The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (The Robert Payne Library)

by Robert Payne

  The story was usually told as an illustration of the boy’s devotion to truth, his refusal under any circumstances to tell a lie. This is not quite fair to Mohandas, who was one of the jubilant plotters and thoroughly enjoyed committing mischief. While the story showed that he loved truth, it also showed that he was not averse to stealing.

  Many stories were told about his childhood, but not all of them have the ring of authenticity. Because he became famous for his practice of nonviolence, the people who had known him in his childhood tended to remember him as a tireless exponent of non-violence from the cradle. We are told that he always resolutely refused to return the blow when someone struck him, that he intensely disliked boisterous sports, and that even as a child he was regarded as an impartial judge and was always invited to be the umpire when the children were playing games. We are told that his judgments were exquisitely fair and never disputed. Long passages of conversation with his adoring mother have been handed down, showing that he had already adopted a code of non-violence when he was four or five. We do not have to believe these stories. There is a good deal of evidence that he was often boisterous, and if he rarely engaged in fisticuffs it was because he was undersized compared with boys of his own age, and it was probably for the same reason that he was chosen to act as umpire in their games. Indian children have a highly developed and inbred sense of decorum, and they would think twice before striking him even in fun. He was, after all, the favorite son of the dewan, a man of very great importance in the town.

  With his large dark eyes, thick nose and jug ears, the neck so thin that it was like a stalk supporting the head, his legs small and ungainly, he was something of an oddity. He had a mop of springing black hair which refused to lie smoothly on his skull, and his lips were unusually thick. He had thin arms and a surprisingly large chest, and it seemed impossible for him to walk at a leisurely pace, for he was always darting about, halfrunning, half-loping. His movements were quick and decisive; it was as though at a very early age he knew exactly what he was doing at every moment of his life. Like all ugly children he was somewhat introverted, but he possessed a weapon which dispelled his ugliness. Like his mother he possessed an enchanting smile.

  He was very close to his mother, though he sometimes laughed at her for being so punctilious in her religious duties. She would go on a fast for the slightest reason, or for no reason at all. She went to the temple every day, said prayers at every meal, and sometimes vowed to go without food unless the sun came out. Mohandas and his brothers and sister would run out of the dark house to see whether the sun was shining through the clouds and report to her. Occasionally she would run out herself to see whether the sun was shining, and if it was still hidden, she would say: “It does not matter. God does not want me to eat today.” Then she would return cheerfully to her household duties.

  In her eyes the sun was Vishnu, who spoke to her every day by signs and portents, blessing her on good days and rebuking her on bad days. Her devotions were intensely personal and continued throughout the day, but her ecstatic belief in the presence of the gods did not prevent her from being a good housewife in a large household, for it included not only her husband and her children but her old mother-in-law, many relatives, dependents and servants. Every day meals were set for about twenty people. She was always busy and had little time for herself.

  She was not a beautiful woman, but she had a quiet comeliness and a vivid presence. It was remembered that she dressed very simply, and her jewelry consisted of a gold nose-ring, which she wore only on important occasions, gold-plated bracelets and the heavy silver anklets which Indian women have worn from time immemorial. Round her neck she wore the sacred tulasi beads. She smiled often, and walked gracefully.

  In later years the son would say that he derived most of his character from his mother, but this was to underestimate the influence of the father. A surviving photograph of Karamchand shows a sensitive face with regular features, a straight nose, small eyes, a firm and slightly jutting chin, and a heavy handlebar mustache. He gazes out of the photograph with an air of quiet authority, and he was clearly a man who pondered very carefully before coming to decisions. He had not the least resemblance to his youngest son, who evidently took after his mother. There must have been some sternness in the father, for Mohandas would say later: “I did not talk to him much. I was afraid to speak.” But he had not the slightest fear of his mother, who was indulgent to excess, permitted him to go his own wayward way, and rarely found any reason to punish him.

