by Robert Payne
There was no escape from those Kathiawari members of the Modh Bania caste, who served notice to him that he must appear before a court of elders. The Seth, or headman, a distant relative and close friend of his father, presided over the court. Mohandas was told that voyages abroad were forbidden by his religion and that it was not possible for anyone to live abroad without compromising his religious principles. It would be necessary for him to eat meat and drink wine in the company of Englishmen. Mohandas replied that he had taken a solemn vow of abstinence, and was in no danger of committing sin.
“Will you disregard the orders of the caste?” the Seth thundered, and when Mohandas said that the court had no right to interfere, the Seth pronounced summary judgment: “This boy shall be treated as an outcast from today. Whoever helps him or goes to see him off at the dock shall be punishable with a fine of one rupee four annas.”
This was a sentence of excommunication as final and irrevocable as a sentence of excommunication pronounced by the Pope. Mohandas wrote later that the Seth’s outburst left him unmoved, but there is some evidence that he was profoundly disturbed and alarmed by it. Khushalbhai Makanji was even more alarmed, for he refused to part with the money entrusted to him, fearing that he too would fall under a ban of excommunication. Mohandas wrote to his brother, explaining the circumstances and urging him to authorize Khushalbhai to give him the money. Laxmidas gave his authorization, but the brother-in-law still refused to part with the money. There seemed to be no way out of the impasse until Mohandas had the brilliant idea of borrowing the money from a friend who could then recover it from the brother-in-law; in this way no guilt would fall on anyone, for Khushalbhai could claim truthfully that he gave no money to Mohandas, while Mohandas could claim just as truthfully that no one of his own caste had helped him. With these somewhat legalistic evasions Mohandas was able to buy his passage and a suit of clothes. A lawyer from Junagadh, a middle-aged man called Tryambakrai Mazmudar, had reserved passage for London on the S.S. Clyde, and he suggested that Mohandas should take the same ship and even share a cabin with him. This was an invitation not to be missed, for Mohandas had feared the loneliness of a long sea-voyage. The lawyer was a kindly, sensible man, but he startled Mohandas on the first night at sea by speaking to him as though they were old acquaintances, with a familiarity puzzling to a boy accustomed to being reverential toward his elders.
It was a strange, dreamlike journey into unknown continents and unsuspected experiences. The boy wrapped himself in a cocoon of silence, tremblingly defensive, speaking to no one except his newfound friend, deliberately avoiding the other passengers, never daring to enter the diningroom in case he should be contaminated by the sight of people eating meat, and living on the food he had brought with him. Everything about the ship puzzled him, and he took refuge from his loneliness by contemplating the sea at night, wondering whether the starlight reflected on the smooth sea was really starlight: perhaps someone had scattered diamonds, or perhaps they were fireflies. So he wrote in his journal, that painfully precise and laborious journal in which he recorded with a sense of bewilderment and wonder his first encounter with an English water-closet, the strange and unpredictable habits of the English, and the curious fact that sometimes, because the ship was sailing through a glassy sea, there was an illusion of motionlessness.
The journal is revealing because he is writing for himself alone, committing his fears and exaltations to the paper without any thought of being read by others. He marveled at the dexterity of the sailors, the number of musical instruments on the ship, the continual card-playing. After a few days Mr. Mazmudar was able to convince a friendly servant to cook some meals in the proper Indian fashion for Mohandas, who was properly grateful. All the time he was counting his pennies, frightened at the thought of any extra expense; and when the ship anchored at Aden and he saw the boys rowing out to dive into the clear blue water for the pennies the European flung into the sea, Mohandas felt a pang of envy. If only, like these Adenese boys, he had been trained as a diver! If only he could prowl along the sea-bed in search of pennies! So he thought until he learned from a boatman that the boys sometimes lost their arms or legs to the marauding sharks, and then he decided against envying them. He spent an hour driving around Aden with Mr. Mazmudar in a carriage, admiring the cantonment and looking out for green grass and green trees, but there were none. He noted regretfully in his diary that the carriage ride had cost him one rupee.
