The Essential Gandhi (7 page)

The dreadful night came.…

It was ten-thirty or eleven
P.M
. I was giving the massage. My uncle offered to relieve me. I was glad and went straight to the bedroom. My wife, poor thing, was fast asleep. But how could she sleep when I was there? I woke her up. In five or six minutes, however, the servant knocked at the door. I started with alarm. “Get up,” he said. “Father is very ill.” I knew of course that he was very ill and so I guessed what “very ill” meant at that moment. I sprang out of bed.

“What is the matter? Do tell me!”

“Father is no more.”

So all was over! I had but to wring my hands. I felt deeply ashamed and miserable. I ran to my father’s room. I saw that if animal passion had not blinded me I should have been spared the torture of separation from my father during his last moments. I should have been massaging him and he would have died in my arms. But now it was my uncle who had this privilege.…

[The] poor mite that was born to my wife scarcely breathed for more than three or four days. Nothing else could be expected.…
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[Kasturbai was illiterate. Her husband had every intention of teaching her but she disliked studies and he preferred love-making.]

 … By nature she was simple, independent, persevering and, with me at least, reticent.…

[Kasturbai never learned to read or write anything but elementary Gujarati, her native language.]

 … I am sure that had my love for her been absolutely untainted with lust she would be a learned lady today, for I could then have conquered her dislike for studies. I know that nothing is impossible for pure love.
¹⁸

[When his father died in 1885, Mohandas’ mother took advice on family matters from a Jain monk named Becharji Swami. Jainism prohibits the killing of any living creature, even insects. Jain priests wear white masks over their mouths lest they breathe in and thus kill an insect. They are not supposed to walk out at night lest they unwittingly step on a worm.

The Jain monk, Becharji Swami, helped Gandhi go to England.]

I passed the [high school] matriculation examination in 1887.…

My elders wanted me to pursue my studies at college after the matriculation. There was a college in Bhavnagar [a town on the inland side of the Kathiawar peninsula] as well as in Bombay and, as [it] was cheaper, I decided to go there … I went but found myself entirely at sea. Everything was difficult … I was so raw. At the end of the first term I returned home.

We had, in Mavji Dave, who was a shrewd and learned Brahman, an old friend and adviser of the family. He had kept up his connection with the family even after my father’s death.… In conversation with my mother and elder brother, he inquired about my studies.…

Joshiji—that is how we used to call old Mavji Dave—turned to me with complete assurance and asked: “Would you not rather go to England than study here?” Nothing could have been more welcome to me. I was fighting shy of my difficult studies. So I jumped at the proposal and said that the sooner I was sent the better. It was no easy business to pass examinations quickly. Could I not be sent to qualify for the medical profession?

My brother interrupted me: “Father never liked it. He had you in mind when he said that we Vaishnavas should have nothing to do with the dissection of dead bodies. Father intended you for the bar.”

My mother was sorely perplexed. She did not like the idea of parting with me.…

 … She had begun making minute inquiries. Someone had told her young men got lost in England. Someone else had said they took to meat, and yet another that they could not live there without
liquor. “How about all this?” she asked me. I said: “Will you not trust me? I shall not lie to you. I swear I shall not touch any of those things.…”

“I can trust you,” she said. “But how can I trust you in a distant land? I am dazed and know not what to do. I will ask Becharji Swami.”

 … He came to my help and said: “I shall get the boy solemnly to take the three vows and then he can be allowed to go.” He administered the oath and I vowed not to touch wine, women and meat. This done, my mother gave her permission.
¹⁹

With my mother’s permission and blessings, I set off exultantly for Bombay, leaving my wife with a baby of a few months.…

Time hung heavily on my hands in Bombay. I dreamt continually of going to England.

Meanwhile my caste-people were agitated over my going abroad.… A general meeting of the caste was called and I was summoned to appear before it. I went. How I suddenly managed to muster up courage I do not know. Nothing daunted, and without the slightest hesitation, I came before the meeting. The Sheth—the headman of the community—who was distantly related to me and had been on very good terms with my father, thus accosted me:

“In the opinion of the caste your proposal to go to England is not proper. Our religion forbids voyages abroad. We have also heard that it is not possible to live there without compromising our religion. One is obliged to eat and drink with Europeans!”

To which I replied: “I do not think it is at all against our religion to go to England. I intend going there for further studies. And I have solemnly promised to my mother to abstain from the three things you fear most. I am sure the vow will keep me safe.”

“But we tell you,” rejoined the Sheth, “that it is
not
possible to keep our religion there. You know my relations with your father and you ought to listen to my advice.”

“I know these relations,” said I. “And you are as an elder to me. But I am helpless in this matter. I cannot alter my resolve to go to England. My father’s friend and adviser, who is a learned Brahman, sees no objection to my going to England and my mother and brother have also given me their permission.”

