Before addressing this incident, we must acknowledge that Gandhi’s biographers have focused, not without justification, on two other incidents that occurred on a journey Gandhi was to take at the end of May 1893 from Durban to Johannesburg, incidents that woke Gandhi to the reality of race prejudice in South Africa. Prior to these better-known events, however, Gandhi experienced the sting of color prejudice at the hands of Natal’s judicial system. It is to that incident we turn first, inasmuch as it was sure to have been a strong influence in shaping Gandhi’s self-image as well as his understanding of the legal system in South Africa.
TROUBLE IN THE COURTROOM
On the morning of May 25, 1893, just days after Gandhi’s arrival, Abdulla took his new lawyer to a Durban courtroom, introduced him around, and had him sit with his European lawyer in the “horseshoe,” an area reserved for counsel.1 While Indians were not strangers to Natal’s courts, the European populace did not relish their appearance there. The colonists were annoyed by the need to interpret their language and by the perceived loquaciousness of Indian witnesses. Moreover, many believed that the greater portion of the testimony of Indians consisted of fiction, not fact. Indians, according to the Natal Advertiser, told the “most astounding and preposterous stories.”2 For an Indian to appear not as a witness, but as a barrister, upset every notion the Europeans had of Indians in court. An Indian barrister had never before appeared in a Durban court.
The intensity with which some Europeans disliked Indians should not be underestimated. Only a few days before Gandhi’s arrival in Durban, the Natal Advertiser had editorialized that “coolie immigration has to be stopped. We want cultivators of our lands. But let us see to it that we only assist men of our own race to take up that calling in this country. We want more immigrants, but we want them white. . . . [D]o not let us become suffocated with the native scum of the streets of Bombay and Madras.”3
When Gandhi entered the courtroom, he did so dressed “a la English,”4 but he also wore the turban common among Hindus at the time. After Gandhi had settled himself into the lawyers’ sitting area, largely vacant that morning, he quietly studied the proceedings taking place before him. Before too long, the court’s chief clerk took Gandhi into the interpreter’s room and advised him, on his next visit to the courtroom, not to take a seat in the horseshoe unless he first produced his credentials. Gandhi, thinking that he was safe for the day, returned to his seat. The presiding magistrate, however, began to glare at him, and eventually sent word to Gandhi that he had no business sitting in the lawyers’ section. Gandhi replied that he was an English barrister. The magistrate, however, stated in open court that Gandhi had not formally presented himself to the court, he had not submitted his credentials to act as a lawyer in Natal, and by wearing his “chapeau” in court, he had failed to accord the court the proper respect. The magistrate requested that this interloper both vacate the horseshoe and, if he wished to stay, remove his turban. Gandhi declined the invitation to remove the turban, “apologized if he had done anything wrong,” and left the courtroom. It is unlikely that a visiting European lawyer would have been treated with a similar lack of hospitality. Indeed, the Natal Mercury, in reporting the incident, accused the court of “misdirected zeal.”5
Afraid that the newspaper notices of this incident would harm his reputation, the next day Gandhi wrote a careful letter to the editor of the Natal Advertiser describing his conversation with the clerk and explaining that he was assured by the clerk that he could retain his seat for the day. Gandhi apologized for what was perceived to be his rudeness.
LESSONS
After this unceremonious end to his first appearance in court and with court-watching now out of the question, there wasn’t much for Gandhi to do. Abdulla’s brother had done a favor for Lakshmidas, Gandhi’s brother, by putting Gandhi on the firm’s payroll, but there were no legal skills that the novice Gandhi had that the firm’s experienced European lawyers didn’t already possess in abundance. Accordingly, Dada Abdulla looked upon him as a white elephant.6 With time on his hands and, after almost ten days in South Africa, with very little to occupy his attention, it was natural enough that the thought of establishing a practice of his own in Durban would enter Gandhi’s mind. The thought must have entered the minds of the European lawyers, too; in fact, it was reported that the prospect of competing with an Indian for the business of the Indian merchant community was of sufficient concern among the established European bar to “cause quite a flutter of excitement among the legal fraternity.”7 By this time, however, Abdulla was ready to act. After observing Gandhi for more than a week, he finally consented to allow him to help in the case. The firm’s Johannesburg counsel had sent word to Abdulla that the case was beginning to move and that he needed Abdulla or someone else familiar with the matter to come to the Transvaal to help work on it. Gandhi would be useful in this capacity because both the litigants hailed from Gandhi’s hometown of Porbandar and thus shared Gujarati as their native tongue; Gandhi could serve as an interpreter for the firm’s European lawyers, translating legal concepts with an accuracy of which only someone trained in the law was capable.
