Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  On Monday, 15 September 1913, a party of sixteen Indians left the settlement at Phoenix to illegally enter the Transvaal. Such transgressions of provincial boundaries had been commonly practised during past satyagrahas. What was novel, this time, was that some of the protesters were women. They were breaking a boundary far more rigid or sacrosanct than that dividing one province of South Africa from another.

  While in London in 1906 and 1909, Gandhi had seen the suffragettes at work – and admired them. Their courage and suffering, he thought, could inspire Indians facing discrimination in South Africa. Apart from the suffragettes, Gandhi had also been influenced by his friendship with Millie Polak. Millie believed that ‘all the questions relating to life really belong to women’. She argued that for ‘thousands of years, men have used women and the greatest beauties in their nature rather to their detriment than her glory’. She insisted that ‘only when the finer forces of life are realised can woman come into her own.’2

  In India itself, the idea that women could participate in popular social movements was out of the question. Middle-class women, whether Hindu or Muslim, were not expected to mix socially with members of the other sex. The only men they spoke to were family members, or servants, or itinerant traders who came knocking at their door. They were not supposed to leave the house unescorted.

  The Swadeshi movement in Bengal and Maharashtra had been an all-male affair. The terrorists who assassinated British officials were all men. By the 1910s, a sprinkling of upper-class women had begun attending the meetings of the Indian National Congress. But none had gone to jail. The possibility did not, could not, enter their heads – not least because it would have appalled their husbands. However much they disliked colonial rule, Indian patriots (both Hindu and Muslim) saw struggle and sacrifice in exclusively male terms. The most progressive nationalist in India, c. 1913, could scarcely have countenanced his wife being fed and ordered about by male jailors not of her kin or caste.

  In this respect, the Tamil women in the diaspora were ahead of their sisters at home. In the summer of 1909, the wives of satyagrahis in prison held a meeting in a temple in Germiston, which passed the following resolution: ‘As our religion teaches us that a wife may not be separated from her husband, we pray the Government to send us to gaol with our husbands, and to confiscate our property, if that be justice.’. The resolution was moved by one Thayee Ammall, and seconded by a Mrs Marriam and a Mrs Chengalaraya Moodaley.3

  The Tamil ladies were dissuaded from courting arrest. Four years later, with the struggle reaching its climax, Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, offered to go to jail. This was a spontaneous reaction, an outraged response to a judge and a judgment that called into question the validity of her own marriage. That Gandhi agreed to let his wife court imprisonment may have been a result of his encounters with suffragettes in England and Tamil women in Transvaal. There was also the example of African women in the Orange Free State, who had recently turned in their passes to the authorities, pledging never to carry them again.4

  As for Kasturba, without diminishing in any way the radical and unprecedented nature of her gesture, perhaps she had been prepared for it by the years spent living in proximity to that energetic feminist Millie Polak.

  Three days before the first batch of satyagrahis were to leave Phoenix, Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach asking him to come down from Johannesburg to the Transvaal border to meet them. ‘I shall send the resisters from here on Monday’, wrote Gandhi:

  They will reach Volksrust on Tuesday. You should leave Monday night by the mail train so that you are at the station when the Kaffir Mail reaches Volksrust on Tuesday evening. You should simply watch as a spectator. They are not to speak in English. One of them only will speak in that tongue, interpret for the others. They will not give finger-prints. If the police arrest them, they must ask for shelter at the police station. If the police do not arrest them, you should, there and then, buy tickets for them and proceed to Johannesburg. I then suggest their being housed at Mountain View … No more than Boer meal and a little dholl and rice will be required and fruits and nuts of course. If they are arrested, you should attend court, send full wire to me from Volksrust as also full letter. If they are imprisoned you should immediately see the gaol doctor and the jailor and tell them of religious and health foods they may take and not take. But you should also say that they will not complain if they do not get what they want. Mrs. Gandhi will be purely fruitarian. Jeki and others will not touch bread. Some of them will be able to take only one meal. The names and further details later. It is well that you will be free from your business even if passive resistance is to start. Your whole time will be wanted for the struggle.5

  This is a striking letter, demonstrating that Gandhi was at once a theorist and moralist of non-violent resistance, and its strategist and tactician too. Essays in Indian Opinion from 1907 onwards had outlined the philosophy and relevance of satyagraha – within South Africa, and to the world. Now, as a fresh satyagraha was about to commence, Gandhi was providing detailed instructions to each of its main participants and patrons.

