Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
The woes of Mahatmas are known to Mahatmas alone.
—Mahatma Gandhi
In the early years of the twentieth century, the Vegetarian Society was meeting at a restaurant in London. One of the speakers that evening was a young law student who had written a speech on the benefits of vegetarianism. However, when it was his turn to speak, he was so overcome with panic that he lost his voice after reading the first sentence and someone else had to read out the speech for him.
This shy, timid lawyer would one day address mass rallies of lakhs of spectators and make a nation listen to his every utterance. Many years later, talking of his fear of public speaking, Gandhi said, ‘My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words.’ He always spoke softly, in this slightly hesitant, reflective manner, but what he spoke of were some of the hardest truths as he challenged the might of the biggest colonial empire in the world.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869, in the port city of Porbandar in Kathiawar, Gujarat, the youngest son of Karamchand ‘Kaba’ Gandhi and his wife Putlibai. Kaba Gandhi was the Diwan of the princely state of Porbandar and later of Rajkot. Young Mohandas was a diffident child, afraid of thieves, ghosts and snakes, and he was deeply influenced by his mother who was a gentle, compassionate and religious woman. He was just thirteen when he was married to Kasturbai, who would remain loyal and stoic beside him for the next sixty-two years. They had four sons.
When Gandhi was eighteen, the family decided to send him to England to study law. For the first few days in London he nearly starved because he couldn’t muster up the courage to ask his landlady for vegetarian meals. He was saved when he found a vegetarian restaurant and soulmates in the Vegetarian Society. For a while, he even decided to ‘play the English gentleman’ and acquired a smart wardrobe of suits, silk top hat, spats and a silver-knobbed cane. It would take him ten minutes to tie his cravat before a minor. He even took lessons in dancing, French and playing the violin. Fortunately, this phase did not last too long and soon he immersed himself in law and reading books on philosophy, religion and vegetarian diets.
Gandhi was called to the Bar in 1891 and soon returned to Rajkot. Here, to the bewilderment of his family, he insisted on a ‘sahib’ lifestyle with the children wearing European clothes, everyone sitting down at a dining table with crockery and cutlery for meals, and eating porridge and drinking cocoa. However, his law practice wasn’t doing too well as initially Gandhi found it hard to stand up in court and examine witnesses. He still lost his voice. So when he received a job offer from an Indian firm in South Africa he accepted with alacrity.
Gandhi arrived in Durban to work for Abdulla Sheth, who owned one of the largest trading firms in Natal. Within a week of arriving, the young lawyer got his first taste of a racism that he had not encountered in Britain. While he was travelling to Pretoria by train, a white passenger objected to sharing the first-class compartment with a coloured man. When Gandhi refused to move out as he had a ticket, he was pushed out on to the platform and his baggage thrown out after him, as the train steamed out of the station. He spent the night shivering miserably in the waiting room.
This personal experience of racism made him realise the terrible humiliation and inhumanity of apartheid—the rigid separation of whites and non-whites—in South Africa. Soon he was exploring the conditions in which the Indian community lived there. Many had gone as indentured labourers in the sugar and coffee plantations and then stayed on; the rest were mostly traders. The Indians were contemptuously called ‘coolie’ or ‘sami’ and they had few rights and were often burdened with high taxes. Gandhi began to take up cases of racial discrimination and joined the fight against a proposed bill that aimed to deprive Indians of their right to vote. He became the secretary of the Natal Indian Congress and for the first time exhibited his extraordinary talent for organizing a public service campaign.
One of the cases he handled was that of an indentured labourer Balasundaram, who had been mercilessly beaten by his white employer. Gandhi won the case and then instead of asking for punishment, he requested that Balasundaram be released from his contract. Soon, other labourers were pouring into his office and he handled so many cases that he was often referred to as the ‘Coolie Barrister’.
Meanwhile, Gandhi, who had planned to stay in South Africa for only a year, discovered that there was much work for him there. So in 1896 he went back to India to get his family with him to South Africa. He used this opportunity to create awareness in India about the colour bar in South Africa. He wrote in newspapers, distributed pamphlets and travelled to many cities, addressing meetings where he appealed to people to support the work of the Natal Congress. He met many leaders, like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Badruddin Tyabji. Among them he got the most empathy and practical advice from the learned and astute Gokhale whom Gandhi always called his mentor. Impressed by his impassioned appeal, Pherozeshah Mehta convened a meeting in Bombay where Gandhi’s voice faltered again and his address had to be read out.
