for the psychological moment when the publication of it in a similar sensational manner to my last donation, might again touch the emotions of some people, and goad them into making a second effort to keep alive this struggle of our cause in South Africa, which is getting so painfully feeble day by day owing to the want of financial support.41
Gokhale wrote back that the atmosphere in India was not very encouraging. He did not think that a public announcement of Tata’s bequest would stimulate other donations. The philanthrophist found it hard to accept that ‘the finer feelings are dead amongst all our countrymen’, but deferred to the judgement of the man on the spot. In that case, he would send the money directly to Gandhi. As he saw it,
once the struggle in South Africa is given up, the whites will see that Indians have not grit enough to fight to a finish and that wherever Indians are not wanted, the whites have only to persist long enough, to drive them out of any country. It is pitiful to see a handful of Indians suffering and fighting for the rights of a whole nation, whilst that nation sits inertly and watches the struggle with absolute indifference.42
Ratan Tata had asked Gokhale to ‘embody my views in a letter to Mr Ghandi [sic]’.43 What Gokhale wrote to Gandhi is unrecorded. We do know however that on 18 November 1910, Ratan Tata sent Gandhi a cheque for Rs 25,000, with a brief note saying that ‘the admiration and good wishes of all true Indians are with you in your noble work.’44
Meanwhile, on his tour across India, by his enthusiasm and his eloquence Polak had proved Tata right and Gokhale wrong. In nine months on the road he had raised over Rs 50,000, with contributions, big and small, coming from Hindu Maharajas, Muslim nawabs, Parsi millionaires, Christian clergymen, and secularized members of a growing middle class.45
In the last week of August 1910, after nearly a year in his friend’s homeland, Henry Polak returned to South Africa. At a farewell meeting in Madras, Annie Besant paid tribute to his work for the Indians of the Transvaal. ‘Himself of a persecuted race, whose blood has been shed in every country in Europe,’ Polak had not ‘allowed himself to be soured and embittered by the suffering of his kinsfolk. He has shown himself to possess a heart softened, and … he finds in the suffering of others a reason for taking the cause of the other.’46
From Madras Polak took a train to Bombay, where he boarded a ship for South Africa. He arrived in Durban at daybreak on 28 September. Gandhi was there to receive him, along with some 400 other Indians. A few at least had been inspired to go there by Sheikh Mehtab, Gandhi’s once-estranged friend who was now a vigorous cheerleader for his movement. In a poem in Indian Opinion Mehtab told his compatriots to come to the Point to greet their English friend. For
Polak awakened India
He declared that no indentured labourers will come
He has conquered a citadel [of power]
Honour him, putting flower garlands on his back.
Their welcome, continued the poet, should confirm the spirit of inter-religious solidarity. When Polak came ashore, the Indians must
Sing the songs of Vande Matram and Allah Akbar
Shower him with basketfuls of pearls
Indians with shawls or Turkish caps
Pick up the arrow of unity and
Shoot disunity down.47
After a few days at Phoenix, the friends returned together to the city. On the morning of 4 October, Gandhi and Polak went down to the Point to welcome a shipload of Natal Indians previously deported to Madras and Bombay for illegally entering the Transvaal. Here Polak told a reporter that ‘our programme will remain, as it has always been, not one of violence or attempts to disturb, but one of suffering on the part of our people, who intend to go on enduring these hardships until they make the authorities ashamed of themselves.’48
That same evening, the Indians of Natal threw a large reception for Polak. A little Tamil girl presented him with a rose buttonhole ‘amid continuous cheering’. An address was read out on behalf of the hosts: this saluted Polak’s ‘noble and self-sacrificing work’ in India, by which, he was told, ‘you have identified yourself with our troubles and sorrows in a manner in which very few Europeans or Indians have.’49
Among the Indians, Henry Polak was known as ‘Keshavlal’, since he had long, uncut locks like Lord Krishna himself. But the name also suited him in other respects, since he was likewise playful, mischievous, a romantic at heart, and yet possessed of a sharp political intelligence. Gandhi’s other great European friend, Kallenbach, was known as ‘Hanuman’, to denote his unquestioning devotion to his Lord (here Gandhi rather than Ram) and his willingness to put his muscles (in this case, financial as well as physical) at his master’s service.50
