Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India

by Joseph Lelyveld

  9 “a strong, heavily built”: Meer, South African Gandhi, p. 602.

  10 “We may entertain”: Ibid., p. 601.

  11 Is that, as some Indian scholars: They were speaking speculatively in private conversation.

  12 In strict interpretation of caste: In the late 1960s, when I was a correspondent in India, I asked a Hindu religious figure, the Shankaracharya of Puri, whether he could imagine himself sitting and talking to an untouchable. He replied: “I’m talking with you.”

  13 “the Indian is being dragged”: CWMG, vol. 1, p. 150.

  14 “the raw Kaffir”: Ibid., vol. 2, p. 74.

  15 “About the mixing”: Ibid., vol. 4, p. 131.

  16 “If there is one thing”: Ibid., p. 89.

  17 “We believe as much”: Ibid., vol. 3, p. 453.

  18 “Oh, say have you seen”: Quoted in Mahadevan, Year of the Phoenix, p. 43, clipping in archive of Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad.

  19 “A fair complexion”: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, pp. 8–9.

  20 “Are Asiatic and Colored races”: “Mr. Gandhi’s Address Before the Y.M.C.A.,” Indian Opinion, June 6, 1908, in CWMG, vol. 8, pp. 242–46.

  21 “If we look into the future”: CWMG, vol. 8, pp. 232–46.

  22 “these hypocritical distinctions”: Meer, South African Gandhi, pp. 606–7; “My Second Experience in Gaol,” Indian Opinion, Jan. 30, 1909.

  23 Possibly these are “Native Isaac”: Diary of Hermann Kallenbach, Sabarmati Ashram archive, Ahmedabad.

  24 “It is understood”: CWMG, vol. 96, supp. vol. 6, p. 44.

  25 “I regard the Kaffirs”: CWMG, vol. 10, cited by Green, Gandhi, p. 200.

  26 Rajmohan Gandhi, his grandson: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 149.

  27 And when it comes: The other two were the Reverend Walter Rubusana, who was elected to the Cape province provincial council, and John Tengo Jabavu, editor of a weekly newspaper printed in English and Xhosa in Cape Town, where Gandhi encountered him. See Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, From Cane Fields to Freedom: A Chronicle of Indian South African Life (Cape Town, 2000), p. 118. Of course, the absence of other names in Gandhi’s writings of the period does not in itself demonstrate that he had no further encounters with African leaders. Recently, in an as-yet-unpublished memoir by a woman named Pauline Padlashuk, an account has come to light of a visit to Tolstoy Farm by Pixley ka Isaka Seme, who, like Dube, was an early officeholder of what became the African National Congress. “Mr. Gandhi told Dr. Seme about his passive resistance movement,” this white witness wrote.

  28 A Zulu aristocrat: Shula Marks, “Ambiguities of Dependence: John L. Dube of Natal,” Journal of South African Studies 1, no. 2 (1975), p. 163.

  29 “my patron saint”: Fredrickson, Black Liberation, p. 119.

  30 president-general he was called: Dube himself did not attend the founding session of the new Congress in Bloemfontein. He was elected president in absentia.

  31 “This Mr. Dubey”: CWMG, vol. 5, p. 55.

  32 “They worked hard”: Fredrickson, Black Liberation, p. 119.

  33 We know that Gopal: Ilanga lase Natal, Nov. 15, 1912. The entry in Kallenbach’s diary for that date, at the archive of the Sabarmati Ashram, doesn’t mention the visit to Inanda at all.

  34 “To us at the Phoenix Settlement”: “A Great Zulu Dead,” Indian Opinion, Feb. 15, 1946.

  35 “the solidarity between”: Jacob Zuma, in speech available online at www.info.gov.za/speeches/2000/000/0010161010a1002.htm.>.

  36 The immediate provocation: The term “poll tax” as it was used in South Africa at that time had nothing to do with elections. See Surendra Bhana, “Gandhi, Indians, and Africans in South Africa,” paper presented at the Kansas African Studies Center, Sept. 12, 2002.

  37 “For the Indian community”: CWMG, vol. 5, p. 366.

  38 Gandhi had the rank: Ibid., p. 368. Another biographer, D. G. Tendulkar, following the Autobiography, makes it twenty-four, including nineteen ex-indentured. Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 1, p. 76.

  39 In the next few weeks: This is the surmise of the leading South African scholar on this conflict, Jeff Guy, in his book Maphumulo Uprising, p. 101.

  40 “I do not remember”: Prabhudas Gandhi, My Childhood with Gandhiji, p. 42.

  41 But it did say: See Bhana, “Gandhi, Indians, and Africans in South Africa.”

  42 In London, an exile: Green, Gandhi, p. 160.

  43 “Mr. Gandhi speaks with”: Doke, M. K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot, p. 111.

