Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  Meeting Gandhi’s wide range of clients, and observing lawyers and judges at work, had turned the once-shy girl into an assured (and occasionally combative) young woman. Miss Schlesin, wrote her employer, ‘would not hesitate even to the point of insulting a man and telling him to his face what she thought of him. Her impetuosity often landed me in difficulties, but her open and guileless temperament removed them as soon as they were created.’ Gandhi indulged Miss Schlesin’s idiosyncrasies because of her competence and her commitment. ‘Colour prejudice was foreign to her,’ he recalled, adding, ‘I have often signed without revision letters typed by her, as I considered her English to be better than mine, and had fullest confidence in her loyalty’.76

  The woman who contributed most to Gandhi’s work and career was his wife Kasturba. Next, albeit by some distance, was his secretary Sonja Schlesin. She had a natural sympathy with the Indians and great respect for their leader. Yet despite her admiration for Gandhi, Miss Schlesin was keen to do more than draft and type letters. Her intelligence and passion needed more challenging outlets, which qualifying for the Bar could provide her with. In preparation for her change in profession, Miss Schlesin cut her hair short and began wearing a shirt and tie. In April 1909, the Transvaal Law Society wrote back rejecting her application. ‘The articling of women,’ they said, ‘is entirely without precedent in South Africa and was never contemplated by the Law.’ Miss Schlesin suppressed her disappointment and returned to her regular duties in Gandhi’s office.77

  Gandhi was released from Pretoria Prison on 24 May 1909. The authorities set him free early in the morning, in the hope ‘of preventing a demonstration’. However, when he came out at 7.30 a.m. several hundred Indians were waiting at the prison gate, with bouquets and garlands. They conveyed him to the home of G. P. Vyas (a prominent local resister), where he had breakfast.78

  Gandhi proceeded to the Indian mosque in Pretoria, where he made a plea for donations. ‘While in gaol, I learnt from Mr Polak’s letter that the British Indian Association has become bankrupt … Therefore, those who have been carrying on their business [while others have been in jail] must lighten their pockets.’ He carried on to Johannesburg, where he was received at Park Station by a large crowd – mostly Indians, with a few Chinese and European friends such as Joseph Doke. He was garlanded and taken in a procession to the Hamidia Mosque. Gandhi expressed his displeasure at being called the ‘King of Hindus and Muslims’ by the crowd. He was merely a servant of the community. Urging more people to volunteer for the movement, he said that ‘a task that needs a thousand men cannot be accomplished by ten, as it were. The struggle is being prolonged because not enough men join it.’79

  Two weeks after coming out of prison, Gandhi spoke on ‘The Ethics of Passive Resistance’ to the Germiston Literary and Debating Society. The Society was run for and by liberal-minded whites. Here, the practitioner-turned-theorist of satyagraha argued that his method of protesting injustice, based on ‘soul-force’, was superior to rival methods based on physical force; not least because it ‘never caused suffering to others’. Therefore, argued Gandhi, the colonists should not take exception to Indians ‘making use of this [soul] force in order to obtain a redress of their grievances. Nor could such a weapon, if used by the Natives, do the slightest harm. On the contrary, if the Natives could rise so high as to understand and utilize this force, there would probably be no native question left to be solved.’80

  On 16 June 1909, a meeting of about 1,500 Indians was held outside the Fordsburg Mosque. It resolved to send a deputation to London to present their views to the Imperial Government. There was a heated discussion on the composition of the delegation. Some argued that a knowledge of English was essential. Others insisted that those who had not been to jail be excluded.

  The British Indian Association nominated five men: its chairman, Ahmed Mahommed Cachalia; V. A. Chettiar, chairman of the Tamil Benefit Society; the English- and Gujarati-speaking lawyer, Gandhi; the Parsi, Nadeshir Cama, who had left his job as a postmaster to court arrest; and the Pretoria merchant Hajee Habib, who had previously stayed away from the movement but now declared himself a ‘passive resister’. Cachalia, Chettiar and Cama were all in prison, so only Gandhi and Habib were free to go. The meeting also decided that Henry Polak would travel to India to drum up support for their cause.81

