Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  Doke and Polak stressed the principle, while Hermann Kallenbach, just as characteristically, spoke of the personality. Protesting the ‘insinuating remarks’ in the press attributing ‘material and dishonourable motives’ to Gandhi’s conduct, the architect said that he had not met ‘a more conscientious, more honourable or better man’. For ‘if Mr Gandhi, after the most thorough test and self-investigation, considers the course to be adopted by him to be the right one, he will not be hindered by any results, however disastrous they may be to himself from a material point of view, or, as we have seen now, from the point of view of his personal freedom.’ Kallenbach appealed to his ‘fellow-colonists not to be unjust to a man whose motives are of the highest, and who has proved this to us by action’.3

  Doke, Polak and Kallenbach were all friends of Gandhi. More striking was the support that came from the other side of the colour bar, from Africans whom Gandhi did not know at all. In an article entitled ‘A Lesson in True Manliness’, the Basutoland Star marvelled that the Transvaal Government, ‘known all over the world as being very harsh and inconsiderate in its treatment of all persons of colour’, was ‘almost driven to climb down from its high pedestal by the exhibition of manly qualities by the Indians’. The paper approved of the movement’s ends and, as crucially, of the means. ‘Man has two ways of resenting or resisting,’ said the Basutoland Star:

  The one is by active resistance, and the other is by passive resistance. The former is not commendable, as it leads to bloodshed, which should be avoided, and the latter is commendable, as it avoids bloodshed and usually ends in a bloodless and amicable settlement of the point at issue. It is the latter mode of resistance, which the Asiatics have adopted, which we commend our people the natives of South Africa to emulate. Gandhi and his compatriots are truly martyrs, and, come what may, true martyrs have before today never suffered in vain … Our sympathies go out to our oppressed fellow-subjects, who are made to suffer for the same cause that we suffer – viz., our slight pigment of the skin. Truly, the Transvaal has tarnished the fair name of our mighty Empire by its blind colour prejudice.4

  This statement of solidarity is made more remarkable by the fact that it was unprompted, unsolicited, and – so far as we can tell – unrequited.

  In the third week of January, Gandhi was visited by Albert Cartwright, editor of the Transvaal Leader, a liberal-minded Englishman who had experienced terms of imprisonment himself (for opposing the way the war against the Boers had been conducted). Cartwright was in touch with Smuts about a negotiated settlement between the Government and the Indians. The General was now worried about the pressure on the jails. As he told a meeting of whites, he had ‘sent every leader to prison, and hundreds more, and it had had no impression.’ There were not enough jails to house all the Indians in the Transvaal. To ‘take 10,000 men by the collar’ and put them in prison was ‘not only physically but morally impossible’.5

  Pressure was also being exerted on the Colonial Office by the India Office, who had been alerted by the Viceroy of ‘the existence of a very strong and bitter sentiment amongst the educated and articulate sections of the native community throughout India on the subject of the disabilities imposed on their countrymen resident in South Africa.’6 The Viceroy had been forwarded an anguished, breathless telegram received by the Anglican Church in India, which read:

  Barrister merchants traders hawkers agents clerks interpreters government officials colonial born married South African children born here [all] arrested … many families left mercy community some merchants twenty years standing including greybeards others gaoled include youths tender years 2 old soldiers bearing medals several campaigns also leaders ambulance corps boer war stretcher corps Natal rebellion … 7

  With his ambivalent feelings about British imperialists, Smuts might not have been swayed by these protests had they not been endorsed by his old friend, the Cape liberal J. X. Merriman. The treatment of educated Asiatics like Gandhi, said Merriman to Smuts, ‘savour[ed] of the yellow cap of the Jew, or the harrying of the Moriscoes of Spain’. He urged Smuts to follow the principle: Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos (to spare the humble and subdue the proud).8

  Gandhi was likewise amenable to a compromise. Before starting the satyagraha he had worked hard to avoid it. He was now prepared once more to try the path of dialogue and reconciliation. The resisters were all first-time satyagrahis, and doubtless keen to get out of jail as early as possible.