  44 “It was no trifle”: Ibid., p. 112.

  45 “My heart was with the Zulus”: Gandhi, Autobiography, p. 279.

  46 As late as 1943: Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment, p. 264.

  47 “These themes”: Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, p. 194.

  48 In part, this may have: Marks, “Ambiguities of Dependence,” p. 54.

  49 “No, I purposely did not”: CWMG, vol. 62, p. 199.

  50 “Yours is a far bigger issue”: Ibid., vol. 68, p. 273.

  51 “I venture to trust”: Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, Government House 1457, Military Affairs, Bhambatha Rebellion Correspondence, Feb. 9, to Dec. 28, 1907. See also M. K. Gandhi to Gov. H. McCallum, Aug. 13, 1907. Thanks to Jeff Guy, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, who called this passage to my attention.

  52 He had spoken of the need: Marks, “Ambiguities of Dependence,” p. 54.

  53 “decency of wearing clothes”: Speech at the Natal Missionary Conference, at Durban Town Hall, July 4, 1911. Text in archive of Killie Campbell Library in Durban.

  54 close to the Zulu royal house: In 1936—twenty-four years after he was elected president of the South African Native National Congress—John Dube was named “Prime Minister” of what was termed the Zulu nation by the reigning Prince Regent.

  55 “Every other question”: “Sons of the Soil,” Indian Opinion, Aug. 30, 1913, quoted in Nauriya, African Element in Gandhi, p. 48.

  56 “You must know that every one”: Reprinted in “Sons of the Soil,” cited by Nauriya, African Element in Gandhi, p. 48.

  57 “About five hundred Indians”: Document in the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Center at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, File 1262/203, 3984, HIST/1893/14.

  58 “people like Indians”: See Carl Faye, Zulu References for Interpreters and Students in Documents (Pietermaritzburg, 1923), which includes “Notes of Proceedings at Meeting with Zulus Held by John L. Dube at Eshowe, Zululand, 30 November 1912.”

  59 “anti-Indianism”: Heather Hughes, “Doubly Elite: Exploring the Life of John Langalibalele Dube,” Journal of Southern African Studies vol. 27, no. 3 (Sept. 2001): footnote p. 446. The quotation from “The Indian Invasion” came to me in an e-mail from Ms. Hughes.

  60 Later a Zulu newspaper: Roux, Time Longer Than Rope, p. 250.

  61 “Indians cannot make common cause”: Harijan, Feb. 18, 1939.

  62 “Indians and Africans must act”: A little more than two months before Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, she was delivering what was essentially an antiwar message, but not for Gandhi’s reasons.

  63 That night, according to one: “I Remember,” privately circulated memoir by I. C. Meer, edited by E. S. Reddy and Fatima Meer.

  64 “pogrom” against Indians: Goolam Vahed and Ashwin Desai offer a narrative and analysis of the 1949 riot in Monty Naiker: Between Reason and Treason (Pietermaritzburg, 2010), pp. 234–55.

  65 “The inclusion of all”: CWMG, vol. 87, p. 414.

  66 But few African leaders were ready: The conspicuous exception was Albert Luthuli who became president of the African National Congress in 1952. Four years earlier, a few months after Gandhi’s murder, Luthuli spoke of “the efficacy of nonviolence as an instrument of struggle in seeking freedom for oppressed people” in a speech at Howard University in Washington that anticipated Martin Luther King, Jr. The first South African to win the Nobel Peace Prize said blacks in the United States as well as Africa should go forward as Gandhi’s “undoubted disciples.” His notes for
the speech are preserved in the archive of the Luthuli Museum in Groutville, KwaZulu-Natal, and cited by Scott Couper in his Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith.

  67 “Many of our grassroots”: Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 107, cited by Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Gandhi’s Prisoner? p. 342.

  68 Repeatedly, he courted arrest: Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Gandhi’s Prisoner? pp. 353–55.

  69 But Manilal had no organized: Ibid., p. 355.

  70 At one meeting: Ibid., pp. 350–51.

  71 “The principle was not”: Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 111. See also pp. 91, 99.

  CHAPTER 4: UPPER HOUSE

  1 “No man or woman living”: Gandhi to Kallenbach, June 16, 1912, quoted by Hunt and Bhana, “Spiritual Rope-Walkers.”

  2 “a grim fight against”: CWMG, 2nd ed., vol. 58, pp. 118–19.

  3 For five of those years: Kasturba moved to Tolstoy Farm with two sons in the latter half of 1910 and stayed till September 1912, when she moved back to Phoenix, according to Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Gandhi’s Prisoner? pp. 96, 104.