  The first batch of resisters left Phoenix Farm on 15 September. Work in the fields, the press and the school was suspended for the day. The children helped the women pack their bags and carry them to the station. Before they left the settlement, the satyagrahis gathered for one last meeting, where Gandhi told the departing mothers that their children were safe in the hands of God. Some hymns were sung, but (as a boy staying back recalled) ‘nobody’s voice was clear. Everyone was overwhelmed.’6

  Gandhi wrote to Manilal – who was in Johannesburg – that ‘Ba and others boarded the train with great courage on Monday.’ The ‘others’ included their son Ramdas, Parsee Rustomjee, Jeki Mehta, and the wives of Chhaganlal and Maganlal (named Kashi and Santok respectively), the last two offering to go out of solidarity with their aunt. The party – numbering sixteen in all, four women and twelve men – crossed the border, and were detained at Volksrust. Kasturba and company were tried on 23 September, and pleaded guilty to the charge of violating the immigration acts. They refused to offer further testimony, and waived their right to ask questions of the prosecutor or judge. A reporter noted that ‘the case created great commotion among the local [Indian] community, most of whom were present in court.’7

  The satyagrahis were all sentenced to three months in prison. They were at first taken to a jail at Volksrust, and later shifted to Maritzburg. The women were housed in the same cell as African women convicts; the boys put to work in the prison orchards.8

  Gandhi, meanwhile, wrote two strong, stirring articles in Indian Opinion. The first called for Indians in every town to join the fight and court arrest. The second said that removing the £3 ‘blood tax’ was ‘the central point of this struggle’. Recalling the promise made by the leading whites to Gokhale, he said the removal of the tax ‘is a simple, primary duty every Indian in South Africa owes to his country, to Mr Gokhale and to the poor men who are the victims of gold hunger’.9

  This, too – the foregrounding of the poorest Indians in South Africa – was a departure. Indentured labourers had been among Gandhi’s clients, and he had campaigned for better working conditions for them. However, in past satyagrahas in Transvaal, hawkers, merchants and professionals had been in the vanguard. Now, the ‘central point’ was the abolition of a discriminatory tax that hit the poor most.

  On the morning of 25 September, Gandhi left Phoenix for the Transvaal. His hope was that he would be arrested and follow Kasturba into jail. He was under great stress, as a growing number of Indians in Natal now resented his leadership. During the last struggle, he had found it increasingly hard to get volunteers from the merchant class. Now, as the struggle recommenced, Gandhi was confronted with questions to which the answers seemed unclear. How would the satyagraha turn out? How readily would the Indians in either province court arrest? His nerves were on edge. On the 25th, in a hurry to catch the train, he lost his temper with the children at Phoenix while
eating breakfast. Later, from his carriage, he wrote Maganlal an abashed, apologetic letter that revealed ‘the awful state’ he was in. As he ‘ran for the train’, remembered Gandhi,

  I gave no end of trouble to the boys. Everyone was delayed because of me … Thinking of this, I felt extremely miserable. Even those of my actions which I believed to be for a spiritual purpose have a big flaw in them … It is never the mark of a spiritual aspirant to be in too great a hurry and make himself a nuisance to others. He may, of course, not overtax himself – ought not to. What an ignoble state to be in! All this is the consequence of initial mistakes. I also realized that if I had skipped the meal, I could have worked with an unruffled mind, with plenty of time on hand, and would have been no trouble to any of you … I felt ashamed within myself even as I was on the way. I reproached myself. I, who used to believe that I had perhaps something in me, find myself today in a humiliating state. I tell you all this because you attribute so many excellences to me. You should see the faults in me in order that you may save yourself from like faults. Plunged as I have been in the affairs of South Africa, I think I can be entirely free only in India. But please warn me whenever I take upon myself too heavy a burden. You will be with me, no doubt, even in India. If I am imprisoned, it will be all peace and nothing but peace for me. If not, I may return there [to India]. But please warn me if ever in future, even in South Africa, you find today’s story being repeated. We could have done without bread for Mr Kallenbach and without groundnut jam for me. We need not have been particular about feeding the children. Or rather, we might have pleased ourselves in all these ways and yet things would have been all right if I had not insisted on having my meal. But I would ride all the horses and that is why God ordained my fall. Surely, this is not the first occasion when such a thing has happened to me. This time, however, the lesson has been brought home to me. I will now change myself a little.10