  Cartwright and Gandhi had two meetings, after which the editor drafted a document wherein the resisters offered voluntary registration in exchange for the dropping of cases, the release of prisoners, the reinstatement of Government employees who had become satyagrahis, and a discussion about the repeal of the Asiatic act. The paper was signed by Gandhi, Thambi Naidoo (on behalf of the Tamils) and Leung Quinn (representing the Chinese).9

  On 30 January, Gandhi was taken by a posse of policemen to meet Smuts in Pretoria. They discussed the terms of the compromise, with Smuts asking that those Indians who had been loyal to the Government not be harassed. Later, Gandhi wrote to a friend that he and the General

  met as though we had been old chums. He spoke most familiarly and allowed me to do likewise. He began by saying that he had no ill-feeling against me or the Asiatics, that his best friends were Indians at the time he was studying for the Bar, and that he wanted to give every assistance … He then said that I should see that the Indians did not crow over their victory and that demonstration was avoided. This was, of course, in our interests, because the Law was yet to be repealed, which he has promised to do, and the repeal of the Law will cost him a great deal of anxiety and trouble … [He] came to the door to receive me and we shook hands. There was heartiness on his part in the handshake.10

  That same evening Gandhi was released. A reporter who met him at Johannesburg station said he ‘seemed keenly pleased that a settlement had been come to by which neither side had suffered in honour, integrity or prestige’.11 The next day, the other passive resisters (about 220 in all) were also set at liberty. Those freed went at once to Gandhi’s law chambers. The first to arrive was an ex-soldier named Nawab Khan, ‘conspicuous in the uniform of the Bengal Lancers’. Gandhi came soon afterwards, riding a bicycle. A large crowd of Indians had assembled to greet the satyagrahis. A reporter on the spot noted that

  a certain amount of mutual gratification seemed to be going on, but the perfect orderliness which has marked the agitation was maintained … [I]n deference to Mr Gandhi’s understood wish – that there was to be no demonstration of any kind – they departed quietly after hearing news and exchanging their views.12

  Gandhi’s political style was oriented towards reconciliation and compromise. Petitions, letters, meetings – it was only when these methods had not proven successful that he had chosen to court arrest. But how long could he, and the Indians, sustain the path of struggle and sacrifice? Sensible of the compulsions of his followers, their need to earn a livelihood and not be separated from their families, Gandhi was now amenable to a settlement with Government.

  The more militant Pathans, however, were not. They had played their part, as soldiers on the British side, in the war against the Boers. That they were now subjected to humiliating laws by those they had once militarily defeated enraged them. Gandhi had mobilized them for the struggle; now, they would rather fight to the finish. They believed the lawyer had backed down too easily. At a meeting in Johannesburg, they raised objections to the giving of fingerprints, which Pathans such as Nawab Khan thought was humiliating. Back in India, only criminals were asked to provide them, and to submit one’s body to such (symbolic) subjection was anathema to their sense of masculinity and tribal pride.

  The Pathans were not persuaded by Gandhi’s claim that he had himself had his fingerprints taken in prison. Seeking a compromise within the compromise, Gandhi wrote to Smuts asking if thumb impressions alone were acceptable. While to him, ‘personally, it is immaterial whether thumb-prints or digit-impr
essions be given, there are many among the Asiatics to whom the latter presents an impassable difficulty’.13 Gandhi suggested that educated Indians waive the right to give signatures and offer fingerprints instead.14

  Extremists on the European side were also unhappy with the compromise. Gandhi should have been exiled from the province, they argued. A meeting of the White League, held in Johannesburg on 1 February, asked its members to ‘passively resist the Asiatics by securing pledges from the white people not to deal with the Orientals’. A co-operative society of whites to replace the trade of Indian hawkers was proposed. These colonists ‘want[ed] the Asiatics out of the country, and will have nothing to do with them.’15

  As mandated by the agreement, voluntary registration was scheduled to begin at ten a.m. on Monday 10 February 1908. An office was opened at Von Brandis Square, in the heart of Johannesburg. Hoping to be the first to register, Gandhi left his chambers at a quarter to ten, accompanied by Thambi Naidoo and Essop Mia. The subsequent events are described in a contemporary newspaper report:

  On the way, a party of Indians stopped the party [led by Gandhi] and asked what they were going to do.

