Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  The ubiquity of agriculture and of warfare, the importance of coastal trade, a large urban population – these made Kathiawar most attractive to the Bania. Within the towns, merchants were organized in powerful guilds, which pressured kings to grant land and tax concessions for homes and businesses. Here they worked as merchants, shopkeepers and moneylenders. But what made the Banias of Kathiawar distinctive was that they were not confined to their traditional occupations. They also worked for the state, as revenue collectors and civil servants.7 In Hindu states or kingdoms, the second most important person was the diwan, or chief minister. This key post was almost always taken by a member of the two highest castes, Brahmin and Kshatriya. Not so in Kathiawar, where members of the merchant caste could aspire to become chief ministers. Among the many Bania diwans in Kathiawar were Mohandas Gandhi’s own father and grandfather.

  Porbandar, Gandhi’s birthplace, is on the south-west of the Kathiawar peninsula. It has a moderate climate, with sunny but not sweltering days, and evenings cooled by the sea breeze. An English visitor observed that Porbandar ‘had received from Nature an unimaginable splendour of sea and sky’. Built entirely of stone and protected by great high gates, the city looked out ‘from a jutting headland into the infinite expanse of ocean’. Its air was ‘fresh with the salt spray’ of the sea, which was ‘driven along the beach from great combing breakers as they burst into white foam’.8 The town gave its name to the state, which in the 1860s covered about 600 square miles, in a broad band along the coast. Closer to the sea the land was marshy, but as one moved inland it became arable. On this drier ground, the peasants of Porbandar grew rice and lentils.

  A good quarter of the state’s citizens lived in Porbandar town, participating in the commerce of the port, whose ninety-foot lighthouse could be seen from miles out at sea. There had once been ‘a brisk trade with the ports of Sind, Baluchistan, the Persian Gulf, Arabia, and the east coast of Africa’. However, the emergence of Bombay had seriously diminished the traffic of ships and goods in and out of Porbandar. At the time of Mohandas Gandhi’s birth in 1869, the main imports were timber from Malabar, cotton and tobacco from Bombay and Broach, and grain from Karachi.9

  The rulers of Porbandar were from the Jethwa clan of Rajputs. They claimed to be the oldest ruling dynasty in Kathiawar, dating back to the ninth century. Their fortunes had ebbed and flowed down the years, as they fought with the neighbouring states of Nawanagar and Junagadh. As a consequence of battles lost or won, their capital had shifted around considerably, but from the late eighteenth century they had been based in the port town of Porbandar.10

  Porbandar was one of some seventy chiefdoms in Kathiawar. So many states in such a small territory encouraged a proliferation in titles. Many rulers called themselves ‘Maharaja’ if they were Hindu, and ‘Nawab’ if they were Muslim. Others used more exotic titles such as ‘Rao’ and ‘Jam Saheb’. The ruler of Porbandar was known as the ‘Rana’.

  The peninsula of Kathiawar has a stark, somewhat special beauty. Apart from the long coastline, it has several low ranges of hills, on which are perched temples holy to Hindus as well as Jains. In Gandhi’s boyhood, the countryside teemed with wildlife: leopards, lions and deer abounded. The bird life remains spectacular: flamingos on the coast, storks and cranes in the fields, doves and warblers and hornbills in the woods.

  The first census, conducted in 1872, estimated the peninsula’s population at about 2.3 million. While 86 per cent of Kathiawaris were Hindus, they belonged to different castes and sub-castes, each with their distinctive rituals and ways of living. About 13 per cent of the population were Muslim. The bulk were descended from Hindu converts, but some claimed an Arabian or African lineage. Endogamous groups among the Muslims included the Memons, who belonged to the mainstream Sunni tradition of Islam, and the Khojas and Bohras, who were considered more heterodox because they followed a living leader.

  The Muslims of Kathiawar were traders, farmers and artisans. However, despite their varying occupations and orientations, they all spoke the language of the land, Gujarati, rather than Persian or Urdu, the languages associated with Muslims in the north of India.11 Then there were the Jains and the Parsis, more of whom were present here than in other parts of the subcontinent. The Jains were a sect that had broken away from the Hindu fold in about the ninth century BC. The Parsis, also known as Zoroastrians, had fled to India from Persia after the rise to power in that land of the Shia branch of Islam. The Jains and the Parsis, adding to the heterogeneity of Kathiawar, were both admired for their scholarship and business acumen. The Jains were further respected for their austere personal lives; the Parsis, for their easy emulation of Western manners and mores.

