Gandhi Before India (89 page)

13.
Gandhi to F. S. Taleyarkhan, 18 October 1896,
CWMG
, II, pp. 67–8.

14.
‘Out of pocket expenses’, S. N. 1310, SAAA.

15.
Gandhi to G. K. Gokhale, 18 October 1896,
CMWG
, II, p. 66.

16.
Based on an analysis of the surnames in the notice, a copy of which is in the SAAA (S. N. 1213).

17.
‘Speech at Meeting, Madras’,
CWMG
, II, pp. 71–2.

18.
Madras Mail
, 27 October 1896.

19.
‘Preface to the Second Edition of the Green Pamphlet’,
CWMG
, II, p. 93.

20.
Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part II, Chapter XXIX.

21.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi, ed.,
A Frank Friendship: Gandhi and Bengal
(Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2007), p. 4.

22.
CWMG
, II, p. 94; Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part III,
Chapter I
.

23.
See letters and clippings
in File No. 138, CO 179/195, NAUK.

24.
NM
, 19 September 1896.

25.
NM
, 21 September 1896.

26.
Natal Witness
, 6 January 1897, clipping in CO 179/197, NAUK.

27.
NA
, 17 September 1896, S. N. 1112, SAAA.

28.
See J. T. Henderson, ed.,
Speeches of the Late Right Honourable Harry Escombe, P.C., M.L.A., Q.C., L.L.D
(Maritzburg: Davis and Sons, 1904), p. 324.

29.
NM
, 27 November 1896.

30.
NA
, 7 December 1896, S. N. 1366, SAAA.

31.
See David Arnold, ‘Touching the Body: Perspectives on the Indian Plague, 1896–1900’, in Ranajit Guha, ed.,
Subaltern Studies V
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).

32.
See Annie Besant, ed.,
How India Wrought for Freedom: The Story of the National Congress told from Official Records
(Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1915), pp. 246, 236–7.

33.
Quoted in Britton,
Gandhi Arrives in South Africa
, pp. 513–14.

34.
NA
, 30 December 1896, S. N. 1508, SAAA.

35.
See Britton,
Gandhi Arrives in South Africa
, pp. 526–7.

36.
NM
, 30 December 1897.

37.
NM
, 5 January 1897.

38.
Times of Natal
, 6 January 1897, clipping in CO 179/197, NAUK;
NA
, 5 January 1897, quoted in
Memorial
,
CWMG
, II, p. 151.

39.
NM
, 8 January 1897.

40.
See
Memorial
, Appendix Aa,
CWMG
, II, p. 198.

41.
See S. N. 3638, NGM.

42.
Natal Witness
, 11 January 1897;
NA,
11 and 12 January 1897, clippings in CO 179/197, NAUK.

43.
‘Interview to “The Natal Advertiser”’,
CWMG
, II, pp. 118–26.

44.
Ian Morrison,
Durban: A Pictorial History
(Cape Town: C. Struik, 1987), pp. 76ff.

45.
Cf. correspondence in Natal Government House Documents, on microfilm, Reel 6, Accession no. 2179, NMML.

46.
Memorial
,
CWMG
, II, pp. 159–60.

47.
See reports in
NM
, 14 January 1897.

48.
See Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part III,
Chapter III
.

49.
This account of the assault on Gandhi is largely based on the extensive reports – covering several pages of the newspaper – printed in
NM
, 14 January 1897. Cf. also ‘How Gandhi Got Away Disguised as a Servant’,
Natal Witness
, 16 January 1897, S. N. 1894, SAAA. When R. C. Alexander died, ten years later, an obituarist wrote that the police chief ‘had more influence over a mob, through the medium of his commanding personality, than the whole of the police force combined, and many are the instances on record where, by the display of surprising ingenuity, he hoodwinked the
gatherings of angered men’. (
NM
, 21 October 1907). The writer here may perhaps have had Alexander’s ingenious hoodwinking of Gandhi’s persecutors foremost in mind.

50.
NM
, 15 January 1897.

51.
NM
, 16 January 1897.

52.
R. C. Alexander and Jane Alexander to M. K. Gandhi, both letters dated 22 January 1897, respectively S. N. 1938 and 1939, NGM. Ironically, in February 1896, before Gandhi left for India, he had clashed with the police superintendent in court, when Alexander insinuated that two Indian Christians the lawyer was defending had changed their faith merely to ingratiate them with the ruling race. See Charles DiSalvio,
The Man Before the Mahatma: M. K. Gandhi, Attorney-at-Law
(NOIDA, UP: Random House India, 2012), pp. 92–4. On behalf of the Indian community in Natal, a gold watch was presented to Alexander for being ‘instrumental in saving the life of one whom we delight to love’. In addition, £10 was sent ‘for distribution among those of your Force who assisted on the occasion’. See
CWMG
, II, pp. 229–30.

