Mahatma Gandhi: In South Africa
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Hurdles in South Africa
‘WE’LL HANG OLD GANDHI ON A SOUR APPLE TREE’
…Sang a white mob, baying for Gandhi’s blood on his return to South Africa in 1897. Historian Ramachandra Guha narrates the hair-raising confrontation in his new book ‘Gandhi before India’
The Times of India 2013/09/29
In the third week of December 1896, the S S Courland arrived off the coast of Durban. With it was another ship, the S S Naderi, also coming from India. Between them, the vessels had some 600 Indians on board, Mohandas Gandhi and his family among them. The ships were asked to wait out at sea while the passengers were examined by doctors. There had been an outbreak of plague in the Bombay Presidency, and the authorities were concerned the migrants might be infected with the disease. The etiology of plague was imperfectly understood; it was not yet established that rats and fleas were the disease’s main carriers. Some doctors, and more ordinary folk, feared that it could spread through human contact.
As the ships lay moored off the Natal coast, the twelfth annual meeting of the Indian National Cogress convened in Calcutta. Gandhi was an absent presence, with his recent lobbying in India informing its deliberations. Among the 24 resolutions passed by the Cogress was one recording a ‘most solemn protest against the disabilities imposed on Indians in South Africa, and the invidious and humiliating distinctions made between them and European settlers….’ Moving the resolution, G Parameshvaram Pillai of Madras observed that while in India, Indians could become members of the Legislative Council, and in England they could win election to the House of Commons, in Natal ‘we are driven out of tramcars, we are pushed off footpaths, we are kept out of hotels, we are refused the benefit of the public paths, we are spat upon, we are hissed, we are cursed, we are abused, and we are subjected to a variety of other indignities which no human being can patiently endure.’
On the other side of the Indian Ocean, the mood was very different. Gandhi had become a hate-figure among the whites of Natal, on account of what he was supposed to have said in his travels in India. On the 23rd of December, the Natal Advertiser printed a plea urging swift action against the ‘great Gandhi [who] has arrived at the head of the advanced guard of the Indian army of invasion — the army that is to dispossess us of our country and our homes…. We must be up and doing, and make our arrangements so as to be able to give the invaders a fitting reception.’
… The anger against Gandhi and company was compounded by a paranoia about the germs they allegedly carried. The doctors who came aboard the two ships said they could not yet allow them to land; in their view, plague germs took three weeks to incubate, and it was better to wait and watch. The ship’s captains were instructed to have the decks washed and cleaned daily with a mixture of water and carbolic acid. Sulphur fires were kept burning day and night to cleanse the passengers and their possessions of any remnants of the dreaded germs.
A rumour reached Durban that the Indians on board would sue the Government of Natal for illegal detention. Swallowing the rumour whole, a local newspaper concluded that Gandhi’s ‘keen legal instincts have scented a splendid brief to occupy himself immediately on his release from the “durance vile” of the quarantine and purifying effects of the carbolic bath. The large sum of money said to have been subscribed for the purpose would naturally go to Mr Gandhi whether the case was won or lost, and nothing in fact could suit the gentleman better than such an interesting case to devote his attention to immediately he got on shore.’
This representation of Gandhi as a malevolent, money-grubbing lawyer further consolidated the anti-Indian sentiments on shore. On the 4th of January 1897, some 1500 whites gathered for a meeting in Durban’s Market Square. As the chairman, a certain Harry Sparks—the owner of a butcher’s shop—moved into his chair, it began to rain. He decided to shift the meeting to the Town Hall nearby. Thereupon ‘a unanimous and spontaneous move was made in the direction of the municipal hall, the verandahs and space immediately around the main entrance being quickly thronged with a surging crowd of interested and enthusiastic burgesses. Some little time elapsed before the gates were opened, but in the meantime the lights were switched on, and in a few minutes after the gates were thrown open the central hall was thronged from floor to ceiling. The audience when Mr. Sparks resumed the chair must have numbered 2,000…’.
The meeting called upon the Government to send the two ships back to India, and to disallow all Indians other than indentured labourers from entering Natal. A voice in the crowd shouted: ‘Let them take Gandhi with them’. The main speaker, a Dr McKenzie, ‘relieved himself freely of his opinion about the mischievous Mr Gandhi. … [H]e said Mr Gandhi had gone away [to India] to drag our reputation in the gutters of India, and he had painted Natal as black and filthy as his own skin…. Mr Gandhi had come to the colony to take everything that was fair and good, and he had gone out of it to blackguard the hospitality with which he had been indulged. They would teach Mr Gandhi that they read from his actions that he was not satisfied with what they had given him and wanted something more. They would give him something more.’
