by Robert Payne
“Certainly, throw the wretched things away,” Kallenbach said.
“I mean it!”
“So do I,” came Kallenbach’s quick reply.
They were standing near the porthole of Gandhi’s cabin, and it was a simple matter to fling the binoculars into the sea. According to Gandhi, Kallenbach never regretted the loss of his expensive binoculars, never complained against Gandhi’s action, and seemed to be delighted by the non-violent resolution of the debate.
It is an instructive story, telling us a good deal about the workings of Gandhi’s mind. In a rather similar way he would resolve many of the problems that assailed him. First, the long debate, with Gandhi driving his arguments home with force and eloquence, even if it were about a subject as insignificant as a pair of binoculars. Secondly, the concrete object is transformed into an idea or a passion; it became Ostentation, Irrelevance, Complexity, a flaw in a man’s character, and so by easy stages the work of the devil. Finally, the problem is resolved by a refusal to tolerate its existence and by a violent gesture of dismissal. Gandhi’s non-violence sometimes assumed such extreme forms that it could scarcely be distinguished from violence. The flinging of a pair of binoculars into the sea was not a non-violent act; on the contrary, it was within its context an act of quite extraordinary violence.
When Gandhi arrived in London on August 6,1914, he entered a world where violence had become commonplace. The newsboys were shouting about the invasion of Belgium and the streets were crowded with people waving Union Jacks. There was no sign of Gokhale, who had gone to France in the hope of curing his diabetes by drinking Vichy water and was caught in Paris; all the trains had been commandeered by the army. Kallenbach was in a worse plight, for although he had been living for the past eighteen years in the Transvaal, he had never taken out South African naturalization papers and was still a German citizen. He was in grave danger of being interned. Gandhi appealed to the India Office on his behalf, but to no avail. Later in the year, Kallenbach, the pure pacifist, was sent off to an internment camp.
Sarojini Naidu, the poetess, heard that Gandhi had arrived in London and went out to search for him, finding him at last in an obscure part of Kensington in an old unfashionable lodginghouse. She climbed the steep stairs, and suddenly caught sight of him in an open doorway, sitting on a black prison blanket and eating a meal of squashed tomatoes and olive oil out of a wooden prison bowl. Around him were some battered tins of parched groundnuts and tasteless biscuits of dried plantain flour. The moment she saw him, she burst into a peal of happy laughter at the vision of the famous Satyagrahi leader. He lifted his eyes and laughed: “Ah, so you must be Mrs. Naidu. Who else dare be so irreverent? Come in, and share my meal.”
“What an abominable mess it is!” Mrs. Naidu exclaimed, and from that moment their friendship began.
She was then thirty-five, a rather plump woman with plain features and a singularly sweet smile, the wife of a doctor in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and she was already famous as a poetess and as a determined nationalist. Gokhale was her guru and her friend, and when he was in London she spent most of her time nursing him. Edmund Gosse had admired her verses, and with his help two volumes, The Golden Threshold and The Bird of Time, had been published. Her verses were neat and graceful, and derived from her extensive reading of the romantic poets. She was not a great, or even a good, poet, but there was a quality of excitement in them which was wholly her own. Here, for example, is her poem In Salutation to the Eternal Peace:
Men say the world is full of fear and hate,
And all life’s ripening harvest-fields await
The restless sickle of relentless fate.
But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born,
When from the climbing terraces of corn
I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.
What care I for the world’s desire and pride,
Who knows the silver wings that gleam and glide,
The homing pigeons from Thine eventide?
What care I for the world’s loud weariness,
Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless
With delicate sheaves of mellow silences.
Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,
Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,
The mute and mythic terrors of the tomb?
For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,
O inmost wine of living ecstasy!
O intimate essence of eternity!
So she would write with a kind of happy carelessness, never quite convincing when she spoke of ecstasy and eternity, but completely convincing when she spoke of her joy in being born. She wanted to be remembered as a poet, but this gift was not given to her. Instead she would be remembered as a political figure who was devoted to Gandhi and strong enough to stand up to him when he was being wildly erratic. She liked to call him “Mickey Mouse.” When he was in danger or when he was fasting, she would defend him like a tigress defending her young. Exuberant, earthy, irreverent, improbable, she was one of those women who make the world glad.
She took Gandhi in hand, organized a reception in his honor, invited everyone, of importance, including Mohamed Ali Jinnah, the Muslim leader, and Ananda Coomaraswamy, the great authority on Indian art, and saw that they made the appropriate speeches. She settled him in better lodgings in Palace Chambers, Westminster, closer to his old haunts, and mothered Kasturbai, who felt lost and insecure in the great metropolis. It was her first and only visit to London, and she was terrified by the noise and the traffic.
