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

by Robert Payne

  In this way, with little hope of convincing the Muslims and perhaps even less hope of convincing himself, Gandhi offered his own apologia for his son’s behavior. He believed that when a child is born, his character is already largely determined as a result of his previous lives and his ancestry; and the faults of the father are visited on the son. All he could hope for now was a sudden alteration of character through the intervention of divine grace, and he could see little real evidence that it would come about.

  Kasturbhai also wrote a letter to Harilal’s Muslim friends, begging them to see the error of their ways. While brooding on the apostasy of her son, her health had been affected; there had been so many sleepless nights, so many bitter arguments with herself. While Gandhi could take some comfort from the knowledge that Harilal’s evil life came about as a result of a momentary transgression, this was not a view which could commend itself to her. She could think only of her weak-willed and erring son at the mercy of those who wanted to make a laughingstock of his father and mother. She wrote:

  I fail to understand the keen interest you have been taking in my eldest son’s life. You should, on the contrary, take him to task for bringing discredit to your religion. But instead you have begun to address him as “Maulvi” and show undue respect to him whenever you go to the station to see him off! Maybe, you want to make his father and mother a laughing-stock of the world. In that case, I have nothing to say to you except that what you are doing is highly reprehensible in the eyes of God.

  I am writing this in the hope that the piteous cry of this sorrowing mother will pierce the heart of at least one of you, and you will help my son turn a new leaf. In the meantime my only comfort lies in the knowledge that we have several lifelong Muslim friends, who highly disapprove of our son’s doings.

  But there was very little comfort to be derived from the Muslim friends who wrote letters of sympathy. What hurt most perhaps was that they were being subjected to ridicule, and neither Gandhi nor Kasturbhai were properly equipped to deal with ridicule. Harilal Gandhi had become Maulvi Abdulla, or “Great Teacher" Abdulla, and when he arrived at railroad stations groups of his friends were treating him with the same reverence with which Gandhi was treated as he traveled about India. It was a charade deliberately designed to ridicule the Mahatma, and there is no antidote against charades.

  With his deeply lined face, prematurely old and toothless, Harilal represented a threat to Gandhi’s existence. He was the genie who had emerged from a bottle to haunt and torment him through all the remaining years of his life. In the past there had been merely an estrangement, a separation, an unwritten agreement that they would remain outwardly friendly or at least indifferent to one another. There had been some brief battles between them, but except on very rare occasions they had declared a truce soon after the battles were joined. Now, emerging at last from the depths of his despair, Harilal had gone over to the offensive. For a long time he had been searching for an opportunity to destroy his father; now at last he thought he had found it.

  How dangerously deep-rooted the estrangement had become was shown by an incident that occurred some months previously, when Gandhi and Kasturbai were traveling on the Jabalpur Mail. When they reached the small town of Katni, they heard the usual shouts: “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!” and there was the usual parade of people hoping to have Gandhi’s darshan. Suddenly there was heard a voice shouting: “Mata Kasturba ki jai!” meaning “Victory to Mother Kasturba!” This was so unusual a cry that she peered out of the train window and immediately caught sight of Harilal standing on the platform. His clothes were in rags, and he looked as though he was suffering from illness and privation. Seeing his mother peering from the window, he went up to her, solemnly removed an orange from his pocket and presented it to her, saying: “Ba, this is for you.” Gandhi, who was standing beside his wife, said: “And have you nothing for me?”

  “No, I have brought the orange only for Ba,” Harilal said. “I have only one thing to say to you— If you are so great, you owe it all to Ba.”

  “Of course,” Gandhi replied. “But first tell me, are you coming along with us?”

  “No, I came only to meet Ba.”

  Then he offered the orange to his mother, saying it was only a token of his love for her, even though he had had to beg for it. The orange was for her, and for her alone.