  Mr Gandhi replied that they were going to register, and others endeavoured to explain that, if finger impressions were objected to, the registration officers would not insist.

  One of the party raised a stick and hit Mr Gandhi on the back of the head, knocking him to the ground. One of Mr Gandhi’s party tried to save their leader, but he also was knocked down with a severe blow on the side of the head.

  Mr Mia, the chairman of the British Indian Association, also interfered, and he was put out of action with a blow to the head.

  The assailants hit Mr Gandhi several blows with sticks on the head.

  The police on point duty saw the disturbance, and their appearance caused the assailants to decamp. Two, however, were arrested. The assailants are Punjabis and Pathans, and they allege that Mr Gandhi has not, in coming to the agreement, guarded their interests.

  Considerable excitement prevails, judging by the number of Indians waiting to be registered. The great majority are on Mr Gandhi’s side.16

  This report, from the Natal Mercury, needs to be supplemented by one from Indian Opinion, from which it appears that Thambi Naidoo may have saved Gandhi’s life. The Tamil was carrying an umbrella, and used it to engage the main attacker, Meer Allam Khan, pitting his instrument against the iron rod used by the Pathan. The umbrella finally broke, but by then the commotion had attracted the police as well as the employees of Arnott and Gibson, a law firm which had its offices nearby.17

  When Gandhi recovered consciousness, he was taken to the private office of J. C. Gibson, a partner in the firm that bore his name. He was bleeding from the lips and the forehead, and two of his front teeth were loose. A doctor was called in to treat the wounds. The Baptist minister Joseph Doke, hearing of the attack, had reached the scene. When someone suggested that Gandhi be removed to hospital, the clergyman offered to take him to his house in Smith Street instead. Doke’s son Clement vacated his room for the unexpected guest. Clement’s sister Olive watched as the patient was patched up. In her vivid recollection, ‘he would not have any chloroform or anything, he just sat on the bed while Mother held him up and the doctors stitched up his wounds. Two stitches were put in his cheek and two on his lip and two on his eyebrow. The last one was almost too much for him; he nearly fainted.’18

  During the day, Mrs Doke made tea for the stream of Indians who came in to visit their wounded leader. At night, Doke sat by Gandhi’s bedside and prayed. For two days after the attack, Gandhi ran a high fever. This, and the injuries to his face and lips, made it very hard for him to eat or drink. Slowly, he began taking liquids and also fruit, and, in time, bread dipped in milk. The wounds were healing, thanks to earth poultices, applied despite the doctor’s objection.19

  Telegrams of support for Gandhi and of thanks to the Dokes began pouring in from all parts of Transvaal and Natal. The Christian couple received money and jewels from individuals and community groups, thanking them ‘for their kindly and charitable assistance to our fellow-countryman and leader Mr Gandhi in his time of physical need’. Joseph Doke said he would create a trust fund from the gifts, to fund the education of Indian boys.20

  Back in 1897, when Gandhi had been attacked by a white mob in Durban, it was a European superintendent of police who, with Parsee Rustomjee, had helped spirit him to safety. Now, when savaged by a group of angry Indians, it was a family of British Baptists who nursed him back to health. In the course of his convalescence, Gandhi became very attached to the Dokes, to the father and daughter in particular. After he had left their household, he would, from time to time, send Olive playful notes, enclosing Indian women’s magazines for her to read and demanding that she send chocolates to his law office in exchange. These letters reveal an unexpected tenderness in a man whose missives to his own sons were far more censorious and prescriptive.21

  For Gandhi, the support given by Albert Cartwright, and then by the Dokes, confirmed that this conflict should not be seen through a purely racial lens. The Indian community, he wrote, should ‘give up its anger against the whites. We are often thoughtless enough to say that the whites can have nothing good in them. But this is patent folly. Mankind is one, and even if a few whites make the mistake of considering themselves different from us, we must not follow them in that error.’22

