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

by Robert Payne

  Meanwhile he was deeply concerned with his education, which seemed to be lagging, or at the very least it was unsatisfactory. He thought of attending classes at Oxford or Cambridge, and perhaps acquiring a degree in literature, but this would have involved a prolonged stay in England. Some quicker, easier solution was necessary, and he finally settled on the London Matriculation examination, which involved only the payment of a small fee. If he could pass his matriculation, he would feel assured that he had acquired the rudiments of an education. Unfortunately it was necessary to learn Latin and to be proficient in a modem language. He chose French, for he already had a smattering of the language and he hoped to improve. The examinations were held twice a year, in July and January, and he looked forward to sitting for the examination in January 1890. There were five months of hard, regimented work ahead of him. He worked by the clock, using every minute he could spare from working for his bar examinations, which were far less difficult. He took the examination in January, and learned a month later, when he was on holiday in Brighton, that he had passed in all the subjects except Latin. Six months later he took the examination again and passed triumphantly.

  Toward the end of 1889, while he was studying for his matriculation, he met two unmarried brothers who professed a deep interest in Indian religion and in the hermetical cult of theosophy invented by an extraordinary woman who called herself Madame Blavatsky. The brothers were reading the Bhagavad Gita in the English translation of Sir Edwin Arnold. Gandhi, who had never read the Gita either in Sanskrit or English, was impressed by the moral fervor of the work. What particularly attracted him was a passage at the close of the second chapter with its firm warning of the dangers of desire and passion:

  If one

  Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs

  Attraction; from attraction grows desire,

  Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds

  Recklessness; then the memory—all betrayed—

  Lets noble purposes go, and saps the mind,

  Till purpose, mind, and man are all undone.

  Over the years Gandhi would make a prolonged study of the Gita until he came to know it by heart, but this first confrontation was decisive. Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation, known as The Song Celestial, has little to commend it, for it is neither accurate nor faithful to the spirit of the original; the cumbrous blank verse lacks an essential excitement and moves at a snail’s pace. Gandhi, however, was attracted by the high moral fervor displayed by the translator; some vestiges of the original could be found at intervals; and he recognized that he was in the presence of one of the great classics of ancient India. With the help of the two brothers he read the book through, but he was more impressed by Sir Edwin Arnold’s reconstruction of the life of Buddha in the long poem called The Light of Asia, or The Great Renunciation, in which Buddha appears to be scarcely distinguishable from Christ.

  As members of the Theosophical Society, the brothers invited him to attend a meeting presided over by Madame Blavatsky. He was not especially impressed by the high priestess of the movement, but he derived some pleasure at meeting Mrs. Annie Besant, who had recently joined the theosophists. In time Mrs. Besant would also become a high priestess, but she was more scholarly, more intelligent, more understanding of human problems. Mrs. Besant was in love with India, while Madame Blavatsky believed that ultimate truth was to be found only in Tibet. From being a free-thinker and an atheist Mrs. Besant had recently turned to theism, and Gandhi was therefore disposed to regard her favorably.

  About this time a vegetarian friend introduced him to the Bible, emphasizing that neither drinking nor meat-eating were enjoined in holy scripture. Gandhi acquired a Bible with maps, concordance and other aids. He read Genesis, but the other books of the Old Testament sent him to sleep and he developed a particular aversion for Numbers. But while he found little to profit him in the Old Testament, the New Testament offered more pleasant pastures, and he was especially delighted with the Sermon on the Mount. “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” In the Sermon on the Mount, the Bhagavad Gita and The Light of Asia he found the common theme of renunciation. But while approving of renunciation, he also found satisfaction in Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero Worship, with its proud assertion of heroism as a way of life. What especially pleased him was Carlyle’s depiction of Mohammed as a spiritual hero who fasted, mended his own shoes, patched his own cloak and received the gift of visions with equanimity.

