Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India (62 page)

1
   “
the least Indian
”: Naipaul,
Area of Darkness
, p. 77 [my italics].

2
   “
the quintessence
”: Nehru,
Toward Freedom
, p. 189.

3
   “
He looked at India
”: Naipaul,
Area of Darkness
, p. 77.

4
   “
I was face to face
”: Gandhi,
Autobiography
, p. 196.

5
   “
There were only a few
”: Ibid., pp. 196–97.

6
   
Even as a boy
: Andrews,
Mahatma Gandhi
, p. 113.

7
   
Just as racial segregation
: Bayly,
Caste, Society, and Politics in India
, chap. 5, especially pp. 196, 210, 226.

8
   “
pollution barrier”:
Ibid., pp. 189, 233.

9
   
Practices varied
: The following studies have illuminating discussions on these points: Ibid., Dirks,
Castes of Mind;
and Mendelsohn and Vicziany,
Untouchables
.

10
   
the coinage “Hinduism
”: See Pennington,
Was Hinduism Invented?
p. 60, also p. 168.

11
   
Gandhi was then warned
: Jordens,
Gandhi’s Religion
, p. 56.

12
   “
It was also a problem
”: Prabhudas Gandhi,
My Childhood with Gandhiji
, p. 59.

13
   
Three years later
: Photostat of the certificate is on display at the Sabarmati Ashram Museum.

14
   
The Bania in Gandhi
: Doke,
M. K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot
, p. 52.

15
   
The prodigal son
: Pyarelal,
Early Phase
, p. 281.

16
   “
I would not so much
”: Gandhi,
Autobiography
, p. 78.

17
   
His standing with the Modh Banias
: I am indebted to Narayan Desai, son of Mahadev, Gandhi’s secretary, for making this point in an interview in Barodi in April 2008.

18
   “
Wherever you see men
”: O’Hanlon,
Caste, Conflict, and Ideology
, p. 71.

19
   “
We are all brothers
”: Tolstoy,
Kingdom of God Is Within You
, p. 88. According to Professor Donald Fanger of Harvard, the literal translation would be “carries out my chamber pot.”

20
   
What Is to Be Done?
: Although the common English title of this Tolstoy volume is the same as that of a more famous tract by Lenin, the Russian titles are different.
Professor Fanger says the literal translation of the Tolstoy would be “So What Must We Do?”

21
   “
when men of our circle
”: Tolstoy,
What Is to Be Done?
p. 272. I’ve here substituted “latrines” for “sewers” on the advice of Professor Fanger.

22
   “
Gandhi,” Aurobindo said
: Aurobindo,
India’s Rebirth
, p. 173.

23
   
But an Indian scholar
: Mahadevan,
Year of the Phoenix
, pp. 70–71.

24
   
In any case, by August
: Swan, in
Gandhi: The South African Experience
, pp. 48–50, casts doubt on the assumption that the young Gandhi provided the impetus for the formation of the
Natal Indian Congress. She suggests that the traders who subsequently dominated the organization are likely to have employed Gandhi to advance their goals.

25
   “
To inquire into the conditions
”:
CWMG
, vol. 1, p. 132.

26
   “
I lived in South Africa
”: Ibid., vol. 33, p. 25.

27
   
His wounds have been treated
: Ibid., vol. 2, p. 20.

28
   
It takes half a year
: Meer,
Apprenticeship of a Mahatma
, p. 36.

29
   “
A regular stream
”: Gandhi,
Autobiography
, p. 135.

30
   “
He emerged virtually
”: Sanghavi,
Agony of Arrival
, p. 129.

31
   
Gandhi himself doesn’t go on
: According to the Durban lawyer Hassim Seedat, who attempted to trace Gandhi’s legal papers from this era through the successor firm that inherited them only to be told that they had been thrown out.

32
   “
He will cause some trouble
”: Britton,
Gandhi Arrives in South Africa
, p. 300. The location of this document isn’t specified in the book. Responding to an e-mail query, its author explained that he did his research “on and off for thirty years,” much of it in the archives of colonial Natal, in the branch of the National Archives in Pietermaritzburg, or in British Colonial Office files, now located at the National Archives in Kew.

33
   “
have no wish to see
”:
CWMG
, vol. 1, pp. 273–74, cited by Naidoo,
Tracking Down Historical Myths
, p. 137.

34
   “
If that hatred
”:
CWMG
, vol. 1, p. 143.

35
   
In finely honed understatement
: Ibid., pp. 142–63.

36
   “
The class of Hindoos
”:
Critic
, Jan. 11, 1895, as quoted in Pyarelal,
Early Phase
, p. 478.

37
   
Or, since Pyarelal
: Pyarelal and Nayar,
In Gandhiji’s Mirror
, p. 7.

