Gandhi Before India (3 page)

Gandhi’s caste, the Banias, occupied an ambiguous place in the Hindu social hierarchy.
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Above them lay the Kshatriyas and the Brahmins, traditionally rulers and priests. These were the ‘upper’ castes, so called because of the temporal and spiritual power they exercised. Below the Banias lay the Sudras and the Untouchables, who worked as farm labourers, artisans and scavengers. These were the ‘lower’ castes, so called because of the stigma attached to their traditional occupations, and because of their dependence, for instruction and occasionally for succour, on those above them.

The Banias were placed in the third stratum. They were, in more senses than one, middlemen. Their traditional occupation was trade and moneylending. They lent money to peasants and labourers, but also to kings and priests. They ran shops and stores that catered to all sections of society. The services they provided were indispensable; perhaps for this reason, the Banias were not trusted very much by those they served. In popular folklore, they were cunning and avaricious. They were said to maintain two sets of accounts: one written in a legible script and intended for the tax official; and a second, representing their real transactions, written in code. As one Hindi proverb had it, even God himself could not decipher the Banias’ handwriting.

The Bania was a survivor, adept and adaptable, possessing the skills and instincts to see him through periods of adversity and political instability.
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The Banias of Gujarat, writes their modern historian, were ‘renowned for their smooth tongue’ (in contrast to the arrogance of the Brahmin and the brashness of the Kshatriya). They cultivated ‘a soft and persuasive way of speech’ while extolling the quality of the goods they sold. ‘They would always try to avoid a confrontation with customers
and clients, backing down when necessary’. The code of the caste stressed ‘hard work and frugal living’. Thus ‘Baniyas were taught never to be idle, and they had in consequence a reputation for being a restless people, irritated when there was no work at hand’.
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In the political economy of medieval and early modern India, Banias played a crucial role. Agriculture, the mainstay of subsistence, required them to provide credit to peasants in periods of distress and scarcity. Warfare, the mainstay of politics, required them to advance money to, and hoard jewels for, chiefs seeking to expand or defend their territories.
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Gandhi’s native region, Kathiawar (also known sometimes as ‘Saurashtra’), is an ear-shaped peninsula some 23,000 square miles in area, in the central part of the western Indian state of Gujarat. Kathiawar has a coastline that extends over 600 miles, with many deep harbours. It has a long history of trade, both up and down the west coast of India, and with the Middle East and Africa. By one estimate, the peninsula’s sea trade in the late sixteenth century was of the order of Rs 30 million a year. The items bought and sold included agricultural commodities, spices, jewels, arms and, sometimes, slaves. The transport, loading and unloading of these materials was done by labourers of the Sudra castes. However, their purchase, storage and sale was undertaken largely by the Banias.
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The peninsula was one of the first centres of urban civilization in the subcontinent. Cities have existed here from Harappan times, more than 3,000 years ago. Through the medieval period, Kathiawar was divided into many small principalities, each requiring a capital city. Dotted with towns small and large, sited on the coast as well as inland, Kathiawar in the late nineteenth century had an urban population of well over 20 per cent. (Elsewhere in the subcontinent, urban settlements accounted for barely 10 per cent of the population.)
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The ubiquity of agriculture and of warfare, the importance of coastal trade, a large urban population – these made Kathiawar most attractive to the Bania. Within the towns, merchants were organized in powerful guilds, which pressured kings to grant land and tax concessions for homes and businesses. Here they worked as merchants, shopkeepers and moneylenders. But what made the Banias of Kathiawar distinctive was that they were not confined to their traditional occupations. They also worked for the state, as revenue collectors and civil servants.
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In Hindu states or kingdoms, the second most important person was the diwan, or chief minister. This key post was almost always taken by
a member of the two highest castes, Brahmin and Kshatriya. Not so in Kathiawar, where members of the merchant caste could aspire to become chief ministers. Among the many Bania diwans in Kathiawar were Mohandas Gandhi’s own father and grandfather.

