En route, they stopped at Zanzibar. The island had an active Indian community, who, it turned out, knew all about the satyagraha in South Africa, and its leader, whose struggle deeply resonated with them. ‘Remarkable how the men’s faces light up when they hear the name “Gandhi”,’ wrote Kallenbach in his diary, ‘and how eager they are to shake hands.’79
There was one last public meeting in Africa, this ‘the largest gathering Indians at Dar-es-Salam have ever had’,80 before Gokhale took leave of his companions and headed east to Bombay. The next day, Gandhi wrote to Gokhale that ‘I want to be a worthy pupil of yours. This is not mock humility but Indian seriousness. I want to realize in myself the conception I have of an Eastern pupil. We have many differences of opinion, but you shall still be my pattern in political life.’ After this expression of qualified devotion, he continued:
One word from the quack physician. Ample fasting, strict adherence to two meals, entire absence of condiments of all kinds from your food, omission of pulses, tea, coffee, etc., regular taking of Kuhne baths, regular and brisk walking in the country (not the pacing up and down for stimulating thought), ample allowance of olive oil and acid fruit and gradual elimination of cooked food – and you will get rid of your diabetes and add a few more years than you think to your life of service in your present body.81
In a month spent in each other’s company, Gokhale and Gandhi must have made manifest their many differences of opinion – with regard to the respective merits of petitioning versus protest, modern versus traditional civilization, allopathic versus naturopathic systems of medicine. Speaking to Gandhi, watching him at work among his compatriots, Gokhale nonetheless came away with a distinctly elevated view of his protégé’s personality and achievements. In a public meeting on his return to Bombay – held on 13 December – Gokhale said Gandhi was ‘without doubt made of the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made. Nay, more. He has in him the marvellous spiritual power to turn ordinary men around him into heroes and martyrs.’ He told the assembled Indians of Gandhi’s sacrfices, of how he built up the movement in South Africa, and how he inspired others to follow him. Some among the several thousand satyagrahis who went to jail at his behest were established traders and professionals, but the bulk, observed Gokhale,
were poor humble individuals, hawkers, working men and so forth, men without education, men not accustomed in their life to think or talk of their country. And yet these men braved the horrors of gaol-life in the Transvaal and some of them braved them again and again rather than submit to degrading legislation directed against their country … [T]hey were touched by Gandhi’s spirit and that had wrought the transformation, thus illustrating the great power which the spirit of man can exercise over human minds and even over physical surroundings.
Gokhale defended Gandhi against his critics at home and abroad. Some radicals thought Gandhi should have argued for an ‘open door’ policy, whereby Indians could freely migrate to South Africa. But, said Gokhale, it was precisely ‘the fear of an indiscriminate influx which haunted the European mind’. The demand for free migration would have made ‘the Europeans more implacable in their determination to get rid of the Indians at all costs and the eventual expulsion of the Indians from the [South African] sub-continent would only have been hastened by such a move’. He claimed that the ‘theoretical rights’ that Gandhi had so valiantly fought for ‘would no doubt steadily grow more and more into rights actually enjoyed in practice, but that was a matter of slow growth and it depended on a large measure upon the improvement of their position in India itself.’82
Saints, it appears, could or should be pragmatists as well. Thus argued Gokhale, in whose view Gandhi’s distinctive combination of personal saintliness and social meliorism was necessary to safeguard the position of Indians in South Africa.
Gokhale’s visit, important in itself, also helped consolidate Gandhi’s position within the community. That the great Indian leader placed himself entirely in Gandhi’s hands, that Gandhi accompanied him wherever he went, that Gandhi’s public words of praise for Gokhale were often answered by Gokhale’s public words of praise for Gandhi – none of this was lost on the varied audiences in Natal, Transvaal and the Cape.
