Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  The resentment against the Searle judgment was felt equally in Natal and the Transvaal. In recent years, the Indians in these two provinces had tended to conduct their affairs separately. The marriage question bound them together once more. The Natalians were also very exercised by the continuance of the £3 tax. The Durban journalist P. S. Aiyar had convened several meetings asking for its removal. Aiyar wrote to the Prime Minister, General Botha, that a repeal of the tax would be ‘hailed with unbounded joy’ and ‘have a far-reaching influence on the consolidation and stability of the Empire’.10

  The request, or plea, was disregarded. In April 1913 the Government released the draft of a new Immigration Bill. This had distinctly, and perhaps deliberately, failed to take the sentiments of Indians into account. It retained the £3 tax, while making the qualifications for domicile more stringent and inter-provincial migration for Indians more difficult. It did not allow appeals to courts, and rendered the status of wives and children uncertain and insecure. The Bill gave wide discretionary powers to officials, allowing them to keep out ‘any person or class of persons deemed … on economic grounds or on account of standard or habits of life to be unsuited to the requirements of the Union or any particular Province thereof’.11

  In the third week of April, the Natal Indian Congress wired the Governor-General in protest. Unless the amendments it asked for were made, it said, the ‘Indian community will be obliged strenuously to oppose [the] Bill with all [the] resources in its power’.12 The same week, Gandhi travelled from Phoenix to Johannesburg, to attend a meeting at the Hamidia Hall. A large and excited crowd heard him say that since the Union Bill incorporated the worst features of provincial legislation, this time ‘the struggle might be prolonged and fierce’. L. W. Ritch, speaking after him, said that ‘if he as an Englishman were settled in any country and found himself treated as his Indian brothers were, he would fight unto death’.13

  The Interior Minister now was Abraham Fischer, a Free Stater who, on the Indian question, was even more hardline than General Smuts. Fischer defended the harshness of the Bill in Parliament. For the ‘self-preservation of the white man’, he said, it ‘was considered undesirable that this country should be encroached upon by Asiatics’. His predecessor, Smuts, had once complained to Gandhi about the intransigent attitude of the MPs from the Orange Free State. Fischer now praised them for having ‘shown from the start what was good for the country’. As for the contentious question of Indian marriages, the Minister told Parliament that ‘a man was entitled to have only one wife, which some people maintained was quite sufficient. (Laughter.) A European was not allowed the privilege of having more than one wife, and surely we were not going to give that privilege to non-Europeans? (Laughter.)’14

  A few liberal politicians opposed the Bill in Parliament. The Cape lawyer Morris Alexander called it a ‘serious infringement’ of the rights of Asiatics. W. P. Schreiner thought this was really an ‘Immigrants Restriction [rather than Regulation] Bill’; its provisions were contrary to the assurances given to Gokhale, whom Schreiner described as ‘one of the greatest men of the time’. The majority opinion, however, was solidly behind the Minister and his Bill, which was necessary for ‘the self-preservation of the white race in South Africa’. As one Boer MP put it, apart from ‘a few cranks’ the ‘unanimous opinion of [white] South Africa was against the importation of Asiatics’. Some of them wanted to go further, and deport the Asiatics already in the country.15

  As Interior Minister, Smuts had at least been prepared to talk to Gandhi. His successor, however, treated Gandhi as an interloper. The lawyer, said Abraham Fischer, was ‘representing only that section of the Indian community in the Transvaal, which was known some three or four years back as the “Passive Resisters”.’ His secretary told Gandhi that the Minister did not accept that he was ‘acting on behalf of the entire Asiatic population of the Transvaal’. Later, when Gandhi asked for the Searle judgment to be overturned, the Minister answered that ‘from the earliest times, following the introduction of European civilization into South Africa, the law of the land has only recognised as a valid union the marriage, by a recognised marriage officer, of one man to one woman, to the exclusion, while it lasted, of any other.’16

  The implications were enormous, and ominous. Marriages between Hindus and Muslims were solemnized in private ceremonies conducted by priests and imams, not before a registrar or marriage official appointed or recognized by the state. The Minister’s interpretation would make thousands of Indian marriages in South Africa illegal – among them Gandhi’s and Kasturba’s.17

