Gandhi Before India (86 page)

AC

African Chronicle

APAC/BL

Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, British Library, London

BL

British Library, London

C. M. Doke Papers

C. M. Doke Collection, Documentation Centre for African Studies, UNISA Library, Pretoria

CO

Colonial Office

CWMG

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
(New Delhi: Government of India, 1958 onwards).

Gandhi,
An Autobiography

M. K. Gandhi,
An Autobiography, or the Story of My Experiments with Truth
, translated from the Gujarati by Mahadev Desai (first published in 1927; 2nd edn, 1940; reprint Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1995). There are many print editions of Gandhi’s autobiography in English, published in India, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries. And there will be more. The book has also been translated into many languages. The pagination of these editions varies enormously. Therefore in my references to it I have cited Part and Chapter rather than page numbers. However, since the book originated in a series of newspaper articles, each chapter is merely a few pages long, so my citations will be relatively easy to track down by those who have editions other than mine, or in languages other than English.

ILN

Illustrated London News

IO

Indian Opinion

IR

Indian
Review

J. J. Doke Papers

J. J. Doke Papers, South African Baptist Union Archives, Johannesburg

KP

Hermann Kallenbach papers, in the possession of Isa Sarid, Haifa, Israel

Memorial

Memorial to The Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary for the Colonies, by the British Indians in Natal, re Anti-Indian Demonstration

MSA

Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai

NA

Natal Advertiser

NAI

National Archives of India, New Delhi

NAUK

National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew

NASA

National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria

NGM

National Gandhi Museum, Delhi

NM

Natal Mercury

NMML

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi

NYPL

New York Public Library, New York

S.N.

Serial Number(s)

SAAA

Sabarmati Ashram Archives, Ahmedabad

1
http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&275 (accessed 26 July 2011).

2.
Cf. reports in
New York Times
, 16 February 2011; and in
New Yorker
, 11 April 2011. These various affirmations, personal and political, have provoked vigorous denunciations from left-wing critics disenchanted – or even disgusted – by how widely Gandhi is admired across the world. In the
London Review of Books
, the political theorist Perry Anderson launched a three-part attack on Gandhi and his legacy, calling him an ‘autocrat’ and ‘Hindu revivalist’ whose thought contained ‘a battery of archaisms’, and whose ‘conception of himself as a vessel of divine intention allowed him to escape the trammels of human logic or coherence’. Anderson went on to suggest that Gandhi’s intellectual weaknesses were substantially responsible for the flawed nature of Indian democracy today. See
London Review of Books
, 5 July, 19 July and 2 August 2012. The length (the series ran to some 50,000 words in all), the (harsh, often angry) tone, and the fact that Anderson had never (in a five decade long career) previously written anything on Gandhi (or India) lends credence to the speculation that the series was provoked by Gandhi’s (to the Marxist) inexplicable popularity so long after his death.

3.
On Gandhi’s Gujarati and English prose styles, see, respectively, C. N. Patel,
Mahatma Gandhi in his Gujarati Writings
(New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,
1981); Sunil Khilnani, ‘Gandhi and Nehru: The Uses of English’, in Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, ed.,
An Illustrated History of English Literature in English
(New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003).

4.
The project of compiling all of Gandhi’s writings was launched in February 1956, eight years after his death. The first volume in the series was published in 1958; the ninetieth and last, in 1984. Seven supplementary volumes were then published, consisting of letters collected too late to include in the chronological volumes. A ‘subject index’ and an ‘index of persons’ followed. That made it ninety-nine; whereupon, to satisfy the Indian’s incurable love of symmetry, a book of ‘prefaces’ to the individual volumes was also brought out. The
Collected Works
have been published in three languages – English, Gujarati and Hindi.

5.
Two older books on Gandhi that deal specifically with his South African experience are Robert A. Huttenback,
Gandhi in South Africa
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971); Maureen Swan,
Gandhi: The South African Experience
(Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985). Written by scholars rather than journalists, both works were important and necessary – at the time at which they appeared. Focusing on Gandhi’s public career, neither dealt with his personal, familial or religious life. Neither scholar did any serious research on Indian sources; and of course many important sources outside India have come to light in the decades since their books were published.

