GANDHI'S FIRST SATYAGRAHA: AN 18-YEAR-OLD STANDS UP TO CASTE BULLIES

The interview in The Vegetarian (June 13, 1891)
where Gandhi talks about the difficulties he faced
(he compares them to Ravana's heads) before
he was able to come to London. 

MAHATMA Gandhi, as he informed the American journalist Webb Miller in London in 1931 and later confirmed to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, was deeply influenced by Henry David Thoreau's essay, 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience', which he read and shared in South Africa in 1906, months before he galvanised mass protests against the Asiatic Registration Act (the "Black Act") being pushed by the colonial regime. Gandhi, though, was no stranger to Passive Resistance, which he in his later life elevated into a moral weapon he called Satyagraha ('holding firmly on to Truth'). He practised it in his first face-off with authority -- nothing less formidable than the influential leadership of his Modh Bania sub-caste. I find this episode to be ageless because, across centuries, young people have had to stand up for their aspirations.

The young Gandhi recalled this nasty incident, which took place a little before he turned 19, in his first newspaper interview -- to The Vegetarian, the journal of the London Vegetarian Society, of which he was an active member, on June 13, 1891. Surprisingly, the incident is dismissed in a couple of sentences in the diary he kept in London -- a mere 20 of 120 pages survive today of the diary, the first attempt at autobiographical writing by the man who went on write one of the world's most widely read autobiographies.

Gandhi gave it to his nephew and co-worker Chhaganlal when the young man went to London for higher studies in 1909. Chhaganlal, in turn, passed it on to Gandhi's private secretary, Mahadev Desai, in 1920 after copying 20 pages of it, but the diary in its entirety doesn't figure in the cornucopia of archival material that survived the Mahatma. The 20 surviving pages, though, contain in them the riveting story of a young man stepping out of his teens and preparing for life as a student in the capital of the empire in which the sun never set.

Our story begins in what was once the tiny princely state of Bhavnagar, where Gandhi was having a miserable initiation into higher education at Samaldas College. With the medium of instruction being English and a 50 per cent failure rate considered normal in Bombay University, the examining authority, and having to live and cook by himself, young Mohandas could not cope with the pressure of unfamiliarity.

Wracked by headaches and nosebleeds, he was overcome by an intense desire to go to London -- initially to study medicine, an idea that was to be nipped in the bud by his eldest brother, Laxmidas, because of the requirement to perform vivisection, or operations on animals. The bar was his second choice. He first shared his dream with his college friend, Jayashankar Dayashankar Buch, who advised him to compete for a scholarship. Mohandas shied away from the possibility because he was not at all confident of his academic competence. His family was his only hope, but his father had left little money behind,  and his elder brothers -- Laxmidas, a locally trained law clerk, and Karsandas, sub-inspector with the Rajkot state police -- as the Mahatma's grandson, Arun Gandhi, points out in The Untold Story of Kasturba, commanded neither a large income, nor much prestige.

Their trusted family adviser, Mavji Joshi, stood up for the young man's claim. Of course, he had calculated that Gandhi's London sojourn would set back the family by Rs 5,000 (a gross under-estimate because it added up to Rs 13,000 in the end), but, he said, in the words of the Diary, it was the "only means to keep the reputation of your deceased father". To reinforce his point, Joshi added (again, in the words of the Diary): "Apply to Junagadh and Porbandar States. ... if you fail in getting pecuniary help and if you have no money, sell your furniture."

Joshi's son, Kewalram, a successful locally trained vakil, however, wasn't as encouraging. "You will have to spend there at least Rs 10,000," Gandhi reports Kewalram as saying. "You will have to set aside all your religious prejudices, if any. You will have to eat meat, you must drink. You cannot live without that. The more you spend, the cleverer you will be. ... There are many temptations in London. You are apt to be entrapped by them."

In his interview to The Vegetarian, Gandhi likened the many challenges that confronted him with the many heads of the demon king Ravana. His mother was convinced he would turn non-vegetarian, start drinking and consort with women; his attempts at raising money from the local British officials failed miserably -- Frederick Lely, who could be reached only after a five-day journey, partly on a camel and then on a bullock cart, in Porbandar, advised Gandhi to graduate first (a more matured Gandhi would later say that he should have heeded the advice); and Colonel James Watson, who is immortalised in Rajkot's most-visited museum today, gave him "a trivial note of introduction (apparently to the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge), which, he said in a peremptory voice, was worth one lac of rupees."

