Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  For Indians, Gandhi was informed, the Transvaal was worse than Natal. Europeans there apparently thought that Indians had no sense of human decency, suffered from loathsome diseases, considered every woman as their prey, and believed that women did not have souls. ‘Four lies,’ Gandhi would soon comment (S 30).

  A Transvaal law, Act 3 of 1885, specified small locations away from the cities where Indians could own land; the law also severely restricted their right to trade. When the republic’s leading Indians tried to complain to President Kruger, he did not admit them to his house. Addressing them in his courtyard, Kruger, like many Afrikaners a devotee of the Old Testament, evidently said:

  You are the descendants of Ishmael and therefore from your very birth bound to slave for the descendants of Esau. As the descendants of Esau, we cannot give you rights placing you on an equality with ourselves. You must rest content with what rights we grant to you (S 30-1).

  Learning of ever-increasing sums that Abdullah was paying his lawyers, matched no doubt by Tyeb Sheth’s payments to his lawyers, Gandhi expressed to Abdullah a wish to ‘try, if possible, to settle the case out of court’. After all, said Gandhi, Tyeb was ‘a relative of yours’. Though ‘startled’ at the suggestion, Abdullah authorized Gandhi to explore that path, while asking him to remain wary of Tyeb’s cleverness.

  On 31 May 1893, in the southern hemisphere’s winter, Abdullah escorted Gandhi to a first-class coupe in the train to Charlestown in Natal, close to the Transvaal border, from where a stagecoach would carry him to Standerton in eastern Transvaal and, after an overnight halt, to Johannesburg, a road trip in all of about 150 miles; from Johannesburg another train would take Gandhi to Pretoria. Gandhi did his homework for the complicated journey, and collected information that might prove useful, but the journey proved more difficult than he had anticipated.

  At 9 p.m. the train stopped at Pietermaritzburg, which was on a plateau and colder than Durban. A passenger entered Gandhi’s coupe, looked him ‘up and down’, left, and returned with one or two railway officials. Another official then arrived and ordered Gandhi to go to the van compartment.

  ‘But I have a first class ticket,’ said Gandhi.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I tell you, you must go to the van compartment.’

  ‘I tell you, I was permitted to travel in this compartment at Durban, and I insist on going on in it.’

  ‘No you won’t.’

  ‘I refuse to move.’

  A police constable was called, and Gandhi was pushed out. So was his luggage. The train steamed away. Gandhi walked to a dark waiting room, leaving the luggage where it was. It was bitterly cold but Gandhi’s overcoat was inside his luggage. Unwilling to invite another insult, Gandhi did not ask anyone about it, and shivered through the black night. At one point a man entered the room and ‘possibly wanted to talk’ but Gandhi was ‘in no mood’ for that. A storm raged inside him, and he also felt afraid of the stranger (A 97-8)3.

  Returning to India entered his mind but was rejected as a cowardly option. He would stay and fight, and for more than his personal rights, for a shapeless spectre had assaulted a belief deep inside of him—the insight, nurtured from childhood and confirmed by his three years in England, that all human beings, creations of the same God, were of equal value.

  When the Ollivant incident occurred in Rajkot, Gandhi had not quite known how to divide the blame between Ollivant and himself. Now, in Pietermaritzburg, he had committed no impropriety, yet he had been tossed out by a monster, not the man who threw him off the train, but a spirit in which the arrogance of power joined the arrogance of race.

  Emerging from the depths of his soul, young Gandhi’s decision to stay and fight was both political and spiritual. The two impulses had fused and spoken to him as one. If he had moved as ordered, he would have accepted that souls covered by brown and black skins were of lower value than the souls of white folk. But he knew that all souls had equal value.

  Yes, even Ollivant’s soul, and the soul of the man who had tossed him off the train, carried the worth of Gandhi’s soul; but, by God, his own soul was not cheaper.

  He did not realize it at once, but the dilemma of his life-goal, whether it should be political or spiritual, had been resolved. The humiliation was a break for him, for he had found a task ‘in which his will to God and his will to politics could flow together as one force’.4

  In that unlit waiting room, Gandhi also seems to have decided to set aside any interest in personal redress. It was risky, Mehta had warned in Rajkot, to proceed against white officers. In Pietermaritzburg Gandhi figured it would be a waste of energy and time, for these were now needed to fight the shapeless monster that had violated his virgin faith (A97).

