Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  31. Mehta to Gandhi, 29 September 1909, S. N. 5101, SAAA.

  32. Mehta to Gandhi, 27 September 1909, S. N. 5097, SAAA.

  33. CWMG, IX, pp. 406–11.

  34. Polak to Gandhi, letters of 14 and 21 August 1909, S. N. 5011 and 5021, SAAA.

  35. Polak to Gandhi, 9 September 1909, S. N. 5061, SAAA. Lord Curzon had been a controversial Viceroy, whose decision to partition Bengal had provoked widespread popular protest.

  36. See reports and clippings in File No. 242, Part I, G. K. Gokhale Papers, NAI; and in L/P&J/6/1000, APAC/BL.

  37. Polak to Gandhi, 19 October 1909, S. N. 5138, SAAA.

  38. See reports in File 184, L/P&J/6/917, APAC/BL.

  39. Gandhi to Polak, 14 October 1909, CWMG, IX, p. 478.

  40. Polak to Gandhi, letters of 7 and 14 October 1909, S. N. 5116 and 5126, SAAA.

  41. H. S. L. Polak, The Indians of South Africa: Helots Within the Empire and How They Are Treated (Madras: G. A. Natesan and Co., 1909), Part I, pp. 4, 21, 70ff; Part II, pp. 16–17, 22–3, 41, 43–4.

  42. See Report of the Protector of Indian Immigrants for the Year ending 31 December, 1909, in Natal Government Records (on microfilm), Reel No. 6., Accession No. 2179, NMML.

  43. Anon., M. K. Gandhi: A Sketch of His Life and Work (Madras: G. A. Natesan and Co., 1910).

  44. See CWMG, IX, pp. 436–7.

  45. Polak to Gandhi, 7 October 1909, S. N. 5116, SAAA.

  46. Letter of 23 September, 1909, CWMG, IX, pp. 429f.

  47. Polak to Gandhi, 7 October 1909, S. N. 5116, SAAA.

  48. ‘Mr Polak’s Visit to Rangoon’, IO, 22 January 1910.

  49. Pranjivan Mehta to G. K. Gokhale, dated Rangoon, 8 November 1909, File No. 4, Servants of India Society Papers, NMML.

  50. Cf. the names appended to the notice of the meeting in the Town Hall, Calcutta, 3 December 1909, copy in E. S. Reddy Papers, NMML.

  51. H. S. L. Polak to G. K. Gokhale, 10 January 1910, File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI; report on Banaras meeting in IO, 12 February 1910.

  52. First published in Bande Matram, 11 to 23 April 1907, reprinted in Sri Aurobindo, Bande Matram: Early Political Writings (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972; fourth impression 1995), pp. 90–123.

  53. ‘The Transvaal Indians’, first published in Karmayogin, 11 December 1909, reprinted in Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin: Political Writings and Speeches, 1909–1910 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1997), pp. 347–9. I am grateful to Peter Heehs for this reference.

  54. See Peter Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

  55. Reports in IO, 10 July and 25 September 1909.

  56. Editorial in IO, 20 November 1909.

  57. See IO, 6 and 13 November 1909.

  58. IO, 9 September 1909.

  59. IO, 3 April 1909.

  60. C. K. T. Naidoo to Gandhi, 4 October 1909, S. N. 5107, SAAA.

  61. CWMG, IX, p. 499; Dhananjay Keer, Veer Savarkar (1950; 3rd edn, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1988), pp. 62–4.

  62. Asaf Ali, ‘Gandhiji: 1909–1920’, in Chandrashanker Shukla, ed., Reminiscences of Gandhiji (Bombay: Vora and Co., 1951), p. 17.

  63. Letter of 30 October 1909, CWMG, IX, pp. 508–9.

  64. CWMG, IX, pp. 450–51.

  65. CWMG, IX, pp. 531–2.

  66. CWMG, IX, pp. 352–3, 417, 435–6, 495.

  67. Gandhi to Ramdas, 27 November 1909, CWMG, XI, pp. 81–2.

  68. Francis Hopwood, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, to M. K. Gandhi, 3 November 1909, in Further Correspondence Relating to Legislation Affecting Asiatics (Cd. 5363).