38
   “
The barbed shaft penetrated
”: Pyarelal,
Early Phase
, p. 478.

39
   “
Has not a just
”: Fischer,
Essential Gandhi
, p. 251. See also M. K. Gandhi,
Selected Political Writings
, p. 118.

40
   “
During my campaigns
”:
CWMG
, vol. 13, p. 278.

41
   “
dark and stinking
”: Gandhi,
Autobiography
, p. 149.

42
   
He then went into
: Ibid., p. 150.

43
   “
But to clean those used
: Ibid., pp. 243–44.

44
   
His pique becomes
:
CWMG
, vol. 67, p. 2.

45
   “
close touch with suffering Indians
”: Gandhi,
Autobiography
, p. 177.

46
   “
The Indians were not entitled
”: Gandhi,
Satyagraha in South Africa
, p. 76.

47
   
So while he has told us
: Gandhi,
Autobiography
, p. 189.

48
   “
General Buller had no intention
”: Gandhi,
Satyagraha in South Africa
, p. 77.

49
   “
For days they worked
”: Fischer,
Life of Mahatma Gandhi
, p. 63.

50
   “
The agony of the General
”: Pyarelal,
Discovery of Satyagraha
, p. 287.

51
   
curtained palanquin
: This thought is suggested by the drawing on a French weekly magazine cover on display in the Museum Africa in Johannesburg.
Showing a palanquin used for ferrying wounded officers, the drawing has a legend that describes it as an “ambulance Indienne” in the “guerre au Transvaal.” See
Le Petit Journal: Supplément Illustré, Dec. 17, 1899
.

52
   
detailed narrative of these events:
Amery, “
Times” History of the War in South Africa
, vol. 1, pp. 245–97.

53
   “
Streams of wounded
”: Reproduced in
New York Times
, March 3, 1900.

54
   
The recruits from the ranks
: Meer,
South African Gandhi
, p. 751.

55
   
In the event, no Indians
: Ibid., pp, 749–50.

56
   
At the time he finds
: Gandhi,
Satyagraha in South Africa
, p. 78.

57
   “
Bapu had found a use
”: Mehta,
Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles
, p. 248.

58
   
In a contemporary send-up
: Reprinted in
African Chronicle
, July 4, 1908.

59
   “
high-caste men married
”: Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie,
From Cane Fields to Freedom: A Chronicle of Indian South African Life
(Cape Town, 2000), p. 13.

60
   “
These two Indians
”: Bhana and Pachai,
Documentary History of Indian South Africans
, p. 26.

61
   
Except for a rare academic study
: Such as Ebr-Vally,
Kala Pani
.

62
   “
without first trying
”: Rolland,
Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel
, p. 23.

63
   
He condemned India’s
: Parekh,
Colonialism, Tradition, and Reform
, p. 235.

64
   
Their suppression depresses
:
CWMG
, vol. 18, pp. 375–76.

65
   “
into intimate touch
”: Pyarelal,
Discovery of Satyagraha
, p. 396.

66
   “
A purer, a nobler
”: Mahadevan and Ramachandran,
Quest for Gandhi
, p. 344.

67
   “
You will never know
”: Shirer,
Gandhi
, p. 37.

68
   “
converted the whole carriage
”: Gandhi,
Autobiography
, p. 212.

69
   “
in retrospect, Gandhi
”: Pyarelal,
Discovery of Satyagraha
, p. 396.

1
   “
We were then marched
”:
CWMG
, vol. 8, p. 135.

2
   
Similarly, he would later
: Enacted in 1907 by the all-white provincial legislature as soon as self-rule was restored to the former South African Republic. (The 1906 Asiatic Law Amendment Act, passed during the brief period that the Transvaal was counted as a crown colony, had been disallowed by Britain.) The legislation once again barred Indians with no history of previous residence in the Transvaal.

3
   “
The spirit of fanaticism
”: Huttenback,
Gandhi in South Africa
, p. 198.

4
   
It would violate
:
Natal Mercury
, Jan. 14, 1903. The
Orange Free State, one of the four provinces in the original Union of South Africa, barred Indians from taking up residence for nearly ninety years longer, until the dismantling of apartheid.

5
   “
for the first time
”: Rajmohan Gandhi,
Gandhi
, p. 126.

6
   
Brought to Johannesburg
: Doke,
M. K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot
, p. 151; see also Meer,
South African Gandhi
, pp. 600–601; Itzkin,
Gandhi’s Johannesburg
, p. 30.

7
   “
a Native lying in bed
”: Meer,
South African Gandhi
, p. 601.

8
   “
This refined Indian
”: Doke,
M. K. Gandhi: Indian Patriot
, p. 152.

9
   “
a strong, heavily built
”: Meer,
South African Gandhi
, p. 602.

10
   “
We may entertain
”: Ibid., p. 601.

