Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  The lawyer’s main adviser in London was Lord Ampthill. Born the same year as Gandhi, 1869, Ampthill was – as described in the Dictionary of National Biography – an ‘instinctive liberal’, descended on both sides from famous Whig politicians. He had hoped to succeed Curzon as Viceroy of India; but the Secretary of State, Lord Morley, found him too pro-Indian for his taste.14 He certainly displayed much vigour in taking up Gandhi’s case. The two men wrote each other almost daily, the Indian sending typed missives (since he had ‘a very indifferent and illegible hand’), the Englishman writing by pen, in an elegant, cursive hand.

  The Parsi grandee, Sir Mancherjee Bhownaggree, had advised Gandhi to issue a statement to the newspapers about their mission. Ampthill demurred, saying that ‘no public pressure would be opportune or wise at the moment’; it might merely ‘make the authorities again harden their hearts’.15 The choice, for Gandhi and the Indians, lay ‘between the “diplomatic” and the “political” method’. If they chose the former, then they must leave the conduct of the negotiations entirely to Lord Ampthill and not go to the press, since ‘diplomacy is only possible through individual agency and by private action’. He told Gandhi ‘not to publish or circulate anything without first consulting me. It would be fatal if any of the responsible statesmen were offended or put out at the present juncture.’ Only if Ampthill’s negotiations failed should Gandhi try the public route advocated by Bhownaggree.

  Ampthill asked Gandhi two questions. If the Asiatic Act was repealed and six educated Indians admitted annually, would that ‘finally remove the sense of injustice and indignity under which the Indian community in the Transvaal is suffering’? He added that there was ‘much prejudice in high quarters on account of a belief that “Passive Resistance” in the Transvaal is being fomented and financed by the party of sedition in India who do not desire that the question should be settled. Please tell me how I am to meet this charge.’

  Gandhi replied that if the two concessions were granted, ‘I would certainly be contented.’ To the charge of being a pawn or tool in the hands of revolutionaries in India, he answered,

  I know of no Indian whether here, in South Africa or in India, who has so steadily, even defiantly, set his face against sedition – as I understand it – as I have. It is part of my faith not to have anything to do with it, even at the risk of my life … The movement in the Transvaal, with which I have identified myself, is an eloquent and standing protest in action against such methods. The test of passive resistance is self-suffering and not infliction of suffering on others. We have, therefore, not only never received a single farthing from the ‘party of sedition’ in India or elsewhere, but even if there was any offer, we should, if we were true to our principles, decline to receive it.16

  The Cape politician J. X. Merriman was also in London at this time. So was General Smuts. Knowing the friendship between the two men, Gandhi asked the liberal Briton to press the hardline Boer into making the necessary concessions. He had, he told Merriman, just received a cable from South Africa ‘saying that the struggle has taken its first victim. A young Indian who was serving imprisonment as a passive resister, was discharged in a dying condition and died six days after his discharge. There are at present about 100 Indians in the Transvaal gaols and during the struggle, over 2,500 Indians have passed through them.’

  The situation was dire, yet the solution, said Gandhi to Merriman, was ‘exceedingly simple’. All General Smuts had to do was repeal the Asiatic Act, while ‘placing highly educated Indians on a footing of equality under the Immigration Act’. The Government could make the education test as severe as it wished; and restrict the number of Indians who came in every year. But ‘what we resent,’ said Gandhi, ‘is the racial bar, involving as it does a national insult.’17

  Merriman declined to intervene, so Gandhi now met Lord Morley, who was Secretary of State for India, as well as Lord Crewe, Secretary of State for the Colonies. Both gave him a ‘sympathetic hearing’, but without any specific assurances. Crewe had spoken with General Smuts, who said he was prepared to allow six educated Indians a year into the Transvaal, but as an administrative concession, not a legal right. If ‘equality is conceded in principle,’ said Smuts, then ‘the practice would ultimately have to conform to the principle, and in the end the Asiatic immigrant would be on the same footing as the European’ – a denouement which was, of course, quite unacceptable to the colonists, whether Boer or British.18

  Smuts also met Ampthill, who told him that Gandhi was ‘as clear, convincing, and unyielding from his point of view as you are from yours’. Before the Transvaal Acts of 1907, Indians had enjoyed the theoretical right of entry to any part of the British Empire. Gandhi, wrote Ampthill to Smuts,

  is contending for a principle which he regards as essential and, so far as I can judge, he is no more likely to abandon a cause which he considers vital and just than any of us are likely to abandon our life-long principles of politics or religion … It is impossible not to admire the man, for it is evident that he recognises no court of appeal except that of his own conscience.