The Gandhi family faced a nasty reception when their ship docked at Durban. Reports of his activities in India had reached Natal and the whites were up in arms. First the ship was quarantined with the excuse that there had been an outbreak of the plague in India and then a mob waited at the dock for Gandhi to disembark. As the passengers left the ship after twenty-three days, Gandhi was advised to leave only after darkness fell, but he refused to skulk into Durban like a criminal. He let his family be taken away first and then left the ship alone.
He planned to walk from the docks to a friend’s house, a distance of two miles, and he was immediately surrounded by a violent mob that attacked him with punches and kicks. He would have been fatally injured had it not been for the presence of mind of Mrs Alexander, the wife of the police superintendent, who shielded him till the police arrived. The mob followed and surrounded his friend’s house, forcing him to slip away in disguise. When the authorities asked him to give a list of his assailants so that they could be prosecuted, Gandhi refused. Later he wrote that his action ‘produced such a profound impression that the Europeans in Durban were ashamed of their conduct’.
In spite what he had seen and suffered, he still considered himself a loyal subject of the British Crown. In 1899, when the Boer War broke out between the English and Afrikaner colonial settlers, he joined the Indian Ambulance Corps for the British and worked in dangerous conditions. Gandhi hoped that this show of loyalty by the Indian community would make the government grant them citizenship, but to his great disappointment, after the war was over their condition became much worse.
During the following years, as his law practice flourished, Gandhi gradually evolved his concept of Satyagraha, a term variously translated as ‘soul force’, ‘truth force’ and ‘militant non-violence’. It was the name he gave to non-violent resistance to any form of oppression. He led a Satyagraha against the government when they refused to recognize non-Christian marriages and during the protests some demonstrators were killed. At a meeting to mourn the dead Gandhi finally declared that he no longer felt any loyalty to the British government. He discarded his European clothes, shaved his head and donned a dhoti and kurta.
In 1914 the Gandhi family sailed for India. His activities had made him quite a celebrity in his homeland. His mentor Gokhale advised him to first travel across the country to become familiar with the people and their problems. So Gandhi and Kasturba travelled by train all across India, with crowds greeting them at every station. He met Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan and a very close bond developed between them. It was the poet who dubbed him ‘Mahatma’, though Gandhi personally preferred to be called ‘Bapu’. The ever-energetic Gandhi tried to reorganize the Shantiniketan kitchen into a vegetarian one and Tagore indulgently allowed him to do so. The menu went back to fish curry soon after the Gandhis left.
Gandhi set up his first ashram at Sabarmati, near Ahmedabad in Gujarat. Here people of every religion and caste lived and ate together. It was an austere lifestyle: they grew their own vegetables, milked the cows, cooked and cleaned together. However, when Gandhi brought a Harijan couple to live there, donations dried up and many of the inmates left. The ashram was threatened with closure but was saved by a young man who drove up to the gates, gave a bag of money to Gandhi and drove off. Later he discovered that the man was Ambalal Sarabhai, a mill owner, and he had donated thirteen thousand rupees, a very substantial amount in those days!
The first call for help came from Champaran in Bihar. A farmer begged Gandhi to come and help the peasants who were being forced to grow indigo by British landlords. Gandhi walked from village to village to collect the facts, the first Congress leader to do so. He was arrested and taken to a court in Motihari, but such a huge crowd gathered outside that he had to come out to control them! He presented a detailed report of the farmers’ situation to the government; it led to an enquiry and a new settlement for the farmers. At the same time, Gandhi the social reformer was talking to the villagers about good hygiene and the importance of education, religious tolerance, the rights of women and the atrocious unfairness of the caste system. Here, he gathered his first batch of devoted followers—Rajendra Prasad, J.B. Kripalani and Maulana Mazharul Haq.
Champaran made him realize that a Satyagraha gave people the courage to protest and that it would work in India. More Satyagrahas soon followed. During a farmers’ strike, demanding the reduction of taxes in the Kheda District of Gujarat, he was joined by Vallabhbhai Patel. Then he led a strike at the cotton mills of Ahmedabad even though the largest mill owner was Ambalal Sarabhai, his anonymous benefactor. What caught everyone’s attention was that standing at the gates of the mill beside Gandhi and the striking workers was Ambalal’s sister Anasuya Sarabhai!
The massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh in 1919 turned what had been a sporadic campaign into a national one. Gandhi’s call for nationwide hartals was a success. Soon after, he gradually started taking control of the Congress party. The party was still an urban gathering of upper class, western educated men, but Gandhi knew that if it was to be taken seriously as a party that represented the country, it had to become a party of the masses, where the poor also had a voice.
A meticulous maker of lists and a master at raising funds, Gandhi was a genius at organization. When he organized Congress sessions, he would worry about everything from cleanliness to drinking water and seating arrangements. He travelled relentlessly, addressing rallies everywhere, telling people that they had to stand up for their rights and join his Satyagraha. Soon he had Congress workers canvassing for members in districts. Then all proceedings at the provincial level were held in the regional language and at the national level in Hindustani. The Indian National Congress was now a truly national party.
In 1920 the Non-cooperation Movement was launched. The idea was to make it impossible for the British to govern India. There was a boycott of British goods; foreign cloth was burnt in huge bonfires; shops, offices, law courts were closed; and students walked out of their classes. Lawyers like Nehru; Patel and C.R. Das walked away from their law practices forever. Gandhi had made it clear that all the demonstrations had to be peaceful, so when a mob attacked a police station in Chauri Chaura in Uttar Pradesh and twenty-two policemen were killed, he called off the campaign. This was the first time that people from every section of society joined the protests and it also showed the people how firm Gandhi was in his resolve to protest peacefully.
The country now learned a few new words. Satyagraha—when you went to battle with truth on your side. This battle was fought through ahimsa—non-violence. Gandhi believed that ‘the strongest physical force bends before moral force when it is used in the defence of truth.’ People had to embrace Swadeshi products made in India and learn to use the charkha, the spinning wheel. The aim was to gain Swaraj—self-rule. For the first time the common man realized that they had the right to challenge the government and that theirs was a just cause. As Gandhi said, ‘What I did was a very ordinary thing. I declared that the British could not order me about in my own country.’ And even the poorest peasant, factory worker and woman in purdah felt they were a part of the movement. The Non-cooperation Movement gave Indians a sense of being one nation, and this was Gandhi’s greatest achievement.
Gandhi was arrested, put on trial and in court willingly admitted that he was leading a seditious movement and was prepared to be punished. He said, ‘I hold it an honour to be disaffected towards a government which in its totality has done more harm in India than any previous system.’ To the amazement of the spectators the judge called Gandhi a ‘patriot and great leader’, but going strictly by the law he had to sentence him to six years of imprisonment. Instead of being dubbed a criminal, Gandhi left the court a hero. The government arrested Gandhi many times after this, but they never put him on trial knowing well how he would transform it into a trial of the government instead.
Gandhi was released after two years and came out to discover growing tensions between Hindus and Muslims. He went on a twenty-one-day fast to restore communal harmony and then decided to concentrate on social reform for a while as he felt the country was not yet ready for another all-India movement. He started a passionate campaign against untouchability. He called the supposed untouchables ‘Harijans’, the children of God. He campaigned for their education and their rightful place in society, and picketed temples that did not allow them inside. In 1933 he stared another ashram at Wardha and left Sabarmati in the hands of Harijans. He also began a new journal called Harijan that replaced his earlier paper Young India.
It was only in 1930 that he felt the time was right for another agitation and this was the Civil Disobedience Movement. What amazed most of the leaders was the issue over which he chose to protest—salt! They could not understand why he chose to protest about a small tax, but the master strategist knew the power of the right gesture. The salt tax may have been a tiny amount but even the poorest Indian had to pay it, and as the government held a monopoly on salt manufacture, it could fix the price as it pleased. So this was a protest that was understood by everyone. C. Rajagopalachari, one of the few who immediately gauged Gandhi’s intentions, commented shrewdly, ‘It’s not salt but disobedience you are manufacturing.’
Gandhi’s plan was a brilliant piece of showmanship. He inaugurated the protest with the headline-grabbing march to Dandi. He and seventy-nine supporters, a carefully chosen mix of people from various regions, belonging to different religions and castes, marched from Sabarmati Ashram to the sea beach at Dandi, a distance of 240 miles. The march took twenty-eight days and through it all the country waited keenly to see what the government would do to stop him. The international press picked up the extraordinary story of a man walking to make salt and reports began to appear in European and American newspapers. What was really amusing was that Gandhi himself had not used salt in his food for years!