  69. CWMG, IX, pp. 514–17, 527.

  70. S. N. 5156, SAAA.

  71. ‘Notes of a meeting held at the Westminster Palace Hotel on November 12th 1909 to bid farewell to the Transvaal British Indian Association’, in File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  72. See CWMG, IX, pp. 539–43.

  73. Ritch to Polak, 19 November 1909, in File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  74. CWMG, IX, pp. 533–4.

  75. H. S. L. Polak, ‘Early Years (1869–1914)’, in H. S. L. Polak, H. N. Brailsford and Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Mahatma Gandhi (London: Oldhams Press Limited, 1949), p. 17.

  76. Gandhi to Polak, 15 November 1909, CWMG, XCVI (Supplementary Volume – Six), pp. 34–6.

  77. Gandhi to Millie Polak, 14 November 1909, CWMG, XCVI (Supplementary Volume – Six), pp. 32–3.

  78. Millie Graham Polak, Mr Gandhi: The Man (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931), pp. 124–5.

  79. Ampthill to Curzon, 14 November 1909, Mss Eur. F 112/79, APAC/BL.

  16 THE CONTEST OF CIVILIZATIONS

  1. M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. Anthony Parel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), editor’s introduction, p. xiv.

  2. In writing about Hind Swaraj, it is hard to keep out of one’s mind the continuing debates about what the book means to us now. But this is a biography, not a work of political or literary criticism. In what follows, I write about the book in terms of what it meant to Gandhi and his readers, at the time it was published and circulated. For recent writings on or around Hind Swaraj, see Varsha Das, ed., Gandhiji on Hind Swaraj and Select Views of Others (New Delhi: National Gandhi Museum, 2009); M. K. Gandhi, Indian Home Rule (Hind Swaraj), a centenary edition introduced by S. R. Mehrotra (New Delhi: Rajendra Prasad Academy, 2010); Suresh Sharma and Tridip Suhrud, eds and trans, M. K. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj: A Critical Edition (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2010). The journal Aryan Path, in its issue of September 1938, published a fascinating and still readable symposium on Hind Swaraj, with contributions from (among others) the Nobel prize-winning-chemist Frederick Soddy, the economist G. D. H. Cole and the critic John Middleton Murry.

  3. G. K. Chesterton, ‘Our Notebook’, Illustrated London News, 18 September 1909.

  4. IO, 8 January 1910, CWMG, IX, p. 425 (the article was written by Gandhi in the last week of October 1909).

  5. CWMG, IX, pp. 457–60.

  6. CWMG, IX, pp. 475–6.

  7. CWMG, IX, pp. 477–82.

  8. The case that Pranjivan Mehta was the ‘Reader’ of Hind Swaraj has been convincingly made by S. R. Mehrotra. See his Gandhiji ké Aajivan Ananya Mitra [Gandhi’s Intimate Lifelong Friend] (Allahabad: Etawah Hindi Seva Nidhi, 2008); and his introduction to the centenary edition of Indian Home Rule.

  9. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (ed. Parel) pp. 14–16, 17, 31, 38, 47, 52, 58, 61, 63–4, 71, 89–90, 93–5, 105–6, 112–19, etc.

  10. Cf. the eyewitness accounts of the Surat Congress reproduced in Govind Talwalkar, Gopal Krishna Gokhale: His Life and Times (New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 2006), pp. 381–6.

  11. The standard work on the Swadeshi movement remains Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1905–7 (first published 1973; new edn, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010).

  12. Gokhale to William Wedderburn, letters of 24 May 1907 and 24 September 1909, in B. N. Pandey, ed., The Indian Nationalist Movement, 1885–1947: Select Documents (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 7–8, 10–11.

