Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  We do not know whether Polak read Mehta’s letter before it was sent, and it appears that Gandhi never saw or knew of it at all. The recipient of the letter, although a man of great wisdom and selflessness, must have read it with mixed emotions. Gandhi professed Gokhale to be his mentor; but here was Mehta telling the teacher that he could learn a lesson from the student in South Africa, that the struggle for the emancipation of millions in India could profit from a close study of the struggle of a few thousand migrants in Natal and the Transvaal.

  After staying with Mehta in Rangoon, Polak sailed to Calcutta to carry on his campaign for the South African Indians. A large public meeting was held here on 3 December, ‘to protest against the treatment of Indians in the Transvaal’. The gathering was ecumenical – it included the prominent Hindu liberals Bhupendranath Basu and Surendranath Bannerjee, leading Bengali Muslims, as well as some Marwari businessmen of the city.50

  From Calcutta, Polak proceeded to the north of the country, speaking at towns across the United Provinces and Punjab. In Banaras the meeting was chaired by Annie Besant, the former British socialist who was now an Indian spiritualist. Besant, said Polak, ‘delivered the finest address that I have heard for many years. There was no play acting in it. What she said was from the heart and she spoke very strongly.’ Mrs Besant subscribed Rs 30 for a fund for the South African Indians, which had collected Rs 1,000 by the end of the meeting. This pleased Polak, as did a ‘most refreshing dip’ the next day in the river Ganges, a rite of passage for a Hindu, but purely optional for this mostly lapsed Jew.51

  Polak’s talks and writings were noticed by, among other people, the brilliant Bengali radical Aurobindo Ghose (later known as Sri Aurobindo). In April 1907, Ghose had written a series of essays on the possibilities of passive resistance in India.52 He had not, it appears, read Gandhi at that stage; nor, it seems, had Gandhi read him. Now, Polak’s visit spurred the Bengali revolutionary to write a fascinating essay on the situation in South Africa. ‘The great glory of the Transvaal Indians,’ wrote Ghose,

  is that while men under such circumstances have always sunk into the condition to which they have been condemned and needed others to help them out of the mire, these sons of Bharatavarsha, inheritors of an unexampled moral and spiritual tradition, have vindicated the superiority of the Indian people and its civilisation to all other peoples in the globe and all other civilisations by the spirit in which they have refused to recognise the dominance of brute force over the human soul. Stripped of all means of resistance, a helpless handful in a foreign land, unaided by India, put off with empty professions of sympathy by English statesmen, they, ignored by humanity, are fighting humanity’s battle in the pure strength of the spirit, with no weapon but the moral force of their voluntary sufferings and utter self-sacrifice … The passive resistance which we had not the courage and unselfishness to carry out in India, they have carried to the utmost in the Transvaal under far more arduous circumstances, with far less right to hope for success. Whether they win or lose in the struggle, they have contributed far more than their share to the future greatness of their country.53

  Indian politics was then divided into ‘Moderate’ and ‘Extreme’ camps, the former politely, even apologetically, asking for concessions from the British, the latter militantly, even angrily, demanding them. Aurobindo Ghose was in political terms an ‘extremist’, indeed, an extreme Extremist. He had close contacts with terrorist groups in Bengal, and in May 1908 he and his brother Barindranath were arrested in what became known as the Alipore Bomb Case. Barin was sentenced to life imprisonment; Aurobindo, however, was released after a year in prison.54

  The party of the Ghoses had (the word is inescapable) extreme contempt for Moderates like Gandhi’s mentor, Gokhale. It is a measure of Polak’s success as a publicist that he could obtain, for their cause in the Transvaal, the endorsement of both Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Aurobindo Ghose.