  Unlike in eastern or southern India, the British did not choose to rule over Kathiawar directly. About 80 per cent of the peninsula remained with Indian rulers. These potentates were tolerated, so long as they recognized the military and political superiority of the British, and allowed them to monitor trade and the movement of people.

  The British placed the chiefs of Kathiawar in seven categories. Class I rulers had full jurisdiction over their subjects: they could, provided they followed due process, convict criminals, and even hang them. Those in lower categories were denied the powers of capital punishment and of extended imprisonment. Class VII chiefs, for example, had to obtain the permission of the British to levy fines of more than Rs 15 or to impose sentences longer than fifteen days in jail.

  The states of Kathiawar were divided into four geographical divisions, each with a British agent, to whom the chiefs reported. Some towns had British garrisons; others, British railway engineers or Christian missionaries. Detachments of troops led by white officers visited ports and towns at subtle intervals. Sometimes a higher dignitary came calling – the governor of Bombay perhaps, or even the viceroy. For them large darbars were held and hunting expeditions organized. The pomp and the hospitality was a sign of princely deference to the Raj; it made clear to everyone who, ultimately, was in charge.12

  Of the seventy-four chiefs in Kathiawar, only fourteen were placed in Class I. The Rana of Porbandar was one of them. This fact was broadcast to his 70,000 subjects, among them the Gandhis, a family that for several generations had been in the service of the state. The first Gandhi in public service, named Lalji, migrated from Junagadh State to work in Porbandar. Lalji Gandhi served under the diwan, as did his son and grandson. Only in the fourth generation of service did a Gandhi achieve the coveted post of diwan, or chief minister. This was Uttamchand Gandhi, also known as ‘Ota Bapa’, ‘Ota’ being a diminutive of his first name, and ‘bapa’ the Gujarati word for ‘father’ or ‘respected elder’.

  Uttamchand Gandhi’s first job was as Collector of Customs in Porbandar port. He was then asked to negotiate the transfer of slivers of land between Porbandar and Junagadh, so that each state could consolidate its territory. Proficiency in both jobs was rewarded with the prize post of first minister to the king.

  As Diwan of Porbandar, Uttamchand Gandhi put the state’s finances in order. He also secured the trust and good faith of the British overlord. When two Englishmen were murdered by bandits along the Porbandar–Jamnagar border, Uttamchand Gandhi told his ruler to say that the place where the crime was committed lay in the other state. The hills where the murders took place were remote and valueless; better not to claim them, if that disavowal helped bring Porbandar closer to the Raj and its rulers.13

  Uttamchand Gandhi seemed set for a long tenure as diwan, when the Rana of Porbandar suddenly died. The male heir was too young to ascend the throne, so the power devolved in the interim to his mother, the Queen Regent. She resented the Diwan’s prestige and influence; by one account, she even sent a body of troops to attack his house. Uttamchand Gandhi then left Porbandar and settled in his ancestral village of Kutiyana in Junagadh State.14

  The Nawab of Junagadh sent for Uttamchand Gandhi to ask if he needed anything from the darbar. The visitor, showing up at the palace, saluted the Nawab ‘wit
h his left hand in outrage of all convention’. When a courtier chastised him, Uttamchand replied that ‘in spite of all that I have suffered I keep my right hand for Porbunder still’.15

  After the death of the Queen Mother in 1841, Uttamchand Gandhi returned to Porbandar. His property was restored. The family story says that the new rana, Vikmatji, urged him to resume the office of diwan, which he declined. The records in the archives complicate the tale. There was a British garrison in Porbandar, paid for from the state’s funds. The town’s merchants complained that the soldiers were often drunk and harassed them for cash. Vikmatji thought that since there was little threat of piracy, the soldiers could be sent back to Bombay. Uttamchand Gandhi disagreed; the British, he said characteristically, had still (if not always) to be humoured.16

  Vikmatji listened at the time; but remained unhappy with the burden the garrison put on his finances. In 1847 he chose Uttamchand’s son Karamchand (known as Kaba) as his diwan, giving him a silver ink-stand and inkpot as the sign of his office. The new diwan was just twenty-five, closer in age to Vikmatji, and more amenable to the ruler’s wishes (and whims) than his tough and overbearing father.