Gokhale’s endorsement of Gandhi irritated and angered the Durban journalist P. S. Aiyar. For some time now, Aiyar had pressed for a more prominent place for himself. In his call for attention he had attacked Gandhi’s followers, but not, as yet, Gandhi himself. As late as June 1912 he was writing that while Swami Shankeranand was ‘the leader of the reactionary group’ among Indians, ‘Mr Gandhi is and has been recognised as the leader of the progressive party’.83
When Gokhale arrived in South Africa later in the year, and Gandhi was always at his side, Aiyar was not pleased, although he was not yet willing to confront Gandhi directly. An essay of November 1912 started by expressing ‘the highest admiration and respect for Mr Gandhi’, while claiming there was nonetheless ‘a considerable body of opinion outside the Transvaal which do not apparently fall in line with all his views and conclusions’.
Aiyar then set out his own view of the Indian predicament in South Africa. As inheritors of an ancient civilization, they could not allow themselves to be submerged by ‘materialistic western civilization’; nor, however, could they identify with the ‘savagery’ of the Africans. The way forward was to ‘improve themselves on their traditional lines of civilisation. For doing so, they must have social and commercial intercourse with the country of their origin’. This continuous intercourse was what the proposed Asiatic Act forbade.84
Aiyar’s position was not dissimilar to that held by Gandhi before the Anglo-Boer War, when he had likewise argued for equal rights for all British subjects, which implied the free movement of Indians into (and across) South Africa. As white attitudes hardened, however, Gandhi modified his stand, now asking only for guaranteed rights of residence and work for Indians already in South Africa. That was what he asked Lord Milner for in 1904, and what he had asked General Smuts for between 1906 and 1911.
Aiyar also grumbled that Gokhale’s itinerary in South Africa was dictated by Gandhi and company. The journalist was able to get only a half-hour appointment with the visitor, which left him deeply dissatisfied. Gokhale told him that the demand for free immigration and free movement was impractical, and the further demand for an Indian franchise highly premature. Aiyar wrote bitterly that ‘instead of endeavouring to find a remedy to put our countrymen on our legs he [Gokhale] simply evaded to tackle the real and lectured on the maintenance of European civilisation and praised Mr Gandhi as a wonderful personage and all ended there.’85
Gokhale departed for India, with Aiyar’s complaints following him across the ocean. Aiyar now wanted a deputation to proceed to the motherland and stir up the Indian public. ‘Of course,’ he wrote, ‘such a deputation must be absolutely free from the influence of Messrs Gandhi, Polak, Rustomjee and Co.’ When Gokhale praised Gandhi in a public meeting in Bombay, Aiyar erupted again. It ‘is a national misfortune,’ said the angry journalist,
that a man of Gokhale’s intellectual calibre should have been hypnotised by Messrs Gandhi and Pollock [sic] who are notoriously lacking in those ingredients [necessary] for political work, and but for the regrettable influence that these two men possess over Mr Gokhale, he would have been able to do more solid work for the Indians of South Africa.86
P. S. Aiyar’s animus was in part born out of jealousy. He would have liked Gandhi to consult him, to work with him, to substitute Polak with him as his second-in-command. While Aiyar himself had marginal influence, for the biographer he merits attention as the only articulate opponent of Gandhi within the Indian community. From 1895 or thereabouts the whites of Natal had poured a steady stream of abuse at Gandhi. From 1907 or thereabouts they had been joined by their colleagues in the Transvaal. Polak, Kallenbach, Doke and Sonja Schlesin notwithstanding, Gandhi was an object of hate and ridicule to the majority of Europeans. Conversely, he was the acknowledged
popular leader of the Indians in Natal and the Transvaal. To be sure, the respect he commanded among his people was not universal: some Pathans had attacked him physically when he sought to compromise with the rulers, some merchants had refused to follow him into jail when he resumed the struggle. P. S. Aiyar, however, was sui generis – the only Indian in South Africa who expressed his disagreements with Gandhi in print and in sometimes splendidly vituperative prose.
19
A Physician at Phoenix
With the Union of South Africa in place, there was no reason for Gandhi to remain in the Transvaal any more. Immigration laws were no longer colony-specific: any settlement General Smuts and he arrived at would apply to South Africa as a whole. And so, at the beginning of 1913, Gandhi moved to Natal, to live with his family and his disciples on the farm he had founded eight years previously.