  With Gandhi in London and Polak in the subcontinent, the English pages of Indian Opinion were being edited by the Reverend Joseph Doke. As before, the journal carried weekly updates on the struggle. One issue noticed the death of a young Tamil named Nagappen, who had contracted pneumonia in jail. Thirty horse-driven cabs accompanied the cortège to the cemetery. There was a wreath from the British Indian Association, and another ‘from Leung Quinn with deepest sympathy; he died for conscience’s sake.’ An editorial in Indian Opinion praised the contributions of Tamil women. ‘They have seen their husbands and sons imprisoned, they have taken up the duties of life which do not usually fall to a woman’s lot and have borne the heaviest burdens to make it possible for those they love to be true to conscience.’55

  Gandhi’s journal also wrote about a failed assassination attempt on the Viceroy of India. ‘As passive resisters,’ commented the paper,

  we have absolutely no sympathy with the employment of bombs and such like symbols of force to achieve Nationalist objects … We are thankful to believe that the upholders of bomb throwing are a small minority of the responsible men, who are working for the uplifting of India, and we trust that the ethics of passive resistance, which are now prominent in our Motherland through the interest which she is taking in our welfare [in South Africa], may lay hold of the judgment of our people.

  This was written by the stand-in editor, Joseph Doke, who had to ventriloquize in the absence of Gandhi and speak thus of India as his ‘Motherland’, too.56

  In other issues, Harilal’s fourth term in prison was noticed, as also the fresh incarcerations of Parsee Rustomjee, Thambi Naidoo and others. In other places and past times, remarked Indian Opinion, jail-going ‘brought shame, humiliation and the criminal taint with it.’ In this place at this time, however, ‘the glory of heroism rests like a halo upon it – and in the Transvaal the man who has not been to gaol is the questionable character.’57

  As before, meetings were held every Sunday at the Hamidia Mosque in Johannesburg, where the latest batch of satyagrahis released were welcomed and the latest batch of satyagrahis who had courted arrest were saluted. At one meeting, in early September, Joseph Doke made a special point of praising the Chinese resisters. He told his Indian friends that they ‘ought to be delighted how loyally they were standing by their Asiatic brethren, so that Mr Quinn and 74 Chinese had just been arrested, and would have to face imprisonment.’58

  Gandhi was keeping in touch with South Africa through Indian Opinion and via letters from friends. One of these was Thambi Naidoo, now temporarily out of jail. When he emerged from his most recent prison sentence, Indian Opinion wrote that ‘Mr Thambi Naidoo looks well and hardy, and he has come out a giant in purpose. His is an uncrushable spirit.’59 In early October, Thambi wrote to Gandhi that ‘all Tamil prisoners discharged from the prison during your absence are ready to go to jail again and again until the Government will grant to [sic] our request.’ The Tamil leader travelled to Pretoria in the last week of September, receiving a batch of resisters who had recently been discharged. He found them ‘thin and weak’ owing to the ‘insufficiency of food and the absence of ghee’ in the prison diet, and yet ‘they are all prepare[d] to go back to gaol.’ Thambi saluted their human will, adding however that ‘I depend upon no other than Bhagawan [God], he is the only one who can bring the Government down to do their duty towards [the] weak.’60

  By October 1909 it was clear that the diplomatic method advocated by Lord Ampthill had failed. Gandhi now wrote to the Colonial Office that since a settlement was not forthcoming, he intended to address a series of public meetings before returning to South Africa. He spoke to a group of Parsis in London, where he saluted the sacrifice of their co-religionists – Parsee Rustomjee, Shapurji Sorabjee, et al. – in South Africa. On 24 October, he spoke to a mixed gathering of Indians, sharing a platform with V. D. Savarkar. It was Vijaya Dashami, the last day of the Dasehra festival, marking the victory on the battlefield of Ram over Ravan. The moderate and the extremist were a study in contrast. Gandhi wore a tailcoat and a dress shirt.
Savarkar was dressed more casually. Gandhi wrote later that ‘Mr Savarkar delivered a spirited speech on the great excellence of the Ramayana.’ Savarkar had insisted that just as, in ancient times, Hindu gods had vanquished Lankan demons with the force of arms, so with the same methods would modern Hindus now put their British conquerors to flight.61

  A young student who was present remembered – forty years later – the contrast between the two men. Savarkar was ‘by far the most arresting personality’ at the meeting; for ‘around him had been built a flaming galaxy of violent revolutionism’. Gandhi, on the other hand, seemed shy and diffident; the students had to ‘ben[d] their heads forward to hear the great Mr Gandhi speak’. His voice and speech were of a piece with his manner – ‘calm, unemotional, simple, and devoid of rhetoric’.62