  In late April, Gandhi travelled from Phoenix to Johannesburg for a meeting of the Transvaal Indians. He asked whether they were ‘ready to undergo the ordeal’ of passive resistance. He trusted that, ‘as self-respecting men, they could not shirk it. They must be prepared to risk all for the honour of their womanhood, for the sake of their religions and for the good name of the country of their birth.’ The same week, he wrote in his newspaper asking Indians in the Cape and Natal to ‘wake up’. They too should come forward and be prepared to go to jail.18

  Meanwhile, Henry Polak was peppering the Government of India and the Colonial Office with letters asking them to intervene. He outlined the Bill’s flaws, and suggested how they could be overcome. Gandhi would go down to Cape Town if required to talk with the ministers. But if negotiations failed, then a revival of passive resistance was ‘certain’, and Gandhi himself would ‘not hesitate to put personal inclination on one side in order to take his part in the struggle.’19

  Polak’s intervention angered the Interior Minister, who asserted that he had in the past carried out an ‘active campaign of mis-statement’ against the Government. Fischer had hoped ‘that by this time the Colonial Office would have formed a correct estimate of communications written by Polak; but apparently his highly coloured and sensational communications still find credence, or at least more consideration than they ought to have in that quarter.’20

  Two weeks later, the Interior Minister received a letter forwarded by another European supporter of the Indians. Sent by Sonja Schlesin on behalf of ‘over forty Indian ladies of Johannesburg professing the Hindu, the Mahomedan and the Christian faiths’, this said that if the law was not amended to recognize Indian marriages, the women would offer passive resistance along with their menfolk. Schlesin was here acting, and writing, as the Honorary Secretary of the Transvaal Indian Women’s Association. Reproducing her lettter, Indian Opinion commented that Miss Schlesin held that office because of the knowledge of English and of South African politics that her ‘Indian sisters’ lacked. ‘Miss Schlesin, like the male European workers in South Africa for the Indian cause, demonstrates the unity of human nature, whether residing in a brown-skinned or a white-skinned body.’21

  The tribute to the white-skinned Sonja Schlesin was written by the brown-skinned Gandhi. To underscore the unity of human nature, Polak returned the compliment in another section of the newspaper, by praising Indian women for daring ‘to fight the Government rather than submit to the insult offered by the Searle judgment’. Polak hoped now that the men would rise as quickly to the challenge, since, as he put it, ‘“the larger the number of passive resisters the quicker the termination of the struggle” is a mathematical formula.’22

  Unlike Polak and Sonja Schlesin, Hermann Kallenbach was too mild and not political enough to lobby the Government on behalf of the Indians. However, in a series of private letters written at this time, he laid bare his own understanding of the character and personality of their leader. He also revealed his own plans, which were to accompany Gandhi to India as and when his friend moved there for good. The letters were addressed to British followers of Tolstoy, whom Kallenbach had befriended on his visit to that country in 1911. Here, in part, is what the architect told them about their fellow Tolstoyan.23

  Hermann Kallenbach to George Ferdinand, 3 March 1913:

  I cannot describe the man’s character to you by letter, but I can
only say that the more I have had the privilege of being with, and near him, the clearer I have recognized the utter unselfishness of his character. True, it is sometimes hard – very hard – to live near and with him, but it is also true that he cannot serve God and Mammon …

  My wishing to go to India is not really a pilgrimage in the right sense of the word. It is more that I clearly recognize how very deficient my character is in many respects, and that I am hoping that the life there will give me more energy to throw off this defectiveness.

  Hermann Kallenbach to Isabella Fyvie Mayo, 3 March 1913:

  As long as I know Mr G[andhi] he has always loaded upon himself work and responsibilities, which no ordinary ten men would undertake … I believe that on account of this desire to be of such great service to all, he can not in my opinion pay sufficient attention to his family and his nearer friends, and in still doing so he has to curtail his meals, do with less sleep and to make time here and there when necessity arises.

