by Robert Payne
As the judge left the bench, he bowed once more to the prisoner, who bowed in return. The trial, which had lasted about a hundred minutes, was over.
To the embarrassment of the police, the courtroom was suddenly transformed into a kind of family gathering, as a smiling Gandhi accepted the homage of his friends, who crowded round him, joked, pressed gifts on him, and sometimes knelt to kiss his feet. As usual, he wore only a coarse and scanty loincloth and seemed in some mysterious way to be wearing the robes of an emperor. A few moments later, together with Shankarlal Banker, who had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, he was taken in a waiting motor-van to Sabarmati Jail. Two days later they would be taken by special train to Kirkee, a suburb of Poona, and from there driven to Yeravda Jail.
So ended the brief trial, which came to be known to the followers of Gandhi as “the great trial,” because both the judge and the prisoner behaved with uncommon courtesy and because Gandhi had stated the case for India’s freedom with fairness and precision. Sarojini Naidu, who was present at the trial, described it as “the most epic event of modem times,” but it was far from being an epic event. It was in fact a disaster, for Gandhi could no longer influence the course of events from behind prison bars and in the Congress Party there was ho one who could take his place. In the following months, as he sat in his cell in Yeravda Jail, he would sometimes reflect that he was paying too high a price for his enforced silence.
The Silent Years
IT WAS Gandhis practice, born of long experience, to study his prison cell carefully as soon as he entered it. The cell at Yeravda Jail did not displease him. It was clean and airy, there was a ventilator near the ceiling and another near the floor, there was a smooth cow-dung floor, and though small, it was not oppressively small. Outside there was a triangular courtyard fronted with a high black wall separating the solitary cells from the rest of the prison. It was a very dingy courtyard, but it was better than no courtyard at all. Only one thing distressed him: there was no electric light, and it was therefore impossible to read after nightfall.
On the whole he liked his jailors. The prison superintendent was stiff and unbending, treating him like a common prisoner and insisting on a proper deference being paid to him. Happily, there were few occasions when he had to see the superintendent. The jailors were “trusties,” usually murderers undergoing long sentences, and except for one young jailor Gandhi found them likable and kindly. This young jailor, taking advantage of the fact that Gandhi was wearing a short loincloth, touched his genitals, and went on to touch Gandhi’s cooking pot with his boots. Outraged, Gandhi was about to explode with anger, but saved himself just in time, forgave the man, said nothing at all about the incident to the prison officials, and was never molested again.
Gandhi studied his jailors carefully, and was always puzzled that such calm, sensible people should be murderers. His first jailor—for they were constantly being changed—was a Punjabi called Harkaran, a former merchant, who had apparently committed a murder in a fit of absentmindedness. He had been sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment, of which five remained to be served. He was one of those convivial people who practice small thefts with relish, and he liked to talk about the gifts and provisions he was able to smuggle into the prisoners’ cells. As he explained it, the jailyard was filled with buried treasure, and if you dug it up to a depth of twelve inches there was no end to the knives, spoons, pots, bars of soap and cigarettes you would find. He knew where everything was, and regarded himself as the chief purveyor to all the prisoners; and he was a little dismayed to learn that Gandhi wanted nothing he could provide, being too busy with his books and his thoughts to betray the slightest interest in physical possessions.
Harkaran was followed by a powerfully built murderer from Baluchistan, a Muslim with a gentle smile. He had killed a man in a tribal foray. He, too, offered to present Gandhi with any delicacies he desired, and was a little put out because none was wanted. “You know,” he would say, “if we did not help ourselves to these few things, life would become intolerable, eating the same things day in and day out. Of course, you come for religion, and this sustains you.” Gandhi was not sure that he came for religion; he would say that he came for a rest; but he approved of the heavily built Baluchistani and thought it absurd to keep such a man in jail.