11
   
Is that, as some Indian scholars
: They were speaking speculatively in private conversation.

12
   
In strict interpretation of caste
: In the late 1960s, when I was a correspondent in
India, I asked a Hindu religious figure, the Shankaracharya of Puri, whether he could imagine himself sitting and talking to an untouchable. He replied: “I’m talking with you.”

13
   “
the Indian is being dragged
”:
CWMG
, vol. 1, p. 150.

14
   “
the raw Kaffir
”: Ibid., vol. 2, p. 74.

15
   “
About the mixing
”: Ibid., vol. 4, p. 131.

16
   “
If there is one thing
”: Ibid., p. 89.

17
   “
We believe as much
”: Ibid., vol. 3, p. 453.

18
   “
Oh, say have you seen
”: Quoted in Mahadevan,
Year of the Phoenix
, p. 43, clipping in archive of Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad.

19
   “
A fair complexion
”: Gandhi,
Satyagraha in South Africa
, pp. 8–9.

20
   “
Are Asiatic and Colored races
”: “Mr. Gandhi’s Address Before the Y.M.C.A.,”
Indian Opinion
, June 6, 1908, in
CWMG
, vol. 8, pp. 242–46.

21
   “
If we look into the future
”:
CWMG
, vol. 8, pp. 232–46.

22
   “
these hypocritical distinctions
”: Meer,
South African Gandhi
, pp. 606–7; “My Second Experience in Gaol,”
Indian Opinion
, Jan. 30, 1909.

23
   
Possibly these are “Native Isaac
”: Diary of Hermann Kallenbach, Sabarmati Ashram archive, Ahmedabad.

24
   “
It is understood
”:
CWMG
, vol. 96, supp. vol. 6, p. 44.

25
   “
I regard the Kaffirs
”:
CWMG
, vol. 10, cited by Green,
Gandhi
, p. 200.

26
   
Rajmohan Gandhi, his grandson
: Rajmohan Gandhi,
Gandhi
, p. 149.

27
   
And when it comes
: The other two were the Reverend Walter Rubusana, who was elected to the Cape province provincial council, and
John Tengo Jabavu, editor of a weekly newspaper printed in English and Xhosa in Cape Town, where Gandhi encountered him. See Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie,
From Cane Fields to Freedom: A Chronicle of Indian South African Life
(Cape Town, 2000), p. 118. Of course, the absence of other names in Gandhi’s writings of the period does not in itself demonstrate that he had no further encounters with African leaders. Recently, in an as-yet-unpublished memoir by a woman named Pauline Padlashuk, an account has come to light of a visit to Tolstoy Farm by
Pixley ka Isaka Seme, who, like Dube, was an early officeholder of what became the African National Congress. “Mr. Gandhi told Dr. Seme about his passive resistance movement,” this white witness wrote.

28
   
A Zulu aristocrat
: Shula Marks, “Ambiguities of Dependence: John L. Dube of Natal,”
Journal of South African Studies
1, no. 2 (1975), p. 163.

29
   “
my patron saint
”: Fredrickson,
Black Liberation
, p. 119.

30
   
president-general he was called
: Dube himself did not attend the founding session of the new Congress in Bloemfontein. He was elected president in absentia.

31
   “
This Mr. Dubey
”:
CWMG
, vol. 5, p. 55.

32
   “
They worked hard
”: Fredrickson,
Black Liberation
, p. 119.

33
   
We know that Gopal
:
Ilanga lase Natal
, Nov. 15, 1912. The entry in Kallenbach’s diary for that date, at the archive of the Sabarmati Ashram, doesn’t mention the visit to Inanda at all.

34
   “
To us at the Phoenix Settlement
”: “A Great Zulu Dead,”
Indian Opinion
, Feb. 15, 1946.

35
   “
the solidarity between
”: Jacob Zuma, in speech available online at
www.info.gov.za/speeches/2000/000/0010161010a1002.htm
.>.

36
   
The immediate provocation
: The term “poll tax” as it was used in South Africa at that time had nothing to do with elections. See Surendra Bhana, “Gandhi, Indians,
and Africans in South Africa,” paper presented at the Kansas African Studies Center, Sept. 12, 2002.

37
   “
For the Indian community
”:
CWMG
, vol. 5, p. 366.

38
   
Gandhi had the rank
: Ibid., p. 368. Another biographer, D. G. Tendulkar, following the
Autobiography
, makes it twenty-four, including nineteen ex-indentured. Tendulkar,
Mahatma
, vol. 1, p. 76.

39
   
In the next few weeks
: This is the surmise of the leading South African scholar on this conflict, Jeff Guy, in his book
Maphumulo Uprising
, p. 101.

40
   “
I do not remember
”: Prabhudas Gandhi,
My Childhood with Gandhiji
, p. 42.

