Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

  3. Undated news clipping (c. May 1909), entitled ‘A Fresh Development / Indian Women’s Meeting / Desire to be Imprisoned’, in J. J. Doke Papers.

  4. Cf. ‘Native Women’s Brave Stand’, IO, 2 August 1913.

  5. Gandhi to Kallenbach, 12 September 1913, CWMG, XCVI, p. 142.

  6. Prabhudas Gandhi, My Childhood with Gandhiji (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1957), p. 129.

  7. Report in NM, 24 September 1913.

  8. CWMG, XII, pp. 188–91; Ramadas Gandhi, Sansmaran, translated from Gujarati to Hindi by Shankar Joshi (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1970), pp. 59–62.

  9. CWMG, XII, pp. 196–8, 204–6.

  10. See CWMG, XII, pp. 209–10.

  11. CWMG, XII, p. 215.

  12. Transvaal Leader, 30 September 1913.

  13. Transvaal Leader, 1 October 1913. The paper printed three letters alongside Gandhi’s. L. W. Ritch archly noted that ‘the concern of us Europeans should be not with whether their [the Indians’] campaign will succeed or fail, but rather, whether right is or is not on their side.’ Kallenbach, like Gandhi, refuted the slur that the satyagrahis were mercenaries. It was ‘an absolute falsehood that any monetary consideration has been received by them … beyond the mere maintenance for themselves and their families’. The third letter came from some forty merchants ‘throughout the principal towns of the Transvaal’, who stated ‘that we are in full sympathy with the [satyagraha] movement, and that the merchants along with the others are contributing both men and money to the movement.’

  14. NM, 2 October 1913.

  15. Letter of 17 October 1913, CWMG, XII, p. 242.

  16. The conversation took place on Smuts’ farm, on 10 or 11 October, and is reported in H. J. Stanley to H. C. M. Lambert of the Colonial Office, 12 October 1913, in File 15/486A, vol. 897, GG, NASA.

  17. IO, 15 October 1913.

  18. As reported in NM, 13 October 1913.

  19. Reports in NM, 17 and 18 October 1913.

  20. AC, 5 July 1913.

  21. Report in Transvaal Leader, 21 October 1913.

  22. See NM, issues of 20, 21 and 23 October 1913; CWMG, XII, pp. 245–6.

  23. Cf. reports in NM, 20 October 1913.

  24. Gandhi, quoted in Rand Daily Mail, 23 October 1913.

  25. See NM, 24 and 25 October 1913.

  26. See Gillian Berning, ed., Gandhi Letters: From Upper House to Lower House, 1906–1914 (Durban: Local History Museum, 1994), photos on pp. 34–6.

  27. CWMG, XII, pp. 251–3.

  28. Report in File 1389, L/P&J/6/1306, APAC/BL.

  29. See Governor-General of South Africa to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 30 October 1913; clipping from the Transvaal Leader, 29 October 1913, both in L/PJ/6/1283, APAC/BL.

  30. Note by W. H. Clark, Member, Commerce and Industry, Government of India, dated 20 March 1913, in File 1398, L/P&J/6/1235, APAC/BL.

  31. Clipping from the Transvaal Leader, 30 October 1913, ibid. See also AC, issues of 27 September, 8, 15 and 22 November 1913, etc.

  32. M. K. Gandhi, ‘The Last Satyagraha Campaign: My Experience’, CWMG, XII, pp. 508–19.

  33. H. S. L. Polak, ‘Passive Resistance Movement in South Africa’, typescript composed c. 1908–12, Mss. Afr. R. 125, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, p. 103.

  34. NM, 27 October 1913.

  35. Reports in Rand Daily Mail, 30 October 1910; IO, 5 November 1913.

  36. Reports in NM, 30 and 31 October 1913.

  37. Telegram dated 30 October 1913, in File No. 427, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  38. NM, 1 and 4 November 1913.

  39. NA, 10 November 1913.

  40. Times of Natal, 7 November 1913.

  41. Governor-General of South Africa to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 6 November 1913, in CO 879/112/4, NAUK.