Almost at once Gandhi decided to offer his services to the War Office. A circular letter was sent to the Indians he knew in London, suggesting that they should place themselves unconditionally at the disposal of the authorities, and having received favorable replies, he wrote to the Under Secretary of State for India, saying that his fellow Indians desired “to share the responsibilities of membership in this great Empire, if we would share its privileges.” There was nothing in the letter to suggest that he had any reservations. In later years he explained that he had wrestled with his conscience, concluding that England was in dire straits and as a loyal subject of the Empire he could do no less. To the argument that this was a heaven-sent opportunity for the Indians to press their claim for independence he answered that the Indians must first show their goodwill by standing beside England in her hour of need. Ahimsa and Satyagraha had lost their force or were in suspension. He argued with himself, balanced the opposing claims of England and India, hinted at the idiocy of civil disobedience while on British soil, for it would only lead to a term of imprisonment, and finally came to the very simple conclusion: “I thought there was nothing for it but to serve in the war.” He had served in two wars, and this was the third.
The letter to the Under Secretary of State was signed by Gandhi, Kasturbai and Sarojini Naidu, and more than fifty Indian doctors, lawyers and students living in London. Since Gandhi had offered to serve in any capacity whatever, the India Office assumed rightly that he wanted to raise a field force which would be incorporated in the Army; there were long discussions, and it was Lord Crewe, the Secretary of State, who finally came to the conclusion that the Indians would be more useful serving in a Field Ambulance Corps. Gandhi readily agreed, and soon about sixty Indians were taking Red Cross training at the Regent Street Polytechnic with Dr. James Cantlie as their chief adviser and teacher; and so it came about that Gandhi, who had spoken of his horror and detestation of doctors in Hind Swaraj five years before, found himself the willing pupil of that gruff, kindly doctor. There was a six-week training course in first aid, followed by a period of military training and more first aid at Netley, a village in Hampshire, where there was one of the largest military hospitals in England. Dr. Cantlie had taught medicine to Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Hong Kong, and was probably the only man who could claim to have taught both revolutionaries.
The Indians were happy at the Regent Street Polytechnic, but trouble broke out when th
ey reached Netley and were placed under military discipline. There were continual feuds with the commanding officer, who resented the fact that they would take orders only from Gandhi, the chairman of the Volunteer Corps. When the commanding officer appointed corporals from among the ranks of privates, they objected strongly, saying that Gandhi should appoint the corporals or they should themselves elect the corporals. Since Gandhi was ill with pleurisy in London, this meant that they were free to organize themselves as they pleased. Correspondence flew back and forth between Gandhi, the commanding officer, and the Under Secretary of State. The Indians threatened to go on strike, and Gandhi gave his approval; Satyagraha had unlimited applications. Suddenly an unexpectedly large number of wounded soldiers arrived at Net-ley, and there was no longer any question of disobeying military orders. The Under Secretary of State sent a cautiously worded letter to Gandhi explaining the situation, urging him to place the Indians under the command of the authorities at Netley so that the wounded would receive helpful service, and Gandhi acceded. It was one of those exhausting and exasperating situations which should never have arisen, but Gandhi took some comfort from the fact that he had practiced “a miniature Satyagraha” in wartime England.
Meanwhile he was unable to shake off the attack of pleurisy, which left him weak and despondent. Sarojini Naidu had been unable to wean him from his dietetic experiments, and he was now living on a diet of groundnuts, ripe and unripe bananas, lemons, tomatoes, grapes and olive oil. His doctor insisted that he should take milk and cereals to strengthen him, but he refused; and when Gokhale added his advocacy, Gandhi became adamant. He was strong enough to walk the short distance to the National Liberal Club where Gokhale was staying, and to inform him that after a sleepless night he had come to the conclusion that he could not drink milk for the same reason that he could not eat meat. His religion forbade it, and the sin of milk-drinking was too heavy a burden to place on him. Gokhale was distressed, but there was nothing he could do. “I do not approve of your decision,” he said. “I do not see any religion in it.” Gandhi saw religion in everything, and he was faintly surprised at not being able to convert Gokhale to a regimen of groundnuts and fruit. Soon Gokhale left for India and Gandhi was free to pursue his experiments in diet without any further argument.
On questions of diet Gandhi was a law to himself. He spoke with supreme authority, laying down what could and could not be eaten, dispensing his services to anyone who would listen to him and making exceptions to his laws whenever he thought they were advisable. Milk-drinking was a sin, but he approved of Kasturbai drinking milk for her health’s sake, and having forbidden himself any cereals, he relented long enough to take a few slices of plain brown bread. Then once again he would announce that the laws must be observed and there can never be any exceptions.
He consulted Dr. Allinson, the famous vegetarian doctor who had been hounded out of the Vegetarian Society for advocating birth control. Dr. Allison agreed that milk was not conducive to health and favored raw vegetables and fresh fruit. Gandhi enjoyed the fruit, but the raw, grated vegetables made him “nervous.” The doctor also favored fresh air, daily walks, and oil massage as a cure for pleurisy. He told Gandhi to sleep in the fresh air, whatever the weather, and to keep his windows open at night. Unfortunately, there were French windows in the Indian boardinghouse where he was now staying, and when they were left open, the rain came pouring in the bed-sitting room. He solved the problem by keeping the windows partially open and smashing a pane of glass.
