Gandhi Before India (73 page)

The upsurge in Natal, and the arrest of Gandhi and company, provoked a wave of sympathy and support in the protesters’ homeland. ‘India thrilling with indignation,’ wired Gokhale to Millie Polak. ‘Protests pouring upon [Indian] Government for forwarding Imperial Government.’ A public subscription had already collected £5,000; Gokhale wanted to know where to send it. He also asked who was leading the movement in the absence of Gandhi. ‘Full information present position prospects necessary,’ he said.
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The range and depth of the Indian interest in Gandhi’s movement is manifest in a series of wires sent by the Viceroy on to London. Here are two samples:

Viceroy to India Office, 26 November 1913:

My telegram dated 22nd November S. Africa. 23 further telegrams received, two from private individuals, twenty are from Chairmen of meetings held at Ahmedabad, Ongole, Amalapuram, Bezwada, Tanuku, Yeotmal, two meetings Bombay, Coonoor, Lucknow, Narsapur, Rajkot, Bapatla, Poona, Guntur, Nasik, Kovur, Ellore, Rampurhat, Gudiwada, and Bhimavaram. Contents similar to that of previous telegrams reported to you protesting against treatment of Indians in Natal and urging government intervention.

Viceroy to India Office, 8 December 1913:

Thirteen further telegrams received from women of Bombay and citizens of Rangoon, Hyderabad, Sind, Cawnpore, Hardoi, from All India Muslim
League Lucknow; Chairmen public meetings Calicut, Yeotmal, Ajmer, Bombay mill-hands, Sanghsabha Shanghai, Chandra Chairman Political Association Kimberley, public of Kotdwara, and letter from Chairmen of public meetings Nellore, Raipur, and Coimbatore, and from Joint Secretary Godavari District Association Cocanada praying for adoption of measures for the prevention of sufferings of Indians in S. Africa.
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The interest in the South African struggle was particularly keen in South India, the region from where the majority of the satyagrahis came. A Tamil paper published out of Madras praised the ‘wonderful determination’ of ‘Mr Gandhi and his followers’; they had ‘glorif[ied] the good name of India by means of their noble and courageous conduct, risking even their lives’. A Kannada paper printed in Bangalore saluted ‘the leadership of that zealous servant of India, that generous and heroic personage, Mr Gandhi’. A Telugu weekly in Guntur reached for mythic parallels – Gandhi, the leader of the resistance, was like Arjuna, brave and fearless, while Gokhale was like Krishna, providing sage advice from behind the scenes.
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To raise money for the struggle, G. A. Natesan reprinted Polak’s booklet on Gandhi. In December 1913, a rival publisher in Madras, Ganesh and Company, commissioned its own capsule biography of ‘the hero of the Passive Resistance Movement’, its proceeds to go ‘in relief of our brethren in South Africa in their present struggle’.
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And a rising lawyer in Salem, C. Rajagopalachari, reprinted Gandhi’s account of his jail experiences for the same purpose. Rajagopalachari said Gandhi ‘must be ranked with the Avatars’, while his followers, ‘even in these degenerate days, act[ed] like real heroes in the cause of the Nation’. The booklet sold rapidly, so quickly in fact that the lawyer was able to send a cheque for Rs 1,500 to aid the struggle in South Africa.
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The massively enhanced stature of Gandhi in his homeland was most strikingly underlined by a Telugu play in five acts, performed at this time in the Andhra country. The first four acts detail the handicaps of the Indians in South Africa. In the final act Gandhi appears in the flesh and embarks on an extended soliloquy. He reflects on the condition of his compatriots, and on the degradation and humiliation they suffer in the workplace and away from it. The cruelties of the poll-tax and the marriage laws are dwelt upon. The (prosperous) lawyer then asks him
self: ‘Am I to live in this mansion while my fellow-brothers and sisters are suffering from untold miseries?’, and provides this answer:

O, Gandhi; O mind of mine! Have no desire for wealth or fame. No more happiness so long as the children of Bharata [India] are in slavery. You shall have no peace until you put an end to the racial hatred that has converted these South Africans into brutes. To achieve this you do not require the strength of the sword … Truth is your existence. Your colour is justice, your name is liberty … Throughout the length and breadth of this sacred land of Bharata one determination is blazing forth in one flame and resounding in one voice. The Lord has sent his message. It is resounding from the craggy Cape Comorin to the snow-peaked Himalayas. No gaols can oppose our determination. The whips cannot cow down our spirits. Even the cannon balls cannot keep our country behind.