  42. NM, 8 November 1913.

  43. Transvaal Leader, 8 November 1913.

  44. NA, 9 November 1911.

  45. Montford Chamney, ‘Mahatma Ghandi [sic] in the Transvaal’, typescript dated c. 1935, Mss Eur. C. 859, APAC/BL.

  46. M. K. Gandhi to the Resident Magistrate, Heidelburg, 10 November 1913, in File 4/572/13, vol. 181, JUS, NASA (this letter is not in CWMG).

  47. NA, 12 and 14 November 1913.

  48. CWMG, XII, pp. 263–4.

  49. CWMG, XII, pp. 266–8; File 15/228, vol. 897, GG, NASA.

  50. See H. S. L. Polak, ‘A South African Reminiscence’, Indian Review, October 1926.

  51. Polak to Ampthill, 12 November 1913, written from Volksrust Prison, in CO 879/112/4, NAUK.

  52. The letter is reproduced in its entirety in Isa Sarid and Christian Bartolf, Hermann Kallenbach: Mahatma Gandhi’s Friend in South Africa (Berlin: Gandhi Informations Zentrum, 1997), pp. 34–61 (quote from p. 37).

  53. ‘The Leaders Sentenced’, IO, 26 November 1913.

  54. Gandhi to Millie Polak, 12 November 1913, CWMG, XCVI, p. 155.

  55. Letter from Ritch in Rand Daily Mail, 21 October 1913.

  56. Letter from Ritch in Transvaal Leader, 31 December 1913.

  57. See Percy Binns, Magistrate’s Office, Durban, to E. Gorges, Department of the Interior, 1 December 1913, in Natal Government Records (on microfilm), Reel 5 (Accession No. 2178), NMML.

  58. Cf. press reports quoted in IO, 19 November 1913.

  59. See Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, Inside Indenture: A South African Story, 1860–1914 (Durban: Madiba Publishers, 2007) , pp. 147–57.

  60. Maureen Swan, ‘The 1913 Natal Indian Strike’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 10:2 (1984).

  61. Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, pp. 376–85.

  62. Cf. correspondence in File 15/516, vol. 897, GG, NASA.

  63. Reports in NA, 14, 15 and 16 November 1913; in NM, 14 November 1913.

  64. NM, 17 November 1913.

  65. See enclosure no. 8 to Governor-General of South Africa to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 20 November 1913, in CO 879/112/4, NAUK.

  66. Reports in NM, 18 November 1913.

  67. ‘Report on the Indian Strike in the Division of Durban’, dated 3 December 1913, in File 4/572/13, vol. 203, JUS, NASA.

  68. Telegrams from General Lukin to ‘Defence, Pretoria’, dated 21, 25 and 27 November, ibid.

  69. See Heather Hughes, First President: A Life of John L. Dube, Founding President of the ANC (Auckland Park, South Africa: Jacana, 2011), pp. 178–9.

  70. ‘Dr. Abdurahman and Passive Resistance’, IO, 3 December 1913.

  71. NA, 20 November, 2 and 8 December 1913.

  72. ‘The Indian Menace: Question of Natal’s Future’, NM, 26 November 1913. Henderson was a protégé of Harry Escombe, whose speeches he edited for publication.

  73. Transvaal Leader, 22 November 1913, clipping in CO 879/112/4, NAUK. A more emotional defence was sent by Millie Graham Polak to the Natal Advertiser, which declined to publish it, on the grounds that among the matters she had mentioned were some (presumably the cases against her husband, Kallenbach and Gandhi) which were sub judice. See NA, 22 November 1913.

  74. Quoted in Transvaal Leader, 8 December 1913, clipping in Add Mss 46001, BL.

  75. See A. H. West to G. K. Gokhale, undated, c. 24 November 1913, in File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  76. Gokhale to Mrs Polak, 17 November 1913, ibid.