“But will you disregard the orders of the caste?”

“I am really helpless. I think the caste should not interfere in the matter.”

This incensed the Sheth. He swore at me. I sat unmoved. So the Sheth pronounced his order: “This boy shall be treated as an outcaste from today. Whoever helps him or goes to see him off at the dock shall be punishable with a fine of one rupee four annas” [about fifty cents].

The order had no effect on me and I took my leave of the Sheth. But I wondered how my brother would take it. Fortunately he remained firm and wrote to assure me that I had his permission to go, the Sheth’s order notwithstanding.
²⁰

[Gandhi bought a steamer ticket, a necktie, a short jacket and enough food, chiefly sweets and fruit, for the three weeks to Southampton. On September 4, 1888, he sailed. He was not yet nineteen. Several months earlier, Kasturbai had borne him a male child and they called it Harilal. Now the voyage to England gave Gandhi “a long and healthy separation” from his wife.]

The storm in my caste over my foreign voyage was still brewing [on Gandhi’s return three years later]. It had divided the caste into two camps, one of which immediately re-admitted me, while the other was bent on keeping me out.…

I never tried to seek admission to the section that had refused it. Nor did I feel even mental resentment against any of the headmen.… Some of these regarded me with dislike but I scrupulously avoided hurting their feelings. I fully respected the caste regulations about excommunication. According to these, none of my relations, including my father-in-law and mother-in-law and even my sister and brother-in-law, could entertain me and I would not so much as drink water at their houses. They were prepared secretly to evade the prohibition but it went against the grain with me to do a thing in secret that I would not do in public.

The result of my scrupulous conduct was that I never had the occasion to be troubled by the caste.… I have experienced nothing but affection and generosity from the general body of the section that still regards me as excommunicated. They have even helped
me in my work without ever expecting me to do anything for the caste. It is my conviction that all these good things are due to my non-resistance. Had I agitated for being admitted to the caste, had I attempted to divide it into more camps, had I provoked the caste-men, they would surely have retaliated and, instead of steering clear of the storm, I should … have found myself in a whirlpool of agitation.…
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[After arrival in London] I was very uneasy … I would continually think of my home and country. My mother’s love always haunted me. At night the tears would stream down my cheeks and home memories of all sorts made sleep out of the question. It was impossible to share my misery with anyone. And even if I could have done so, where was the use? I knew of nothing that would soothe me. Everything was strange—the people, their ways and even their dwellings. I was a complete novice in the matter of English etiquette and had to be on my guard. There was the additional inconvenience of the vegetarian vow. Even the dishes I could eat were tasteless and insipid.…
¹

[An English friend] had not ceased to worry about me. His love for me led him to think that if I persisted in my objections to meat-eating I should not only develop a weak constitution but should remain a duffer because I should never feel at home in English society.…

 … I could see and appreciate the love by which all my friend’s efforts were actuated and my respect for him was all the greater on account of our differences in thought and action.

But I decided that I should … assure him I would be clumsy no more but try to become polished and [cultivate] other accomplishments which fitted one for polite society. And for this purpose I undertook the all too impossible task of becoming an English gentleman.

The clothes after the Bombay cut that I was wearing were, I thought, unsuitable … and I got new ones … I also went in for a chimney-pot hat costing nineteen shillings [three dollars]—an
excessive price in those days.… I wasted ten pounds [about forty dollars] on an evening suit made in Bond Street, the center of fashionable life in London, and got my good and noble-hearted brother to send me a double watch-chain of gold. It was not correct to wear a ready-made tie and I learnt the art of tying one for myself. While in India the mirror had been a luxury permitted on the days when the family barber gave me a shave; here I wasted ten minutes every day before a huge mirror watching myself arranging my tie and parting my hair in the correct fashion. My hair was by no means soft and every day it meant a regular struggle with the brush to keep it in position.…
²

[Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha, an Indian then a student in London, recalls meeting Gandhi in February, 1890, in Piccadilly Circus. Gandhi, he says, “was wearing at the time a high silk top hat ‘burnished bright,’ a stiff and starched collar [known as a Gladstonian], a rather flashy tie displaying all the colors of the rainbow, under which there was a fine striped silk shirt. He wore as his outer clothes a morning coat, a double-breasted waistcoat and dark striped trousers to match, and not only patent-leather shoes but spats over them. He also carried leather gloves and a silver-mounted stick but wore no spectacles. His clothes were regarded as the very acme of fashion for young men about town at that time and were largely in vogue among the Indian youth prosecuting their studies in law at one of the four institutions called the Inns of Court.” The Inner Temple, the one in which Gandhi enrolled, was considered by Indians “the most aristocratic,” says Dr. Sinha.
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]