When he was based in Johannesburg, Gandhi had still considered Phoenix his home. It was where his family lived, where his journal was produced, where his ideas for moral regeneration were enacted. The settlers looked forward to his visits with keen anticipation. The children prepared welcome arches for him; or, if he arrived at night, lighted the path to his hut with candles. The affection was reciprocated; so long as they were not his own, and not yet teenagers, Gandhi delighted in the company of children. Chhaganlal’s son recalled how the patriarch carried them across his shoulder, rolled them down a sloping garden plot, showed them his teeth fillings and – not least – cured their ailments by, in this case, prescribing raw tomatoes for boils. ‘Another thing that attracted me,’ remembered the boy, ‘was that he laughed more often than anyone in Phoenix in spite of being such an important person.’1
When Gandhi moved to Phoenix in January 1913, the school had thirty children. Teachers and students worked on the farm from 6 to 8 a.m. After breakfast Gandhi took the boys to the classroom, while the men went off to the press. In the afternoons, while someone else took class, Gandhi worked at the press himself. Dinner, at 5.30, was followed by songs and prayer. From 7.30 to 9 p.m. Gandhi supervised Manilal’s lessons, in a belated recognition of the special obligations of biological parenthood.
In the nine years since the settlement was founded, it had made steady progress. The hedges were trim and neat, marking out fields that produced an array of vegetables and fruits, among them succulent pineapples. The homes were furnished; some even had (as Millie Polak noted appreciatively) ‘attractive curtains at the windows’. The common areas included the river, open grounds, shrubs and trees, and a large one-room structure that served as a school in the day and as a meeting-place in the evening.
Every Sunday the residents of Phoenix gathered for an inter-faith prayer meeting. Passages from the Gita and the New Testament (among other texts) were read, and hymns in Gujarati and English sung. The founder’s own favourites included ‘Lead, Kindly Light’ and ‘The Hymn of Consecration’. An admittedly partisan observer wrote that ‘perhaps in no place in the world’ were these hymns ‘sung with greater fervour and meaning than in that little lamp-lit corrugated-iron room, where Mr Gandhi was the centre of the life of an assembled congregation of about twenty people, from East and West’.2
With Indian Opinion’s first issue for 1913, Gandhi began a weekly series in Gujarati called ‘General Knowledge about Health’. This drew on wide reading and, even more, on his own experiments and experiences. This ‘quack physician’ (to use Gandhi’s self-description) was critical of the modern dependence on drugs. ‘Once the [medicine] bottle enters a house,’ he complained, ‘it never leaves.’ He thought bad air to be the cause of most diseases. Dirty latrines and open-air urination fouled the atmosphere, as did the casual dumping of food peelings and garbage, and spitting – all practices common to Indians. He spoke of the dangers of drinking contaminated water, and explained how water could be cleaned and purified in homes.
The self-taught physician turned next to substances to be eschewed or encouraged. ‘Drink, tobacco, hemp, etc., not only damage physical health,’ he said, ‘but also impair mental fitness and entail wasteful expenditure. We lose all our moral sense and become slaves to our weakness.’ Chillies, spices and salt were also to be avoided. Gandhi outlined a hierarchy of ideal and preferred diets. A purely fruit diet was the best, then fruit and vegetables with no salt or spices, then a mix of vegetables and meat. Last, and most deplorable, was a purely carnivorous diet. ‘Those who … subsist exclusively on flesh,’ remarked Gandhi, ‘need not detain us here. Their state is so vile that the very thought of them should be enough to put us off meat-eating. They are not healthy in any sense of the term.’3
In the last week of January 1913, Gandhi wrote to his son Harilal saying that he hoped to return to India quite soon. With him would come some of the boys he was schooling at Phoenix. ‘I should certainly be able to go if a law satisfying to our demands is passed,’ he remarked, ‘so it appears. I have therefore settled in Phoenix. I don’t wish to stir out from here for five months.’4
As before, Gandhi’s optimism was misplaced. In February, he complained to Gokhale that the assurances given him by the ministers were not being honoured. ‘The Immigration Acts are being administered with an ever-growing severity. Wives of lawfully resident Indians are being put to great trouble and expense.’5