  77. See File 202, L/P&J/6/1295, APAC/BL.

  78. Cf. reports in L/P&J/R/5/118, APAC/BL.

  79. Anon., M. K. Gandhi: A Study (Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1913).

  80. C. Rajagopalachari, ed., Mr Gandhi’s Jail Experiences: Told by Himself (Salem: T. Adinarayana Cetti, 1913). Rajagolachari was to become a close companion of Gandhi in the freedom movement in India.

  81. A copy of the play is in File 1041, L/P&J/6/1302, APAC/BL. The playwright (whose name, alas, has not come down to posterity) may have attended some of Henry Polak’s talks in South India. He seems to have been reading the journals Indian Review and Indian Opinion; and perhaps various biographies of Gandhi as well, thus to extol the patriotism, th
e principled non-violence, and the spirit of sacrifice of a successful lawyer who had embraced poverty and public service.

  82. Bhawani Dayal, Dakshin Africa ké Satyagraha ka Itihas (Indore: Saraswati Sadan, 1916), pp. 53–7.

  83. For more details on these meetings, see documents and clippings in L/PJ/6/1284, APAC/BL; NA, 21 November 1913; B Proceedings No. 29 for December 1913, Department of Commerce and Industry (Emigration Branch), NAI.

  84. Cf. correspondence in File No. 242, Part II, Gokhale Papers, NAI (emphasis in original).

  85. Tagore to Gokhale, 18 November 1913, in File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  86. Tagore to Gokhale, 9 December 1913, in File No. 547, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  87. The Bishop of Madras, quoted in Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi: With an Introduction by Mr C. F. Andrews, a Tribute by Mr G. A. Natesan, a Biographical Sketch by Mr H. S. L. Polak (2nd edn: Madras: G. A. Natesan and Co., 1918), Appendix III, p. x.

  88. CWMG, XII, pp. 602–3; Robert A. Huttenback, Gandhi in South Africa (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), pp. 319–21.

  89. K. Hariharan to Gokhale, 11 December 1913; A. E. Lall to Gokhale, 29 November 1913, both in File No. 242, Part II, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  90. Mehta, quoted in Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi, Appendix III, p. xiv.

  91. Gandhi to Devi West, 14 December 1913, CWMG, XII, pp. 269–71.

  92. D. M. Manilal [Manilal Doctor], Barrister-at-Law, Suva, Fiji, to Lord Gladstone, 30 December 1913, in File 15/652, vol. 899, GG, NASA.

  93. See correspondence in File 15/543, vol. 897, GG, NASA.

  94. NA, 19 December 1913.

  95. NA, 20 December 1913; NM, 22 December 1913.

  96. CWMG, XII, pp. 274–7.

  97. Henry Polak to his family in England (addressed as ‘Dear Folks’), Durban, 31 December 1913, Mss. Brit. Emp. S 372/2, Rhodes House Library, Oxford.

  98. NM, 22 December 1913.

  99. NM, 23 December 1913.

  100. Cf. M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, translated from the Gujarati by Valji Govindji Desai (2nd edn, 1950; reprint, Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 1972), p. 258.

  101. Telegram dated 23 December 1913, in File No. 242, Part II, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  102. See correspondence in CWMG, XII, pp. 277–81, 599, 283–4, 286, 289, 295–6, 301–5; and in File No. 242, Parts I and II, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  103. NM, 30 December 1913.

  104. See Hope Hay Hewison, Hedge of Wild Almonds: South Africa, the Pro-Boers and the Quaker Conscience, 1890–1910 (London: James Curry, 1989), pp. 187–95.

  105. Gandhi to Emily Hobhouse, 5 January 1914, copy in E. S. Reddy Papers, NMML (this letter is not in CWMG).

  106. Emily Hobhouse to Smuts, 29 December 1913, in W. K. Hancock and Jean van der Poel, Selections from the Smuts Papers, III: June 1910 – November 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), pp. 152–6. On the Hobhouse–Smuts friendship, see W. K. Hancock: Smuts, I: The Sanguine Years, 1870–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), especially pp. 179–88, 282–6.

