Between 21 and 28 December, Gandhi and Gokhale wired each other once or twice a day. Gokhale said the boycott of the Commission would be a ‘grave mistake’, alienating friends and sympathisers, and forgoing the chance to present evidence of cruelty to Indians. Gandhi answered that he was ‘besieged by people all day’ protesting against the Commission and calling for a march on Pretoria. Gokhale said both boycott and march would constitute a ‘great personal humiliation’ to the Viceroy. Gokhale had persuaded Lord Hardinge to depute a senior civil servant named Sir Benjamin Robertson as the representative of the Government of India to the Commission. Even if Gandhi persisted with a boycott, Sir Benjamin would convey his concerns to the body.102
Gokhale’s counsel prevailed. Speaking to reporters on the 29th, Gandhi said that ‘at the request of friends’ he had postponed the march to Pretoria. They would ‘wait until we know that we have left no stone unturned to arrive at a honourable settlement’.103
Gokhale had asked Gandhi to be restrained; on the other side, Smuts was urged to be magnanimous by the British social reformer Emily Hobhouse. A Quaker by religious conviction, Hobhouse had endeared herself to the General during the Anglo-Boer War. In the first half of 1901 she travelled through South Africa, documenting the harsh treatment of Boer prisoners of war. She returned to England to present her findings before the British public, before taking a ship back to continue her investigations. Her criticisms had so angered British colonists, that – in a striking reprise of Gandhi’s own experience in Durban in 1896–7 – she had not been allowed to land in Cape Town.104
In the latter part of 1913 Emily Hobhouse was back in South Africa, where she contacted Gandhi. They were introduced by a common friend, Elizabeth Molteno. The daughter of the first prime minister of the Cape Colony, Betty Molteno had left South Africa in disgust following the Anglo-Boer War. She had met Gandhi in London in 1909, returning from exile soon afterwards.
In December 1913, after Gandhi and Kasturba were released from prison, Betty Molteno travelled from Cape Town to Natal to meet them. She was moved by their stories of jail life, and by the cross-class support for the satyagraha. She passed on her impressions to Emily Hobhouse, urging her to press the Indian case on Smuts. Miss Hobhouse was sympathetic, not least because several members of her family had served in India, and back home in England she had friends from the subcontinent.
From Millie Polak on through Sonja Schlesin, Maud Polak and beyond, Gandhi got along with independent-minded Western women. Betty Molteno and he had hit it off from their first meeting, and so now did he and Emily Hobhouse. They discussed the Indian question, of course, but also other matters such as the tactics of the suffragettes and the respective merits of city life versus rural living. Miss Hobhouse had been unwell, so Gandhi wrote inviting her to Phoenix, where ‘the scenery around is certainly very charming’, where ‘there is no bustle or noise’, and where she would ‘find loving hands to administer to your wants’. Nothing, said Gandhi to Miss Hobhouse, ‘would give me personally greater pleasure than, if I were free, to be able to wait upon you and nurse you’.105
On 29 December, Miss Hobhouse wrote to Smuts as someone who was not ‘South African or Indian but in fullest sympathy with both’. While recognizing that white South Africa already ‘has as many Indians as it can digest’, she hoped the General would find ‘a modus vivendi to suit their amour propre’. To begin with, he could, she suggested, ‘readjust the marriage question and abolish that stupid £3 tax’.
