Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  as long as Indians delight in being Britonised, so long as ‘Swadeshi’ means only more ‘factories’, so long as Indian ambitions point to entering Government service, so long will India be enslaved. Her freedom is absolutely in her own hands, and the proscription of Mr Gandhi’s book shows that the authorities know this – for not only does he oppose all revolutionary violence and bloodshed but he would give an entirely new, irresistible and peacable character to all progressive movements everywhere.31

  Reading Hind Swaraj today, one finds some portions of the book enormously appealing, other parts disconcerting and even bizarre. The polemic is powerful, but also crude. The linguistic infelicities may be because it was both written and translated in a hurry. The English version was, as noted, dictated to Hermann Kallenbach. Gandhi sent a typescript to the Baptist pastor Joseph Doke, with the request that he ‘correct and criticize’ it. ‘Some of the similes,’ said Gandhi, ‘read very crude in English.’ He was ‘painfully aware of the fact’ that the book ‘was not a “finished product”. I have simply jotted down my thoughts as they have come to me.’ The minister, taking this judgement at face value, sent what seems to have been a long list of criticisms. But Gandhi was keen to see the book in print at once, and chose not to rewrite it on the lines suggested by Doke.32

  One striking feature of the book is its extraordinarily positive portrait of ancient Indian culture and civilization. This was perhaps not unrelated to the fact that Gandhi had lived for so many years out of India. For diasporic nationalism tends to be uncritical, eulogizing the faraway homeland, its hallowed and mostly unsullied past, and its pristine and ageless culture.

  The celebration of Indian civilization went hand-in-hand with a thoroughgoing condemnation of Western civilization. Ironically, this was based mostly on Western authorities. The Appendix lists twenty books or pamphlets consulted by Gandhi in writing the book, of which as many as six are by the Russian, Leo Tolstoy. Other works are by the Italian, Mazzini; the American, Thoreau; and the Englishmen, Carpenter, Ruskin and Maine. Only two of the twenty books are by Gandhi’s fellow countrymen, these being Dadabhai Naoroji’s and Romesh Chunder Dutt’s studies of the economic exploitation of the subcontinent under British rule.

  Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj in 1909, at a time he scarcely knew India at all. By 1888, when he departed for London at the age of nineteen, he had lived only in towns in his native Kathiawar. There is no evidence that he had travelled in the countryside, and he knew no other part of India. Later, in 1892 and again in 1902, he came to spend several months in the city of Bombay. In 1896 he visited Calcutta and Madras to lobby for the rights of Indians in South Africa. However, at the time of the writing of Hind Swaraj, Gandhi may never have spoken to a single Indian peasant or worker (or landlord or moneylender) living or working in India itself. Hence, perhaps, the romantic (and to a modern eye hopelessly unreal) representation of indigenous Indian culture in the book.

  It may be worth pointing out that while Hind Swaraj was the first book that Gandhi published, it was not the first book he had written. This was his ‘Guide to London’, drafted during those solitary evenings in Pretoria during his first year in South Africa, when he hoped still to make a career as an Anglicized barrister in Bombay. This first, unpublished, book was a paean to English education and English manners, written, appropriately, in English. The book that Gandhi wrote some sixteen years later was conceived and penned in his native Gujarati, in which language he vigorously upheld the virtues of his own civilization while diminishing that of the conqueror.

  17

  Seeking a Settlement

  Just before he left London, Gandhi heard that the funds in his Phoenix settlement were running dangerously low. The satyagraha of 1908 and 1909 had severely tested the community’s will to give. Much money had been collected, and spent, on sustaining the families of passive resisters. Now the main organ of the struggle was in danger of going under. On 27 November 1909 – shortly after he had completed the first draft of Hind Swaraj – Gandhi wrote to his nephew Maganlal that they must somehow keep their weekly magazine afloat. Whatever happened, they would ‘bring out at least a one-page issue of Indian Opinion and distribute it among the people as long as there is even one person in Phoenix’.1

  The SS Kildonan Castle arrived in Cape Town on 30 November. On disembarking, Gandhi heard that the philanthrophist Ratan Tata had sent a cheque for Rs 25,000 to aid the struggle in South Africa. Indian Opinion had been saved; so too, perhaps, the struggle itself.

