Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  Gandhi was being placed by his friend in very elevated company. Although Mehta mentioned no names, it is clear that he was comparing Gandhi to the medieval saints Nanak and Kabir, and, going further back, to Mahavira and Gautama Buddha, founders of Jainism and Buddhism respectively. He suggested that had Gandhi been born in the eighteenth century, India would not have been colonized by the British.

  To place a mere lawyer and diasporic leader in this pantheon was an act of faith, and friendship. Gokhale’s answer is unavailable. How might he have reacted to Mehta’s letter? He was a generous man, and had praised Gandhi in private and in public. He probably considered Gandhi his most able protégé. He hoped that Gandhi would come back to India and take over the Servants of India Society. But surely he must have been puzzled, if not offended, by this implicit reversal of their roles and place in Indian history. Gokhale was widely acknowledged to be the ‘strongest individual force in Indian politics’; it was in that capacity that he had been asked by Gandhi to visit South Africa. But here was Pranjivan Mehta telling him that a man he considered his follower was actually far greater than himself.

  In September 1912 Gandhi executed a deed transferring ownership of Phoenix Farm to five trustees, these being the Durban merchant Omar Hajee Amod Johari, Parsee Rustomjee, Kallenbach, Ritch and Pranjivan Mehta – a Muslim, a Parsi, two Jews and a Hindu respectively. The document transferred to these five others Gandhi’s right, title and interest in the land and machinery of Phoenix, and listed eight aims by which the Farm would be run: namely, to earn a livelihood as far as possible by one’s own labour; to promote better relations between Indians and Europeans; to ‘follow and promote the ideas’ set forth by Tolstoy and Ruskin; to promote ‘purity of private life in individuals by living pure lives themselves’; to start a school to educate children mainly in their own vernaculars; to establish a sanitation and hygiene institute; to ‘train themselves generally for the service of humanity’; and to publish Indian Opinion for the advancement of these ideals.

  Gandhi was to be manager of the trust during his lifetime, and have two acres and a building for the use of his family. He would draw the same allowance as other settlers, which was £5 a month. If he died, or left the settlement, the trustees would appoint a manager from among themselves.55

  At the same time, Gandhi announced that Indian Opinion would no longer carry any advertisements. He had come round to the view that ‘the system of advertisement is bad in itself, in that it sets up insidious competition, to which we are opposed, and often lends itself to misrepresentation on a large scale’. In the past, the journal had ‘always used our discrimination and rejected many advertisements which we could not conscientiously take’. Now it would stop taking ads altogether.56

  The affairs of Phoenix sorted, Gandhi turned his attention to welcoming Gokhale. He had not seen the older man for ten years, but they had been in regular correspondence. More recently, Gandhi’s nephew Chhaganlal had visited Poona. While studying law in London, Chhagan had fallen ill with tuberculosis, and had to abort his studies and return to India to recover, before rejoining his uncle in South Africa. While in Poona he had written of Gokhale’s work in less-than-flattering terms. Writing to Maganlal, Gandhi said,

  I felt sad when I read Chi. Chhaganlal’s description of the Servants of India Society. It is a matter of regret that a great man like Prof. Gokhale is engrossed in it. I believe he will come out of it, for he is honest. It is simply an indifferent imitation of the West. Is it proper for the servants to have servants? And who are the servants? Why was it necessary to engage them? Why do they have others cook for them? Why should there be large buildings in India? Why should not huts be enough? … What a superstition that only an M. A. or B. A. could become a ‘servant’? … I do feel that the aims of Phoenix as well as the way of life there surpass those of the [Servants of India] Society.57

  There is a clear sense here that, as a person, social worker and political activist, Gandhi had equalled, if not surpassed, Gokhale. But respect was due to the latter’s status in Indian politics and his early encouragement of the then unknown Gandhi. So when Gokhale came to South Africa, his one-time disciple made sure he would get a stirring reception. He knew his mentor to have a fetish about etiquette and attire; so, to humour and honour him, he would, for the first time in years, wear a formal Kathiawari turban when meeting him off the ship in Cape Town.58

  The ship carrying Gokhale, the RMS Saxon, landed at Cape Town on Tuesday, 22 October 1912. A large crowd of Indians had gathered at the quayside, making what Kallenbach (who was present) called ‘peculiar scenes’, a reference to the raising of flags and the shouting of slogans.59 Gandhi and a senior Muslim cleric, Imam Bawazeer, boarded the ship to escort the visitor ashore. They then took Gokhale to the home of his local hosts, the Gools, in a procession of fifty carriages.