Porbandar, Gandhi’s birthplace, is on the south-west of the Kathiawar peninsula. It has a moderate climate, with sunny but not sweltering days, and evenings cooled by the sea breeze. An English visitor observed that Porbandar ‘had received from Nature an unimaginable splendour of sea and sky’. Built entirely of stone and protected by great high gates, the city looked out ‘from a jutting headland into the infinite expanse of ocean’. Its air was ‘fresh with the salt spray’ of the sea, which was ‘driven along the beach from great combing breakers as they burst into white foam’.
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The town gave its name to the state, which in the 1860s covered about 600 square miles, in a broad band along the coast. Closer to the sea the land was marshy, but as one moved inland it became arable. On this drier ground, the peasants of Porbandar grew rice and lentils.

A good quarter of the state’s citizens lived in Porbandar town, participating in the commerce of the port, whose ninety-foot lighthouse could be seen from miles out at sea. There had once been ‘a brisk trade with the ports of Sind, Baluchistan, the Persian Gulf, Arabia, and the east coast of Africa’. However, the emergence of Bombay had seriously diminished the traffic of ships and goods in and out of Porbandar. At the time of Mohandas Gandhi’s birth in 1869, the main imports were timber from Malabar, cotton and tobacco from Bombay and Broach, and grain from Karachi.
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The rulers of Porbandar were from the Jethwa clan of Rajputs. They claimed to be the oldest ruling dynasty in Kathiawar, dating back to the ninth century. Their fortunes had ebbed and flowed down the years, as they fought with the neighbouring states of Nawanagar and Junagadh. As a consequence of battles lost or won, their capital had shifted around considerably, but from the late eighteenth century they had been based in the port town of Porbandar.
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Porbandar was one of some seventy chiefdoms in Kathiawar. So many states in such a small territory encouraged a proliferation in titles. Many rulers called themselves ‘Maharaja’ if they were Hindu, and ‘Nawab’ if they were Muslim. Others used more exotic titles such as ‘Rao’ and ‘Jam Saheb’. The ruler of Porbandar was known as the ‘Rana’.

The peninsula of Kathiawar has a stark, somewhat special beauty. Apart from the long coastline, it has several low ranges of hills, on which are perched temples holy to Hindus as well as Jains. In Gandhi’s boyhood, the countryside teemed with wildlife: leopards, lions and deer abounded. The bird life remains spectacular: flamingos on the coast, storks and cranes in the fields, doves and warblers and hornbills in the woods.

The first census, conducted in 1872, estimated the peninsula’s population at about 2.3 million. While 86 per cent of Kathiawaris were Hindus, they belonged to different castes and sub-castes, each with their distinctive rituals and ways of living. About 13 per cent of the population were Muslim. The bulk were descended from Hindu converts, but some claimed an Arabian or African lineage. Endogamous groups among the Muslims included the Memons, who belonged to the mainstream Sunni tradition of Islam, and the Khojas and Bohras, who were considered more heterodox because they followed a living leader.

The Muslims of Kathiawar were traders, farmers and artisans. However, despite their varying occupations and orientations, they all spoke the language of the land, Gujarati, rather than Persian or Urdu, the languages associated with Muslims in the north of India.
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Then there were the Jains and the Parsis, more of whom were present here than in other parts of the subcontinent. The Jains were a sect that had broken away from the Hindu fold in about the ninth century
BC
. The Parsis, also known as Zoroastrians, had fled to India from Persia after the rise to power in that land of the Shia branch of Islam. The Jains and the Parsis, adding to the heterogeneity of Kathiawar, were both admired for their scholarship and business acumen. The Jains were further respected for their austere personal lives; the Parsis, for their easy emulation of Western manners and mores.

Unlike in eastern or southern India, the British did not choose to rule over Kathiawar directly. About 80 per cent of the peninsula remained with Indian rulers. These potentates were tolerated, so long as they recognized the military and political superiority of the British, and allowed them to monitor trade and the movement of people.

The British placed the chiefs of Kathiawar in seven categories. Class I rulers had full jurisdiction over their subjects: they could, provided they followed due process, convict criminals, and even hang them. Those in lower categories were denied the powers of capital punishment
and of extended imprisonment. Class VII chiefs, for example, had to obtain the permission of the British to levy fines of more than Rs 15 or to impose sentences longer than fifteen days in jail.