Because he insisted on being his own doctor, he was ill for many weeks. Nor was Kasturbhai’s health showing any sign of improvement. Winter was coming down; soon there would be fogs and mist, and sometimes he wondered whether he would survive a London winter. He was still directing the Volunteer Corps and conducting a massive correspondence, but the pain in his chest was growing worse. He thought of returning to India, and then he would tell himself that it was his duty to remain in England until the end of the war, and since the war would be over in three or four months, there was at least the possibility that he would be able to return to India in the spring. But that meant living through an English winter, and more pleurisy, and Kasturbhai growing weaker as the months passed. So he argued with himself and came to no satisfactory conclusions.
Incessantly, as he tossed and turned on his sick bed, he was confronted by unanswered questions. He had a duty to England and a duty to God, and they were not reconcilable. He was protected from the Germans by the Royal Navy, and therefore he owed a duty to the Navy. Ideally, he could separate himself from the war by living in the mountains and subsisting on whatever fruit or grains or leaves he could find, and for a while he quite seriously contemplated such a move, admitting finally that he did not have the courage for it. It might be possible in India, but not in England in winter. So he came back again to the familiar questions: What was his duty to England? What was his duty to God?
The truth was that he did not know, and in his efforts to answer them he was driving himself into a nervous breakdown. He did not know what was going to happen to him or where he was going. His dietetic experiments had failed. He wrote late in November: “Just now my own health seems to have been completely shattered. I feel that I hopelessly mismanaged my constitution in the fast.” It was one of his rare admissions of failure. He had been too impatient, too determined to cure himself with his own methods. He was forced to remain in bed for six weeks, and when he tried to get up there was a terrible pain in his chest. All this, in his view, showed his unworthiness. He was plagued by doubts: if he had been a perfect Satyagrahi, then he would not have been ill. A perfect Satyagrahi would know at once, without the least hesitation, where his duty lay. And as he struggled back to health, he wondered whether he had been right in forming the Volunteer Corps. Had he not written that the Indians in England would undertake unconditionally any work that the British government gave them? The word “unconditionally” haunted him. Everyone knew, of course, that he was in no state to bear arms, but what of the others? “Thousands have already been killed. And am I, doing nothing, to continue enjoying myself, eating my food?” The Gita said: “He who eats without performing a sacrifice is a thief.” According to his interpretation, “sacrifice” meant “self-sacrifice,” but it seemed to him that he was simply luxuriating in bed, performing no useful service, and far from performing an act of self-sacrifice, he had merely sacrificed others to his own desires, his own vanity. And he hated the moral and mental atmosphere. “Everything appears so artificial, so materialistic and immoral that one’s soul almost becomes atrophied,” he wrote in a letter to South Africa.
For twenty-five years he had known day by day, moment by moment, exactly what he was doing and where he was going. He had been in prison, fasted, organized, delivered speeches, assumed immense responsibilities over the lives of others, fought battles with high officers of state, and there was nothing to show for it One life had ended, and there was no new life stirring within him, no sense of direction. All his active life he had been buoyed up by certainty and he had always found himself in a position where he could command others to do his bidding. Now there was no certainty and no one to command.
For Gandhi these months spent in wartime England were among the most tragic in his life. Never again would he be so conscience-stricken, so useless, so vulnerable. He was comforted by the presence of the women who attended him in his sickness, but they could not answer his questions.
Among those who attended him were some of the most distinguished women of the time. Olive Schreiner, the South African novelist, helped to nurse him back to health. Lady Cecilia Roberts, the wife of the Under Secretary of State for India, was a frequent visitor. Sarojini Naidu brought to him her vitality and good humor until she left for India. One day in November Charles Roberts, the Under Secretary of State, came to see him in the drab Indian boardinghouse. He was alarmed by the news he had heard from his wife—Gandhi was emaciated, querulous, losing hope, living on a handful of groundnuts
and dry bananas.
“What should I do?” Gandhi asked.
“You should go back to India,” Charles Roberts replied. “It is only there that you can be completely cured. If, after your recovery, you should find the war still going on, you will find many opportunities there of rendering help. As it is, I do not regard what you have already done as by any means a small contribution.”
Gandhi had been planning to go to Netley and take charge of the Volunteer Corps as soon as he recovered. He had not been thinking of returning to India. Charles Roberts’ visit came at exactly the right time, and the historian may well wonder what would have happened to Gandhi and to India if the Under Secretary of State for India had not called at the boardinghouse on that bleak November day.
For the first time in many years Gandhi found himself a helpless spectator, watching decisions being made for him. For a few moments he argued against leaving England; surely there could be found some other position for him! Surely he could be of service in England! But Mr. Roberts was insistent that he had already performed a considerable service to the Crown and that nothing more could be demanded of him except that he should recover his health and strength in India.
There was a farewell gathering at the Westminster Palace Hotel. Speeches were made in his honor, and he replied that he was wholly undeserving, but had merely performed his duty as he saw it. He had brought the Volunteer Corps into existence, and this was the least he could do in the hour of England’s, need. He paid graceful tribute to the Under Secretary of State whose farewell speech had been full of his praises, and to Lady Cecilia Roberts, who had helped to nurse him. He spoke of returning soon to England, where he hoped to serve as a nursing orderly. “There must be something good in the connection between India and England,” he concluded, “if it produced such unsolicited and generous kindness from English men and women to Indians.”