Read Gandhi Before India Online
Authors: Ramachandra Guha
51.
‘National Convention re Asiatic Question held at the Opera House, Pretoria, Thursday, 10 November 1904: Verbatim Record of Proceedings’, in Natal Government Records (on microfilm), Reel 3, Accession No. 2176, NMML.
52.
Governor of the Transvaal to Secretary of State for the Colonies, letters of 13 May and 13 July 1904, in ibid.
53.
M. K. Gandhi to Private Secretary
to Lord Milner, High Commissioner and Governor of the Transvaal, 3 September 1904, in Natal Government Records (on microfilm), Reel 3, Accession No. 2176, NMML. (This letter is not in
CWMG
.)
54.
Cf. Arthur Percival Newton, ed.,
Select Documents Relating to the Unification of South Africa
(1924; reprint, London: Frank Cass, 1968), vol. II, pp. 1–2.
55.
Letter of 3 October 1904,
CWMG
, IV, pp. 272–3.
56.
Emily Hobhouse, quoted in Adam Hochschild,
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p. 34.
57.
Saul Dubow, ‘How British Was the British World? The Case of South Africa’,
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
, 37:1 (2009), p. 13.
58.
John Ruskin,
‘Unto This Last’: Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy
, edited and introduced by Lloyd J. Hubenka (first published 1860; this edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967).
59.
Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part IV, Chapter XVIII. Cf. also M. L. Dantwala, ‘Gandhiji and Ruskin’s
Unto This Last’
,
Economic and Political Weekly
, 4 November 1995.
60.
CWMG
, IV, pp. 319–21.
61.
West, ‘In the Early Days with Gandhi – 1’.
62.
Letter of 13 January 1905,
CWMG
, IV, pp. 332–3.
63.
Sir William Wedderburn to Colonial Office, 13 January 1899, in Natal Government House Records, Reel 2 (Accession No. 2175), NMML.
64.
‘Notes taken at interview with Sir Denzil Ibbetson on the 5 February 1903’, in Natal Government House Records, Reel 1 (Accession No. 2174), NMML.
65.
Note dated 23 May 1904, in Mss. Eur. F 111/258, APAC/BL.
1.
Eric Itzkin,
Gandhi’s Johannesburg: Birthplace of Satyagraha
(Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2000), pp. 61–3.
2.
H. S. L. Polak, ‘Early Years (1869–1914)’, in H. S. L. Polak, H. N. Brailsford and Lord Pethick-Lawrence,
Mahatma Gandhi
(London: Oldhams Press Limited, 1949), p. 49.
3.
Ramadas Gandhi,
Sansmaran,
translated from Gujarati to Hindi by Shankar Joshi (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1970), pp. 12–13, 47–8.
4.
See
IO
, 7 January and 13 May 1905.
5.
Reports in
IO
, 22 and 29 April 1905.
6.
Reports in
IO
, 7 January and 18 February 1905.
7.
Reports in
IO
, 27 May, 3 June, 5 August and 2 September 1905.
8.
CWMG
, V, pp. 5, 27–8, 50–52, 56–7, 61–2.
9.
CWMG
, IV, p. 441; V, pp. 65–8.
10.
CWMG
, V, p. 55; IV, p. 347.
11.
This account of Gandhi’s lectures and their aftermath draws on
CWMG
, IV, pp. 368–70, 375–7, 405–9, 430–1, 454, 458–9, 468–9; V, pp. 42, 49–50;
and on letters in the Gujarati section of
Indian Opinion
, issues of 20 May, 3 and 17 June 1905.
12.
IO
, issues of 4 and 11 November 1905,
CWMG
, V, pp. 121–2, 131–2.
13.
Gandhi to Revashankar Jhaveri, 18 July 1905, in
CWMG
, V, p. 21.
14.
See Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal,
Harilal Gandhi: A Life
, edited and translated from the Gujarati by Tridip Suhrud (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007), pp. 6–7.
15.
Gandhi to Chhaganlal, 27 September 1905,
CWMG
, V, p. 78.
16.
Millie Graham Polak,
Mr Gandhi: The Man
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931), pp. 17–18.
17.
Gandhi to Millie Graham, 3 July 1905,
CWMG
, XCVI, pp. 1–2.
18.
Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part IV, Chapter XXII.
19.
