Gandhi Before India (53 page)

It fell to Gandhi to introduce Savarkar at the Dasehra meeting. In public he was polite, saying he did not want to stand between the speaker and his audience. His real feelings were communicated in a letter to Lord Ampthill, which noted the unmistakable ‘awakening of the national consciousness’ among Indians in London, tarred somewhat by an ‘impatience of British rule. In some cases the hatred of the whole [white] race is virulent.’ Gandhi had been in discussion with the extremists, trying to ‘convince them of the errors of their ways’. One extremist (whom he does not name, but who most likely was Savarkar)
spoke to Gandhi ‘with a view to convince me that I was wrong in my methods and that nothing but the use of violence, covert or open or both, was likely to bring about redress of the wrongs they consider they suffer.’ Gandhi answered that he wished to take his own ‘humble share in national regeneration’, albeit with gentler, more incremental methods.
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Gandhi was alarmed by the hostility of the extremists towards his mentor, Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Their house journal,
Bande Matram
, had dismissed the Poona leader as ‘mean and cowardly’. In a public rejoinder, Gandhi saluted Gokhale’s decades of service, remarking that ‘it is the duty of both the extremists and moderates to see that they do not pull down the work of those who have been called the pillars of India; they are welcome to build further on it. Otherwise, they will be cutting off the very branch on which they are sitting.’
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Gandhi also wrote to Gokhale, reporting the ‘extreme bitterness’ against him among Savarkar and company in London. The criticism could best be answered, he thought, by Gokhale visiting the Transvaal and identifying with the movement. ‘I claim that the Transvaal struggle is national in every sense of the term,’ wrote Gandhi. ‘It deserves the greatest encouragement. I have considered it to be the greatest struggle of modern time. That it will succeed in the end I have not the slightest doubt. But an early success will break up the violence movement in India.’ Gandhi wanted Gokhale to come ‘to the Transvaal, publicly declaring that it was your intention to share our sorrows and, therefore, to cross the Transvaal border as a citizen of the Empire’. His coming would give the cause a ‘world-wide significance, the struggle will soon end and your countrymen will know you better. The last consideration may not weigh with you. But it does with me … If you are arrested and imprisoned, I should be delighted. I may be wrong, but I do feel that it is a step worth taking for the sake of India.’
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This was a letter as confidently presumptuous as that written to Tolstoy. To be sure, it was written out of concern for his mentor, and for his reputation. Gokhale’s reply is unavailable. But he could scarcely have gone back on the principles and prejudices of a lifetime. His style was to reason and appeal, to draft petitions and make sonorous – if occasionally also ponderous – speeches in the Imperial Council. To court arrest was as foreign to his temperament as the firing of a gun was to Gandhi’s.

In London, Gandhi continued to monitor, from long distance, the moral education of his son Manilal. The boy was now fifteen, and his father was determined that his passage into adulthood would be smoother – or at any rate less rocky – than his brother Harilal’s. The excerpts below are revealing.

Gandhi to Manilal, 10 August 1909:

Thinking of the state of affairs in the country, I believe very few Indians need marry at the present time … A person who marries in order to satisfy his carnal desire is lower than even the beast. For the married, it is considered proper to have sexual intercourse only for having progeny. The scriptures also say so … I want you to understand the purport of what I said above; and, understanding it, conquer your senses. Do not be scared by this and think that I want to bind you not to marry even after the age of 25. I do not want to put undue pressure on you or anyone whatever. I just want to give you advice. If you do not think of marriage even at the age of 25, I think it will be to your good.

Gandhi to Manilal, 17 September, on hearing that the boy had been nursing the ailing Albert West:

To do good to others and serve them without any sense of egoism – this is real education.

