Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  Kallenbach and Polak were both tried before a judge named Jooste. In his testimony, the architect began by describing himself as ‘an intimate friend of Mr Gandhi for many years’. The ‘voiceless and voteless’ Indians had drawn attention to their grievances through petitions and representations. Having tried and failed with these methods, their leader, Gandhi, then introduced what Kallenbach considered ‘the only effective means of securing redress, viz., passive resistance, a means in which I, for many years a disciple of Tolstoy, thoroughly believe.’

  Polak spoke of his long association with the Indians of South Africa, and his work as editor of their weekly newspaper. He supported their passive resistance movement as an Englishman, a Jew, and a member of the legal profession. As an Englishman, he said,

  it is impossible for me to sit silent whilst the Government of the Union, claiming to speak in my name, repudiate, as they have done twice this year, their solemn pledges towards my fellow-British subject of Indian nationality, in defiance of what is best in British public opinion, and regardless of Imperial obligations and responsibilities towards the people of India …

  As a Jew, it is impossible for me to associate myself, even passively, with the persecution of any race or nationality. My co-religionists to-day, in certain parts of Europe, are undergoing suffering and persecution on racial grounds, and, finding the same spirit of persecution in this country, directed against the Indian people, I have felt impelled to protest against it with every fibre of my being.

  As a member of the legal profession, I have made a declaration of loyalty to the Crown and to do my duty as an Attorney of this honourable court. In taking the part of the Indian passive resisters, loyal subjects of the Crown, in their demand for justice, I claim to have proved my loyalty in the most practical possible manner, and, as an Attorney, I claim to have given the only advice to them possible to me as an honourable man who places justice before loyalty and moral law before human law.

  Polak then added a fourth reason – that he was a friend of Gokhale’s, a man revered by millions of Indians, who had been promised by the South African Government that the £3 tax would be repealed. Polak called the tax ‘a relic of barbarism’, whose ‘direct effect is to drive the tax-payers back to conditions of servitude, dishonourable to British traditions of freedom, or to expel them from this country, which has reaped the fruits of their labour for a period of years.’

  These statements of Gandhi’s closest colleagues were both deeply moving. Yet they were very differently articulated. Kallenbach’s was spontaneous and heart-felt, drawing attention to the friend who was leading the struggle. Polak’s was more closely crafted. The work of a writer and polemicist, it stressed rather the principles by which one who was not an Indian himself would choose to support their movement.53

  Kallenbach was unattached, but Polak had a wife and children. When Millie Graham came out to South Africa in 1905 to join him, she was prepared for a life of service. But surely she would not have anticipated that this would land her husband in prison. Now, she was consoled and cheered by a lovely letter from her husband’s best friend, which read:

  My Dear Millie,

  You are brave. So I know you will consider yourself a proud and happy wife in having a husband who has dared to go to gaol for a cause he believes in. The £3 tax is the cause of the helpless and the dumb. And I ask you to work away in the shape of begging, advising and doing all you can. Do not wait for their call but call the workers. Seek them out even though they should insult you. Miss S[chlesin] knows the struggle almost like Henry. Assist her. I have asked her to move forward and backward and assume full control. Draw upon West and Maganbhai for your needs. May you have strength of mind and body to go through the fire.

  With love,

  Yours

  Bhai.54

  A third Jewish supporter of the satyagraha, L. W. Ritch, could not seek arrest, since he had to run Gandhi’s law practice. But he showed his solidarity in other ways, peppering the press with letters defending the Indian cause. When General Smuts claimed that the new marriage laws were necessary because Muslim men had only to utter ‘talaq’ three times to secure a divorce, Ritch answered that the practice was in fact so rare that when it occurred, it was regarded as a ‘scandal of communal importance’. He estimated that there had not been more than fifty cases of talaq in the past thirty years among the Indian community in South Africa. On the other hand, divorce was rampant among Europeans in Natal and the Transvaal. ‘South African lawyers cannot complain of lack of practice in this branch of our profession,’ said Ritch sarcastically. ‘A husband absents himself from his wife for a few months, ignores the ensuing order of court, and the divorce is granted. Almost as simple as saying [talaq], don’t you think?’55