Millie Polak,
Mr Gandhi
, pp. 21–7, 29–35, 43–5, 62–3.
20.
H. S. L. Polak, ‘Mahatma Gandhi: Some Early Reminscences’, typescript probably from the early 1930s, in Mss Eur D.1238/1, APAC/BL.
21.
Millie Polak,
Mr Gandhi
, pp. 25–6.
22.
Report in
IO
, 27 January 1906.
23.
Editorial in
IO
, 16 June 1906.
24.
Cf. Isaac Deutscher, ‘The Non-Jewish Jew’ (based on a lecture to the World Jewish Congress, February 1958), in Deutscher,
The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays
(1968; reprint, London: Merlin Press, 1981).
25.
See Richard Mendelsohn,
Sammy Marks: ‘The Uncrowned King of the Transvaal’
(Cape Town: David Philip, 1991), especially
Chapter 11
.
26.
Gandhi to Kallenbach, undated,
c.
1904–5, handwritten, in KP. This letter is not in
CWMG
.
27.
See Prabhudas Gandhi,
My Childhood with Gandhiji
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1957), pp. 59–60.
28.
IO
, 24 March 1906,
CWMG
, V, p 243. On Gandhi’s friendship with Dr Abdurahman, see also Gavin Lewis,
Between the Wire and the Wall: A History of South African ‘Coloured’ Politics
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), pp. 54, 63, 78, etc.; and James D. Hunt, ‘Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa’,
Gandhi Marg
, April–June 1989.
29.
Joseph J. Doke,
M. K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot in South Africa
(London: The London Indian Chronicle, 1909), pp. 1–2. For more on Doke, see
Chapters 11
to
14
below.
30.
J. H. Balfour Browne,
South Africa: A Glance at Current Conditions and Politics
(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1905), pp. 200–202.
31.
See Saul Dubow, ‘Colonial Nationalism, the Milner Kindergarten, and the Rise of “South Africanism”, 1902–10,
History Workshop Journal
, 43 (Spring 1997).
32.
Letter of 21
September 1905, A Proceedings, no. 11, April 1906, Department of Commerce and Industry (Emigration), NAI.
33.
Letter of 21 May 1906, ibid., no. 3, May 1906.
34.
CWMG
, V, pp. 142–52, 236–8.
35.
See reports in
IO
, 3 March, 17 March, 26 May and 9 June 1906; Charles DiSalvio,
The Man Before the Mahatma: M. K. Gandhi, Attorney-at-Law
(NOIDA, UP: Random House India, 2012), pp. 209–13.
36.
Montford Chamney, ‘Mahatma Ghandi [
sic
] in the Transvaal’, typescript dated
c.
1935, Mss Eur. C. 859, APAC/BL, pp. 6, 16–17.
37.
Gandhi to M. Chamney, letters of 9 March, 9 April and 19 May 1906 (not in
CWMG
); Chamney to Assistant Colonial Secretary, 9 April 1906, all in Natal Government Records (on microfilm), Reel 3, Accession No. 2176, NMML.
38.
See Shula Marks,
Reluctant Rebellion: The 1906
–
8 Disturbances in Natal
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), Part IV.
39.
IO
, 28 April 1906.
40.
IO
, 16 and 23 June 1906.
41.
CWMG
, V, pp. 281–2, 348, 368–74.
42.
Edward Roux,
Time Longer than Rope: The Black Man’s Struggle for Freedom in South Africa
(first published 1948; 2nd edn, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pp. 96, 104.
43.
Padmanabh S. Jaini,
The Jaina Path of Purification
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 175–6, 183.
44.
Quoted in James Laidlaw,
Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society among the Jains
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 237.
45.
Gandhi, ‘Preface to “Srimad Rajchandra”’,
CWMG
, XXXII, p. 6.
46.
Cf. Gail Hinich Sutherland,
Nonviolence, Comsumption and Community among Ancient Indian Ascetics
(Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1997), pp. 6–7 and
passim
.
47.
Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part III,
Chapters VII
and
VIII
.
48.
‘The First Step’, in
The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy
, vol. XIX, translated and edited by Leo Wiener (Boston: Dana Estes and Company, 1905), pp. 391–2 and
passim
.
1.
Eric Itzkin,
Gandhi’s Johannesburg: Birthplace of Satyagraha
(Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2000), pp. 68–9.