  Gokhale was presented an address on behalf of the local Indians. This was suitably ecumenical, with Hindus, Muslims and Parsis, and Gujaratis, Tamils and Hindi-speakers all signing on. Later, at a public meeeting, he was welcomed by the leading white liberal of the city, Senator W. P. Schreiner. In his speech, Schreiner praised Gandhi for his unselfishness of spirit; Gandhi, speaking next, doffed his hat in turn to the visitor, his ‘political teacher’, whose name was sacred to all Indians.

  It was left to Gokhale to deal with the substantive issues. He reminded the Europeans that since ‘everything in India was open to all’, they ‘could not hope to shut the Indian out of their territory altogether without inflicting a very serious blow on the prestige of the Empire’. He had not come to South Africa ‘to light a flame’; he had come in a ‘spirit of compromise’, with the desire to ‘aid the cause of justice’. He noted however that

  India is now watching what is being done to her sons. There is a new awakening throughout the East, not merely in India, but all through Eastern lands. You feel a new life throbbing, a new national consciousness everywhere; and however indifferent India may have been in the past to the sufferings of her children and to her own humiliations, there will be more and more self-respect in the future in her dealings with such matters.60

  Gokhale also met the leading Cape politician J. X. Merriman at Cape Town. Unlike Schreiner, Merriman had been too timid to attend the public reception in Gokhale’s honour. But he met him privately, later writing to Smuts that the Indian had ‘impressed me very favourably – an educated gentleman who speaks English as well as we do, is not a Baboo but a High Caste Mahratta, who were, as you know, a fighting race who gave us many a twister’. In Gokhale, Merriman saw ‘the new spirit that has arisen in the East of disgust at Western domination’. He urged Smuts to ‘do away with all the odious and illiberal machinery of repression’ against the Indians, to recognize that ‘there are other and surely greater interests at stake [in South Africa] than the conveniences of [white] traders and the prejudices of the [white] community’.61

  For the next four weeks, as Gokhale travelled through South Africa, Gandhi was at his side. Everywhere, mentor and disciple made similar speeches, with Gandhi professing his admiration for Gokhale, and Gokhale asking the Europeans to look at the question not from their narrow communal interest but from the standpoint of Justice and Empire. Everywhere, Indians turned out in numbers to receive him, and to pass on messages from community groups to which they belonged – which included the Madras Indians, the United Hindu Association, the Hamidia Islamia Society, the Patidar Association, the Transvaal Indian Women’s Association, the Brahman Mandal, the Zoroastrian Anjuman, even the Ottoman Cricket Club.

  From Cape Town, Gokhale carried on to Kimberley, where among those who received him was the novelist Olive Schreiner.62 Indians and Europeans sat down together for a meal for the first time in the history of the mining town. Here, Gandhi praised Gokhale for, among other things, having ‘brought with him the much-needed rain which the parched land of Kimberley required so badly’.63

  Gokhale and Gandhi carried on northwards, halting at the small towns of
the Rand – Bloemhof, Klerksdorf, Potchefstroom, Krugersdorp, etc. – to allow the local Indians to pay their respects. At Krugersdorp the mayor turned up at the station to receive Gokhale, earning the ire of his fellow whites, who demanded why he had gone to meet the ‘Coolie Gentleman’ who had ‘evidently come here with the express purpose of stirring up strife’. Just because the mayor of Cape Town had met Gokhale, ‘it was not necessary that the Mayors of the Transvaal towns should follow suit.’ A meeting of whites affirmed that ‘they in Krugersdorp would do their share to help to keep this a white man’s country.’64

  On 28 October, Gokhale’s party arrived at Johannesburg’s Park Station, whose ‘sombre grey of corrugated iron and girders’ had been ‘transformed for the time at least into a brilliant blaze of colours’. Gokhale exited the station through a giant arch of flowers, designed by Kallenbach, which had ‘Hearty Welcome’ written in Gujarati, and twin domes shaped in the form of the Muslim crescent and the Hindu trident.