There was now talk in Gandhi’s circle of starting the march to Pretoria on 15 January. Before then, said Hobhouse to Smuts, ‘some way should be found [of] giving private assurance to the leaders that satisfaction is coming to them.’ The grievance of the Indians, she continued,
is really moral not material and so, having all the power of the spiritual behind him, he [Gandhi] and you are like [the British suffragette] Mrs Pankhurst and [the British Home Secretary Reginald] McKenna and never never will governmental physical force prevail against a great moral and spiritual upheaval.106
Like that other English friend of Smuts, the Cambridge don H. J. Wolstenholme, Emily Hobhouse was far in advance of white opinion in South Africa. More representative was an article published in the Natal Advertiser on 30 December, entitled ‘The Political Creed of Mr Gandhi’. The paper ‘deemed it well to enlighten the South African public, from Mr Gandhi’s own mouth, as to what manner of man this is, and what his ultimate political creed is as to the relations between the British and the Indian people’. A string of quotations from Gandhi’s book Hind Swaraj followed, damning modern civilization and British rule in India. ‘And it is an Indian capable of this farago of incoherent, inconsequent and hysterical nonsense,’ commented the newspaper,
whom our Union Government is negotiating with as a representative of the concrete demands of the South African Indian community! … This is the language of acute hypocrisy! If Western civilisation be so immoral as Mr Gandhi says, a British Dominion should be the last place he would wish his compatriots to enter … And it is a man capable of using this language to the British of India who is posing as a martyr here in South Africa because denied the privileges of a European British citizen!107
That was one view of Gandhi, expressed in public by whites angry and humiliated by the consequences of the recent uprising. Another view was expressed in private by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, in a letter written to Sir Benjamin Robertson on 31 December. ‘I do not think you have met Mr Gandhi,’ said Gokhale to the Viceroy’s emissary to the Enquiry Commission:
He is a thoroughly straightforward, honourable and high-minded man and though he may at times appear obstinate and even fanatical, he is really open to conviction … The bulk of the community there is devoted to Mr Gandhi and any confidence that you may repose in him will not only be amply justified by him by his conduct, but will be repaid tenfold by the gratitude which it will inspire in the community.108
Gandhi himself stressed what he owed the Indian community in South Africa, not what they owed him. On 31 December 1913, Indian Opinion printed its last issue for the year. This noted that the last satyagraha campaign ‘has hardly a parallel in history. The real credit for this goes to the Hindi and Tamil speaking brothers and sisters living in this country.’ To mark their sacrifice, and the memory of those killed by soldiers’ bullets, the periodical would now resume the publication of sections in Tamil and Hindi.109
21
Farewell to Africa
On 2 January, 1914, two English clergymen arrived in Durban to meet Gandhi. Their names were C. F. Andrews and W. W. Pearson. Both taught at St Stephen’s College in Delhi; both were associates and admirers of Rabindranath Tagore. Andrews in particular had identified strongly with the people of India. Like an Indian sadhu he was celibate, lived simply, and cultivated friendships with a wide cross-section of society.1
C. F. Andrews was an old acquaintance of Gokhale’s. After they met at a Congress session in 1906, he wrote to Gokhale that ‘if at any time there is any way you can suggest in which I can help the national cause you know how glad I shall be to do so if it is within my power.’2 Gokhale remembered this promise, and some years later decided to redeem it. In December 1913, when Gandhi and company were still in jail, he asked Andrews and Pearson to go out to South Africa to mediate between the Indians and the Government. Introducing them to Albert West of the Phoenix Settlement, Gokhale described them as ‘both great friends of India’.3
Andrews was a ‘non-official’ mediator. His official counterpart was Sir Benjamin Robertson, the civil servant deputed by the Viceroy to represent the Government of India. Robertson was briefed by Gokhale, who sent him copies of Indian Opinion for the middle months of 1913, which showed ‘that every possible effort was made by Mr Gandhi to arrive at a settlement before resuming the struggle’. Gokhale then listed, for Robertson’s benefit, the five major demands of the Indians in South Africa, namely, the removal of racial handicaps in the immigration law; the restoration of the
right of South Africa born Indians to enter Cape Province; the abolition of the £3 tax; the recognition of monogamous marriages performed under the rites of Indian religions; and, finally, a more generous and sympathetic administration of all laws concerning Indians. Gokhale recalled the assurance given him in 1912 that the £3 tax would be repealed, and said that without a recognition of Hindu and Muslim marriages, ‘the position of Indian women in South Africa cannot be honourable.’4
