Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  The peasants remained defiant. They stopped supplies of milk to dairies which produced butter and cheese for troops stationed in Bombay. One station in Kheda, which usually supplied 12,000 gallons of milk to the city daily, had to be closed due to this ‘organized agitation’.38

  The unpaid dues of the peasants in Kheda were mounting. Two friends from the Servants of India Society suggested to Gandhi that a public subscription of one lakh rupees be raised to pay off the debts. This would save the peasants from going to jail or having their lands confiscated. Gandhi refused the offer, since ‘the object behind the idea of satyagraha is to make the people fearless and free, and not to maintain our own reputation anyhow’.39

  As the peasant satyagraha in Kheda was developing, a conflict was emerging in Ahmedabad as well. The rains that had destroyed crops in the countryside had led to the onset of plague in the city. By November 1917, some 550 deaths had been reported. Schools, colleges and offices had shut down.

  The onset of plague led to a panic migration out of the city. This worried the textile mill owners. If the workers fled to their villages, who was to produce the fabrics? To persuade their staff to stay, the mill owners offered a ‘plague bonus’ of 75 per cent. This was to be paid to all categories of workers, except the relatively well-off warpers. These incentives permitted the mills in Ahmedabad to function while everything else came to a halt. There were now some 106,000 spindles at work in the city’s mills, supplying 22,000 looms. To meet the growing demand, factories worked two shifts instead of one.40

  By January 1918, the plague had subsided. The owners decided to dispense with the plague bonus. When the workers complained, citing rising prices, they were offered—uniformly across all categories—a flat 20 per cent pay increase. This was not accepted, with the weavers in particular finding the offer hopelessly inadequate.

  On 2 January, Gandhi was in Bombay. Also in the city was the Ahmedabad mill owner Ambalal Sarabhai, who had saved Gandhi’s ashram by his gift of Rs 13,000 back in 1915. When Ambalal met Gandhi in Bombay, he conveyed his concern that the workers in the mills might strike on the question of the bonus.

  On returning to Ahmedabad, Gandhi asked his associates to give him data on the workers’ living conditions, and on wages in Ahmedabad’s mills as compared to other cities. The evidence suggested that the workers deserved a better deal. They wanted a flat 50 per cent increase in wages; Gandhi persuaded them to settle for 35 per cent.

  However, the mill owners refused to improve on their original offer of a 20 per cent increase. Now, as Mahadev Desai recalled, ‘an element of doggedness…characterized both the sides’.41

  Leading the mill owners in their obstinacy was Ambalal Sarabhai. Leading the workers in their intransigence was his sister Anasuya. This class conflict was also a family dispute, surely an unprecedented situation in the history of worker–capitalist relations in India—or anywhere else perhaps.

  Heirs to a prosperous family business, the Sarabhais were orphaned early. Anasuya, who was several years older, helped bring Ambalal up. However, she was married off at thirteen to a man who would not let her attend school. Eventually, she left her husband, and went back to live with her brother.

  Ambalal ran the family business while his sister ran the household. After her brother got married, Anasuya decided to go to England to fulfil her long-suppressed desire to educate herself. She attended classes at the newly founded London School of Economics and Political Science, met trade unionists, and was impressed by the commitment of the suffragettes, although their methods (stone throwing and window breaking) did not appeal to her Jain sentiments. She was admitted to St Hilda’s, a women’s college in Oxford, but before she could join, news came that her younger sister had died. Anasuya abandoned her studies and returned home. Since Ambalal was now happily married and with children of his own, she sought fulfilment outside the home. She started a day school for the children of mill-hands, and a night school for workers who were illiterate. She also helped with access to healthcare and housing.42

  Anasuya and her brother had first come into conflict in December 1917. This was when the warpers, denied the plague bonus, asked for a 25 per cent ‘dearness allowance’ instead. The demand was taken by Anasuya to her brother. When he refused, she wrote to Gandhi (then in Champaran) to intervene. He did. ‘Why should not the mill-owners feel happy paying a little more to the workers?’ wrote Gandhi to Ambalal. He added: ‘How could a brother be the cause of suffering to a sister?—and that, too, a sister like Anasuyabehn?’43

  Now, two months later, the mill owners and workers were once more in disagreement. Ambalal stood with his class; Anasuya for her cause. Once more, Gandhi was asked to settle the dispute.