6.
H. S. L. Polak, ‘Passive Resistance Movement in South Africa’, typescript composed
c.
1908–12, Mss. Afr. R. 125, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, p. 103.

7.
Bhawani Dayal,
Dakshin Africa ké Satyagraha ka Itihas
(Indore: Saraswati Sadan, 1916), p. 1 (my translation).

1.
The classical or scriptural name for this category of Hindus is ‘Vaishya’. However, the Vaishyas are more often referred to in everyday conversation as ‘Bania’ (or, in the plural, as ‘Banias’). The name is subject to regional variations and alternate spellings, among them ‘Vaniya’, ‘Baniya’ and even ‘Bunyan’.

2.
A lexicon in Gandhi’
;s mother tongue, Gujarati, says of them that
Vaniyani mochchh nichi
(‘the Bania is always ready to compromise’; literally, ‘the Bania’s moustache is ready to droop downwards’);
Vaniya Vaniya fervi tol
(‘the Bania always changes according to circumstance’);
Vaniya mugnu naam pade nahi
(‘the Bania will not commit himself to anything’). To this a Gujarati–English dictionary adds,
Jaate Vaniyabhai, etle todjod karvaman kushal
(‘Being born a merchant, he was possessed of tact and was good in settling quarrels’). See Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth,
The Shaping of Modern Gujarat: Plurality, Hinduism, and Beyond
(New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2005), p. 34.

3.
See David Hardiman,
Feeding the Baniya: Peasants and Usurers in Western India
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), especially
Chapter 4
(quotes from pp. 68–9, 71, 75).

4.
Harald Tambs-Lyche,
Power, Profit and Poetry: Traditional Society in Kathiawar, Western India
(Delhi: Manohar, 1997),
Chapter IX
(‘The Banias: The Merchant Estate’).

5.
Cf. Howard Spodek,
Urban–Rural Integration in Regional Development: A Case Study of Saurashtra, India, 1800–1960
(University of Chicago Geography Research Papers, 1976), p. 11.

6.
Ibid., pp. 2–3.

7.
Cf. Harald Tambs-Lyche, ‘Reflections on Caste in Gujarat’, in Edward Simpson and Aparna Kapadia,
The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text
(Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2010), pp. 101–2, 104, 108.

8.
C. F. Andrews, ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s Birthplace’,
The Centenary Review
(January 1938), pp. 35f.

9.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), XX:
Pardi to Pusad
, pp. 188–91.

10.
Chandran D. S. Devanesan,
The Making of the Mahatma
(Bombay: Orient Longman, 1969), pp. 100–5.

11.
Cf. Satish C. Misra,
Muslim Communities in Gujarat: Preliminary Studies in their History and Social Organization
(2nd edn, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1985).

12.
Devanesan,
Making of the Mahatma
,
Chapter 2
(‘Whirlwinds of Change: Kathiawar in the Nineteenth Century’); Howard Spodek, ‘Urban Politics in the Local Kingdoms of India: A View from the Princely States of Saurashtra under British Rule’,
Modern Asian Studies
, 7:2 (1973).

13.
This incident has been narrated, based on primary sources, in Krishnalal Mohanlal Jhaveri,
The Gujaratis: The People, their History, and Culture
, 4:
Gujarati Social Organization
(New Delhi: Indigo Books, 2002), p. 141.

14.
Pyarelal,
Mahatma Gandhi
, I:
The Early Phase
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1965), pp. 173–8.

15.
Anon.,
Heroes of the Hour: Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer
(Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1918), p. 5.

16.
See compilation no. 190, vol. 48 of 1950, Political Department, MSA.

17.
Pyarelal,
Mahatma Gandhi
, I, pp. 186–7.

18.
This account is based on the correspondence in A Proceedings 130–147 (Political), December 1869, Foreign Department, NAI.