  Then, when a Johannesburg paper claimed that the Indians wanted an ‘open door to immigration’, Ritch answered that what they actually asked for was fair treatment for those resident in South Africa. In his view, the policy of the Union Government

  resembles nothing as much as the conduct of Holy Russia towards Russia’s Jewish population. All the same elements are present – repression, segregation, studied insult and neglect. And the same excuses are advanced by way of justification: economic danger, unassimilability, alien race, incompatibility of ideas – and all the rest of it. That Russia’s attitude is one of criminal folly nobody doubts; that the future will prove us to have similarly erred is to my mind no less certain.56

  No less tireless was a fourth Jewish friend of the Indians, Gandhi’s secretary Sonja Schlesin. She came down to Natal, shuttling between Phoenix and the prisons, nourishing the morale and the stomach of first-time satyagrahis. She sent Gokhale, in India, a series of telegrams, updating him on the struggle. The duties assigned to her were substantial, and she sometimes took upon other tasks voluntarily. When a white planter, angry with the strike, assaulted and injured two of his workers, Miss Schlesin had their wounds attended to. She also photographed their bruises, sending the prints to the press and to the Government.57

  Gandhi and his friends were sent to Volksrust Prison, before the authorities decided to separate them. Polak was shifted to Boksburg, and Kallenbach to Krugersdorp. Gandhi himself was transferred first to Pietermaritzburg and then to Bloemfontein.

  The leader was away, yet the protests continued. On 13 November, 2,000 Indians working in sugar fields and sugar mills in southern Natal went on strike. At one major estate, Mount Edgecombe, the managers ‘enrolled a corps of special police, and drew a cordon around the estate, with the idea of keeping out the agitators and apostles of Gandhi, and of protecting loyal Indians from intimidation.’ The coercion failed, with an estimated 1,500 out of the 2,700 labourers at Mount Edgecombe downing tools and going off to join their fellows.58

  In the fifty years that they had worked on the sugar plantations and coal mines, Indian labourers had occasionally protested against harsh working conditions or brutal supervisors and managers. When provoked or humiliated, they had deserted their work, marched in a body to their manager’s office, petitioned government authorities, and sometimes even assaulted their employers.59 Still, the strikes in 1913 were unprecedented in their scale and scope. In the sugar plantations of the south these were wholly self-organized. Indian workers had heard of the protests among the mines in the north; and of the leaders who had organized them. They were disturbed and moved by Gandhi’s arrest. But Gandhi had not ever worked with or mobilized sugar workers. These now came out on their own, in a remarkable display of solidarity with their compatriots. By the middle of November, some 15,000 sugar workers were on strike. A rumour spread that Gokhale was coming out again from India to have the £3 tax abolished. Many workers believed that Gandhi had sent a message urging them to down tools. Some strikers left the plantations and moved into towns nearby; others converged on the settlement founded by Gandhi at Phoenix.60

  While Gandhi’s name was invoked, the methods of protest were not always ‘Gandhian’. Angry strikers burned cane fie
lds, and attacked policemen with sticks and stones (and even cane knives). In clashes between constables with guns and Indians with swords, there were many casualties, some fatal. European planters, unnerved, sent their wives and children to the comparative safety of Durban.61

  As the strike spread through the colony, the army was called in. Several hundred mounted riflemen under the command of a brigadier-general were sent to the sugar country. The navy was also put on alert, in case troops had to be sent from the Cape to Durban.62

  The show of force failed once more. The strike now spread to the brick kilns and to Durban, where Indians employed by the City Corporation and in the port stopped work. At a well-attended meeting, the strikers were ‘unanimous in their decision, which was a refusal to work until the £3 tax had been repealed, and until Gandhi was released.’63

