An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth
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492 Hind Swaraj, written on board the steamer Kildonan Castle, between 13 and 22 November 1909, was first published under the title Hind Swarajya in the Gujarati columns of Indian Opinion in two instalments: 11 December (twelve chapters) and 18 December (eight chapters) 1909. In January 1910, published as a book under the same title and proscribed in India by the Government of Bombay on 24 March 1910; translated in English by MKG, with a foreword dated 20 March 1910 under the title ‘Indian Home Rule’ and published by the International Printing Press, Phoenix. See CWMG, vol. X, pp. 6–64. For a bilingual critical edition, see M.K. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj: A Critical Edition, annotated, translated and edited by Suresh Sharma and Tridip Suhrud (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2010).
493 ‘The very fact of his living’ added in the English translation.
494 ‘all action’ to add.
495 ‘so long as he lives in the body’ to add.
496 ‘but for me to serve’ in the first edition.
497 ‘as chance would have it’ in the first edition.
498 ‘what may be called miniature satyagraha’ added in the English translation.
499 Col. Richard J. Baker.
500 ‘Bhai’ to add before ‘Beware’.
501 ‘lord it over us’ translates ‘Jahangiri’, literally, ‘rule like Emperor Jahangir’.
502 Sorabji’s first impression of Col. Baker and the work was favourable. On 7 October 1914 he wrote to Chhaganlal Gandhi, ‘Col. Baker is a kind man. We do not have much hard work. At present it is a play.’ SN 6059, translated from the Gujarati by TS. On 24 October he reported the dispute to Chhaganlal, ‘Because of our dispute with the Commanding Officer, both the drill and camping have stopped.’ SN 6058, translated from the original Gujarati by TS.
503 ‘by’ in the first edition.
504 Emily Hobhouse (1860–1926) brought to light the depraved condition of concentration camps built in South Africa to incarcerate Boer women and children during the Second Boer War.
505 In the Gujarati the term used is pasali no varam, meaning pain in the ribcage, which is a possible symptom of pleurisy.
506 ‘military and non-military’ added in the English translation.
507 ‘high-handedness’ translates ‘Jahangiri’.
508 ‘who have been appointed to instruct us’ added in the English translation.
509 MKG wrote to Col. Baker on 13 October 1914. See CWMG, vol. 12, pp. 536–37.
510 This is reproduced from Col. Baker’s letter to MKG of 13 October 1914. SN 6069A. The original in Gujarati reads: ‘Complaints cannot be made through you, complaints should be made directly to me through section officers.’
511 Col. Baker in a letter of 14 October 1914 wrote to MKG, ‘It is an idea repugnant to military discipline that these promotions should be made by election by the members of the Corps.’ SN 6069.
512 ‘and decided upon withdrawal’ added in the English translation.
513 Fifty-three members attended, the resolution was carried by a vote of 49-2. The meeting took place on 13 October 1914.
514 For the full text of the resolution, see CWMG, vol. 12, p. 538.
515 Letter of 14 October 1914, see CWMG, vol. 12, pp. 538–39.
516 ‘and carry the work to fruition’ to add.
517 ‘I also drew his attention to a precedent.’ Added in the English translation.
518 ‘in the South African Indian Ambulance Corps’ added in the English translation.
519 ‘the previous evening’ added in the English translation.
520 ‘good’ added in the English translation.
521 Col. Baker wrote to MKG at 4.15 p.m. on 16 October, ‘I would strongly advise you not to venture to drill this afternoon—the more so as any attempt on your part to address the Corps is unnecessary—as I myself will convey the decision arrived at to those who attend—to say nothing of the fact that it would be a grave breach of discipline on your part.’ SN 6069B.
522 See Letter to Charles Roberts, dated 16 October 1914, CWMG, vol. 12, pp. 540–41.
523 Roberts wrote three letters to MKG, on 16, 18 and 22 October 1914, all bear SN 6069B, the letter referred to here is of 22 October.