  In the morning (1 June) he sent telegrams narrating what had happened to Abdullah and to the general manager of the railway. Abdullah met the manager and also wired Indian merchants at every halt on the way to Pretoria, asking them to help Gandhi.

  That night the Charlestown train stopping at Pietermaritzburg offered Gandhi a reserved berth in the first class. On the morning of 2 June he reached Charlestown, where however he was told that his ticket for the stagecoach (run by George Heys & Co.5) was no longer valid: ‘You should have come yesterday.’ But Gandhi pointed out the rules, which he knew were in his favour.

  Though allowing him to board the coach, the conductor or ‘leader’, as he was called, asked Gandhi to sit away from the other passengers, who were all accommodated in an enclosed carriage. The ‘leader’ offered Gandhi his own seat, attached to one side of the driver’s box. (A Khoi helper sat in a similar seat on the other side of the driver.)

  Though aware that he was being humiliated, Gandhi pocketed the insult. He had lost twenty-four hours already and there was no assurance that things would improve if he waited another day. As the vehicle chugged along in the Transvaal country, the ‘leader’ sat inside the coach, along with the other passengers, while Gandhi sat in the conductor’s outer seat.

  However, at a stop in Pardekoph, reached at about 3 p.m., the ‘leader’ decided that for the next leg he would use his own seat, where he could comfortably smoke. He spread ‘a piece of dirty sack-cloth’ on the footboard and, addressing Gandhi, said: ‘Sami, you sit on this. I want to sit near the driver.’ This was too much, and Gandhi replied:

  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.

  Enraged, the ‘leader’ thrashed Gandhi around his ears and, seizing his arm, tried to force him down. Gandhi ‘clung to the brass rails of the coachbox and was determined to keep [his] hold even at the risk of breaking [his] wrist-bones’. After a while some of the passengers spoke up for Gandhi: ‘Man, let him alone. Don’t beat him. He is right. If he can’t stay there, let him come and sit with us.’

  ‘No fear,’ the ‘leader’ cried. But he let go of Gandhi’s arm, swore some more at Gandhi, asked the Khoi servant to sit on the footboard, took the seat the servant vacated, and gave the whistle for starting. As the coach rattled away, Gandhi, his heart beating fast, wondered whether he would reach his destination alive, while from time to time the ‘leader’ shook his finger at Gandhi and growled threats of what he would do ‘once we get to Standerton’.

  Thanks to messages from Abdullah, several Indians were waiting for Gandhi at Standerton, and a Muslim businessman called Isa Sheth accommodated him for the night. Gandhi sought (in writing) an assurance from the coach company that the problems he had faced would not be repeated on the leg to Johannesburg, but he made no attempt to proceed against the man who had assaulted him. The assurance was given.

  On the evening of 3 June, the coach carrying Gandhi in ‘a good seat’ reached Johannesburg. Abdullah’s friends had been alerted here as well, but the man sent to meet Gandhi’s coach missed him. Gandhi took a cab to the Grand National Hotel (‘I knew the names of
several hotels,’ Gandhi writes in the Autobiography) and asked the manager for a room.

  After being ‘eyed for a moment’, Gandhi was told that the hotel had no space. He went next to the firm of Muhammad Kassim Kamruddin (he was carrying the address), where Abdul Ghani Sheth had ‘a hearty laugh’ over Gandhi’s expectation of a room at the Grand National. Abdul Ghani went on to speak, as Isa Sheth had done in Standerton, of the insults borne by Indians in South Africa.

  As for the train journey to Pretoria that lay ahead, Abdul Ghani assured Gandhi that he would have to travel third class. First-class or second-class tickets were never issued to Indians in the Transvaal. Rules existed to that effect, said Abdul Ghani. Gandhi replied that he would make an attempt to go first class, failing which he would take a cab for the thirty-seven-mile journey.