  Ratan Tata was the son of Jamshedji Tata, the pioneering Parsi entrepreneur who had started India’s first steel mill and endowed the Indian Institute of Science. The younger Tata spent a great deal of time on the Continent and in England – he had a home in Twickenham – but maintained an interest in Indian politics. Naturally, he preferred the Moderates to the Extremists. Gokhale in particular was a friend. In 1905, Gokhale had started a ‘Servants of India Society’, whose members were required to ‘work for the advancement of all [Indians], regardless of caste and creed’. The objectives of the society included the promotion of education and communal harmony, and the advancement of women and low castes.2 Tata was an early supporter of the Servants of India Society, which he sent Rs 6,000 a year because he saw it as ‘a constitutional and rational alternative to the violent methods which some people adopt for the progress of our people and our country’.3

  Tata followed developments in the Transvaal closely. He was disappointed that Gandhi’s trip to London had ended in failure. He noted the public meetings held in India, but felt that the time had come ‘when our appreciation … must take the form, not merely of expressions of sympathy but also of substantial money help’. In the last week of November, he sent Gokhale a cheque for Rs 25,000 (equivalent, roughly, to £1,650 then, and to £131,000 today), asking him to forward it to Gandhi ‘to be spent in relieving destitution, and in aid of the struggle generally.’ Explaining his gesture, Tata said he had

  watched with unfeigned admiration the undaunted and determined stand which our countrymen in the Transvaal – a mere handful in numbers – have made and are making against heavy odds and in the face of monstrous injustice and oppression, to assert their rights as citizens of the Empire and as freemen, and to vindicate the honour and dignity of our motherland … The ruinous sacrifices which men mostly of very modest means are cheerfully making in this unequal struggle, the fortitude with which men of education and refinement are ungrudgingly submitting to treatment ordinarily accorded to hardened convicts and criminals, the calm resignation of men devotedly attached to their homes to cruel disruption of family ties, and the perfectly legitimate and constitutional character of the resistance which is being offered and which is in such striking contrast to the occasional acts of violence which we deplore nearer home – all these to my mind, present a spectacle of great nobility of aim, resoluteness of purpose and strength of moral fibre with which we Indians are not usually credited.4

  This was a striking passage, which (among other things) strongly suggests that Ratan Tata had been reading Indian Opinion. It displays an acute understanding of the larger issues at stake, relating to the status of British subjects across the Empire, to the prestige and honour of India, and not least, to rival methods of obtaining justice and redress. On receiving the news, Gokhale sent Gandhi a telegram urging him to write directly to Tata thanking him for his ‘munificent [and] timely help’. He also issued a public statement asking other patrons to follow Mr Tata’s lead. The industrialist’s gesture would ‘put fresh heart and hope’ into Gandhi and his colleagues, who were ‘determined to win in this struggle or perish’. Should not the mother country, for whose sake all this suffering is being ‘undergone’, asked Gokhale, now ‘recognise her responsibilities in the matter and come to their assistance? Mr Tata’s example needs to be widely followed and that without delay.’5

  It was. Inspired by Ratan Tata, his fellow Parsi grandee J. B. Petit sent £750 from Bombay, and Gandhi’s friend Pranjivan Meht
a raised a similar sum in Rangoon. Other sections of the Indian diaspora also chipped in: £135 came from London, £61 from Mozambique and £59 from Zanzibar.6

  Disembarking at Cape Town on their return from London, Gandhi and Hajee Habib took a train north-east to Johannesburg. At the city’s Park Station they were met by a large crowd, mostly of Indians, with a sprinkling of Chinese and European supporters. The next day, Gandhi spoke at a meeting of Tamil ladies, thanking them for supporting their brothers and husbands who had been to jail. On the 5th, he addressed an audience of 1,500 at the Hamidia Mosque, where he spoke of the larger importance of their struggle and thanked Ratan Tata for his gift (a product, in Gandhi’s view, of ‘the magnificent efforts that were being made [in India] by the self-sacrificing Mr Polak’).