  The self-scrutiny, the self-criticism, was in character. The key phrase perhaps is ‘I would ride all the horses’. Seeking simultaneously to be a conscientious (by his lights) teacher, father, editor, opponent of racial injustice (whether suffered by hawkers, merchants, professionals, or labourers) and multi-purpose reformer (of diet, health, sexual attitudes, relations between religions), Gandhi would, from time to time, find the obligations of one calling competing with the demands of another, the clash leading to a loss of temper or loss of direction, this then recognized and, if possible, rectified.

  Gandhi crossed into Transvaal without being detained. He proceeded to Johannesburg, where he addressed two meetings on 28 September, speaking once to an audience of men, the other time to women who had decided to court arrest.11 Two days later, the Transvaal Leader wrote that ‘the Indian passive resistance movement is threatened with collapse.’ The story’s headlines ran: ‘No Money for Martyrs / Passive Resisters in a Pickle / Indian Merchants against the Campaign / Support Very Scanty’.

  The newspaper claimed that while Gandhi and his colleague A. M. Cachalia – chairman of the British Indian Association – were ‘proclaiming the opening of hostilities, and urging their compatriots to fill the gaols, there are growls and curses from the rank and file, open defiance, and frank avowals of contentment with the present order of things’. Last time, there were more than 3,000 convictions; but ‘on this occasion’, it was being said that ‘Mr Gandhi himself does not expect that more than 150 persons will go to prison in the cause.’ Even this was thought to be an over-estimate, since ‘a leading Indian merchant’ interviewed by the paper thought that at most fifty people in Johannesburg would ‘risk their liberty’. That the arrests so far had been of people from Natal showed, to the newspaper, that ‘whatever measure of success Mr Gandhi achieves amongst the poorer and more ignorant of his countrymen, the wealthy Indian traders [of the Transvaal] … are making no secret of their antagonism to the passive resistance campaign.’12

  The same day, Gandhi wrote to the Transvaal Leader disputing this story. The meeting of 28 September had, he pointed out, been attended by many merchants. He called the paper’s claim that passive resisters were ‘demand[ing] payment for their penance’ an ‘atrocious libel, and a cruel wrong to the men and women who have suffered during the last campaign, and who will suffer now’.13

  The protests continued. On 1 October, Manilal Gandhi was detained in Johannesburg for hawking without a licence. Like the other resisters, he chose to go to jail rather than pay a fine.14 Two of the Gandhi boys were now in prison; perhaps the eldest, an experienced jailbird, could be summoned to join them. Gandhi thus wrote to Harilal saying ‘both of you may come over here [from India] and get arrested. Chanchi may come while the fight is on only if she has the courage to go to gaol.’15

  In the second week of October, General Smuts – who had now resumed charge of the Interior Ministry – spoke to the Governor-General’s secretary about the developing situation. Smuts said ‘Gandhi was suffering from one of his periodic attacks of mental derangement, and was, for the time being, attracted by the role of prophet and martyr.’ The General ‘doubted whether there was much real enthusiasm or financial support behind it [the passive resistance movement], and he rather expected that it would soon collapse.’ Asked about specific grievances he said, with regard to the marriage question, that it was impossible to give ‘legal recognition to a polygamous system’. He was personally opposed to the £3 tax and was keen to repeal it, ‘but the narrow-minded folly of the [white] Natalians had been, and still was, an insuperable obstacle’. The planters wanted the tax as a means to get the workers to re-indenture; the non-planters wanted it to induce them to return to India.16