  107. NA, 30 December 1913.

  108. Gokhale to Robertson, 31 December 1913, in File No. 242, Part II, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  109. CWMG, XII, p. 311.

  21 FAREWELL TO AFRICA

  1. Unlike some other figures in Indian history, C. F. Andrews has been well served by his biographers. There are three excellent studies, each focusing on a different aspect of his life, work and friendships: Benarsidas Chaturvedi and Marjorie Sykes, Charles Freer Andrews: A Narrative (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1949); Hugh Tinker, The Ordeal of Love: C. F. Andrews and India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979); and Daniel O’Connor, Gospel, Raj, and Swaraj: The Missionary Years of C. F. Andrews (1904–14) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1990).

  2. Andrews to Gokhale, 24 January 1906, File No. 11, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  3. Gokhale to West, 12 December 1913, File No. 242, Part II, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  4. Gokhale to Robertson, 31 December 1913, in File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  5. NM, 5 January 1914.

  6. ‘Arrival of Mr Andrews and Mr Pearson’, IO, 7 January 1914.

  7. Ibid.

  8. CWMG, XII, p. 316.

  9. CWMG, XII, pp. 317–18.

  10. Gokhale to Gandhi, 26 December 1913, File No. 242, Part II, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  11. Harilal to Gokhale, 13 January 1914, File No. 242, Part II, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  12. J. C. Smuts to Lord Gladstone, 6 January 1914, in File 15/622, vol. 899, GG, NASA.

  13. Clipping from the Pretoria News, in File 15/640, vol. 899, GG, NASA.

  14. As recalled in Andrews to Gokhale, 30 January 1914, in File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI.

  15. Lord Gladstone, Governor-General of South Africa, to Lewis Harcourt, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 14 January 1914, in File 15/640, vol. 899, GG, NASA.

  16. CWMG, XII, pp. 324–6,

  17. CWMG, XII, pp. 609–10.

  18. See File 15/647A, vol. 899, GG, NASA.

  19. Andrews to Gokhale, 30 January 1914, in File No. 242, Part I, Gokhale Papers, NAI, emphasis in original.

  20. IO, issues of 14, 21 and 28 January 1914.

  21. As reported in Gandhi to Gokhale, 18 February 1914, CWMG, XII, pp. 353–4.

  22. Rabindranath Tagore: A Lecture by the Rev. C. F. Andrews of Delhi (Cape Town: Cape Times Limited, 1914), copy in Mss. Eur. D. 1238/5, APAC/BL.

  23. Clippings from Cape Times, dated 23 February 1914, in File 15/658, vol. 899, GG, NASA.

  24. Andrews to Gandhi, 26 February 1914, S. N. 5943, NGM.

  25. Mehta to Gandhi, 14 February 1914, S. N. 6034, SAAA. Posted from Burma, the letter would have arrived in Durban towards the end of February or in early March.

  26. See IO, 5 April 1913.

  27. Letter dated 27 February 1914, CWMG, XII, pp. 360–61.

  28. Gandhi to Kallenbach, 25 March 1914, CWMG, XCVI, p. 165.

  29. See Gandhi to Kallenbach, 6 March 1914 (not in the CWMG), KP.

  30. CWMG, XII, pp. 367–9.

  31. Letter dated 22 March 1914, CWMG, XII, p. 395.

  32. Gandhi to Kallenbach, 15 March 1914, CWMG, XCVI, p. 175.

  33. CWMG, XII, pp. 378–80.

  34. In late February, Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach that ‘my eldest brother who used always to go strongly against me has now completely changed and repents of his past letters and thinks I have not discredited the family after all as he used to think before. His one wish is to see me before he dies’. Now, when the news of Laxmidas’s death came, Gandhi wrote again, saying: ‘What a passionate wish it was on his part to meet me! And for me I was hurrying everything on so that I could go to India with the quickest despatch and fall down at his feet and nurse him. But it was not to be’. Letters of 25 February and 10 March, CWMG, XCVI, pp. 165, 173.

