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

by Robert Payne

  Gandhi rose in cold fury to ask Mr. Hosken whether he understood what the words “the inevitable” meant to the oriental mind. What did these words mean to the Indians in the Transvaal? For them “the inevitable” meant something very different; it meant that they should oppose the law. They were not permitted to vote, they had no voice in the country, their petitions were flung into the wastepaper basket, no one spoke for them in Parliament, not even Mr. Hosken had offered a word of sympathy. In these circumstances “the inevitable” was to oppose the law and submit to the will of God. If God willed that every single Indian in the Transvaal should be reduced to beggary rather than obey a degrading law, then so be it! Since Mr. Hosken was in no position to change the color of his skin and suffer on himself the same indignities that were suffered daily by the Indians, he had no right to speak! What would he think if a law were passed in London ordering everyone to wear a top hat? Of course, all the Londoners would go about hatless to show their contempt for the law. Here in the Transvaal it was not a question of wearing a top hat—it was a question of wearing a badge of slavery!

  It was a bitter speech, and there were more bitter speeches to come. Ahmad Kachalia, a trader who had never taken a public position before, rose red-faced, boiling with anger, shouting: “I swear in the name of God that I will be hanged, but I will not submit to the law!” Saying this, he gripped his own throat and wore the look of a man being hanged. Gandhi, who sometimes deliberately overacted, thought he recognized the signs of overacting and permitted himself a polite smile. Later he was sorry, for he came to realize that Ahmad Kachalia meant what he said.

  The government was determined to make the Indians obey the law, but quite prepared to wait until the bitterness died down. The time limit was extended by a month, then by another month. Finally it was decided that November 30 would be the last day for registration. On that day it was learned that only 511 persons had registered, and there was little likelihood that any more would register. The government was therefore forced to act, for no government can remain in power if its laws are flouted.

  On November 8, three weeks before the last day for registration, a Hindu priest called Ram Sundara Pandit was arrested in Germiston, a suburb of Johannesburg. A handsome, fiery man, a brilliant speaker, something of a scholar, with his own temple and his own devoted followers, he typified everything that Gandhi admired among the South African Indians. He was thirty years old, had married in South Africa and had two children. He was charged with unlawfully entering and remaining in the Transvaal after the expiry of his temporary permit, but the real reason for his arrest became clear during the trial—he was the captain of the Indian pickets in Germiston and had made a number of speeches and sermons calling upon the Indians to disobey the law.

  Gandhi defended him in court, but the defense was more in the nature of a general admission of all the crimes attributed to him. According to Gandhi, Ram Sundara Pandit had disobeyed an earthly law in obedience to a heavenly law; as a priest he could do no less. He should therefore be punished to the full extent of the law. The magistrate sentenced him to a month’s imprisonment, and Gandhi then turned his attention to all the propaganda advantages to be derived from the sentence. There would be telegrams of protest to the King-Emperor and the Viceroy against this travesty of justice, all stores would be closed for the day, and Ram Sundara Pandit—“Pandit” was the honorary title given to a learned man—would be proclaimed a religious martyr. All this was done, and Gandhi could not find words enough to praise the young hero in the pages of Indian Opinion. He was the symbol of resistance, the priestly mediator between Heaven and the Indian people. In prison he was given a separate cell in the European section, and the government permitted him to receive visitors and to talk at great length about the need to defy the laws. When Gandhi came to interview him in his cell, he said his only sorrow was that he had not been sentenced to hard labor.

  In December, when he was released from jail, Ram Sundara Pandit was taken in procession through all the Indian communities, presented with addresses of welcome, and garlanded with flowers. He was the hero of the hour, and Gandhi was always by his side, encouraging him, writing letters for him, seeing that he played the hero’s role to the end. When Ram Sundara Pandit returned to his temple, he found it in a desolate condition. As the sole owner and only priest of the temple, he wrote—or rather Gandhi wrote for him—a lengthy note of protest to the government, urging them to reconsider his case and to permit him to carry on his religious functions unhindered. The government issued an expulsion order: he must leave the Transvaal within seven days or face more imprisonment. He decided that nothing would be gained by fighting the government, and taking his family with him he left for Natal.

