Gandhi Before India (27 page)

The land, the building materials and the workers’ stipends were paid for principally by two men. Gandhi supplied the substantial sum of £3,500 from his own savings. (Clearly, the ‘decent practice’ he had spoken of to his Rajkot friend was very decent indeed.) The Durban merchant Parsee Rustomjee contributed in cash and in kind – apart from writing cheques, he also donated a large number of sheets of corrugated iron.

By the first week of January 1905, issues printed on the farm had begun reaching the journal’s subscribers. Gandhi wrote to Gokhale that he now hoped to establish a school at Phoenix ‘which would be second to none in South Africa’. He asked his mentor to recommend an Indian teacher with ‘a blameless character’, and to send a letter of encouragement for printing in
Indian Opinion
.
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Back in 1899, when the two sets of white colonists in South Africa went to war, Gandhi was an Empire loyalist, a believer in Imperial citizenship who thought that flattery and persuasion would end discrimination against Indians in South Africa. Thus he signed up to support the British in their campaign against the Boers. Thus, too, his repeated petititions to London, made in the belief that even if the colonists were sometimes bigoted and narrow-minded, they would be brought around by sagacious Imperial statesmen.

Gandhi took heart from the fact that British officials in India tended to side with his people in South Africa. A leading member of the Indian Civil Service had chastised the Transvaal Government for placing members of an ‘ancient and orderly civilization’ on a par with ‘uncivilized African labourers’.
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A second ICS man told a delegation from Natal that ‘the Indian is not on a level with the kafir; he belongs to a higher class. The Indian trader is almost as advanced as ourselves.’
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These views on the hierarchy of civilizations were conventional – Gandhi shared them too (at the time). They placed Indians almost adjacent to Europeans, from which perspective the discriminatory laws in South Africa were clearly misguided, if not actively malevolent. The Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, thus criticized Lord Milner for ‘justifying the vexatious regulations’ on Indians in the Transvaal. Curzon
thought it ‘much more important to conciliate the unanimous sentiment of 300,000,000 of our subjects in Asia than to defer to the prejudices of a small colony of white men in South Africa.’
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When Gandhi sailed for Durban in November 1902, his hopes in British justice were largely intact. Two years later he was less naïve. He had once hoped to unite the Indians with the British against the Boers; now, after the war, the British were uniting with the Boers against them. South Africa was not England, where brown men could be elected to Parliament; or even India, where they could become judges and Imperial Councillors. Here, the bonds of race would always trump Imperial loyalties and obligations. The Indian situation in the Transvaal was now uncertain, fraught with difficulties. When, in September 1904, Lord Milner rejected the compromise Gandhi offered him, Gandhi felt he had to stay on. So he asked his wife and children to join him in Johannesburg.

Kasturba arrived in South Africa towards the end of 1904. The eldest son, Harilal, now sixteen, had stayed back in India. He was keen to sit the Bombay Matriculation that his father had taken back in 1887. However, the other sons came out with their mother, as did two nephews, Gokuldas and Chhaganlal.

Gandhi rented a house in Albemarle Street, in the east Johannesburg district of Troyeville, to accommodate the whole family. As in Durban, theirs was the only Indian home in a white neighbourhood. The two-storey house was spacious, with eight rooms, balconies and a garden.
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Gandhi had warned Kasturba that he would spend little time with her in Johannesburg, and so it turned out. He rose early, helped his wife grind flour for the day’s meals, then walked the five miles to his office in Rissik Street, carrying a packed lunch of wholemeal bread with peanut butter and a selection of seasonal fruits. His days were spent taking cases, drafting petitions to government, and writing for and supervising, long-distance, the production of
Indian Opinion
. He walked home in the evenings, where, after dinner, he taught his sons the elements of Gujarati grammar and composition.
²

Hermann Kallenbach was a frequent visitor to the Gandhi household. The boys liked him, not least because he brought gifts of chocolates and toys. They were also impressed by stories of his elegant lifestyle; apparently he had a barber come in every morning to shave him in bed.
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While the children were being home-schooled, the adult nephew, Chhaganlal, was sent to join the community at Phoenix. His younger brother Maganlal was already working there as a compositor. Chhagan and Magan served as Gandhi’s eyes and ears in a community he had founded and funded, but at this stage rarely visited. The uncle wrote to his nephews at least once a week, asking for reports on the staff and the state of the finances. The young men were advised on how to set Gujarati type and where to look for subscribers.

Indian Opinion
had now expanded from eight pages to thirty-six. The text was printed in three columns instead of six. The end pages
were taken up with advertisements – of, for instance, a ‘German East African Fortnightly Steamer for BOMBAY, Direct’. A Calcutta bookseller took space to publicize his wares, which included a volume entitled
Helps to the Study of English
, and another containing
Select Speeches of the Great Orators
. Most advertisements, however, were (as before) for shops and enterprises in Natal selling cloth, cigars, sweets, rice,
ghee
and real estate.