53.
I found this previously unknown essay in a file in the records of the old India Office, where it had been marked for attention by the reforming civil servant Sir Alfred Lyall. See ‘D. B.’, ‘East Indians in South Africa’,
The Nation
, 6 May 1897, clipping in File 2536, L/P&J/6/467, APAC/BL.

54.
Quoted in
NM
, 16 January 1897.

55.
NM
, 18 February 1897, S. N. 2046, SAAA.

56.
Louis Fischer,
The Life of Mahatma Gandhi
(first published in 1951; reprint, Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1998), pp. 50–51.

1.
David Dick,
Who Was Who in Durban Street Names
(Durban: Clerkington Publishing Co., 1998), pp. 62–3.

2.
J. T. Henderson, ed.,
Speeches of the Late Right Honourable Harry Escombe, P.C., M.L.A., Q.C., L.L.D
(Maritzburg: Davis and Sons, 1904), pp. 154–5, 291–4.

3.
The text of these Acts is reproduced in
CWMG
, II, pp. 272–8.

4.
Speeches of Harry Escombe
, p. 340.

5.
CWMG
, II, p. 241.

6.
CWMG
, II, pp. 246f.

7.
Petition dated 26 March 1897,
CWMG
, II, pp. 231–5.

8.
Petition dated 2 July 1897,
CWMG
, II, pp. 260–72.

9.
Letter written ‘before September 18, 1897’, in
CWMG
, II, pp. 284–7.

10.
Naoroji to Chamberlain, 11 October 1897, copy in S. N. 2568, NGM.

11.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria%27s_Proclamation

12.
Harry Escombe to M. K. Gandhi, 20 September 1897, S. N. 2549, SAAA.

13.
Paul Tichman,
Gandhi Sites in Durban
(Durban: Old Court House Museum, n.d.), p. 21.

14.
The editors of the
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
did not have access to these files, for during the apartheid years it was forbidden for Indians to have any dealings with the Government or people of South Africa. The files were photocopied from the Pietermaritzburg Archives by the Gandhi scholar E. S. Reddy, who then generously made them available to me. This and the next two paragraphs are based on this material.

15.
Cf. S. N. 3856, SAAA.

16.
The logbook, running to thirty-one pages in all, is filed as S. N. 2711, SAAA.

17.
News clipping dated 27 February 1898, S. N. 2700, SAAA.

18.
Francis Younghusband,
South Africa of To-day
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1899), pp. 228–31.

19.
P. J. Mehta,
M. K. Gandhi and the South African Indian Problem
(Madras: G. A. Natesan and Co., 1912), p. 80. The title-page of this booklet wrongly spells the author’s name as ‘Metha’.

20.
Text of speech in Gujarati by Pranjivan Mehta, Durban, 17 October 1898, S. N. 2825, SAAA.

21.
Cf. Vernon February,
The Afrikaners of South Africa
(London: Kegan Paul International, 1991),
Chapters 1
and
2
. The British annexed the Transvaal in 1877, but restored it to the Boers in 1881, on condition that Britain retained control over its foreign relations.

22.
See J. Emrys Evans, ‘Report on Indian Immigration into the Transvaal’, 2 March 1898, in L/P&J/6/478, File 789, APAC/BL.

23.
See, for an excellent overview, Bala Pillay,
British Indians in the Transvaal: Trade, Politics and Imperial Relations, 1885–1906
(London: Longman, 1976),
Chapters 1
and
2
. Cf. also Iqbal Narain,
The Politics of Racialism: A Study of the Indian Minority in South Africa down to the Gandhi–Smuts Agreement
(Delhi: Shiva Lal Agarwal and Co., 1962),
Chapters 6
and
7
.

24.
I have borrowed this story from Edward Roux,
Time Longer than Rope: The Black Man’s Struggle for Freedom in South Africa
(first published 1948; 2nd edn, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 102.

