This account was then dramatized for a second time in Richard Atttenborough’s blockbuster film Gandhi, which (for this and other episodes) took Fischer’s book as its main source. The film begins with Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 and then goes straight back to his ejection from the train in 1893, making it the first major moment in the Mahatma’s life and career. Based, therefore, on a popular book and an even more popular film, the standard narrative of Gandhi’s life draws a straight, clear line from the incident at the train station on to the mass movements he later led in South Africa and in India.
The facts about the Durban attack and its prelude (till now largely unknown) make the line more jagged, more contingent, and more true. When he was thrown out of the compartment in Pietermaritzburg, Gandhi suffered no physical harm. He soon proceeded on his journey. In Durban he was beaten black and blue. The crucial difference, however, is this: in the train, Gandhi was the victim of one person’s racism, expressed at one time alone. Off the coast and when he landed in Durban, he was the target of the collective anger of (virtually) all the whites in Natal, expressed continuously for several weeks at a stretch.
The attack in Durban was far more important than the insult in Pietermaritzburg; more revealing of the racial politics of South Africa and of the challenges faced by Mohandas Gandhi himself.
6
Lawyer-Loyalist
In March 1897 Harry Escombe was elected Prime Minister of Natal, the culmination of a long career in the service of the colony. Born in London in 1838, Escombe arrived in Durban as a young man and soon became the leading light of its legal fraternity. He also made significant contributions outside the law; for instance, as chairman of the Natal Harbour Board, he supervised the removal of the sandbar that impeded the entry of ships into Durban harbour.1
As a practising lawyer, Escombe had represented Indians both in Natal and the Transvaal. He had even taken briefs for Dada Abdulla and Company. It was he who recommended Gandhi to the Natal Bar. The two men met in court and on the street, for Escombe lived a stone’s throw away from Gandhi’s home in Beach Grove.
While friendly enough on an individual level, as a politician representing a white electorate Escombe had ambivalent feelings about Indians. In 1890, just after he had entered Parliament, he was walking home when a white mechanic stopped and warned him that ‘if you do not vote for the exclusion of the Indian, out you will go.’ The encounter made him more proactive; thus, supporting the £3 tax in May 1895, he said in Parliament that it was necessary to ‘put an Indian on his guard’. The tax met the wish of white Natalians ‘that the Indians are to come here appreciated as labourers, but not welcomed as settlers and competitors’.2
The anti-Indian and anti-Gandhi demonstrations of 1896–7 consolidated Escombe’s views. When he became prime minister, his government proposed three new Acts. The first allowed the colony to deport passengers coming from places where plague or other epidemics currently raged. The second declared as a ‘prohibited immigrant’ anyone who could not sign his name in a European language. The third gave town boards the liberty to deny or refuse to renew trading licences to those who did not keep their books in English, or whose premises were ‘unprovided with proper and sufficient sanitary arrangements’.3
The words ‘Indian’ or ‘Asiatic’ did not appear in the Acts. But there was no mistaking whom they were aimed at. Introducing the new legislation, the Prime Minister said it was required to maintain Natal, ‘as far as it is possible, as a British Colony’, and save it from being ‘submerged under an Asiatic wave of immigration’. Escombe continued:
We ourselves have brought into this Colony 50,000 Indians, and other Indians to-day follow in their train because of the stories which go from here to their native villages to the effect that Natal is a paradise for Indians. And it is. And if you are to allow them to make it a paradise for Indians, you will find that, as far as Europeans are concerned, it is an exact antipodes of paradise.4
In the first months of 1897, the Parsi lawyer F. S. Taleyarkhan wrote several letters to Gandhi asking when he should come out to Durban. In early March, Gandhi wrote back wondering ‘whether it would be advisable, in the present state of public feeling, for you to land in Natal as a public man. Such a man’s life in Natal is, at present, in danger. I am certainly glad you did not accompany me.’5 Having just experienced an attack on his life, he refused to expose his friend to the risk of moving to Natal.