…The ships had now been moored off shore for some twenty days. In Durban, an ‘European Protection Association’ was formed to resist the Asiatic invasion. The Association’s first meeting was held on 10th January. When one speaker said that the ‘mouthpiece’ of the Indians ‘was a gentleman of the name of Ghandhi’, a voice from the crowd interjected: ‘Don’t say a gentleman’. A rumour spread that Gandhi was cowed by the protests; one newspaper even claiming that ‘some of the officials who visited the vessels this morning report that Mr Gandhi and the Indians on board are in a state of “funk”, and several were pleading to be taken back to India direct.’
On the 11th of January, a reporter of the Natal Advertiser went on board the S S Naderi to interview the captain. There were, he found, 356 passengers on board, including ‘infants in arms’, and that contrary to the fears on shore, there were no artisans among them. To the question, ‘How do the passengers look upon Gandhi?’, the captain answered: ‘There is not a man on board these ships who knew Gandhi until they landed here. I never heard of him either, and only read his pamphlet during my quarantine.’
The next day the reporter obtained an interview with Gandhi himself. The lawyer refuted the rumours that there were blacksmiths and carpenters on board, and that he was importing a printing press. Most of the passengers were Natal residents, returning after a holiday in India. The newcomers were traders, storekeeper’s assistants, and hawkers. And he had ‘absolutely nothing whatever to do’ with bringing these other passengers to Natal.
…‘What is your object in coming back?’, the reporter asked, ‘I do not return here with the intention of making money’, answered Gandhi, ‘but of acting as a humble interpreter between the two communities [of Europeans and Indians]. There is a great misunderstanding between the two communities, and I shall endeavour to fulfill the office of interpreter so long as both the communities do not object to my presence.’
… On the 12th of January 1897, the authorities finally allowed the ships from India to send their passengers ashore. The captains of the Naderi and Courland were asked to commence landing operations the next morning. The decision was prompted by appeals by the Viceroy in India and the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, who warned that the agitation in Natal had put a question mark on imperial harmony in the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria’s reign.
Word of the compromise—or capitulation—reached the white protesters in Durban. On the morning of the 13th, they began streaming down from the town to the Point marching in groups defined by trade — the railwaymen together, then the blacksmiths, the carpenters, the mechanics, the shop assistants, the tailors, the bricklayers, and, finally, a number of unaffiliated whites referred to in the newspaper reports as the ‘general public’. More than 5,000 Europeans had responded to the call. There was also a ‘native section’ of about 500 Africans; a dwarf was appointed to lead them, who (to the whites’ delight) ‘marched up and down in front of their ranks officering them, while they went through a number of exercises with their sticks, and danced and whooped.’
Hearing of the demonstration, the Attorney-General of Natal, Harry Escombe, rushed down to the Point. Escombe was a little man; to make himself heard, he climbed on top of a heap of logs and sought to pacify an increasingly angry crowd. The passengers on the two ships, he said, were innocent men (and women, and children) who did not know of the strong feelings in Natal. He urged the crowd to be ‘quiet, manly and resolute’, to abjure ‘haste and hysterics’, and to have trust in their Government. Natal was and would remain a white Colony. An early session of Parliament would be convened, to pass legislation keeping out Asiatics. Escombe’s pleas were answered with shouts of ‘send the Indians back’, and ‘Bring Gandhi ashore, let him come here for all the tar and feathers.’
Escombe again urged the crowd to disperse peacefully. This was the sixtieth year of Queen Victoria’s reign and ‘in the autumn of her life it should never be said that anything which took place in Natal caused the least sorrow or sadness in the heart of that great Sovereign’. The appeal to Imperial honour had some effect, for the crowd began to quieten down, and slowly, to melt away.
