Gandhi Before India (33 page)

Though he can afford to live in comfort, he lives in poverty. He dresses simply and lives like an ascetic. His mission is service to his country. The idea underlying his service is that there should be complete
swaraj
[freedom] for India and that the British should quit the country, handing over power to Indians. If they do not do so, the Indians should refuse them all help so that they become unable to carry on the administration and are forced to leave. He holds that unless this is done the people of India will never be happy. Everything else will follow
swaraj
.
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After a week in hospital, H. O. Ally moved back to the Hotel Cecil. However, on Oldfield’s advice, he had hour-long massages every evening, to make him fit for the meeting with the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

Two days before meeting the deputation, Lord Elgin received a joint letter from five Indians from South Africa studying in London – three Christian, one Muslim and one Hindu. The letter was clearly prompted and very likely drafted by Gandhi. It detailed the disabilities under the laws being proposed in the Transvaal, noting that the signatories would not be able to gain entry into the colony on their return. It tellingly added: ‘We are here being nurtured in the teachings of Bentham, Austin, and other English writers whose names are a watchword for liberty and independence, and we could hardly believe that anything of the kind referred to above would possibly be applicable to us.’
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On the afternoon of 8 November, Gandhi, Ally and ten others were at the Colonial Office to meet Lord Elgin. The first to speak was Sir Lepel Griffin, former Chief Secretary of the Punjab and current chairman of the East India Association. Here is the official transcript of part of what Griffin said:

And against whom is this [offending] legislation directed? Against the most orderly, honourable, industrious, temperate race in the world, people of our own stock and blood, with whom our own language has as a sister-language been connected …

And by whom is this legislation instigated? I am told, and I believe it, that it is not by the best part of the British community in the Transvaal, who are, I believe, in favour of giving all reasonable privileges to British Indian subjects; it is by the alien foreign population in the Transvaal who are perhaps to some extent inconvenienced by Indian traders who are so very much more temperate and industrious than themselves. It does not come from the English. The legislation is prompted, and the prejudice against the Indians is encouraged, by the aliens, by Russian Jews, by Syrians, by German Jews, by every class of aliens, the very off-scourings of the international sewers of Europe.

The two questions were pertinent, but Griffin’s answer to the second was extraordinary. From where and whence did this diatribe come? Was it a product of Sir Lepel Griffin’s own prejudices, or a more general pandering to the anti-Semitism then common among the British ruling class? In fact, it was Boers and Britons, Christians both, who had been in the forefront of the anti-Indian legislation. To be sure, some recent Jewish immigrants to the Transvaal were hostile to Indian traders who competed with them. Even so, Gandhi’s closest supporters were, as often as not, Jews such as Henry Polak, Hermann Kallenbach and Lewis Ritch. What did Gandhi think of Sir Lepel’s diatribe, as he heard it? Alas, the records are silent on the matter.
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Gandhi spoke next, and with sobriety. He explained how the new Ordinance violated the ‘fundamental maxim of the British law’ that everyone was presumed innocent unless proven otherwise; it ‘brands every Indian as guilty’. It originally applied to women too, but as a result of their protests at least this had been withdrawn. The larger worry was that it would be applied elsewhere, that ‘what the Transvaal thinks today the other Colonies think tomorrow.’

H. O. Ally spoke briefly, endorsing Gandhi’s stand and emphasizing that they were ‘loyal British subjects’ who did not demand political parity. ‘We are content that the white man should be predominant in the Transvaal,’ said Ally, ‘but we do feel that we are entitled to all the other ordinary rights that a British subject should enjoy.’

The Indian MP M. M. Bhownaggree also spoke. He invoked the duty Elgin owed India and Indians, as the ‘custodian and guardian of Indian interests and the protector of their rights, during a memorable and distinguished viceroyalty’. Dadabhai Naoroji drew attention to the political traditions of the party of which he, like the Colonial Secretary, was a member. ‘If there is one principle more important than another,’ remarked Naoroji, ‘it is that of the freedom of British subjects under the British flag, and I do hope that the British Government, especially a Liberal Government, will stand upon that basis.’ (It was characteristic that the Indian Tory stressed the official’s duty, whereas the Indian Liberal emphasized a broader principle.)

