Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  After breakfast (usually milk and fruits) the friends walked some five miles into the city, to attend to their respective sets of clients. If they had an early meeting they cycled instead, Gandhi getting off his bike on the steeper slopes. Once the day’s work was done they walked or cycled back to The Kraal. Gandhi wrote to John Cordes that Kallenbach and he lived a ‘reasonable’ if not a ‘popular’ life. They had learnt to be tolerant of one another, and to give each other the benefit of doubt.52

  Among the things that brought Gandhi and Kallenbach together was a shared admiration for the works of Leo Tolstoy, who at this time was certainly the most famous writer in the world. Tolstoy was admired for his novels and stories, and in some quarters, even more for his attempts at simplifying his life. In his early fifties he had a conversion experience, following which he gave up alcohol, tobacco and meat. His vegetarianism became so well-known that he was asked to write an introduction to a book of Henry Salt’s. He took up working in the fields, and splitting wood and making shoes in a bid to empathize with his serfs. From a martial background, he now began to preach the virtues of pacifism. Although born and raised in the Russian Orthodox Church, he developed a deep interest in Hinduism and Buddhism.

  Of Tolstoy’s many transitions, the most painful was his embrace of celibacy. In his youth he had been (in his own words), ‘a radical chaser after women’. His wife went through more than a dozen pregnancies. He had affairs with peasant women on his estate. A man of ‘wild passion’, he sought in middle age to give up sex along with the other pleasures he had forsaken.53

  Tolstoy’s embrace of the simple life was widely spoken of, and often emulated. Across Europe, Asia and North America, his followers refused to enrol for military service, established craft and farming co-operatives, practised vegetarianism and preached religious tolerance. Reading and venerating their master, these Tolstoyans sought to do in their homelands what Tolstoy was believed to have done in his.54

  The experiments of Gandhi and Kallenbach in Johannesburg were of a piece with this worldwide trend. Both were from middle-class backgrounds; both practised professions that brought them close to circles of wealth and power. Reading Tolstoy was for each an educative and even epiphanic experience. For the lawyer, it consolidated the non-attachment to worldly possessions so exalted in the Hindu and Jain traditions; for the architect, it provided an encouragement to embrace a life of austerity and abstinence that his own, Jewish, tradition did not mandate and (at least with regard to celibacy) perhaps did not comprehend.

  Gandhi and Tolstoy were akin in good ways and bad. Both were indifferent fathers and less than solicitous husbands. There were also differences. Gandhi’s prose style was more restrained, less polemical. Whereas Tolstoy loved nature, and took his family for holidays in the hills, Gandhi did not much care for beaches, parks or forests. Although he often visited Cape Town, there is no record of his ever having climbed Table Mountain. Once, when the Gandhis were in Cape Town and Manilal wanted to stay an extra day to climb it, his father told him that there was no need, since ‘when you go home to India you can go up to the Himalayas which contain thousands of Table Mountains’.55

  Where Gandhi more closely emulated his Russian idol was in his increasing disenchantment with his profession. Despite constantly being urged to do so, Tolstoy turned away from writing the sort of novels which had made him famous. Likewise, Gandhi had come to see his legal practice more as an obligation than as a career. He would attend to cases of discrimination, but his heart lay (as Tolstoy’s did) in personal improvement and social reform.

  Tolstoy had once written to an English disciple rejecting formal, institutional Christianity, and instead exalting ‘the sincere effort made by each individual person to coordinate one’s life and actions with those moral foundations one considers to be true, regardless of the demands of family, society, and government’.56 This, precisely, was the goal that Gandhi and Kallenbach had set themselves. Thus it came to be that, in a South African town in 1908, a lawyer from western India and an architect from eastern Europe set out to run their Tolstoyan experiment. The contours of their life together emerge clearly in a letter written in June 1908 by Kallenbach to his brother Simon. This went into details about their domestic labours – ‘we cook, bake, scrub and are cleaning the house and the yard; we are polishing our shoes, and are working in the flower and vegetable garden.’