  Gandhi was enraged, for he had been deprived of a hero. The sudden apostasy of the man who had symbolized Indian resistance came at an awkward time, for now at last the government was beginning to exert the pressure it had been holding in abeyance for so long. Ram Sundara Pandit was consigned to damnation. In future, Gandhi wrote, parents would say: “Ram Sundara is coming!” to frighten their children; and true believers would pray constantly: “O God, preserve us from the fate of Ram Sundara!” There could be no expiation for the crime of treachery. He had committed the unforgivable crime, and deserved to die.

  Gandhi rarely delivered venomous attacks on people, but there was no hiding the venom in his attack on Ram Sundara, now stripped of the title of “Pandit,” because, according to Gandhi, he was no scholar and scarcely a priest. The man could recite a few verses of Tulsidas’s Ramayana, and that was the full extent of his learning. “Panditji has opened the gate of our freedom,” Gandhi wrote in November. Now, having fled the country, he became a coward and a hypocrite, and there were no words strong enough to describe him. Early in January, Gandhi wrote in the columns of Indian Opinion a violent denunciation of the man who was once the hero of the Indians:

  As far as the community is concerned, Ram Sundara is dead as from today. He lives to no purpose. He has poisoned himself by his own hand. Physical death is to be preferred to such social death. He would have enjoyed undying fame if he had been killed in an accident at Germiston before the critical moment when he entrained for Natal. Having meanly betrayed the people of Germiston, his community, himself, and his family, he has fled like a coward in fear of imprisonment.

  Gandhi himself had no fear of imprisonment. Brought before the magistrate’s court in Johannesburg a few days later, he asked for the heaviest penalty provided by the law, which was six months’ hard labor and a fine of £500. The magistrate was puzzled. Prisoners rarely ask for severe punishment. He decided that an appropriate punishment would be two months’ imprisonment without hard labor, and sentenced the prisoner accordingly. In this way, on January 10, 1908, Gandhi received the first of many prison terms.

  In time he would grow accustomed to prison, enjoying the enforced seclusion which permitted him to catch up with his reading and to meditate on the Bhagavad Gita. He would speak laughingly about entering one of “His Majesty’s hotels.” But when the full consciousness of what was about to happen dawned on him, he was deeply shaken. Alone in a cell in the courthouse, he gave himself up to agitated thoughts. For two months he would have no home of his own, there would be no meetings to address, no courtroom where he could practice his trade. He told himself the only hope lay in the fact that thousands of Indians would soon be arrested, the prisons would be choked, and consequently it would be necessary to release him long before his term was over. But this was clutching wildly at straws, as he knew, and in a few moments he recovered his composure. Had he not encouraged the Indians to go to prison? Was not righteousness on their side? He had summoned them to offer Satyagraha in perfect joy, and in the knowledge that they would only overcome their enemies by suffering. A door opened, a police officer ordered him into a closed van and he was driven off to jail.

  No one who has been sentenced to prison is likely to forget the first jolt, the moment when he is alone in
a cell for the first time. In prison Gandhi was not left alone for long; soon he was joined by Thambi Naidoo, a Tamil from the island of Mauritius, a man with a ready wit and keen intelligence, and a few other Satyagrahis who had been arrested at the same time. They were all stripped and made to wear prison clothes: a loose coarse jacket marked with the broad arrow, short trousers—one leg dark, the other light—also marked with the broad arrow, thick gray woolen socks, leather sandals, and a small cap not unlike the “Gandhi cap” which became famous later. The cell, which could hold thirteen prisoners, was clearly marked “For Coloured Debtors.”