  13. These paragraphs draw on Amales Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge: India between 1890 and 1910 (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1967) and Peter Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India, 1900–1910 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993). Tripathi (p. 134) notes that the Bhagavad Gita was a constant companion of the revolutionaries of Bengal. ‘In their hands, it was a more terrible weapon than the bomb. It steeled them for the killing, which was God’s will and ordained decree, and it assured them of salvation through death in God’s service. The Gita provided a better philosophy of tyrannicide than Bakunin.’ Heehs, for his part, gives us such revealing chapter titles as ‘Militancy in a Vanquished Land’ and ‘Mother Kali’s Bomb’.

  14. Valentine Chirol, Indian Unrest (London: Macmillan and Co., 1910), pp. 324, 321–2. This book was based on reports published in The Times, some of which Gandhi must have read.

  15
. Henry W. Nevinson, The New Spirit in India (London: Harper and Brothers, 1908), pp. 321–2.

  16. Syed Shamsuddin Kadri, Oriental Translator, Government of Bombay, to Commissioner of Police, 16 February 1910, in B Proceedings nos. 4–5, Home (Political), NAI.

  17. Bombay Government notification dated 17 March 1910; Home Department note dated 12 April, both ibid.

  18. M. K. Gandhi to Home Secretary, Government of India, 16 April 1910, in A Proceedings nos. 96–103, Home (Political), NAI. This letter is not in CWMG; it was discovered in the National Archives of India by Professor S. R. Mehrotra, who generously shared it with me.

  19. This is reproduced, with a brief preface by Anthony Parel, in Gandhi Marg, issue of July–September 1993, pp. 240–54.

  20. Note signed ‘A. L.’, dated 27 May 1910, in A Proceedings nos. 96–103, Home (Political), NAI.

  21. Note by C. R. Cleveland, dated 24 June 1910, ibid.

  22. ‘Anglo-Indian Funk’, AC, 19 March 1910.

  23. Note by S. H. Slater, dated 13 May 1910; note by A. G. Cardew, dated 19 May 1910, both in G. O. No. 753, 21 May 1910, Judicial Department, Tamil Nadu State Archives, Chennai.

  24. Edward Dallow to Lord Crewe, 7 June 1909, in File 2757, L/P&J/6/954, APAC/BL.

  25. I have here used a clipping of the printed review in the Doke Papers, UNISA, which has ‘Transvaal Leader, May 1910’ written on it by hand. It seems to have been published on 2 May, since it is mentioned by Gandhi to Gokhale in a letter of that date (cf. CWMG, X, pp. 239–40).

  26. Typescript dated 4 May 1910, marked ‘unsigned reply by M. K. G. to E. Dallow’s Review of “Indian Home Rule”’, in C. M. Doke Papers, UNISA. This rejoinder is not in CWMG; nor, apparently, was it published in the Transvaal Leader.

  27. Cf. Bala Pillay, British Indians in the Transvaal: Trade, Politics and Imperial Relations, 1885–1906 (London: Longman, 1976), pp. 75–6.

  28. See CWMG, X, pp. 507–10, 246–50.

  29. See CWMG, XI, pp. 203–7, 249–50.

  30. Cf. Lindy Moore, ‘The Reputation of Isabella Fyvie Mayo’, Women’s History Review, 19:1 (2010).

  31. Isabella Fyvie Mayo to Hermann Kallenbach, 3 February 1911, in KP.

  32. Cf. Gandhi to Doke, letters of 21 January and 5 February 1910 (not in CWMG), C. M. Doke Papers.

  17 SEEKING A SETTLEMENT

  1. CWMG, XI, pp. 81–2.

  2. See B. R. Nanda, Gokhale: The Indian Moderates and the British Raj (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), Chapter 16.

  3. Ratan Tata to G. K. Gokhale, 17 December 1907, in File No. 4, Servants of India Society Papers, NMML.

  4. Ratan Tata to Gokhale, 29 November 1909, File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  5. Gokhale to Gandhi, 3 December 1909; undated press statement (c. first week of December 1909), both ibid.