  Charles Bradlaugh, the exponent of atheism, died on January 30, 1891, and an enormous crowd attended his funeral at Woking Cemetery. Most of the Indians living in London including Gandhi attended the funeral. It was not because they approved of atheism, but because they approved of heroism. Bradlaugh had been elected to Parliament but was refused a seat on the grounds that an atheist could not swear the oath of allegiance on a Bible. Bradlaugh felt that he had the right to swear an oath, or anything at all, on the Bible and fought the rules committee of Parliament until they reluctantly permitted him to take a seat. He had qualities of human courage and superb intelligence; he was a spellbinding orator; and he was genuinely loved by people who detested his beliefs. Gandhi attended the funeral as an act of homage to a hero.

  While he was waiting for the train to take him back to London Gandhi heard a dispute between a clergyman and a confirmed atheist.

  “Well, sir, you believe in the existence of God?” said the atheist.

  “I do,” the clergyman replied in a low voice.

  “You also agree that the circumference of the earth is about 25,000 miles, don’t you?” the atheist continued with a self-satisfied smile.

  “Indeed.”

  “Pray tell me then the size of God and where he may be?”

  Gandhi disliked these irrelevant arguments, and this conversation left a lasting impression on him as being so totally irrelevant as to become indistinguishable from vulgarity. The clergyman fell into a subdued silence, while Gandhi pondered the eternal presence of the gods.

  In his quiet way Gandhi was enjoying the London scene. He rarely went to the theater, but he went to church, sampling the various preachers of the time. He was impressed by Joseph Parker, the Congregationalist who presided over City Temple in Holborn Viaduct, delivering sermons in down-to-earth speech, involving the congregation in the excitement of his own search for God. He was also attending the meetings of the London Thepsophical Society, becoming an associate member in March 1891. But vegetarianism, which he regarded as a religious creed, occupied far more of his time, and he was so impressed by the overwhelming need to disseminate the doctrine that he founded his own Vegetarian Club in Bays-water, with Dr. Josiah Oldfield as president, Sir Edwin Arnold as vice-president, and himself as the secretary.

  Dr. Josiah Oldfield is forgotten now, but in those days he was a power to be reckoned with. A wonderfully self-opinionated man, brusque and charming, with something of the air of an Elizabethan buccaneer, he became the high priest of vegetarianism as Madame Blavatsky became the high priestess of theosophy. He was the editor of The Vegetarian, and the author of most of the articles, which were inclined to celebrate the virtues of fruit at the expense of all other foods. He wrote vigorously and with an air of stupendous authority, and Gandhi was so devoted to him that for a while they took rooms together in St. Stephen’s Square, Bayswater, and spent all their spare time together lecturing at clubs and addressing public meetings. Dr. Oldfield lived to a great age, and more than fifty years later he could still remember his first meeting with Gandhi, then “a young, shy, diffident youth, slim and a little weakly,” who came to consult him on a question of diet.

  Soon Gandhi was climbing high in vegetarian circles. He joined the London Vegetarian Society, wrote articles for The Vegetarian—the first article he ever wrote was concerned with vegetarianism in India—and became a member of the executive committee of the society. The Vegetarian sometimes printed his speeches,
and so we find in the issue of May 6, 1891, the announcement that Mr. M. K. Gandhi, a Brahmin from the Bombay Presidency, delivered a speech on “The Foods of India” at Bloomsbury Hall, Hart Street, Bloomsbury, and was “rather nervous in the beginning.” It was an excellent speech, and he delivered it again at a conference held later in the month at Portsmouth. Delegates from all over England arrived in Portsmouth to form a Federal Union of Vegetarian Societies, and Gandhi was one of the official delegates of the London Vegetarian Society.

  The visit to Portsmouth was noteworthy for an incident which profoundly shocked him. He was staying in lodgings with an Indian friend, and one evening after returning from the conference he sat down to play a rubber of bridge. The landlady took part, and there was a good deal of banter. Gandhi’s young Indian friend and the landlady exchanged salacious jokes, and Gandhi joined in. He was enjoying himself, caught up in a happy tide of indecency, the landlady making advances and the Indian egging him on. He was very close to submitting to her advances. Just in time he rose from the table and rushed to his bedroom, to spend a sleepless night wondering how he had permitted himself to succumb to lustful desires. No woman except his wife had ever moved him in this way. He debated with himself whether to leave the boardinghouse and take the next train back to London, or to stay to the end of the conference. “I decided to act thenceforth with great caution,” he wrote in his autobiography. The following evening he returned to London.