  Smuts answered that he was willing to repeal Act 2 of 1907 – the original legislation aimed at Asiatics, that had so offended Gandhi and his colleagues – and to admit a certain number of educated Indians, but without conceding the principle of theoretical equality. Ampthill now advised Gandhi to accept these concessions. ‘I am anxious,’ he said,

  for the sake of your community, that the struggle should cease, because I think you have already done enough for the sake of honour. You will be gaining something very substantial in the repeal of Act 2 of 1907 and you can make it quite clear that your opinions on the question of right remain unaltered even though you feel justified in giving up a quixotic struggle.19

  As the word ‘quixotic’ suggests, after six weeks of intense lobbying on his behalf, Ampthill was a little exasperated with Gandhi. The Indian was getting increasingly impatient too. Joseph Doke reported to Kallenbach that he had received a letter from their mutual friend written in a ‘resigned-hopeless strain’.20 Soon, Gandhi made his sentiments public in a dispatch to Indian Opinion. ‘The more experience I have of meeting so-called big men or even men who are really great,’ he wrote,

  the more disgusted I feel after every such meeting. All such efforts are no better than pounding chaff. Everyone appears preoccupied with his own affairs. Those who occupy positions of power show little inclination to do justice. Their only concern is to hold on to their positions. We have to spend a whole day in arranging for an interview with one or two persons. Write a letter to the person concerned, wait for his reply, acknowledge it and then go to his place. One may be living in the north and another in the south [of London]. Even after all this fuss, one cannot be very hopeful about this outcome. If considerations of justice had any appeal, we would have got [what we wanted] long before now. The only possibility is that some concessions may be gained through fear. It can give no pleasure to a satyagrahi to have to work in such conditions.21

  Gandhi spent most Sundays with Millie Polak, who was now living in London with her young children. He renewed contacts with ‘Esoteric Christians’ he had first befriended in the 1880s.22 He sought an appointment with, and may even have met, Tolstoy’s British biographer Aylmer Maude. He took Pranjivan Mehta and Maud Polak to a farm outside London, run by a Tolstoyan named George Allen. They all enjoyed the visit; however, when Gandhi suggested they walk back to London in the spirit of the occasion, Maud protested, and they had to take the train instead.23

  These encounters emboldened Gandhi to write directly to Tolstoy. He had, of course, been reading his work for many years now. He was an eager consumer of books and pamphlets written by Tolstoy and published by his acolytes in English translation. He also read books about the Russian master: among the volumes in his library were Ernest Howard Crosby’s Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster (1904) and Percy Redfern’s Tolstoy – A Study (1907).24

  Gandhi was not the first Indian to write to Tolsto
y. This was most likely a Madras journalist called A. Ramaseshan, who in 1901 wrote to the novelist describing the pitiful condition of India under British rule. Tolstoy answered that these sufferings would continue ‘as long as your people agree to serve [the rulers] as sepoys … [Y]ou must not help the English in their rule by violence and you must not participate in any way in the government based on violence.’ In the following years, Tolstoy was sent letters by Indian Muslims and Indian Hindus, each urging him to study their scriptures. Most recently, in June 1908, a Bengali radical named Taraknath Das (then in exile in America) asked Tolstoy to support them in their fight against the British. Das had asked for an endorsement of armed struggle; in reply, Tolstoy wrote despairingly of ‘the amazing stupidity indoctrinated in you by the advocates of the use of violence’. He asked the Indian to resist the ruler not by arms, but by non-violent non-cooperation. If Indians took no part ‘either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, in the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, no one in the world will be able to enslave you’.25