When C. F. Andrews and W. W. Pearson arrived in Durban, the local Indians hosted a reception in their honour. Here Andrews spoke with ‘deep feeling’ about the widespread sympathy in India with their sufferings. A ‘profound impression was caused when Mr Andrews recited, with beautiful accent and effect, a Sanskrit mantra, which was given to him as a message to South African Indians by the poet Tagore.’5 So reported the Natal Mercury, whereas Indian Opinion highlighted the songs sung in the visitor’s honour by Gandhi’s old schoolmate Sheikh Mehtab. The two were now quite reconciled, with the erstwhile sportsman, meat-eater and brothel visitor having become a singer and passive resister. The songs rendered at this Durban reception, reported Indian Opinion, had ‘been specially composed by Mr Shaikh Mehtab as a tribute to the devotion of Messrs. Andrews and Pearson to the Indian cause’.6
Also present at the meeting was Gandhi’s friend from Cape Town, Betty Molteno. At this Indian welcome for their English visitors, she spoke of a deeper humanity that would overcome divisions of race and gender. ‘After the Boer War,’ said Miss Molteno,
I saw that Boer and Briton would have to unite, but would they try to do it at the cost of their dark brothers? Broken-hearted I went to England. For eight long years I remained away from Africa – in body – never in soul and spirit. And England and Europe have sent me back with this message to white South Africa: ‘Open your hearts – your souls - to your brethren of colour’. We are in the 20th century. Rise to the heights of this glorious century. Try to comprehend the words of Du Bois – that grand and sympathetic soul: ‘The 20th century will be the century of colour.’ And I say it is also the century of the woman. She, too, is divine and supreme. She, too, must play her God-appointed part – and in this 20th century her part will be a great one.7
The morning after the Durban meeting, the clergymen went off with Gandhi to Phoenix. Despite Andrews’ arrival, Gandhi was not hopeful of a settlement. He had yielded to Gokhale’s plea and called off the march to Pretoria; now, given the character of the Enquiry Commission, he wanted satyagraha to resume. Among the volunteers who would have to court arrest was his eldest son. ‘Subject your sanction feel Harilal should come,’ Gandhi wired Gokhale. ‘He vowed see struggle through as resister. Should be permitted fulfil obligation. My opinion gaol other experiences substantial education.’8
This wire, sent on 3 January, is best read in juxtaposition with a letter sent the next day to his second son. Manilal was serving a sentence of three months in prison; he awaited release pending a formal amnesty. His father said that on his discharge he must come straight to Phoenix to see Kasturba and himself. ‘Ramdas is looking well and has done well,’ wrote Gandhi. ‘Dev[a]das has proved a hero. He has developed a sense of responsibility which was unexpected.’9 There is a note here of quiet pride with regard to the growing closeness of the family during the campaign. The father as leader; the mother as a pioneering woman resister; the second and third sons as satyagrahis themselves; the youngest son, only twelve, who could not go to jail but played his part in keeping Phoenix going – all had acquitted themselves honourably. Only Harilal was in India and out of it altogether.
Gandhi had for some time wanted Harilal back in South Africa. In late December he had cabled his son to take a ship to Durban. That cable is lost, but its contents can be guessed at from one sent by Gokhale to Gandhi, which read: ‘Your son Harilal saw me Bombay, told me you had asked him return South Africa immediately rejoin struggle. I have taken on myself responsibility asking him remain India and continue studies. Forgive my intervention.’10
The intervention was disregarded. Thus Gandhi’s cable of 3 January, which Gokhale passed on to Harilal himself. Harilal wrote back from the family home in Rajkot, where he then was. He asked about Gokhale’s health – reported to be indifferent – offering his own prayer ‘that you may soon be out of bed and be working again’. ‘Before reading the news of your health,’ wrote Harilal,
my friends and me all here in our house used always to chat away with much éclat about you and the S[outh] A[frican] struggle … I notice my father’s reply to your cable. I admit I promised my father and others to return to rejoin the struggle if necessary. I will not refuse to keep it. I shall go if I must, though I certainly feel that my education is being hampered. As it is, it is after a long interruption of six years that I have again come to India for University education. However I shall leave for S[outh] A[frica] in about a fortnight.11
Harilal’s letter was written in a firm, clear hand, and in direct and economical prose. The form barely masked the contents, which are of a young man deeply torn between the expectations of his father and his own hopes and desires. Gokhale was moved by Harilal’s predicament in person; and must surely have been moved by his letter, whose apparent willingness to catch a ship to Durban is hedged and qualified in such telling ways. As it happens, Harilal did not return to South Africa. We do not know why – whether Gokhale wrote again to Gandhi pleading on behalf of the boy, whether Gandhi himself chose not to press the point, whether Harilal decided to follow his own instincts rather than his father’s command.