  Kaba Gandhi was short and stocky, and wore a moustache. He had little formal education; studying briefly in a Gujarati school before joining the Rana as a letter-writer and clerk. He enjoyed his ruler’s trust, became diwan at a young age, and by 1869 had given more than two decades of service in that post. In that time he had also married three times. His first two wives died early, but not before producing a daughter apiece. The third marriage proved childless. With no heir in sight, he sought his wife’s permission to take another consort (permitted under traditional Hindu law).

  The request granted, Kaba Gandhi chose a woman twenty-two years younger as his fourth wife. Named Putlibai, she came from a village in Junagadh State. They were married in 1857, and in quick succession she bore him three children. A son, Laxmidas, was born in or around the year 1860. A daughter named Raliat was born two years later, followed, in about 1867, by a second son named Karsandas.17

  In the spring of 1869 Putlibai was pregnant once more. As she awaited the birth of her fourth child, the state of Porbandar was mired in controversy, caused by the actions of Kaba Gandhi’s ruler and pay-master, Rana Vikmatji. In April, a slave named Luckman as well as an Arab soldier were killed on the orders of the king. The former in particular met with a gruesome end. His ears and nose were slit and then he was thrown off the town walls to his death.

  Told of the killings, the British agent asked Rana Vikmatji for an explanation. The Rana replied that the slave Luckman was an attendant to his eldest son, whom he had made a ‘habitual drunkard’. When the Rana and his wife were out of town, Luckman promoted his prince’s ‘indulgence in ardent spirits’, as a result of which he ‘expired in extreme agony’. The Rana had to punish the ‘murderer of our son’; he admitted to having ordered the cutting of nose and ears, but claimed the deadly fall was an accident.

  As for the Arab soldier, Rana Vikmatji said he had entered the zenana, the women’s quarters of the palace, where he ‘took hold of our late son’s widow’ and attempted to molest her. The soldier too had to be put to death, for violating ‘the fidelity he owed to his master, and like a robber secretly and at night invad[ing] the sanctity of the zenana so jealously guarded by Hindoos, especially Rajputs’.

  The British were unpersuaded by the Rana’s explanations. In view of these ‘serious instances of abuse of power’, his status was downgraded – previously a prince of the First Class, he would now be put in the Third Class. He was deprived of the power of capital punishment over his subjects. As a mark of good behaviour he had to establish criminal courts run on modern principles of justice.18

  The archival record of these incidents in Porbandar does not contain any hint of the feelings of the Rana’s Diwan. In a small state with a small court, one suspects that Kaba Gandhi knew of the close relationship between the prince and his slave. What advice did the Diwan give his ruler? Did he counsel against the mutilation of the slave or the execution of the soldier? Did he help in drafting Vikmatji’s letter of explanation? To such questions we have no answer. But of the fact that Kaba Gandhi felt his ruler’s demotion most keenly there can be no doubt. News of the king’s troubles would have reached the servants, and Kaba’s pregnant wife Putlibai too.

  It was on 10 September 1869 that the Bombay Government formally downgraded Rana Vikmatji by making him a Ruler of the Third Class. Three weeks later, amidst this background of violence and humiliation, the wife of the Rana’s longserving Diwan gave birth to her fourth child. He was a boy, who was named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

  Since the year 1777, the Gandhi family had lived in a three-storey house close to one of the old city gates of Porbandar. The rooms – twelve in all – were large but with little light. On the second floor there was a large balcony; this was where the family repaired in the evenings, to refresh themselves with the sea breeze. Below the house was a tank to store water. Since the aquifer under Porbandar was brackish, it was necessary to harvest and husband rainwater. Before the monsoon, the roof of the Gandhi home was cleaned. Then as the rain ran down it was purified by some lime, attached to the mouth of a pipe which linked the roof to the water tank below.19