  The struggle was now to be renewed. Gandhi sent a letter to Indian Opinion announcing this, saying, ‘I hope I shall find myself lodged in gaol before this letter appears.’ His second son, Manilal, who had turned seventeen in October, would also court arrest, in pursuit of his father’s belief that ‘to go to gaol or suffer similar hardships with a pure motive for the motherland is the truest kind of education.’7

  In the third week of December, Gandhi went to Natal. He arrived at Umgeni station at night and walked three hours in the dark to Phoenix through the grass, nervous that he might ‘tread upon a snake or scorpion’. Kasturba was pleased to see him. ‘Mrs G. has considerably improved,’ he wrote to Kallenbach, ‘she is sweet. She has been working regularly at the Press for one hour. She folds Tolstoy’s letter. What a privilege for her!’8

  On Sunday, 19 December, Gandhi was due to speak at a meeting in Durban. A crowd of more than 1,000 had gathered at the Victoria Street Indian Market, but the main speaker did not come. That was no fault of his, however. The journalist P. S. Aiyar had gone in a car to pick up Gandhi from his settlement. That mode of transport was very new in South Africa. En route to Phoenix, the car got stuck in a stream (whether it was the vehicle’s or the driver’s fault the sources do not say). No one was injured, but by the time word of the mishap got to Phoenix, it was too late for Gandhi to come to Durban.

  The next day, Gandhi went to Durban by the safer route, that of the railway. The meeting this time was held in the Albert Street Hall. After being garlanded ‘amid rousing cheers’, he announced that some young men, among them his son Manilal and the Cambridge-educated barrister Joseph Royeppen, would ‘accompany him to the Transvaal and [were] expected with him to go to gaol.’9

  Gandhi crossed back into the Transvaal with six companions. He hoped they would be arrested; when they were not, he sent Royeppen and Manilal back to Natal, asking them to travel afresh to Johannesburg and hawk without a licence, to simultaneously break the law and demonstrate that selling fruits and vegetables was as honourable a trade as being a clerk or lawyer. This time the young men were detained, and sentenced to ten days with hard labour.10

  In this new phase of the campaign, the Tamils were, as before, in the vanguard. Gandhi wrote to Gokhale that Thambi Naidoo was ‘perhaps the bravest and staunchest’ of the passive resisters.

  I do not know of any Indian who knows the spirit of the struggle so well as he does. He was born in Mauritius, but is more Indian than most of us. He has sacrificed himself entirely, and has sent me a defiant message, saying that, even though I may yield … he alone will offer resistance and die in the Transvaal gaols.

  The Tamil women were not far behind. In a spectacular affirmation of solidarity, Mrs Amacanoo and Mrs Packirsamy – whose husbands were in jail – came to Gandhi’s office in Rissik Street, removed their earrings, nose-rings, bangles and necklaces, and said they would not wear them again until the end of the struggle.11

  The most steadfast woman supporter of the satyagraha, however, was Gandhi’s secretary, Sonja Schlesin. In times of peace, she dealt patiently – not to say heroically – with her employer’s indecipherable scrawl, his eccentric work and eating habits, and his many and various clients. In times of strife she was called upon to urge and mobilize the women. On their behalf she drafted and sent many petitions to government. The formal historical record has few traces of Miss Schlesin’s contributions. Henry and Millie Polak spoke of their involvement in books, essays and letters. Kallenbach’s correspondence with Gandhi and others is very extensive. But since Miss Schlesin was with Gandhi all day, most days, there are few letters between them. From stray reports in Indian Opinion, however, we get a sense of how much Sonja Schlesin did for the struggle. Passive resisters in jail were allowed a weekly visit. Sometimes relatives made the trip; when these were unavailable, or in jail themselves, Miss Schlesin rushed about on her bicycle from prison to prison, carrying food and messages. With the main Indian leaders going in and out of jail, Gandhi’s secretary also handled the ‘Passive Resistance Fund’: monitoring and recording the inflow of donations, and directing the money to individuals and families in need.