In the third week of March, a judgment in a Cape Town court called into question the validity of Indian marriages. One Hassan Esop, a barber working in Port Elizabeth, had, while on holiday in India, married a lady named Bal Mariam. After his return, he applied for a permit for his wife to join him. Although Bal Mariam was his only wife, the court refused to allow her to join her husband, on the grounds that Islam permitted polygamy. ‘The courts of this country,’ said the judge, a Justice Searle, ‘have always set their faces against recognition of these so-called Mahommedan marriages as legal unions’, since a woman admitted as a wife could ‘be repudiated the next day after the arrival by the husband’. To the argument that at least one wife should be admitted, the judge said sarcastically, ‘I do not know whether it is to be the first that comes, or the first that is married.’6
Hindu law did not ban polygamy either. Did this mean that only Christian marriages would be recognized as valid in South Africa? The judgement alarmed the Indians, whose concerns were forcefully articulated by Gandhi in an editorial in Indian Opinion:
This decision means as from today all Hindu or Muslim wives living in South Africa lose their right to live there … a Hindu, Muslim or Parsi wife can live in this country only by the grace of the Government. It is quite on the cards that the Government will not permit any more wives to come in or that, if it does, it will entirely be a matter of favour … The remedy is entirely in our hands. Every Anjuman, every Dharma Sabha and every one of the [community] associations must respectfully submit to the Government that the law should be amended and that marriages solemnized under the rites of Indian religions should be recognized as legal. Any nation that fails to protect the honour of its women, any individual who fails to protect the honour of his wife is considered lower in level than a brute.7
Gandhi’s own marriage had its good periods and bad. His children and his wife had to bear the brunt of his social and ethical experiments. But of his commitment to marriage as a social institution there could be no doubt. The Searle judgment, if interpreted literally and implemented vigorously, threatened to sunder husband from wife, mother from children. This would seriously damage the life of the Indian community in South Africa. Gandhi may also have worried that, in the absence of their wives, Indian men would patronize prostitutes. Hence his call to community organizations to mobilize in protest against the Searle judgment. He was heeded, and quickly. The judgment was delivered on 21 March; eight days later, a mass meeting of Indians was held at the Hamidia Hall in Johannesburg. The meeting expressed ‘deep distress and disappointment’ at the court verdict, which was calculated ‘to disturb Indian domestic relations, to break up established homes, to put husband and wife asunder, to deprive lawful
children of their inheritance …’ The Indians wanted remedial legislation that recognized as valid any marriage solemnized under the rites of ‘the great religions of India’. If this was not forthcoming, then it became ‘the bounden duty of the community, for the protection of its womanhood and its honour, to adopt passive resistance’.8
This meeting was attended only by men, but the women were likewise outraged by the Searle judgment. Kasturba asked Gandhi whether this meant ‘that I am not your wife according to the laws of this country’. When he answered in the affirmative, she suggested that they should perhaps return to India. Gandhi said that would be cowardly, whereupon Kasturba asked, ‘Could I not, then, join the struggle and be imprisoned myself?’
Kasturba’s offer was a mark of her deep loyalty to her husband, and of her acquired understanding of his cause. Despite their very different temperaments, Gandhi and Kasturba had, over thirty years of marriage, developed a relationship of understanding and companionship, to which the word ‘love’ may also be applied. Back in 1901, Kasturba had resisted Gandhi giving back jewels presented to him for his work. Now, twelve years later, she was herself volunteering to go to jail. Thus she underlined her commitment to a marriage the new law chose to regard as ‘invalid’; thus also she showed her solidarity with the Indian community as a whole.
Reporting their conversation to Gokhale, Gandhi said, ‘this time the struggle, if it comes, will involve more sufferings than before.’ He did not want to ask the public in India for support; rather, ‘the plan would be to beg in S[outh] A[frica] from door to door.’ He thought ‘most of the settlers [at Phoenix] including the womenfolk will join the struggle. The latter feel they can no longer refrain from facing the gaol no matter what it may mean in a place like this. Mrs. Gandhi made the offer on her own initiative and I do not want to debar her.’9