19.
Prabhudas Gandhi,
My Childhood with Gandhiji
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1957), pp. 4–5.

20.
M. N. Buch, ‘Answers to Louis Fischer’s questions regarding Porbandar and Rajkot’, dated 9 March 1949, in Box 1, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL.

21.
Quoted in Pyarelal,
Mahatma
Gandhi
, I, p. 194.

22.
Stephen Hay, ‘Digging up Gandhi’s Psychological Roots’,
Biography
, 6:3 (1983), pp. 211–12.

23.
Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell,
Hobson-Jobson: Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical, and Discursive
(London: John Murray, 1886), p. 48.

24.
Hardiman,
Feeding the Baniya
, p. 65.

25.
For more details, see K. T. Achaya,
Indian Food: A Historical Companion
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 133ff. I do not know of a stand-alone work in English on the culinary arts of Gujarat, but a sampling of this superb cuisine may be had in restaurants such as Chetna, in the Kala Ghoda area of Mumbai, and Swati Snacks, near Law College in Ahmedabad.

26.
Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part I,
Chapter I
. A footnote (added most likely by Mahadev Desai) explains that
Chaturmas
was ‘literally a period of four months. A vow of fasting and semi-fasting during the four months of the rains. The period is a sort of long Lent’.

27.
Yagnik and Sheth,
Shaping of Gujarat
, pp. 159–60; Devanesan,
Making of the Mahatma
, p. 34.

28.
See Narayan Desai,
My Life Is My Message
, I:
Sadhana (1869–1915)
(Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2009), pp. 10–11.

29.
Cf. Pyarelal,
Mahatma Gandhi
, I, Appendix E, pp. 737–8.

30.
Imperial Gazetteer of India
, XXI:
Pushkar to Salween
, pp. 73–5.

31.
See J. M. Upadhyaya, ed.,
Mahatma Gandhi as a Student
(New Delhi: Publications Division, 1965) and
Mahatma Gandhi: A Teacher’s Discovery
(Vallabh Vidyanagar: Sardar Patel University, 1969). Unless otherwise stated, the rest of this section is based on these two books. Remarkably, the material reproduced in these books has never before been used by a Gandhi biographer.

32.
The school is referred to as ‘Alfred High School’ in some recent biographies of Gandhi. However, it acquired that name only in 1907, long after Mohandas had left it. ‘Kattywar’ is the way the British then spelt ‘Kathiawar’. In 1969, on the centenary of Gandhi’s birth, the school was renamed ‘Mahatma Gandhi Memorial High School’.

33.
Notes of an interview with Raliatbehn, 14 December 1948, in Box 1, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL. (The questions were framed by Fischer, but asked of Raliat by an Indian friend on his behalf.)

34.
See Stephen Hay, ‘B
etween Two Worlds: Gandhi’s First Impressions of British Culture’,
Modern Asian Studies
, 3:4 (1969), pp. 308–9; Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part I,
Chapter X
. The preacher’s name was H. R. Scott; years later, he identified himself in a letter to Gandhi, but disputed the Indian’s recollection that he had ‘poured abuse’ on Hindu gods. See correspondence in Mss. Eur. C. 487, APAC/BL.

35.
Upadhyaya,
Mahatma Gandhi as a Student
, pp. 14–15, 32, 35.

36.
See J. M. Upadhyaya,
Gandhiji’s Early Contemporaries and Companions
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1971), photo opposite p. 23.

37.
Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part I,
Chapters VII
and
VIII
.

38.
Cf. Stephen Hay, ‘Gandhi’s First Five Years’, in Donald Capps, Walter H. Capps and M. Gerald Bradford, eds,
Encounter with Erikson: Historical Interpretation in Religious Biography
(Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1977), fn. 5.

39.
Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part I,
Chapter III
.

40.
Arun and Sunanda Gandhi,
The Untold Story of Kasturba: Wife of Mahatma Gandhi
(Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 2000), p. 5.