The Essential Gandhi (9 page)

“But please hear me out,” said I. That made him more angry. He called his peon and ordered him to show me the door. I was still hesitating when the peon came in, placed his hands on my shoulders and put me out of the room.

 … I pocketed the insult but also profited by it. “Never again shall I place myself in such a false position, never again shall I try to exploit friendship in this way,” said I to myself and since then I have never been guilty of a breach of that determination. This shock changed the course of my life.
⁶

[At this juncture a business firm of Porbandar Moslems offered to send Gandhi to South Africa for a year as their lawyer. He seized the opportunity to see a new country and have new experiences.]

 … I wanted somehow to leave India.…
⁷

This time I felt only the pang of parting with my wife. Another baby [a second son named Manilal] had been born to us since my return from England. Our love could not yet be called free from lust but it was getting gradually purer. Since my return from Europe we had lived together very little and … I had now become her teacher, however indifferent.… But the attraction of South Africa rendered the separation bearable. “We are bound to meet again in a year,” I said to her, by way of consolation.…
⁸

[Gandhi was a self-remade man and the transformation began in South Africa. It is not that he turned failure into success. Using the clay that was there he turned himself into another person. His was a remarkable case of second birth in one lifetime.]

[When Gandhi landed at Durban, Natal, in May, 1893, his mission was simply to win a lawsuit, earn some money and, perhaps, at long last start his career. As he left the boat to meet his employer, a Moslem businessman named Dada Abdulla Sheth, Gandhi wore a fashionable frock coat, pressed trousers, shining shoes and a turban.

The lawsuit required Gandhi’s presence in Pretoria, the capital of Transvaal. First-class accommodations were purchased for him at Durban, where he boarded the train for the overnight journey.]

The train reached Maritzburg, the capital of Natal, at about 9
P.M
. [A white man entered the compartment] and looked me up and down. He saw that I was a “colored” man. This disturbed him. Out he went and came in with one or two officials. They all kept quiet, when another official came to me and said, “Come along, you must go to the van [third class] compartment.”

“But I have a first-class ticket,” said I.

“That doesn’t matter,” rejoined the other. “I tell you, you must go to the van compartment.”

“I tell you, I was permitted to travel in this compartment at Durban and I insist on going on in it.”

“No you won’t,” said the official. “You must leave this compartment or else I shall have to call a police constable to push you out.”

“Yes you may. I refuse to get out voluntarily.”

The constable came. He took me by the hand and pushed me out. My luggage also was taken out … and the train steamed away. I went and sat in the waiting room.…

It was winter, and winter in the higher regions of South Africa is severely cold. Maritzburg being at a high altitude, the cold was extremely bitter. My overcoat was in my luggage but I did not dare
to ask for it …
¹
lest I might be insulted and assaulted once again.
²
[So] I sat and shivered. There was no light in the room.…
³

 … Sleep was out of the question.…
⁴

I began to think of my duty. Should I fight for my rights or go back to India or should I go on to Pretoria without minding the insults and return to India after finishing the case? It would be cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation. The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial—only a symptom of the deep disease of color prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process. Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the color prejudice.
⁵

 … This resolution somewhat pacified and strengthened me but I did not get any sleep.

 … I suffered further insults and received more beatings on my way to Pretoria. But all this only confirmed me in my determination.

Thus … I obtained full experience of the condition of Indians in South Africa.…
⁶

[Many years later in India, Dr. John R. Mott, a Christian missionary, asked Gandhi, “What have been the most creative experiences in your life?” In reply, Gandhi told the story of the night in the Maritzburg Station.
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]

I will not describe my bitter experience in the courts within a fortnight of my arrival, the hardships I encountered … and the difficulty in, and the practical impossibility of, securing accommodation in hotels. Suffice it to say that all these experiences sank into me.…
⁸

[Within a week of his arrival in Pretoria, Gandhi summoned all the Indians of the city to a meeting. He wanted “to present to them a picture of their condition.” He was twenty-four. This was his first public speech. The audience consisted of Moslem merchants interspersed with a few Hindus.]

 … I had always heard the merchants say truth was not possible in business. I did not think so then nor do I now.… I strongly contested this position in my speech and awakened the merchants to a sense of their duty.…

I had found our peoples’ habits to be insanitary as compared with those of the Englishmen around them and drew their attention to it. I laid stress on the necessity of forgetting all distinctions such as Hindus, Mussalmans [Moslems], Parsis, Christians … and so on.

 … As I felt knowledge of English would be useful in that country I advised those who had leisure to learn English. I told them it was possible to learn a language even at an advanced age and cited cases of people who had done so. I undertook, besides, to teach a class if one was started or to instruct individuals personally.…

 … I had no misgivings regarding my capacity to teach. My pupils might become tired but not I.…
⁹

[A barber, a clerk and a shopkeeper accepted his offer. Gandhi dogged them for months and would not let them be lazy or lax in their studies.]