Gandhi to Manilal, 27 September, in reply to an apparently anxious, confused letter:

You get nervous at the question, ‘What are you going to do?’ If I was to answer on your behalf, I would say that you are going to do your duty. Your present duty is to serve your parents, to study as much as you can get the opportunity to do and to work in the fields … You must be definite on this point at least – that you are not going to practise law or medicine. We are poor and want to remain so … Our mission is to elevate Phoenix; for through it we can find our soul and serve our country. Be sure that I am always thinking of you. The true occupation of man is to build his character … He who does not leave the path of morality never starves, and is not afraid if such a contingency arises … While writing this I feel like meeting and embracing you; and tears come to my eyes as I am unable
to do that. Be sure that Bapu [Father] will not be cruel to you. Whatever I do, I do it because I think it will be in your interest. You will never come to grief, for you are doing service to others.

Gandhi to Manilal, 22 October:

I see that you have again begun to be worried about your education. Can you not give an answer to the question, ‘What class are you in?’ Hence-forward you may say that you are in Bapu’s class. Why does the idea of study haunt you again and again? If you want to study for earning your livelihood, it is not proper; for God gives food to all. You can get enough to eat even by doing manual labour … I want you to shed all fear. Do have faith in me.
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Manilal appears from these letters to be less truculent or questioning than his elder brother, if likewise concerned with his education and his sexuality. As for the father, he cannot but be hortatory, yet one notices an undercurrent of tenderness, absent in the often unfeeling letters to his elder son. A letter written to his third son, Ramdas, also displays a softness that is new. ‘Do not be angry with me if I have not brought anything for you [from London]. There was nothing I liked. What could I do if nothing European appealed to me?’ wrote Gandhi. Then he added, ‘Do not be upset with me if I go to gaol; rather you should rejoice. I should be where Harilal is.’
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It does appear that Gandhi was, albeit slowly, growing into fatherhood.

On 3 November 1909, the Colonial Office wrote to Gandhi that ‘Mr Smuts was unable to accept the claim that Asiatics should be placed in a position of equality with Europeans in respect of right of entry or otherwise’.
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The rejection was definitive. Two days later, Gandhi and Hajee Habib released a statement to the press, summarizing their visit, their meetings with Imperial officials, the refusal of General Smuts to introduce a non-racial law. The Transvaal legislation, they said, ‘cuts at the very root’ of the principle of ‘elementary equality’ of all British subjects. Interviewed by Reuters, Gandhi said Habib and he expected to be arrested when they sought to re-enter the Transvaal. Their campaign would be ‘continued most strenuously’ in India, the United Kingdom and South Africa.
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A week later, the Nonconformist minister F. B. Meyer hosted a farewell dinner for Gandhi. In attendance were the Parsi statesman M. M.
Bhownaggree, several serving Members of Parliament, and the rising Indian politician Motilal Nehru. Some who could not come sent heart-felt letters of support. Gertrude Toynbee, daughter of the reformer Arnold, wrote to Gandhi that the Indian struggle in the Transvaal ‘raises one’s conception of the possibilities of humanity’. A Christian from Fife wrote to the Reverend Meyer that

although the cause they [Gandhi and colleagues] represent is passing through a dark hour, I am not dismayed. In the history of the human race it has always been darkest before dawn … Never did the cause of the Negro seem more hopeless than during the years that preceded the abolition of slavery … May I add with all reverence that the saviour of the world himself seemed lost in the moment that brought about our redemption? And so I join you in spirit in wishing God-Speed to Messrs Gandhi and Haji Habib.
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Also present at the party for Gandhi was Sir Frederick Lely, who, back in 1888 and 1889, had refused to provide the aspiring law student with a scholarship from the State of Porbandar. Twenty years later, now living in retirement in London, the once unfeeling Administrator issued a partial
mea culpa
. Remembering his years in Kathiawar, and his friendship with Kaba Gandhi, Sir Frederick told the gathering that ‘he was quite sure that his old friend Mr Gandhi, had he been alive now, would have been proud of his son’.
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As for Gandhi himself, he spoke at this reception of how their struggle turned on a question of national honour. They had refused to meet violence with violence, and instead adopted passive resistance. He explained this method with reference to the Bible, namely the chapter where Daniel refused to accept the laws of the Medes and the Persians.
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Afterwards, L. W. Ritch sent a report to his fellow Gandhi worshipper Henry Polak:

Our big little chief left for S. Africa on Monday. A big crowd was at the St[atio]n to wish the little man farewell, and his going creates a gap in our circle of workers … Gandhi’s magnificent personality attracted about him the best spirits among the Indians resident here, and those Europeans who are capable of quiet solid work.
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The person who missed Gandhi most was Maud Polak. With his departure, she would work under L. W. Ritch on the South African
British Indian Committee. ‘She is throwing herself heart and soul into the work,’ wrote Ritch to her brother. ‘Gandhi has influenced her wonderfully and I am looking upon her as a sister.’ Precisely how wonderful the chief’s influence was is described in two little-known letters written by Gandhi himself to Henry Polak. On 11 November, the day before Meyer’s party, he wrote that Maud was ‘very seriously thinking’ of coming to South Africa. ‘Last evening she could not restrain herself, and told me she wanted to go to South Africa very badly and work for the cause.’ Gandhi said that while Maud was ‘very sweet-natured’ and ‘capable of great self-sacrifice’, he did

not know how far the Phoenix life would suit her … I have told her all I could about things. I have told her as well as I could about the jarring notes there, and I have told her, too, that there is no money in it. I have further told her how Millie herself finds it difficult to reconcile … to life at Phoenix … I have told her, too, that however much she may regard my view, and like it, I consider myself incompetent to enter into all a woman’s feelings, and when she has accessible to her Millie’s loving assistance and advice, she cannot do better than rely upon her judgment.
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Four days later, while on board ship, Gandhi wrote to Polak again about his sister’s growing attachment to himself and his cause. ‘She cannot tear herself away from me,’ he remarked:

I was watching her closely at the station. She was on the point of breaking down. She would not shake hands with me. She wanted a kiss. That she could not have at the station, not that she or I was afraid but it would be misunderstood. So she stood right on the platform … If all she has shown to be genuine she may eclipse you [in devotion to me].

Maud Polak had been desperately keen to accompany Gandhi to South Africa. Her sister-in-law Millie, probably at his urgings, filled her in on the ‘jarring notes’: namely, ‘beetles everywhere, spiders, ants in the milk, no baths, water bad, people half naked, filth too, lift a plate and you will find an insect underneath, snakes hanging from the tree, you have not only to tolerate this but love the insect life, you may not destroy any life …’ Maud Polak was undeterred by these descriptions – she still wanted to go where Gandhi was. South Africa was to her
terra nova
. Jobless, unmarried, stuck with her parents in London, it was a land with
enormous appeal, not least because Gandhi lived there. The past four months had been spent almost continuously in his company. Maud’s feelings for Gandhi were intense, and probably romantic. (Years later, with his sister’s attachment to his friend in mind, Polak recalled that while Gandhi ‘was by no means good-looking by Indian standards … throughout his life many notable women were greatly attracted by his personality, and he always had women friends, both British and Indian.’)
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Maud Polak was attracted by Gandhi’s personality, and perhaps also by his profile – a successful lawyer, a leader of a popular movement, an Indian who parleyed with Secretaries of State and Members of Parliament. His feelings for her, on the other hand, were paternal. Gandhi’s letter to her brother Henry thus continues:

I have told her [Maud] that I consider Indian civilization to be the best in the world and therefore [what] it means for her to be more Indianized than you are. She revels in the thought. Such is the condition in which I have left her. Mrs. G[andhi] used to describe you as my first born lovingly. She would accept Maud as my first born lovingly. She I think will fill her life. Mark a father’s selfishness. You are to me – Chhota Bhai – a younger brother and yet more than a brother … Maud on the other hand can be my first born and therefore in some ways more than you are to me. She will claim more of me. Can I give it? Am I worthy of all affection? Is she worthy of it from me? Unless she is a downright impostor which she is not, she is quite capable of it. The other theory is that the whole thing is a nine days wonder due to the glamour of my personality. If so, I should be shot on sight. For if people can be so falsely enthused by me, I am useless – a power more for harm than good. However that may be, there is a huge problem for you and me to solve. May Maud go to Phoenix? If her affection is real it will be a sin for anybody to prevent that. I leave it at that.
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