The journey through the Suez Canal astonished, delighted, and terrified him. The heat tormented him, and he would rush out of his cabin to catch the stray breezes that sometimes came over the desert. He was fascinated by the powerful searchlight on the ship’s bow, and he could not express his admiration for the builders of the canal except in halting sentences. “The construction of the Suez Canal I am not able to understand,” he wrote. “It is indeed marvellous. I cannot think of the genius of the man who invented it. I don’t know how he would have done it. It is quite right to say that he has competed with nature.” He writes in the style of a schoolboy’s essay, but he cannot conceal his helpless bewilderment and uneasiness. So many things were happening in the journey which were unexpected, beyond anything he had ever dreamed or thought of. At Port Said he was amazed to learn that what he thought was a theater was merely a coffee-house, and he was still more dismayed when, visiting the coffee-house and listening to the music which was advertised as being free, he was confronted by a woman who demanded payment, so that he was compelled to give her six pennies. “Port Said,” he commented, “is nothing but a seat of luxury.”
He was beginning to open out and even to talk tentatively to some of the English passengers. A certain Mr. Jeffreys, noting that he never dared to come to the table, implored him to eat like all the other passengers, but he refused; and when Mr. Jeffreys announced that there would be cold weather after Brindisi, and in fact the weather remained warm, Mohandas was pleased to learn that even an Englishman could be wrong. When he went ashore at Brindisi an enterprising pimp attempted to lead him to a prostitute. His account of his meeting with the pimp is written in an oddly hortatory manner, and he has evidently pondered with great care exactly how to avoid such encounters in future. He wrote:
When you land at Brindisi, a man would come and ask you, in case you are a black man: “Sir, there is a beautiful girl of 14, follow me, Sir, and I will take you there, the charge is not high, Sir.” You are at once puzzled. But be calm and answer boldly that you don’t want her and tell the man to go away and thereby you will be safe. If you are in any difficulty at once refer to a policeman just near you, or at once enter a large building which you will surely see. But before you enter it, read the name on the building and make sure that it is open to all. This you will be able to make out at once. Tell the porter that you are in a difficulty, and he will at once show you what you should do. If you are bold enough, ask the porter to take you to the Chief Officer and you will refer the matter to him. By a large building I meant that it must be belonging to Thos. Cook or Henry King or some other such agents. They will take care of you. Don’t be miserly at this time. Pay the porter something.
In this way, very cautiously, entrusting himself to authority and maintaining a judicious calm, Mohandas showed that it was perfectly possible to avoid the temptations of the devil. The policemen, the porter, the chief officer, and the large building with the name read very carefully to ensure its respectability, all, in that unhappy parable, seem to be disguises of the same thing. Safety lay in uniformed authority; there could be no other safety. Authority was understanding and perceptive, devoted to the welfare of the unprotected; and the more authorities there were, the better for the lonely wanderer. Mohandas was concerned that there should be protective rings of authority around him. It seems not to have occurred to him that there were simpler ways to avoid the importunities of a pimp—he could, for example, have run back to the ship.
His description of his encounter with the pimp has some importance as an indic
ation of his attitude to authority, an attitude bred into him by his religion, his upbringing, his private beliefs and his father’s position in society. For the greater part of his life he would continue to show the utmost respect for authority. For fifty years he showed his enduring respect for the duly constituted authority of the British Raj, turning defiantly against it only in 1919 after the Amritsar massacre. And when at last India was free and ruled by a government which consisted largely of his appointees, he showed it the same profound respect which he had shown earlier to the Viceroys. Like many people whose lives have been dominated by a powerful father, he was inclined to look favorably on authority and not to question its purposes.