  She began to eat the orange, and then she said sorrowfully: “Look at your present condition, son. Come along with us. Do you realize whose son you are? Or perhaps your condition is beyond hope.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. Already the train was steaming out of the station. Harilal was saying: “Ba, please eat the orange!”

  Suddenly Kasturbai remembered that she had given nothing to her son. There was some fruit in her basket, and she hurriedly offered it to him, but he was already out of reach. The train was picking up speed. From far away there came the cry: “Mata Kasturba kijai!”

  Satyagraha

  AS THE YEARS passed Gandhi continually refined his conception of Satyagraha, a word which he had himself invented. The word was capable of many meanings, and these meanings were capable of many interpretations. It was never simply “truth force,” for there are many kinds of truth and many kinds of force. Gandhi was continually experimenting with truth and inventing new forms of force. And just as Satyagraha was never “truth force,” so it was never “non-violence” or “passive resistance,” although it included them in its ever-widening orbit

  What Gandhi had in mind from the beginning was something essentially positive, an outgoing of spiritual power and a purification through suffering. The legendary King Harishchandra, who sacrificed his kingdom, his wealth, his wife and child, in order to honor the word given by him, was an example of Satyagraha. Gandhi had seen the play when he was a boy, and it made a deep impression on him. “Why should not all be truthful like Harishchandra? This is what I asked myself day and night” he wrote in his autobiography. “To follow truth and to go through all the ordeals Harishchandra went through was the one ideal it inspired in me.” By the force of truth and by the willingness to sacrifice everything he possessed he overcame all obstacles. In Gandhi’s mind truth and sacrifice were close bedfellows.

  Once he wrote: “Satyagraha is the vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one’s self.” The enemy was not to be touched by human hands, but “weaned from error by patience and sympathy.” But as usual—for he made many definitions—this was only a part of the whole. There were forms of Satyagraha which involved at least the hint of violence, and when Poland defended herself valiantly against the German Army in the early days of World War II, Gandhi, who had been deeply touched by an imploring message from Paderewski, went to the length of characterizing Polish armed resistance as “almost nonviolent.” He explained this interpretation of non-violence in an article in Harijan in August 1940:

  If a man fights with his sword single-handed against a horde of dacoits armed to the teeth, I should say he is fighting almost non-violently. Haven’t I said to our women that, if in defence of their honour they used nails and teeth and even a dagger, I should regard their conduct as non-violent? She does not know the distinction between himsa and ahimsa. She acts spontaneously. Supposing a mouse in fighting a cat tried to resist the cat with its sharp snout, would you call that mouse violent? In the same way, for the Poles to stand valiantly against the German hordes vastly superior in numbers, military equipment and strength, was almost non-violence. I should not mind repeating that statement over and over again. You must give its full value to the word “almost.”

  It is not always easy to give the full value to the word “almost.” There were degrees of non-violence, and Gandhi, being a skillful lawyer, at ease among words with continually shifting meanings, spent a good deal of time arranging the degrees of non-violence in their proper categories. He was under no illusions concerning the danger of the task. Sometimes nonviolence was indistinguishable from violence, and Gandhi was
well aware that himsa and ahimsa were negotiable terms.

  In article after article he sought to discover the springs of non-violent action. Sometimes they eluded him, and he would find himself in a territory where Words lost their meaning, negatives piled up on negatives, and absolutes were welded together. He would say that “the sword of the Satyagrahi is love,” forgetting that in this context “sword” and “love” were no more than counters in a game. Some of his articles on Satyagraha have no bite; he was merely repeating what he had said so many times before and was bored by his own argument. In other articles he would look at Satyagraha freshly, as though it had only come into existence at that very moment. He was at his best when he portrayed the living Satyagrahi, the character he had invented. Like a painter, he would add new brush strokes from time to time, darken or lighten the background, emphasize some element of the features or swiftly remodel the entire portrait. Finally he drew up fifteen commandments for the Satyagrahi to obey, and then the portrait was rounded and complete:

  The Commandments for a Satyagrahi

  As an Individual.