  Among the speakers at the Johannesburg meeting were two Europeans. William Hosken said that the recent incarceration of 2,700 out of 9,000 Indians in the Transvaal was ‘a horrible disgrace to our Christianity and our civilisation’. Joseph Doke asked that under the British flag ‘there should be justice for every man as a man, whether he was an Indian or a Chinese, or whatever his nationality’.

  In his speech, Gokhale praised Gandhi in terms that might not have displeased Pranjivan Mehta. The Indians in South Africa, he said, ‘had self-reliance and they had a great leader’. Gandhi, ‘his friend, their friend, the friend of everyone in the room’, was ‘a great and illustrious son of whom she [India] was proud beyond words, and he was sure that men of all races and creeds would recognise in him one of the most remarkable personalities of their time’.65

  On 30 October, Gandhi was interviewed by the Transvaal Leader on the progress of Gokhale’s visit. His mentor, he said, had ‘come to the general conclusion that the Indians resident here are entitled to civic equality. That is to say, their movement within the Union should not be hampered and, under restrictions of a general character applying to the community at large, they should be allowed freedom of trade.’ The caveat was crucial: civic, not social or political equality: the freedom to practise one’s trade and to live where one wished, not the right to vote or be treated as equal in all respects with the ruling race.

  Gandhi was also asked about the attitude of the Orange Free State. In his view, it was ‘part of the compromise that under the new Act the few fresh immigrants that will be allowed to come in will be free to move in any part of the Union’. In other words, Indians would or should be allowed to enter the Free State, but not perhaps to trade or farm in it. ‘But some day or other,’ added Gandhi, ‘the Free State barrier [to holding property or trading] must entirely disappear. Otherwise the Union will be a farce.’66

  On 1 November, Gokhale was hosted for breakfast by the Chinese Association of Johannesburg. He was welcomed by Leung Quinn, now back in the Transvaal. Quinn spoke of how the Chinese ‘stood shoulder to shoulder with their brother Asiatics’. Theirs was ‘a fraternity larger than that of common religion and race … They hoped for the passing of British antagonism, and looked forward to the reign of sweet reason instead of stupid prejudice.’ Gokhale, in reply, spoke of the two communities having much in common, ‘both being old peoples and India having given China one of her oldest religions’.67

  Gokhale then spent a few days resting at Tolstoy Farm. On the 6th Gandhi and he left for Natal. They stopped at the smaller mining and plantation towns, such as Newcastle and Dundee, before arriving in Durban on the morning of the 8th. A crowded meeting was attended by very many Indians, ‘who, at least for that night, felt that the Town Hall really belonged to them and that they enjoyed the rights of citizenship’. Among those who spoke was F. A. Laughton, KC, he who had bravely stood by Gandhi when the white mob attacked him in 1897.

  The next day, Gokhale presented the prizes at a sports meeting and then heard grievances against the £3 tax. Some sixty individuals filed up, one by one, and spoke of how their inability to pay the tax had led to their imprisonment. They were heard by a crowd of several thousand, who had come from the outlying districts by train, cycle, cart, wagon or on foot. The testimonies were offered in Tamil and Gujarati, and then translated for Gokhale’s benefit, the narration often interrupted by cries of ‘Shame! Shame!’.68

  On Sunday, 10 November Gokhale and Gandhi visited the Ohlange Industrial School and ‘spent some time discussing the Native question with the Rev. John Dube’. The students sang Zulu songs for the visitors.69 Later that week Gokhale returned to the Transvaal. On Thursday 14 November he travelled to Pretoria to meet the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior. General Botha had followed Gokhale’s progress through the country with dismay. He was offended that the Indian leader had not come to see him soon after landing. That Gokhale was warmly received in most places did not please him either. Gokhale’s statements, grumbled Prime Minister Botha to the Governor-General, had raised ‘false hopes among our Indian population’. They had ‘put up the backs of our European population – Dutch as well as English-speaking, and made them more than ever opposed to any kind of concession’. But, said Botha to the Governor-General, he would still ‘meet him in the most reasonable spirit’.70

  Gokhale had asked that Gandhi be allowed to come with him, but the request was refused.71 Meeting the ministers, he urged the abolition of the £3 tax and the admission of a select number of educated Indians to the Transvaal.