The states of Kathiawar were divided into four geographical divisions, each with a British agent, to whom the chiefs reported. Some towns had British garrisons; others, British railway engineers or Christian missionaries. Detachments of troops led by white officers visited ports and towns at subtle intervals. Sometimes a higher dignitary came calling – the governor of Bombay perhaps, or even the viceroy. For them large
darbars
were held and hunting expeditions organized. The pomp and the hospitality was a sign of princely deference to the Raj; it made clear to everyone who, ultimately, was in charge.
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Of the seventy-four chiefs in Kathiawar, only fourteen were placed in Class I. The Rana of Porbandar was one of them. This fact was broadcast to his 70,000 subjects, among them the Gandhis, a family that for several generations had been in the service of the state. The first Gandhi in public service, named Lalji, migrated from Junagadh State to work in Porbandar. Lalji Gandhi served under the diwan, as did his son and grandson. Only in the fourth generation of service did a Gandhi achieve the coveted post of diwan, or chief minister. This was Uttamchand Gandhi, also known as ‘Ota Bapa’, ‘Ota’ being a diminutive of his first name, and ‘bapa’ the Gujarati word for ‘father’ or ‘respected elder’.

Uttamchand Gandhi’s first job was as Collector of Customs in Porbandar port. He was then asked to negotiate the transfer of slivers of land between Porbandar and Junagadh, so that each state could consolidate its territory. Proficiency in both jobs was rewarded with the prize post of first minister to the king.

As Diwan of Porbandar, Uttamchand Gandhi put the state’s finances in order. He also secured the trust and good faith of the British overlord. When two Englishmen were murdered by bandits along the Porbandar–Jamnagar border, Uttamchand Gandhi told his ruler to say that the place where the crime was committed lay in the other state. The hills where the murders took place were remote and valueless; better not to claim them, if that disavowal helped bring Porbandar closer to the Raj and its rulers.
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Uttamchand Gandhi seemed set for a long tenure as diwan, when the Rana of Porbandar suddenly died. The male heir was too young to ascend the throne, so the power devolved in the interim to his mother,
the Queen Regent. She resented the Diwan’s prestige and influence; by one account, she even sent a body of troops to attack his house. Uttamchand Gandhi then left Porbandar and settled in his ancestral village of Kutiyana in Junagadh State.
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The Nawab of Junagadh sent for Uttamchand Gandhi to ask if he needed anything from the
darbar
. The visitor, showing up at the palace, saluted the Nawab ‘with his left hand in outrage of all convention’. When a courtier chastised him, Uttamchand replied that ‘in spite of all that I have suffered I keep my right hand for Porbunder still’.
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After the death of the Queen Mother in 1841, Uttamchand Gandhi returned to Porbandar. His property was restored. The family story says that the new rana, Vikmatji, urged him to resume the office of diwan, which he declined. The records in the archives complicate the tale. There was a British garrison in Porbandar, paid for from the state’s funds. The town’s merchants complained that the soldiers were often drunk and harassed them for cash. Vikmatji thought that since there was little threat of piracy, the soldiers could be sent back to Bombay. Uttamchand Gandhi disagreed; the British, he said characteristically, had still (if not always) to be humoured.
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Vikmatji listened at the time; but remained unhappy with the burden the garrison put on his finances. In 1847 he chose Uttamchand’s son Karamchand (known as Kaba) as his diwan, giving him a silver ink-stand and inkpot as the sign of his office. The new diwan was just twenty-five, closer in age to Vikmatji, and more amenable to the ruler’s wishes (and whims) than his tough and overbearing father.

Kaba Gandhi was short and stocky, and wore a moustache. He had little formal education; studying briefly in a Gujarati school before joining the Rana as a letter-writer and clerk. He enjoyed his ruler’s trust, became diwan at a young age, and by 1869 had given more than two decades of service in that post. In that time he had also married three times. His first two wives died early, but not before producing a daughter apiece. The third marriage proved childless. With no heir in sight, he sought his wife’s permission to take another consort (permitted under traditional Hindu law).