2.
Millie Graham Polak, ‘My South African Days with Gandhiji’,
Indian Review
, October 1964.
3.
Unlike in early modern Europe, wealthy Indian merchants were not often patrons of the arts or of artists. The patronage of art and music was more characteristic of Kshatriya and Muslim nobles; besides, Banias did not want to draw attention to great wealth if they had it.
A third, enduring, Gandhi characteristic may also be a residue of his Bania upbringing – an indifference to, and a lack of ability in, modern sports such as cricket, football, and tennis.
4.
These paragraphs on Gandhi’s life with the Polaks in Johannesburg in 1906 are based on Millie Graham Polak,
Mr Gandhi: The Man
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931), pp. 70–87.
5.
The letter is reproduced in Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal,
Harilal Gandhi: A Life
, edited and translated from the Gujarati by Tridip Suhrud (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007), pp. 225–6.
6.
Chanchal was also known as ‘Gulab’. Many girls in Saurashtra carried two names, one given by the mother’s family, the other by the father’s family. In this book however I have referred to her as ‘Chanchal’ throughout, or by its diminutive, ‘Chanchi’, by which she was also known.
7.
Gandhi to Laxmidas, 27 May 1906,
CWMG
, V, p. 334–5.
8.
Gandhi to Chamney, 13 August 1906, in File E 26/8, vol. 215, ‘ND’, NASA. This letter is not in
CWMG
.
9.
Chamney to Gandhi, 15 September 1906; Gandhi to Chamney, 17 September 1906 (not in
CWMG
), both in File E 26/8, vol. 215, ‘ND’, NASA.
10.
Letter of 27 September, in
CWMG
, V, pp. 408–9.
11.
Bala Pillay,
British Indians in the Transvaal: Trade, Politics and Imperial Relations, 1885–1906
(London: Longman, 1976), pp. 210–12.
12.
Statement to the press, 4 August 1906, in Natal Government Records (on microfilm), Reel 2, Accession No. 2175, NMML.
13.
See Deborah Lavin,
From Empire to Commonwealth: A Biography of Lionel Curtis
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 59–60.
14.
Lionel Curtis, quoted in Keith Breckenridge, ‘Gandhi’s Progressive Disillusionment: Thumbs, Fingers, and the Rejection of Scientific Modernism in
Hind Swaraj’
,
Public Culture
, 23:2 (2011), p. 339.
15.
See Lionel Curtis, With
Milner in South Africa
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951), p. 348. Curtis probably meant Trinidad or Guyana rather than Jamaica. In a book published in 1908, he outlined his larger vision for South Africa:
The present population of white to coloured is one to six; and how far the future population is to be drawn from the higher and how far from the lower races of mankind is the issue which hangs on the native problem of to-day. The answer depends upon whether South Africa accommodates her industrial system to the habits of the whites or to those of the coloured races. If the system is one in which the lower races thrive better than the higher, the coloured element will grow at the expense of the European. South Africa will then sink to the level of States such as those of central and southern America – republics in name and not seldom tyrannies in fact, unequal to the task of their own internal government and too weak to exert an influence on the world’s affairs. If, on the other hand, the scheme of society offers the white population, instead of the coloured population, to be
built up from outside as well as from its own natural increase, so that in the course of years the one gains upon the other, this country will gradually assume its place beside England, the United States, Canada, or Australia, as one of the powers of the world and share in the direction of its future.
To achieve this ideal, said Curtis, the ‘promotion and control of immigration is a matter of supreme importance’. The Asiatic Ordinance was therefore a natural outcome of this view of the world – and of South Africa in particular. See Anon.,
The Government of South Africa
(2 vols) (South Africa: Central News Agency, Ltd., 1908), vol. 1, pp. 156–8. Although without an author (or place of publication), the All Souls copy of this book has ‘by L. G. Curtis’ written on it in pencil on the title page. It appears the book was compiled and edited by Curtis on the basis of reports on different subjects written by others, which he then wove into a single, coherent narrative.
16.
CWMG
, V, pp. 400–405, 409–12.
17.
Gregorowski to Gandhi 6 September 1906, quoted in Pyarelal,
Mahatma Gandhi
, III:
The Birth of Satyagraha – from Petitioning to Passive Resistance
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1986) pp. 492–3.