  The next day Gokhale and the Prime Minister independently met the Governor-General, Lord Gladstone (a son of the great Liberal prime minister, who had served as home secretary before coming out to South Africa). Later, Gladstone sent London this report: ‘As regards the £3 tax, the Prime Minister told me that he thought it would be possible to meet Mr Gokhale’s views, though there might be strong opposition in Natal. From what Mr Gokhale said I gathered that the Prime Minister had given him a satisfactory assurance.’ The Governor-General was also hopeful that the Immigration Bill would finally be passed in an acceptable form. He was ‘convinced that the Prime Minister and General Smuts are sincerely anxious to put it through’.72

  Gokhale came away from these meetings convinced that the Indians’ demands would be met. ‘You must return to India in a year,’ he told Gandhi. ‘Everything has been settled. The Black Act will be repealed. The racial bar will be removed from the immigration law. The £3 tax will be abolished.’73

  In a farewell speech in Pretoria, Gokhale appealed to ‘the better mind of the two communities, European and Indian’. To the former he said, ‘the Government must exist for promoting the prosperity not of the European community only, but of all its subjects.’ To the latter he said, ‘your future is largely in your own hands.’ He hoped that a struggle of the kind waged in the Transvaal between 1907 and 1910 would not have to be fought again. But ‘if it has to be resumed,’ said Gokhale, ‘or if you have to enter on other struggles of a like nature for justice denied or injustice forced on you, remember that the issue will largely turn on the character you show, on your capacity for combined action, on your readiness to suffer and sacrifice in a just cause.’74

  Overlapping with Gokhale’s trip to South Africa was the visit of a rather more obscure friend of Gandhi’s. This was Maud Polak, who had managed to travel to South Africa after all. She had come to study the Indian situation at first-hand – the better to aid her lobbying work in London – and perhaps also to spend time with Mohandas Gandhi. She succeeded in the first endeavour but not in the second. Indian Opinion reported her movements – a tea party for her in Johannesburg on 14 October, another on the 19th, both hosted and attended by women, Europeans as well as Indians. Then she crossed over to Natal, where she spent two weeks, speaking to labourers and merchants, and attending at least two parties in her honour.75 Her arrival and stay in South Africa was drowned out by the visit of Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Gandhi himself was criss-cross
ing the country with his mentor, and appears to have hardly seen Maud at all. Whether this was by accident or design the sources do not say.

  In London, Gokhale had been impressed by Maud Polak’s commitment; now, in South Africa, he was even more impressed by Sonja Schlesin, a young woman who worked for Gandhi without having a romantic interest in him. In his travels through Natal and the Transvaal he met many among Gandhi’s friends and associates – those who ran his journal and his ashrams, those who went to jail with him, those who raised money for him. Having seen them all, and seen some admirable social workers in India and England too, Gokhale told Gandhi, ‘I have rarely met with the sacrifice, the purity and the fearlessness I have seen in Miss [Sonja] Schlesin. Amongst your co-workers, she takes the first place in my estimation.’76

  Gokhale spent his last weekend in South Africa at Tolstoy Farm. On the evening of 17 November, he left Johannesburg by train for the Portuguese port of Lourenço Marques. Gandhi and Kallenbach accompanied him. At a reception in the town hall, Gandhi used the chance to flog his ideas on diet, health and religious pluralism. He said he

  remembered Lourenço Marques when it had the reputation of being a malarious place, but it was almost superfluous to drink the health of the European guests in a town so admittedly healthy as the town was to-day. They also had partaken of a vegetarian, non-alcoholic repast – these things were also considered consistent with good health. He considered the gathering unique; they had with them Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mahomedans, and Parsees.

  The British Consul General, speaking next, ‘referred to the trouble this same Mr Gandhi had given to the Consulate in days past [with regard to permits, etc.], but he remembered that the proposer of the toast had also done good service to the Empire during the [Boer] War, and after all loyalty was the chief thing’.77

  Gokhale now proceeded, his disciples in tow, to Dar-es-Salaam by ship. On board, Gandhi promised Gokhale that he ‘would not leave for I[ndia] without making arrangements for the work in S[outh] A[frica] to be carried on in my absence. Most probably the management of affairs will be left in Polak’s hands.’78