Gandhi Before India (75 page)

On 2 January, 1914, two English clergymen arrived in Durban to meet Gandhi. Their names were C. F. Andrews and W. W. Pearson. Both taught at St Stephen’s College in Delhi; both were associates and admirers of Rabindranath Tagore. Andrews in particular had identified strongly with the people of India. Like an Indian
sadhu
he was celibate, lived simply, and cultivated friendships with a wide cross-section of society.
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C. F. Andrews was an old acquaintance of Gokhale’s. After they met at a Congress session in 1906, he wrote to Gokhale that ‘if at any time there is any way you can suggest in which I can help the national cause you know how glad I shall be to do so if it is within my power.’
²
Gokhale remembered this promise, and some years later decided to redeem it. In December 1913, when Gandhi and company were still in jail, he asked Andrews and Pearson to go out to South Africa to mediate between the Indians and the Government. Introducing them to Albert West of the Phoenix Settlement, Gokhale described them as ‘both great friends of India’.
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Andrews was a ‘non-official’ mediator. His official counterpart was Sir Benjamin Robertson, the civil servant deputed by the Viceroy to represent the Government of India. Robertson was briefed by Gokhale, who sent him copies of
Indian Opinion
for the middle months of 1913, which showed ‘that every possible effort was made by Mr Gandhi to arrive at a settlement before resuming the struggle’. Gokhale then listed, for Robertson’s benefit, the five major demands of the Indians in South Africa, namely, the removal of racial handicaps in the immigration law; the restoration of the right of South Africa born Indians to enter Cape
Province; the abolition of the £3 tax; the recognition of monogamous marriages performed under the rites of Indian religions; and, finally, a more generous and sympathetic administration of all laws concerning Indians. Gokhale recalled the assurance given him in 1912 that the £3 tax would be repealed, and said that without a recognition of Hindu and Muslim marriages, ‘the position of Indian women in South Africa cannot be honourable.’
⁴

When C. F. Andrews and W. W. Pearson arrived in Durban, the local Indians hosted a reception in their honour. Here Andrews spoke with ‘deep feeling’ about the widespread sympathy in India with their sufferings. A ‘profound impression was caused when Mr Andrews recited, with beautiful accent and effect, a Sanskrit mantra, which was given to him as a message to South African Indians by the poet Tagore.’
⁵
So reported the
Natal Mercury
, whereas
Indian Opinion
highlighted the songs sung in the visitor’s honour by Gandhi’s old schoolmate Sheikh Mehtab. The two were now quite reconciled, with the erstwhile sportsman, meat-eater and brothel visitor having become a singer and passive resister. The songs rendered at this Durban reception, reported
Indian Opinion
, had ‘been specially composed by Mr Shaikh Mehtab as a tribute to the devotion of Messrs. Andrews and Pearson to the Indian cause’.
⁶

Also present at the meeting was Gandhi’s friend from Cape Town, Betty Molteno. At this Indian welcome for their English visitors, she spoke of a deeper humanity that would overcome divisions of race and gender. ‘After the Boer War,’ said Miss Molteno,

I saw that Boer and Briton would have to unite, but would they try to do it at the cost of their dark brothers? Broken-hearted I went to England. For eight long years I remained away from Africa – in body – never in soul and spirit. And England and Europe have sent me back with this message to white South Africa: ‘Open your hearts – your souls - to your brethren of colour’. We are in the 20th century. Rise to the heights of this glorious century. Try to comprehend the words of Du Bois – that grand and sympathetic soul: ‘The 20th century will be the century of colour.’ And I say it is also the century of the woman. She, too, is divine and supreme. She, too, must play her God-appointed part – and in this 20th century her part will be a great one.
⁷

The morning after the Durban meeting, the clergymen went off with Gandhi to Phoenix. Despite Andrews’ arrival, Gandhi was not hopeful of a settlement. He had yielded to Gokhale’s plea and called off the march to Pretoria; now, given the character of the Enquiry Commission, he wanted satyagraha to resume. Among the volunteers who would have to court arrest was his eldest son. ‘Subject your sanction feel Harilal should come,’ Gandhi wired Gokhale. ‘He vowed see struggle through as resister. Should be permitted fulfil obligation. My opinion gaol other experiences substantial education.’
⁸