On 6 March 1930, when Gandhi picked up a handful of salt at Dandi, all across the country people made and sold salt, salt works were picketed, and shops, offices, schools and colleges were closed. Gandhi was soon arrested but the agitations continued; 60,000 people were arrested and the country came to a halt. Amazingly, there was not a single case of violence. Before starting the Satyagraha, Gandhi had politely informed the viceroy Lord Irwin of his plans and Irwin had underestimated the impact of the march. Now Irwin agreed to meet him and the Gandhi-Irwin Pact led to the Satyagraha being stopped. Then Gandhi left for the Second Round Table Conference in London where the future of India was to be discussed.
Gandhi went around Britain addressing rallies and the most remarkable was his address to the workers at the Lancashire textile mills. The workers should have been violently against him as they were facing unemployment because of the Indian boycott of foreign cloth. Instead they applauded his persuasive speech and there is a photograph of him, smiling happily, with some women workers, one of whom was is holding his hand! The press followed him everywhere and when he came out of Buckingham Palace after an audience with King George V, a journalist asked him if he had felt inappropriately dressed for the occasion. Gandhi gave his toothy grin and said, ‘The King had enough on for both of us.’
The Second World War began in 1939 and in 1942 the Cripps Mission arrived in India to discuss independence for India after the war. The Congress met in Bombay and passed a resolution demanding that the British ‘Quit India’ immediately. Gandhi was arrested and he and Kasturba (or ‘Ba’ as she was usually called) were interned in the Aga Khan Palace in Poona. Here he endured deep sorrow as Kasturba and his secretary Mahadev Desai died. Gandhi was released in 1944.
Independence was now on the horizon but so was the partition of the country, as the Muslim League led by M.A. Jinnah demanded the separate Islamicstate of Pakistan. Violent communal riots broke out and Gandhi spent all his time trying to put out the fire. He was reconciled to the partition of India but it broke his heart—he felt that a lifetime of building bridges between the two communities had come to nothing. So when India became independent, he was not in Delhi to celebrate but in Noakhali in Bengal, walking from village to village trying to calm the people—an unarmed, unprotected man talking of peace and communal harmony. The viceroy Lord Mountbatten called him the ‘one-man boundary force’ between Hindus and Muslims.
Gandhi came back to Delhi because Nehru wanted him to go to Punjab, which was in deep turmoil. He again went on a fast and a semblance of peace was restored. Frail, tired and ill, he nearly starved to death. At that time he was staying at Birla House in New Delhi. On 30 January 1948 he left his room leaning on his two ‘walking sticks’, his grand-nieces Abha and Manu, to walk to the prayer meeting in the lawns. A man wearing khaki broke through the surging crowds, bent down as if to touch his feet and then raised a revolver and shot him thrice in the chest. Nathuram Godse thought he was killing a man who favoured Muslims over Hindus. What he did was silence the voice that could have taught India to live in religious harmony in the future.
Winston Churchill called Gandhi the ‘seditious faqir’, others dubbed him the ‘saint of the spinning wheel’. Few believed that his Satyagraha could work, but Gandhi proved that one could succeed through non-violent methods if one’s cause was just. Two of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century—Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela—were inspired by him and their successful campaigns for equal rights proved once again that Satyagraha is the path of the most courageous and that violence leads only to an endless cycle of bloodshed. In tribute to his philosophy, the UN General Assembly has decided to observe Gandhi’s birthday as the International Day of Non-violence.
He was the most unlikely of leaders. A frail, gentle man with a shy, modest manner who preferred to talk with logic and reason, instead of inflaming passions. His mild exterior hid a will of iron and a shrewd strategic brain that the British learned to respect. Living on a faddish diet of nuts, fruits and goat’s milk, he crammed his days with activities, most of the time in public view. He used to joke that he looked forward to being arrested because the only time he got any rest was in prison.
Gandhi had an unerring understanding of the people of the country and captured their imagination as no other leader had before or since. Villagers came to see him as if they were on a pilgrimage; crowds of thousands waited for hours at railway stations just to catch a glimpse of him. His most prized possession was a battered watch and he was precise, organized and so disciplined that he could exhaust even much younger leaders with his energy. Most who met him trusted him implicitly because they sensed his selfless love for people and few around the world ever challenged the befitting title that made Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi so uncomfortable—Mahatma.