The reports in the expanded
Indian Opinion
covered a wide range of topics. The rise of other Asian nations was noted and appreciated. After the fall of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War, the journal wrote that ‘the Japanese, by sheer force of character, have brought themselves into the forefront of the nations of the world. They have shown unity, self-sacrifice, fixity of purpose, nobility of character, steel[y] courage, and generosity to the enemy.’ An article in Hindi spoke of a national renewal in China, with moves to create officer corps and military academies on Japanese and Western models. The journal recalled General Gordon’s old prediction that when China awoke, the world would watch with fear and admiration.
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Indian difficulties in Natal and the Transvaal were written about, but so also was the situation of the other communities in South Africa. A report of April 1905 spoke of a ‘monster native petition’ signed by 33,000 people, addressed to the Imperial Government in London, which asked that when full autonomy was granted to Transvaal, the interests of Africans be kept in mind, and no class legislation introduced which would ‘degrade and suppress all coloured races’. The petition urged the abolition of the death penalty, an end to the practice of whipping Africans, and the granting of permission to ‘respectable natives’ to travel in ‘superior classes’ on railways and to vote in municipal elections.
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Gandhi’s weekly also carried reports on society and politics in India. A report from early January 1905 summarized the presidential address at the Bombay Congress of the liberal imperialist Sir Henry Cotton. Despite their promises, said Cotton, the British had been harsher on Indians than the Boers. ‘Their little finger had been thicker than Mr Kruger’s loins. Where he chastised with whips, they chastised with scorpions.’
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Gandhi’s newspaper ran several reports on the opening of an ‘India House’ in London, promoted by a Gujarati radical named Shyamaji Krishnavarma. The chief guest at the opening was the British Marxist, H. M. Hyndman. As
Indian Opinion
reported, Krishnavarma said it
‘gave him much pleasure to see his veteran friend Dadabhai Naoroji who, tied down as he was by certain political views, had the catholicity and generosity of mind to give encouragement by his presence that afternoon.’ In a later speech, Krishnavarma remarked ‘that while under the Mahommedan rule they were hit on the back, under the English rule they were hit in the stomach’.
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Mohandas Gandhi’s own contributions to
Indian Opinion
included a series of sketches of famous men. In the first week of July 1905 the paper printed a tribute to the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, singling out his criticisms of tyranny and his spirit of public service. In the last week of July it saluted Mazzini, the unifier of Italy, who was yet ‘so broad-minded that he could be regarded a citizen of every country’. In August it carried a homage to Abraham Lincoln which stressed his humble origins, his commitment to the poor, his selflessness and his patriotism. September saw the spotlight being turned on Tolstoy, who, born into a rich family, voluntarily embraced poverty, and bravely criticized the Tsar and his policies. The next week a woman was profiled for the first time. This was Florence Nightingale, whose life’s story prompted the moral: ‘No wonder that a country where such women are born is prosperous. That England rules over a wide empire is due not to the country’s military strength, but to the meritorious deeds of such men and women.’
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This global-minded Gujarati also wrote of Indians he admired. On the first anniversary of the death of industrialist J. N. Tata, Gandhi observed that Tata ‘never looked to self-interest … nor did he ever take distinctions of caste or race into consideration … [T]he Parsis, the Muslims, the Hindus – all were equal to him.’ An assessment of the Bengali social reformer Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar emphasized his work for the education of girls and the emancipation of widows. Vidyasagar’s career, wrote Gandhi, made clear ‘how Bengal provides an example for the other parts of India to follow.’
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With these sketches Gandhi was providing role models for his compatriots. As noteworthy, perhaps, was his appreciation of the African reformer John Dube, who, Gandhi informed his readers, had acquired 300 acres of land quite close to Phoenix, where he ‘imparts education to his brethren, teaching them various trades and crafts and preparing them for the battle of life’. When a progressive planter took Dube to meet a group of visiting British scientists, the African told them that the
contempt with which his people were regarded was unjustified, since ‘they worked hard and without them the whites could not carry on for a moment.’

The praise of Dube revealed a certain broadening of the mind, for Africans – or ‘Kaffirs’, as Gandhi called them, following contemporary usage – had previously been treated with condescension by the Indian leader. Further evidence of this evolution is provided by an essay attacking the Johannesburg Town Council for compelling African cyclists to wear a large badge on their left arm, so that whites could avoid them. ‘May not a Native ask the question,’ wrote Gandhi: ‘has he no feelings?’
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Indian Opinion
featured Gandhi the social reformer and community activist, but also Gandhi the seeker and spiritualist, printing a series of talks by him to the Theosophical Society. He had been invited to speak by L. W. Ritch, who was by now not just Gandhi’s friend, but a clerk working in his law office. The lectures were on religion, a subject that had long fascinated Gandhi. Born a Hindu and mentored by a Jain, encounters with Christians, Jews, Muslims and Parsis had encouraged him to see his faith in broader, more comparative terms.

These public talks reported the progress of his religious education. Gandhi began with Hinduism, which, he argued, rested on three pillars: the importance of caste in social matters; the importance of pantheism in religious matters; and the importance of self-denial in ethical matters. Gandhi referred in passing to the rise and fall of Buddhism in India, and also mentioned Jainism, whose ‘most remarkable characteristic was its scrupulous regard for all things that lived’.

