Gandhi Before India (14 page)

must for ever remain without freedom, without any prospect of ever bettering his condition, without ever even thinking of changing his hut, his meagre allowance and his ragged clothes, for a better house, enjoyable food and respectable clothing. He must not even think of educating his children according to his own taste or comforting his wife with any pleasure or recreation.
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A coalition known as the ‘Unionists’ was in power in the United Kingdom, which brought together the Conservatives with Liberals who had left their party over the question of Home Rule for Ireland. In the elections of 1895, Dadabhai Naoroji had failed to win re-election, but an Indian standing as a Unionist, Mancherjee Bhownaggree, was successful in his bid to become an MP. The Birmingham businessman and former Liberal, Joseph Chamberlain, was now Secretary of State for the Colonies. In September 1895, Chamberlain wrote to the Natal Government about the Franchise Bill still awaiting approval. The bill, he said, did not distinguish between the ‘most ignorant and the most enlightened of the Natives of India’. The ‘position and attainments’ of the latter class, he thought, ‘fully qualify them for all the duties and privileges of citizenship’. The Natalians were surely ‘aware that in two cases within the last few years the electors of important constituencies in this country have considered Indian gentlemen worthy not merely to exercise the franchise, but to represent them in the House of Commons’.

Chamberlain accepted that the ‘destinies of the Colony of Natal shall continue to be shaped by the Anglo-Saxon race, and that the possibility of any preponderant influx of Asiatic voters should be avoided’. Still, like his predecessor, Lord Ripon, he worried about overtly racist legislation. Like Ripon, he sat on the government benches with an Indian colleague – yet in a colony for which he was responsible, Indians were being denied the vote altogether. A bill which ‘involves in a common disability all natives of India without any exception,’ he argued, and which ‘provides no machinery by which an Indian can free himself from this disability, whatever his intelligence, his education, or his stake in
the country … would be an affront upon the people of India such as no British Government could be a party to’.

In Britain it was assumed that, with guidance and patronage, a select group of Indians could come to keep the company of white men. The rise of Naoroji and Bhownaggree was proof of the success of this kind of liberal paternalism. Such mobility was harder to imagine or achieve in the Colonies. Especially in South Africa, where it was assumed by the ruling race that
all
Coloured people would for
all
time be fixed in a position of cultural and political inferiority.

Seeking a middle way between the hardliners in the colony and the liberals in London, the Governor of Natal had a clause introduced stating that only those who had representative institutions in their own country would be eligible for the franchise. This ruled out Indians, while enfranchising Englishmen and other Europeans from countries with their own parliaments. Thus was a racial bill formally saved from ‘the naked disenfranchisement’ from which it had previously been marked. The amended draft was sent to Chamberlain in November 1895, and he indicated that if legislation based on this principle was passed by the Natal Legislature, he would advise Her Majesty to assent to it.
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While seeking spiritual truths in private, and pursuing racial parity in public, Gandhi had not forgotten his main professional duty, which was to establish a legal practice. Here his clients were all Indians. The judges he appeared before and the lawyers he argued against were all Europeans. Socially or professionally, Gandhi had no dealings with the Africans who constituted the vast majority of the population of Natal.