41
   
But it did say
: See Bhana, “Gandhi, Indians, and Africans in South Africa.”

42
   
In London, an exile
: Green,
Gandhi
, p. 160.

43
   “
Mr. Gandhi speaks with
”: Doke,
M. K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot
, p. 111.

44
   “
It was no trifle
”: Ibid., p. 112.

45
   “
My heart was with the
Zulus
”: Gandhi,
Autobiography
, p. 279.

46
   
As late as 1943
: Nayar,
Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment
, p. 264.

47
   “
These themes
”: Erikson,
Gandhi’s Truth
, p. 194.

48
   
In part, this may have
: Marks, “Ambiguities of Dependence,” p. 54.

49
   “
No, I purposely did not
”:
CWMG
, vol. 62, p. 199.

50
   “
Yours is a far bigger issue
”: Ibid., vol. 68, p. 273.

51
   “
I venture to trust
”: Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, Government House 1457, Military Affairs, Bhambatha Rebellion Correspondence, Feb. 9, to Dec. 28, 1907. See also M. K. Gandhi to Gov. H. McCallum, Aug. 13, 1907. Thanks to Jeff Guy, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, who called this passage to my attention.

52
   
He had spoken of the need
: Marks, “Ambiguities of Dependence,” p. 54.

53
   “
decency of wearing clothes”:
Speech at the Natal Missionary Conference, at Durban Town Hall, July 4, 1911. Text in archive of Killie Campbell Library in Durban.

54
   
close to the Zulu royal house:
In 1936—twenty-four years after he was elected president of the South African Native National Congress—John Dube was named “Prime Minister” of what was termed the Zulu nation by the reigning Prince Regent.

55
   “
Every other question
”: “Sons of the Soil,”
Indian Opinion
, Aug. 30, 1913, quoted in Nauriya,
African Element in Gandhi
, p. 48.

56
   “
You must know that every one
”: Reprinted in “Sons of the Soil,” cited by Nauriya,
African Element in Gandhi
, p. 48.

57
   “
About five hundred Indians
”: Document in the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Center at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, File 1262/203, 3984, HIST/1893/14.

58
   “
people like Indians
”: See Carl Faye,
Zulu References for Interpreters and Students in Documents
(Pietermaritzburg, 1923), which includes “Notes of Proceedings at Meeting with Zulus Held by John L. Dube at Eshowe, Zululand, 30 November 1912.”

59
   “
anti-Indianism”:
Heather Hughes, “Doubly Elite: Exploring the Life of
John Langalibalele Dube,”
Journal of Southern African Studies
vol. 27, no. 3 (Sept. 2001): footnote p. 446. The quotation from “The Indian Invasion” came to me in an e-mail from Ms. Hughes.

60
   
Later a Zulu newspaper
: Roux,
Time Longer Than Rope
, p. 250.

61
   “
Indians cannot make common cause
”:
Harijan
, Feb. 18, 1939.

62
   “
Indians and Africans must act
”: A little more than two months before Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, she was delivering what was essentially an antiwar message, but not for Gandhi’s reasons.

63
   
That night, according to one
: “I Remember,” privately circulated memoir by I. C. Meer, edited by E. S. Reddy and Fatima Meer.

64
   “
pogrom” against Indians:
Goolam Vahed and Ashwin Desai offer a narrative and analysis of the 1949 riot in
Monty Naiker: Between Reason and Treason
(Pietermaritzburg, 2010), pp. 234–55.

65
   “
The inclusion of all
”:
CWMG
, vol. 87, p. 414.

66
   
But few African leaders were ready:
The conspicuous exception was
Albert Luthuli who became president of the African National Congress in 1952. Four years earlier, a few months after Gandhi’s murder, Luthuli spoke of “the efficacy of
nonviolence as an instrument of struggle in seeking freedom for oppressed people” in a speech at Howard University in Washington that anticipated Martin Luther King, Jr. The first South African to win the
Nobel Peace Prize said blacks in the United States as well as Africa should go forward as Gandhi’s “undoubted disciples.” His notes for the speech are preserved in the archive of the Luthuli Museum in Groutville, KwaZulu-Natal, and cited by Scott Couper in his
Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith
.

67
   “
Many of our grassroots
”: Mandela,
Long Walk to Freedom
, p. 107, cited by Dhupelia-Mesthrie,
Gandhi’s Prisoner?
p. 342.

68
   
Repeatedly, he courted arrest
: Dhupelia-Mesthrie,
Gandhi’s Prisoner?
pp. 353–55.

69
   
But Manilal had no organized
: Ibid., p. 355.

70
   
At one meeting
: Ibid., pp. 350–51.

71
   “
The principle was not
”: Mandela,
Long Walk to Freedom
, p. 111. See also pp. 91, 99.