Gandhi Before India (69 page)

Among the letters of solidarity received by Gandhi at this time, the most curious (and perhaps also the most charming) came from John Cordes, his somewhat errant disciple who was still in thrall to Theosophy. Cordes had recently been in India, where he met both Annie Besant and the boy she had chosen as the Representative of God on Earth, Jiddu Krishnamurti. ‘I have not met your equal regarding outward virtues,’ wrote Cordes to Gandhi. ‘You are a mystic. But in neatness J. Krishnamurti surpasses you.’
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From India, Cordes proceeded to Vienna, to see his mother. He now hoped Gandhi would ‘find money to carry on [your] next campaign’. The Theosophist had been ‘mentally arguing with friend Smuts imagining myself in possession of £100,000 which I tendered him as bribe to try to be honest for once but he said it was
foreign to his nature and quite impossible, so I handed this fund to you for P[assive] R[esistance].’
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In the middle of August, the Baptist minister Joseph Doke died. Gandhi wrote tributes to him in both English and Gujarati, and also travelled to Johannesburg to speak at a memorial service. The minister was ‘a great and altruistic man’ with no trace of class or colour prejudice, in whose house ‘every Indian, whether rich or poor, was given the same consideration’. Gandhi remembered Doke’s efforts to convert him to his faith. The Indian had answered that the ‘fullness of Christianity could only be found in its interpretation of the light and by the aid of Hinduism. But Mr Doke was not satisfied. He missed no occasion to bring home to him (the speaker) the truth as he (Mr Doke) knew it and which brought him and his so much inward peace.’
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The memorial service for Joseph Doke was held in Johannesburg’s Baptist Church on 24 August. Two weeks later, Gandhi informed the Government that due to the continuance of the £3 tax, the racial bar in the Immigration Law, and the uncertain status of their married women, the Indians had ‘most reluctantly and with the utmost regret decided to revive passive resistance’.
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They had waited long enough in any case.

In 1913, it was twenty years since Mohandas Gandhi had first come out to South Africa. In that time the Indian community had become larger and more varied in its composition. The population in Natal had tripled, from just over 40,000 in the early 1890s to about 135,000 now. A large number were indentured labourers, working in sugar plantations and coal mines. In the year 1911 the import of labour was stopped; well before that, Indians had moved out of the fields into other trades and professions. They were a visible component of the population of Natal, present in the tens of thousands in the main city, Durban, streets and sections of which were dominated by them. Indian families were also scattered through the countryside, working as farmers and traders in the towns and villages of the province.

There were roughly 10,000 Indians in the Transvaal. These included some prosperous merchants, a larger number of petty traders and hawkers, and a significant sector of clerks, hotel workers and other members of the salariat. The Cape had about 6,500 Indians, among them some successful traders and professionals. There were, according to the 1911 census, a mere 106 Indians in the Orange Free State. Of the main provinces of South Africa, only the Free State had no real ‘Indian problem’ at all.
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A key difference from the time of Gandhi’s first arrival was that many more Indians were now born and raised in South Africa. There was even a ‘Colonial-Born’ Indian Association in Natal. This was their home and, increasingly, their homeland. Their connections to the Indian subcontinent now were more sentimental than substantial. It was in South Africa that they would raise families and make their future. Younger Indians especially were keen to move out of the working class into more secure
and highly regarded professions such as medicine, the law and government service.

Despite his own extended stay in South Africa, Gandhi still considered himself Indian. Yet he recognized the profound change in the orientation of the community he worked with. He would return to India, but the others would stay on, to live and labour under a government – and ruling race – that was often strongly prejudiced against their interests. This is why Gandhi was so keen to arrive at a settlement with General Smuts, whereby the rights to work and residence of Indians in all provinces of the Union were safeguarded, existing policies that bore down unfairly on them (such as the £3 tax in Natal) removed, and proposed policies that threatened the integrity of the community (such as the marriage restrictions implied by the Searle judgment) withdrawn.

Ever the incrementalist, Gandhi had appealed to Smuts and his colleagues to have these changes in the laws made. Through 1912 and much of 1913 he had written hundreds of letters, printed dozens of appeals, sought audiences with Smuts, and lobbied MPs. By September 1913, this series of preliminary steps had got nowhere. With the government still disinclined to concede their claims, the Indians now prepared, under Gandhi’s leadership, to use their final recourse and reserve weapon, that of satyagraha.

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.’
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.’
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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.’
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.