Meanwhile, as the ship made its leisurely progress through the Mediterranean, he was still being goaded by friendly Englishmen to act like a pucka saheb by eating meat and drinking liquor. He was told that the cold weather in the western Mediterranean and the still colder weather in the Bay of Biscay were fatal to people who were not protected from the elements by animal flesh and wine. He regarded their prognostications very seriously, kept a sharp eye on the weather, and concluded that it would be better to die than to break the oath he had given to his mother and to the Jain priest. It was still sunny when the ship reached Malta. There was the usual discouraging adventure with the boatman taking him to shore, who demanded an outrageous fee. Mohandas carefully took the number of the boat, but nothing came of his attempts to punish the rogue. He was impressed with the Cathedral of St. John, and went down into the crypt to see “some skeletons of eminent persons” and some very old paintings. “They were not really paintings but embroidered in, but a stranger could not perceive it was embroidered work unless told by somebody.” They were the tapestries of Peter Paul Rubens depicting the life of Christ, the first he had ever seen, the first works of European art he had ever looked upon. He went on to enjoy the armor and the shining helmets in the Armoury Hall, and he thought the carriage of Napoleon Buonaparte was “very beautiful.” But what he really enjoyed after so much expensive wandering through the city was a quiet pool where red and gold fish were swimming. There was something else which impressed him deeply. He noted that the streets were paved on both sides, and this evidently puzzled him, for he noticed the same phenomenon when he came to Gibraltar.
Having been warned by Mr. Jeffreys and many other Englishmen that he must choose between meat and death when the weather grew cold, he was agreeably surprised to find that he was still alive when the ship sailed down the English Channel. He had seen nothing of Plymouth, for it was shrouded in fog when the ship anchored in the Sound, and he saw little of the English coastline. Fog and bitter cold accompanied them to Tilbury docks. At four o’clock in the afternoon of October 28, 1888, he arrived on the boat-train at Victoria Station. It was observed that he was wearing the white flannel suit which he had bought in Bombay for summer wear, and there were people who said this demonstrated a certain lack of judgment on a bitterly cold day. More likely, it showed his determination to go his own way. Everyone had been telling him he would not survive the cold, and he was proudly exhibiting his summer clothes to show his triumph over the elements.
The Young Lawyer
We can naturally expect that
education must be encouraged under
the British administration.
I am one who can take advantage
of such encouragement.
The London Years
THE VICTORIA HOTEL was one of those large, ornate and expensive hotels, much frequented by Americans, which used to stand on Northumberland Avenue, not far from Picadilly Circus. The servants wore livery, the waiters wore frock coats, and there were capacious elevators to the upper floors. Here in the company of Mr. Mazmudar and a certain Mr. Abdul Majid, a first-class passenger on the S.S. Clyde, Mohandas descended after a brief ride in a cab from Victoria Station.
Never in his life had he seen anything so splendid, so ornate, or so brightly lit, as this Christmas-cake hotel with its marble floors and row upon row of gleaming electric lights. Mr. Majid was one of those careless, grandiloquent men who find themselves automatically attracted to expensive hotels. Reaching the hotel, he grandly told the doorman to pay off the cab and advanced into the vestibule with the air of a maharajah distributing largesse. Mohandas followed silently, a little amused but also intimidated by the spectacle. The manager asked whether he wanted a room on the second floor, and Mr. Majid, thinking it beneath his dignity to inquire about the cost, assented with a flourish. The cost of a room on the second floor was six shillings a day, and he had spoken for all of them. Mohandas was puzzled and horrified. Was everything in London so expensive? He was still more puzzled a few minutes later when a servant pressed a button to summon the elevator. “The doors were opened and I thought that was a room in which we were to sit for some time. But to my great surprise we were brought to the second floor.”
Surprises followed one another in rapid succession. It was the custom in those days for travelers to entrust their luggage to an agent, who would arrange for its transportation, thus relieving the owner of all the trouble of carrying it from the station. Mohandas had heard that this was the proper thing to do. But he arrived in London on a Sunday, with the result that he was without any luggage at all and with only his white flannels. Happily he had been given a letter of introduction to Dr. Pranjivan Mehta, a friend of the Gandhi family, and on the previous day he had telegraphed to the doctor from Southampton, announcing his arrival. The doctor arrived that same evening, resplendent in a top hat. Mohandas was so delighted with the top hat that he passed his hand over it to feel the glossy fur. Unfortunately, he rubbed it the wrong way, and Dr. Mehta took this opportunity to give him some necessary lessons in deportment and behavior. In the first place he must never rub silk hats the wrong way. Then, his anger abating, he listed some commandments which must always be obeyed: “Do not touch other people’s things. Do not ask questions as we usually do in India on first acquaintance. Do not talk loudly. Never address people as ‘sir’ when speaking to them as we do in India; only servants and subordinates address their masters that way.” There were a good many of these instructions, and Mohandas took them to heart. Dr. Mehta was also of the opinion that the Victoria Hotel was not a suitable place for a poor student to reside, and he promised to return the next day after giving some thought to a more suitable residence.