The clergyman visiting from India, C. F. Andrews, was one of nature’s reconcilers. At Phoenix he prevailed upon Gandhi to meet Smuts to seek a compromise. The always complicated, fraught relations between the two had recently gone through a very bitter phase. Through the mass march across the border, Gandhi had mounted an open challenge to Smuts. The General had responded by putting his tormentor in jail. Pressed by the Imperial and Indian Governments, Smuts released him. Then they exchanged sharp letters about the constitution of the Enquiry Committee.
Now, Gandhi was persuaded by Andrews (acting on Gokhale’s behalf) that it was time to talk to Smuts again. On 6 January, ‘much to his surprise’, the General received a letter from Gandhi asking for an appointment.12
Smuts said he could meet Gandhi on either Friday the 9th or Saturday the 10th. Gandhi and Andrews reached Pretoria on the 8th, to be met first by a reporter, who was struck by the Indian’s ‘extraordinary appearance, with his shaven head, his mourning suit of unbleached calico and his bare feet’.13 Meanwhile, a nationwide strike of white workers had broken out, forcing the General’s attention in that direction. Andrews was impressed by Gandhi’s ‘gentlemanly conduct’, as he waited patiently while Smuts ‘put him off again and again on account of the General Strike’. They had a brief meeting on the 13th, when, as Andrews reported, Gandhi ‘was so kindly and courteous that the old relation of respect between them gradually came back again’.14
On the 14th, in a conversation of seconds as it were, C. F. Andrews met the Governor-General, Lord Gladstone. The clergyman ‘impressed me favourably,’ reported Gladstone, not least because he seemed to ‘have an exceptionally intimate acquaintance with the working of Mr Gandhi’s mind’. Andrews said the two main demands that must be met were the abolition of the £3 tax and the recognition of Indian marriages. These had been promised by the leader to his increasingly militant followers, and were non-negotiable. ‘Nothing could shake Mr Gandhi on matters of conscience,’ remarked Andrews. He reminded the Governor-General of how, in Johannesburg in 1908, Gandhi had been assaulted and nearly killed ‘because after taking a vow he had come to an agreement’ with the Government. A capitulation on those two points would make Gandhi vulnerable to another attempt on his life.15
Gandhi met Smuts for a longer conversation on the 16th. He asked, in addition to the repeal of the tax and the recognition of marriages, for the entry of South African Indians into the Cape, and for the removal
of an overt racial bar in the laws of the Free State. (The logic of allowing free entry into the Cape was that, like Natal, it was originally a British colony, with greater and older obligations to British imperial subjects than Transvaal or the Orange Free State.) Smuts was sympathetic, but requested Gandhi to state these issues in front of the Enquiry Commission, who, in turn, could then formally recommend these changes to the Government. Gandhi answered that they could not go back now on their boycott of the Commission.
Reporting this interview to the Colonial Office, Lord Gladstone said:
General Smuts has shown a most patient and conciliatory temper. In spite of a series of conflicts extending over many years, he retains a sympathetic interest in Mr Gandhi as an unusual type of humanity, whose peculiarities, however inconvenient they may be to the Minister, are not devoid of attraction to the student … It is no easy task for a European to conduct negotiations with Mr Gandhi. The workings of his conscience are inscrutable to the occidental mind and produce complications in wholly unexpected places. His ethical and intellectual attitude, based as it appears to be on a curious compound of mysticism and astuteness, baffles the ordinary processes of thought. Nevertheless, a tolerably practical understanding has been reached.16
Gandhi and Andrews returned to Durban. Letters and phone calls passed between Phoenix and Pretoria, with Smuts assuring Gandhi that he need feel
no serious apprehensions as to the probable nature of the Commission’s recommendations on his four points and as to the Government’s intentions, but he should promise not to revive passive resistance until the Commission had reported and the Government had been given an opportunity of acting on the report.17