This wire, sent on 3 January, is best read in juxtaposition with a letter sent the next day to his second son. Manilal was serving a sentence of three months in prison; he awaited release pending a formal amnesty. His father said that on his discharge he must come straight to Phoenix to see Kasturba and himself. ‘Ramdas is looking well and has done well,’ wrote Gandhi. ‘Dev[a]das has proved a hero. He has developed a sense of responsibility which was unexpected.’
⁹
There is a note here of quiet pride with regard to the growing closeness of the family during the campaign. The father as leader; the mother as a pioneering woman resister; the second and third sons as satyagrahis themselves; the youngest son, only twelve, who could not go to jail but played his part in keeping Phoenix going – all had acquitted themselves honourably. Only Harilal was in India and out of it altogether.

Gandhi had for some time wanted Harilal back in South Africa. In late December he had cabled his son to take a ship to Durban. That cable is lost, but its contents can be guessed at from one sent by Gokhale to Gandhi, which read: ‘Your son Harilal saw me Bombay, told me you had asked him return South Africa immediately rejoin struggle. I have taken on myself responsibility asking him remain India and continue studies. Forgive my intervention.’
¹⁰

The intervention was disregarded. Thus Gandhi’s cable of 3 January, which Gokhale passed on to Harilal himself. Harilal wrote back from the family home in Rajkot, where he then was. He asked about Gokhale’s health – reported to be indifferent – offering his own prayer ‘that you may soon be out of bed and be working again’. ‘Before reading the news of your health,’ wrote Harilal,

my friends and me all here in our house used always to chat away with much éclat about you and the S[outh] A[frican] struggle … I notice my
father’s reply to your cable. I admit I promised my father and others to return to rejoin the struggle if necessary. I will not refuse to keep it. I shall go if I must, though I certainly feel that my education is being hampered. As it is, it is after a long interruption of six years that I have again come to India for University education. However I shall leave for S[outh] A[frica] in about a fortnight.
¹¹

Harilal’s letter was written in a firm, clear hand, and in direct and economical prose. The form barely masked the contents, which are of a young man deeply torn between the expectations of his father and his own hopes and desires. Gokhale was moved by Harilal’s predicament in person; and must surely have been moved by his letter, whose apparent willingness to catch a ship to Durban is hedged and qualified in such telling ways. As it happens, Harilal did not return to South Africa. We do not know why – whether Gokhale wrote again to Gandhi pleading on behalf of the boy, whether Gandhi himself chose not to press the point, whether Harilal decided to follow his own instincts rather than his father’s command.

The clergyman visiting from India, C. F. Andrews, was one of nature’s reconcilers. At Phoenix he prevailed upon Gandhi to meet Smuts to seek a compromise. The always complicated, fraught relations between the two had recently gone through a very bitter phase. Through the mass march across the border, Gandhi had mounted an open challenge to Smuts. The General had responded by putting his tormentor in jail. Pressed by the Imperial and Indian Governments, Smuts released him. Then they exchanged sharp letters about the constitution of the Enquiry Committee.

Now, Gandhi was persuaded by Andrews (acting on Gokhale’s behalf) that it was time to talk to Smuts again. On 6 January, ‘much to his surprise’, the General received a letter from Gandhi asking for an appointment.
¹²

Smuts said he could meet Gandhi on either Friday the 9th or Saturday the 10th. Gandhi and Andrews reached Pretoria on the 8th, to be met first by a reporter, who was struck by the Indian’s ‘extraordinary appearance, with his shaven head, his mourning suit of unbleached calico and his bare feet’.
¹³
Meanwhile, a nationwide strike of white workers had broken out, forcing the General’s attention in that direction. Andrews
was impressed by Gandhi’s ‘gentlemanly conduct’, as he waited patiently while Smuts ‘put him off again and again on account of the General Strike’. They had a brief meeting on the 13th, when, as Andrews reported, Gandhi ‘was so kindly and courteous that the old relation of respect between them gradually came back again’.
¹⁴