  It fell to Gandhi to introduce Savarkar at the Dasehra meeting. In public he was polite, saying he did not want to stand between the speaker and his audience. His real feelings were communicated in a letter to Lord Ampthill, which noted the unmistakable ‘awakening of the national consciousness’ among Indians in London, tarred somewhat by an ‘impatience of British rule. In some cases the hatred of the whole [white] race is virulent.’ Gandhi had been in discussion with the extremists, trying to ‘convince them of the errors of their ways’. One extremist (whom he does not name, but who most likely was Savarkar) spoke to Gandhi ‘with a view to convince me that I was wrong in my methods and that nothing but the use of violence, covert or open or both, was likely to bring about redress of the wrongs they consider they suffer.’ Gandhi answered that he wished to take his own ‘humble share in national regeneration’, albeit with gentler, more incremental methods.63

  Gandhi was alarmed by the hostility of the extremists towards his mentor, Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Their house journal, Bande Matram, had dismissed the Poona leader as ‘mean and cowardly’. In a public rejoinder, Gandhi saluted Gokhale’s decades of service, remarking that ‘it is the duty of both the extremists and moderates to see that they do not pull down the work of those who have been called the pillars of India; they are welcome to build further on it. Otherwise, they will be cutting off the very branch on which they are sitting.’64

  Gandhi also wrote to Gokhale, reporting the ‘extreme bitterness’ against him among Savarkar and company in London. The criticism could best be answered, he thought, by Gokhale visiting the Transvaal and identifying with the movement. ‘I claim that the Transvaal struggle is national in every sense of the term,’ wrote Gandhi. ‘It deserves the greatest encouragement. I have considered it to be the greatest struggle of modern time. That it will succeed in the end I have not the slightest doubt. But an early success will break up the violence movement in India.’ Gandhi wanted Gokhale to come ‘to the Transvaal, publicly declaring that it was your intention to share our sorrows and, therefore, to cross the Transvaal border as a citizen of the Empire’. His coming would give the cause a ‘world-wide significance, the struggle will soon end and your countrymen will know you better. The last consideration may not weigh with you. But it does with me … If you are arrested and imprisoned, I should be delighted. I may be wrong, but I do feel that it is a step worth taking for the sake of India.’65 This was a letter as confidently presumptuous as that written to Tolstoy. To be sure, it was written out of concern for his mentor, and for his reputation. Gokhale’s reply is unavailable. But he could scarcely have gone back on the principles and prejudices of a lifetime. His style was to reason and appeal, to draft petitions and make sonorous – if occasionally also ponderous – speeches in the Imperial Council. To court arrest was as foreign to his temperament as the firing of a gun was to Gandhi’s.

  In London, Gandhi continued to monitor, from long distance, the moral education of his son Manilal. The boy was now fifteen, and his father was determined that his passage into adulthood would be smoother – or at any rate less rocky – than his brother Harilal’s. The excerpts below are revealing.

  Gandhi to Manilal, 10 August 1909:

  Thinking of the state of affairs in the country, I believe very few Indians need marry at the present time … A person who marries in order to satisfy his carnal desire is lower than even the beast. For the married, it is considered proper to have sexual intercourse only for having progeny. The scriptures also say so … I want you to understand the purport of what I said above; and, understanding it, conquer your senses. Do not be scared by this and think that I want to bind you not to marry even after the age of 25. I do not want to put undue pressure on you or anyone whatever. I just want to give you advice. If you do not think of marriage even at the age of 25, I think it will be to your good.

  Gandhi to Manilal, 17 September, on hearing that the boy had been nursing the ailing Albert West:

  To do good to others and serve them without any sense of egoism – this is real education.

  Gandhi to Manilal, 27 September, in reply to an apparently anxious, confused letter:

  You get nervous at the question, ‘What are you going to do?’ If I was to answer on your behalf, I would say that you are going to do your duty. Your present duty is to serve your parents, to study as much as you can get the opportunity to do and to work in the fields … You must be definite on this point at least – that you are not going to practise law or medicine. We are poor and want to remain so … Our mission is to elevate Phoenix; for through it we can find our soul and serve our country. Be sure that I am always thinking of you. The true occupation of man is to build his character … He who does not leave the path of morality never starves, and is not afraid if such a contingency arises … While writing this I feel like meeting and embracing you; and tears come to my eyes as I am unable to do that. Be sure that Bapu [Father] will not be cruel to you. Whatever I do, I do it because I think it will be in your interest. You will never come to grief, for you are doing service to others.