Two weeks later, Gandhi wrote a long letter to the Natal Mercury, his first public statement after his return. He denied that in India he had ‘blackened the character of the Colonists’, denied that he wished to swamp the colony with Indians, denied that he had any political ambition whatsoever. He was in Natal
not to sow dissensions between the two communities [of Indians and Europeans], but to endeavour to bring about a honourable reconciliation between them … I have been taught to believe that Britain and India can remain together for any length of time only if there is a common fellow feeling between the two peoples. The greatest minds in the British Isles and India are striving to meet that ideal. I am but humbly following in their footsteps, and feel that the present action of the Europeans in Natal is calculated to retard, if not altogether to frustrate, its realization.
He went on to deplore the recent introduction of Bills in the Natal Parliament ‘prejudically affecting the interests of the Indians’.6
This letter to the press was accompanied by a formal petition to the Natal Legislative Assembly (the lower house of the colony’s parliament). Despite their apparent neutrality in terms of race, said Gandhi, the new Acts were designed ‘to operate against the Indian community alone’. Those refused licences were denied the right to appeal in court. This ‘would be deemed an arbitrary measure in any part of the civilized world’.7
When the colonists were unmoved, the Natal Indian Congress wrote to the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, protesting against the Bills drafted to keep out their compatriots. It pointed out that a man learned in Indian languages would not be allowed to land in the colony, merely because he could not write his name in English.8
Chamberlain does not appear to have replied to the letter. He was inclined to recommend to Her Majesty that she grant assent to the bill. Speaking to a gathering of colonial prime ministers in London, Chamberlain said he ‘quite sympathize[d] with the determination of the white inhabitants of these Colonies which are in comparatively close proximity to millions and hundreds of millions of Asiatics that there shall not be an influx of people alien in civilization, alien in religion, alien in customs’.
When this speech was reproduced in the Natal papers, Gandhi wrote to Dadabhai Naoroji in alarm. The Colonial Secretary had ‘completely given up the Indian cause and yielded to the clamour of the different Colonies’. ‘We are powerless,’ wrote Gandhi to the acknowledged leader of the Indian community in the UK: ‘We leave the case in your hands. Our only hope lies in your again bestirring yourself with redoubled vigour in our favour.’9
Naoroji sought an appoinment with Chamberlain but was denied one. He then wrote to him with a certain resignation. ‘All I ask,’ he said, ‘is that we are repeatedly told that we are British subjects, just as much as the Queen’s subjects in this country are not slaves, and I always look forward with hope to a fulfilment of these pledges and Proclamations.’10 Pre-eminent among these pledges was one made by Queen Victoria when the British Government directly assumed charge of India in 1858. This said the Crown and the Empire were
bound to the natives of our Indian territories by the same obligations of duty which bind us to all our other subjects, and those obligations, by the blessings of Almighty God, we shall faithfully and conscientiously fulfil … And it is our further will that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified, by their education, ability, and integrity, duly to discharge.11
The Natal Acts were, as Naor
oji now reminded Chamberlain, in clear violation of this proclamation.
In September 1897, a rift in his party led to Harry Escombe resigning as prime minister. Before leaving office, he wrote to Gandhi asking him ‘to convey to the Indians the value I set on their good opinion’. Then he added a personal touch: ‘I thank you,’ he remarked, ‘for in bringing me into closer touch with them, you have allowed us to understand one another and this in itself is a great gain.’12
In view of the discriminatory legislation that Escombe had, just a few months previously, passed through the Natal Parliament, this was more than a trifle disingenuous. Could it be that even if he could not abide Indians as fellow citizens, he might yet need them as clients in court? One cannot say for certain, for before the year was out, Escombe was dead.
The house in Beach Grove where Gandhi once lived alone was now also home to his wife and children. This was the first time in the fifteen years of their marriage that Kasturba and he were running a house together. In Rajkot they had lived in a traditional joint family set-up, in a two-storey building known as ‘Kaba Gandhi no Delo’. The patriarch after whom it was named died in 1885, but his children had lived on there, now with their children. The house had many rooms but a single kitchen. Harilal and Manilal played with their cousins in the courtyard and in the streets, and regarded them, as was the custom, as brothers. At mealtimes and at bedtime, they were looked after by their aunts as well as their mother. Now, in Durban, the Gandhis were learning to live as a nuclear family, with Kasturba in sole charge of the kitchen and of her boys too.