He had the same feeling for Adan, a young Somali soldier who had been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for desertion from the British Army. Once Adan was bitten by a scorpion. The man was in great pain and Gandhi decided to operate at once. He called for a knife, but there was no clean knife available, and so he sucked the wound, spitting out the poison, then sucking again. Indulal Yajnik, a political prisoner in the same compound, was deeply impressed because he knew that Gandhi had only just recovered from a serious illness and his gums were bleeding when he sucked the wound.
While Indulal Yajnik was a prisoner, it was decided to transfer the politicals to the European quarter of the jail. At first Gandhi was disturbed; he had grown accustomed to his old quarters; he had no liking for any change of atmosphere, for it invariably involved a change, however slight, in his habits. “Of course,” he was told, “you do not have to accept the change. Look at it and then tell us whether you approve of it.” There was a spacious compound, a large garden, flowers and fruit trees, with the cells arranged in two rows on a platform about ten feet above the ground. There were verandahs nearly ten feet wide, and the general impression was that of a very quiet, well-arranged cantonment. Gandhi was given four cells—the first for his library and toilet, the second for his bedroom, the third for spinning, and the fourth for storing cotton, slivers, and old spinning wheels. Indulal Yajnik had the next two cells. Mansar Ali, another political prisoner, joined them at prayer time, and they lived in quiet monastic seclusion. Gandhi was reminded of the Trappist monastery in South Africa, where he had spent only half a day but always remembered.
His life followed an unchanging pattern. He rose at four o’clock each morning and spent the dark hours before sunrise in prayer and meditation. When it was light, he would start work, writing and reading. There were six hours of literary work and four hours of spinning. There was a well-filled prison library with books in most of the Indian languages. He read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Kipling’s The Five Nations, Barrack-Room Ballads and The Second Jungle Book, Jules Verne’s Dropped from the Clouds, Macauley’s Lays of Ancient Rome and Shaw’s Man and Superman. In 1923 he kept a diary of his reading, and it was clear that he was chiefly interested in religious works and liked to read English and Indian works alternately. So he would put down an immense historical work like Buckle’s History of Civilization and pick up a copy of the Gita Govinda, the erotic hymn on the loves of Krishna written in the twelfth century by Jayadeva. Erotica fascinated him, and he read Sir John Woodroffe’s Shakta and Shakti, a work which he would remember vividly a quarter of a century later when he entered into a strange experiment in sexual sublimation. His taste was eclectic, and he read Plato’s Dialogues with the same interest as a book called Rosicrucian Mysteries.
Not all his reading followed a carefully considered plan. People in America and England were continually sending him books, and he felt he owed them the duty of at least perusing them. In this way he found himself reading some quite useless books and far too many books on Christian apologetics. Since he had long ago come to the conclusion that he would never be a Christian, he finally set all these books aside. What chiefly interested him during this time was Islam, and he read voluminously in Islamic literature, taking great pleasure in the lives of the Companions of the Prophet, in Washington Irving’s The Lives of Mahomet and His Successors, and Amir Ali’s rather bloodthirsty Short History of the Saracens. He studied Urdu, the form of Hindustani spoken by Muslims, and was surprised to learn how greatly it differed from current Hindustani, being almost a separate language. So many Persian and Arabic words and so many foreign constructions had entered into it that he began to wonder w
hether bringing the divergent streams together might not be one of the supreme tasks of this generation.
He kept a scrapbook in which he wrote out passages which pleased him, but he rarely made any judgment on the books he read, so that it is not very easy to discover which books impressed him. From his scattered notes we learn that he had enormous admiration for Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, and Boehme’s The Supersen-sual Life. He also had good words for Jules Verne’s Dropped from the Clouds, probably the only book of science fiction he ever read.