  Some of these letters had been reproduced in the Indian press, where Gandhi may have read them. In any case, he had his own reasons for writing to Tolstoy. In a letter posted from London on 1 October 1909, Gandhi said the Russian’s life and work had ‘left a deep impression on his mind’. He explained the genesis of the satyagraha in South Africa. He now planned an essay competition on the ethics and efficacy of Passive Resistance, and wanted to know whether Tolstoy thought this consistent with his idea of morality. Gandhi also asked for permission to reprint, in Indian Opinion, the letter written to Taraknath Das deploring the use of violence in political movements. If Tolstoy agreed, he wished to delete the slighting reference to re-incarnation, which the Russian did not believe in, but which ‘is a cherished belief with millions in India, indeed, in China also … It explains reasonably the many mysteries of life. With some of the passive resisters who have gone through the gaols of the Transvaal, it has been their solace.’

  Tolstoy wrote back immediately. He was pleased to hear of the struggle of ‘our dear brothers and co-workers in the Transvaal’. In Russia, ‘the same struggle of the tender against the harsh, of meekness and love against pride and violence, is every year making itself more and more felt among us also’, as in the growing refusals to undertake military service. However, he thought that ‘a competition, i.e., an offer of a monetary inducement in connection with a religious matter would, I think, be out of place.’ He agreed to the reprinting of his letter to Taraknath Das. Left to himself, he would not delete the sentence Gandhi disagreed with, ‘for, in my opinion, belief in reincarnation can never be as firm as belief in the soul’s immortality and in God’s justice and love. You may, however, do as you like about omitting it.’26

  Gandhi reproduced the modified ‘Letter to a Hindu’ in Indian Opinion. He introduced it as the work of ‘one of the clearest thinkers in the western world, one of the greatest writers, one who as a soldier has known what violence is and what it can do’. To those Indians at home (and abroad) who saw armed struggle as the necessary route to national salvation, Gandhi pointed out that ‘the assassination of Sir Curzon Wyllie was an illustration of that method in its worst and most detestable form. Tolstoy’s life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in suffering’.27

  Joseph Doke’s biography of Gandhi had just been published in London. This covered the main events of his life thus far – the upbringing in Kathiawar, the student years in London, the insult in the train and the attack on the Point, the racial laws in Natal and the Transvaal and Gandhi’s opposition to them – while interpreting his mission in a Christian idiom. In Doke’s eyes, the simplicity of Gandhi’s life and the truthfulness of his conduct, his readiness to court death in pursuit of justice, made him come closer to ‘the Jew of Nazareth’ than most practising Christians. Gandhi had himself told Doke that the New Testament, and the Sermon on the Mount in particular, had awakened him ‘to the rightness and value of Passive Resistance’.

  For all this, if Gandhi was not ‘a Christian in any orthodox sense’, then ‘orthodox Christianity has itself to blame’. Christians in the colonies denied the faith in their laws and their practice. This ‘discrepancy between a beautiful creed and our treatment of the Indian at the door,’ wrote Doke, ‘repels the man who thinks’. To recognize the justice of Gandhi’s struggle, to salute the suffering of the satyagrahis, would be the proper Christian thing to do. Doke asked thus for a repeal of the racial laws, a prelude to the construction of ‘a new Jerusalem, whose beautiful gates are ever open to all nations; where no ‘colour-bar’ is permitted to challenge the Indian, and no racial prejudice to daunt the Chinese; into whose walls even an Asiatic may build those precious stones which, one day, will startle us with their glory.’28

  Tolstoy was mentioned in Doke’s biography, as a significant influence on its subject. Gandhi now sent the book to the Russian writer, with this gloss on its contents:

  This struggle of the Indians in the Transvaal is the greatest of modern times, inasmuch as it has been idealised both as to the goal as also the methods adopted to reach the goal. I am not aware of a struggle in which the participators are not to derive any personal advantage at the end of it, and in which 50 per cent. of the persons affected have undergone great suffering and trial for the sake of a principle. It has not been possible for me to advertise the struggle as much as I should like. You command, possibly, the widest public today. If you are satisfied as to the facts you will find set forth in Mr Doke’s book, and if you consider that the conclusions I have arrived at are justified by the facts, may I ask you to use your influence in any manner you think fit to popularise the movement?