  The attempt was executed with finesse. At the station in Johannesburg, Gandhi left a note for the stationmaster in which he identified himself as a barrister, always travelling first, who needed to reach Pretoria at the earliest. Since there was no time for receiving a written response (added Gandhi), he would present himself at the station and hear the reply the next day. The plan was to impress the stationmaster with his appearance.

  In the morning Gandhi ‘went to the station in a frock-coat and necktie, placed a sovereign on the counter, and asked for a first-class ticket’. He got it (from a friendly stationmaster who explained that he was a Hollander and not a Transvaaler) but only after Gandhi had given his word that he would not sue the railway if problems arose on the way to Pretoria.

  Later that day, a surprised Ghani saw Gandhi enter a first-class carriage at Johannesburg station but warned him of likely trouble ahead. Sure enough, at Germiston the guard asked Gandhi to move to third class. Gandhi showed him his first-class ticket. When the guard repeated his instruction, the only other passenger in the compartment, an Englishman, said, ‘Don’t you see he has a first-class ticket? I don’t mind in the least his travelling with me.’ Muttering, ‘If you wish to travel with a coolie, what do I care?’ the guard went away.

  At eight in the evening of Sunday 4 June the train reached Pretoria. The station was quite dark, and nobody was there to meet him. (Later Gandhi learnt that Sunday evening was not a good time for Albert Baker, Abdullah’s lawyer in Pretoria.) After waiting for other passengers to make their exit, Gandhi surrendered his ticket at the gate and (afraid of being insulted again) cautiously asked if the ticket-collector could suggest a small hotel for the night. (If he could not, Gandhi was ready to spend the night at the station.)

  The ticket-collector was courteous but at a loss. However, an African-American ‘who was standing nearby’ took matters in hand and offered to take Gandhi to Johnston’s Hotel. ‘I know Mr Johnston very well. I think he will accept you,’ the unnamed African-American said. Johnston, also an American, accepted Gandhi but with the stipulation that this guest would have meals in his room. If he went to the dining room, other guests ‘might be offended and even go away’.

  Gandhi agreed to the condition and was shown into his room, where he was awaiting his dinner when Johnston appeared and invited Gandhi to the dining room. His guests, he said, had no objection to Gandhi eating there. Thanking Johnston, Gandhi ‘went to the dining room and had a hearty dinner’ (A 99-104).

  We may pause to assess Gandhi after his twelve days thus far in South Africa. Quickly taking in the world around him, he also appears to be in control. Physically shaken but mentally and morally firm, he has reacted to ejection, assault, and rejection—needles of South Africa’s racism—with dignified defiance and prudence, and also by recording the wrongs in letters and telegrams. (His interest in writing has not left him.)

  One sign of his control is the second string in his bow: in Johannesburg he retained the option of the Kamruddin firm even as he went first to the Grand National, and of the coach to Pretoria even as he sought the first-class ticket; and in Pretoria he had settled on the station as a fallback space for a night.

  Secondly, this twenty-three-year-old has evoked not just the trust but also the respect and affection of a man like Abdullah, who takes pains for Gandhi’s safety and comfort. In young Gandhi, Abdullah and his friends seem to have found the sort of person they have hoped for. One of his qualities, not yet fully noticed by Abdullah, is a grasp of the power of a symbolic act, revealed at Johannesburg station when a Gandhi conspicuous in a frock-coat and tie dramatically placed a sovereign on the counter.

  Thirdly, and this is related to the second point, there is a hint of the newcomer quickly becoming known and marked, among fellow-Indians and also among the whites of South Africa.

  Fourthly, while he grasps opportunities (the London idea, the invitation to South Africa) swiftly, he is able also to clear obstacles (opposition to the London trip, assaults in South Africa). And whether facing a window or a wall, he maximizes his response by doing his homework and enlisting allies. True, Ollivant’s blow stymied him. But he drew lessons.

  Finally, he seems to have found both purpose and confidence: vulnerable Indians in South Africa need his help, and maybe he can help. It may have also occurred to him that the same might be true one day of Indians in India.