  IX

  When the mill owners refused to enhance the wages by 35 per cent, Gandhi and Anasuya Sarabhai advised the workers to stop going to the factories. A millworkers’ strike began on 22 February 1918. Every afternoon, a meeting was held outside a large babul tree on the banks of the Sabarmati. Gandhi would drive to the meeting in Anasuya’s Overland roadster, while workers would walk several miles from their chawls. At the meeting, Gandhi spoke, while a leaflet of instructions and reflections on the dispute was distributed. Afterwards, Gandhi and Anasuya drove back to her brother’s house for tea. Gandhi had told the magnate that it was best if they discussed the dispute every day in a spirit of understanding and trust.44

  The civility between brother and sister notwithstanding, the middle class of Ahmedabad was consumed by anxiety. ‘Every one was afraid that the angry workers would cause trouble on thoroughfares, commit thefts, and provoke scuffles, and riots.’ Nothing of the sort happened. The workers remained non-violent, meeting with Gandhi every evening under the babul tree. After Gandhi had spoken, the workers began to sing, the songs freshly composed for the occasion.45

  The Gujarati leaflets distributed at these daily meetings were composed by Gandhi, Anasuya and an energetic trade unionist named Shankarlal Banker. One leaflet asked workers not to gamble, to spend their time—now that they were not at the mill—reading or repairing their homes. They were advised to work part-time as tailors or carpenters. Another leaflet recalled the satyagrahas in South Africa and the sacrifices made by the mining and plantation workers there. A third urged the strikers not to make ‘distinctions of Hindu, Muslim, Gujarati, Madrasi, Punjabi, etc.’, for ‘in public work we are all one or wish to be one’. A fourth deplored the callous attitude of the mill owners, saying, ‘we had confidently hoped that the Jain and Vaishnava employers in the capital city of this worthy land of Gujarat would never consider it a victory to beat down the workers or deliberately to give them less than their due.’46

  On 1 March 1918, Gandhi wrote Ambalal Sarabhai a remarkable letter, telling him that if his class of mill owners succeeded in their aims,

  the poor, already suppressed, will be suppressed still more, will be more abject than ever and the impression will have been confirmed that money can subdue everyone. If, despite your efforts, the workers succeed in getting the increase, you, and others with you, will regard the result as your failure. Can I possibly wish you success in so far as the first result is concerned? Is it your desire that the arrogance of money should increase? Or that the workers be reduced to utter submission?…Do you not see that in your failure lies your success, that your success is fraught with danger for you?…Kindly look deep into your heart, listen to the still small voice within and obey it, I pray you. Will you dine with me?47

  Ambalal came over to dine with Gandhi at the ashram. What they spoke about is not recorded. At any rate, they did not reach a settlement on the question of workers’ wages.

  The strike was now into its third week. The workers had begun to lose heart. The attendance at the daily meetings held by Gandhi dwindled. In the beginning, several thousand workers came. By 10 March, the figure was down to a few hundreds. Some millhands had gone back to work, accepting the magnates
’ offer of a 20 per cent increase.48

  One day, Gandhi’s nephew Chhaganlal went to the Jugaldas chawl to ask the workers why they had not attended the daily meeting. A worker responded: ‘What is it to Anasuyabehn and Gandhiji? They come and go in their car; they eat sumptuous food, but we are suffering death-agonies; attending meetings does not prevent starvation.’49

  When these words reached Gandhi, he recognized the truths they contained. He decided to go on a fast to force the issue. Gandhi had fasted before, but for reasons internal to the family and his ashram (such as departures from celibacy). This was the first occasion on which he chose to fast for a larger social or political purpose. The criticisms of the workers had stung him, forcing him to put his body on the line for their rights.