Gandhi was not a well-read man and he would sometimes complain that he never had time enough to read the books he wanted to read. In the next breath he would say that it was unnecessary to read, and it was enough to go through life gathering experience. Never did he read so much, with such concentrated passion, as he read during this stay in Yeravda Jail. In later years he would say: “I remember a book I read at Yeravda—”
On the evening of January 11, 1924, Gandhi’s prison life came to an abrupt end. He developed acute appendicitis, and was immediately transferred to Sassoon Hospital in Poona, where it was decided to operate on him. Before leaving the prison he gave elaborate instructions for the disposal of his books, clothes and spinning wheels. Colonel Maddock, the surgeon general at the hospital, had not the least doubt about the diagnosis. Speed was essential, if his life was to be saved. Urgent messages were sent to two Indian doctors, close friends of Gandhi, in the hope that they would perform the surgery, but neither was available. On the evening of the following day Gandhi drew up a statement saying he had the fullest confidence in Colonel Maddock and had asked that the operation should be carried out without delay. “See how my hand trembles,” he said after writing the statement. “You will have to put this right.” Colonel Maddock replied: “Oh, we will put tons and tons of strength in you.” A few minutes later the operation began, and it was still going on when a thunderstorm cut off the electricity. The last stages of the operation were conducted by the light of a hurricane lamp.
The appendix was successfully removed, but a local abscess formed and retarded a quick recovery. On February 5 Gandhi was sitting up in bed and talking to Charlie Andrews when Colonel Maddock entered the hospital room and announced that the government had decided to release him unconditionally. For a few moments Gandhi remained quiet, and then he said: “I hope you will allow me to remain your patient and also your guest a little longer.” Colonel Maddock laughed, and said he hoped Gandhi would continue to obey the doctor’s orders. Gandhi was now free to go where he pleased.
There were many reasons why the news of his unconditional release gave him little pleasure. He had settled down into habits of study which are not easily broken; he had not yet reached any conclusions about the next stage in the war against the Raj; he felt that an unconditional release laid him under an inescapable moral obligation to the government. He was too ill and too weak to take an active role in affairs. While he was in prison the Khilafat movement had lost its momentum, for the Sultan had been deprived of all his titles, including that of Caliph, by Mustapha Kemal, and sent into exile in Malta. Gandhi had hoped that Hindu-Muslim unity could be brought about by throwing the Hindus into a struggle for the revival of the Caliph’s power, but this hope was now lost, and with it went the last remnants of Hindu-Muslim collaboration. Noncooperation was dead, the spinning wheels were idle, the Congress leaders no longer spoke of swaraj but of dominion status within the empire. The revolutionary movement he had brought into being had collapsed, and Gandhi himself seemed to belong to a distant age when hopes ran high and dedicated followers could be had for the asking.
In a mood of solemn resignation Gandhi set out to enjoy a long convalescence on the estate of a Parsi friend at Juhu, twelve miles from Bombay. The house stood on the seacoast with vast stretches of sandy beach, and for long hours he would sit on the beach gazing out to sea, his shoulders wrapped in a shawl. Visitors crowded upon him, but he had little to say to them; and in those days he liked to quote from his scrapbook the lines he had read in prison:
My peace is gone, and my heart is sore,
I have lost him, and lost him, for evermore.
The place, where he is not, to me is the tomb.
The world is sadness and sorrow and gloom.
My poor sick brain is crazed with pain;
And my poor sick heart is tom in twain.
My peace is gone, and my heart is sore,
For lost is my love for evermore.
They were the words of Margaret in Goethe’s Faust, but he had taken them for his own.
What especially disheartened him was the knowledge that the struggle would have to be undertaken as though from the beginning, and under even more difficult circumstances. Every communal disturbance, wherever it took place, would be a setback. Once more he would have to inaugurate his own movement and impose it on the Congress. Khaddar was almost a thing of the past, and at all costs it must be restored to its former eminence. When savage rioting broke out early in September at Kohat, a military outpost on the Northwest Frontier, with the Muslims butchering Hindus and burning down their houses, he convinced himself that he could only wash away the sin by fasting. This time, in an upper room in a house in Delhi, he fasted for twenty-one days; it was the longest fast he had ever undertaken. The decision to fast came to him at three o’clock in the morning of September 17,1924, exactly a week after the massacre, and it was as though God had spoken to him. He had a feeling of absolute assurance that this was the right thing to do.