Through the day, boats carrying passengers from the Naderi and Courland came over the sand-bar into the harbour. As a gesture of appeasement, the owners had run the Union Jack up at the head of the ships. The passengers quietly disembarked and made their way into the Indian areas of the city. Kasturba and the children were now safely ashore, but Gandhi was still on the Naderi, where he had been joined by his friend, the Durban solicitor F A Laughton. The Attorney-General had sent word that it might be better for Gandhi to come ashore after dusk, but Laughton did not like the idea of his ‘entering the city like a thief in the night.’ In any case, things appeared to have quietened down on the Point; the whites were said to have dispersed, and it seemed safe for them to land.
The boat carrying Gandhi and Laughton came ashore shortly before five in the afternoon. As it crossed the sand-bar, the passengers would have seen, on the right, the city of Durban;, and on the left, the long, low, wooded hill known as the Bluff. Behind them lay the mighty ocean. This was a striking landscape, which at other times may have been savoured for pleasure. But now, with the Bluff on one side and a hostile city on the other, and the ocean and his homeland receding further into the distance, Gandhi may well have had the feeling of being hemmed in.
As their boat was landing, some white boys loitering about recognized the Indian barrister. They sent word to the remnants of the retreating crowd, who hurried back to the Point. Laughton and Gandhi hailed a rickshaw and were about to step into it, when the boys laid hold of the wheels. The barristers tried to get into another rickshaw, but, sensing the mood, the driver was unwilling to take them. Gandhi and Laughton decided to walk on with their luggage. From the Victoria Embankment they walked northwards on Stanger Street, with a crowd of ever greater numbers following them, hissing and jeering. Then they took a turn towards West Street. When they neared the Ship’s Hotel — as its name suggests, a place favoured by seamen—Gandhi and Laughton were surrounded, and the former set upon. The Indian became ‘the object of kicks and cuffs, while mud and stale fish were thrown at him. One person also produced a riding-whip, and gave him a stroke, while another plucked away at his peculiar hat.’
Gandhi was beaten, but not bowed. Blood was flowing down his neck, but ‘eye-witnesses state that he bore himself stolidly and pluckily through the trying ordeal.’ He was rescued from the mob by a white lady, who used her parasol to keep away the attackers. She was the wife of the long-serving Superintendent of Police, R C Alexander. Alerted by some Indians, a posse of constables arrived to relieve Gandhi — and Mrs Alexander. Superintendent Alexander himself followed soon after.
The policemen safely conveyed Gandhi to Parsee Rustomjee’s store in Field Street, locking the doors from the inside as they entered. Outside, the crowd continued to bay for (more of) Gandhi’s blood. Superintendent Alexander, now joined by the Deputy Mayor, urged them to disperse. But more and more whites began to gather around the store; they constituted ‘a compact mass of anti-Gandhites.’
According to a reporter on the spot, the crowd ‘told the Superintendent what a fine fellow he was, and also exactly their modus operandi of dealing with Gandhi. They had a barrel of treacle quite close, and, if the Superintendent would only confide Gandhi to their care, they would undertake that he should be handed back safe and sound, if treacled and sticky.’ Then they began to sing a song beginning with the words, ‘We’ll hang old Gandhi on a sour apple tree.’
Alexander, thinking on his feet, devised a plan to spirit Gandhi to safety. He went into the store, and made the lawyer exchange his clothes for the uniform of a government peon. Gandhi’s face was blackened, and covered with a muffler. Then, escorted by two detectives, he took a side door out of the house, which led into Parsee Rustomjee’s godown, from which the trio escaped into the street and hopped into a carriage that conveyed them to the police station.
A little later, Alexander himself emerged, to tell the crowd that Gandhi was not inside. He invited a deputation to go in and check. Three members of the mob went into Rustomjee’s store, and ‘reappeared with the intelligence that wherever Gandhi was he could not be found in that building.’
By now it was late evening. It had begun to rain. As the shower intensified, ‘the ardent desire of the crowd to see Mr Gandhi began to wane, and in its place a desire arose to find a more comfortable place to discuss the situation than in the middle of a somewhat sloppy road in front of an Indian store with wetting rain overhead.’
So the crowd finally dispersed. Where they went the reports do not tell us. It may, or must, have been a place which served refreshments other than tea.
Excerpted by The Times of India with permission from Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India, Penguin/Allen Lane, 2013
The African Gandhi
The Times of India 2013/09/29
In his remarkable new biography, Ramachandra Guha argues that Gandhi’s ideas, philosophy and techniques were moulded in England and South Africa — an important formative period in his life that tends to be forgotten. How many of us are familiar with the role played by Pranjivan Mehta, Henry Polak, Thambi Naidoo and Sonja Schlesin in Gandhi’s political evolution? Guha, whose research took him to four continents, talks to Namita Devidayal about how both the personal and the political Gandhi were shaped by his years abroad
What made you decide to write this biography?
