Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  In the last week of March, the report of the Enquiry Commission was published. It was ambivalent about Gandhi, acknowledging that he was ‘the recognised leader of the Indian community’, but regretting that he and his followers chose ‘entirely to ignore the Commission’, so that no witnesses came forward to substantiate the allegations of the excessive use of force against the strikers. Compelled to rely on the evidence of the police, the Commission concluded that in the places where men in uniform had shot bullets into crowds, ‘the use of firearms was fully justified’.

  Other recommendations of the Commission were more comforting to the Indians. It asked the Government to pass legislation that would, among other things, allow Indian residents in South Africa to bring in one wife and minor children by her; permit the appointment of Indian priests of different denominations to solemnize marriages in South Africa; register de facto monogamous marriages already in existence; repeal the £3 tax applied annually on Indians in Natal; issue identification certificates for three years at a time (rather than for one year, the existing practice); and to provide interpreters to assist Indians in making applications to register marriages, obtain certificates, etc.37

  Gandhi was pleased with the report, whose promptness justified his boycott. Had the Indians given evidence, he argued, then the Europeans would have insisted on doing likewise, and the report would have been delayed by months. Indians and whites would have exchanged bitter words in public, and it would ‘not have been possible for Mr Andrews to do what he did, sowing the seeds of conciliation so silently and with such deep love and humility’. In any case, the Commission’s recommendations on the £3 tax and marriage question ‘could not possibly have been better even if we had tendered voluminous evidence’. He now hoped that the Government would meet Indian demands in the Cape and the Free State.38

  The favourable recommendations of the Enquiry Commission were noted in the press in India, which gave the credit to the passive resisters. Sadhva, a Kannada weekly published in Mysore, published a striking paean to the distinctiveness of Gandhi’s political method. Thus

  not a sword was drawn, not a gun fired … Mr Gandhi merely defied the unjust laws of the South African Government, agitated for their removal, even went to jail, and renewed his campaign of passive resistance the moment he was released. In this manner he raised an uproar against their iniquities and finally forced them to the right path. He performed, so to speak, the obsequies of unrighteousness. History has its heroes in men of the type of Alexander the Great whose fame is measured by the havoc and devastation they caused, but heroism of the type displayed by Mr Gandhi in making iniquity’s defeat its own end is without a parallel.39

  In early May the Gandhis were back at Phoenix, where Kasturba’s health continued to improve. ‘If her progress continues,’ wrote her husband to Gokhale, ‘in a month’s time she should regain most of her former health. In that case and in any case I could come to London taking her with me. And after consultation with you, we may both proceed to India directly and the rest of the party may leave here after we have left.’40

  Gokhale was spending the summer in London, as was C. F. Andrews. They had long talks, the gist of which were passed on to Gandhi in Durban. Unlike the priest and the ascetic, Gokhale was not a seeker for or after God. He told Andrews that ‘his love for the Motherland, his vision, his absorption in its life and future was to him religion itself and made the Divine real to him.’ Patriotism was Gokhale’s religion; a patriotism that did not rule out partnership with the foreign rulers as long as they remained on Indian soil. Gokhale told Andrews that ‘there was the need of three kinds of national work – that in connection with the foreign Government, that in independence of it, and that in opposition to it. And all were needed.’ He worried that Gandhi’s insistence on the ‘independence’ of Indians from Government ‘would be a stumbling block’ in his working for, and in, the Servants of India Society.41

  Meanwhile, back at Phoenix, Gandhi’s attentions were again diverted to rumours of sexual transgression at the ashram. In mid April Kasturba told Gandhi that she suspected Jeki Mehta of still harbouring romantic feelings for Manilal. Gandhi dismissed the speculation. Kasturba, he thought, was excessively prejudiced against Pranjivan Mehta’s daughter; she tended to ‘spit fire’ on Jeki at every opportunity.