For twenty-one breathless days, the country waited for the moment when the fast would end. The house was near the golf course, and his conversations with his friends were punctuated by the clicking of golf clubs and the shouts of caddies. Among his visitors was the five-year-old Indira Nehru, Jawaharlal’s daughter, who was to become the third Prime Minister of India some forty years later. She perched on the edge of Gandhi’s low-slung bed with the faintest smile on her lips, while Gandhi smiled so happily that he looked more childlike than the serious, dark-haired child.
When Gandhi broke his fast at noon on October 8, he had the assurance that Hindus and Muslim leaders all over India had been caught up in a moment of extraordinary tension, conscious of their responsibility to put an end to communal strife. The demon had been exorcised, but only for a moment. He would return again and again to haunt every village and town of India.
During the week following the ending of the fast, Charlie Andrews decided to present one of his favorite students to Gandhi. He was a tall, well-built student from Santiniketan, with glowing eyes and prominent teeth, a self-confessed atheist. His name was Govindas Ramachandran, and he earnestly desired to argue with Gandhi on the subject of art. He admired Tagore, and was puzzled by Gandhi’s obvious disinterest in art. Was it not true that the great artists transmuted the soul’s unrest into beautiful colors and shapes? Gandhi replied that many call themselves artists, but he had never found in them the moral qualities necessary for greatness. He mentioned Oscar Wilde, who had been much discussed when he was a student in England. There ensued a kind of Socratic dialogue, which is among the very few dialogues with Gandhi which ever took place on the subject of art.
RAMACHANDRAN: I have been told that Oscar Wilde was one of the greatest literary artists of modem times.
GANDHI: Yes, that is just my trouble. Wilde saw the highest Art simply in outward forms and therefore succeeded in beautifying immorality. All true Art must help the soul to realize its inner self. In my own case, I find that I can do entirely without external forms in my soul’s realization. I can claim, therefore, that there is truly sufficient Art in my life, though you might not see what you call works of art about me. My room may have blank walls; and I may even dispense with the roof, so that I may gaze out upon the starry heavens overhead that stretch in an unending expanse of beauty. What conscious Art of man can give me the panoramic scenes that open out before me, when I look up at the sky above with all its shining
stars?
RAMACHANDRAN: The artists claim to see and find Truth through outward beauty. Is it possible to see and find Truth in this way?
GANDHI: I would reverse the order. I see and find Beauty in Truth or through Truth. All Truths, not merely true ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures, or songs, are highly beautiful. People generally fail to see Beauty in Truth; the ordinary man runs away from and becomes blind to the beauty in it. Whenever men begin to see Beauty in Truth, then true Art will arise.
RAMACHANDRAN: But cannot Beauty be separated from Truth, and Truth from Beauty?
GANDHI: I would want to know exactly what is Beauty. If it is what people generally understand by that word, then they are wide apart. Is a woman with fair features necessarily beautiful?
RAMACHANDRAN: Yes.
GANDHI: Even if she may be of an ugly character?
RAMACHANDRAN: But Bapuji, the most beautiful things have often been created by men whose own lives were not beautiful.
GANDHI: That only means that Truth and Beauty often co-exist, good and evil are often found together. In an artist also not seldom the right perception of things and the wrong co-exist. Truly beautiful creations come when right perception is at work. If these moments are rare in life, they are also rare in art.
Long ago Gandhi had hammered out his own conception of art, finding confirmation in the works of Tolstoy for his rejection of any art lacking in moral purpose. For him, the sun and the moon were works of art because they possessed a moral purpose; and the statue of Christ in the Vatican, which he was to see later, pleased him not because it was beautiful but because it was moral. He had the metaphysician’s distaste for the disorders of art; the moral law was a sufficient decoration for the world.