Gandhi Before India (44 page)

The escalation of passive resistance in the second half of 1908 was viewed with some dismay by the white press. A paper in Pretoria thought General Smuts had ‘lowered the prestige of the Colony by his handling of the Asiatic question’. It chastised him for having ‘started another controversy with Mr Gandhi’. A paper in Johannesburg was less even-handed. It argued that Gandhi’s testimony that Smuts had promised the repeal of the 1907 Act was ‘certainly not conclusive’; in any case, the General would have had to ratify the promise in the legislature. The paper concluded that ‘whatever hardships the Asiatics have suffered they owe entirely to the recalcitrancy and folly of their leader.’
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Whether sympathetic to Gandhi or hostile, such comments represented a huge leap in the Indian’s standing in the Transvaal. Before the satyagraha of 1907–8, his opposite number on the white side was Montford Chamney. In fact and in fancy, the lawyer was opposed to the bureaucrat, the permit-seeker to the permit-giver. Now, however, he was being equated with the scholar and war hero General Smuts in the popular imagination. They were the leaders of their respective communities, engaged in an argument about the rights and claims of those they represented. This new equivalence is reflected in the cartoons of the time, which, for example, showed the Asiatics led by Gandhi as akin to an elephant, barring the passage of a steamroller driven by the General himself.
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On 14 August 1908, Gandhi wrote to Smuts announcing that the Indians would meet soon to burn their registration certificates. Then, characteristically, he tempered his militancy, asking the General to recognize that ‘the difference between you, as representing the Government, and the British Indians is very small indeed.’ The discrepancy could be
removed by the Government accepting the admission of educated Indians and pre-war residents of the Transvaal.
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On the afternoon of Sunday 16 August, some 3,000 Asians congregated outside the Fordsburg Mosque. On a raised plaform sat Gandhi, Essop Mia of the British Indian Association, Dawad Mahomed and Parsee Rustomjee of the Natal Indian Congress, the Cape Indian leader Adam Mahomed, and Leung Quinn to represent the Chinese. Below the podium was ‘the Press table, and beyond that, a sea of upturned and expectant faces, with determination and a bitter merriment stamped deep upon each of them.’
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The main speaker, inevitably, was Gandhi. Once too shy to read from a prepared text, he was now, a decade later, very willing to directly address a large (and mostly captive) audience. Claiming the country to be ‘as much the Indians’ as the Europeans”, he said the recent laws sought to treat them as cattle and not men. ‘I would far rather pass the whole of my lifetime in gaol and be perfectly happy than see my fellow-countrymen subjected to indignity and I should come out of gaol.’ The lesson of their struggle was that

unenfranchised though we are, unrepresented though we are in the Transvaal, it is open to us to clothe ourselves with an undying franchise, and this consists in recognizing our humanity, in recognizing that we are part and parcel of the great universal whole, that there is the Maker of us all ruling over the destinies of mankind and that our trust should be in Him rather than in earthly kings, and if my countrymen recognize that position I say that no matter what legislation is passed over our heads, if that legislation is in conflict with our ideas of right and wrong, if it is in conflict with our conscience, if it is in conflict with our religion, then we can say that we will not submit to the legislation.

This flight into the Empyrean was followed by a direct attack on an earthly being – the Protector of Asiatics, whom Gandhi charged with ‘hopeless incompetence and ignorance’. Unless Montford Chamney was removed from his job, claimed the lawyer, ‘there will be no peace’.
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After Gandhi had spoken, the Indians came up to place their individual certificates in a large three-legged pot previously saturated with wax.