I have been interested in Gandhi all my life. Back in the 1980s, I studied Gandhi’s influence on Indian environmentalism. Then I wrote a biography of the maverick anthropologist Verrier Elwin, who was a sort of adopted son of Gandhi’s. Writing a history of cricket, I found that although Gandhi had little interest in sport, he deeply shaped its politics and sociology. The man had left his traces on so many aspects of the history of India and the world. So I finally decided to write a full-fledged biography, in two volumes, of which this is the first.
What were the new discoveries you made while researching this book?
‘Gandhi before India’ deals with his life in Kathiawar, London, and, above all, South Africa. I found fascinating new material in archives in five countries on his friendships, rivalries, and struggles. Whereas the main secondary characters of Gandhi’s Indian years — Nehru, Patel, Jinnah, Ambedkar — are well known, those of his South African years are not. My book showcases such remarkable individuals as the Gujarati jeweller Pranjivan Mehta, the Tamil militant Thambi Naidoo, the Jewish radical Henry Polak, and Gandhi’s feminist secretary Sonja Schlesin. Researching their lives and fleshing out their personalities was a thrilling exercise. They all deserve to be far better known, since they shaped Gandhi in his formative years.
Was there anything in his early life that indicated that he would one day inspire thousands of people to follow him?
Among his striking traits, developed when still a young man, were his absolute fearlessness----he faced down mob attacks in 1897 and 1908 (and was badly injured on both occasions) -- and his ability to forge friendships across religious and racial boundaries.
Where did his unshakeable belief in non-violence come from?
It developed over time. Both the Jain poet Raychandbhai, who was an early mentor, and the Russian sage Leo Tolstoy, whom Gandhi read closely and corresponded with, encouraged him to privilege non-violence over violence. Moral commitment apart, Gandhi also recognized that with the asymmetry of numbers, wealth and power between Europeans and Indians in South Africa, armed struggle would never work.
You have written in some detail about his failures as a husband and father. What flaws in his personality did these arise from?
It is not uncommon for great artists, writers, and activists to be indifferent (and sometimes even cruel) husbands and fathers. They are so consumed by their passion and vocation that they do not recognize the emotional needs of those closest to them. In Gandhi’s case, the conflict was complicated by the fact that he had his children so early. When his eldest son turned 18, Gandhi himself was only 36, and had just shifted from the law to social activism. The boy’s adolescent crisis thus coincided with the father’s midlife crisis. Even so, by any standard Gandhi was excessively harsh on his sons Harilal and Manilal, and (in the typical way of the Indian patriarch) tended to take his wife Kasturba for granted.
In what ways do you think this book will alter our understanding of Gandhi?
Earlier biographies have brushed over Gandhi’s life before his return to India in 1915. By paying these 45 years close attention, my book deepens our understanding of this great political and moral exemplar in many ways. It demonstrates in detail how he developed as a writer and as a propagandist; how he forged his philosophy of religious pluralism; how he perfected the theory and practice of non-violence; and how he inspired Gujarati merchants, Tamil labourers, heterodox Christians and dissident Jews to follow him into jail.
The making of a national leader
Mahatma Gandhi as national leader was really formed in diaspora: Nalini Natarajan
Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN | Jan 30, 2014
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948. Even during his lifetime, and particularly after his death, writing on Gandhi has been a cottage industry. Not a year goes by without a new facet of Gandhi's life being scrutinized. More recent examinations center on Gandhi's life among the Indian diaspora, particularly the 21 years he spent in South Africa.
Nalini Natarajan, a professor at the College of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, who looks at the diasporic Mahatma in her book Atlantic Gandhi published last year, speaks to Chidanand Rajghatta:
Writing on Gandhi is almost an industry. What prompted you to take up this project?