  Gandhi to Manilal, 22 October:

  I see that you have again begun to be worried about your education. Can you not give an answer to the question, ‘What class are you in?’ Hence-forward you may say that you are in Bapu’s class. Why does the idea of study haunt you again and again? If you want to study for earning your livelihood, it is not proper; for God gives food to all. You can get enough to eat even by doing manual labour … I want you to shed all fear. Do have faith in me.66

  Manilal appears from these letters to be less truculent or questioning than his elder brother, if likewise concerned with his education and his sexuality. As for the father, he cannot but be hortatory, yet one notices an undercurrent of tenderness, absent in the often unfeeling letters to his elder son. A letter written to his third son, Ramdas, also displays a softness that is new. ‘Do not be angry with me if I have not brought anything for you [from London]. There was nothing I liked. What could I do if nothing European appealed to me?’ wrote Gandhi. Then he added, ‘Do not be upset with me if I go to gaol; rather you should rejoice. I should be where Harilal is.’67

  It does appear that Gandhi was, albeit slowly, growing into fatherhood.

  On 3 November 1909, the Colonial Office wrote to Gandhi that ‘Mr Smuts was unable to accept the claim that Asiatics should be placed in a position of equality with Europeans in respect of right of entry or otherwise’.68 The rejection was definitive. Two days later, Gandhi and Hajee Habib released a statement to the press, summarizing their visit, their meetings with Imperial officials, the refusal of General Smuts to introduce a non-racial law. The Transvaal legislation, they said, ‘cuts at the very root’ of the principle of ‘elementary equality’ of all British subjects. Interviewed by Reuters, Gandhi said Habib and he expected to be arrested when they sought to re-enter the Transvaal. Their campaign would be ‘continued most strenuously’ in India, the United Kingdom and South Africa.69

  A week later, the Nonconformist minister F. B. Meyer hosted a farewell dinner for Gandhi. In attendance were the Parsi statesman M. M. Bhownaggree, several serving Members of Parliament, and the rising Indian politician Motilal Nehru. Some w
ho could not come sent heart-felt letters of support. Gertrude Toynbee, daughter of the reformer Arnold, wrote to Gandhi that the Indian struggle in the Transvaal ‘raises one’s conception of the possibilities of humanity’. A Christian from Fife wrote to the Reverend Meyer that

  although the cause they [Gandhi and colleagues] represent is passing through a dark hour, I am not dismayed. In the history of the human race it has always been darkest before dawn … Never did the cause of the Negro seem more hopeless than during the years that preceded the abolition of slavery … May I add with all reverence that the saviour of the world himself seemed lost in the moment that brought about our redemption? And so I join you in spirit in wishing God-Speed to Messrs Gandhi and Haji Habib.70

  Also present at the party for Gandhi was Sir Frederick Lely, who, back in 1888 and 1889, had refused to provide the aspiring law student with a scholarship from the State of Porbandar. Twenty years later, now living in retirement in London, the once unfeeling Administrator issued a partial mea culpa. Remembering his years in Kathiawar, and his friendship with Kaba Gandhi, Sir Frederick told the gathering that ‘he was quite sure that his old friend Mr Gandhi, had he been alive now, would have been proud of his son’.71

  As for Gandhi himself, he spoke at this reception of how their struggle turned on a question of national honour. They had refused to meet violence with violence, and instead adopted passive resistance. He explained this method with reference to the Bible, namely the chapter where Daniel refused to accept the laws of the Medes and the Persians.72 Afterwards, L. W. Ritch sent a report to his fellow Gandhi worshipper Henry Polak:

  Our big little chief left for S. Africa on Monday. A big crowd was at the St[atio]n to wish the little man farewell, and his going creates a gap in our circle of workers … Gandhi’s magnificent personality attracted about him the best spirits among the Indians resident here, and those Europeans who are capable of quiet solid work.73