  Christianity. On the morning of 5 June Gandhi met Albert Baker in his office and found that Abdullah’s attorney, thirteen years older than him and a second-generation South African, was above all a warm-hearted and committed Christian. Baker arranged lodgings for Gandhi, at thirty-five shillings a week, with ‘a poor woman’, the wife of a baker. She was willing to cook vegetarian food, and Gandhi soon ‘made himself quite at home with the family’, which was free of prejudice.

  After briefly discussing with Gandhi the case against Tyeb, for which, said Baker, ‘we have engaged the best counsel’, and expressing gladness that Gandhi would make communication with Abdullah ‘easy for me’, Baker asked Gandhi, ‘during the very first interview’, about his religious views. Gandhi answered that he was a Hindu by birth but unclear about where he stood and what he believed, and keen to make a careful study of Hinduism and other religions.

  To help Gandhi come to a decision, Baker invited him, ‘from tomorrow’, to a daily prayer of about five minutes during the lunch hour. Gandhi agreed to do this, and over the next months may have attended over a hundred of these five-minute prayer sessions when participants, including Gandhi, knelt down while one or more of them petitioned either for a peaceful day or for a special happening or, at times, for God to open and speak to Gandhi’s heart.

  On the first night in his Pretoria home, ‘absorbed in deep thought’ as he lay on his bed, Gandhi asked himself questions that are recalled in the Autobiography. Why was Baker interested in him? How far should he go in studying Christianity? Should he not study Hinduism just as deeply? After concluding that he should ‘dispassionately’ study all that Baker and his friends supplied but not think of ‘embracing another religion before I had fully understood my own’, he fell asleep, he writes (A 105). The decision became a compass for the uncertain religious voyage that lay ahead.

  Baker’s colleagues in his daily prayers, coming from different Christian backgrounds but united in a missionary purpose, included Michael Coates, an England-born Quaker, and two ladies who had learnt the Zulu language, Clara Harris and Georgina Gabb, who would later serve in Swaziland. Living in the same house, Misses Harris and Gabb asked Gandhi to join them for tea on Sundays, when Coates, too, was often present.

  Older than him by about seven years, Coates became one of Gandhi’s closest friends in Pretoria, in some ways taking the place that Josiah Oldfield had occupied in London. Coates plied Gandhi with one religious book after another until Gandhi’s ‘shelf was filled with them’, read a weekly religious diary that Gandhi wrote, took Gandhi to church services, and had long walks and talks with him.

  Gandhi told Coates that he liked and agreed with some things he was given to read, but not others, and that he had difficulty accepting Jesus as God’s only incarnation or the only mediator between
God and man. However, Coates and Baker did not weaken either in their warmth toward Gandhi or in their prayer, and sometimes made a more direct effort for his enlightenment. One day Coates told Gandhi that a rational man like him should not be wearing a necklace of tulsi beads. ‘This superstition does not become you. Come, let me break the necklace.’

  ‘No, you will not,’ Gandhi replied. ‘It is a sacred gift from my mother.’ Asked by Coates whether he believed that the necklace had spiritual powers, Gandhi answered that he did not think so, and added that he was unlikely to replace the necklace when it wore off. But it was ‘put round my neck out of love’ and he would not break it (A 107-8).

  A Plymouth Brother introduced by Coates told Gandhi that human attempts at improvement and atonement were futile. The burden of sin could only be thrown at Jesus, whose death at the cross took care of believers’ sins. The Brother predicted a life of restlessness if Gandhi strove to conquer sin by his own effort. According to Gandhi, who answered that in that case he would be ‘content to be restless’, this Brother ‘knowingly committed transgressions’ in the faith that Christ would redeem him and other believing sinners.

  This version of redemption did not appeal to Gandhi, who was aware that other Christians did not believe in it either. As he saw it, Coates and Misses Harris and Gabb acknowledged the value of self-purification efforts, and that Coates himself ‘walked in the fear of God’ and had a ‘pure heart’ (A 108).

  Gandhi was once walking by himself on a sidewalk close to the modest home of Paul Kruger, the Transvaal President, a sidewalk he had frequently used before, when, without ‘the slightest warning’ or prior word, a guard on duty ‘pushed and kicked’ Gandhi ‘into the street’.