  As his knowledge of prisons increased, Gandhi was inclined to regard them with a professional air. He liked large cells with plenty of ventilation, good electric light, a decent bed, a writing table and writing facilities, some stout furniture and proper sanitation. On all these counts except the last the cell in Johannesburg Jail was defective. The ventilation came from two small half-open windows near the ceiling, the single electric bulb gave only a dim light, the bed consisted of wooden planks, and there was no writing table, although this was provided later at his urgent request.

  He rejoiced in proper sanitation, and he was especially pleased to learn that the floor of the cell was washed with disinfectant every day and the edges of the floor were limewashed. He noted that the bathroom and the commodes were also washed with soap and disinfectant. Similarly the planks of the beds were washed every day with sand and water. Every morning at nine o’clock some Chinese prisoners came to empty the commodes. Gandhi himself would sometimes wash out the commodes with disinfectant fluid. As a result, there was no unpleasant odor, and the cell always “looked fresh.”

  There were, of course, many things about prison life in Johannesburg that annoyed and disturbed him. For some reason the electric light, which was turned off regularly at eight o’clock every evening, would be turned on spasmodically during the night, no doubt to permit a warden to see that everyone was well behaved. Since Gandhi was extremely sensitive to light, and would wake up the moment it came on, he regarded this as a form of torture. He detested the soiled prison clothes he was made to wear, for he had a fastidious taste in dress. He was at first alarmed by the order that all prisoners must have their hair cropped close and their mustaches shaved off, but quickly realized the sanitary advantages of hair cropping and was soon busily cropping the hair and clipping off the mustaches of the other prisoners. So many Indians were being sent to jail that on his own computation he was spending two hours a day working as an amateur barber.

  What especially annoyed him was the food, which consisted largely of mealie pap, a food favored by the Kaffir prisoners but capable of bringing on acute attacks of indigestion in Indian stomachs. There was mealie pap for breakfast and dinner, rice and ghee for lunch, and assorted vegetables on Saturdays and Sundays. Gandhi wrote an appeal to the director of prisons, urging that the Indians be better fed. There was a slight improvement of the diet, and it pleased Gandhi to learn that Indians would be permitted to cook their own meals. Indians thrive on condiments, and he felt their absence keenly. When he pointed out to the prison medical officer that condiments were permitted in Indian prisons, he was told sternly: “This is not India.”

  On the whole he enjoyed prison life, because there were few distractions and he had ample leisure for reading. He read the Bhagavad Gita in the morning, the Koran in the afternoon, and spent some time in the evening reading the Bible to a Chinese Christian who wanted to improve his English. In addition he read Thomas Henry Huxley’s lectures, Bacon’s Essays, Plato’s Dialogues, and some essays by Carlyle. He was translating Ruskin’s Unto This Last into Gujarati and planning and perhaps writing the series of essays on Socrates that appeared in Indian Opinion later in the year. From time to time this busy life was interrupted by secret negotiations with Albert Cartwright, the editor of the Johannesburg daily newspaper The Transvaal Leader, who offered his services as a mediator. The first of these secret meetings took place eleven days after Gandhi entered the jail.

  These negotiations were held in a private room with no warders present. Cartwright was a good friend of Gandhi and had often supported him in his newspaper. The draft agreement offered a compromise: the law would be repealed, registration would be voluntary, and the certificate of registration would be drawn up in a manner more in keeping with Indian sensibilities. Since most of the Indians were illiterate, fingerprinting was accepted, but educated Indians would be permitted to give their signatures. The draft agreement was loosely worded, and when it was finally signed General Smuts considered that he had won an outright victory, for the Indians were left with few advantages. The difference between voluntary and enforced registration was largely one of semantics. General Smuts denied later that he had promised to repeal the law, but this too was a matter of interpretation and there was nothing to prevent him from repealing one law and then enacting a very similar law. Gandhi signed the draft agreement after making a few minor amendments, and two or three days later, on January 30, 1908, there took place the first of those secret journeys which were to become the strange commonplaces of his revolutionary career.

