Gandhi Before India (63 page)

Despite their professional (and/or personal) rivalry, the Phoenix crowd in fact agreed with P. S. Aiyar on the question of the tax. In late 1911, A. E. West wrote to Gandhi proposing an immediate satyagraha asking for its abolition. Gandhi, in reply, advocated a more incrementalist approach. ‘With reference to the £3 tax’, he told West,

the first step to take is not to advise the men to refuse to pay the tax, but for the [Natal Indian] Congress to send a petition to the Prime Minister, signed by all the Indians in Natal – say 15,000 signatures. There should be a mass meeting held. The Congress should then ask the Indians in the other Provinces to support. We must then await the reply from the Prime Minister. Then there should be a petition to Parliament next year, and, if Parliament rejects the petition, there should be an appeal to the Imperial Government by the Congress aided by the other Associations in South Africa. Finally the refusal to pay the tax! Then, undoubtedly, the Congress should undertake to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned. The men would undoubtedly go to gaol, if there is a body of earnest workers. For this purpose, either you will have to be in Durban continuously, or someone else will. The thing cannot be taken up haphazard. If the men were asked to go to gaol today, I do not think you would find anybody taking up the suggestion, but if the preliminary steps as described above, are taken, by the time a final reply is received the men will have been thoroughly prepared to face the music. I know, too, that the thing is quite capable of being done, but one man at least must be prepared to devote the whole of his time to the matter.
³⁷

The letter concisely captures Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance to unjust laws. He was a strategist of slow reform, of protesting by stages, of systematically preparing himself and his colleagues rather than spontaneously (or, as he would have it, haphazardly) rushing into confrontation.

In April 1912, Gandhi wrote to Ratan Tata, giving an account of the struggle he had so generously supported. He described the teaching methods, the regime of labour and the student profile at Tolstoy Farm. There were currently eighteen Gujaratis, six Tamils and one North Indian in the school. These students were taught that ‘they are first Indians and everything else after that, and that, while they must remain absolutely true to their own faiths, they should regard with equal respect those of their fellow-pupils.’

With his letter, Gandhi enclosed a statement of accounts. They had received £8,509 (equivalent to about £680,000 today). £6,723 came from India (about half of this from Tata himself), £972 from Rangoon, £59 from Zanzibar, £61 from Mozambique, £18 from Mombasa and
£159 from London. Turning to their expenses, £2,335 was spent on relief for passive resisters and families, £1,490 on the London committee, £1,200 on
Indian Opinion
, £530 on salaries, and lesser amounts on rent, legal expenses, travel, stamps and stationery.
³⁸

The account – and accounts – pleased Ratan Tata, so much so that he pledged a third gift of Rs 25,000. This was announced at a public meeting held in Bombay on 31 July 1912. The Parsi magnate Sir Jamshetjee Jeejebhoy presided over the meeting, which discussed the handicaps faced by Indians in different parts of the Empire. A memorial forwarded by Sir Jamshetjee urged the Imperial Government to put an end to discriminatory statutes and practices. ‘South Africa has long been the worst offender against Indian national sentiment,’ it declared; it was ‘hardly to be expected that the people of this country will acquiesce in the treatment of Indians as an inferior race in order that the rights of self-government accorded to the Colonies may remain intact’.
³⁹

In the last week of July 1911,
Indian Opinion
had written about a proposal to unite the various native associations in South Africa. Its prime mover was a young Zulu attorney in Johannesburg named Pixley Seme. Seme took a first degree at Columbia University in New York and later studied law in London. Now, asked by a reporter about the aims of the new initiative,

Seme was at pains to remove any suspicion that force in any degree would be countenanced, but it is clear that the lessons of the Indian agitation have not been lost on the natives, and though nothing definite was said to indicate reliance on passive resistance, it is not improbable that in certain eventualities recourse will be had to it.
⁴⁰

These links between the Indian struggle and the new African initiative were also personal. In an unpublished memoir that has recently come to light – written by a lady of Russian extraction living in Johannesburg – it seems that Pixley Seme visited Tolstoy Farm sometime in 1911. Here, ‘Mr Gandhi told Dr Seme about his passive resistance movement and how he had settled the women and children on the farm. He remarked on how satisfactorily it had all worked out.’
⁴¹