I was satisfied with the result of the meeting. It was decided to hold such meetings … once a week or, maybe, once a month. These were held more or less regularly and … there was a free exchange of ideas. The result was that there was now in Pretoria no Indian I did not know or whose condition I was not acquainted with.…
¹⁰

[I] felt it would be well if a permanent organization was formed to watch Indian interests. But where was I to live and how? [The Indian community] offered me a regular salary but I expressly declined. One may not receive a large salary for public work. Besides, I was a pioneer. According to my notions at the time I
thought I should live in a style usual for barristers [attorneys] and reflecting credit on the community, and that would mean great expense. It would be improper to depend for my maintenance upon a body whose activities would necessitate a public appeal for funds, and my power of work would be thereby crippled. For this and similar reasons I flatly refused to accept remuneration for public work. But I suggested I was prepared to stay if the principal traders among them could see their way to give me legal work and give me retainers for it beforehand.… We might deal with each other for [a year], examine the results and then continue … if both parties were agreeable. This suggestion was cordially accepted by all.

I applied for admission as an advocate of the Supreme Court of Natal. The Natal Law Society opposed my application on the sole ground that the law did not contemplate that colored barristers should be placed on the roll.… The Senior Court over-ruled the Law Society’s objection and granted my application.… The newspapers of South Africa ridiculed the Law Society and some of them even congratulated me.

 … I had never attended a session of the Indian National Congress [Party of India] but had read about it.… I was … a Congress devotee and wished to popularize the name. Inexperienced as I was, I did not try to find out a new name. I was also afraid of committing a mistake. So I advised the Indians to call their organization the Natal Indian Congress.… [It] worked throughout the year and those who paid an annual subscription of at least three pounds [about fifteen dollars] were admitted to membership.… About three hundred members were enrolled in a month. They included Hindus, Moslems, Parsis and Christians.… The well-to-do traders went about far-off villages in their own conveyances enrolling new members and collecting subscriptions.… Some [potential members had] to be persuaded. This persuasion was a sort of political training and made people acquainted with the facts of the situation.… [A] meeting of the Congress was held at least once a month, when detailed accounts were presented and adopted. Current events were explained and recorded in the minute-book. Members asked various questions. Fresh subjects were considered. The advantage of all this was that those who
never spoke at such meetings got accustomed to do so.… All this was a novel experience. The community was deeply interested.…
¹¹

[Another] feature of the Congress was propaganda. This consisted in acquainting the English in South Africa and England and people in India with the real state of things in Natal.…
¹²

Side by side with external agitation the question of internal improvement was also taken up. The Europeans throughout South Africa had been agitating against Indians on the ground of their ways of life. They always argued that the Indians were very dirty and close-fisted. They lived in the same place where they traded.… How could clean open-handed Europeans with their multifarious wants compete in trade with such parsimonious and dirty people? Lectures were therefore delivered, debates held, and suggestions made at Congress meetings on subjects such as domestic sanitation, personal hygiene, the necessity of having separate buildings for houses and shops and for well-to-do traders, of living in a style befitting their position.…

 … Steps were taken to save the community from the habit of exaggeration. Attempts were always made to draw their attention to their own shortcomings. Whatever force there was in the arguments of the Europeans was duly acknowledged. Every occasion when it was possible to coöperate with the Europeans on terms of equality and consistent with self-respect, was heartily availed of. The newspapers were supplied with as much information about the Indian movement as they could publish, and whenever Indians were unfairly attacked in the press, replies were sent to the newspapers concerned.
¹³

All this activity resulted in winning the Indians numerous friends in South Africa and in obtaining the active sympathy of all parties in India. It also opened out and placed before the South African Indians a definite line of action.
¹⁴

[The lawsuit for which Gandhi came to South Africa brought him into contact with Roman Catholics, Quakers and Protestants. Some of them tried to convert him to Christianity. Gandhi did not discourage their efforts. He read the books they gave him and tried to answer their searching questions about Indian religions. None of the books made much of an impression on him, however—except one.]

Tolstoy’s
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking, profound morality and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me … seemed to pale into insignificance.
¹⁵

[Gandhi’s Christian friends taught him the essence of Christianity. They said if he believed in Jesus he would find redemption.]

“If this be the Christianity acknowledged by all Christians, I cannot accept it,” [Gandhi told them]. “I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself.… Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless.”
¹⁶

[Gandhi liked the sweet Christian hymns and many of the Christians he met. But he could not regard Christianity as the perfect religion or the greatest religion.]

 … It was impossible for me to believe that I could go to heaven or attain salvation only by becoming a Christian.…

 … I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born.… The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles.…