Every morning, Gandhi left his wife and children to go to his law office, which was in a columned arcade known as Mercury Lane. His chambers were opposite the office of the city’s major newspaper, the Natal Mercury.13 Some details of Mohandas Gandhi’s law practice are contained in a set of files kept in the public archives in the capital of Natal, Pietermaritzburg.14 Much of his work had to do with getting passes and permits. The travel and residency requirements for Indians in Natal were increasingly onerous; Gandhi’s job was to effect a temporary, case-by-case, relaxation. A merchant from the Cape wanted to visit his partner in Durban; Gandhi wrote on his behalf asking for a one-month pass. Passengers en route to India were marooned in the harbour; Gandhi asked that they be allowed to see the city and return to their ship at night. A trader wished to return to India for a spell; Gandhi asked for a pass for his brother, who would stand in for him in the business.
The names of Gandhi’s clients – Dadabhai, Mutale, Munisamy, Hassanjee, Rustomjee, Appasamy, Naidoo, Edward Nundy, Thakarsi – reveal their varying affiliations. They came from Parsi, Hindu, Muslim and Christian homes, and spoke Gujarati, Urdu, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil. The range of cases was likewise impressive. An Indian who was a good typist wished to enter the Civil Service; Gandhi asked that he be accommodated when a vacancy arose. A qualified Indian doctor asked, via Gandhi, to be registered as a medical practitioner in Natal. An Indian merchant had been attacked and robbed by Europeans; his assailants were arrested and then jumped bail. Gandhi asked that his client be compensated from the amount forfeited.
A particularly interesting case was of Mahomed Hoosen, the brother of an Indian merchant in Ladysmith. Hoosen was born with only one arm and one leg. He lived in Gujarat, while his family prospered in Natal. In September 1899, Gandhi requested permission for Hoosen to join them on compassionate grounds. The family, he said, wanted to ‘have him by their side so as not only to save expense but also to afford what consolation Mahomed Hoosen can derive from being with them.’ He tellingly added: ‘The wish in my humble opinion is natural and reasonable. It does not come into conflict with the intention of the legislature namely to restrict the influx of Asiatic competitors.’ (Unfortunately, the records don’t tell us whether Mahomed Hoosen was allowed to join his family.)
The range of Gandhi’s professional contacts is also revealed in a log-book of letters sent and received by his office. His European correspondents included a Forbes, a Fairfield and a Fraser, probably all lawyers, as were his old friends A. W. Baker and F. A. Laughton (also listed here). Others were planters, a W. R. Hindson and a D. Vinden among them. Among the letters from overseas were several from Dadabhai Naoroji. The names of Gujarati merchants in Durban are not as plentiful as one might expect – this may be because only letters in English are listed, and Gandhi’s dealings with his compatriots were largely in their own language.
There is also some correspondence with the Protector of Immigrants, most likely about the treatment of indentured labourers. An Anglo-Indian supervisor at the Esperanza sugar estate had written to Gandhi about the cruel treatment of the coolies there. They were made to work very long hours, in the cold and in the pouring rain. If they complained they were beaten up. The supervisor had ‘never seen animals treated as these unfortunate creatures are’. He asked Gandhi to raise the matter with the Protector, without mentioning his informant’s name.15
The logbook runs from January 1895 to March 1898. The most intriguing entries are two letters are from a certain M. A. Jinnah. This is the man, also a Gujarati lawyer trained in London, who, in the 1930s and 1940s, became Gandhi’s most implacable Indian adversary. Historians have demonstrated that Jinnah knew of Gandhi’s public work in South Africa from about 1908. But in fact, as this logbook (discreetly tucked away, with all of Gandhi’s incoming correspondence, in a cupboard at the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad) reveals, they had first been in contact a full decade earlier.16
These letters are dated 21 January and 24 July 1897. The contents are unknown, but, from what we otherwise know of the two men’s lives, some speculation may be in order. Could Jinnah’s first letter have been a message of support on hearing of the brutal attack on Gandhi at the Point in Durban? Or might both letters have been explorations of interest in a possible career in South Africa?