Paraffin was then poured in, and the certificates set on fire, amid a scene of the wildest enthusiasm. The crowd hurrahed and shouted themselves
hoarse; hats were thrown in the air, and whistles blown. One Indian, said to be a leading blackleg, walked on to the platform, and, setting alight his certificate, held it aloft. The Chinese then mounted the platform, and put in their certificates with the others.
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The day after this conflagration, Gandhi was summoned to Pretoria to meet General Smuts. Also present were the Prime Minister (General Botha), the leading Opposition politician Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (representing the British interest), William Hosken, Albert Cartwright and Leung Quinn. They talked for three hours; eventually, the Government agreed to allow prewar residents to return and register; not to register children under sixteen; and to allow thumb impressions or signatures when issuing trading licences. Having yielded on many points, the Government remained adamant that it could not allow the admittance of educated Indians. As for the 1907 Act, it would not be repealed but remain a ‘dead letter’.
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Three days after this meeting, Smuts introduced a new bill in the Transvaal Legislature, which contained the concessions regarding Boer certificates and minors, but still barred educated Indians. Moving this ‘Asiatic Registration Amendment Bill’, the Colonial Secretary admitted the depth of the popular opposition he had faced from the Indians. There was, he said,

no more awkward position for a Government than a movement of passive resistance … In more primitive times one would have met it by simply issuing a declaration of war. But in these times it is impossible to do that, and therefore the situation became a very difficult one for us to handle. I did my best … to carry out the law and apply the penalties which have been fixed under the law, and as a result early this year many Asiatics were languishing in prisons from one end of the country to the other. This was an undesirable state of affairs.
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With outright repression having failed, said Smuts, he had decided to release Gandhi and his colleagues, and draft a bill less onerous than its predecessor, providing for the voluntary registration of all Asiatics legally resident in the Transvaal. Smuts assured his colleagues that compromise certainly did not mean capitulation. Thus,

Mr Gandhi has referred to Indians being in partnership with the white population of this country. I have nothing to say against that. It is a claim
which may appeal strongly to the Indians and those who are interested in them, but it is a claim that the white population will never allow (sustained cheers). It will be impossible to meet them on that ground.
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The former Jameson Raider Percy Fitzpatrick spoke next. Before the War, Smuts and he were on opposite sides; now, with Boer and Briton reconciled, he endorsed the closed-door policy against the Indians. The House had to ‘be absolutely firm on the policy that this Colony was not going to be the home for immigrant Asiatics (Cheers)’. South Africa, thundered Fitzpatrick, ‘was redeemed from barbarism by the white people’; and it was ‘the white people who will have to carry it on, and defend it if needs be.’
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The bill was passed by the House within twenty-four hours of its first reading. Writing to the Governor of the Transvaal, Prime Minister Botha claimed it met ‘every reasonable claim’ put forward by the Indians. The Governor, in turn, wrote to the Colonial Office asking it to recommend that His Majesty assent to it immediately, otherwise ‘the Indians will continue their campaign of resistance against the laws in force in the hope that by so doing they may influence the judgement of the Imperial authorities for the purpose of obtaining concessions they are not entitled to in law, in justice, or in reason.’
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The questions that immediately come to mind when reading this, are of course: Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
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The concessions offered by the Government did not satisfy the Indians. For the notorious Asiatic Act had not been formally repealed, while educated Indians were still barred from entering the Transvaal. So, on 23 August, another bonfire of certificates was organized outside the Fordsburg Mosque. This time, some Pathans also joined in after having ‘admitted their previous errors’. The next day, Gandhi wrote to Smuts about this meeting and the strong sentiments expressed therein. He hoped that ‘colonial statesmanship will still find a way out of the difficulty, and close the struggle that has now gone on for nearly two years’.
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The General chose not to answer. Gandhi now asked four Indians from Natal, among them his old friend and patron Parsee Rustomjee, to come and show their support (the others included the president and secretary of the Natal Indian Congress). The Natalians toured the towns of the Transvaal, collecting certificates to burn. After a week on the road,
they were arrested and deported. They re-entered the colony and recommenced their propaganda activities, going around Indian homes in Johannesburg and raising £200 for the campaign; then, hat in hand, going to Heidelberg and Standerton. In early September they were arrested once more; this time, their sentence was three months in jail with hard labour.
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The Natalians were all men of property, and they were all Gujaratis. Gandhi’s hope was that their example would inspire Gujarati merchants in the Transvaal to more actively court arrest. At the moment, the Tamils were more ready to take the plunge. Gandhi found them to be ‘most enthusiastic’ for the struggle; by the end of August, fully one-fourth of the Tamil community had been to prison at least once. They included hawkers, artisans, cooks and waiters, all risking their livelihoods for the larger cause of community self-respect.
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Gandhi had now made a new suggestion to the Transvaal Government – that a certain number of educated Indians (say six) be allowed into the colony each year. The suggestion was prompted in part by personal considerations – the sense that as a lawyer himself he should not bar the way to other qualified Indians – and in part by national pride, the sense that given the chance, Indians were fully the equal of Europeans in the modern, high-status professions.
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Gandhi’s demand, said one Johannesburg paper, was very reasonable, for ‘even if the full number of six came every year, we doubt if that formidable invasion would ruin the Transvaal.’ Other colonies such as Australia and Canada permitted a certain number of Asians to enter each year. By instituting a colour bar, the Transvaal Legislature had ‘enacted, for the first time in the history of the Empire, so far as we know, that in no circumstances, under no conditions, shall the people from another of the Imperial states set foot here’.
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General Smuts and his fellow ministers saw it differently. One Gandhi was trouble enough. If six such lawyers were allowed in every year, would they not mobilize the Indians for more and greater rights? The problem with educated Indians was that they might instil in their working-class compatriots the dangerous idea that the avowal or denial of equal citizenship should have nothing to do with the colour of one’s skin.