  1. A Satyagrahi, i.e. a civil resister, will harbour no anger.

  2. He will suffer the anger of an opponent.

  3. In doing so he will put up with assaults from the opponent, never retaliate, but he will not submit, out of fear of punishment or the like, to any order given in anger.

  4. When any person in authority seeks to arrest a civil resister, he will voluntarily submit to the arrest and he will not resist the attachment or removal of his own property, if any, when it is sought to be confiscated by the authorities.

  5. When a civil resister has any property in his possession as a trustee, he will refuse to surrender it, even though in defending it he might lose his life. He will, however, never retaliate.

  6. Non-retaliation excludes swearing and cursing.

  7. Therefore a civil resister will never insult his opponent, and therefore also, he may not take part in many of the newly coined cries which are contrary to the spirit of Ahimsa.

  8. A civil resister will not salute the Union Jack, nor will he insult it or officials, English or Indian.

  9. In the course of the struggle if one insults an official or commits an assault upon him, a civil resister will protect such official or officials from the insult or attack even at the risk of his life.

  As a Prisoner.

  10. As a prisoner, a civil resister will behave courteously toward prison officials, and will observe all such discipline of the prison as is not contrary to self-respect; as for instance, whilst he will salaam the officials in the usual manner, he will not permit any humiliating gyrations and will refuse to shout, “Victory to Sarkar,” [government] or the like. He will take cleanly cooked and cleanly served food, which is not contrary to his religion, and will refuse to take food insultingly served or served in unclean vessels.

  11. A civil resister will make no distinction between an ordinary prisoner and himself, will in no way regard himself as superior to the rest; nor will he ask for any conveniences that may not be necessary for keeping his body in good health and condition. He is entitled to ask for such conveniences as may be required for his physical and spiritual well-being.

  12. A civil resister may not fast for want of conveniences whose deprivation does not involve any injury to one’s self-respect.

  As a Unit

  13. A civil resister will joyfully obey all the orders issued by the leader of the corps, whether they please him or not.

  14. He will carry out orders in the first instance even though they appear to him to be insulting, inimical or foolish, and then appeal to higher authority. He is free to determine the fitness of the corps to satisfy him before joining it; but after he has joined it, it becomes his duty to submit to its disciplines, irksome or otherwise. If the sum total of the energy for the corps appears to a member to be improper or immoral, he has a right to sever his connection; but, being within it, he has no right to commit a breach of its discipline.

  15. No civil resister is to expect maintenance for his dependents. It would be an accident if any such provision is made. A civil resister entrusts his dependents to the care of God. Even in ordinary warfare wherein hundreds of thousands give themselves up to it, they are able to make no previous provision. How much more, then, should such be the case in Satyagraha? It is the universal experience that in such times hardly anybody is left to starve.

  In this revolutionary catechism much had inevitably been omitted. Gandhi was describing the Satyagrahi in terms of his attitudes toward authority, but his precise functions and aims were never clearly expressed, perhaps because they were regarded as self-explanatory. The order in which the commandments was written is revealing. First, we see the Satyagrahi confronted by British authority. Then we see him as a prisoner, and finally we see him as a disciplined member of a group who can expect no rewards and no special care for his family, which is entrusted to the mercy of God. He was offering his followers only “blood, sweat and tears.”

  If the portrait was partly a self-portrait, it was nevertheless admirably designed to appeal to the idealism of youth. Gandhi was demanding no more from them than he demanded of himself. Yet non-violence by its very nature demanded qualities which are always rare in human nature: forbearance, fortitude, a fierce courage. The Christian martyrs had possessed it, and so had many Christian sects, but it was so rare in the world that it seemed to have been invented by Gandhi. The awful, the terrible thing about the Satyagrahi was that he rarely had a clear, recognizable shape and no one could predict how he would achieve his victories. Was it to be expected that if sufficient Satyagrahis appeared, the British government would simply abandon the struggle and go home?