First, however, Gandhi had to acquaint himself with the case. It concerned the sale of the Transvaal branch of Dada Abdulla and Company’s trading business to another Muslim merchant, a relative of Abdulla, Tayob Hajee Khan Muhammad. Muhammad and Company had defaulted on the promissory note it had given Abdulla and Company to support the sale, and Abdulla had sued to recover on the note. The case, according to Gandhi, was thus “mainly about accounts”—a subject that baffled him.8 Gandhi did not even know what “P. Note,” the shorthand term for promissory note, meant. Like a good lawyer called to work in another profession’s field, however, Gandhi immersed himself in the study of bookkeeping, mastered it, and announced to Abdulla that he was ready to work. With that, Dada Abdulla dispatched Gandhi by a combination of train and coach to join the firm’s counsel in Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal.
Abdulla purchased for Gandhi a first-class train ticket for the Durban-to-Charlestown leg of the trip. Just before the train reached the Pietermaritzburg station, a European passenger brought the presence of a “colored” man in the first-class section to the attention of train officials. When they demanded that Gandhi remove himself to the van compartment, he refused and dared them to call a constable. The officials did call the constable, who promptly pushed Gandhi not only out of his first-class compartment but out of the train altogether—and threw his bags after him. Humiliated, Gandhi spent the night in the piercing cold of the Pietermaritzburg train station. His mind raced through the possibilities. Was South Africa a mistake? Should he give it up and return to India? Should he remain in South Africa, keep his head down, and do his work? Should he stay and fight? After a night of thought, Gandhi, having already survived his embarrassing eviction from the Durban courtroom, resolved to fight.
In the morning Gandhi wired Abdulla, who arranged for fellow merchants in Pietermaritzburg to tend to Gandhi during the day. That evening Gandhi reboarded the train for Charlestown on which he availed himself of a reserved berth and a bedding ticket.
After the train reached Charlestown in the morning, Gandhi presented himself at the stage coach station for passage to Johannesburg. The authorities there balked at putting Gandhi in the coach with white passengers. When they seated him outside of the coach box to separate him from the whites, Gandhi, not wanting to lose yet another day, decided to pocket the insult and take his seat alongside the coachman. This arrangement held until the coach reached Pardekoph, when the white man in charge of the coach demanded that “Sami” (a derogatory term for Indians) take a seat on the footboard so that the white man could take Gandhi’s seat and enjoy a smoke. At this Gandhi refused. “It was you who seated me here, though I should have been accommodated inside. I put up with the insult. Now that you want to sit outside and smoke, you would have me sit at your feet. I will not do so, but I am prepared to sit inside.” This was too much
for the white man. He punched Gandhi in the head and then seized his arms in an attempt to pry him from his seat. The wiry Gandhi held on to the rails of the coach for dear life as the stronger opponent nearly broke Gandhi’s wrists. The other passengers screamed for the fellow to stop. He did.
Gandhi endured the man’s threats of more violence from Pardekoph to Standerton, all the while occupying the seat he refused to surrender. At Standerton he was placed in a good seat on the coach to Johannesburg. Arriving there, he was warned by an Indian merchant that in the Transvaal first- and second-class tickets were never issued to Indians traveling by train from Johannesburg to Pretoria. Gandhi, desirous of flexing his barrister’s muscles, obtained the railroad’s rules and studied them. It seems he could find no exclusion of Indians in the rules. So he sent word to the stationmaster that Mohandas K. Gandhi, barrister at law, would soon appear to obtain a first-class ticket to Pretoria. Gandhi arrived in “faultless English dress” complete with frock coat and necktie. The stationmaster sold him the ticket and Gandhi boarded the train. When the train reached Germiston, a train guard discovered Gandhi and ordered him to move to third class. Gandhi was saved by an English passenger who recognized Gandhi as a “gentleman” and convinced the guard to let him stay in first class.9
When Gandhi’s long journey ended that evening in Pretoria, he had much to think about. He had gambled with resistance in Pietermaritzburg and had lost. He had gambled with resistance again in Pardekoph and had won. But in Johannesburg the English barrister had played the insider’s game and had won with that approach, too—without getting beaten.
