Gandhi Before India (59 page)

The Transvaal Government’s attempts to break the movement continued. In April–May 1910, several hundred satyagrahis, Indians and Chinese, were placed on ships bound for Madras and Bombay. The deportation intensified the resolve of the resisters, and also consolidated support for them within India. Henry Polak was at hand to receive the deportees as they disembarked in Madras and Bombay, sending some of them straight back to South Africa, while organizing receptions for those who chose to stay behind.
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Polak was aided by the liberal reformer G. A. Natesan, editor and publisher of the Madras-based
Indian Review
. Natesan was a Tamil, and hence well placed to look after the Tamil-speaking satyagrahis who arrived in Madras. The
Indian Review
published representative accounts of the deportees’ suffering. One Subramanya Asari had gone to Natal in about 1900 to join his father, who was a jeweller. Joining the satyagraha out of solidarity with the Transvaal Indians, he was arrested, deported to Delagoa Bay, and then put with fifty-nine other resisters on a ship to India. They travelled in great discomfort on deck, with meagre rations. A satyagrahi named Narayanaswamy fell sick and died on board. The spirit of his compatriots was undaunted; a few days after the steamer carrying them landed in Madras, twenty-six of the sixty deportees, themselves born or domiciled in Natal, boarded a ship back to Durban.
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The reports in the
Indian Review
often spoke of the veneration in which satyagrahis from South India held their Gujarati leader. Consider the case of P. K. Naidoo. A barber in Johannesburg, he was an autodidact who had taught himself to speak French, Zulu and Hindi in
addition to his native Telugu. Arrested in January 1908 for not possessing a registration certificate, he was tried and convicted along with Gandhi. When he arrived at the jail a few hours later, Naidoo was ‘struck with horror to see my leader attired in the native criminal convict’s garb. My wish, in the present instance, was to make a noise, but Mr Gandhi, who was acquainted with my deportment, at once, told me in a mild tone: “Simply do what you are told, Naidoo.”’ The barber was put in prison garb and taken to his cell. Next morning, he was appalled to find that the meal consisted of mealie porridge. ‘None of us, excluding Mr Gandhi, who wished to show that it was good food, relished it as [we did] our breakfast at home.’

Naidoo was released, but rearrested a second time, and then a third. At this point he had not seen Gandhi for eight months. ‘When I was out he was in, and when he was out I was in, and on this occasion he was gone to London.’ In May 1910, on release from his fifth term, P. K. Naidoo was met at the prison gate by a large contingent, including Cachalia and Kallenbach. Of his reception committee Naidoo remarked that ‘Mr Gandhi, whom I had not met for 17 months, was naturally the most attractive.’
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Among those deported to Madras was the Chinese leader Leung Quinn. In an essay for Natesan’s journal he explained why he and his compatriots had joined Gandhi’s struggle. The laws in the Transvaal, ‘erected by reason of racial antipathies and jealousies’, were such that even Chinese ambassadors welcomed in the courts of Europe would not be allowed into the colony. It was, said Quinn, ‘not possible for us, who belong to an ancient and dignified civilisation to sit silent under such a flagrant insult’. Judging that the ‘honour of Asia was at stake’, the Chinese joined the Indian resisters. Quinn told his Indian audience that ‘the Transvaal colonists have foolishly thrown down the gauntlet to the whole of Asia. Neither they nor other Europeans should be surprised if Asiatics, as a body, take it up.’
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The presence of the deportees and the sympathies they aroused worried officials of the Raj, who thought they might inflame nationalist sentiments in India. The Madras Government found their presence ‘very embarrassing’. The deportees were being treated as martyrs. Their troubles in South Africa evoked feelings that were ‘rapidly becoming more bitter and more widespread’.
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In Bombay, the arrival of shiploads of satyagrahis from the Transvaal attracted the attentions of the
Commissioner of Police. He went to meet the deportees, finding them in ‘fairly good spirits and quite ready to converse amicably’. The Commissioner nonetheless wished the process of deportation would stop, ‘in view of the capital which the local agitator can make of it if he chooses.’
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The Transvaal Government had hoped the deportations would demoralize the satyagrahis and demolish the satyagraha. As it happened, the adverse publicity in India helped infuse it with, among other things, a new source of funds. When the deportations began, in April 1910, the balance in the ‘Passive Resistance Fund Account’ of the Natal Bank in Johannesburg stood at slightly over £3,000. This, Gandhi told Gokhale, would only last them till the end of the year. He noted that he had himself given the bulk of his earnings to the cause, as had ‘a European friend’ (Kallenbach).
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Hearing of the deportations, Ratan Tata wrote to Gokhale in July 1910 that he wished to make a further donation of Rs 25,000. He asked that the matter be kept private for the moment, in reserve