  4 Gandhi insists: Gandhi, Autobiography, p. 270.

  5 Colonial Natal was a place: Natal Mercury, June 15, 1903.

  6 “no reason why we should”: Huttenback, Gandhi in South Africa, p. 244. Emphasis mine.

  7 Finally, in 1908: Ibid., p. 235.

  8 “I use all the money”: CWMG, vol. 6, p. 433.

  9 “So I kept pouring out”: Gandhi, Autobiography, pp. 252–53.

  10 “One day news came”: Prabhudas Gandhi, My Childhood with Gandhiji, pp. 44–45, 58.

  11 “I could stay there only”: Gandhi, Autobiography, p. 270.

  12 The two centers: Anand, Mahatma Gandhi and the Railways, p. 13.

  13 Physically strong and quick-tempered: Meer, South African Gandhi, p. 1202.

  14 According to Prema Naidoo: Interview with Prema Naidoo, Johannesburg, Nov. 2007.

  15 “If Thambi Naidoo”: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 148.

  16 “Mine would be considered”: Gandhi, Autobiography, p. 274.

  17 Gandhi’s house still stands: Itzkin, Gandhi’s Johannesburg, p. 61.

  18 “His voice was soft”: Interview with Millie Polak, 1954, from the BBC archive, broadcast on May 7, 2004.

  19 When Harilal was married: Dalal, Harilal Gandhi, p. 10.

  20 In a will drafted in 1909: CWMG, vol. 96, p. 9.

  21 “He feels that I have”: Dalal, Harilal Gandhi, p. 30.

  22 “almost in the same bed”: Harijan, May 29, 1937. Quoted in an article by Mahadev Desai on Kallenbach’s visit to India.

  23 Gandhi early on made a point: CWMG, vol. 96, p. 9.

  24 One respected Gandhi scholar: “[James D.] Hunt asserts that their relationship was clearly homoerotic while not homosexual.” As related by Weber, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor, p. 74.

  25 Kallenbach, who was raised: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 301.

  26 He’d thus been in South Africa: Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, pp. 153–54.

  27 “Your portrait”: CWMG, vol. 96, pp. 28–29.

  28 The most plausible guesses: See Joseph S. Alter, Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism (Philadelphia, 2000), p. 36: “Moreover, Gandhi’s focused attention on the problems associated with constipation, and his regular use of enemas, can be explained, at least in part, by the need he felt to keep his body immaculately clean.”

  29 In the agreement dated: CWMG, vol. 96, pp. 62–63.

  30 “For the last two years”: Sarid and Bartolf, Hermann Kallenbach, p. 16.

  31 Later it is Kallenbach: Gandhi, Autobiography, p. 294.

  32 “I see death in chocolates”: CWMG, vol. 96, p. 71.

  33 He sends Kallenbach: Ibid., p. 129.

  34 a Dutch word: Jean Branford, A Dictionary of South African English (Cape Town, 1980), p. 147.

  35 “Life is very short”: CWMG, vol. 9, p. 426, citing the original G. K. Chesterton article which appeared in The Illustrated London News, Oct. 2, 1909. See also Payne, Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 213.

  36 “The English have not taken India”: M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, pp. 39, 114.

  37 “Those in whose name we speak”: Ibid., p. 70.

  38 “The primary object”: CWMG, 2nd ed., vol. 11, p. 428.

  39 “I should like to slip out”: Ibid., p. 428.

  40 “They are more useful”: M. K. Gandhi, “To the Colonial Born Indian,” Indian Opinion, July 15, 1911.

  41 “That is my predominant occupation”: CWMG, 2nd ed., vol. 12, p. 49.

  42 “makes us eat more”: Ibid., vol. 11, p. 169.

  43 Now, when he eases up: Ibid., vol. 96, p. 96, where Gandhi informs Kallenbach of the dietary switch. For his earlier insistence on a saltless regime, which he said “purifies the blood to a high degree,” see vol. 11, pp. 130, 150, 507–8.

  44 In Gandhi’s mind: Ibid., vol. 11, p. 190.

  45 Upper House is wounded: Ibid., vol. 96, p. 220.

  46 “Though I love”: Ibid., p. 166.

  47 “a man of strong feelings”: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 171, cited in Weber, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor, p. 71.

  48 “morbid sensitiveness”: CWMG, vol. 96, pp. 118, 183.

  49 The timing of Gandhi’s: Gandhi settled in Johannesburg following his application to the Johannesburg bar on February 16, 1903. Meer, South African Gandhi, p. 37.

  50 “whose eyes were always”: Gandhi, Autobiography, p. 222.

  51 “In these conversations”: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 269.