25.
The judgment is reproduced in
Papers Relating to the Grievances of Her Majesty’s Indian Subjects in the South African Republic
(London: HMSO, 1895 [C. 7911]), p. 24. This assertion of the right of ‘every European nation’ to ‘exclude alien elements which it considers to be dangerous’, seems strikingly contemporary, with the rise of right-wing nativist parties across Western Europe whose platform rests on such sentiments (or prejudices).

26.
Petition dated 31 December 1898, signed by ‘Tayob Hajee Khan Mohammed, Hajee Habib Hajee Dadee Hajee Cassim, H. Joosw, Mohammed H. Joosw, and 27 others’, in Natal Government House Records, on microfilm, Reel 2, Accession No. 2175, NMML. This petition is not in the
Collected
Works
, but a document in the archives confirms that it was Gandhi’s handiwork. Forwarding it to his boss in Cape Town, the British Agent in Pretoria said that ‘they [the traders] informed me that the petition had been drawn up by Mr Gandhi’ (Edmund Fraser, Her Majesty’s Agent in Pretoria, to High Commissioner, Cape Town, 31 December 1898, in Natal Government House Records, on microfilm, Reel 2, Accession No. 2175, NMML.)

27.
For the Uitlander point of view, see Alfred Hillier,
South African Studies
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1900) and J. P. Fitzpatrick,
The Transvaal from Within: A Private Record of Public Affairs
(New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1899); for accounts sympathetic to the Boer perspective, F. Reginald Statham,
South Africa As It Is
(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897) and F. V. Engelenburge, ‘The South African Question from the Transvaal Point of View’, in John Clark Ridpath and Edward S. Ellis, eds.,
The Story of South Africa: An Account of the Transformation of the Dark Continent by the European Powers and the Culminating Contest between Great Britain and the South African Republic in the Transvaal War
(London: C. B. Burrows, 1899). Cf. also Murat Halstead,
Briton and Boer in South Africa
(Philadelphia: The Bell Publishing Co., 1900) and C. E. Vulliamy,
Outlanders: A Study of Imperial Expansion in South Africa, 1877–1902
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1938),
Chapters 10
and
11
.

Two useful recent summaries of the background to the conflict are James Barber,
South Africa in the Twentieth Century
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999),
Chapter I
, ‘Prelude to War: Afrikaner and British Imperial Nationalism’ and Hermann Gilimore,
The Afrikaners: Biography of a People
(Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2003),
Chapter VIII
, ‘The Crucible of War’. The definitive history remains Thomas Pakenham,
The Boer War
(first published in 1979; reprint, London: Abacus, 2007).

28.
Milner, quoted in John Marlowe,
Milner: Apostle of Empire
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1976), p. 47; Chamberlain, quoted in Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher,
Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism in the Dark Continent
(New York: St. Martins Press, 1961), p. 455.

29.
M. K. Gandhi,
Satyagraha in South Africa
, translated from the Gujarati by Valji Govindji Desai (2nd edn, 1950; reprint, Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 1972), pp. 65–6.

30.
Letter of 19 October 1899,
CWMG
, III, pp. 134–5.

31.
See S. N. 3302, NGM.

32.
See M. K. Gandhi, ‘Indian Ambulance Corps in Natal’ and ‘Indian Ambulance Corps’, in
CWMG
, III, pp. 163–9, 174–6.

33.
Vere Stent, ‘On the Battle-field’ (originally published in 1911), reprinted in Chandrashanker Shukla, ed.,
Gandhiji as We Know Him: By Seventeen Contributors
(Bombay: Vora and Co., 1945), pp. 18–19.

34.
Herbert Kitchin to M. K. Gandhi, 20 April 1900, S. N. 3444, NGM.

35.
News clipping
dated 16 March 1900, S. N. 3412, SAAA.

36.
See
Indian Opinion
, 12 November 1903.

37.
CWMG
, I, pp. 188, 199, 233;
CWMG
, III, pp. 4, 44, 108, 137.

38.
Gokhale, quoted in David Omissi, ‘India: Some Perceptions of Race and Empire’, in David Omissi and Andrew S. Thompson, eds,
The Impact of the South African War
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p. 224.

39.
Gandhi,
An Autobiography
, Part III,
Chapter X
.

40.
Peter Warwick,
Black People and the South African War, 1899
–
1902
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 110–11. See also Hulme T. Siwundhia, ‘White Ideologies and Non-European Participation in the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902’,
Journal of Black Studies
, 15:2 (1984).