  Hermann Kallenbach to Isabella Fyvie Mayo, 10 March 1913:

  If you would know him better you would also recognise that it is indeed somewhat difficult to be near him and with him, unless one covers the whole distance with him … [H]e is so severe with himself that he simply goes ahead, and it is a question of either being with him, or not being able to be near him.

  Hermann Kallenbach to Isabella Fyvie Mayo, 21 April 1913:

  Your judgement about Mr G[andhi] placing him next [to] Ruskin and Tolstoy is a true one, and if he lives, posterity will once recognize it.

  The devotion was intensely personal. Like Pranjivan Mehta, Kallenbach was clear that his friend would one day be recognized as a moral exemplar to his country and the world. But where Mehta saw in Gandhi’s qualities and personality the redemption of India, Kallenbach saw in them the route to the improvement of his own anguished, flawed self.

  Even as his European friend (or devotee) was praising Gandhi in private, Gandhi was being attacked in public by his Indian rival, the Durban journalist P. S. Aiyar. African Chronicle’s issue of 19 April 1913 carried an essay with the bald title: ‘Why Mr Gandhi is a Failure’. The lawyer’s politics, claimed the critic, have ‘resulted in no tangible good to anyone’. On the other hand, they had caused ‘endless misery, loss of wealth, and deprivation of existing rights’.

  Aiyar accused Gandhi of thinking ‘that he is an immutable, omnipotent Czar’, and Polak of seeing himself as a ‘white Dinizulu [the Zulu chief] for the Indians’. He charged both men with ‘rank arrogance and inordinate ambition’. He urged Gandhi now ‘to climb down from his high pedestal’, and to ‘make some sacrifice of his personal antipathies and prejudices’. Instead of ‘sulking in the tent at Phoenix’, and being ‘as shy to face an audience as an Indian bride’, Gandhi should ‘come to Durban and convene a caucus meeting of the leaders, and … have a free and frank exchange of ideas with the people’.

  The screed reeked of animosity, but also of ambition – Aiyar was pleading, rather desperately, to be heard. The challenge to Gandhi was followed by a meaningful remark about his chief lieutenant: ‘As for Mr Polak, a large body of Indians do not seem to care much to be led by this gentleman.’24

  Did Gandhi read Aiyar’s challenge? Did he read it as what – the bile that covered it notwithstanding – it really seems to be, a cry for attention, an appeal to be considered worthier than the Englishman Polak in being the second-in-command of the Indian leader? The name of P. S. Aiyar does not figure in Gandhi’s memoirs of his South African days. We do know, from stray reports in Indian Opinion, that the two men knew each other, and had shared a common platform several times in Durban. But at least in print Gandhi steadfastly disregarded the taunts, the complaints, the challenges and the abusive remarks that came his way from the editor of the African Chronicle.

  This was Aiyar’s most strongly worded attack yet; and although Gandhi ignored it his admirers were compelled to respond. Some forty Tamils wrote to the African Chronicle declaring that ‘whatever your attacks may be upon Mr Gandhi, it will not deter us from being his faithful and staunch followers’. The editor printed their letter, appending a comment of his own, which urged the Tamils not to ‘subject themselves to be led by cattle, not knowing where the leader leads them whether to Heaven or to Hell’.25

  As the private praise and public invective poured in, Gandhi carried on with his series on health. Part XIV paid attention to what leaves the body. ‘From the appearance of our faeces,’ remarked the author, ‘we can make out if we have eaten too much.’ The faeces of one who had eaten ‘only as much as he can comfortably digest’ would tend to be ‘small, well formed, darkish, sticky, dry and free from bad odour’.