  These activities were foreign to the traditions and habits of the social class to which Kallenbach’s family had aspired. As he told Simon, he had now radically departed from the lifestyle of the modernizing Jewish bourgeoisie of Europe. The stimulus for these departures was his Hindu housemate, who was ‘a vegetarian according to his religious convictions’, and yet ‘an extraordinarily good and capable person’. Under his influence Kallenbach had given up meat; even more dramatically, as he informed his brother, ‘for the last 18 months I have given up my sex life.’ By these changes and choices, Hermann had ‘gained in character – strength – mental vitality and physical development; my bodily well-being had become bigger and better.’

  In London, twenty years previously, Gandhi had shared a home with Josiah Oldfield. The flatmates organized parties and visited homes to convert meat-eaters to vegetarianism. Now, living with Kallenbach in Johannesburg, Gandhi sought rather to convert himself (and his house-mate), by practising the austerity and detachment from worldly pleasures advocated by his old preceptor Raychandbhai and his new preceptor Leo Tolstoy.

  By this time, there were two distinct groups among Gandhi’s followers and friends. One group endorsed his political programme: they were prepared to go to jail for him, and to give speeches and write articles in favour of lifting restrictions against the Indians. Many Gujarati merchants and Tamil hawkers fell into this category; as did European friends such as Henry and Millie Polak.

  A second, smaller group endorsed Gandhi’s moral and spiritual programme as well. They simplified their diet and their needs, they worked with their hands at home and at the press, they sought to promote inter-faith understanding, they sought (not always successfully) to practise brahmacharya. In this group were Gandhi’s nephews Chhaganlal and Maganlal, Albert West, and the new resident of Phoenix, John Cordes. And now Hermann Kallenbach, too.

  Gandhi had already taken a vow of celibacy; Kallenbach, under his influence, joined him. To keep the vow was hard enough for the Indian; but even harder for the Jew. For one thing, Gandhi was older, and had already begotten four children. For another, Indian religious traditions placed a very high value on abstinence from sexual pleasure. However, Kallenbach was younger and highly sexed. Besides, celibacy was utterly foreign to the Jewish tradition, where religious fulfilment was compatible with family life and sexual relations.57

  Gandhi had failed to convert his own eldest son, Harilal, to brahmacharya. The boy had married against his wishes, and was planning a family too. Like Harilal, Kallenbach was deeply attracted to women. That he still chose to be celibate was proof of his admiration, even awe, for Gandhi. Having described, to his brother Simon, his life with his new mentor, Kallenbach spoke of how it might turn out in the future. In three months, he told his brother, payments for work in progress would make him financially independent. Then, with an annual income of £250, he would be free to leave, as he hoped, to study in London. But he would not go alone. For ‘probably Mr Gandhi, who is a barrister-at-law, plans to go with me in order to study medicine in London; there he plans to acquaint himself with Hydrotherapy (a branch of Naturopathy). For years, Mr Gandhi had been deeply interested in the study and methods of all natural healing methods.’

  Kallenbach himself was undecided what to study, whether ‘languages, architecture or even medicine’. He relished the prospect of Gandhi and he being students together, when they would ‘naturally, live together in London and continue our life in a similar fashion as we live here’. The plans were firm but not yet final, Kallenbach telling his brother that ‘if, for some reason or other, Mr Gandhi will be prevented
from leaving South Africa within 3 or 4 months, I intend waiting for him till the end of the year. However, thereafter I intend going on my own.’58

  The fact that Gandhi was contemplating leaving South Africa in 1908 to study medicine in London seems to have escaped the attention of historians and biographers. But there is a contemporary verification of Kallenbach’s claim, in the book of his South African travels written by the Baptist preacher F. B. Meyer. ‘He practises as a barrister,’ wrote Meyer of Gandhi in the summer of 1908, ‘but, not content with one profession, is hoping to visit London again shortly, to study medicine, and give his sons wider opportunities for realising the ideals with which he has inspired them.’59