for the psychological moment when the publication of it in a similar sensational manner to my last donation, might again touch the emotions of some people, and goad them into making a second effort to keep alive this struggle of our cause in South Africa, which is getting so painfully feeble day by day owing to the want of financial support.
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Gokhale wrote back that the atmosphere in India was not very encouraging. He did not think that a public announcement of Tata’s bequest would stimulate other donations. The philanthrophist found it hard to accept that ‘the finer feelings are dead amongst
all
our countrymen’, but deferred to the judgement of the man on the spot. In that case, he would send the money directly to Gandhi. As he saw it,

once the struggle in South Africa is given up, the whites will see that Indians have not grit enough to fight to a finish and that wherever Indians are not wanted, the whites have only to persist long enough, to drive them out of any country. It is pitiful to see a handful of Indians suffering and fighting for the rights of a whole nation, whilst that nation sits inertly and watches the struggle with absolute indifference.
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Ratan Tata had asked Gokhale to ‘embody my views in a letter to Mr Ghandi [
sic
]’.
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What Gokhale wrote to Gandhi is unrecorded. We
do know however that on 18 November 1910, Ratan Tata sent Gandhi a cheque for Rs 25,000, with a brief note saying that ‘the admiration and good wishes of all true Indians are with you in your noble work.’
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Meanwhile, on his tour across India, by his enthusiasm and his eloquence Polak had proved Tata right and Gokhale wrong. In nine months on the road he had raised over Rs 50,000, with contributions, big and small, coming from Hindu Maharajas, Muslim nawabs, Parsi millionaires, Christian clergymen, and secularized members of a growing middle class.
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In the last week of August 1910, after nearly a year in his friend’s homeland, Henry Polak returned to South Africa. At a farewell meeting in Madras, Annie Besant paid tribute to his work for the Indians of the Transvaal. ‘Himself of a persecuted race, whose blood has been shed in every country in Europe,’ Polak had not ‘allowed himself to be soured and embittered by the suffering of his kinsfolk. He has shown himself to possess a heart softened, and … he finds in the suffering of others a reason for taking the cause of the other.’
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From Madras Polak took a train to Bombay, where he boarded a ship for South Africa. He arrived in Durban at daybreak on 28 September. Gandhi was there to receive him, along with some 400 other Indians. A few at least had been inspired to go there by Sheikh Mehtab, Gandhi’s once-estranged friend who was now a vigorous cheerleader for his movement. In a poem in
Indian Opinion
Mehtab told his compatriots to come to the Point to greet their English friend. For

Polak awakened India
He declared that no indentured labourers will come
He has conquered a citadel [of power]
Honour him, putting flower garlands on his back.

Their welcome, continued the poet, should confirm the spirit of inter-religious solidarity. When Polak came ashore, the Indians must