Gandhi’s second lecture was on Islam, whose keynote was ‘its levelling spirit’. Its ‘doctrine of equality could not but appeal to the masses, who were caste-ridden. To this inherent strength was also added the power of the sword.’ It thus won many converts in India. However, ‘in keeping with the spirit of Hinduism’, attempts were made to ‘bring about reconciliation between the two faiths’. Among these reconcilers in medieval India were the poet Kabir and the emperor Akbar.

The third lecture dealt with the advent of Christianity in India. European missionaries, admitted Gandhi, had ‘pointed out some of the glaring defects in Hinduism’, such as caste discrimination and the subordination of women. The last talk observed that ‘there have been three assaults on Hinduism’, in the form of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity,
yet ‘on the whole it came out of it unscathed. It has tried to imbibe whatever was good in each of these religions.’

The reaction of the white Theosophists in the audience is unrecorded. However, when the talks were printed, they provoked a torrent of criticism by Muslims, who said Gandhi had insulted Islam by suggesting its converts were of low caste origin. One critic claimed that the ancestors of the Bohras, a prominent community of Muslim traders in Gujarat, had been Brahmin priests. Another observed that ‘the statement that the lower classes of Hindus had been converted to Islam is not supported by any Urdu or Gujarati books on Indian history’ and are ‘figments of Hindu imagination’. A third charged Gandhi with laying excessive stress on the ‘bad deeds’ of Islam. His writings had ‘hurt the feelings of Muslims’; they were ‘unbecoming of a worthy person’.

At Gandhi’s initiative, the critics had their views aired in
Indian Opinion
. He pointed out in reply that ‘no stigma attaches to Islam if the Hindus of the lower castes became Muslims. On the contrary, it shows its excellence, of which the Muslims should be proud.’ He insisted that ‘to me, personally, there is no distinction between a Brahmin and a
bhangi
[low-caste scavenger]. And I consider it a merit of Islam that those who were dissatisfied with the social distinctions in Hinduism were able to better their condition by embracing Islam.’

The debate carried on for weeks, in public and in private. As the editor of
Indian Opinion
, Gandhi would have the last word. He had come across a piece in a journal called the
Christian World
, which argued that ‘religion, by a hundred different names and forms, has been dropping the one seed into the human heart, opening the one truth as the mind was able to receive it.’ Gandhi commented that this ‘growing spirit of toleration of all religions is a happy augury of the future’. To this spirit of ecumenism,

India, with its ancient religions, has much to give, and the bond of unity between us can best be fostered by a whole-hearted sympathy and appreciation of each other’s form of religion. A greater toleration on this important question would mean a wider charity in our everyday relations, and the existing misunderstandings would be swept away. Is it not also a fact that between Mahomedan and Hindu there is a great need for this toleration? Sometimes one is inclined to think it even greater than between East and West. Let not strife and tumult destroy the harmony between
Indians themselves. A house divided against itself must fall, so let me urge the necessity for perfect unity and brotherliness between all sections of the Indian community.
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In India, too, the question of Hindu–Muslim unity was in the fore-front of political debate. In October 1905, the Bengal Presidency was divided. The eastern part of Bengal was predominantly Muslim; by making it a separate province, the British hoped to wean Muslims away from the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress. The partition provoked a great outcry – especially among the middle classes in Calcutta, angry that their province was cut in half. Protests to undo the partition took on an increasingly anti-British cast. A movement known as
Swadeshi
, meaning ‘of and for one’s land’, urged the boycott of foreign goods.

Watching from South Africa, Gandhi gave the protests his support. The movement against the partition, he said, ‘has in it the germs of the unification of the different communities’. As for the economic boycott: ‘What can be more natural than for the people to wish to clothe themselves, to feed themselves, and to supply their luxuries out of home-grown products and home manufactures?’ The events in Bengal were compared to the democratic upsurge under way in Russia. ‘The movement in Bengal for the use of
swadeshi
goods is much like the Russian movement,’ remarked Gandhi. ‘Our shackles will break this very day, if the people of India become united and patient, love their country, and think of the well-being of their motherland, disregarding their self-interest.’
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In between work and writing, Gandhi snatched time away for the family. In July 1905 he wrote to a friend in Bombay suggesting that he send Harilal to South Africa. The funding of
Indian Opinion
had cut into his savings; besides, with Kasturba and the other children now in South Africa, it made little sense for one son to stay back in India. ‘The burden on me here is so heavy that it is difficult for me to meet the expenses there,’ wrote Gandhi. ‘Nor do I see that Harilal’s interests are served thereby.’
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But Harilal did not want to leave India. Unbeknownst to his parents, the boy had fallen in love with the daughter of the Rajkot lawyer Haridas Vora.
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With Harilal out of reach, Gandhi turned his attention to his second son, Manilal. In September the thirteen-year-old was sent for a spell to Phoenix, where he was supervised by his cousins.
Gandhi told Chhaganlal to put Manilal to work with his hands. ‘The main thing is to clear the big plot of land and water the plants. He will get to know more by himself if he looks after the trees.’
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