Gandhi continued to represent his first patron, Dada Abdulla, on whose behalf he sued a ship’s captain who, without his employer’s knowledge, had transferred passengers from second to first class and pocketed the difference.
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In another case, he represented ‘two well-dressed respectable-looking young Indians, one a clerk and the other a teacher’, charged with ‘vagrancy’ for being out at night without passes. ‘Mr Gandhi contended that the men had a perfect right to be out, because they gave a good account of themselves. They were thoroughly respectable lads.’ The judge agreed, and dismissed the case against them.
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Gandhi defended the rich, the middle-class and the working poor. An
indentured labourer was tried for attacking a policeman; the Indian lawyer said his client had been provoked and humiliated. A newspaper now accused Gandhi of violating the codes of the Inns of Court – ‘the idea of his having anything to do with defying justice,’ it wrote, ‘even in the most remote fashion, is simply intolerable.’ The ‘sooner this gentleman gets the money he wants from the Indian community,’ said the paper, ‘and clears for his native country, Guam or Britain, the better it will be for himself and the Colony.’
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The accusations were unfair. Making money was scarcely Gandhi’s sole aim. Consider the case of Balasundaram, an indentured worker beaten up by his master. He spent several days in hospital recovering from his injuries, and then went to Gandhi seeking redress. The local magistrate had issued a summons against the employer. Gandhi, characteristically seeking a compromise, did not press the charges, but arranged for Balasundaram to be transferred to a less brutal employer.
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Through 1895 and 1896, Gandhi fought cases on behalf of merchants seeking to recover dues, families seeking a share of a dead ancestor’s property, individuals harassed by constables or by plantation owners. One case was particularly resonant: he defended a Muslim who refused to remove his cap when ordered to do so in court by the magistrate. As a barrister Gandhi was obliged to go bare-headed, but he would still uphold the right of an ordinary citizen to dress according to the articles of his faith.
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On another occasion, Gandhi was called in by a European colleague to advise on the disposal of the property of a Muslim merchant who had died intestate. The judge hearing the case, Walter Wragg, had previously opposed Gandhi’s application to the Natal Bar – ostensibly because Gandhi had produced a self-attested copy rather than an original certificate from the Inner Temple, but more likely because he could not abide the idea of a coloured lawyer. Justice Wragg now insisted that Gandhi was ‘as great a stranger to Mohammedan law as a Frenchman … Mr Ghandi [
sic
] is a Hindu and knows his own faith, of course, but he knows nothing of Mohammedan law’. Gandhi answered, spiritedly, that ‘were I a Mohammedan, I should be very sorry to be judged by a Mohammedan whose sole qualification is that he is born a Mohammedan. It is a revelation that … a non-Mohammedan never dare give an opinion on a point of Mohammedan law’.
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A reporter who often covered Gandhi’s court appearances remarked that while he did his work well, his

manner was not aggressive but pleading. He was no orator. When addressing the court he was not eloquent, but rather otherwise; and in his submissions he did not actually stammer, but prefaced his speeches and comments by repeated sibilants, for instance: ‘Ess-ess-ess your worship, ess-ess-ess this poor woman was attending an invalid sister and was on her way home after the curfew bell had gone when she was arrested. I ask ess-ess-ess that she should not be sent to gaol, but cautioned ess-ess-ess.’
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His speaking deficiencies notwithstanding, Gandhi was soon a prominent member of the Natal Bar. That he had a captive clientele helped: he was the lawyer of all the Indians of Natal, regardless of caste, class, religion or profession. The lawyer who failed in Bombay and Rajkot had spectacularly succeeded in Durban. Gandhi welcomed the financial security, but it appears that he welcomed the social acclaim even more. He was happy to be the lawyer of the Indians, and their spokesman and representative, too.

Durban, Gandhi’s fourth port city, was far newer than Porbandar or London or Bombay. In the 1850s it had just two two-storey buildings. As the port grew and the sugar plantations in the hinterland prospered, the city began to expand. A series of impressive stone buildings were constructed between the 1860s and 1880s, among them a court house, a town hall and a Royal Theatre, as well as banks, hotels, churches, and a whites-only club. Transport within the city was by horse-drawn trams and hand-pulled rickshaws.
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The whites in Durban were, in proportionate terms, more numerous than in Bombay, yet more insecure in their position. Europeans in India knew they were a tiny minority in a well-populated land. They had come to rule but not to settle. On the other hand, like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Natal was a ‘neo-Europe’, whose climate, ecology and sparse population allowed the whites to recreate the conditions of life in the mother country. Sensing that this was a country they could make their own, the British set about ensuring their permanent ascendancy.
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As Gandhi was making his career in Durban, the Governor of Natal
addressed a London audience on the attractions of life in the new colony. Natal had fine scenery and a pleasant climate (‘there is no such thing as malaria’, noted the Governor), abundant natural resources, and a thriving plantation industry. As for Durban itself,