  6. See correspondence and reports, ibid.

  7. CWMG, XI, pp. 86–7, 90–92.

  8. Gandhi to Kallenbach, dated ‘Monday’ (c. end December 1909), in KP (this letter is not in CWMG).

  9. See reports in IO, 25 December 1909.

  10. IO, 22 January 1910.

  11. CWMG, XI, pp. 96–8, 101, 103–4, 128–30, 140–41, 149–50, 153.

  12. Sonja Schlesin to Gandhi, 31 July 1913, S. N. 5829, SAAA.

  13. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, pp. 165–6.

  14. CWMG, X, pp. 503–5. Much later, Diepkloof was where the liberal reformer (and novelist) Alan Paton served as a warden.

  15. See piece from The Outlook, reproduced in IO, 1 April 1905. Phillips may also have been the author of an extraordinary essay written in December 1903, which chastised laws aimed at Indians as unchristian, while asking:

  ‘And at this season, too, when thoughts of Christendom are said to be sweetly stirred by the memory of a Message and a Messenger, shall the Teacher’s lessons be held so lightly that upon His very anniversary the demon of injustice shall mount triumphant, and virtue and brotherly charity be heartlessly trampled beneath the heel of mercenary greed, and callous indifference to sufferings about to be inflicted?’

  See ‘The Excommunication of a People’, IO, 3 December 1903.

  16. Report in IO, 26 February 1910.

  17. CWMG, X, pp. 117–19.

  18. The speech is reproduced in full in R. P. Patwardhan and D. V. Ambekar, eds, Speeches and Writings of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, I: Economic (Poona: The Deccan Sabha, 1966), pp. 284–94.

  19. Proceedings of the Council of the Governor-General of India, 25 February 1910, in Natal Government House Records, Reel 4, Accession No. 2177, NMML.

  20. CWMG, X, p. 201.

  21. L.W. Ritch to Colonial Office, letters of 16 April, 9 May and 7 June 1910, in Further Correspondence Relating to Legislation Affecting Asiatics in the Transvaal (Cd. 5363 – in continuation of Cd. 4854) (London: HMSO, 1910).

  22. CWMG, X, p. 263.

  23. Kallenbach to Gandhi, 30 May 1910, in KP.

  24. See ‘The Passive Resistance Farm’, IO, 18 June 1910.

  25. Polak once wrote to Gokhale that ‘you have an ally against Gandhi and myself regarding the simple life in Mrs Polak’ (letter of 10 January 1910, File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI). Polak’s support for the simple life was in any case largely theoretical; over time, Millie’s views in this regard became his, too.

  26. CWMG, X, pp. 262, 272, 288–90, 297, etc; reports in IO, 13 August and 15 October 1910, 4 January 1911, etc.

  27. Gandhi to Maganlal, 21 August 1910, CWMG, X, pp. 307–8. Years later, Ramdas Gandhi recalled the rigid regimen by reproducing the Farm’s daily timetable in his memoirs:

  5.30: Wake-up

  5.30 to 7: Cleaning and Prayer

  7 to 8: Work in the fields

  8 to 9: Breakfast

  9 to 11: Work in the fields, in the kitchen, and in the printing press

  11 to 1: Bath, lunch, washing dishes and rest

  1 to 4.30: School

  4.30 to 5.30: Work in the fields and collect firewood

  5.30 to 6.30: Sports and Games (football, cricket, kabaddi, etc)

  6.30 to 7: Supper, cleaning of kitchen

  7 to 8: Prayer and reading of religious texts

  8 to 10: Relaxation

  10 to 5.30: Sleep

  See Ramadas Gandhi, Sansmaran, translated from Gujarati to Hindi by Shankar Joshi (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1970), p. 36. (The translation from the Hindi is mine).

  28. IO, 22 October 1910, CWMG, X, p. 340.

  29. One supposes an exception was made for African peons and cleaners.

  30. CWMG, X, pp. 113, 176–7. In apartheid-era terminology ‘Coloured people’ referred to those of mixed race; Gandhi, however, was using the term to denote those who were not white, who included blacks, Indians, Chinese, and those of mixed race.