524 Roberts sent MKG an ‘Extract From the Army Field Service Regulation, chapter XI, No. 97 (4)’, which stated, ‘Voluntary medical units will be required to adhere to the service regulations governing the constitution, personnel and equipment of war of corresponding units of the army. They will, when accepted, come under orders of the military authorities, and be incorporated with the medical units of the army in such a manner and for such purposes as the Commander-in-Chief may determine.’
525 On 14 October Col. Baker requested MKG, ‘I would be glad if you can exert your influence to have as full a muster of the Corps tomorrow as possible.’ SN 6069B.
526 ‘The India Office was not pleased with this.’ To add.
527 Roberts visited MKG on 17 October 1914 at 10.15 a.m. at his lodgings at 16, Trebovir Road, West Kensington.
528 On 30 October twelve members reported to Netley, on 31st, a further eight and on 1 November two more volunteers reported to duty. SN 6069A.
529 Gokhale returned to London on 16 August 1914 and stayed till 24 October, when he returned to India. He was in England in connection with his work on the Royal Commission on Public Service. He stayed in a cottage in suburban Twickenham as a guest of Sir Ratanji Tata (1871–1918). MKG and Kallenbach used to meet him at the National Liberal Club in the Whitehall Place and Northumberland Avenue.
530 ‘the disease’ in the original; pleurisy is not mentioned.
531 ‘so-called’ added in the English translation.
532 ‘but firmly’ added in the English translation.
533 ‘and nuts’ added in the English translation.
534 ‘October–November’ in the original.
535 ‘chest pain’ in the original.
536 ‘or ground’ to add.
537 ‘if I could not masticate them’ added in the English translation.
538 ‘nor had I the necessary faith’ to add.
539 Lady Cecilia Maude Roberts (1868–1947), wife of Charles Roberts and daughter of the Earl and Countess of Carlisle.
540 ‘It was akin to asking about the antecedents of the household after having accepted its water.’ To add.
541 ‘only too late’ added in the English translation.
542 ‘after having taken it once’ to add.
543 ‘and of course wanted to sail by the same boat’ added in the English translation.
544 ‘pass’ in the original.
545 MKG wrote two letters to the undersecretary for Colonies. In one he also mentioned Kallenbach’s desire to join the Indian Volunteers Corps. See CWMG, vol. 12, pp. 526, 528–29.
546 Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penhurts (1856–1944), Viceroy of India (1910–16); his viceroyalty was marked by the visit of King George V and the Delhi Durbar of 1911 and the shifting of the capital of British-administered India from Calcutta to Delhi in 1912.
547 Kallenbach registered with the London police as an alien enemy on 10 September 1914; on 17 June 1915 he was assigned to a detention camp. He remained at the detention camps at Stanford, Knockaloe and Douglass Small Camp till his release in January 1917.
548 Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, dating back to 1822.
549 MKG and Kasturba sailed from London on S.S. Arabia on 19 December 1914.
550 A rigid corset cast from plaster of Paris, fixed around the torso, fortified with a layer of belladonna plant; originally a costume worn by the Medes, an ancient tribe of Persia.
551 ‘till we reached the Red Sea’ added in the English translation.
552 On 23 December MKG reported on his diet: ‘We live on the food we have brought from England. Mixing two parts banana flour and one part wheat flour, we have made biscuits and rotis. We eat these and dry fruit, soaked in water. Ripe fruit we obtain from the ship.’ CWMG, vol. 12, p. 566.
; 553 ‘There was distance there too, but this appeared to be of a different type.’ To add.
554 ‘mostly formal’ translates Sahib, saalam, literally, ‘Salutations, Sir’.
555 ‘and in South Africa’ to add.
556 Kekobad Cowasji Dinshaw (Adenwala), manager and partner of Cowasji Dinshaw firm in Aden.
557 MKG and Kasturba reached Bombay on 9 January 1915.
558 A public reception was accorded to him and Kasturba on 12 January 1915 at Mount Petit, with over 600 guests present and with Sir Pherozeshah Mehta presiding. On the previous day a reception was given to them in Ghatkopar, Bombay, with Rao Bahadur Vasanji Khimji presiding. On 13 January a meeting to welcome him was held by the Bombay National Union, with Lokmanya G.B. Tilak present. On 14 January the Gurjar Sabha gave him a reception with M.A. Jinnah presiding.