  On Saturday, 15 November, 1,200 Indians gathered in Pietermaritzburg to discuss the state of their movement. A certain T. R. Naidoo said that while ‘he was not against the passive resistance movement as a matter of principle, he was against the Maritzburg Indians doing anything which would be likely to jeopardize the trade or interests of the Indians by adopting an antagonistic attitude towards the Europeans’. Other speakers vigorously disagreed. One Ramsingh pointed out that ‘Mr Gandhi had gone to prison for them all, and he wanted to know whether they were going to leave him to face the trouble alone, or whether they were going to join forces with him.’ A priest named Dhonduram Maharaj praised Gandhi for bringing Hindus and Muslims together. Under his leadership, they had made ‘common [cause] in the passive resistance movement’. The mood of the meeting was very clearly pro-satyagraha and pro-Gandhi.64 On the crucial issue of the £3 tax, it accused the Government of betrayal. Thus when one speaker ‘asked whether his confrères placed reliance on General Smuts or on Mr Gokhale, there was a loud cry of Mr Gokhale’.65

  On Sunday, 16 November, a meeting of Indians in Johannesburg asked the Government to release Gandhi and begin talks.66 Meanwhile, Natal’s largest town, Durban, ‘was seething with the strike spirit’. On the afternoon of the 16th, 3,000 Indians gathered for a meeting, where ‘cheers were given for Mr Gandhi and the strikers.’ One speaker asked hospital and sanitary workers to return to duty as an act of courtesy to their fellow citizens. Otherwise, the strike embraced all trades and professions. It was ‘practically universal amongst the Indians in the Borough’.

  The chief magistrate of Durban toured the city, urging the strikers to return to work. At each place he was informed that ‘they had been told by their “Rajah” or “King”, Mr Gandhi, that they were to strike until the £3 Licence was repealed.’ Then he toured the plantations outside the town, to be told there too that ‘Gandhi had ordered them to strike’. The magistrate thought that beyond the specific grievance of the £3 tax, the protestors also wanted the franchise and ‘equal rights’.67

  Across Natal, Indians had stopped working in sugar plantations, coal mines, railways, ships, shops and hotels. The authorities sought to compel them back to work. The police arrested 120 ‘ringleaders’ in Durban. In the country districts, riflemen marched up and down the plantations in a show of strength, sometimes provoking clashes with angry Indians. In a scuffle at Avoica several indentured labourers were injured. At the Beneva sugar estate, ‘the coolies came out in strength and a volley was fired’. Two Indians were killed by bullets, and ten seriously wounded. At Mount Edgecombe, soldiers with revolvers battled coolies with sticks and stones. Five Europeans were injured, as against four Indians killed and twenty-four wounded.68

  One eyewitness to the conflict was the Zulu reformer John Dube. He saw Indian strikers congregate on a piece of open ground, and refuse to move despite being beaten by the police. Constables mounted on horses ran through them, and yet they did not disperse. Dube was impressed by their courage and endurance, telling a friend that while he had once thought plantation coolies crude and uncivilized, now he had ‘acquired a sense of respect for all the Indians’.69

  The Indian satyagraha also came in for praise from the leader of the Cape Coloureds, Dr Abdurahman. In the last week of November, he told the annual conference of the African Political Organization that

  if a handful of Indians, in a matter of conscience, can so firmly resist what they consider injustice, what could the coloured races not do if they were to adopt this practice of passive resistance? We must all admire what these British Indians have shown, and are showing, in their determination to maintain what they deem to be their right.70

  In response to the Indian upsurge, the Europeans in Natal reinforced their own solidarities of race and class. Angry letters to the papers singled out Gandhi as the chief trouble-maker. One spoke of ‘the rebellion on the part of Indians at the bidding of Gandhi and Co.’; another spoke sarcastically of agitators ‘elevating Gokhale and Gandhi to the level of little gods’. A third asked the South African Government to ‘deport to India and permanently banish Gandhi, Polak, Kallenbach, [Thambi] Naidoo, and all Indians convicted of agitation in the “strike”’. A fourth said the best answer to the strike was to demonstrate that ‘we can do without the Indian.’ The whites should sweep their own backyards and blacken their own boots. They could then ‘do away with 50 per cent of these Indians and coincidentally smash up the backbone of this Young India menace’.71