Having heard everybody out, Elgin then responded. He did not think ‘that the impression of thumb mark in itself should be a very debasing operation’. Gandhi interjected that it was a ten-finger mark that was required, which in India was asked for only in the case of criminals. Elgin replied, ‘I do not want to argue it, but I think that there is just that much to be said.’ He then turned to the forces behind the new legislation. He had received many telegrams from different (white) municipalities in the Transvaal urging him to pass the Ordinance. ‘I cannot, therefore, entirely subscribe to what Sir Lepel Griffin said about the opposition [of whites to Indians].’ He admitted that had he been in the India Office rather than the Colonial Office, he might have himself signed dispatches ‘protesting, in as strong language as has been used here, against the restrictions on British citizens’. However, placed where he was, he had

to recognize the fact that all over the world there are difficulties arising on the part of white communities, and we have to reckon with them. I do not say that they ought always to succeed; they certainly ought not to succeed in points of detail which would, in any way, involve oppression. But the fact of there being that sentiment has to be borne in mind when we have to deal with matters of this description.

He ended with a carefully worded equivocation: ‘I have now heard what Mr Gandhi had to say … I have heard the other gentlemen who have accompanied him. I will give the best consideration to their representations, and I shall think it my duty to make up my mind with the full responsibility which I have to assume.’
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Writing to Henry Polak, Gandhi, ever the optimist, described his meeting with Elgin as ‘exceedingly good’.
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For his part, the Secretary of State for the Colonies was now persuaded that Gandhi and Ally were ‘really representative of the majority of their compatriots’. Elgin wrote to the Transvaal Government that while he appreciated the force of white sentiment, he would not want to advise Royal Assent to the new legislation just yet. He asked them ‘to favour me with a further expression of your own opinion on the question, in view of the strong, and, as I gather, somewhat unexpected, opposition with which the Ordinance has been met by the majority of the Indian community.’
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Two days after Gandhi’s delegation met Lord Elgin,
The Times
printed a long article on its mission. Before the Anglo-Boer War, perhaps the Imperial Government could have intervened in favour of the Indians, but it would ‘be injudicious, and indeed impracticable, to attempt to settle such a question from Downing Street now, when the colony will enjoy within a few months all the rights of responsible government.’ The paper explained why the Indians’ claims and demands could not, or rather would not, be conceded:

No young democratic community of white men can be expected to deal out even-handed justice to formidable rivals in their trade and business who come from another race, with other traditions, other creeds, and other complexions than their own. The fact that the interlopers are subjects of the same Sovereign, and can claim to be treated as members of the same Empire, will probably never, in our time, outweigh these considerations with them. The lapse of years, and perhaps of generations, may be needed to create, if indeed it can ever be created, such a spirit of common Imperial citizenship as will greatly mitigate the combined force of race prejudice and of self-interest.
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As a student, Mohandas Gandhi had proved impervious to the delights and distractions of London. Plays, parties and cricket matches did not interest him then. Now he had neither the interest nor the time. He worked from nine in the morning until midnight, lobbying editors, politicians and other men of influence. They, and others like them, were besieged by a torrent of letters. Apparently, as many as 5,000 penny stamps were used by the delegation.

