Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  7. Cf. Harald Tambs-Lyche, ‘Reflections on Caste in Gujarat’, in Edward Simpson and Aparna Kapadia, The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2010), pp. 101–2, 104, 108.

  8. C. F. Andrews, ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s Birthplace’, The Centenary Review (January 1938), pp. 35f.

  9. The Imperial Gazetteer of India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), XX: Pardi to Pusad, pp. 188–91.

  10. Chandran D. S. Devanesan, The Making of the Mahatma (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1969), pp. 100–5.

  11. Cf. Satish C. Misra, Muslim Communities in Gujarat: Preliminary Studies in their History and Social Organization (2nd edn, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1985).

  12. Devanesan, Making of the Mahatma, Chapter 2 (‘Whirlwinds of Change: Kathiawar in the Nineteenth Century’); Howard Spodek, ‘Urban Politics in the Local Kingdoms of India: A View from the Princely States of Saurashtra under British Rule’, Modern Asian Studies, 7:2 (1973).

  13. This incident has been narrated, based on primary sources, in Krishnalal Mohanlal Jhaveri, The Gujaratis: The People, their History, and Culture, 4: Gujarati Social Organization (New Delhi: Indigo Books, 2002), p. 141.

  14. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, I: The Early Phase (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1965), pp. 173–8.

  15. Anon., Heroes of the Hour: Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer (Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1918), p. 5.

  16. See compilation no. 190, vol. 48 of 1950, Political Department, MSA.

  17. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, I, pp. 186–7.

  18. This account is based on the correspondence in A Proceedings 130–147 (Political), December 1869, Foreign Department, NAI.

  19. Prabhudas Gandhi, My Childhood with Gandhiji (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1957), pp. 4–5.

  20. M. N. Buch, ‘Answers to Louis Fischer’s questions regarding Porbandar and Rajkot’, dated 9 March 1949, in Box 1, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL.

  21. Quoted in Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, I, p. 194.

  22. Stephen Hay, ‘Digging up Gandhi’s Psychological Roots’, Biography, 6:3 (1983), pp. 211–12.

  23. Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical, and Discursive (London: John Murray, 1886), p. 48.

  24. Hardiman, Feeding the Baniya, p. 65.

  25. For more details, see K. T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 133ff. I do not know of a stand-alone work in English on the culinary arts of Gujarat, but a sampling of this superb cuisine may be had in restaurants such as Chetna, in the Kala Ghoda area of Mumbai, and Swati Snacks, near Law College in Ahmedabad.

  26. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter I. A footnote (added most likely by Mahadev Desai) explains that Chaturmas was ‘literally a period of four months. A vow of fasting and semi-fasting during the four months of the rains. The period is a sort of long Lent’.

  27. Yagnik and Sheth, Shaping of Gujarat, pp. 159–60; Devanesan, Making of the Mahatma, p. 34.

  28. See Narayan Desai, My Life Is My Message, I: Sadhana (1869–1915) (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2009), pp. 10–11.

  29. Cf. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, I, Appendix E, pp. 737–8.

  30. Imperial Gazetteer of India, XXI: Pushkar to Salween, pp. 73–5.

  31. See J. M. Upadhyaya, ed., Mahatma Gandhi as a Student (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1965) and Mahatma Gandhi: A Teacher’s Discovery (Vallabh Vidyanagar: Sardar Patel University, 1969). Unless otherwise stated, the rest of this section is based on these two books. Remarkably, the material reproduced in these books has never before been used by a Gandhi biographer.

  32. The school is referred to as ‘Alfred High School’ in some recent biographies of Gandhi. However, it acquired that name only in 1907, long after Mohandas had left it. ‘Kattywar’ is the way the British then spelt ‘Kathiawar’. In 1969, on the centenary of Gandhi’s birth, the school was renamed ‘Mahatma Gandhi Memorial High School’.

  33. Notes of an interview with Raliatbehn, 14 December 1948, in Box 1, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL. (The questions were framed by Fischer, but asked of Raliat by an Indian friend on his behalf.)

  34. See Stephen Hay, ‘Between Two Worlds: Gandhi’s First Impressions of British Culture’, Modern Asian Studies, 3:4 (1969), pp. 308–9; Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter X. The preacher’s name was H. R. Scott; years later, he identified himself in a letter to Gandhi, but disputed the Indian’s recollection that he had ‘poured abuse’ on Hindu gods. See correspondence in Mss. Eur. C. 487, APAC/BL.