  On 26 November the Natal Mercury carried an interview with a local legislator, J. T. Henderson. Henderson noted that in 1874 there were a mere 6,000 Indians in Natal; now they were in excess of 130,000. If the £3 tax on free Indians was abolished, the numbers would increase even more, and ‘the outlook for the white population here [would be] a very dark one indeed.’ The ambition of the Indians was worrying; they tended to look ‘for a higher plane of employment’ than labouring in fields and mines, and were ‘exceedingly keen’ on education. The tax was necessary to discourage them from challenging the whites even more directly than they presently did.72

  The legislator was refuted by F. A. Laughton, in whose opinion the £3 tax was illegal. Since wages on plantations were much below market rates, Indians were ‘under no obligation either to leave Natal after the expiration of their indentures or to take out a licence if they remain’. This opinion from a ‘jurist of standing’ led to ‘jubilation among local Indians and considerable astonishment amongst Europeans’.73

  Meanwhile, back in the Transvaal, the Boer party, Het Volk, renewed its call to deport the Indians en masse. The party paper Die Transvaler complained that the Indians ‘have increased their demands, become more obstreperous than they have ever been, caused more trouble than ever before, and evidently they are never going to be satisfied until every article of the Immigration Act has been repealed’. ‘South Africa has had enough of these Indians,’ said the Boer organ. ‘We want no more of them from India or elsewhere.’74

  In the last week of November, the Government renewed its efforts to break the strike in Natal by force. Contingents of police were dispatched to get labourers back to work. Fleeing the police, many workers swarmed on to the farm at Phoenix. They were taken in hand by Albert West and Maganlal Gandhi, who fed them and allowed them to sleep over at the settlement. The workers ‘repeatedly stated that they would rather die than go back to their work, and they seemed to be really afraid’. West wired the Government, suggesting that it ‘allow people [to] remain quietly here until disturbance is over, or Government supply food and take charge [of the] camp’.75

  The upsurge in Natal, and the arrest of Gandhi and company, provoked a wave of sympathy and support in the protesters’ homeland. ‘India thrilling with indignation,’ wired Gokhale to Millie Polak. ‘Protests pouring upon [Indian] Government for forwarding Imperial Government.’ A public subscription had already collected £5,000; Gokhale wanted to know where to send it. He also asked who was leading the movement in the absence of Gandhi. ‘Full information present position prospects necessary,’ he said.76

  The range and depth of the Indian interest in Gandhi’s movement is manifest in a series o
f wires sent by the Viceroy on to London. Here are two samples:

  Viceroy to India Office, 26 November 1913:

  My telegram dated 22nd November S. Africa. 23 further telegrams received, two from private individuals, twenty are from Chairmen of meetings held at Ahmedabad, Ongole, Amalapuram, Bezwada, Tanuku, Yeotmal, two meetings Bombay, Coonoor, Lucknow, Narsapur, Rajkot, Bapatla, Poona, Guntur, Nasik, Kovur, Ellore, Rampurhat, Gudiwada, and Bhimavaram. Contents similar to that of previous telegrams reported to you protesting against treatment of Indians in Natal and urging government intervention.

  Viceroy to India Office, 8 December 1913:

  Thirteen further telegrams received from women of Bombay and citizens of Rangoon, Hyderabad, Sind, Cawnpore, Hardoi, from All India Muslim League Lucknow; Chairmen public meetings Calicut, Yeotmal, Ajmer, Bombay mill-hands, Sanghsabha Shanghai, Chandra Chairman Political Association Kimberley, public of Kotdwara, and letter from Chairmen of public meetings Nellore, Raipur, and Coimbatore, and from Joint Secretary Godavari District Association Cocanada praying for adoption of measures for the prevention of sufferings of Indians in S. Africa.77

  The interest in the South African struggle was particularly keen in South India, the region from where the majority of the satyagrahis came. A Tamil paper published out of Madras praised the ‘wonderful determination’ of ‘Mr Gandhi and his followers’; they had ‘glorif[ied] the good name of India by means of their noble and courageous conduct, risking even their lives’. A Kannada paper printed in Bangalore saluted ‘the leadership of that zealous servant of India, that generous and heroic personage, Mr Gandhi’. A Telugu weekly in Guntur reached for mythic parallels – Gandhi, the leader of the resistance, was like Arjuna, brave and fearless, while Gokhale was like Krishna, providing sage advice from behind the scenes.78