Victory to our motherland.

This play was originally published in Telugu in a journal called the
Kistna Patrika
, and then translated into English and printed afresh in Dublin, from where copies were posted to school and college teachers across South India, to be staged in public. Copies were intercepted by the police; but one copy reached an archive in London, providing the basis of this account. That Gandhi’s struggle could prompt such a passionate rendering in Telugu is remarkable; for in 1913 Gandhi had not been in India for a decade, and he had never visited the Andhra country at all.
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Across the subcontinent, in the holy city of Banaras, protesters burned effigies of Generals Botha and Smuts. In a meeting chaired by the celebrated nationalist leader Madan Mohan Malaviya, a Hindi poet named Pratap read out verses urging patriots to hear the ‘far cry from distant Africa’, where ‘heroes like Gandhi in jail’ were ‘showing the bravery of India to the world’.
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Back in 1910, Gandhi had published
Hind Swaraj
as a direct response to, and a passionate intervention in, debates on Indian nationalist politics. The book was banned in both its Gujarati and English versions. Even had it been available in India, one wonders how widely it would have been read. It bore the marks of its hasty production; and in a society with such low levels of literacy, there wasn’t much of a market for
books in any case. Nonetheless, by 1913 many parts of India were familiar with Gandhi’s name. More Indians read newspapers than books; more still attended or heard of meetings organized in solidarity with the South African protests. That so many of their countrymen had so heroically resisted racial oppression in that faraway land was now known in towns across the subcontinent. Their leader was saluted and celebrated in talks, editorials, reports, poems, and at least one play. This was testimony not so much to the originality of his political ideas as to the vigour of his political practice. Mohandas Gandhi had made a definite impact on the popular consciousness of the motherland; not, however, as the author of an obscure text named
Hind Swaraj
, but as the chief inspirer of the collective defiance of discriminatory laws and the collective courting of imprisonment by Indians in South Africa.

One of the many ‘indignation meetings’ was held in Gandhi’s place of birth, Porbandar. The princely states had thus far kept out of the national movement. They were insulated from British India, whose political ferment did not affect them. The princes themselves were resolutely loyal to the Raj. But now the residents of Porbandar were moved to act, because some of the satyagrahis in South Africa came from the Kathiawar coast, and because their leader was born and raised in the town. The resolutions passed at this meeting included one praising ‘the inspiring leadership’ of the native son, M. K. Gandhi, and another thanking ‘Major F. de Hancock, our popular administrator for the liberal and munificent State contribution of Rs 1,000 towards the fund [for Indians in South Africa] and for allowing the use of the Victoria Memorial Hall for convening their meeting.’
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In 1888, the British Administrator in Porbandar had refused to pay for Gandhi’s studies in London; now, twenty-five years later, his successor was funding the lawyer-turned-activist’s campaign chest. In this respect, Porbandar was no exception; at other meetings, too, large sums of money were raised and dispatched to Gokhale in Poona. On 28 November, Sonja Schlesin passed on a message from Gandhi to his mentor: ‘He says that you are not to
worry
yourself about funds. If they did not come, we should manage here somehow.’ Gokhale’s response was to wire £5,000 two days later. On 3 December, a further instalment of £5,000 was sent to Maganlal Gandhi at Phoenix.
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All kinds of people chipped in, some famous, some obscure. In the
first category fell the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who had recently been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In November, Tagore sent Gokhale Rs 100 as his ‘humble contribution’ to the South African Indian Fund.
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Three weeks later he sent another cheque, apologizing for its niggardly contents. ‘I am ashamed to own that the response has been feeble in Bengal to the call of our countrymen in trouble in South Africa,’ wrote the poet. ‘But I can assure you that my boys’ hearts were moved to genuine sympathy when appealed to and little though these children were able to raise for the fund it was not the less valuable in its moral worth.’
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More surprising than Tagore’s endorsement was that of the Bishop of Madras, a pillar of the Establishment and, of course, an Englishman. ‘I frankly confess,’ remarked the Bishop in December 1913, ‘though it pains me to say it, that I see in Mr Gandhi, the patient sufferer for the cause of righteousness and mercy, a truer representative of the Crucified Saviour, than the men who have thrown him into prison and yet call themselves by the name of Christ.’
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More surprising still was the support for Gandhi and company expressed by the most powerful individual in India, the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge. Also speaking in Madras, he said the passive resisters in South Africa had ‘the deep and burning sympathy of India and also of those who like myself, without being Indian, sympathise with the people of this country’. The Viceroy argued that ‘if the South African Government desires to justify itself in the eyes of India and the world, the only course open to it is to appoint a strong impartial committee, whereon Indian interests will be represented, to conduct the most searching enquiry.’
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There were some less well-known supporters of the struggle too. One A. K. Hariharan sent Rs 250 to Gokhale from Kuala Lumpur, on behalf of ‘the Indians who are employed in Railways and other petty positions in the town’. The ‘Heroes of South Africa’, said this representative of the Indian diaspora, ‘are superior to our adversaries in courage, in devotion, and in knowledge of the wants of the people’. A certain A. E. Lall, manager of a motor agency in the northern town of Peshawar, wrote to Gokhale offering his services. He had previously lived in South Africa, claimed to have ‘known Mr Gandhi intimately’, counting him ‘the best man I have met in any part of the world’.
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Kasturba Gandhi also came in for her share of praise. In early
December, while speaking at a meeting in the Bombay Town Hall, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta recalled the ‘touching episode’ wherein Kasturba told Gandhi that if the court claimed her marriage was illegal, then she would insist on joining the satyagraha. Mehta said that