  Before leaving for London, Gandhi spoke to a journalist in Johannesburg, who sent a report on to the Daily Republican, published out of Springfield, Massachussets. The article described the sufferings of the Indians, and their satyagrahas against harsh laws, in sympathetic terms. Of Gandhi – whom he had met ‘a number of times’ – the journalist wrote:

  The struggle has reduced him to poverty, but this he does not regret, nor is he discouraged. Ultimate success he regards as sure. Passive resistance he considers more potent than the exercise of any physical force. Its strength is spiritual and must prevail. ‘I am absolutely convinced,’ he says, ‘of the invincibility of passive resistance. It will be the deliverance of Indians in South Africa and India as well.’82

  In 1909, as in 1906, Gandhi had as his companion to London a representative of the merchant community. The two men left Johannesburg for Cape Town on 21 June. On the train, Gandhi scribbled a series of letters to Henry Polak. The plan was to send Polak to India, to lobby the Government and to raise funds. The letters provided specific instructions on what to say in the press and whom to contact for support. Articles written by Polak ‘should be translated in all the principal languages and widely circulated in India’. Polak was at Phoenix; he was advised that ‘unless you find complete encouragement from the people [in Durban] do not go to India.’ In an intriguing postscript, Gandhi asked him, in case he did go to India, to come back with a copy of a book on Saddarshan Samuccaya, the six schools of Indian philosophy.83

  On reaching Cape Town, Gandhi was interviewed by a local newspaper. The Indians, he said, hoped the Imperial Government would act before the union of the four colonies was finalized. Their ‘great fear’ was ‘that under the Constitution, it will be a union of white races against British Indians and the Coloured races’.84

  Boarding ship on the 23rd, Gandhi and Habib were seen off by a group of Cape Indians. The novelist Olive Schreiner had come to bid goodbye to a relative; seeing Gandhi, she insisted on coming on board ship to shake his hand, her gesture watched by many whites. Gandhi, who knew of her work, and who had certainly read her meditations on race reprinted in Indian Opinion, was immensely flattered. As he wrote to Polak, ‘Fancy the author of “Dreams” paying a tribute to passive resistance’.85

  Meanwhile, a tribute of a different kind was being conveyed to Gandhi by means of a letter sent from India. The writer was Meer Allam Khan, the man who had assaulted Gandhi back in February 1908. The Pathan and the Gujarati had since mended fences, so much so that Khan had joined the satyagraha. He was arrested, and along with several dozen other resisters, deported to India. Arriving in the motherland in the middle of June, he wrote Gandhi a letter, in English, whose errors of grammar and construction cannot mask its manifest sincerity:

  I arrived in Bombay and hoping you are well. I have published all news of Transvaal’s operations in Bombay Gujarati newspapers, and I shall publish also in Punjab when I will go there. Please, sir, let me know about the Government law settlement and I hoping you will let me all the news of the case. Besides I shall attend to Lahore Anjumani Islam meeting and I shall speak at the meeting in Lahore all the above operation at Transvaal and shall see to Mr Lala Lajpatrai at Lahore and I shall take his opinion on the above matter and publish in all the Anglo-Indian newspapers. And when I shall approach to frontier then also I shall publish to all of our friend, and I shall try my best and daresay that you may not fear and don’t afraid I shall take much effect in this case and I shall go to Afghanistan and will inform each and everyone.

  The letter reached Johannesburg just after Gandhi left for London. It was read by Henry Polak, who immediately printed it in In
dian Opinion. He sent on a copy to Gandhi, who would have read it with interest, pleasure, and, one thinks, a certain sense of vindication.86

  15

  Big Little Chief

  When Gandhi travelled to London in 1906, his companion was the larger-than-life H. O. Ally. His partner this time, Hajee Habib, was also a Muslim merchant; there the parallels ended. Habib did not smoke or drink, and said his prayers five times a day. He was happy to share Gandhi’s diet of fruit and vegetables, although he occasionally indulged himself with fish, and (again unlike the abstemious lawyer) drank tea and coffee.