  By the age of seven the boy was already showing the traits of character which would remain for the rest of his life. He had, like his father, an air of quiet authority and independence; he enjoyed the companionship of women; he was impudent and charming. He had a passion for clean clothes, and this too remained with him, so that he would sometimes express annoyance if he found a stain on them. As a child, washing his clothes at a well, he would always scrub them vigorously in competition with other boys, and his were always the cleanest. He also had a passion for plants, which he collected and kept in pots on the roof of the house, running up and down the stairs to see that they were well watered; and this miniature hanging garden was his fondest possession. Later, at Rajkot, he was given a small plot inside the compound of the house where he planted saplings, and he enjoyed advising his friends and companions on the care of plants. All plants interested him, and when he presided over an ashram he spent a good part of the day superintending the work in the fields. He liked animals, and he had an odd habit of tweaking their ears; this, too, persisted, and he would tweak the ears of his friends and followers.

  As with most Indian children of the time, he had little formal schooling until he was six or seven. “My intellect must have been sluggish and my memory raw,” he complained when writing of himself at the age of six. There was a private school nearby kept by a lame scholar, who taught children how to write the letters of the Gujarati alphabet in the dust on the floor, and it is possible that he attended the school; if so, the lame scholar taught him badly, for he never learned to form his letters well. He learned the alphabet and the multiplication table, but what he remembered most vividly of those early days was the long sing-song recital of the family’s genealogical tree, with all its branches and leaves until every one of his cousins to the fourth or fifth degree was accounted for. Seventy years later he could still remember the genealogical tree he had learned in his childhood because it was repeated so often.

  Toward the end of 1876, when he was seven years old, his enchanted childhood at Porbandar came to an end. About this time Karamchand Gandhi was appointed dewan of Rajkot State with full powers, and given an official residence near the palace. Then after two years’ absence he returned to Porbandar, collected his family, and brought them to live with him in a large and spacious house with high walls, courtyards, gardens, and an imposing gateway. Rajkot was a small dusty town lying in the arms of two small streams, ugly and without charm. There was no sea pounding against snow-white walls, no flashing of silvery light in the air. Inland, in a strange town, the hard years of schooling began.

  Schoolboy

  OF HIS SCHOOLDAYS Gandhi said that they were the most miserable years of his life and that he was never more than a mediocre student. He complained that he had no aptitude for lessons and rarely appreciated his teachers, especially those who taught in English, a language he learned with difficulty. He felt he had no gift for learning and might have done better if he had never been to school.

  Though some of his school records are lost, enough remain to give a fairly complete account of his studies over a period of ten years. He was not a mediocre student, but a wildly erratic one, sometimes very good and sometimes inexplicably bad. He gained two small scholarships or bursaries, did well in the subjects he liked, mastered English, obtained good marks in Sanskrit, did well in arithmetic, and once stood fourth in his class. He had no fondness for gymnastics, but was remembered as a dashing cricketer. His attendance at school lef
t much to be desired; he was often ill, and his schooldays were interrupted by family crises. He married while he was still a schoolboy and the upheaval caused by his marriage was clearly indicated in his marks.

  The earliest records to survive show that he entered the Taluka School at Rajkot on January 21, 1879. He was about two months late, and his attendance record shows that he missed 110 days in the school year of 238 days. These absences were probably due to illness, for during this year we find his father writing to the Rajah of Wankaner, explaining that he could not leave the house because five or six persons in his family were laid up with fever and his youngest son had a high temperature. Although he missed nearly half his schooling that year he did reasonably well, for his final marks were 20/50 for arithmetic, 20/50 for Gujarati, 24/50 for dictation, and 18/50 for history and geography. He was allowed to pass into the next class, and did considerably better the following year, when he missed only thirty days. His arithmetic and dictation improved, but his Gujarati and geography remained weak. His marks were 70/100 for arithmetic, 37/100 for Gujarati, 70/100 for dictation, and 37/100 for history and geography. He was forty-seventh in his class in his first year, and twenty-first in his class during the second year.