In the last week of October 1911, Seme published an article advocating the formation of a South African native congress. ‘The demons of
racialism,’ he wrote, ‘the aberrations of the Xhosa–Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tongas, between the Basutos and every other Native must be buried and forgotten … We are one people. These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance today.’
⁴²

On his visit to Tolstoy Farm, Pixley Seme may have noticed that its residents included, by ethnicity, Gujaratis, Tamils, North Indians and Europeans – and, by faith, Parsis, Muslims, Christians, Jews and Hindus. It is hard to decisively establish a chain of influence. Still, there is no doubt that there was a family resemblance between what Seme sought to do with the Africans and what Gandhi had already done with the Indians – that is to help them overcome distinctions of sect and tribe, and present a united front to the rulers.

As a result of Pixley Seme’s efforts, some sixty Africans met in Bloemfontein in the second week of January 1912. They included chiefs, journalists and community lawyers. The meeting led to the formation of a body called the South African Native National Congress. The veteran Zulu reformer John Dube was elected its first president,
in absentia
, since previous commitments prevented him from attending the meeting.

The new Congress was a response to the white Union of South Africa, in which Africans had no voice in administration or law-making. Their Congress, said Seme, would ‘together devise ways and means of forming our national union for the purpose of creating national unity and defending our rights and privileges.’ The attorney noted that this was ‘the first time that so many elements representing different tongues and tribes ever attempted to co-operate under one umbrella in one great house.’
⁴³

John Dube, the first president of the Native National Congress, was a neighbour and acquaintance of Gandhi’s in Natal. The two men had written appreciatively about one another. Congratulating him on his elevation,
Indian Opinion
now reproduced two paragraphs of the ‘excellent’ manifesto he had issued ‘to his countrymen’. Although the natives were ‘the first-born sons of this great and beautiful continent,’ remarked Dube, ‘as citizens of the glorious British Empire, we are the last-born children, just awakening into political life’ – after the whites, the Indians and the Cape Coloureds. They had therefore to tread ‘softly, ploddingly, along the bright path illuminated by righteousness and reason … that will surely and safely lead us to our goal, the attainment
of our rightful inheritance as sons of Africa and citizens of the South African Commonwealth.’

Dube understood that this would be an ‘uphill fight’, with ‘enemies without’ and ‘dangers within’. Yet he insisted that ‘by dint of our patience, our reasonableness, our law-abiding methods and the justice of our demands, all these obstacles shall be removed and enemies overcome.’ By ‘the nobility of our character,’ he said, ‘shall we break down the adamantine wall of colour prejudice and force even our enemies to be our admirers and friends.’
⁴⁴

Despite the proximity of Ilanga and Phoenix, Dube and Gandhi met rarely, in part because in these years Gandhi was based mostly in the Transvaal. The resemblances in their political views are striking. The African reformer and the Indian reformer both practised – and preached – a principled incrementalism. Their opposition to racial prejudice was unswerving, yet they thought – or hoped – that a combination of patience and courtesy would make their adversaries see reason and finally dispense justice.

Gandhi’s law practice was now in the hands of L. W. Ritch. His visits to the city were mostly to take advantage of the skills of his secretary Sonja Schlesin. Through the first half of 1912, Gandhi was in correspondence with the Ministry of Interior with regard to a new Immigration Bill. The issues he raised included the rights of domicile of women and minor children, the arbitrary powers of immigration officers, the right of appeal to courts, and the right of inter-provincial migration for educated Indians.
⁴⁵

In May 1912, General Smuts introduced a fresh ‘Immigrants Restrictions Bill’ in Parliament. The General said that to work out a satisfactory immigration law was like a ‘Chinese puzzle’. For, ‘whilst, on one hand, they were most anxious to foster immigration of white people, they were most anxious to keep Asiatics out of the country. (Hear! Hear!).’ The Government was thinking of applying an education test on the Australian model, since that test ‘admitted of being applied with rigour in the one case and treated with some laxity in the other. The white people would thus be encouraged to come into the country and the Asiatics kept out.’ In the debate that followed, a member from Bechuanaland said the exclusion of Asiatics ‘was the one question upon which Dutch and English agreed’. He claimed that since the coming of the Indians,

hundreds, he might say thousands, of white people who used to do a respectable business had been entirely ousted. The competition of the Asiatic was such that no European could stand up against him, and he would like it to be laid down clearly that in future no Asiatic should be allowed to come into the country.
⁴⁶