  35. Upadhyaya, Mahatma Gandhi as a Student, pp. 14–15, 32, 35.

  36. See J. M. Upadhyaya, Gandhiji’s Early Contemporaries and Companions (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1971), photo opposite p. 23.

  37. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapters VII and VIII.

  38. Cf. Stephen Hay, ‘Gandhi’s First Five Years’, in Donald Capps, Walter H. Capps and M. Gerald Bradford, eds, Encounter with Erikson: Historical Interpretation in Religious Biography (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1977), fn. 5.

  39. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter III.

  40. Arun and Sunanda Gandhi, The Untold Story of Kasturba: Wife of Mahatma Gandhi (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 2000), p. 5.

  41. Anon., Smt. Kasturba’s House at Porbandar (Ahmedabad: Directorate of Archaeology, 1973). These wall-paintings would have been of religious themes, perhaps of the lives (and legends) of Krishna and Ram.

  42. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter IV.

  43. Ibid., Part I, Chapter IX.

  44. These paragraphs are based on Upadhyaya, Mahatma Gandhi as a Student, passim.

  45. See Sitamshu Yashaschandra, ‘From Hemacandra to Hind Svaraj: Region and Power in Gujarati Literary Culture’, in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: University of Calfornia Press, 2003).

  46. For more details, see Tridip Suhurd, Writing Life: Three Gujarati Thinkers (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2009), Chapters 2 and 4.

  47. Based on an analysis of the names in a photocopied page of the class register in Subject File no. 1, Gandhi Papers, NMML.

  48. This account of Gandhi’s time in Samaldas College is based on Upadhyaya, Mahatma Gandhi: A Teacher’s Discovery, pp. 95–102.

  49. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter XI.

  50. Cf. Yashaschandra, ‘Hemacandra to Hind Svaraj’, p. 596.

  51. Political Agent of Kathiawar, quoted in Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, VII: Kathiawar (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884), p. 343.

  52. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter XI.

  53. See File no. R/1/1/740, APAC/BL.

  54. Extract from the Kathiawar Times, 12 August 1888, reproduced in Upadhyaya, Mahatma Gandhi as a Student, p. 83.

  55. On the likely date of Harilal’s birth, see Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal, Harilal Gandhi: A Life, edited and translated from the Gujarati by Tridip Suhrud (Chennai: Orient Longman, 2007), p. 1.

  56. Gandhi, ‘London Diary’, CWMG, I, p. 45.

  57. Ibid., pp. 45–6; Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter XII.

  2 AMONG THE VEGETARIANS

  1. Unless otherwise stated, this section is based on M. K. Gandhi, ‘London Diary’, CWMG, I, pp. 2–16.

  2. Gandhi, ‘Guide to London’ (Appendix), in CWMG, I, p. 117.

  3. James D. Hunt, Gandhi in London (revised edn, New Delhi: Promilla and Co, 1993), pp. 7–8.

  4. Cover of ILN, 13 July 1889.

  5. See ILN, 7 September 1889.

  6. Jonathan Schneer, London in 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 7–8.

  7. Rozina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 45–6, 125–6.

  8. This paragraph is based on issues of the Illustrated London News for the period.

  9. Gandhi, An Aut
obiography, Part I, Chapter XIII.

  10. Hunt, Gandhi in London, pp. 220–22; Gandhi, ‘Guide to London’, CWMG, I, pp. 94, 117, 119.

  11. Hunt, Gandhi in London, p. 14.

  12. CWMG, I, pp. 2, 16–18.

  13. Gilchrist Alexander, The Temple of the Nineties (London: William Hodge and Company, 1938), p. 78.

  14. Ibid., p. 269.

  15. Thomas Leaming, A Philadelphia Lawyer in the London Courts (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911), p. 137.

  16. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter XXIV.

  17. The Recollections of Sir Henry Dickens, K. C. (London: William Heinemann, 1934), p. 296. The author was a son of Charles Dickens.

  18. Sachindananda Sinha, ‘Gandhiji’s Earlier Career as I Knew It’ (11-page typescript written c. 1949), in Box 3, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL.

  19. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapters XVII and XVIII.

  20. See Tristram Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India (London: Harper Press, 2006), pp. 40, 43, 49, 50, 53, 57, 62–3, 69, 280f., 284–5, 342–3, 422–3, etc.

  21. Stephen Winsten, Salt and His Circle (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1951); George Hendrick, Henry Salt: Humanitarian Reformer and Man of Letters (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977).

  22. George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick, eds, The Savour of Salt: A Henry Salt Anthology (Fontwell, Sussex: Centaur Press, 1999), pp. 25–8.