Around 10 years ago, I was reflecting on diaspora as a kind of mirror image of nation and it suddenly struck me that Gandhi, the national leader, was really formed in diaspora. I presented a paper on that at the Madison South Asia conference and at several other venues, then left it for a while. Then in 2009 I revisited it, this time connecting the diaspora idea with the history of transplanted labour. I felt that these aspects of Gandhiji, that of his formation in diaspora, drawing into his experience the particular alienations, anxieties, desire for unities; as well as his pertinence to issues of residency rights for transplanted peoples (a feature of Atlantic history) had not been explored yet. That led to an article in EPW, which then led to the contract for a book length project. Mainly the idea that moving between modes of production — colony to plantation, gives rise to insights.
Also my special interest is narrative — the narrative of his autobiography, of Hind Swaraj, of Satyagraha in South Africa.
Ram Guha's most recent book Gandhi before India, the first of a two-part biography of the Mahatma, suggests that Gandhi's time in South Africa was under-researched. You seem to disagree with that assessment - why?
In working on the South Africa period, I put forward a reading of Gandhi's life using material from many other preious scholars. Maureen Swan and Huttenback have researched his activism in S africa in great detail. So has Isabel Hofmeyer hose work I had not read when the book went to press (the book came out after); Rajmohan Gandhi has extensive details on the South Africa period, so did Parel. In my book I explain what my book is doing that is new. I see South Africa as a rehearsal for India, especially in 3 ways — the restitution of the coolie as a resilient figure; the technique of the March (Transvaal March as precursor to the salt march) and the introduction of women into the movement.
How is your work different form Guha's?
I have not read Guha's book except in bits and pieces, but have seen reviews. My sense is that his is archival — he has traced down letters, etc, while mine is interpretive. Also my sense is that he focuses on Gandhi the man, his formation as a man, while I am interested in Gandhi the oceanic traveller and diasporic labour leader especially as it resonates with Atlantic issues. But until I look at his book I cannot say. I do know that the diaspora idea and the South africa period has been important to my work for quite a while and that in 2009 and 2012 I published on those topics.
Why Atlantic Gandhi - after all there was plantation/indentured labor in the Pacific too?
Yes indeed there was. By Atlantic I mean the shorthand for a body of study — Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic, LInebaugh and Rediker's work and others who study movements of resistance around the Atlantic rim. The Atlantic was made up, barring the Amerindian peoples, of entirely introduced populations and this situation created particular histories — creole movements for independence, plantation transplanted labour both enslaved and indentured, and their slow struggle for inclusion. Gandhi's struggles for the indentured raise so many parallels to these issues (I deal with these in detail in chapter 7 of the book).
Gandhi didn't travel elsewhere in Asia either ... not to Russia or China or Japan/Far East. So why is it such a matter of debate and discussion that he did not go west of UK and South Africa
For my purposes, I think he might have travelled further west had he not returned to India when he did. By the time he left for India he was steeped in Atlantic issues. IN my chapter on Andrews, I read Andrews as a kind of alter ego of Gandhi's doing in the Caribbean and North America the things Gandhi might have done. For instance Andrews' great work in the Caribbean. Similarly in Fiji, Mauritius etc. The point is, there is so much that is suggestive for the Atlantic in Gandhi's work — as is seen by the fact that MLK Jr was so inspired by him (and as my book shows its not just non-violence).
For someone who gave to and derived much from diasporic plantation/indentured, is it fair to say Gandhi didn't appear to be particularly moved or concerned by the plight of the blacks of South Africa or other oppressed people across the continent.
I wouldnt agree with that view. Gandhi was rather uninformed and racially biased when he went to South Africa, For instance he often repeats the Aryan myth, and speaks of Indians and Saxons as allied. But as he observed the Zulu and the Khoisan, he shows a keen sense of how taxation has reduced them from a life of freedom to one of bondage. Mention is often made of his use of the word "kafir', but if Gandhi's writings show one thing it is that names mean nothing. He too was called a coolie and as far as he was concerned all were racist.
There were many Indian leaders and founding fathers who studied and lived abroad and would have come in touch with the Indian diaspora? How and why did Gandhi's experience turn out to be different?
My book argues that it is the particular confluence of political (fighting for diasporic rights), social (betterment of diasporic society such as male female relations) and personal (his own personal struggles in diaspora which led to his personal philosophy e.g, frugality and vegetarianism) that came together in a unique way. Other diasporas may not have done precisely that. I think it was Gandhi's holistic approach — everything is and must be connected — which made it so unique.
See also
Mahatma Gandhi Mahatma Gandhi: In South Africa