  What shocked him was how easily he had fallen into lust, how effortlessly and joyously he had entered the trap. He had vowed to his mother that he would not touch a woman in England, and this vow had been faithfully kept. God had saved him in the nick of time.

  By living very simply on lentils, boiled rice and raisins, by working hard, by going for long walks, by seeking out people who lived quietly, and by reminding himself constantly of his vows, Gandhi had remained chaste throughout his stay in London. But in his eyes chastity alone was insufficient; there must not be the slightest thought of sex, the slightest awakening of sexual feeling.

  His life in London was sober, disciplined, and lonely. He made few close friends and rarely traveled outside the area of London which extends from Kensington to Holborn. Once he paid a flying visit to Paris to see the Great Exhibition. He found a vegetarian restaurant, engaged a room there, and did his sightseeing on foot with the aid of a map, like any impecunious student. He was impressed by the Eiffel Tower, took the elevator to the first platform, and spent what was for him the outrageous sum of seven shillings on lunch for the satisfaction of being able to say that he had looked out on all of Paris and dined like a king. He visited Notre-Dame, and was struck by the gravity and decorum of the worshipers. He was touched by the sight of women genuflecting before the statue of the Virgin, and felt that “they were not detracting from but increasing the glory of God.”

  But all the time he was sighing for the pageantry of India. The flowers, the garlands, the swings, the cows with their painted horns, the shepherds with their pipes, the feasts and the festivals—he wrote about all these in articles which appeared in The Vegetarian in March 1891, and it was obvious that he was suffering terribly from homesickness.

  His days in London were now coming to an end. On June 5, 1891, he gave a farewell dinner to the members of the London Vegetarian Society at the Holborn Restaurant on Kingsway. It was an odd place for a vegetarian dinner, for it was one of the most fashionable restaurants in London, famous for its cuisine and for the largest and best conducted dance hall in London. Gandhi had deliberately chosen the restaurant with the idea that vegetarianism deserved a proper éclat, and there was no reason at all why vegetarians should not enjoy speeches, music, excellent service, and entertainment. A few days later The Vegetarian described the dinner at some length, saying that “Mr. Gandhi, in a very graceful but somewhat nervous speech, welcomed all present, spoke of the pleasure it gave him to see the habit of abstinence from flesh progressing in England, related the manner in which his connection with the London Vegetarian Society arose, and in so doing took occasion to speak in a touching way of what he owed to Mr. Oldfield.”

  Gandhi’s own recollections of the speech he delivered at the farewell dinner were far more modest. He remembered that he intended to open with a humorous sally based on the opening words of Addison’s maiden speech in the House of Commons. Addison had begun by saying: “I conceive . . .” and not knowing what else to say he had repeated the words three times, only to be interrupted by a Member of Parliament who observed: “The gentleman conceived thrice but brought forth nothing.” Gandhi wanted to begin his speech with this joke, but when he got up to speak he found he had nothing to say. Finally he stammered: “I thank you, gentlemen, for having kindly responded to my invitation,” and then abruptly sat down.

  One of the causes of his nervousness may have been that he did not yet know whether he had passed his bar examination. Five days later, on June 10, he learned that he had passed, and on the next day he was enrolled on the books of the High Court. On the following day he sailed for India on the P. O. steamship Oceana.

  He was happy on the Oceana, which was one of those commodious Victorian ships in which the passengers’ wants were attended to, and the second-class saloon was very nearly as comfortable as the first-class saloon. The English waiters were clean, neat and obliging, and they served tea gratis the moment the passengers came on board. His first task, of course, was to find a fellow vegetarian, and he soon found one. They thought they would have some difficulty in procuring vegetarian meals, and might have to take recourse in boiled potatoes, cabbages and butter, but a sympathetic waiter gave them vegetable curry, rice, stewed and fresh fruit from the first-class saloon, and brown bread, and so they were able to enjoy undiluted vegetarian meals until they reached Aden, where they were transferred to another ship.