  Part XVII, entitled ‘An Intimate Chapter’, was on brahmacharya, here deemed ‘the most important’ thing to promote good health. It implied not ‘merely refraining from contact with each other with such enjoyment in view, but also keeping the mind free from the very thought of it – one must not even dream about it’. In Gandhi’s view, the violation of brahmacharya was ‘the basic cause of pleasure-hunting, envy, ostentation, hypocrisy, anger, impatience, violent hatred and other such evils’. Once a couple had children, they must desist from sexual relations. ‘I, who was married in childhood,’ recalled this converted celibate, ‘was blinded [by lust] in childhood and had children while a mere child, awoke after many years and seem to have realized on awakening that I had been pursuing a disastrous course. If anyone learns from my mistakes and my experience and saves himself, I shall be happy to have written this chapter.’26

  Kallenbach may, among other things, have had this paragraph in mind when he wrote that Gandhi ‘is so severe upon himself that he simply goes ahead, and it is a question of either being with him, or not being able to be near him.’

  In May 1913, the Immigration Bill passed its second reading. Gandhi wrote to MPs and the Minister of the Interior, asking that the £3 tax be withdrawn and the marriage question satisfactorily settled. The Minister answered that the tax would be removed for women but not for men, and that marriages would be recognized if they were registered. The concessions were meagre and, unsurprisingly, rejected, with Gandhi pointing out that Gokhale had been assured that the tax would be removed for men as well, and that virtually no Indian marriages were registered.27

  The Bill passed through the Senate, and received Royal Assent on 14 June. Lord Gladstone complained to London of ‘the truculent and minatory attitude of the Indian community generally, and of Mr Gandhi in particular’. He was confident the resistance would dissipate, telling the Colonial Office in London that ‘attempt on the part of the Indians in this country to extort concessions by threats and charges of bad faith’ was ‘foredoomed to failure’.28

  The breakdown of negotiations was reported to Gokhale by Henry Polak via a series of melancholy missives. In early June he wrote that ‘the relations between the Government and the Indian community are almost as seriously strained as ever they have been.’ In late June, after the passage of the Bill, he remarked, ‘the betrayal has been complete.’ Polak felt ‘thoroughly ashamed to have to call myself an Englishman today’.29

  Gokhale, who was then in London, wrote to the Government of India, warning that ‘unless the compromise agreed to between the two sides is scrupulously carried out there is sure to be renewal of a bitter struggle.’ He complained that ‘the Union Government, under pressure from Boer Extremists, has again broken faith with the Indians.’ If passive resistance broke out once more, Gokhale would return to India and move a resolution supporting it in the Imperial Council.30

  Also making the case for Gandhi was his old English patron Lord Ampthill. Ampthill had been briefed by Maud Polak, who prepared for his scrutiny a 78-page document listing the handicaps under which Indians in South Africa still suffered. Speaking in the House of Lords, Ampthill launched a wide-ranging attack on the new Immigration Bill. It did not maintain existing rights of entry and re-entry; it did not recognize Hindu and Muslim marriages; it did not hono
ur the South Africans ministers’ promise to Gokhale that they would abolish the £3 tax.

  Lord Ampthill recalled how, between 1907 and 1910, under the leadership of the ‘devoted patriot’ Gandhi, the Indians in South Africa ‘were obliged to resort to passive resistance and to voluntarily undergo untold sacrifices’. ‘My Lords,’ asked Ampthill of his fellow peers, ‘how are you going to meet the untold scandal which will be created if there shall be a renewal of passive resistance?’31

  In the third week of June 1913, Gandhi wrote to Gokhale that ‘the Bill is so bad that passive resistance is a necessity. By the time this is in your hands, some of us may already be in gaol.’ He listed the defects in the bill: namely, the persistence of the racial bar in the Orange Free State, the merely partial relief in the tax and marriage questions, the taking away of the right of Indians in other provinces to enter the Cape. He thought passive resistance might begin as early as July, with educated and uneducated Indians alike entering provinces and refusing to show any papers. ‘So far as I can judge at present,’ he wrote, ‘100 men and 13 women will start the struggle. As time goes, we may have more.’ Food and clothing would be collected by begging. ‘If we all go to gaol, Kallenbach has undertaken to do the begging himself. He can be thoroughly relied upon to see that no family is starved so long as he has life in him.’ He added: ‘Some of my private burdens are being found by Dr. Mehta.’ Gandhi expected the ‘struggle … to last a year but if we have more men than I anticipate, it may close during the next session of the Union Parliament. We are making provisions for an indefinite prolongation.’32