In 1896, Jinnah returned from London to his home town, Karachi. Soon afterwards, he moved to Bombay. There, like Gandhi some years previously, he found it hard to establish an independent law practice. We know that Gandhi was keen to bring some barristers to Natal to help him, hence his invitation to the Parsi lawyer trained in London, F. S. Taleyarkhan. Jinnah may very well have known Taleyarkhan in London and Bombay, and thus have known of the opportunities across the ocean. Did he approach Gandhi to find out how to proceed? Or did Gandhi ask him in the first place? Jinnah was a Gujarati Muslim, in terms of personal and professional background extremely well qualified to work as a lawyer among the Indians of Natal.
That Jinnah wrote to Gandhi to commiserate on his injuries is plausible; that he wrote to ask whether they could forge a legal partnership together in South Africa is not entirely impossible. But we must speculate no more. All we now know is that, a full fifty years before Partition and the independence of India and Pakistan, the respective ‘Fathers’ of those nations were in correspondence.
Gandhi’s skills in court were admired by the Europeans who opposed him. In a case of bankruptcy, he represented one creditor, while a white lawyer named R. H. Tatham represented another. When Gandhi’s proposal to sell the debtor’s business was accepted over an alternate proposal offered by Tatham, the latter jokingly remarked: ‘Gandhi’s supreme. The triumph of black over white again.’17
The young lawyer’s work made an impression on two visitors from overseas. In March 1897, the traveller and soldier Francis Younghusband came to Natal. He met Gandhi, whom he described as ‘the spokesman of the Indian community and the butt of the [white] agitators’. He found him a ‘particularly intelligent and well-educated man’. Gandhi invited the traveller for dinner at his ‘well-furnished English villa’, where a group of Indian merchants further impressed him by talking fluently ‘on all the current events of the time. Such men as these naturally resent the use of the term “coolie” … But while they complain of being classed separately from Europeans they are much offended at Kaffirs being classed with them.’18
The following year, when the Gandhis were well e
stablished in Durban, they were visited by Pranjivan Mehta. The two had been close from their student days in London, the bond made more solid by the fact that it was in Mehta’s home in Bombay that Gandhi met the Jain seer Raychandbhai. Mehta was now based in Rangoon, running a jewellery business. In the summer of 1898 he visited Europe, and on his way back stopped in South Africa to see Gandhi. Disembarking at Cape Town, he found at once that he ‘was in a place where the colour of the skin counted for everything and [the] man nothing’. He was denied rooms in several hotels, and also treated discourteously on the long train journey from the Cape eastwards to Durban.19
Once he reached Natal, Mehta was much happier – nourished by the company of his friend, and impressed by what he was doing there. Mehta was struck by how, under Gandhi’s leadership, ‘diverse communities [of Indians] remain united and vigilant about protecting the rights of one another.’ He was moved by the diaspora’s connection to the motherland, manifest in the £1,200 sent from Natal after the great famine and plague of 1896–7. The ‘people of India’, Mehta told an audience of Gujaratis in Durban, ‘can take great pride in the kind of concern you have shown towards them, even though you are thousands of miles away from India.’20
While based in Natal, Gandhi was also drawn into the Indian question in the Transvaal. Here, the ruling race were the Boers, who spoke Afrikaans and were largely of Dutch extraction. When, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the British took firm control of the Cape, the Boers commenced their ‘great trek’ inland. They established themselves beyond the Vaal and Orange rivers, displacing the Africans and taking control of vast areas of fertile land. Their economy, and their sense of self, was founded on farming, herding and hunting. While the British coveted the coast – which provided access to their jewel in the east, India – the Boers had possession of these inland territories. In the 1850s they formed two, semi-autonomous, republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (the latter also known, from the 1880s, as the South African Republic).21