  The pattern was repeated with only minor changes. One moment he would be in prison; then the warder would announce that the superintendent wanted to see him. In the superintendent’s office he would change into civilian clothes, an automobile would be waiting for him, and he would be driven under guard to the nearest railroad station. Still under guard, in a reserved compartment with the blinds drawn, he would spend his time reading, and he would show no surprise when the train stopped a few miles from the main terminus. Here another automobile would be waiting for him, to take him to a secret rendezvous with important dignitaries.

  The scenario was carried out according to plan. The train stopped outside Pretoria and he was driven by automobile to the Colonial Office in the center of the city, where General Smuts was waiting to receive him. The general was calm, affable, precise. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he thought he knew exactly what Gandhi wanted. He was prepared to accept Gandhi’s amendments to the agreement, and spoke of his abiding sympathy for the Indians. “The registration,” he said, “will be outside the law.” He insisted that there should be no more harassment of blacklegs, and Gandhi replied that it was never his intention that there should be any harassment of blacklegs—a statement that probably surprised the general, who had himself observed the pickets taking the law into their own hands. The meeting had begun at noon, and appears to have lasted about two hours. In the afternoon there was a cabinet meeting. Gandhi waited in an anteroom. At last, toward seven o’clock in the evening, he was summoned to General Smuts’s office to learn that the agreement had received the cabinet’s approval.

  “You may go now,” General Smuts said.

  Gandhi was puzzled.

  “Where am I to go?” he asked.

  General Smuts laughed.

  “You are free this very moment. I am telephoning to the prison officials to release the other prisoners tomorrow morning. But I must advise you not to go in for many meetings or demonstrations.”

  Gandhi explained that it would be necessary to hold meetings in order to explain the new regulations to the Indians.

  “Of such meetings,” replied General Smuts, “you may have as many as you please. It is sufficient that you have understood what I desire in this matter.”

  These were the words of a proconsul, and Gandhi knew already, and was to learn again later, that what General Smuts desired in any matter became the law of the land.

  Having no money, Gandhi was forced to borrow the railroad fare to Johannesburg from the general’s secretary.

  When he emerged from the Colonial Office, he found the Indian pickets were waiting for him. They had somehow heard of his interview with General Smuts. The police told them that Gandhi was not in the building, but they remained watchful. When Gandhi appeared at last, he told them that all the prisoners would be released the next day, and he may have known t
hat after so often proclaiming the absolute necessity to defy the government, they would want explanations and clarifications. The storm clouds were gathering.

  When he reached Johannesburg that evening, he called on Yusuf Mian, the chairman of the British Indian Association, outlined the discussion he had had with General Smuts, and asked him to call a meeting to discuss the situation. Yusuf Mian was a rich Muslim merchant who lived near a mosque, and it was a simple matter to obtain permission to hold the meeting in the grounds of the mosque. The pickets went out to summon all the Indians, and the meeting was held late that night by the light of hurricane lamps. About a thousand people were present, Gandhi told them that victory had come to them because they had acted humbly in the consciousness that they were doing God’s work; their demands had been met; in future all registrations would be on a voluntary basis; the law would be set in abeyance as soon as Parliament met; and the freedom they had been dreaming about for so long would be granted to them. He spoke in generalities, but the audience wanted particulars. Would they have to be fingerprinted? Gandhi answered evasively. Some would; some wouldn’t; the atmosphere had changed; a reasonable man would have no objection to being fingerprinted. If he objected on grounds of conscience, the government would not insist upon it. What would have been a crime against the people yesterday was today the proper behavior of a gentleman. But these were legal arguments, not easily comprehensible to Indians who wanted to know exactly what the government demanded of them. A Pathan rose from among the crowd and accused Gandhi of selling out to General Smuts for £15,000. “We will never give the finger-prints nor allow others to do so,” he declared. “I swear with Allah as my witness that I will kill the man who takes the lead in applying for registration.”