Maybe there was something in the law for Gandhi.
DADA ABDULLA & CO. V. TAYOB HAJEE KHAN MOHAMED & CO. AND MOOSA AMOD & CO.
Dada Abdulla & Co. v. Tayob Hajee Khan Mohamed & Co. and Moosa Amod & Co., the litigation that would occupy Gandhi’s attention for the next year, was the high-profile case of its day because of the extraordinary sums at stake. In 1890, Dada Abdulla and Company, wishing to dispose of the Transvaal branch of its business, entered into an agreement with Tayob Hajee Khan Mohamed and Company whereby all of Abdulla’s interests in the Transvaal, including its several stores, would be handed over to Mohamed in return for a promissory note. The purchase price approached £40,000, an astounding figure for the time. A dispute arose over the sale, the exact nature of which is unclear, causing Dada Abdulla and Company to bring suit in the High Court against Mohamed and Company for the balance alleged owing on the sale, £18,000. It is clear that one of the major issues concerned the question of how items in stock should be valued, with each party claiming a different date as that on which the stock should be valued. The difference in the two stock-takings ranged approximately between £4,000 and £6,000.10
The case was set for trial on February 9, 1893, before the High Court. Faced with a matter of some apparent complexity, the court eventually thought the better course was not to try the case immediately. With the consent of the parties, the case was referred to two accountants whose job as commissioners it was to examine all the account books, call witnesses as necessary, and issue a report of their findings to the court. Accordingly, their role might best be understood as that of special masters called in to develop a complicated factual picture. Because the account books they were to examine were not all kept in the English language, Gandhi, trained in the law and fluent in Gujarati, could be useful in interpreting the books for Abdulla’s counsel during this process.
The commissioners apparently having finished their work by the South African spring of 1893, a trial date was set, and the attorneys for the parties engaged in some final pretrial skirmishing. Then the parties, in a major development, agreed to abandon the courtroom and turn the case over to an arbitrator in Pretoria for resolution. When the arbitration opened on April 11, 1894, in Pretoria, little did the lawyers for the two sides realize what a bizarre turn the case would soon take.
CARRYING BAGS
Representing Dada Abdulla was Albert Weir Baker, a successful, somewhat eccentric Pretoria attorney who had first practiced in Natal before relocating to Pretoria. Gandhi called on Baker the day after his arrival in Pretoria. The veteran lawyer lost no time in cordially but frankly giving Gandhi an idea of his role. “We have no work for you here as a barrister, for we have engaged the best counsel. The case is a prolonged and complicated one, so I shall take your assistance only to the extent of getting necessary information. And of course you will make communication with my client easy for me, as I shall now ask for all the information I want from him through you.”11
So this was to be Gandhi’s role—to carry Baker’s bags. So little had Gandhi to do by way of actual work that he found the time to engage in other pursuits, one of which was to study the condition of Indian life in Pretoria and to agitate for its improvement. Gandhi began by making the acquaintance of every Indian in Pretoria, starting with his opponent in the Abdulla case, Mohamed.12 Soon thereafter Gandhi called a meeting of the Indian community in Pretoria; most of those who attended the meeting were, like Mohamed, merchants, mainly Muslim, though with a sprinkling of Hindus among them. Gandhi wasted no time in lecturing his audience on the deficiencies in the Indian community, focusing on the need for merchants to be truthful in their business dealings and for all Indians to reform their derelict sanitary habits. Gandhi attempted to rouse his countrymen by urging them to set aside their religious and ethnic differences and to unite for their mutual benefit.