The number of relatives on whose doors the young man knocked also couldn't help. Finally, it was Vandravandas, the father of his Kattyawar High School buddy, Ranchhodlal Patwari (with whom, later in life, he would engage in debates on untouchability), who loaned the money that Mohan needed for his passage to London, and Laxmidas, his pillar of support, agreed to spend the family's savings on his youngest brother's education. The family's great expectations from him should have weighed heavily on Mohan, but, as he recounted later to The Vegetarian, had become obsessed with the idea of being called to the Bar in England: "Sleeping, waking, drinking, eating, walking, running, reading, I was dreaming and thinking of England and what I would do on that momentous day."

What he hadn't accounted for was the opposition from his caste elders. In his Diary, Gandhi merely mentions: "Twenty-first (of August 1889) was the day on which I was to leave Bombay. But the difficulties I had to withstand in Bombay are indescribable. My caste fellows tried their best to prevent me from proceeding further. Almost all of them were in opposition. And at length my brother, Khushalbhai (Makanji, Gandhi's brother-in-law, that is, his wife Kasturba's brother, with whom Laxmidas and he were staying with in Bombay) and (Ranchhodlal) Patwari himself advised me not to go. But I wouldn't give heed to their advice."

The caste elders had been alerted by a report in the Kathiawar Times of July 25, 1888, announcing his impending departure for England, and then of August 12, 1888, which spoke of a send-off given to him by his schoolmates: "On Thursday last (August 9) a meeting was convened in the local High School, by his friends and well-wishers, for presenting an address to Mr M.K. Gandhi, who left for England to study for the Bar. Mr Gandhi is the first Bania from Kathiawar who proceeds to England to prosecute his study for the Barrister's Examination.

"The address hoped that the Indians returning from England with enlarged views of polity, commerce and society would accelerate the progress of reform in India and ere long restore her to her former glory. The well-wishers appeared to be rather sanguine when they said: 'We are certainly justified in entertaining the hope that you will make it an object of your special care and attention to promote the interests of India in England at the same time that you compete for medals and prizes."

"The reply, too, did not fall far short of the address. Mr Gandhi hoped that others would soon follow his example and on their return from England would devote themselves with the self-sacrifice of martyrs to the noble work of regenerating India."  In his Diary, Gandhi recounts how he was "quite uneasy" when he rose to answer the address. "When I spoke half of what I was to speak, I began to shake. I hope I will never do it again when I return to India," he wrote. Well, that shyness left him completely when he sat down to confront his caste elders.

We get a more detailed account from The Vegetarian, the words being those of a more confident Gandhi ready to go back home after being called to the bar:

The collisions with my caste fellows in Bombay defy description, for Bombay is the place where they chiefly live. In Rajkot I did not meet with any such opposition worthy of the name. It was my misfortune to live in the heart of the city of Bombay, where they most abound, so I was hemmed in on all sides. I could not go out without being pointed and stared at by someone or other. At one time, while I was walking near the Town Hall, I was surrounded and hooted by them, and my poor brother had to look at the scene in silence.

The culminating point was reached when a huge meeting of the caste fellows was summoned by the chief representatives. Every member of the caste was called upon to attend the meeting, under pain of forfeiting a fine of five annas. ... At this great meeting, I was seated in the centre of the audience. The Patels, as the representatives are called, remonstrated with me very strongly and reminded me of their connection with my father.

... Seeing that remonstrance fell flat on me, the head Patel addressed me (in effect) in the following words: "We were your father's friends, and therefore we feel for you; as heads of the caste you know our power. We are positively informed that you will have to eat flesh and drink wine in England; moreover, you have to cross the waters; all this you must know is against our caste rules. Therefore we command you to reconsider your decision, or else the heaviest punishment will be meted out to you. What have you to say to this?"