The reception for Henry Polak in Durban was followed by a meeting to discuss the current state of the movement. When Gandhi began speaking, in English, the crowd shouted: ‘Tamil! Tamil!’ Gandhi answered that if General Smuts sent him to jail again he would have the time, and leisure, to learn their language. Meanwhile, he passed on the responsibility to his nephew Maganlal, who was now managing Phoenix and Indian Opinion on Gandhi’s behalf. Since his elder brother Chhagan was in London (on a scholarship funded by Pranjivan Mehta), Magan, in Natal, would study Tamil seriously, and thus become a bridge between his uncle and the most committed of his supporters. Gandhi wrote regularly to Magan asking about his progress. ‘Do not give up your study of Tamil,’ began one letter. ‘I have a constant feeling that you alone and none else will be able to master Tamil,’ said another.51
Gandhi was now very keen to be arrested. Every month, he would visit Natal and cross back into the Transvaal without registration papers. The authorities stayed their hand, but when, in early November, he brought with him some other Indians, they detained a woman named Mrs Sodha, whose husband was already in prison. The police declared her to be an illegal alien. Gandhi was able to get the case adjourned, and to proceed with Mrs Sodha and her children to Tolstoy Farm. He wired the Minister of the Interior, General Smuts, seeking permission to keep them on the farm till Mr Sodha had served out his term. He pointed out that ‘hitherto Indian women have been left unmolested.’ When Smuts answered that the law would take its course, Gandhi told the press that while the ‘Government are at war with Indian males’, the ‘community was, however, unprepared for an unchivalrous attack on its womanhood’. Mrs Sodha was not a competitor in trade; indeed, ‘a meeker woman’ could not perhaps be found anywhere in South Africa. ‘Whatever may be their views on Asiatic immigration or on the question of general passive resistance,’ asked Gandhi, ‘will not the Christian men and women of this Union rise in unanimous protest against this latest parody of administration on the part of the Government?’52
The invocation of the rulers’ faith was in character. Gandhi was calling on them to recognize the divine rather than devilish aspects of Christianity, and to have empathy for the suffering of all religions (and nationalities). To show them the Path, Gandhi organized an inter-faith picnic on Christmas Day, turning Tolstoy Farm, otherwise a place of work and contemplation, into a theatre of joy and celebration. Three hundred guests from Johannesburg joined the fifty-odd settlers for the festivities. The children ‘were let loose on Mr Kallenbach’s fruit trees, which … they did not treat with any very great consideration. They plucked both ripe and unripe fruit, and what they could not eat they took for future consumption in their kerchiefs.’ At noon, lunch was served, khichri and vegetables followed by plum pudding. Afterwards a series of running and jumping competitions were held. The eating and playing was supervised by two Jewish ladies, Sonja Schlesin and Mrs William Vogt.53
Five days after this party, the case of Mrs Ramabhai Sodha came up for hearing in Johannesburg. The accused had with her two small children, aged eight months and three years respectively. Gandhi served as her lawyer and interpreter. The proceedings were watched by a full house, mostly of Indians, but also including Gandhi’s European friends (and followers) Joseph Doke, Hermann Kallenbach, Mrs Vogt and Sonja Schlesin.
/> The prosecution claimed that Mrs Sodha was brought to Transvaal ‘for the purpose of agitating against the Asiatic Act’. Gandhi said this was ‘entirely wrong’. In Natal, ‘Mrs Sodha was living in a lonely place. And she could be best protected at Tolstoy Farm.’ The judge sentenced Mrs. Sodha to a £10 fine and one month’s imprisonment, but she was released on bail pending an appeal.54
The echoes of the Sodha case reached London, where the Colonial Office received a petition of protest from the All India Muslim League. Gandhi was said to have rescued Mrs Sodha and her children from ‘a state of destitution’. Her prosecution was thus ‘particularly harsh, if not actually cruel’. Sent this petition by London, the Transvaal Ministers answered that Gandhi had crossed the border with Mrs Sodha ‘with the deliberate purpose of embarrassing the Government’. In view of the fact that ‘many thousands of pounds sterling have recently been collected in India and elsewhere by the emissaries of the Transvaal British Indian Association in support of resistance to the laws and the Government,’ said the Ministers, ‘it is difficult to understand why Mrs Sodha should be in the destitute condition alleged, or why the cost of her removal from Johannesburg should have been undertaken unless there existed an ulterior motive.’55
The claims were in conflict, but not, in fact, irreconcilable. Gandhi may have had both objectives in mind. By providing succour to the Sodha family, he was issuing a fresh challenge to the authorities as well.