  This letter is somewhat self-promoting. Yet it speaks of an extraordinary self-confidence. The struggle in the Transvaal involved a few thousand Indians in a single colony of a single country, and yet Gandhi was already seeing it in world-historic terms – as, indeed, ‘the greatest of modern times’.29

  Even as Gandhi asked Tolstoy to publicize his struggle, he used Tolstoy’s name to legitimize the movement in South Africa itself. He published their correspondence in Indian Opinion, saying, ‘it is a matter of deep satisfaction that we have the support of such a great and holy man. His letters shows us convincingly that soul-force – satyagraha – is our only resort. Deputations and the like are all vain efforts.’ He spoke of Tolstoy’s fearlessness at the age of eighty, as manifest in his continuing criticisms of the Russian state. He quoted passages from Tolstoy’s writings chastising ‘those who oppress, imprison or hang thousands of men’, and which dared ‘the tyrannical officers’ to arrest him.

  A man who can write this, who has such thoughts and can act up to them has mastered the world, has conquered suffering and achieved his life’s end. True freedom is to be found only in such a life. That is the kind of freedom we want to achieve in the Transvaal. If India were to achieve such freedom, that indeed would be swarajya.30

  The production of Joseph Doke’s book on Gandhi had been underwritten by Pranjivan Mehta. Mehta now offered to fund the printing and circulation of Tolstoy’s ‘Letter to a Hindoo’ as well. He would pay for its publication as a pamphlet in Gujarati and English, and for its distribution in England and South Africa. Mehta thought that Gandhi’s nephew Chhaganlal should travel through India promoting these books and booklets. He would pay for that, too. Further, he suggested that Gandhi have a friend (perhaps a British Tolstoyan) write an independent essay ‘following Tolstoy’s thoughts’ and outlining the European writer’s interest in India. ‘It will be great,’ wrote Mehta to Gandhi, ‘if the essay reaches those [English people] who believe that India is harmful for people of England (except for the rich and those who make their living in India). If we find a person with such thoughts to write the essay, it would be good.’31

  Mehta’s ge
nerosity was prompted by his patriotism, and by his affection for Gandhi. From very early in their relationship he had seen in his friend a future leader of India and Indians. In this London autumn of 1909, Mehta and Gandhi spent many evenings at the Westminster Palace Hotel, discussing India’s future and Gandhi’s place in it. The jeweller was certain that the lawyer would play a central role in the emancipation of their motherland. He wanted Gandhi to come back to India sooner rather than later. If this mission to London was successful, and the constitution of the new Union of South Africa adequately safeguarded Indian rights, the lawyer would be free to return home, to act as a political leader (and moral exemplar) in a much larger territory and among many more of his own people.

  That Mehta could in some way aid in the elevation of Gandhi was a matter of pride. A letter written as he was leaving London indicates how he viewed the relationship. ‘I forgot to return to you 6 pence I borrowed from you from the hotel stairs,’ wrote Mehta to Gandhi, ‘I will send a check for it and other expenses tomorrow.’ Mehta would look to Gandhi for moral and political guidance, so long as financial transactions ran strictly and always in the other direction.32

  In the middle of September, after ten fruitless weeks in London, Gandhi wrote asking for a further interview with Lord Morley, the celebrated liberal thinker who was now serving as Secretary of State for India. ‘We cannot believe,’ wrote Gandhi, ‘that Lord Morley, who is regarded all over the world as the type of British Liberalism would regard with indifference so reactionary and illiberal a policy as that which has been adopted by the Transvaal Government.’ Having appealed to Morley’s reputation, he now appealed to the duties of his office, by speaking of the support that Henry Polak was receiving on his tour through the sub-continent, which showed that ‘India is deeply hurt by the insult that is put upon her by the racial disqualification imported for the first time into colonial legislation, and is much moved by the sufferings that have been gone through by hundreds of British Indians in the Transvaal.’