  31. CWMG, X, pp. 182–4.

  32. Letter dated 27 August 1910 (translated from the German probably by Christian Bartolf), in KP.

  33. These paragraphs are based on CWMG, X, pp. 369–70, 512–4.

  34. See reports in IO, 23 April, 21 and 28 May, etc.

  35. Report in IR, May 1910.

  36. P. K. Naidu, ‘Five Times to the Transvaal Jail’, IR, September 1910. P. K. Naidu was not related to Thambi Naidoo.

  37. Leung Quinn, ‘A Chinese View of the Transvaal Trouble’, IR, June 1910.

  38. Chief Secretary, Madras Government, to Commerce and Industry Secrerary, Government of India, 13 August 1910, in File 3604, L/P&J/6/1037, APAC/BL.

  39. Commissioner of Police to Bombay Government, 24 May 1910, in File 3200, L/P&J/6/1031, APAC/BL.

  40. See Gandhi to Gokhale, 25 April 1910, CWMG, X, pp. 229–33.

  41. Ratan Tata to G. K. Gokhale, 8 July 1910, File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  42. Ratan Tata to G. K. Gokhale, 22 September 1910, File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI; emphasis in original.

  43. ‘Ghandi’ and ‘Ghandy’ are both variant spellings of Gandhi, especially common among Parsis.

  44. See S. N. 519
2 and 5193, SAAA.

  45. Reports in IO, 3 September and 5 November 1910.

  46. See report in IR, August 1910. Mrs Besant was speaking as an Irishwoman who had embraced the cause of Indian freedom herself.

  47. The poem is reproduced in Surendra Bhana and Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, A Fire that Blazed in the Ocean: Gandhi and the Poems of Satyagraha in South Africa, 1909–1911 (New Delhi: Promilla and Co., 2011), pp. 164–5.

  48. See NM, 5 October 1910.

  49. See reports in IO, 1 and 8 October 1910; NM, 5 October 1910.

  50. Prabhudas Gandhi, My Childhood with Gandhiji (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1957), pp. 56, 135.

  51. Cf. CWMG, X, pp. 336–7, 355, 375, 446, 476.

  52. CWMG, X, pp. 350–53.

  53. ‘A Great Day at Tolstoy Farm’, IO, 31 December 1910.

  54. CWMG, X, pp. 392–5.

  55. All-India Moslem League, London, to Colonial Office, 17 January 1911; Governor-General of South Africa to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 15 March 1911, both in CO 879/108/1, NAUK.

  56. Letter dated 3 March 1911, in File No. 427, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  57. CWMG, XI, pp. 412–14, 424–6.

  58. CWMG, XI, pp. 446–7.

  59. CWMG, X, pp. 477–8, 487–8, 491–2, 530, 531–2.

  60. Memorandum dated 26 November 1911 by H. J. Stanley, Add Mss. 46004, BL.

  61. Extract from the Transvaal Leader, 27 September 1911, File 4625, L/P&J/6/1125, APAC/BL.

  62. Ritch to Gandhi, 15 March 1911, S. N. 5294, SAAA.

  63. Aiyar to Gokhale, 18 March 1911, in File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  64. Editorial in Rand Daily Mail, 28 March 1911, clipping in C. M. Doke Papers, UNISA.

  65. CWMG, X, pp. 494–6.

  66. This discussion of the provisional settlement is based on CWMG, XI, pp. 5–39, 49, 515–16, 519–20.

  67. CWMG, XI, pp. 45, 56–7.

  68. Extract from the Rand Daily Mail, 28 April 1911, in Natal Government House Records, Reel 7, Accession No. 2180, NMML.

  69. Star, 28 April 1911, clipping in C. M. Doke Papers.

  70. CWMG, XI, pp. 90–92.

  71. IO, 6 May 1911.

  72. ‘Successful Banquet in Johannesburg’, IO, 17 June 1911.