  23. Henry S. Salt, Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1894), pp. 51–2, 89–90, 94.

  24. Grant Richards, Memories of a Misspent Youth, 1872–1896 (London: William Heinemann, 1932), p. 106.

  25. In his ‘Guide to London’, Gandhi does not mention sport at all, and says of the theatre that to visit it ‘once a month on the average is quite sufficient’ (an average one suspects he had difficulty in meeting). See CWMG, I, pp. 110–11.

  26. See Stephen Hay, ‘The Making of a Late-Victorian Hindu: M. K. Gandhi in London, 1888–1891’, Victorian Studies (Autumn 1989), esp. pp. 89–90. The large (and still expanding) world of Gandhi scholarship owes a great debt to Stephen Hay and James D. Hunt. These American scholars, both now deceased, have contributed immensely to our understanding of Gandhi’s early years, through archival research that has variously clarified, disputed, contextualized or supplemented the recollections in the Autobiography

  27. Hunt, Gandhi in London, p. 221.

  28. As recalled in Josiah Oldfield, ‘My Friend Gandhi’, in Chandrashanker Shukla, ed., Reminiscences of Gandhiji (Bombay: Vora and Co., 1951), pp. 187–8.

  29. Hunt, Gandhi in London, pp. 28–30; Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter XX.

  30. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter XX.

  31. Ibid., Part I, Chapter XVI.

  32. Hunt, Gandhi in London, pp. 16–18.

  33. Gandhi, ‘Guide to London’, CWMG, I, pp. 83–4, 120.

  34. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapters XXI to XXIII.

  35. G. Parameswaran Pillai, London and Paris Through Indian Spectacles (1897, reprint New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2006), pp. 83–5.

  36. See notice on ‘Inns of Court’, The Times, 16 April 1890. (I am grateful to Zac O’Yeah for this reference.)

  37. Hunt, Gandhi in London, pp. 17–18.

  38. M. K. Gandhi, ‘Indian Vegetarians’, CWMG, I, pp. 19–29.

  39. See Compilation no. 140, vol. 108 of 1892, Political Department, MSA.

  40. See, among other works, Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973); Jan March, Back to the Land: The Pastoral Impulse in England, from 1800 to 1914 (London: Quartet Books, 1982).

  41. M. K. Gandhi, ‘Some Indian Festivals’, three-part series originally published in The Vegetarian, 28 March, 4 and 25 April 1891, CWMG, I, pp. 29–34.

  42. M. K. Gandhi, ‘The Foods of India’, originally published in The Vegetarian Messenger, 1 May 1891, CWMG, I, pp. 36–41.

  43. See Jerry White, London in the Nineteenth Century (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), pp. 3, 29–30, 289–90.

  44. Hunt, Gandhi in London, p. 10.

  45. Hay, ‘Making of a Late-Victorian Hindu’, pp. 82–3, 88.

  46. Cf. Schneer, London in 1900, pp. 184–9.

  47. Obituary notice, ILN, 7 February 1891.

  48. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Chapter XX.

  49. Anon., ‘The First Mosque in England’, ILN, 9 November 1889.

  50. See Gandhi, ‘Guide to London’, CWMG, I, pp. 76–87, 96–7, 117–18.

  51. CWMG, I, pp. 41, 49.

  52. M. K. Gandhi, ‘On [the] Way Home to India’, The Vegetarian, 9 and 16 April 1892, CWMG, I, pp. 50–55.

  3 FROM COAST TO COAST

  1. The house, Mani Bhavan, still exists. It now houses a Gandhi museum and library.

  2. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part II, Chapter I.

  3. See, for biographical details, Satish Sharma, Gandhi’s Teachers: Rajchandra Ravjibhai Mehta (Ahmedabad: Gujarat Vidyapith, 2005), Chapter 2.

  4. See James Laidlaw, Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society among the Jains (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 235–7.

  5. Gandhi, ‘A Great Seer’, CWMG, XLIII, p. 98.

  6. Gandhi, ‘Preface to “Srimad Rajchandra”’, 5 November 1926, CWMG, XXXII, pp. 5–7.

  7. Arun and Sunanda Gandhi, The Untold Story of Kasturba: Wife of Mahatma Gandhi (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 2000), pp. 49–50.

  8. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part II, Chapter II.

  9. Ibid., Part II, Chapter IV.

  10. Administrator, Porbandar State, to Political Agent, Kathiawar, 9 September 1891, in R/2/720/49, APAC/BL.

  11. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part II, Chapter II.