  It happened sometimes that Gandhi had to suffer the irony of being the victim of a Satyagraha campaign. In August 1938, when he was resting at Sevagram, a small army of Harijans marched on the village and announced that they would remain until their demands were satisfied. They would take no food. They would refuse to be removed. They would confront Gandhi with their haunting presence until he had submitted to their demand that he should appoint a Harijan to the Indian cabinet. It made no difference to them that Gandhi was in no position to appoint anyone to the cabinet, for they argued that he had always been able to obtain what he wanted by fasting unto death. They, too, would fast, and they would expect to be treated with the same indulgence which Gandhi received in jail. Attendants must be supplied; rooms must be set aside; they had already chosen their living quarters and expected the present inhabitants to vacate them.

  Gandhi submitted to the severe ordeal with good grace. The room they wanted was occupied by Kasturbhai, and he suggested that they might prefer another, but they rejected the offer. So they mocked him with then high-sounding speeches and insistent demands, and took what they wanted. The Harijans vanished a few days later, but Gandhi was deeply shaken by this confrontation with a Satyagraha campaign.

  Surprisingly, the most brilliant exponent of Satyagraha was neither a Hindu nor a religious leader, but a rich aristocrat, Khan Abul Ghaffar Khan, the son of a Pathan chieftain, a Muslim, and a former soldier. He was built in a heroic mold, being tall and fiercely handsome with his hooked nose and grizzled beard. Over large areas of the Northwest Frontier he had tamed the warlike Pathans and led them in non-violent demonstrations against the British. He was sometimes known as “the Frontier Gandhi,” but such a description was unfair to Gandhi. Khan Abul Ghaffar Khan was one of those towering figures who exist in their own right.

  In October 1938 Gandhi toured the Northwest Frontier in the company of his friend. They were an odd-looking couple, for Gandhi scarcely reached up to the Khan’s shoulder. They were happy together. From time to time Gandhi would assume the mantle of the prophet and lawgiver, but the Khan showed no trace of annoyance, meekly bowed to Gandhi’s opinions, and showed himself to be a superb diplomat. Gandhi spoke to the Pathans as though he could never quite bring himself to believe that those sturd
y, flashing-eyed men wearing red shirts had really accepted nonviolence; and so he begged them to live in peace although they were sworn to peace. The Pathans are a sensitive, gracious and wildly demonstrative people, who shake hands vigorously and are inclined to murder anyone who so much as hints of an act of dishonor. Gandhi wandered among them like a child wandering in a dream.

  On his way to the Northwest Frontier Gandhi had time to ponder Hitler’s triumph at Munich and Neville Chamberlain’s belief that peace had been assured in Europe. He had no faith in Chamberlain. “Europe has sold her soul for the sake of a seven days’ earthly existence,” he wrote. “The peace that Europe gained at Munich is a triumph of violence.” He was saddened by the fate of the Czechs and suggested that they should offer non-violent resistance; he urged them to refuse to obey Hitler’s will and perish unarmed in the attempt. Mirabehn was ordered to draft out two letters to President Eduard Beneš, outlining the proper behavior of a Czech Satyagrahi when confronted by the German Army.

  Munich brought him to the edge of another breakdown, for he had foreseen the consequences of folly. Austria had fallen; Spain was about to fall; the Chinese were withdrawing into their remote hinterland; everywhere he looked there was darkness. He knew in his heart that non-violent resistance offered the sole solution to the world’s problems, but it was abundantly evident that it was almost beyond the reach of mankind. Men were not yet ready for it. Only in India were there men prepared to offer themselves as willing victims, and perhaps even in India there was only a handful.

  Early in the following year he began to lose hope in non-violent resistance. Something more terrible was demanded of the faithful Satyagrahi. “We have had the courage to go to jail, to lose our homes and lands,” he wrote. “Let us pray for the courage to go to the scaffold cheerfully or to become ashes in a consuming fire.”