  On 12 October, the first Muslim woman joined the satyagraha movement. This was the wife of Gandhi’s old classmate Sheikh Mehtab. Mrs Mehtab left Durban with her mother, son and servant, aiming to cross the border and court arrest. She was seen off at the station by a large crowd, who presented her with bouquets and parcels of food for the journey.17

  The same day, Gandhi journeyed in the reverse direction, from the Transvaal to Natal. At a meeting in Durban’s Union Theatre, he was asked why Henry Polak had recently been sent to England. Did the Indians need to have ‘paid European workers’? Gandhi answered that Polak had been deputed at Gokhale’s request.18

  Gandhi now left for the coal-mining town of Newcastle. A meeting held here on the evening of the 13th ended ‘with cheers to the brave son of India, Mr M. K. Gandhi’. Thambi Naidoo also spoke, in Tamil, after which the mineworkers endorsed both Gandhi and passive resistance; they were particularly exercised by the £3 tax.19

  Gandhi returned to Durban, where there had recently been sharp criticism of his methods. He had spent much of the past decade in the Transvaal; in his absence, other leaders had emerged, who did not always endorse his views. In July 1913, Gandhi’s old adversary P. S. Aiyar had claimed that passive resistance had outlived its usefulness. Instead of fighting for their rights in South Africa, said Aiyar, the Indians should depart en masse for the motherland. The South African Government should be made to buy their properties at market price, and pay for their passage back to India.20

  Now, in October, at a well-attended meeting of the Natal Indian Congress, Gandhi was attacked for his ‘provocative and inefficient leadership’. A Gujarati merchant named M. C. Anglia said that Gandhi’s methods had not made their position more secure or elevated their standing among the whites. Why should they support him now? So long as the Indians ‘have a professional and political agitator at the head of political affairs’, said Anglia, ‘we are doomed to failure with the Government and the European public of South Africa.’ 21 Some people rose to defend Gandhi, and since ‘passions were rising on either side’ the chairman closed the meeting, upon which his supporters ‘carried Mr Gandhi shoulder high through the Victoria, Albert, Queen and Field Streets’.22

  In the days after the contentious meeting, Gandhi’s leadership was endorsed by the Hindustani Association of Durban and by a group of Muslim merchants.23 Among his
newer admirers were the workers in mines and plantations, whose endorsement turned out to be definitive. By now, some 2,000 Indians working in the Natal collieries were on strike. The districts of Dundee and Newcastle were said to be ‘in a feverish state of excitement’. The striking miners assembled in the grounds of Dundee’s Hindu Temple, where they ‘expressed confidence in the leadership of Mr Gandhi’. They had been mobilized by eleven Tamil-speaking women, among them Mrs Thambi Naidoo. As Gandhi admiringly noted, ‘the presence of these brave women who had never suffered hardship and had never spoken at public meetings acted like electricity, and the men left their work’.24 For speaking at these meetings and urging the workers to strike, Mrs Thambi Naidoo and her colleagues were sentenced to three months in prison with hard labour.25

  In the second and third weeks of October, Gandhi addressed crowds of striking workers in Durban, Newcastle, Hatting Spruit and other towns in Natal. Contemporary photographs show people listening to him in all variety of dress, Indian and Western, and in all manner of headgear – caps, hats, topis and turbans. The gatherings were large and densely packed, with several thousand Indians come to support their leader.26

  On 24 October, Gandhi wrote to Maganlal that ‘great things are happening in Newcastle. There is a move to lead a march of 2,000 men to Transvaal.’ The next day he told mine and plantation owners that their workers were on strike because of the Government’s failure to honour their promise to Gokhale to abolish the £3 tax.27 A Tamil poster circulated in the plantations quoted Gandhi as saying: ‘I have no grievances against the employers … I ask [them] to assist in getting the tax repealed. I am quite aware of the loss and hardship my unfortunate brethren have to suffer, and I trust even if you have to beg you would not return to work until the tax is repealed.’28