On the following day the luggage arrived, and Mohandas decided to leave the hotel at once, forgetting to inform Dr. Mehta. Mr. Mazmudar had heard of a cheap lodginghouse and suggested they should both go there. Dr. Mehta called at the hotel to find that his charge had flown, but he was able to learn the new address from the hotel manager. But the new address pleased him no more than the old. He wanted Mohandas to learn about English life and customs, and he suggested that he stay for a while with a young friend of his, a law student called Shukla Saheb, in his lodgings at Richmond. Dr. Mehta was one of those square-faced, heavy-browed men who are accustomed to being obeyed, and on that same day Mohandas was whisked off to his new lodgings at Richmond, far from the center of London.
Dr. Mehta realized that Mohandas was a gentle, sensitive and impressionable youth desperately in need of sympathetic surroundings and in danger of violent attacks of homesickness. The law student was genuinely kind and intelligent, initiating him into English ways and manners and ensuring that he spoke English at all times. The landlady wondered how long he would be able to survive on a diet of oatmeal porridge for breakfast, and jam, bread and spinach for lunch and dinner. For some reason no milk was available, and his meals left him completely unsatisfied. At night he wept, and he would dream of the country he had left behind him; by day he starved. His companion tried to wean him from his vow, pointing out that it was completely ludicrous to keep a vow made when he knew nothing about the circumstances of life in England. “What is the value of a vow made before an illiterate mother?” the friend asked. “It would not be regarded as a vow in law. It is pure superstition to sti
ck to such a promise, and I tell you this persistence will not help you to gain anything here.” But though Mohandas found himself arguing with his friend in defense of meatlessness, he never seriously contemplated breaking the vow. The friend smoked and drank but made no attempt to convert him to smoking and drinking, and it appears that nothing was said about the other sins of the flesh. In his arguments against meat-eating Mohandas found himself in a quandary because ultimately no argument was possible: “I am helpless. A vow is a vow. It cannot be broken.”
His stay in Richmond appears to have been very brief, for on November 6, a week after his arrival in England, we find him giving his address as 20 Baron’s Court Road, West Kensington, in his application for admission to the Inner Temple. This change had come about through the intervention of another family friend from Rajkot called Dalpatram Bhagwanji Shukla, who was also studying for the bar. Dalpatram Shukla was much younger than Dr. Mehta, and he looked a good deal like Mohandas, with his deep-set eyes, rather heavy nose and thick lips. He had found an Anglo-Indian family consisting of a widow and her two daughters, and he had come to the conclusion that Mohandas would be more comfortable with them than anywhere else.
Because he was still shy and dared not ask for more food than they put in front of him, he was still confronted with the dangers of slow starvation. The widow knew about his vow and was genuinely sympathetic and understanding, but could not guess at the full extent of his appetite. Sometimes the two girls would offer him an extra slice of bread, while he found himself gazing ravenously at the whole loaf.
The work demanded of him was not very exacting. Once he was admitted to the Inner Temple on the recommendation of two barristers who certified that he was a gentleman of respectability, there were only two conditions to be fulfilled before he was formally called to the bar: he must keep twelve terms and pass his examinations. “Keeping terms” meant eating at least six out of about twenty-four dinners given at the Inner Temple each term, and as he could not eat meat or fish, he ate very little at the dinners, until sometime later it occurred to him to apply for vegetarian dishes. He was a popular guest at the dinners because two bottles of wine were permitted for every group of four, and the others would share his wine. With his practical mind, he thought the dinners were a waste of time, and it seems not to have occurred to him that they were intended to give him some knowledge of the world and to acquire an air of conviviality and refinement.