  The British Indian Association had sent their delegates by first class, where Gandhi found himself ‘looked after by servants as though they were so many babies. There is something to eat every two hours. We cannot even lift a glass of water with our own hands.’ The passengers, he wrote to a friend, are ‘too much pampered’. On ship, he had ‘to live hedged in on all sides. My prayers here lack the depth, the serenity and concentration they had when I was in gaol.’ He wrote this not ‘in a frivolous mood, but after deep reflection … [W]e would all profit from the kind of simplicity and solitude we find in gaol.’1

  Gandhi and Habib disembarked in Southampton on the morning of 10 July. They proceeded to London, where they left their bags at their hotel and went to see L. W. Ritch. After lunch, they got to work, or at least Gandhi did. In 1906, a lady sent by Polak’s father had served as his secretary; this time, Henry’s unmarried sister, Maud, had agreed to take dictation and type his letters. On this, the first day, appointments were sought with Lord Ampthill, the former Governor of Madras who now served as the Chairman of the South Africa British Indian Committee, and with other friends and sympathizers in London and around.2

  On the 14th, Gandhi wrote to Polak that he was ‘very pleased’ to have Maud working with him; she had come quite willingly, as she was jobless at home and ‘does not like her own company’. Polak himself was now in Gandhi’s homeland, promoting his friend’s cause, which was also his own. He was instructed ‘to see most of the leading Anglo-Indians and Indians … You will require all the patience and tact you can command.’

  Gandhi gave Polak the London news. Mrs Ritch was ill, after his oldest English friend had ‘bungled’ an operation on her. ‘Dr [Josiah] Oldfield,’ he complained, ‘has entirely fallen – even his supposed surgical skill is now no more … It hurts me to have to write of a man I have held in high estimation, but we have often to break our idols.’ On the other hand, other friends were gaining in esteem – such as Lord Ampthill, who, when he met him, had ‘transparent honesty, courtesy and genuine humility written on his face’. Gandhi’s compatriot Pranjivan Mehta was also in London, where he had come from Rangoon to admit his son to school. Fortunately, and probably not by accident, he was staying at the same hotel, the Westminster Palace.3

  Gandhi found the Indians in London in a fever pitch of excitement. On 1 July 1909, shortly before he arrived, a student named Madanlal Dhingra had shot Sir Curzon Wyllie, who had been a senior army officer and civil servant in India. The incident occurred at a party at the Imperial Institute, where a large number of Indian students and British guests had gathered. Shortly before 11 p.m., as the guests were leaving, Dhingra went up to Wyllie and fired four shots at him at close range. He died instantly.

  At the time, Dhingra was studying engineering at University College, London. A native of Amritsar, he had matriculated from the Punjab University. He told his fellow students he hoped to qualify for the Indian Civil Service. That was a red herring; but of his intelligence there was no question. The doctor called to examine him after the murder found him ‘well educated, and of an intellectual type’, if ‘somewhat reticent in conversation’. He showed ‘no signs nor symptoms of insanity’.4

  At his trial, on 23 July, Dhingra said he did ‘not think that any English Law Court has any authority to arrest me or detain me in prison’. He held the English responsible for hanging, deporting and starving to death millions of his countrymen, and for draining wealth out of India estimated at £100 million a year. It was thus ‘perfectly justifiable on our part to kill an Englishman who is polluting our sacred land’. He offered this telling analogy:

  In case this country is occupied by Germans, and an Englishman not bearing to see the Germans walking with the insolence of conquerors in the streets of London, goes and kills one or two Germans, then if that Englishman is to be held as a patriot by the people of this country, then certainly I am a patriot, too, working for the emancipation of my motherland.

  Dhingra hoped to be sentenced to death, ‘for in that case, the vengeance of my countrymen will be all the more keener’.5

  Among the Indians most moved by Dhingra’s act was a student from Maharashtra named Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Deeply committed to the freedom of India – by any means possible – Savarkar, wrote an English friend of his, was imbued with ‘a curious and single-minded recklessness’.6 The judge did not allow Dhingra’s statement to be part of the official record, but Savarkar got hold of a copy and leaked it to the press, but not before embellishing it. Here Indian patriotism was given a religious colouring, with Dhingra invoking those divine slayers of evil, Rama and Krishna, in support of his own act. His one prayer, he added, was that he ‘may be reborn of the same mother [Goddess, India,] and may I re-die in the same cause till the cause is successful’.7