its streets are straight, hard, smooth and wide; it possesses a good series of tramways; it is lighted throughout with electric light; it has an ample water supply … It possesses a beautiful and well-kept little park; a Town Hall which would be a credit to a town of six times the size and in that Town Hall an organ which costs £3,000. (Cheers.) It has an agricultural showground, cricket and athletic ground, race-course, golf-links, public baths, museum, public library, theatre, an excellent club, and so forth. And an esplanade is being constructed, and is now nearing completion, at a cost, I believe, of about £80,000, along the sea front in the inner harbour, which will add much to the attractiveness of the town.
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By this account, Natal was not so much a neo-Europe as a Little England and – happily – without the fog, the smog and the snow. The facilities it provided were, unlike those in England, open to all classes of whites. The settlers in Natal came overwhelmingly from other than aristocratic backgrounds. As missionaries, soldiers, lawyers, mine owners, farmers, sailors and teachers, they made their name in the colony, acquiring a prosperity and social status beyond their reach had they stayed at home.
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The Africans in Natal were uneducated and dispersed through the countryside. There was, however, an incipient threat to the political and economic dominance of the Europeans. This came from the Indians, and more particularly the ‘passenger’ Indians. Indeed, had it not been for the Indian merchants – their number, their wealth and their visibility – Durban could have passed for a European city on an African coastline. Unlike plantation labourers, Indian traders tended to be based in the towns, where they conducted their business and, increasingly, bought land and built houses. In 1870 there were 665 Indians in Durban, who between them ran two shops and owned property worth £500. By the end of the century, there were 15,000 Indians in Durban, who ran more than 400 shops and owned property worth more than £600,000. The British were alleged to be a nation of shopkeepers, but in this place at this time they were being given a run for their money.
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The demographic challenge was as real as the economic one: whereas in 1870 there were five Europeans to every Indian living in Durban, by 1890 the ratio was closer to two to one. The pattern was similar in other towns of Natal, where, again, Europeans constituted about 40 per cent of the population and the Indians a threatening 20 per cent. As Robert Huttenback has written, this ‘increasing urban concentration of Indians particularly frightened and offended many European settlers to whom it connoted both domestic propinquity and increased commercial competition’.
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To social proximity and economic rivalry was now added a third challenge – political competition. In 1891, following the decision to grant ‘responsible government’, the Governor of Natal had espied a very distant threat from the unenfranchised Africans. ‘The danger in the future,’ he wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, ‘would arise from the awakening of the Native mind – guided as it only too probably might be by unscrupulous political agitators – to the fact that its interests are not directly represented in the Colony: but this, I think, is a contingency that may fairly be left to be grappled with when it arises’.
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The Governor could scarcely have anticipated that it would be Indian minds that would be awakened first, their aspirations stoked and articulated by a political ‘agitator’ who – at the time this prediction was made – was a shy and diet-obsessed law student in London.

This student was now the Secretary of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC). In August 1895, the NIC celebrated its first anniversary. Presenting a report on the first year of the organization, Gandhi noted its spread to other towns: apart from Durban, branches had been opened in Pietermaritzburg, Verulam, Newcastle and Charlestown. Subscriptions of £500 had been collected; Gandhi thought at least £2,000 were needed to ‘put the Congress on a sure footing’. Cash was supplemented by gifts in kind, with ‘Parsee Rustomjee stand[ing] foremost in this respect’. Rustomjee was a spice and dry goods trader in Durban, who had supplied the Congress with lamps, paper, pens, a clock, and labour to clean the hall where it met. Other Gujaratis were also active in donations; however, as the Secretary noted, ‘the Tamil members have not shown much zeal in the Congress work’.
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The energetic Rustomjee was born in Bombay in 1861. He came to Natal in his early twenties, and at first worked in an Indian store in Verulam. He then set up his own business, which expanded rapidly – by
1893 (when Gandhi arrived) he was one of Durban’s largest merchants. His full name was Jivanji Gorcoodoo Rustomjee. Although a Zoroastrian by faith, he worshipped often at the shrine in Durban of Datta Peer, a Tamil Muslim who had arrived in the colony as an indentured labourer before becoming a Sufi mystic. A story current in Indian circles claimed that Parsee Rustomjee was once charged with the import of saffron, then a white monopoly. He prayed at the shrine of Datta Peer, whereupon the saffron in his warehouse miraculously turned to cardamom, confounding the customs inspectors.
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