  This was not a brilliant beginning, but the primary school could not afford the luxury of good teachers, who were usually graduates from the local teachers’ training college, young, inexperienced and underpaid. His teacher during the first year drew a monthly salary of eight rupees. The low salary was probably due to the fact that he did not have the teachers’ training college certificate. In the second year his teacher, Chatrabhuj Bapuji, who was barely twenty-three, drew a salary of fifteen rupees since he possessed the certificate. Teaching was largely by rote, and writing was done on slates. Ten hours were given to arithmetic, Gujarati and dictation each week, and only three or four hours to geography, which was taught with the help of a large-scale map of India. The boys had to learn the physical conformations, river systems, watersheds, and frontiers of India. No breath of any foreign country entered the classroom.

  He seems to have enjoyed his two years in the primary school, for we hear that he was always punctual and complained if breakfast was late “because it will prevent me from going on with my studies.” The school was only five minutes away, and if it was raining he would make the journey in his father’s carriage. He made some friends among his schoolmates, but after school hours he would usually run straight home to take care of his garden or to continue his studies in a small airy room above the main gate of the house. His father had given him this small room for his own use, realizing how much he cherished his independence. In later years he said he remembered nothing about the school except that the other boys were fond of calling the teachers names behind their backs, but in fact he was showing signs of progress, working hard on the subjects he liked, and adapting himself successfully to the dull world of scholarship.

  Meanwhile the ceremonial life continued with festivals and processions and visits to the temples. His mother still fasted when the sun was hidden behind clouds, and his father was still immersed in affairs of state. The boy was studying so hard that he had little time for reading books outside the school curriculum, but a book called Shravana Pitribakhti (Shravana’s Love for His Father), found in his father’s library, made a deep impression. It was a drama describing how the youthful hero Shravana went on a pilgrimage, carrying his blind parents in baskets which hung from a yoke across his shoulders. Finally, after many adventures, the hero went to fetch water from a river, and he was killed by the king, who mistook the sound of the water filling the pitcher for the sound of an elephant drinking. The bereaved and helpless parents lamented over his dead body. Some time later Mohandas saw some itinerant showmen performing the play with slides in a stereopticon to the accompaniment of musical instruments. He was especially enthralled by the song of the lamenting parents, which he learned to sing while playing on a concertina. In the play he found confirmation for his absolute devotion to his parents. He would live for them and die for them, and nothing would be permitted to come between him and them.

  After two years in the primary school he entered the Kathiawar High School in Rajkot. The entrance examination took place a few days after his eleventh birthday. He scored creditably, obtaining 257 marks out of 400, ranking ninth among sixty-nine candidates. He lost marks for bad handwriting. All his life he would have this formless, ugly handwriting, and though he often complained, there was nothing he could ever do about it. The solution was to employ secretaries whose handwriting was as neat and elegant as his own was unruly and unshaped. He wrote vigorously, the letters sprawling across the page, sloping according to his whims, and often illegible. It was like the handwriting of an unschooled peasant.

  He spent seven years at the Kathiawar High School and enjoyed very few of them. It was a new school, built to resemble a Tudor fortress, heavily endowed by local rajahs and princes, and provided, unlike the primary school, with benches and desks for the pupils and raised platforms for the teachers. What especially disturbed him was that so many of the classes were taught in English by Indians who obviously did not know it very well, and he disliked both the sounds and the shapes of the words. There came a time when he could write and speak English with precision and force and perfect familiarity, but this time was long in coming. Fifty years later he could still rage against those years when he struggled helplessly with a language which seemed to become more difficult the more he groped with it. During his first year at the high school he did well in arithmetic and Gujarati, but secured no marks at all in geography or English spelling. He was at the bottom of his class. The teachers were not particularly alarmed, for in his final report his conduct was recorded as “very good.”