559 ‘South African’ added in the English translation.
560 ‘had’ in the first edition.
561 ‘were to describe’ in the first edition.
562 ‘Even’ to add before ‘As’.
563 ‘would know’ in the first edition.
564 ‘would’ in the first edition.
565 ‘appointed by it’ to add.
566 ‘upon discovery of the error’ to add.
567 ‘We will lose’ in the first edition.
568 ‘Mr. Gandhi’ added in the English translation.
569 ‘beyond measure’ to add.
570 ‘His case was false.’ To add.
571 ‘witness’ added in the English translation.
572 ‘for bringing a false case to me’ added in the English translation.
573 ‘disguise’ in the first edition.
574 ‘sole’ to add.
575 ‘cheerfully’ added in the English translation.
576 ‘and dangers’ added in the English translation.
577 ‘from Imprisonment’ to add.
578 In a letter of 15 July 1928 to Manilal and Sushila Gandhi, MKG explained as to why he mentioned Parsi Rustomji’s name. ‘I was prompted by love in writing what I did about the Rustomji case in the “Autobiography”. I have omitted other names but given this one; my aim in giving certain names is that they should be remembered as long as the “Autobiography” is recognized as an important work.’ CWMG, vol. 37, p. 66.
579 ‘quack’ added in the English translation.
580 ‘business’ to add.
581 ‘and it turned out that’ in the first edition.
582 ‘not infrequently’ added in the English translation.
583 ‘Gujarati’ added in the English translation.
584 ‘in Parsi tongue’ to add.
585 ‘and I am doomed’ added in the English translation.
586 ‘shelved the counsel’s question’ translates the expression ‘bhinu sankeli’, literally, ‘having folded up still wet clothes’.
587 ‘But I shall have to admit to the smuggling that they are unaware of.’ To add.
588 ‘whom I also met’ in the first edition.
1 ‘head of an’ to add.
2 Swami Shraddhananda (1856–1926), also known as Mahatma Munshiram, Arya Samaj missionary, participated in the shuddhi movement and was active in nationalist politics during the agitation against the Rowlatt Act, established Gurukul Kangri near Haridwar in 1902, assassinated in 1926.
3 The Shantiniketan school was founded by Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) in 1901. He located the school in rural southern Bengal, about 140 km north-west of Calcutta. There his father Maharshi Devendranath (1817–1905) had endowed an ashram for Brahmo householders in the 1860s and named it ‘Shantiniketan’. Devendranath’s endowment provided for an annual village fair, a hall of prayer and a school. Rabindranath was concerned over the growing cultural divide between city and village in modern India. He hoped to redeem this at Shantiniketan where boys from the city would live and study in a school surrounded by villages. Shantiniketan was home for a year to Gandhi’s Phoenix Farm boys when they left South Africa and came to India in 1914. Tagore wrote to thank Gandhi ‘for allowing your boys to become our boys as well, and thus form a living link in the sādhanā of both of our lives’. February 1915 (not dated), Visva-Bharati Quarterly, 35, Nos. 1–4 (Gandhi Number), May 1969–April 1970, p. 237.
4 ‘the Poet’ refers to Rabindranath Tagore.
5 ‘served’ in the first edition.
6 Sushil Kumar Rudra (1861–1925), eldest son of Rev. Pyari Mohan Rudra, a missionary of the Church Mission Society, joined St. Stephen’s College in 1883 and became its fourth and first Indian principal in 1912. A friend of C.F. Andrews who dedicated two of his books to Rudra: North India (1908) and Sadhu Sundar Das (1936); the non-cooperation plan was ‘hatched under his roof’ as MKG wrote in his obituary. See CWMG, vol. 27, p. 351. Sushil Rudra is buried at the English chapel in Solan.
7 C.F. Andrews sailed for South Africa from Calcutta on 30 November 1913, reaching Durban on 2 January 1914. He gave a public lecture on Tagore at the Town Hall in Cape Town on 12 February and sailed from there for England on 21 February 1914.
8 ‘therefore’ in the first edition.