  A rare letter from Sonja Schlesin in the archives gives glimpes both of her competence and her independence of mind. Gandhi was spending several weeks outside Johannesburg; in his absence, Miss Schlesin was keeping the office going. Her letter begins with the question of some scholarships Pranjivan Mehta had endowed for Indian students. Applications had begun coming in, and Miss Schlesin was deciding which young man seemed ‘clever’ and which not. She moves next to dues owed by the office to other lawyers, then to the renewal of Gandhi’s and Polak’s subscriptions to the Law Society. News of the Gujarati merchant and activist A. M. Cachalia follows. The last paragraph turns to her own self-education. Here she tells Gandhi that she has been

  just reading a book recently issued called ‘The Truth about Women’. I don’t agree with the conclusion of the writer, but she has gathered together much material which is interesting and instructive. Amongst other things, she says that chastity is not a moral evolution, but that the origination of the idea is connected with the question of property.12

  In this letter, Miss Schlesin addresses her employer as ‘Bapu’, or Father. She was, in age, between Harilal and Manilal, yet far more willing to stand up to Gandhi than they were. This last line of her letter was surely a tease, which suggested, to her friend, employer and fictive father, that the brahmacharya he so exalted had its basis in the desire to keep large estates from being broken up. Miss Schlesin thus implied that younger brothers became monks to keep the economic status of the family intact, rather than (as Gandhi may have fancifully imagined) for elevated spiritual reasons alone.

  For all her cheekiness, Sonja Schlesin was devoted to Gandhi and his cause. Hers was a double or perhaps triple transgression: a white, Jewish woman expressing her solidarity with persecuted Indian males. Much later, her employer gratefully recalled what his struggle owed her. This ‘young girl,’ he wrote, ‘soon constituted herself the watchman and warder of the morality not only of my office but of the whole movement’. Thus

  Pathans, Patels, ex-indentured men, Indians of all classes and ages surrounded her, sought her advice and followed it. Europeans in South Africa would generally never travel in the same railway compartment as Indians, and in the Transvaal they are even prohibited from doing so. Yet Miss Schlesin would deliberately sit in the third class compartment for Indians like other Satyragrahis and even resist the guards who interfered with her.13

  In February 1910, Parsee Rustomjee was released after a year in jail. He told the press of the difficulties he had faced. He was asked to break stones; when he complained, the prison doctor told him that ‘I would be all right when I had thrown off superfluous fat.’ The flying chips affected his eyesight; when he complained about that too, the doctor flippantly remarked that ‘I should, on being discharged, spend from £10 to £20, and be operated upon.’ Rustomjee believed that the passive resisters had been sent to Diepkloof, a notoriously harsh prison, ‘in order to break their spirit and resolution’. After his release he had come back to Natal to restore his business and his health, both in ruins. He remained defiant, telling the Johanne
sburg press, and by extension the Transvaal Government, that ‘there are some Indians left, including myself, who will not be broken, no matter what hardships they are subjected to, and I shall soon have the privilege of affording the Government an opportunity of sending me to Diepkloof or any other place they choose.’14

  On 18 February the passive resisters of the Transvaal hosted a banquet for Joseph Doke, who was departing on a tour of the United States. There were three hundred guests, among them sixty Europeans. Kallenbach and Thambi Naidoo supervised the kitchen, while Gandhi helped serve the dishes. The menu was wholly vegetarian: soup, macaroni cheese, fruits, coffee and mineral water. The main speaker was Doke’s fellow Nonconformist minister, Charles Phillips. His Congregational Church had, from very early on, been sympathetic to Gandhi’s cause. When the Asiatic Ordinance was first proposed, Phillips had written that ‘Indians are just as amenable to sanitary regulations’ as Europeans, adding that ‘in morals they are in no way inferior; in matters of temperance they are decidedly superior’.15 Now the minister recalled the ‘grand old passive resister John Bunyan’, also a Baptist minister, who had spent twelve years in prison for following his conscience. Rev. Phillips said Thambi Naidoo ‘showed something of the spirit of John Bunyan’. There was now a window in Westminster Abbey in honour of Bunyan; the minister hoped ‘that in the future they would be able to erect a monument in remembrance of Indians and Chinese in the Transvaal, who had suffered so bravely and splendidly’.16