This was Gandhi’s first speech in South Africa, and the contrast with his courtroom and public speaking experiences in India could not have been greater. He spoke with none of the difficulties of nervousness and even panic that had characterized his earlier efforts. His audience was sufficiently moved that regular meetings to discuss similar issues began. At least by his own account, Gandhi had made a “considerable impression” on his listeners.13
Gandhi devoted the vast bulk of his free time, however, to a detailed study of religion, reading some eighty books during his year in Pretoria. He was buffeted by calls for his conversion made by his Muslim and, especially, Christian friends. He admits to being “overwhelmed” by Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You, but his friends’ entreaties resulted only in Gandhi’s tighter embrace of Hinduism, even with the faults Gandhi saw in it. He so immersed himself in his comparative study of religion, and his services were so little in demand, that he never bothered to apply for admission to the bar while he was in Pretoria.
Gandhi also had time to make the acquaintance of a number of powerful European figures in the Transvaal. Among them was Dr. Albert Krause, the state attorney and brother of the future public prosecutor. Their common membership in the Inner Temple must have served as an immediate bond for Krause and Gandhi. Krause was embarrassed by the fact that his fellow barrister, as a nonwhite resident, needed a pass to be on the streets after 9 P.M. Rather than give him a pass, something a master would provide for a servant, Krause presented Gandhi with a special letter from himself authorizing Gandhi to be out at any and all times. Gandhi, the barrister, did not refuse this privileged treatment but accepted the letter and carried it with him always.
The letter did not protect him, however, on one of his evening walks. His course took him by the home of the Transvaal president, a residence guarded by a police officer who, without warning, pushed and kicked Gandhi off the footpath. As chance would have it, a European acquaintance of Gandhi who happened to be passing by observed the incident. He urged Gandhi to sue. Gandhi resisted the invitation and, revealing a bit of the legal philosophy beginning to take shape in him, stated he would not “go to court in respect of any personal grievance. So I do not intend to proceed against him.” At this point in his young career as a lawyer, Gandhi was even reluctant to bring a test case. He told his friends that he would rather first work through channels by seeking the assistance of the British agent in the Transvaal.
Gandhi’s superior in the Abdulla case, Baker, was not so shy and traditional a lawyer. He led a
busy and multifaceted life. His first career had been that of a carpenter. After becoming a member of the bar, Baker also established himself as a lay preacher and missionary. He was well known for his religious zeal and, as a member of the Wesleyan Church in Pretoria, he would employ drunkards as clerks in his law office for the purpose of helping them regain control over their lives. He tried on numerous occasions to convert Gandhi to Christianity. Although Gandhi politely declined his entreaties, he did join Baker for daily prayer. And it was Baker’s challenges to Gandhi’s religious thinking that spurred on Gandhi’s study of spirituality. A clue to Baker’s character and a sign of things to come lay in his willingness to lead open-air church services in Pretoria,14 services that resulted on multiple occasions in his getting arrested for breaching the peace.
AN INTRODUCTION TO DEFIANCE
Baker’s principled stubbornness was not confined to his defense of Christianity. On April 25, 1894, the parties to the Abdulla case met to engage in a hearing before the arbitrator, John Livingstone. After the parties, the reporter, the witnesses, the lawyers, and the arbitrator had taken their places, three Pretoria detectives burst into Baker’s office and immediately arrested Abdulla Hajee Adam, Dada’s partner, for breaking customs regulations. The detectives were not there just to arrest Abdulla; they announced that they also had a warrant for the seizure of certain materials belonging to him that were needed to substantiate the charges. The warrant, in Dutch, was translated by the multilingual Baker, who understood the document as authorizing only the seizure of books and nothing else. Baker identified for the detectives the materials belonging to the plaintiff and even identified Abdulla. But when one of the detectives attempted to seize Baker’s papers in the case, the attorney resisted by attempting to stuff them into his briefcase. The two engaged in a struggle over the papers. The detectives got the best of it when a second detective came to the first’s aid. The detectives then put Baker under restraints and seized everything in sight—Abdulla’s books and papers, Mohamed’s books and papers, documents of record in the case, Baker’s private papers, and even the arbitrator’s notes. The detectives then paraded the handcuffed Baker through the town to a police office, where he was charged with resisting the detectives. Baker posted bail and was released.
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