On the 14th, in a conversation of seconds as it were, C. F. Andrews met the Governor-General, Lord Gladstone. The clergyman ‘impressed me favourably,’ reported Gladstone, not least because he seemed to ‘have an exceptionally intimate acquaintance with the working of Mr Gandhi’s mind’. Andrews said the two main demands that must be met were the abolition of the £3 tax and the recognition of Indian marriages. These had been promised by the leader to his increasingly militant followers, and were non-negotiable. ‘Nothing could shake Mr Gandhi on matters of conscience,’ remarked Andrews. He reminded the Governor-General of how, in Johannesburg in 1908, Gandhi had been assaulted and nearly killed ‘because after taking a vow he had come to an agreement’ with the Government. A capitulation on those two points would make Gandhi vulnerable to another attempt on his life.
¹⁵

Gandhi met Smuts for a longer conversation on the 16th. He asked, in addition to the repeal of the tax and the recognition of marriages, for the entry of South African Indians into the Cape, and for the removal of an overt racial bar in the laws of the Free State. (The logic of allowing free entry into the Cape was that, like Natal, it was originally a British colony, with greater and older obligations to British imperial subjects than Transvaal or the Orange Free State.) Smuts was sympathetic, but requested Gandhi to state these issues in front of the Enquiry Commission, who, in turn, could then formally recommend these changes to the Government. Gandhi answered that they could not go back now on their boycott of the Commission.

Reporting this interview to the Colonial Office, Lord Gladstone said:

General Smuts has shown a most patient and conciliatory temper. In spite of a series of conflicts extending over many years, he retains a sympathetic interest in Mr Gandhi as an unusual type of humanity, whose peculiarities, however inconvenient they may be to the Minister, are not devoid of attraction to the student … It is no easy task for a European to conduct negotiations with Mr Gandhi. The workings of his conscience are inscrutable to the occidental mind and produce complications in wholly
unexpected places. His ethical and intellectual attitude, based as it appears to be on a curious compound of mysticism and astuteness, baffles the ordinary processes of thought. Nevertheless, a tolerably practical understanding has been reached.
¹⁶

Gandhi and Andrews returned to Durban. Letters and phone calls passed between Phoenix and Pretoria, with Smuts assuring Gandhi that he need feel

no serious apprehensions as to the probable nature of the Commission’s recommendations on his four points and as to the Government’s intentions, but he should promise not to revive passive resistance until the Commission had reported and the Government had been given an opportunity of acting on the report.
¹⁷

Gandhi also had several long meetings with Sir Benjamin Robertson, which focused on the marriage question. He said the Commission, and the law, should recognize as valid all
de facto
monogamous marriages celebrated anywhere in the past. Monogamous marriages contracted in the future could be solemnized before a priest and, if required, registered. This anterior recognition, said Gandhi, was crucial; otherwise the children of such unions were in danger of being stigmatized as ‘illegitimate’.

Gandhi further asked that wives who were
de facto
monogamous be admitted into South Africa; and that existing plural wives of Indians who had rights of residence in South Africa be registered. The Government was especially worried about the legitimacy accorded by Indian faiths to polygamy. Gandhi argued that an acceptance of his proposals ‘as to legal recognition of
de facto
monogamous unions enables the State to popularise monogamy to an extent hitherto unknown’ in South Africa.
¹⁸

The course of the negotiations with Smuts and others were reported to Gokhale in a long and intensely felt letter written to him by C. F. Andrews. This stressed Gandhi’s goodness of character, but also the fragility of his nerves, on edge as a consequence of the crises he had faced these past few months. As he was negotiating with Smuts, Kasturba again fell ill, while his old rivals P. S. Aiyar and M. C. Anglia had decided to renege on the boycott and testify to the Commission. When the General’s letter outlining the settlement came, Gandhi was ‘terribly excited
and said that from first to last the letter was a studied insult’. Andrews was now ‘in despair’. Gandhi had expected a personal letter, corresponding with the friendliness of the interviews. What he got was a missive in neutral, even officious language. Going over the communication sentence by sentence, Andrews ‘saw at last where the one omission lay. It lay in General Smuts not recognizing the honourableness of Mr Gandhi’s motives.’ The priest went up to meet Smuts once more, and had a clause inserted that satisfied Gandhi’s honour.