  Gandhi had long been keen on natural methods of healing – applying mud poultices to wounds, for example, and taking the so-called Kuhne bath, where one cleansed oneself with water in which salt and baking soda were mixed. Hydropathy and naturopathy were attracting increasing attention in the early twentieth century, with influential schools and practitioners across Western Europe and North America. Hot water, cold water and steam were being used to treat fever, pains and other symptoms of ill-health (including alcoholism).60

  Gandhi’s interest in naturopathy was of a piece with his admiration for Tolstoy and Ruskin, whose writings stressed the need to shed possessions and to adopt a sceptical if not critical attitude to the fast pace and material orientation of modern industrial civilization. Still, that he would wish to pursue the study of this unorthodox branch of medicine full-time speaks of an interest rather deeper than that suggested by his own writings. He was now almost thirty-nine; established as a lawyer, acclaimed as a community leader, with obligations to his wife and children. What would motivate him now to seek a different career on a different continent? And how serious was this ambition? There is no hint of it in his autobiographical writings; and no hint of course in the exhortative articles for public consumption that he wrote for Indian Opinion.

  Gandhi had studied law in one city, London and practised it in four other cities – Rajkot, Bombay, Durban and Johannesburg. His life thus far had been marked by multiple dislocations – as an adult he had lived in a dozen different houses. But at least his career had been the same. And in this career he had steadily become more successful. In recent years, he had increasingly subordinated his legal practice to his social activism. The reason for this is clear – it was due to the compelling need to secure Indians in South Africa their rights. The reason for his wanting to qualify as a doctor are less apparent. Why now would he want to exchange one profession for another? Perhaps he was bored with the law. The range of cases for an Indian representing other Indians was rather limited in South Africa. The issuing of new permits and licences, the renewal of lapsed permits and licences – these more or less exhausted what he could do for his clients.

  Gandhi seems to have thought, or hoped, that the pressure of the protests he led would persuade General Smuts to honour his promise and repeal the obnoxious Asiatic Act of 1907. If that happened, Indians in South Africa would have their rights protected. And he would be free to leave for London to study medicine.

  Perhaps, in now contemplating a career in medicine, Gandhi was inspired by the example of others. A woman he greatly admired, Anna Kingsford, had acquired a medical degree despite refusing to dissect animals. She combined medicine with vegetarianism and heterodox Christianity. Two of Gandhi’s closest friends, Josiah Oldfield and Pranjivan Mehta, had qualified as barristers and doctors both. Mehta had in fact gone on to take up a third profession altogether, the buying and selling of jewellery. It may be that their successful (and fulfilling) changes of profession now encouraged Gandhi to do likewise. But what did Gandhi mean when he told Meyer that by going to England he would give his sons ‘wider opportunities’? Harilal had now worked for almost two years on Indian Opinion; and Manilal had begun assisting in the journal’s operations as well. Did their father think that by removing himself from the scene, the boys would become more responsible and mature?

  On the evidence – published as well as unpublished – Hermann Kallenbach was deeply devoted to Gandhi. The Indian was to him a combination of elder brother and moral preceptor. He greatly looked forward to their life together in London. The possible barriers he alluded to – the ‘some reason or another’ – were, one supposes, personal constraints – would Kasturba and their sons have approved of Gandhi going? – and political compulsions – how would the Indians of the Transvaal and Natal have reacted to the emigration of their leader?

  In the event, it was the Government’s intransigence that put paid to the plans of the two friends. When General Smuts refused to repeal the Act and, to make matters worse, introduced fresh laws aimed at the Indians, Gandhi and his colleagues were compelled to start a new round of satyagraha. Kallenbach’s letter to his brother Simon was posted on 14 June; two weeks later, Gandhi announced to his colleagues that his talks with Smuts had failed. The Indians had now to follow the example of the Japanese and, albeit non-violently, make their European opponents ‘bite the dust’.