Sing the songs of Vande Matram and Allah Akbar
Shower him with basketfuls of pearls
Indians with shawls or Turkish caps
Pick up the arrow of unity and
Shoot disunity down.
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After a few days at Phoenix, the friends returned together to the city. On the morning of 4 October, Gandhi and Polak went down to the Point to welcome a shipload of Natal Indians previously deported to Madras and Bombay for illegally entering the Transvaal. Here Polak told a reporter that ‘our programme will remain, as it has always been, not one of violence or attempts to disturb, but one of suffering on the part of our people, who intend to go on enduring these hardships until they make the authorities ashamed of themselves.’
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That same evening, the Indians of Natal threw a large reception for Polak. A little Tamil girl presented him with a rose buttonhole ‘amid continuous cheering’. An address was read out on behalf of the hosts: this saluted Polak’s ‘noble and self-sacrificing work’ in India, by which, he was told, ‘you have identified yourself with our troubles and sorrows in a manner in which very few Europeans or Indians have.’
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Among the Indians, Henry Polak was known as ‘Keshavlal’, since he had long, uncut locks like Lord Krishna himself. But the name also suited him in other respects, since he was likewise playful, mischievous, a romantic at heart, and yet possessed of a sharp political intelligence. Gandhi’s other great European friend, Kallenbach, was known as ‘Hanuman’, to denote his unquestioning devotion to his Lord (here Gandhi rather than Ram) and his willingness to put his muscles (in this case, financial as well as physical) at his master’s service.
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The reception for Henry Polak in Durban was followed by a meeting to discuss the current state of the movement. When Gandhi began speaking, in English, the crowd shouted: ‘Tamil! Tamil!’ Gandhi answered that if General Smuts sent him to jail again he would have the time, and leisure, to learn their language. Meanwhile, he passed on the responsibility to his nephew Maganlal, who was now managing Phoenix and
Indian Opinion
on Gandhi’s behalf. Since his elder brother Chhagan was in London (on a scholarship funded by Pranjivan Mehta), Magan, in Natal, would study Tamil seriously, and thus become a bridge between his uncle and the most committed of his supporters. Gandhi wrote regularly to Magan asking about his progress. ‘Do not give up your study of Tamil,’ began one letter. ‘I have a constant feeling that you alone and none else will be able to master Tamil,’ said another.
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Gandhi was now very keen to be arrested. Every month, he would visit Natal and cross back into the Transvaal without registration
papers. The authorities stayed their hand, but when, in early November, he brought with him some other Indians, they detained a woman named Mrs Sodha, whose husband was already in prison. The police declared her to be an illegal alien. Gandhi was able to get the case adjourned, and to proceed with Mrs Sodha and her children to Tolstoy Farm. He wired the Minister of the Interior, General Smuts, seeking permission to keep them on the farm till Mr Sodha had served out his term. He pointed out that ‘hitherto Indian women have been left unmolested.’ When Smuts answered that the law would take its course, Gandhi told the press that while the ‘Government are at war with Indian males’, the ‘community was, however, unprepared for an unchivalrous attack on its womanhood’. Mrs Sodha was not a competitor in trade; indeed, ‘a meeker woman’ could not perhaps be found anywhere in South Africa. ‘Whatever may be their views on Asiatic immigration or on the question of general passive resistance,’ asked Gandhi, ‘will not the Christian men and women of this Union rise in unanimous protest against this latest parody of administration on the part of the Government?’
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The invocation of the rulers’ faith was in character. Gandhi was calling on them to recognize the divine rather than devilish aspects of Christianity, and to have empathy for the suffering of all religions (and nationalities). To show them the Path, Gandhi organized an inter-faith picnic on Christmas Day, turning Tolstoy Farm, otherwise a place of work and contemplation, into a theatre of joy and celebration. Three hundred guests from Johannesburg joined the fifty-odd settlers for the festivities. The children ‘were let loose on Mr Kallenbach’s fruit trees, which … they did not treat with any very great consideration. They plucked both ripe and unripe fruit, and what they could not eat they took for future consumption in their kerchiefs.’ At noon, lunch was served,
khichri
and vegetables followed by plum pudding. Afterwards a series of running and jumping competitions were held. The eating and playing was supervised by two Jewish ladies, Sonja Schlesin and Mrs William Vogt.
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Five days after this party, the case of Mrs Ramabhai Sodha came up for hearing in Johannesburg. The accused had with her two small children, aged eight months and three years respectively. Gandhi served as her lawyer and interpreter. The proceedings were watched by a full house, mostly of Indians, but also including Gandhi’s European
friends (and followers) Joseph Doke, Hermann Kallenbach, Mrs Vogt and Sonja Schlesin.

The prosecution claimed that Mrs Sodha was brought to Transvaal ‘for the purpose of agitating against the Asiatic Act’. Gandhi said this was ‘entirely wrong’. In Natal, ‘Mrs Sodha was living in a lonely place. And she could be best protected at Tolstoy Farm.’ The judge sentenced Mrs. Sodha to a £10 fine and one month’s imprisonment, but she was released on bail pending an appeal.
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