In the first weeks of 1911, the government gazette printed a proposed new Immigration Bill. This would repeal the existing legislation, but did not explicitly protect the wives and children of domiciled Asiatics. It specified a language test for new entrants to the Transvaal, but was ambiguous about whether Indians who passed the test would be allowed in. Polak wrote to Gokhale that the last clause was crucial; on its interpretation would depend the Indians’ response. ‘Gandhi is fairly optimistic,’ he remarked. ‘I am not so satisfied.’56
Gandhi asked a senior European lawyer in Johannesburg to analyse the bill on his behalf. He also wrote to the Minister of the Interior, who answered that, yes, educated Asiatics admitted under the new bill would not be made to register. Gandhi now said that if the Government clarified the position of women and children, he would ‘advise the community in the Transvaal to send a formal acquiescence [to the bill], and passive resistance will then naturally end.’57
On 3 March, Gandhi wrote to Maganlal that ‘it appears that the struggle will definitely come to an end.’ In that case, most Indians would leave Tolstoy Farm, but Gandhi and Kasturba, and their sons, would stay on. ‘How can I leave Mr Kallenbach immediately after the struggle is over?’ he said. His friend had spent £600 on the building, and Gandhi and his sons would try ‘and make good as much of the loss as possible by physical labour’.
Preoccupied with the negotiations, Gandhi had neglected Kasturba. She was suffering from bleeding and acute pain, and may have been passing through menopause. One day Gandhi found her in tears. He joked that if she died, there was plenty of wood on the Farm to cremate her. That got her laughing, and ‘half the pain disappeared with the laugh’. Thereafter the two of them decided to go on a salt-free diet, and her health improved. ‘The bleeding stopped immediately,’ he told Maganlal.58
Gandhi could now return to the negotiations, which had turned difficult again. As the Immigration Bill passed through its second and third reading, General Smuts met with stiff opposition from MPs belonging to the Orange Free State. Any law now framed had to be relevant to the Union as a whole. But the Free Staters insisted that whatever the concessions in other provinces, no Asians would be permitted to enter their territory. Gandhi sent Smuts’ secretary a series of telegrams in protest. They were not concerned, he said, with ‘individual material gain’, or with ‘whether a single Asiatic actually enters [the] Free State’, but they must, on a matter of principle, oppose a racial bar in any legislation intended to replace the Transvaal laws against which their struggle had been aimed. He pointed out that the ‘absence of any substantial Indian population’ in the Free State ‘effectively bar [the] entrance of educated Indians’. However, if the Union Parliament ratified the Free State policy, they were then ‘saying to the world [that] no Indian even though a potentate can legally enter and reside in a Province of the Union’.