  In early July, writing his weekly ‘Johannesburg Letter’ for Indian Opinion, Gandhi explained what the coming satyagraha was about. It was for the rights of those Indians who held Boer certificates of residence, for those past residents of the Transvaal who were presently outside the colony, and for educated Indians. The methods it would follow were the burning of registration certificates, and the refusal to give signatures or fingerprints if asked to by the police. If traders or hawkers were denied licences because they would not sign or provide fingerprints, they would continue trading. Imprisonment on account of any of these breaches of the law would be immediately accepted. To the resisters, Gandhi would provide legal assistance ‘free of charge as usual’.61

  The British Indian Association now scheduled a mass burning of certificates for Sunday 12 July 1908, but then agreed to a postponement at the request of Albert Cartwright and William Hosken. These white liberals still hoped a settlement would be struck. They carried Gandhi’s views to Smuts, and vice versa. In the event, the angels of peace found both sides to be unyielding. Smuts accused Gandhi of exploiting Indian permit-seekers for his professional gain; he even claimed that the lawyer charged his Muslim clients more than his Hindu ones. Gandhi dismissed this as a ‘damnable lie’.

  The differences between the two men were of perception and of policy. Smuts thought that as many as 15,000 Indians had Boer certificates and hence claims to re-enter the Transvaal; Gandhi insisted that the number did not exceed 1,000. Of ‘paramount importance’, however, were the rights of educated Indians. Gandhi told Cartwright that he

  should deserve severest condemnation even from General Smuts and all my European friends, if I, a barrister having received a liberal education, were to say that my fellow-barristers should not enter the Transvaal or any other Colony, because they were Indians. Let the education test be as severe as General Smuts chooses to make it … [B]ut a racial test I shall never accept.

  The result of these differences, said Gandhi, would ‘be a petition to [the Transvaal] Parliament against the clause [prohibiting the entry of educated Indians], a petition to the Imperial Government, and, if I can carry my countrymen with me, undoubtedly passive resistance.’62

  Gandhi’s position was consistent with his broader view of the past and future of race relations in South Africa. He was, so to speak, a ‘non-racial incrementalist’. While recognizing the technological, political, economic and social superiority of Europeans, he saw no reason why it must necessarily be maintained into the future. Individuals from other cultures were capable, under the right conditions and in the fullness of time, of achieving parity (in all senses) with the ruling race.

  These views find expression in a fascinating (and neglected) speech delivered by Gandhi at the Johannesburg YMCA in May 1908. With the recent satyagraha in mind, the Association had organized a debate on the topic: ‘Are Asiatics and the Coloured races a menace to the Empire?’

 
Gandhi may have been the only non-white present; he was certainly the only non-white speaker. Opposing the motion, he pointed out that the labour of Africans and Asians had made the Empire what it was. ‘Who can think of the British Empire without India?’ he asked, adding, ‘South Africa would probably be a howling wilderness without the Africans.’

  Gandhi then contrasted western civilization, which was restless, energetic and centrifugal, with eastern civilization, which was contemplative and centripetal. These tended at present to be opposing tendencies, ‘but perhaps in the economy of nature both are necessary.’ He welcomed their meeting, whereby eastern civilization would be ‘quickened with the western spirit’, and the latter, presently directionless, would be infused with a purpose. Gandhi believed – or hoped – that as the encounter proceeded, ‘the eastern civilization will become predominant, because it has a goal.’

  Some Europeans wanted the Indians to be thrown out of South Africa. Gandhi answered these extremists by contrasting different parts of the imperial capital, London.

  There are many complaints against the people living in the East End of London by the people living in the West End, but no one has suggested that, therefore, the people in the East End should be swept away. Sweep away the rack-rent and the conditions prevailing in the East End, and its inhabitants shall be as good as those in the West End.