identification particulars’. The issue of fingerprints could be left in abeyance, but Gandhi insisted that Montford Chamney be replaced, since he ‘is entirely incompetent for the office he holds, in having no legal ability to sift evidence’. Pollock and Hosken took this proposal back to Smuts, who met it with a ‘blunt refusal’.12

  On Sunday 24 November, some 2,000 Indians converged on the Fordsburg Mosque to discuss their future course of action. ‘There were m
en everywhere, on the verandah of the mosque, its terrace and roof.’ A dozen men spoke, but the star turn was Gandhi. He claimed that a growing number of whites sympathized with their cause; in any case, their ‘petition no longer lay with an earthly ruler; it was to be addressed to the Creator’. Answering questions about what to do when they were arrested, Gandhi said that if asked to provide fingerprints in prison, they should give them. ‘This was a struggle for freedom from slavery, not against digit-impressions.’ In case Gandhi himself was jailed, then ‘Mr Polak would be able to attend to all work, such as sending telegrams, etc.’13

  In the last week of November, the Governor, Lord Selborne, had a further meeting with whites seeking to mediate between the State and the Indians. A Congregational minister named Charles Phillips told Lord Selborne that ‘the coloured people and the educated natives are watching this struggle closely, and that for the first time they recognise that they have an instrument in their hands – that is, combination and passive resistance – of which they had not previously thought.’ Selborne himself believed that Africans were incapable of ‘combination and organized action’. He worried however that the ‘manufacture of martyrs’ by the jailing of Indian protesters had undermined the credibility of the Government.

  Selborne now wrote to Smuts asking whether it was not possible to ‘build a bridge’ to the Indians. Perhaps the General could allow them to register voluntarily. Smuts wrote back saying that while he was prepared to meet Gandhi and company in a ‘friendly spirit’, among his colleagues there was a ‘strong popular feeling’ against any concessions to them.14

  Writing to a Cape politician, Smuts admitted that ‘the Indian question is a very difficult one here – under the influence of their leaders they have made a very successful resistance to the finger-print registration.’ If the protests continued, the Government would be ‘forced to resort to drastic steps such as the deportation of the leaders’.15

  With the Government unyielding, the protests continued. On Sunday, 1 December, another large meeting was held in Fordsburg Mosque. All those present, wrote a reporter on the spot, ‘regarded themselves, Hindoos and Mohammedans alike, as attending a religious ceremony’. They ‘were all prepared to go to gaol, and even to close their stores’.16

  Watching these developments from Phoenix was John Cordes. Reading Gandhi in Indian Opinion, and reading about the struggle in the white-owned press, prompted him to write a letter of admiration and support. The letter is lost, but we can guess its contents from the answer it elicited. ‘You talk of my generalship,’ wrote Gandhi to Cordes:

  This shows how little you understand me. I do not think that there is any generalship in me at all, but, if my action has been hitherto serviceable to the Indian cause, it simply means to that extent a triumph of truth. My faith in God and truth (two convertible terms) is almost invincible, and if appropriate things come from my pen on appropriate occasions, you may take it that I am not to be credited.17

  The resolve of the Indians had, by now, impressed some Europeans less in thrall to Gandhi himself. In late November, an article in praise of the resisters appeared in a newspaper published in the Afrikaner stronghold of Bloemfontein. Compulsory registration, it said, had led to ‘suffering to the Asiatic community of a kind and to an extent which we are certain the governing race never intended. It is a martyrdom that the Asiatics are now undergoing. No other word would be exact, because their suffering is voluntary, and marks their refusal to comply with what they consider a degrading law.’ The paper urged a ‘reasonable compromise’ on both parties, namely, a return to the offer of voluntary registration that the British Indians had originally made. To continue enforcing the Ordinance as it stood would ‘drive the self-respecting class of Indians out of the colony [through deportation] and retain only the moral rabble [i.e. those who register] within it. A law which … expels the best and keeps the worst stands self-condemned.’18

  Two weeks later, the Transvaal Leader printed a long letter from David Pollock. As of 1 December, noted Pollock, 95 per cent of all Indians in the colony were unregistered, and hence liable to arrest and possible deportation. This was now ‘not merely a question of local economics’, but ‘a matter of grave Imperial concern’. For, said this open-minded white, ‘we cannot send thousands of agitators (and agitators for conscience sake, remember!) to complicate still further the problem with which the Government of India is struggling’ (namely, the growing movement against colonial rule within India itself). Pollock urged the Government to ‘scorn the petty role of persecution’, repeal the Asiatic Act, and issue certificates of domicile to all lawfully resident Asiatics. It was time, he said, to recognize that a mistake had been made, and to set it right.19

  On 9 December, Gandhi appeared in court in the town of Volksrust, close to the Transvaal–Natal border. He was defending thirty-seven Indians who had deliberately entered the province without valid permits. Of the protesters only four were Muslims, the others being Hindu. This revealed an interesting lopsidedness, which may have had several causes – among them the example of the Hindu priest Ram Sundar and the charisma of the Hindu lawyer Gandhi; and, on the other side, the reluctance of many Muslim merchants actually to test their commitment by courting arrest.