  Gandhi had been living a vegetarian life throughout his stay in England, and he was not accustomed to observing Englishmen at their meals. He was a little pained to discover how much they were capable of eating. He wrote a little disapprovingly: “The breakfast menu generally contained oatmeal, porridge, some fish, chop, currie, jam, bread and butter, tea or coffee, etc., everything ad libitum. I have often seen passengers take porridge, fish and curry, bread and butter, and wash down with two or three cups of tea.” But while he found it impossible to commend them for asceticism, he approved of the passengers’ punctuality. As soon as the breakfast bell rang at 8:30 A.M they were all streaming into the diningroom.

  Dinner was at 1:30 P.M (plenty of mutton and vegetables, rice and curry, pastry and what not), and this was followed by tea and biscuits at 4 P.M and “high tea” (bread and butter, jam or marmalade, or both, salad, chops, tea, coffee, etc.) at 6:30 P.M This was not the end of the feast, for he observed that just before going to bed the passengers took another meal, consisting of “a few, a very few—only eight or ten, fifteen at the most— biscuits, a little cheese and some wine or beer.” Gandhi was always surprised by the Englishmans capacity for food.

  The homeward voyage was like a film being unwound backward. Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said—he had seen these places before and they held no interest for him, though in Malta he visited the red and gold fish again, and as usual Port Said was “full of rogues and rascals.” At Aden the India-bound passengers were transferred to a smaller ship. Gandhi had enjoyed the Oceana, but he detested the Assam. “It was like leaving London for a miserable village,” he wrote, and he had good reason to detest this small cockleshell, for a storm sprang up in the Arabian Sea and all the passengers were sick.

  The storm was still raging when the Assam docked at Bombay. His elder brother Laxmidas was waiting for him, looking oddly strained. They talked for a while, while the rain poured down, and suddenly Gandhi heard himself asking the inevitable question: “How is Mother?” Laxmidas answered that she was dead. She had died only a few weeks earlier, just after receiving the telegram announcing that he had passed his bar examination.

  Since he was t
he favorite son, all her last thoughts had been concerned with him. She had wept with joy when she heard of his success. Laxmidas told him that they did not dare to tell him about her illness, for they knew that he would have collapsed and failed to pass the examination if he had known how serious it was. There had been a family council; the decision was taken unanimously; they had all conspired to keep the truth from him. They did not know that he was made of iron. His grief was so terrible that it went beyond tears. He had worshiped his mother as he worshiped no one else; all his hopes were centered on her. But there was no wild expression of grief. “I could even check the tears,” he wrote, “and I took to life just as though nothing had happened.”

  His mother was only forty when she died.

  Rajchandra

  WHEN GANDHI LISTED the names of the people who most profoundly influenced him, he would usually place Shrimad Rajchandra at the head of the list. There was something about this young man which inspired in him a kind of reverential awe. Rajchandra spoke with authority about matters which are eternally in dispute: about God, about the life of the spirit, about the nature of the world and the universes. It was as though he had opened the gates of Heaven and returned to earth to report faithfully on what he had seen. An inner light glowed in him, and he walked with a strange assurance.

  They had met on the day after Gandhi’s return to India. In their upbringing they had nothing in common. Rajchandra was rich, cultivated, intensely practical, wholly immersed in the Hindu faith, never plagued by doubts, his mind moving with startling clarity. By profession a jeweler, a partner in a large jewelry business with headquarters in Bombay, he was equally well known as a poet and as a Shatavadhani, one who could attend to a hundred (shata) affairs simultaneously. The word, of course, involved a happy exaggeration, but there was not the least doubt that he possessed phenomenal powers of concentration, and he could simultaneously play a game of chess, solve a difficult mathematical problem, discourse on any subject given to him, read from a book and play a musical instrument. At one time he had given public demonstrations of these powers, and had been invited to tour Europe as a man with a stupendous memory. Gandhi put him to the test by reciting all the unfamiliar French and Latin words he could remember, and Rajchandra immediately recited the long list of words in the correct order. Rajchandra soon wearied of demonstrating his powers of memory, for he had more important things to do. What chiefly interested him was his devotion to his faith, and he had a burning desire to see God face to face.