  Two days after the attack on Gandhi, a group of Pathans met in a hall in Vrededorp. The principal speaker was Nawab Khan, ex-Bengal Lancers, dressed, as ever, in military uniform. He ‘urged on his audience that, now Mr Gandhi had forsaken the right path, they should follow him no longer, and refuse to submit to the indignity of having impressions of their 10 digits taken’. Khan ‘worked the audience up to such a pitch’ that they followed him in taking an oath not to register.23

  The Pathans were in a minority. When one newspaper sought to represent it as a Hindu versus Muslim question, a group of leading merchants pointed out that ‘the very first men to register on Monday were Mahomedans. So far as South Africa is concerned, happily, on non-religious matters there are no differences between the two communities.’24 The ‘general opinion among the Asiatics,’ commented one reporter, ‘is that the assault on Mr Gandhi was a cowardly one. It is remarkable how true the Asiatics are to their leader.’25

  The events of recent weeks and months had enormously enhanced Gandhi’s standing in the community. Once, he was admired for his professional qualifications and skills – for being the only British-educated English-speaking Indian lawyer in Natal and the Transvaal. His arrest, and the attack on him, gave him an altogether different glow. He was now admired not so much for his education and privilege, as for his courage and conviction. The dignity with which he bore imprisonment, and with which he faced his tormentors, greatly impressed Tamils and Gujaratis, Hindus as well as Muslims.

  In the week after the assault on Gandhi, a steady stream of merchants and hawkers got themselves registered. There was now ‘a crowd of excited Indians outside the Registration Office’, registering under the guidance of Thambi Naidoo, who was sporting a bandaged hand. Those who could sign their names were not asked to provide fingerprints. Gandhi himself registered from his sick-bed, the papers and other equipment being brought to him by the Registrar of Asiatics, Montford Chamney.26

  In its issue of 15 February, Indian Opinion carried an essay of over 4,000 words, the longest single piece it had published thus far. Written while Gandhi was recovering at the Dokes’, it sought to still the unease among some Indians about the settlement. The essay was couched as a dialogue between a ‘Reader’ asking questions and the ‘Editor’ seeking to answer them.

  The issue that most concerned the Reader was the giving of fingerprints. He wondered how these, so ‘objectionable before, have suddenly become acceptable’. Could it be that ‘the educated and the rich have had their interests protected at the expense of the poor?’ The Editor (Gandhi) answered by say
ing that now that the law was to be repealed, Indians should not stand on ‘false pride’. Even whites who entered Transvaal under the new immigration law had to give fingerprints. If Indians gave them out of ‘our own free choice’ there should be no objection. Besides, these prints were required only on the application, not on the certificate. To further calm the waters, Gandhi proposed that despite the exemption for those who could sign, men of learning and standing must not avail themselves of it. The ‘important thing’ was that ‘well-educated persons should regard themselves as trustees of the poor.’ ‘A person like Mr Essop Mia will rise in stature by giving his ten finger-impressions.’27

  Gandhi’s attackers were tried on 19 February. They pleaded not guilty. The victim was not present, but Essop Mia and Thambi Naidoo gave evidence as to the nature of the attack. The defence claimed that when the Pathans stopped to talk with Gandhi, the lawyer abused them in English (this is represented in the court record by a series of dashes), while Thambi Naidoo prodded the Pathans with a stick. It was then that they retaliated. One attacker, Meer Allam Khan, said he ‘was sorry when he found that he had hurt [Gandhi]. It was all done in hot blood.’

  In his summing up, the magistrate, H. H. Jordan, said that he was

  perfectly sure that Mr Gandhi did not use the words alleged against him. He did not think that anyone could be brought forward to say that Mr Gandhi had used bad language. It was from his personal knowledge of the man that he could say that he (Mr Gandhi) was not a man to use words of that description.

  The verdict was of an unprovoked assault, and the sentence was three months in jail with hard labour.28

  Having lost the argument in the Transvaal, Gandhi’s critics now sought to renew it in Natal. On 5 March, while he was addressing a large gathering in Durban, some men with sticks rushed towards the platform. The crowd surrounded Gandhi and guarded him. The chairman declared the meeting closed, and Gandhi was taken in a carriage to Parsee Rustomjee’s house.29