  On 15 March, Gandhi told the workers that he would not eat, and not sit in a motorcar either. On 17 March, he invoked the example of Tilak, who had gone to jail for the national cause, and thus ‘undergone the sufferings of internment with a spiritual motive’. His own decision to fast was taken to ‘keep’ the 10,000 striking workers from ‘falling’.50

  Gandhi’s fast put pressure on the mill owners. Ambalal and his colleagues could not allow the situation to deteriorate. By the fourth day of the fast, they had been coerced into a settlement. On 18 March, the mill owners agreed to arbitration by a third party, a respected Ahmedabad academic named Anandshankar Dhruva. In the spirit of compromise the workers would be paid 35 per cent extra wages on the first day, but 20 per cent (what the employers had agreed on) on the next day, and so on till the award came.51

  Professor Dhruva gave his award only in August 1918, and it was in favour of the workers, giving them a 35 per cent increase in wages, to be paid retrospectively. In this battle of siblings, the sister had triumphed in the end.

  X

  Gandhi now returned to the agrarian conflict in Kheda. Six months into the struggle, thousands of peasants had refused to pay the land revenue due to the government. In some talukas, the percentage of defaulters was close to 30 per cent.

  On 30 March 1918, the collector ordered the confiscation of the crops of those who had not paid taxes. On 5 April, Gandhi met the collector to try and effect a compromise. The official was unyielding. Police parties raided villages, breaking locks and taking away grain, vessels, furniture and buffaloes.52

  Gandhi sent Vallabhbhai Patel to canvass support in Bombay for the peasants of Kheda. Vallabhbhai tried to meet Jinnah but failed. When he returned to Ahmedabad, he angrily told Gandhi: ‘For two long hours we waited, but Jinnah Saheb couldn’t find time to grant us an audience. And this is whom they call our Mazzini of India!’ (Gandhi’s reply is unrecorded.)53

  Jinnah was a ‘Mazzini’ to the educated classes alone. Others were comparing Gandhi himself to the great Italian patriot, on the grounds that he appealed to far more than city-based lawyers and editors. A Gujarati newspaper said that while some intellectuals dismissed villagers as ‘ignorant and illiterate’, ‘the salvation of India will be achieved only by the agriculturists. If there be a leader in India the people are ready to follow him, but the question is who should be regarded as the leader. Italy produced only one Mazzini who brought about her regeneration. Gujarat has also produced only one Mazzini in Mr. Gandhi. May God make him infuse new life into Gujarat! It is prayed that this spiritual fight put up by the Kheda agriculturists may be closely watched by the entire agricultural class in India.’54

  On 23 April, Gandhi was in Bombay, speaking at a public meeting held in solidarity with the peasants of Kheda. The struggle, he said, ‘did not originate with the Home Rulers or with any barristers or lawyers as some people allege’. Rather, it was ‘started by the tillers themselves’. Men and women had both participated equally. Gandhi had himself witnessed ‘wonderful scenes…at the village meetings. The women declare that even if the Government seize their buffaloes, attach their jewellery or confiscate their lands, the men must honour their pledge. This is a grand struggle…Its fragrance is spreading everywhere.’

  Gandhi was addressing an audience many of whose members had never been to a village. His own experience in Kheda and Champaran, on the other hand, had taught him ‘this one lesson, that, if the leaders move among the people, live with them, eat and drink with them, a momentous change will come about in two years’.55

  From Bombay, Gandhi proceeded to Delhi for a conference called by the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, aimed at soliciting support for the War. (A former governor of the Australian state of Queensland and New South Wales, Chelmsford had replaced Hardinge as viceroy in March 1916.) The conflict between Britain and Germany had entered a crucial stage. Close to a million Indians had already volunteered to fight in the War. Now, with the Germans pressing hard, a fresh round of recruits was required.

  Gandhi still thought the British Empire could or would redeem itself. He still believed that if unfair laws and unjust practices were brought to the attention of the highest officials, they would be revoked or corrected. It was in this spirit, or expectation, that he responded to the viceroy’s appeal to help with the War. However, he was disappointed that Tilak had not been called for the conference, and that important Muslim leaders like Shaukat Ali and Mohammad Ali were under house arrest (on suspicion of being supporters of the Turkish state, against whom the British were at war). Gandhi boycotted the first day of the conference, but was persuaded by Charlie Andrews to show up for the second. The viceroy also met Gandhi privately, and urged him to support the recruitment drive.