  Kasturba then accused Gandhi of shielding Jeki. He answered that she was paranoid. The disagreement spiralled into a fearful row, by all accounts the most intense the Gandhis had had in the thirty years of their marriage. The husband’s version, outlined in a letter to Kallenbach, ran:

  Immediately she began to howl. I had made her leave all the good food in order to kill her. I was tired of her, I wished her to die, I was a hooded snake … The more I spoke the more vicious she became … She is quite normal today. But yesterday’s was one of the richest lessons of my life. All the charges she brought against me she undoubtledly means. She has contrary emotions. I have nursed her as a son would nurse his mother. But my love has not been sufficiently intense and selfless to make her change her nature … Yes, a man who wishes to work with detachment must not marry. I cannot complain of her being a particularly bad wife … On the other hand no other woman would probably have stood the changes in her husband’s life as she has. On the whole she has not thwarted me and has been most exemplary … My point is that you cannot attach yourself to a particular woman and yet live for humanity. The two do not harmonise. That is the real cause of the devil waking in her now and again. Otherwise he might have remained in her asleep and unnoticed.42

  As with Harilal, Gandhi’s relations with his wife were tested again and again by his tendency to place career and cause above family and marriage. In this case, Kasturba was protective about her second son, and thus inclined to blame Jeki for her romance with Manilal. Gandhi was more even-handed, seeing the son as equally responsible for the transgression.

  This particular dispute brought to the fore other disagreements the couple had over the years. In his reflections on their relationship, Gandhi is detached and (to a degree) balanced. With Harilal he tended to be more one-sided. The boy was blamed, and blamed again, for not living up to the ideals of the father. On the other hand, this letter to Kallenbach, while unable to conceal a sense of impatience with Kasturba, sees her discontent as having its origins in choices made by him, that she (and he) were unaware of when they got married in their teens in Porbandar.

  Two weeks after Kasturba and Gandhi quarrelled, Jeki Mehta was found making sexual overtures to another man, not Manilal. Gandhi was hurt and angry. Jeki was a ‘finished hypocrite’, a pathological liar who had betrayed him, her father and the community. He decided to send her back to join her husband Manilal Doctor in Fiji.43

  To atone for Jeki’s new lapse, and his own inadequate supervision, Gandhi decided to go on a two-week fast. Kasturba asked him to desist; she feared for his health. Her husband went ahead anyway. After it ended, he wrote to Kallenbach that

  this fast has brought me as near death’s door. I can still hardly crawl, can eat very little, restless nights, mouth bad … The fast was a necessity. I was so grossly deceived. I owed it to Manilal of Fiji, to Dr. Mehta, and to myself. It was one of the severest lessons of my life. The discipline was very great. Everyone around me was most charming. Mrs. Gandhi was divine. Immediately she realized that there was no turning me back, she set about making my path smooth. She forgot her own sorrows and became my ministering angel.44

  In the last week of May, a bill embodying the Enquiry Commission’s recommendations was published. This provided for the recognition of past monogamous marriages conducted under the tenets of any Indian religion the parties professed; recognized the rights of children such unions produced; mandated the appointment of priests of any Indian religion to be marriage officers; abolished the £3 tax and waived the right of the state to collect past arrears against it; and permitted the Government to provide free passage to anyone in South Africa who wished to go back permanently to Indi
a.45

  Gandhi spent the whole of June in Cape Town, lobbying MPs and meeting ministers. The bill passed through Parliament in stages, meeting opposition which was skilfully negotiated and eventually overcome by General Smuts and the Prime Minister, General Botha. The Governor-General wrote to the Colonial Office praising the duo ‘for their courage in forcing a thoroughly distasteful policy upon their followers’. For ‘the strength of the anti-Indian prejudice among our Dutch legislators and the extraordinary cussedness of some of our British Natalians [were] really amazing’. The former were loth to recognize any Indian marriages; the latter loth to give up the punitive £3 tax. To tame the opposition, Botha and Smuts had to use all their ‘powers of persuasion’; in fact, ‘but for party loyalty all the Dutch back-benchers would have voted against the Bill.’46