9 See n. 557 of Chapter XLIII, Part IV, for details of the receptions.
10 ‘my best life’ added in the English translation.
11 ‘The Gujaratis would not let me go without a reception,’ added in the English translation.
12 Uttamlal Keshavlal Trivedi (1872–1923), versatile literary critic, trained in law, and practised it first at Rajkot and later in Bombay. Translated Lokmanya Tilak’s Gita Rahasya into Gujarati.
13 Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), revered as Quaid-i-Azam, called to the Bar from Lincoln’s Inn; his early public life was in the Indian National Congress and the All India Home Rule League, and he played a prominent part in the Lucknow Pact (1915). He joined the All India Muslim League in 1913; his break from the Congress came in 1920. After a brief interlude from public life he became a member of the Central Legislative Assembly (1934), made a demand for a separate, sovereign nation state of Pakistan through the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League in 1940. With the creation of Pakistan he became its first governor general. Married Ruttie Petit. Jinnah, as the chairman of the Gurjar Sabha, presided over the reception for MKG held on 14 January 1915.
14 ‘in few words’ to add.
15 ‘other’ to add.
16 ‘where’ in the first edition.
17 Lord Willingdon, Freeman Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon (1866–1941), Governor of Bombay (1913–17), Governor of Madras (1919–24), governor general of Canada (1926–31), Viceroy of India (1931–36).
18 MKG visited the Bombay branch of the Servants of India Society on 14 January 1915 and met Lord Willingdon, the Governor of Bombay, on the same day. Gokhale reached Bombay on 15 January (and thus he did not attend the reception at Mount Petit as stated in Chapter XLIII of Part IV) and MKG having met him left for Rajkot the same evening. MKG reached Poona on 8 February 1915, remaining there till 13 February. His diary of 1915 bears this out. See CWMG, vol. 13, pp. 156–59.
19 ‘precious’ added in the English translation.
20 In the original ‘the Society’. The Servants of India Society was founded by Gokhale in 1905 with the object of serving the people of India without any discrimination. It started an English daily, The Hitavada, in 1911; after Gokhale’s death in 1915, Rt. Hon’ble Srinivas Sastri became its president (1915–45).
21 The Mahratta of 14 February 1915 reported a conversation with MKG: ‘Asked about his future plans he replied that he had not yet settled anything and that it was not certain that he would join the Servants of India Society.’ CWMG, vol. 13, p. 20.
22 Dr. H.S. Deva, secretary of the Servants of India Society.
23 In his diary MKG noted. ‘Mr. Gokhale fainted.’ CWMG, vol. 13, p. 159.
24 ‘sat on carpets and’ to add.
25 ‘and fresh fruits of the season’ added. In the original ‘groundnuts, dates etc.’
26 ‘Bombay’ in the
original, which is factually correct.
27 MKG reached Rajkot on 17 January and left it on 1 February 1915.
28 ‘I intended to wear, on return to India, Kathiawadi attire, which I had kept with me in South Africa.’ To add.
29 Motilal Parshottam Parmar (1888–1918), a committed Swadeshi worker, died while serving plague patients.
30 ‘Since I was known’ to add before ‘The’.
31 ‘whatever their position in life,’ added in the English translation.
32 ‘and abuse’ to add.
33 Frederic John Napier Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford (1868–1933), British statesman, called to the Bar from the Inner Temple in 1893, served as Governor of Queensland (1905–1909), Governor of New South Wales (1909-1913), also served as First Lord of Admiralty and Agent-General of New South Wales, Viceroy of India (1916–21), saw the implementation of the Montague–Chelmsford Reform with Secretary of State for India Edwin Samuel Montague, also imposed the repressive Rowlatt Act.
34 ‘that is after about two years’ correspondence’ to add.
35 The Viramgam Custom was removed on 10 November 1917; MKG announced its removal to the Gujarat Political Conference on 4 November and Resolution 5 of the conference expressed its thanks to the Viceroy for this action.
36 The Bombay Secret Abstracts, 1916, do not contain any reference to ‘satyagraha’. See CWMG, vol. 3, p. 151. The phrase ‘and of which he had a report’ deleted in the 1940 edition.