I replied in the following words: "I thank you for your warnings. I am sorry that I cannot alter my decision. What I have heard about England is quite different from what you say; one need not take meat and wine there. As for crossing the waters, if our brethren can go as far as Aden, why could not I go to England? I am deeply convinced that malice is at the root of all these objections."

"Very well, then," replied the worthy Patel in anger. "You are not the son of your father." Then, turning to the audience, he went on: "This boy has lost his sense, and we command everyone not to have anything to do with him. He who will support him in any way or go to see him off will be treated as an outcaste, and if the boy ever returns, let him know that he shall never be taken into the caste." These words fell like a bombshell upon all. Even the chosen few who had supported me through thick and thin left me alone. ... Even my brother began to vacillate, though only for a moment. ... he asked some of his friends to persuade me either to reconsider my decision or to defer its execution till the fury had subsided."

Confronted by the cast-iron will of the 18-year-old, all that Laxmidas could do was postpone the journey till the next month, for seas were inhospitable in August and the captain of the steamship they went to advised them against travelling to London. (Of course, Gandhi suggested in the interview that his caste elders had prevailed upon the captain cook up a story!) "I thought the whole structure would fall to the ground," Gandhi reminisced in the interview. "My brother, having left a note to a friend, requesting him to give me the passage money when the time came, took leave. ... Now I was left alone in Bombay without money to buy the passage. Every hour that I had to wait seemed a year."

Then came another blow. Khushalbhai, Gandhi's brother-in-law, refused to part with the money that Laxmidas had left behind for his brother's passage to London. But that matter was resolved by Ranchhobhai's father, Vandravandas, who suggested that he would pay the money to his son's good friend and Khushalbhai could then circumvent the injunction of his caste elders by paying him back with the money that Laxmidas had entrusted with him.

With this last impediment cleared, young Gandhi boarded the S.S. Clyde in Bombay on Septmber 4, 1888, in the company of a young, smooth-tongued lawyer from Junagadh, Tryambakrai Trikumrai Mazmudar, with whom he shared a love-hate relationship during their journey to and stay in England. Gandhi had a fan following and it was evident from the number of his friends who had come from Rajkot to see him off. They gave him money, starting with Ranchhodbhai's Rs 5, and one of them, Manshanker Ganeshji Anjaria, the son of an old clerk who worked with Gandhi's father, a silver chain.

Later that month, on September 28, 1888 (as reported by the Kathiawar Times on September 30), when Gandhi was still sailing, his school annual report, released at the time of the distribution of prizes, highlighted his achievement:

"It is a matter of great satisfaction to see that within the last few years a strong partiality for English Universities has been displayed by some of the students of this school. Some four years before Mr Goolam Mahmud, a son of the late lamented Bawa Mian, the popular Kotwal of the Agency, set a noble example to the rising youths of Kathiawar by proceeding to England to study for the Bar. He was followed by Mr (Dalpatram) Shukla, an Elphinstonian Graduate (whom Gandhi met later in London). The enterprising spirits displayed by Messrs Goolam Mahmud and Shukla created in one of our last year's successful candidates a laudable ambition for worthily following in their footsteps. I mean Mr Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who a fortnight or so before left us to join one of the English colleges."

Speaking at the function, Colonel Watson, who had only recently fobbed off Gandhi, declared: "Mr Mohandas Karamchand is the son of a well-known official of this province who served the Porbandar State long and faithfully and afterwards entered the Rajkot State employ. He also served under Col. Law and myself for several years as member in the Rajasthanik court. I hope that Mr Mohandas will do credit to this institution, to his father and to the province."

The young man couldn't get time to savour his sweet victory. Or maybe he couldn't care less -- his mind space being too crowded with thoughts of what he'd do or see in London.

SUGGESTED READING

• Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume I : 1884 to June 1896 (New Delhi: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India; May 1985)
• Arun & Sunanda Gandhi with Carol Lynn Yellin, The Untold Story of Kasturba: Wife of Mahatma Gandhi (Mumbai: Jaico; 2000)
• J.M. Upadhyaya, Gandhiji's Early Contemporaries and Companions (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House; October 1971)
• J.M. Upadhyaya, Mahatma Gandhi: The Student (New Delhi: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India; 1965)