Smuts replied that this was an ‘absolutely new contention’ on the part of the Indians, which would ‘exasperate the European community and complicate the position even further’. Glossing this letter to Joseph Doke, Gandhi said that the General’s remark ‘reminds me of what the demonstrators did to inflame the crowd in the December of 1896 and the January of 1897. The European community is certainly not exasperated, but General Smuts is, and he wants to impart his own exasperation to the community.’59
Gandhi was not far wrong. In a conversation with the Governor-General’s Private Secretary, Smuts outlined his views on the question. ‘If South Africa were to be a white man’s country,’ said the General, then more Europeans had to be brought in. At present white immigration was mostly Jewish. Jews (in his view) were ‘apt to take up activities of a parasitical nature’; ‘although ethnically and socially they remained a distinct entity’, they were at least white. Smuts was ‘not prepared to face the alternative of the whole retail trade of the country falling into Asiatic hands. As between the two evils of the undesirable business methods of white traders on the one hand and the unlimited extension of Asiatic trading on the other, he did not hesitate to choose the former.’60
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, Louis Botha, had received a petition asking that all Asiatics be deported from South Africa. Botha answered that he would personally like the Indians to be sent away, but operating as they did under the British flag they had to be more careful. The matter continued to vex his Government; as he joked in a speech to his constituents, ‘General Smuts had wasted away to a shadow (laughter) when as a result of his incessant efforts to settle the question, the gaols were filled.’61
L. W. Ritch was now in Cape Town, from where he sent a report on the mood in the Union Parliament. ‘The feeling against the admission of any more of our people is overwhelming,’ he remarked:
There was only one chorus [in Parliament]. Different representatives of different interests opposed the Bill because it appeared to threaten the particular interests of their class, but there was undoubted unanimity about exclusion. We have, I think, been wise to restrict our demands to existing rights of persons already domiciled.62
The last sentence is crucial – it differentiated the position of Gandhi and company from radicals who wished there to be no bar to immigration at all. Among these radicals was P. S. Aiyar, the Durban journalist and editor of the Tamil-oriented African Chronicle, who by now had begun to move away from the incremental moderation of Gandhi. In March 1911, Aiyar complained to Gokhale that ‘Gandhi and Polak do not wish to press forward our claims for freedom of movement throughout the Union.’ If provincial barriers were not removed, argued Aiyar, then ‘the last four years of terrific suffering and the great sacrifice made by our Motherland towards their cause would result in no practical material benefits’.63
Aiyar’s proposal implied a wholesale redistribution of the Indian population throughout South Africa. But would the white residents (and rulers) of Transvaal, the Cape and the Free State have permitted thousands of Indian traders and craftsmen from Natal to come to their states seeking ‘practical material benefits’? Gandhi understood the impossibility of such a demand and hence set his sights lower, on securing the rights of individuals and their families in the provinces in which they already lived, and on opening the door for a small, incremental immigration of a few educated Indians a year. However, the extreme demands of the radicals prejudiced even the modest claims of the moderates. ‘Asiatic demands,’ wrote an influential white paper in Johannesburg, ‘often display a tendency to grow bigger whenever any part of them is conceded.’ This was ‘one of the dangers of the new policy. There is no finality abou
t it. Once you begin to allow a certain number to enter, you invite an application for increasing the number.’ The paper was in ‘no doubt [that] if the figure was fixed at one hundred and twenty tomorrow, they would be asking for twelve hundred next week.’64
Gandhi and Polak were actually asking only for six new entrants a year. Even this many MPs were unwilling to concede. Seeking to break the deadlock, Gandhi met General Smuts in Cape Town on 27 March, and immediately afterwards set down a record of the meeting. It opened with the General saying that to ask for (theoretical) entry to the Free State was both ‘very unreasonable’ and ‘absolutely new’. Gandhi said what existed was a racial bar, and they had always opposed that. As he put it, ‘the combined effect of the Free State Law and the New Bill will be to shut out the Nizam of Hyderabad [the richest Indian potentate], and I assure you the passive resisters will fight against it.’ Smuts answered that ‘the Free Staters will never consent’ to the change proposed by the Indians. Gandhi responded that ‘it is your duty to persuade them’. Smuts said that he would talk again to Free State MPs.
As the meeting came to a close, Smuts asked Gandhi what he was doing in Johannesburg. Gandhi answered that he was looking after the families of passive resisters. Smuts said that ‘it has hurt me more than you to imprison these people. It has been the unpleasantest episode of my life to imprison men who suffer for their conscience.’ To this Gandhi riposted, ‘And yet you are persecuting Mrs. Sodha.’ The notes end here, with the note-writer having the last word. There does not appear to be another version in the Smuts papers.65
In April 1911, Gandhi went again to Cape Town. This time he stayed four weeks, furiously lobbying MPs to make the changes he desired in the Immigration Law. In the absence of Sonja Schlesin – who had stayed behind in Johannesburg to keep the office going – Gandhi had to type his correspondence himself. And there was plenty of this: letters seeking appointments, letters seeking clarifications, letters stating his own point of view. His fingers were so tired that he used his left hand to write to his family.