  On 27 June, there was a meeting of Europeans and Indians in Cape Town to celebrate the passage of the Indians’ Relief Bill. Here Gandhi thanked ‘the many European friends whose help had most materially contributed to the success now realized’. He said that

  potent, however, though passive resistance was as an instrument for winning reforms – perhaps the mightiest instrument on earth – it could not have achieved success had the Indian community not moderated their demands to what was reasonable and practical. This, again, was not possible until some of them were able to see the question of Indian rights from the European standpoint … The Indians knew perfectly well which was the dominant and governing race. They aspired to no social equality with Europeans. They felt that the path of their development was separate. They did not even aspire to the franchise, or, if the aspiration existed, it was with no idea of its having present effect. Ultimately – in the future – he believed his people would get the franchise if they deserved to get it, but the matter did not belong to practical politics. All he would ask for the Indian community was that, on the basis of the rights now conceded to them, they should be suffered to live with dignity and honour on the soil of South Africa.47

  As the bill was making its progress through Parliament, Gandhi wrote to Gokhale that Kallenbach would accompany Kasturba and him to London. The architect had long wished to visit India; to this wish was now added the desire not to be separated from his friend. After Gandhi had consulted with Gokhale in London, and Kallenbach said good-bye to his family in Europe, they would carry on to India. With the bill now gazetted, their bookings were made for 18 July. ‘My one desire,’ wrote Gandhi to Gokhale, ‘is now to meet you and see you, take my orders from you and leave at once for India.’48

  On 1 July, Gandhi left Cape Town. He travelled via Kimberley and Johannesburg, reaching Durban on the 4th. Two weeks were left for his departure; two weeks to bid good-bye to the friends, followers, associations and places that he had known and experienced in twenty years in South Africa.

  On 8 July, there was a farewell meeting for the Gandhis in the Durban Town Hall. Back in 1897, this had been the venue for the meetings of the mob that wanted to lynch him. Now, Indians and Europeans gathered in friendship, to hear Gandhi say that ‘he did not deserve all the praise bestowed on him. Nor did his wife claim to deserve all that had been said of her. Many an Indian woman had done greater service during the struggle than Mrs. Gandhi.’ He thanked all the Europeans who had helped him and the struggle, from the lawyer F. A. Laughton, who ‘stood by him against the mob’ in 1897, to Mrs Alexander, the policeman’s wife who ‘protected him with her umbrella from the missiles thrown by the excited crowd’, to his long-time comrades Kallenbach and Polak. He would go away with ‘no ill-will against a single European. I have received many hard knocks in my life, but here I admit that I have received those most precious gifts from Europeans – love and sympathy.’49

  The Town Hall meeting was ecumenical. The next day, the Gandhis were congratulated by their own community, the Gujaratis of Durban. Gandhi asked the audience to ‘learn their mother-tongue and study the history and traditions of their Motherland, where he hoped to see them one day’. He urged them to treat members of other communities like guests in their house. Gandhi himself had ‘always shown the same respect for Muslims as for Hindus … If every Indian lived thus in amity with others, there is not the slightest doubt that we shall make great advance in South Africa.’

  The same day, the 9th, Gandhi spoke at a sports day for children, held in the Albert Park. He was pleased that the trophy had been presented by Parsee Rustomjee, of whom he said the Indians

  had no better, no more constant leader to work with in South Africa. Mr Rustomjee knew no distinction of race or religion. He was a Parsee among Parsees, but also a Mahomedan among Mahomedans in that he would do for them, die for them, live for them. He was a Hindu among Hindus and would do for them likewise.

  Also on the 9th, Gandhi attended a reception hosted by the Dheds, a caste of untouchables charged with sanitary duties. The reformer saw them as ‘our own brethren’, and said that ‘to regard them with the slightest disrespect not only argues our own unworthiness but is morally wrong, for it is contrary to the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita.’50

  Two days later, Gandhi spoke at a banquet hosted by the Europeans of Durban. The value of the recent settlement, he said here, ‘lay in the struggle which preceded it – a struggle which quickened the conscience of South Africa – and the fact that there was a different tone prevailing today’. However, while the Commission and the Act had sorted out some difficulties, ‘it was not a full settlement. It was not a charter of full liberties.’ He especially urged a ‘sense of justice’ in administering and granting licences, on which many Indians who were traders depended.