Among the men Gandhi met in pursuit of his case was the campaigning journalist W. T. Stead. Stead had famously – or perhaps notoriously – been sympathetic to the Boer cause during the War, abandoning his earlier support for the imperialism of Cecil Rhodes. Gandhi asked him now to write an article on the Indian question in ‘your own graphic style’; he had ‘no doubt that some at least of the Boer leaders would listen to you and give effect to your suggestions’.
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Stead did not write the article requested, but other grandees were more amenable to Gandhi’s lobbying. The doctor and naturalist George Birdwood, an old India hand, was deeply impressed with Gandhi’s petition to Elgin. He read it ‘with the greatest personal delight for the evidence it affords of the ability and wisdom with which young Hindoos like you can handle such intricate and trying [questions of] Imperial policy’. The rejection of the Indian plea, thought Birdwood, would be an ‘irretrievable blow to the consolidation of the [British] Empire’. In his view, there was

no historical people on earth – not even the Scots – who have a better conceit of themselves or better deserve [it] than the Hindoos, who have given India her immemorial name and fame, and a wanton outrage against their racial pride such as that by which they are affronted in South Africa, will strike a deadly blow to their loyalty towards the British ‘Raj’ which is the mightiest corner-stone of our world-wide Empire.
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Meanwhile, pressed by Gandhi, the liberal MPs Harold Cox and Henry Cotton raised a series of questions in Parliament on the harassment of Indians in the Transvaal. They were answered by the Under-Secretary of State, Winston Churchill, a man noticeably sympathetic to the idea that white and brown could never mix. One question related to an eviction notice issued to about a hundred Indian traders in the Johannesburg locality of Vrededorp. The traders had been there for years, and their vested property was valued at £20,000. When Cotton asked why the Indians were made to vacate their stands, Churchill said that there were also Boer traders operating in the market, and ‘it is very desirable to keep the white and Coloured quarters apart, as the practice of allowing European, Asiatic, and native families to live side by side in [a] mixed community is fraught with many evils, and, in Lord Selborne’s opinion, is injurious to the social well-being of all three.’
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Gandhi immediately wrote to Lord Elgin, taking issue with Churchill’s claims. He said, first, that the Indians in the suburb had legally
acquired rights of residence; second, that Indian shops, described by Churchill as ‘tin shanties’, were in fact ‘superior to many of the buildings in Vrededorp’; and third, and most tellingly,

that if the doctrine of the desirability of keeping the white and the Coloured quarters apart is sound, I fear that there will be an end to British Indian residence in the Transvaal with any degree of self-respect. The logical conclusion of such a doctrine will be a system of locations which can only result in ruination to hundreds of law-abiding and respectable Indians.
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On 27 November, Gandhi and Ally met the Under-Secretary of State in his rooms in the Colonial Office. Churchill asked them to send him a short note, no longer than one foolscap page, of what they ‘had to say on this Ordinance, on the Vrededorp Stands Ordinance and on the question as a whole’. Ally then reminded him that

he was the same person who had been present at the Point [in Durban] to receive Mr Churchill on his return from the [Boer] war. And it was the same Mr Churchill that he now pleaded for redress on behalf of the Indian community. Mr Churchill smiled, patted Mr Ally on the back and said he would do all he could. This answer added to our hopes.
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His experiences in the imperial capital, meeting doors open, closed and ajar, convinced Gandhi that the Indians needed an organized body to represent them in London. Working via the mail and the telephone, he established a South Africa British Indian Committee (SABIC), which was supported by, among others, Griffin, Naoroji and Bhownaggree. L. W. Ritch, his friend from Johannesburg who had now qualified as a lawyer in London, would serve as secretary. ‘I have not told you all about Mr Ritch’s capabilities,’ wrote Gandhi to Bhownaggree.

He has handled many a meeting and has been secretary of more than one organization. He was twenty years ago perhaps what people may call a rabid Socialist. His has been a most chequered career. Today, I do not own a friend who knows me more than he does. He is one of those men who believe in dying for a cause that he holds dear.
²⁹

It was Bhownaggree who chaired a farewell meeting for the deputation. This was held on 29 November, in the Richelieu Room of the Hotel Cecil. In attendance were an array of pro-Indian members of the British Establishment, among them the former Governor of Bombay,
Lord Reay; the former Principal of the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, Theodore Morrison; sundry ex-I. C. S. officials and serving Members of Parliament. Those with more personal connections to Gandhi included J. H. L. Polak (father of Henry) and Dr Josiah Oldfield.
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