  Putlibai’s youngest son, Mohandas, was born in a room on the ground floor. A later visitor wrote, ‘the room is dark. The corner is darker still. No window opens out [to] the verandah. A small door opens out in another room just behind this one at [the] opposite corner.’20

  As was customary in Indian households, the baby Mohandas was looked after by the women around him. Apart from his mother and his aunts, his girl cousins and especially his elder sister Raliat took turns holding and playing with him. The sister recalled that, as a little boy, Mohandas was ‘restless as mercury’. He could not ‘sit still even for a little while. He must be either playing or roaming about. I used to take him out with me to show him the familiar sights in the street – cows, buffaloes and horses, cats and dogs … One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs’ ears’.21

  Gandhi’s mother, Putlibai, was born in a village named Dantrana, set amidst hills and on the banks of a river thirty miles inland from Porbandar. Her father was a shopkeeper. The American scholar Stephen Hay points out that Mohandas’s mother ‘would have had to develop a good deal of patience and forbearance as a young bride, for her husband’s other wife, whom she had in a sense displaced, was both ill and barren, and the two lived under the same roof for some years’.22

  The household that Putlibai ran in Rajkot was vegetarian. Like other members of their caste, the Gandhis never cooked meat or eggs. Hobson-Jobson, that compendium of customs and manners prevalent in nineteenth-century India, notes of the Banias of Gujarat that they ‘profess[ed] an extravagant respect for animal life’.23 Their fastidiousness had made the Banias an object of derision. The meat-eating castes disparaged them as ‘dhili dal’, soft like lentils. In turn, the merchant castes looked down on ‘what they saw as the dirty and degrading eating habits of most non-Baniyas’.24

  Some Bania households refused to eat vegetables grown ‘under the ground’, such as onion and garlic. Bania women watched vigilantly over their cooking fires, lest a passing insect enter the pot and pollute the food. Somewhat unusually, Kaba Gandhi would help his wife cut and clean the vegetables in preparation for the evening meal.

  The Rajputs of Kathiawar (the ranas of Porbandar included) liked hunting, smoking and drinking. The peasants of the peninsula enjoyed the same pleasures, albeit at less regular intervals. Banias like the Gandhis rigorously eschewed meat, tobacco and alcohol. Yet their vegetarian cuisine was subtle and wide-ranging. The main cereals were millet and rice. There were also many varieties of lentils. With these staples went an assortment of special snacks, many distinctive chutneys and pickles, several very fine desserts, but also a unique mixing within the meal of spicy and sweet dishes.25

  Another feature of the Gandhi household
was piety. Putlibai was a woman of self-sacrificing discipline and a stoic religiosity, who (as her son remembered) would

  not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers. Going to Haveli – the Vaishnava temple – was one of her daily duties … She would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching. Illness was no excuse for relaxing them … To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her. Living on one meal a day during Chaturmas was a habit with her. Not content with that she fasted every alternate day during one Chaturmas. During another Chaturmas she vowed not to have food without seeing the sun. We children on those [rainy] days would stand, staring at the sky, waiting to announce the appearance of the sun to our mother.26

  The sub-caste the Gandhis belonged to was known as Modh Bania, the prefix apparently referring to the town of Modhera, in southern Gujarat. Their kul devata, or family deity, was Ram. There was a Ram temple in Porbandar. (One of the temple’s founders was a Gandhi.) The region was steeped in the traditions of Vaishnavism, the worship of Vishnu and especially his avatars Ram and Krishna. Up the coast from Gandhi’s place of birth lay the town of Dwarka, where Krishna is believed to have lived in adulthood, and which since the ninth century ad (at least) has been one of the great pilgrim centres of the Hindu tradition.27

  Mohandas’s mother introduced him to the mysteries – and beauties – of faith. Putlibai was devout, but not dogmatic. Born and raised a Vaishnavite, she became attracted to a sect called the Pranamis, who incorporated elements of Islam into their worship. The sect’s founder was a Kshatriya named Pran Nath who lived in Kathiawar in the eighteenth century. He was widely travelled, and may even have visited Mecca. The Pranami temple in Porbandar that Putlibai patronized had no icons, no images; only writing on the wall, deriving from the Hindu scriptures and from the Koran. Putlibai’s ecumenism extended even further, for among the regular visitors to her home were Jain monks.28