The signs were unmistakable, and this time too the bill failed to pass through the Senate. The Interior Ministry wrote to Gandhi saying they hoped still to pass an amended Bill in the next session.
⁴⁷

In late June, Gandhi spent a week in Durban. The Natal Indians were now divided down the middle. One K. D. Naidoo was canvassing signatures of people who opposed Gandhi; he alleged the lawyer represented the interests only of Gujarati merchants, of those ‘Banyans in South Africa who make money and make cheap living’. On the other side, Gandhi’s old friend Parsee Rustomjee charged K. D. Naidoo and his colleagues of ‘assuming titles of leadership and undertaking public work without the public mandate’.
⁴⁸

Some Indians in Natal were unhappy with Gandhi’s wait-and-see policy. He had not, they thought, campaigned hard enough for the abolition of the £3 tax on Indians in the province. The hostility of this faction worried Gandhi’s friends, who had seen him attacked for his views before. On 27 June, Kallenbach wrote to Chhaganlal Gandhi asking him and his brother Maganlal ‘to be on the look-out and observe matters’ during Gandhi’s stay in Natal. ‘One of you’, said Kallenbach,

should always accompany him to Durban and not lose sight of him
. At the present moment the feeling runs rather high at Durban and therefore be on your guard … [L]et us keep our eyes open. We all know Mr Gandhi dislikes and refuses bodyguards, but under one or another pretext, you and Maganlal will, I hope, be able, without attracting Mr Gandhi’s attention, to accomplish the above. May we jointly be able to guide him from some fanatic in this country.
⁴⁹

Gandhi returned to the Transvaal unscathed. Meanwhile, he had asked Gokhale to visit South Africa. To have an established ‘Imperial’ statesman lobby for the Indians might finally get them the concessions they desired. Gandhi must also have hoped that the arrival of Gokhale would tame and shame his critics in Durban.

Gokhale had in fact planned to come to South Africa the previous
year, on his way back from the United Kingdom, but his doctors had advised against it. So had Gandhi’s friend Pranjivan Mehta. Meeting him in London in August 1911, Mehta reported that ‘Mr Gokhale’s body looks like a paper bag’. A chronic diabetic, he had recently been diagnosed with an excess of albumin, and he was also overweight. Mehta told Gandhi that while Gokhale was indeed very keen to visit South Africa, he worried that the myriad public functions he would have to attend (and speak at) would strain him further. As things stood, it was ‘necessary for his health that he gets as much rest as possible’.
⁵⁰

The trip was aborted, but a year later Gokhale was in somewhat better shape. In London for the summer (as usual), he booked a passage to Cape Town for October. He asked for one of two berths in a first-class cabin; the shipping company answered that if he paid £10 extra he could have the cabin to himself. Gokhale answered that he had made nine voyages between India and the United Kingdom by ship,

and never has such an insult been offered to me … I feel it is grossly unjust that I should be penalised and compelled to pay more than my fare because some Europeans have a prejudice against travelling with Indians. I think the Company should give me one berth and then leave it to those who come after me to take the second or not as they like.
⁵¹

Gokhale had made many voyages between India and England; but none, before this, to South Africa. The experience with the shipping company prepared him for the sort of racism that Indians in that country experienced on a daily basis. Before making the booking, he had suggested to Gandhi that Maud Polak also come to South Africa. He had been impressed by the work she was doing for the South African British Indian Committee, and thought some first-hand experience would enable her to lobby even more effectively. Gandhi was lukewarm about the proposal, perhaps because he knew what Gokhale did not – namely, that Maud Polak’s interest was principally in one Indian in Johannesburg rather than in Indians in South Africa in general.
⁵²