Mr Gandhi must have known what it was to expose tender women to the hardship of the campaign, but in spite of his pleading, that brave lady decided to cast in her lot with those men who were fighting for the cause. History records the deeds of many heroines and I feel Mrs Gandhi will stand as one of the foremost heroines in the whole world.
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By the end of November 1913, more than 1,000 Indians were in jail. A majority were workers from Natal, punished for going on strike. The others included merchants and hawkers from the Transvaal, and followers, friends and family members of M. K. Gandhi.

Only one letter written by Gandhi from jail has survived. Written to Albert West’s sister, Devi, this asked about the routine of the boys at Phoenix, and told her to ‘remind Dev[a]das of the promises he has made me at various times’. ‘Much of my spare time is being devoted to Tamil study,’ added Gandhi. In this latest satyagraha the Tamils had shone more brightly still, and their leader was, it seems, suitably grateful.

Gandhi’s letter had specific instructions for one resident of Phoenix. This was Jeki Mehta, who had just been released from jail after the expiry of her sentence. Gandhi now wrote to Devi West that

Jekiben should adhere to the promises made by her to me. Please tell her that hardly a day passes when I do not give much thought to her. As to her diet, I do not bind her to any promises or resolutions she may have made. She may take whatever suits her constitution. But she must not only keep good health but be robust. She must grow her hair unless she has definitely heard otherwise from Dr. Mehta.
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Meanwhile, unknown to Gandhi, Jeki Mehta was the subject of angry letters written to the Government of South Africa by her estranged husband, Manilal Doctor. This other Manilal was now in Fiji, having shifted there from Mauritius. He had set up practice as a barrister in Suva, servicing the town’s Indian residents. When rumours of what his wife had been up to with his namesake Manilal Gandhi reached him,
Doctor wrote to the Governor-General, Lord Gladstone, asking that he arrange for Jeki to be sent to Fiji. The message was passed on, but Jeki declined to go. She wanted to remain with the satyagraha in South Africa.

His wife’s refusal to join him infuriated Manilal Doctor. He wrote once more to Lord Gladstone, suggesting that if Jeki courted arrest again, the sentence should be deportation, ‘in which case there would be greater chances of her cure from Mr Gandhi’s influences and therefore of settling down to a stable life with me here’. He was willing to pay the expenses of his wife’s travel to Fiji.

Since Gandhi was in jail, Manilal Doctor could not communicate with him directly. So he asked the Governor-General to tell him that