  On 13 December, Ram Sundar Pandit was discharged from prison. He was ‘enthusiastically received with garlands and bouquets’. As advised by Gandhi, the priest now wrote to General Smuts that although he had been ordered to leave the colony in seven days, he would stay on to serve his flock in Germiston.20

  Two weeks later, arrest warrants were issued against twenty-three resisters in the Transvaal. They included Gandhi, Thambi Naidoo (described as ‘chief picket, Johannesburg’), the Chinese leader Leung Quinn and Ram Sundar Pandit. Five Muslim merchants also came forward to court arrest. However, the most surprising name was that of C. M. Pillay. Sometime during the course of the year and the struggle, this Tamil rival of Gandhi had become reconciled to his leadership.

  Gandhi heard of the arrest warrant against him on the morning of 27 December. The Police Commissioner told him that he was at liberty for twenty-four hours, but had to appear in court the next day. The same evening, a meeting was hurriedly convened in the Hamidia Hall. Here Gandhi termed the legislation under which he faced imprisonment as ‘the savage Act of a … Government that dares to call itself Christian. If Jesus Christ came to Johannesburg and Pretoria and examined the hearts of General Botha, General Smuts and the others, he thought he would notice something strange, something quite strange to the Christian spirit.’21

  Back in 1894, on visiting a Trappist monastery in highland Natal, Gandhi had said ‘a religion appears divine or devilish, according as its professors choose to make it appear.’ In later years he had sometimes lectured Natal colonists on how their acts or actions departed from the spirit of Christ. His remarks here were in character: Gandhi asked Hindus and Muslims as much as Christians to recall the nobler values and practices of their own moral or religious tradition. Had they read these remarks, however, Generals Botha and Smuts would scarcely have appreciated them. Not even the most broad-minded Afrikaner would abide being preached to by a Hindu lawyer with a brown skin.

  The case of M. K. Gandhi versus the Transvaal Government came up for hearing in Johannesburg’s B Court on the morning of 28 December 1907. Many friends of the accused were present, mostly Indians but also Henry Polak. When Gandhi asked to make a statement, the judge, H. H. Jordan, refused permission, saying, ‘I don’t want any political speeches made.’ Gandhi said he ‘simply asked the indulgence of the Court for five minutes’. The judge answered, ‘I don’t think this is a case in which the Court should grant any indulgence. You have defied the law.’ He then gave his order, which was that if Gandhi did not leave the colony within seven days, he would be sentenced to a month in prison for not possessing a valid permit. If he stayed on in the colony for more than a week after that sentence expired, he would be sentenced next time to six months in prison. The newspaper report
on the case continues:

  Mr Gandhi, interrupting the Magistrate, asked him to make the order for 48 hours. If they could get it shorter even than that, they would be more satisfied.

  Mr jordan: If that is the case, I should be the last person in the world to disappoint you. Leave the Colony within 48 hours is my order.

  Immediately after he was sentenced, Gandhi defended the others accused of violating the law. C. M. Pillay, asked why he did not register, said he believed ‘that any self-respecting man would not comply with the provisions of the Act, as it simply places our liberty in the hands of the Registrar of Asiatics who, in my humble opinion, is not [a] fit and proper person to hold this post’. This irritated the magistrate, who said ‘he would not listen to nonsense of this kind. He thought it was a piece of gross impertinence for a person to come there and abuse an official of the Government in that way.’ Gandhi agreed that the remarks were improper, and then asked Pillay: ‘Do you object to the officer or the Act?’ to get the answer he wanted, namely, ‘Mainly to the Act.’

  Thambi Naidoo, for his part, told the judge that he ‘objected to registration as it placed him lower than a Kaffir, and it was against his religion.’ Then it was the turn of two Chinese resisters to speak. One, a Mr Easton, said ‘he was not permitted by his religion – Taoism – to give any impressions’; the other, Leung Quinn, said ‘he did not take out a permit because it was a law disgraceful to himself and his nation.’

  The judge, in sentencing the accused to prison, said they

  had deliberately defied the Government and had taken up a very serious position – one which he was sorry to see any resident in this country adopt. It had been a mistake, he had no doubt, which had been copied from the [Nonconformist] passive resisters at Home in connection with the Education Bill, and that was an attitude which had never appealed to him in any shape at all. The laws of a country must be complied with by the people resident there, and if they could not do that, there was but one alternative – such people must go somewhere else.22