  12. Letter, dated c. June 1891, by J. B. Benson, State Engineer, Porbandar State; Administrator to Political Agent, Kathiawar, 15 August 1891, both in R/2/720/49, APAC/BL.

  13. Bhavsinghji to Political Agent, Kathiawar, 5 September 1891; Administrator, Porbandar State, to Political Agent, Kathiawar, 9 September 1891, ibid.

  14. ‘Testimony of Kalidas [Laxmidas] Gandhi, 8 August 1891’, in ibid. Laxmidas Gandhi’s pet name was ‘Kalidas’: that is how he was known to his friends and family in Porbandar.

  15. Political Agent, Kathiawar, to Home Secretary, Bombay Government, 12 September 1891, ibid.

  16. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part II, Chapter IV.

  17. Cf. Stephen Hay, ‘Gandhi’s Reasons for Leaving Rajkot for South Africa in 1893’ (unpublished paper in the possession of E. S. Reddy).

  18. Cf. CWMG, I, item 21, p. 50.

  19. G. W. Stevens, ‘All India in Miniature’, in R. P. Karkaria, The Charm of Bombay: An Anthology of Writings in Praise of the First City in India (Bombay: D. B. Taraporavala and Sons, 1915), pp. 81–4.

  20. Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), Chapter I, ‘The Rise of Bombay’.

  21. S. M. Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay (Bombay: The Times of India Press, 1902), p. 327.

  22. See Rahul Mehrotra and Sharada Dwivedi, The Bombay High Court: The Story of the Building, 1878–2003 (Bombay: Eminence Designs, 2004).

  23. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part II, Chapter III.

  24. M. K. Gandhi to Ranchhodlal Patwari, 5 September 1892, CWMG, I, pp. 56–7. The letter was apparently written in English.

  25. Gandhi, ‘Preface to “Srimad Rajchandra”’, p. 6; ‘Speech on Birth Anniversary of Rajchandra’ (Ahmedabad, 16 November 1921), CWMG, XXI, pp. 432–4.

  26. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part II, Chapter IV. For an example of a petition drafted by Gandhi while in Rajkot, see Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, I: The Early Phase (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1965), Appendix H, pp. 739–44.

  27. See Goolam Vahed, ‘Passengers, Partnerships, and Promissory Notes: Gujarati Traders in Colonial Natal, 1870–1920’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 38:3,
p. 459 and passim.

  28. Gandhi, An Autobiography, pp. 84–5.

  29. NM, 22 November 1860, quoted in C. G. Henning, The Indentured Indian in Natal (1860–1917) (New Delhi: Promilla and Co., 1993), pp. 30–1.

  30. This account of the immigration of Indians into Natal and their life there is based on, among other works, Surendra Bhana and Joy Brain, Settling Down Roots: Indian Migrants in South Africa, 1860–1911 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1990); Mabel Palmer, The History of the Indians in Natal (1957; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977); Surendra Bhana, Indentured Indian Emigrants to Natal, 1860–1902: A Study Based on Ships’ Lists (New Delhi: Promilla and Co., 1991); G. H. Calpin, Indians in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1949); C. J. Ferguson-Davie, The Early History of Indians in Natal (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1952); Surendra Bhana, ed., Essays on Indentured Indians in Natal (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1990); Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, Inside Indenture: A South African Story, 1860–1914 (Durban: Madiba Publishers, 2007); Robert A. Huttenback, ‘Indians in South Africa, 1860–1914: The British Imperial Philosophy on Trial’, English Historical Review, 319 (April 1966); Jo Beall, ‘Women under Indenture in Colonial Natal, 1860–1911’, in Colin Clarke, Ceri Peach and Steven Vertovec, eds, South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Joy Brain, ‘Natal’s Indians: From Co-operation, through Competition, to Conflict’, in Andrew Duminy and Bill Guest, eds, Natal and Zululand: From Earliest Times to 1910: A New History (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1989); Thomas R. Metcalf, ‘“Hard Hands and Sound Healthy Bodies”: Recruiting “Coolies” for Natal, 1860–1911’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 30:3 (2002); Goolam Vahed, ‘“A Man of Keen Perceptive Faculties”: Aboobaker Amod Jhaveri, an “Arab” in Colonial Natal, circa 1872–1887’, Historia, 50:1 (2005).

  31. ‘Report of the Protector of Immigrants for the year ending June 30, 1893’, in Natal Government House Documents, on microfilm, Reel 6, Accession no. 2179, NMML.