  52 “I shall be there”: CWMG, vol. 11, p. 161.

  53 His “inner voice”: As quoted, for instance, in Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment, p. 187.

  54 Threatening renewed resistance: CWMG, vol. 11, p. 229.

  55 Hundreds of other resisters: Huttenback, Gandhi in South Africa, pp. 264–65.

  56 “a substitute for slavery”: Indian Opinion, March 10, 1908, included in Meer, South African Gandhi, p. 964.

  57 “To a starving man”: Indian Opinion, Sept. 17, 1903, included in Meer, South African Gandhi, p. 969.

  58 Indian Opinion carried: Indian Opinion, Sept. 16, 1911.

  59 “In spite of your remarks”: CWMG, vol. 10, p. 465. See also Swan, Gandhi: The South African Experience, p. 211.

  60 The most Gandhi had been hoping: CWMG, vol. 11, p. 130.

  61 “If I felt like being free”: Ibid., vol. 96, p. 98.

  62 A week later he wrote: Ibid., p. 99.

  63 For nearly a year: African Chronicle, May 19, 1909, and March 25, 1911. Available on microfilm at the British Library.

  64 “an absolute Hindu”: African Chronicle, June 15 and 8, 1912.

  65 Just ten months later: African Chronicle, April 16, 1913.

  66 “Mr. Gandhi may have been”: African Chronicle, June 10 and Jan. 10, 1914.

  67 Though they’d agreed that: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 158.

  68 Some days earlier: African Chronicle, Nov. 16, 1912.

  69 Fifteen years after the fact: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, pp. 270, 242–43.

  70 “Are we not to blame”: CWMG, vol. 12, p. 207.

  71 “You must return”: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 268.

  CHAPTER 5: LEADING THE INDENTURED

  1 The status of Indians: Quoted in Millin, General Smuts, p. 230.

  2 He wrote a long piece: CWMG, vol. 12, pp. 132–35.

  3 “Then I am not your wife”: Ibid., p. 31.

  4 “We congratulate our plucky”: Ibid., p. 66.

  5 “I have sketched out”: Ibid., vol. 96, p. 121.

  6 “resolving in my own mind”: Swan, Gandhi: The South African Experience, p. 242.

  7 “When this tax thus fell”: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 273.

  8 The government was too: Meer, South African Gandhi, p. 47.

  9 On consecutive days: Kallenbach diary in the archive of the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad. Naidoo is a Telugu, not a Tamil, name, but Thambi Naidoo was cha
irman of the Tamil Benefit Society in Johannesburg, where the term “Tamil” seems to have been used loosely to designate all those of South Indian origin who might also in that era have been called Madrasis.

  10 That evening he and Gandhi: Kallenbach diary notes, July 3–7, 1913, in the archive of the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad.

  11 “ringleader”: Natal Witness, Oct. 18, 1913.

  12 Gandhi had used the threat: CWMG, vol. 12, pp. 214–15.

  13 “But the mere presence”: Ibid., p. 512.

  14 “It may be difficult”: Ibid., p. 214.

  15 Natal’s attorney general: Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, p. 363.

  16 “A peculiar position”: Natal Witness, Oct. 18, 1913.

  17 As the message spread: Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, p. 364.

  18 “Any precipitate step”: African Chronicle, Oct. 18, 1913.

  19 “Indians do not fight”: CWMG, vol. 12, p. 240.

  20 Despite all these signals: Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, p. 364.

  21 “We do not believe”: CWMG, vol. 12, p. 253.

  22 All the women he’d dispatched: Star, Nov. 1, 1913.

  23 The procession: Bhana and Pachai, Documentary History of Indian South Africans, p. 143.

  24 “They struck not”: Ibid., pp. 142–43.

  25 Here a reporter: “The Great March: Mr. Gandhi at Work,” Indian Opinion, Nov. 19, 1913.

  26 Gandhi, in the thick: “What the British Press Says,” Indian Opinion, Nov. 19, 1913.

  27 Later he wrote: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, pp. 296, 299.

  28 “General Smuts will have”: Ibid., p. 300.

  29 “He gave me strokes”: Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, p. 372.

  30 “Any government worth its salt”: Transvaal Leader, Oct. 29, 1913.

  31 The Natal Coal Owners Association: Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, p. 369.

  32 Taking their cues: The Star, Nov. 10, 1913.

  33 spread of the strike’s seeming flood tide: Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, p. 393.

  34 The first walkout: Transvaal Leader, Nov. 5 and 8, 1913.

  35 At the height of the unrest: Report on Durban Police dated November 17 by Chief Magistrate Percy Binns, National Archives, Pretoria.

  36 Rajmohan Gandhi suggests: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 167.