  During his first year in high school there occurred an incident which he remembered vividly. An Englishman who was the local inspector of education attended the examination and set the pupils five words as a spelling exercise. One of the words was “kettle” and Mohandas misspelled it. The teacher was standing near, and he gave the boy a light kick and made quick signs that he should copy the word as it was spelled on the slate of the boy sitting next to him. Mohandas was confused and disturbed. “It was beyond me to see that he wanted me to copy the spelling from my neighbors slate,” he wrote in his autobiography, “for I had thought the teacher was there to supervise us against copying.” Some time later the teacher told him he had been stupid, and Mohandas answered quite sensibly that he saw no reason to copy someone else’s work. He felt that the teacher was wrong, an impression which was confirmed when he discovered other faults in him. Nevertheless he retained a high regard for his teacher, for he had been brought up to respect people in authority, who were wiser and older than he was.

  It was a time when he was beginning to think seriously about morality and codes of conduct. He was twelve, in his second year at the high school, when he began to question the accepted codes of the Indian caste system. A scavenger called Uka, who belonged to the lowest caste, was employed in the house to clean out the latrines. If anyone of a superior caste accidentally touched the scavenger, then he must at once purify himself by performing his ablutions. Mohandas had a great fondness for Uka and could see no reason why he should be regarded as an inferior. Very respectfully he suggested to his parents that they were wrong to regard the scavenger in this way; an accidental touch could not be a sin and Uka was a man like other men. His mother reminded him that it was not necessary to perform one’s ablutions after touching a scavenger; instead, one could touch a Muslim, thus transferring the pollution to someone who was free of the taboos of the Hindu religion.

  Smoking, too, Mohandas regarded as being no sin, and during this period he became, with his young cousin, an enthusiastic smoker, eagerly collecting the cigarette butts of an uncle. When the butts ran out, they rolled up dried vegetable leaves and smoked them. Sometimes he stole the servants’ pocket money and bought real cigarettes, and the boys would then hide somewher
e and smoke contentedly. Mohandas said later that he had a passionate delight in the smell of cigarette smoke. As the days passed, and more and more money was stolen from the servants, both boys were overcome by a sense of guilt. They dared not confess the crime and they dared not steal any more money. There remained only one way out: they would commit suicide. First, they went into the jungle in search of poisonous dhatura seeds, then they visited the temple and performed all the offices proper for intending suicides before finding a quiet place where they could put an end to their lives. They ate some of the small seeds and debated what they should do next, afraid that the seeds would not take effect. What then? And was it really necessary to commit suicide? They debated the matter very seriously and finally decided to make some propitiatory offerings in the temple, and then they went home.

  Mohandas had an excellent reason for staying alive: he was about to get married at the age of thirteen to the girl who had been chosen for him.

  The girl’s name was Kasturbai Makanji, and she was the daughter of Seth Gokaldas Makanji, a merchant dealing in cloth, grain and cotton, living only a few doors away from their house in Porbandar. She was the same age as her future husband, and although her precise birthday has not been recorded it is known that there was only a difference of a few days. Like Mohandas she was small for her age. She had no schooling and she had spent all her life in the large, well-furnished and beautifully decorated house of her father.

  Since weddings are always expensive in India and families are often ruined by them, it was decided that the costs could be reduced by holding three marriages simultaneously. Mohandas’s eldest brother was already married, but Karsandas, who was two years older, remained unmarried, and so was one of his cousins. The wedding, which took place in Porbandar, was celebrated with great pomp. Preparations had been going on for many months; new clothes and new jewels were bought; costly presents were exchanged between the families, astrologers were consulted, and elaborate feasts were arranged far in advance. Musicians were engaged, servants were trained, horses and carriages were hired. From a would-be suicide in love with death Mohandas was transformed into an eager bridegroom surrounded by all the care and comfort that could be provided by an admiring family. All his life he had been treated like a young prince; now, during a week of ceremonies, he would be treated like a young king.