  The hosts had presented an address to Gandhi, and a set of books to Sonja Schlesin. The latter was not present, so Gandhi accepted the books on her behalf, noting that ‘Miss Schlesin had played a great part in the passive resistance movement. She had worked night and day and thrown herself into the work. She had not hesitated to court imprisonment but that was denied her.’

  In Durban, Gandhi also called on his friend-turned-rival M. C. Anglia. Anglia had recently started a newspaper that regularly ran articles critical of Gandhi, complaining in particular that the settlement with the Government prohibited polygamy.51 Notably, while Gandhi sought to mend fences with Anglia he did not do the same with P. S. Aiyar, judging perhaps that this critic was too far gone to be reconciled.

  Gandhi then travelled to Phoenix where, on 11 July, there was a farewell party for him and Kasturba hosted by the settlers. There were two short speeches: one by Gandhi, the other by Albert West, who, ‘in a few brief sentences, referred to the ever-growing friendship, commenced eleven years ago, between Mr Gandhi and himself and its influence upon their lives and the history of the Phoenix Settlement. The singing of some favourite hymns in English and Gujarati brought the proceedings to a close.’ West had played a vital role in sustaining Phoenix and sustaining the struggle. He was one of Gandhi’s two greatest supporters in Natal; the other, equally self-effacing, was Parsee Rustomjee, who on this occasion too chipped in by providing the food.52

  Gandhi now moved deeper into the countryside. He spoke to a large audience of indentured labourers in Verulam. This, to him, was

  like going on a pilgrimage, for the Indian friends here played a great part in the recent strike; and in what wonderful a manner! When all the so-called leaders [in Durban] were resting in their private rooms or were busy making money, the indentured brethren of this place, the moment they happened to hear that a strike was on in Charlestown and elsewhere about the £3 tax, struck work too. They looked for no leaders.

  With the settlement in place, said Gandhi to the labourers, they could stay on in South Africa as free men, without paying tax or re-indenturing. Although he was leaving for India, they could approach those who remained at Phoenix for advice and help. And wherever he was, said Gandhi, ‘I shall, of course, continue to work for you. You are under indenture for one person for five years, but I am under indenture with 300 millions [of Indians] for a life-time. I shall
go on with that service and never displace you from my hearts.’

  There was a sprinkling of white managers in the crowd. Addressing them directly, Gandhi said that

  sometimes the European employer was inclined to be selfish, and he asked them to bear in mind that the indentured Indians were human beings, with the same sentiments as themselves. They were not cattle, but had all the weaknesses of themselves, and all the virtues if only they were brought out. He made a plea for sanitary housing, and asked that the Europeans would look upon their indentured Indians as fellow-beings, and not as Asiatics who had nothing in common with them. The indentured Indian was a moral being.53

  Everywhere he went, Gandhi was presented with addresses and sometimes with a purse, which he said he would use for public work only. His speeches at these farewells were artful but also sincere, addressing the specific concerns and anxieties of the audience, while underlining his own special connection to them.

  Europeans, Indians, labourers, merchants, high-castes, low-castes, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis – all had worked with Gandhi at various points in his years in Natal. His links with these groups were varied – political, personal, professional; social, spiritual, sentimental. One group however is absent from this otherwise capacious list – the Africans. To them alone were Gandhi’s connections too slight to merit a formal and public farewell. This was a sign in part of his own orientation, and a sign, perhaps in greater part, of the times.

  On 12 July, Gandhi and Kasturba left for Johannesburg. This city he had come to later than Durban, but had come to know more intimately. It was where he had befriended Polak, Kallenbach, L. W. Ritch, A. M. Cachalia, Sonja Schlesin, Joseph Doke and Thambi Naidoo; where he had first formulated the theory of satyagraha; and where, with the aid of Gujarati merchants and later of Tamils, he had put this theory to the test.