  Savarkar and Dhingra were both associated with India House, the institution founded and funded by Shyamaji Krishnavarma, who was now in exile in France. The Times noted that Dhingra had ‘imbibed with disastrous effect the teaching of Mr Krishnavarma and others who more or less directly favour and commend political assassination.’8 When he met Krishnavarma in London in 1906, Gandhi had found him both interesting and intriguing. However, the satyagrahas he led in South Africa in 1907–8 had convinced him of the moral superiority of non-violent resistance. Now, back in London, Gandhi was horrified by the outcome of Krishnavarma’s preachings. Dhingra’s violent and vengeful act, he wrote, ‘has done India much harm; the deputation’s efforts have also received a setback … Mr Dhingra’s defence is inadmissible. In my view, he has acted like a coward. All the same, one can only pity the man. He was egged on to do this by ill-digested reading of worthless writings.’

  Wyllie, noted Gandhi, had come as a guest among the Indian students. ‘No act of treachery can ever profit a nation,’ he insisted:

  Even should the British leave in consequence of such murderous acts, who will rule in their place? The only answer is: the murderers. Who will then be happy? Is the Englishman bad because he is an Englishman? Is it that everyone with an Indian skin is good? … India can gain nothing from the rule of murderers – no matter whether they are black or white.9

  The fall-out of the Dhingra case was the topic of daily discussion between Gandhi and his friend, the doctor-jeweller from Rangoon, Pranjivan Mehta. A sharp critic of British colonial rule, Mehta was at first predisposed to the methods of armed struggle. However, after long arguments in their hotel, he came round to Gandhi’s point of view.

  These shifts are captured in a series of letters Gandhi wrote Henry Polak. On 20 August, Gandhi told Polak that Dr Mehta now ‘under-stands the struggle much better … [H]e has begun to see that passive resistance is a sovereign remedy for most of the ills of life.’ A week later, he reported ‘further important chats with Dr. Mehta. I think he is convinced now that ours is the right plan.’ In another week, Dr Mehta had agreed to fund a scholarship to England for one of the boys being schooled at Phoenix. He wanted this to be one of Gandhi’s own sons, but the latter, mindful of propriety, said he would send his nephew Chhaganlal instead. Chhagan would enrol himself at an Inns of Court, take a vow of poverty, stay with a vegetarian family in London, and during his stay ‘seek contact with every Indian student, in fact, force himself on their attention and, after insinuating himself in their favour, should present both in his life and by conversations, the Phoenix ideals to them’.10 The idea, evidently, was to use
a convinced follower of non-violence to convert young Indians away from the path laid down by Madanlal Dhingra.

  Meanwhile, a student he was talking to in London had cleared up one of Gandhi’s old confusions. Gandhi had once toyed with the idea of coming to the United Kingdom to study medicine. Now, a young Indian from Cape Town, studying to be a doctor, told him that in two years he had had to kill fifty frogs. ‘If this is so,’ wrote Gandhi to Polak, ‘I have absolutely no desire to go in for medical studies. I would neither kill a frog, nor use one for dissecting, if it has been specially killed for the purpose of dissection.’11

  From London, Gandhi also wrote regularly to his other Jewish friend, Hermann Kallenbach. We don’t, alas, have Kallenbach’s letters, but Gandhi’s mix affection with instruction. Kallenbach was asked to read a book on the morals of diet, and told to ‘count your pennies’ and ‘hold your possessions in trust for humanity’.

  With Gandhi far away, Kallenbach sought consolation by visiting his family at Phoenix. Kasturba and he got on famously. He passed on an account of his visit to Gandhi, who wrote back:

  That you should describe Mrs. Gandhi as your mother, shows your ultra-regard for me … That you can make yourself comfortable in my home (have I one?) without me and with all the awkward ways of Mrs. Gandhi and the children shows the height you have attained. You remind me of friendships of bygone ages of which one reads in histories and novels.12

  While Dhingra was being tried, and then executed, Gandhi turned his attention to his own cause and his own methods. He had come to London to lobby, peacefully, for the rights of Indians in the Transvaal. ‘The best part of the day,’ he wrote to Olive Doke, ‘has to be devoted to interviewing people and explaining the same thing to them over and over and writing to them. At times one has to enter into elaborate explanations of things which may appear to one to be perfectly simple.’ Then he added: ‘I have done no sightseeing. I seem to have lost all desire for it.’13