Joseph Doke was in London on holiday. Reading the news from the Transvaal and regularly meeting the members of the South African British
Indian Committee, he was itching to get back to where his friend was. On 11 September he wrote to Gandhi that ‘you may be sure that my whole heart goes out to you and the Indians in their great affliction … So go on; the cause is righteous and it
must
prevail. It’s only a matter of some time and suffering. We
shall
be the victors. It’s a fight not for South African Indians only but for the dumb millions of India!’
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In the second week of September, the British Indian Association announced that its chairman, Essop Mia, was resigning in order to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. He was replaced by Ahmed Mahomed Cachalia, also a prominent merchant, who had already proved his credentials by going to jail. On the other side, the Transvaal Government began toughening its stand. The shops of merchants who had courted arrest were boarded up, and their goods confiscated and auctioned.
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In the last week of September, Gandhi went to Phoenix for a spell. A small school had been established there, with a Gujarati, Purushottamdas Desai, as principal, and Albert West and John Cordes among the teachers. On this visit, Gandhi hoped to open the school to boarders from elsewhere in Natal. The curriculum was in both Gujarati and English, and included instruction in the religion of the boy’s choice. Desai would teach Hindu boys the elements of their faith, West would take care of the Christians, a visiting
maulvi
the Muslims, while (in a typically Gandhian touch) the Theosophist Cordes would instruct those with more unorthodox, experimental leanings.

Just as characteristically, Gandhi paid close attention to what the boys would eat. They were encouraged to consume green vegetables, fresh fruit and pulses. On the other hand, tea, cocoa and coffee were forbidden, as these ‘are produced through the labour of men who work more or less in conditions of slavery’.
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In Natal, Gandhi was interviewed by a correspondent of the colony’s most influential newspaper. He was described as ‘the doughty champion of the Indians’ cause in the Transvaal’ (this said with some relief, since he was no longer the doughty champion of the Indians’ cause in Natal). Gandhi told the paper that whites in the Transvaal were ‘frightened with the bogey of an invasion of half-educated youths from Natal’. The passive resisters were fighting for something larger, namely ‘the honour of India, and for a principle … viz. that restriction should be based on sensible [criteria] and not on grounds of colour or race’. The education test was not the issue; it could be made as severe as they wanted. It was
the exclusion on racial grounds that they opposed. The paper was reminded of the larger Imperial consequences of the controversy. Englishmen ‘could not have India as the brightest jewel in the British Crown, and yet use the jewel as a target from every point.’
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