  35. CWMG, XII, pp. 380–83.

  36. News clipping dated 25 March 1914, S. N. 5949, SAAA.

  37. See Report of the Indian Enquiry Commission (Cape Town: Government Printers, 1914).

  38. IO, 25 March 1914, in CWMG, XII, pp. 396–9.

  39. Sadhva, 24 July 1914, translated excerpt in L/R/5/119, APAC/BL.

  40. Gandhi to Gokhale, 6 May 1914, CWMG, XII, p. 414.

  41. Andrews to Gandhi, 5 April 1914, S. N. 5956, NGM.

  42. Gandhi to Kallenbach, 12 April 1914, CWMG, XCVI, pp. 181–2.

  43. Gandhi to Kallenbach, 5 May 1914, CWMG, XCVI, p. 186.

  44. Gandhi to Kallenbach, 18 May 1914, CWMG, XCVI, p. 190.

  45. See ‘Correspondence Relating to the Indian Relief Act, 1914’, copy in E. S. Reddy Papers, NMML.

  46. See correspondence in File 15/708, vol. 900, GG, NASA.

  47. CWMG, XII, pp. 436–7.

  48. Gandhi to Gokhale, letters of 5 June and 1 July 1914, CWMG, XII, pp. 422, 440.

  49. CWMG, XII, pp. 445–7.

  50. CWMG, XII, pp. 454–9.

  51. See File 1305, L/P&J/6/1305, APAC
/BL.

  52. IO, 22 July 1914.

  53. CWMG, XII, pp. 463–72.

  54. Transvaal Leader, 15 July 1914.

  55. This paragraph is based on materials supplied by the Gandhi scholar Ian Desai, who found these addresses in the basement of the M. J. Library in Ahmedabad.

  56. CWMG, XII, pp. 472–5.

  57. A copy of the invitation is in the Kallenbach Papers, Haifa.

  58. CWMG, XII, pp. 486–95.

  59. CWMG, XII, p. 497.

  60. CWMG, XII, pp. 459–60. Gandhi’s memory may have been at fault here. Other sources say Chamney was accompanied by a ‘posse’ of police – at least several, not one, constable; but still a small number when confronting more than 2,000 strikers. The date of the Pretoria meeting is wrongly given as 10 July in CWMG – it was in fact held on the 16th.

  61. Her father, Solomon Schechter, had rescued a huge cache of old Hebrew documents from the attic of a Cairo synagogue – known as the ‘Geniza’ documents, these were then passed on by him to Cambridge University.

  62. Baruch Hirson, The Cape Town Intellectuals: Ruth Schechter and her Circle, 1907–1954 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2001), pp. 3, 13, 15, 37–8; Enid Alexander, Morris Alexander: A Biography (Cape Town: Juta and Co., 1953), p. 118.

  63. The account of the Cape Town farewell is based on clippings in File 15/730, vol. 900, GG, NASA.

  64. Polak to Gandhi, 14 July 1914, S. N. 6006, NGM.

  65. CWMG, XII, p. 507.

  66. The telegrams are all in ‘Gandhi–Kallenbach Correspondence’, vol. IV, NAI. (The first three volumes of this correspondence, mostly letters to Gandhi by Kallenbach, are published in CWMG, XCVI. The fourth volume, on which these paragraphs are based, consists of these unpublished telegrams, lying in the NAI.)

  67. Hobhouse to Smuts, 23 April 1914, in W. K. Hancock and Jean van der Poel, Selections from the Smuts Papers, III: June 1910–November 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), pp. 173–4 (emphasis in original). Posted in the last week of April, the letter would have reached Smuts sometime in the middle of May.

  68. Smuts to Robertson, 21 August 1914, ibid., pp. 190–91.

  22 HOW THE MAHATMA WAS MADE

  1. Source notes have not been provided in this concluding chapter for remarks by Gandhi (and others) that have also been quoted earlier in the book.