  Before he left Delhi, Gandhi wrote the viceroy a long and intensely felt letter. Not calling Tilak and the Ali Brothers was, he said, a ‘grave blunder’. For, they were ‘among the most powerful leaders of powerful opinion’. The protest registered, Gandhi acknowledged that in this hour of danger, it was necessary to provide ‘ungrudging and unequivocal support to the Empire, of which we aspire, in the near future, to be partners in the same sense as the Dominions overseas’.

  In cooperating with the British war effort, Gandhi was acting similarly to other subjects of the Empire who hoped one day to see their nation free. The great Israeli nationalist David Ben-Gurion was even more energetic in his support for the rulers; raising, and himself volunteering for, a Jewish battalion to fight alongside the British in the Great War. As with Gandhi, the hope here was that a good turn done in the Empire’s time of crisis would be rewarded with self-rule after the crisis had passed.

  Loyalty to the Empire was, in Gandhi’s mind, directly linked to the securing of Home Rule. Support for the War involved ‘the consecration of our lives to the common cause’. But since India, unlike Canada or South Africa, was not yet a partner in the Empire, this was ‘a consecration based on the hope of a better future’.

  After returning to Gujarat, Gandhi wrote again to the viceroy, asking for ‘relief regarding the Kheda trouble’. If revenue was suspended for the year, he cannily argued, he and his co-workers would be free to devote their energies to getting recruits for the War.56

  Through much of May and June, Gandhi toured Kheda, asking peasants to enlist to save the Empire. A Gujarati leaflet issued by him claimed ‘the easiest and the straightest way to win swaraj is to participate in the defence of the Empire’. Gandhi even offered to lead one unit, but without carrying arms himself. That way he would (admittedly uneasily) balance his desire to help the British with his own commitment to non-violence. The peasants were unpersuaded. On 9 July, Gandhi wrote to his son Devadas: ‘I have not had a single recruit so far, so deplorable is the plight of the country.’ Two weeks later, about 100 men—still a meagre number—had come forward.57

  Gandhi was counting on his own appeal and that of Vallabhbhai Patel. He failed, because the peasants were reluctant soldiers, and because some now saw him as a hypocrite. They were appalled that he, who had recently been counselling non-violent protest against the Raj, was now advocating that they enlist as soldiers to fight in the Empire’s cause. The attendance at hi
s meetings was thin; on occasion, he was denied transport and food, and at one gathering, peasants shouted at him: ‘We made you great! We helped you make Satyagraha work! And see what you ask of us now.’58

  That Gandhi tried so hard to get recruits did, however, make an impression on the authorities. In June, following a meeting between Gandhi and the collector of Kheda, an order was issued suspending the collection of revenue from those who could not afford it, while asking well-to-do cultivators to voluntarily pay up.59

  In Champaran and in Ahmedabad, the struggles led and conceived by Gandhi had met with a substantial degree of success. On the other hand, this third experiment with satyagraha resulted in what can (at best) be termed a face-saving compromise.

  XI

  In the first week of March 1918, Gandhi wrote to Henry Polak’s wife, Millie: ‘I am here attending to the Kheda trouble as also a big strike. My passive resistance is therefore beginning to have full play in all the departments of life.’ The excitement was palpable. Three months later, the intensity of the struggle had begun to take its toll. In late June, he wrote to another woman friend, the secretary of his South African years, Sonja Schlesin: ‘My work has involved constant railway travelling. I am longing for solitude and rest. They may never be my lot.’60

  In the first half of 1918, Gandhi was continually on the move. In his absence, the ashram in Ahmedabad limped along. Among those desolated by the patriarch’s absence was his wife Kasturba. Her letters are lost, but from Gandhi’s replies we can tell she missed him terribly. One letter, addressed to ‘Beloved Kastur’, begins: ‘I know you are pining to stay with me. I feel, though, that we must go on with our tasks. At present, it is right that you remain where you are [in the Ashram]…As you come to love others and serve them, you will have a joy welling up from within.’ Working alone in the ashram was evidently little consolation for Kasturba. For, two days later, Gandhi wrote again: ‘Your being unhappy makes me unhappy. If it had been possible to bring ladies, I would have brought you. Why should you lose your head because I may have to go out? We have learnt to find our happiness in separation. If God has so willed, we shall meet again and live together. There are many useful things one can do in the Ashram and you are bound to keep happy if you occupy yourself with them.’61