Mahatma Gandhi: The Man Who Became One With the Universal Being

Gandhi's activity may be divided into two periods. From 1898 to 1914 its field was South Africa; from 1914 to 1922, India.

That Gandhi could carry on the South-African campaign for more than twenty years without awakening any special comment in Europe is a proof of the incredible short-sightedness of our political leaders, historians, thinkers, and believers, for Gandhi's efforts constituted a soul's epopee, unequaled in our times, not only because of the intensity and the constancy of the sacrifice required, but because of the final triumph.

In 1890-91 some 150,000 Indian emigrants were settled in South Africa, most of them having taken up abode in Natal. The white population resented their presence, and the Government encouraged the xenophobia of the whites by a series of oppressive measures designed to prevent the immigration of Asiatics and to oblige those already settled in Africa to leave. Through systematic persecution the life of the Indians in Africa was made intolerable; they were burdened with overwhelming taxes and subjected to the most humiliating police ordinances and outrages of all sorts, ranging from the looting and destruction of shops and property to lynching, all under cover of "white" civilization.

In 1893 Gandhi was called to Pretoria on an important case. He was not familiar with the situation in South Africa, but from the very first he met with illuminating experiences. Gandhi, a Hindu of high race, who had always been received with the greatest courtesy in England and Europe, and who until then had looked upon the whites as his natural friends, suddenly found himself the butt of the vilest affronts. In Natal, and particularly in Dutch Transvaal, he was thrown out of hotels and trains, insulted, beaten, and kicked. He would have returned to India at once if he had not been bound by contract to remain a year in South Africa. During these twelve months he learned the art of self-control, but all the time he longed for his contract to expire, so that he might return to India. But when at last he was about to leave, he learned that the South-African Government was planning to pass a bill depriving the Indians of the franchise. The Indians in Africa were helpless, unable to defend themselves; they were completely unorganized and demoralized. They had no leader, no one to guide them. Gandhi felt that it was his duty to defend them. He realized it would be wrong to leave. The cause of the disinherited Indians became his. He gave himself up to it, and remained in Africa.

Then began an epic struggle between spirit on one side and governmental power and brute force on the other. Gandhi was a lawyer at the time, and his first step was to prove the illegality of the Asiatic Exclusion Act from the point of view of law, and he won his case despite the most virulent opposition. In this connection he had huge petitions signed; he organized the Indian Congress at Natal, and formed an association for Indian education. A little later he founded a paper, "Indian Opinion," published in English and three Indian languages. Finally, in order to work more efficaciously for his compatriots in Africa, he decided to become one of them. He had a lucrative clientele in Johannesburg (Gokhale says Gandhi was making at that time about five or six thousand pounds a year). He gave it up to espouse poverty, like St. Francis. He abandoned all ties in order to live the life of the persecuted Indians, to share their trials. And he ennobled them thereby, for he taught them the doctrine of non-resistance. In 1904 he founded at Phoenix, near Durban, an agricultural colony along Tolstoian lines.[13] He called upon his compatriots, gave them land, and made them take the solemn oath of poverty. He took upon himself the humblest tasks.

For years the silent colony resisted the Government. It withdrew from the cities, gradually paralyzing the industrial life of the country, carrying on a sort of religious strike against which violence--all violence--was powerless, just as the violence of imperial Rome was powerless against the faith of the first Christians. Yet very few of these early Christians would have carried the doctrine of love and forgiveness so far as to help their persecutors when in danger, as Gandhi did. Whenever the South-African state was in serious difficulties Gandhi suspended the non-participation of the Indian population in public services and offered his assistance. In 1899, during the Boer War, he organized an Indian Red Cross, which was twice cited for bravery under fire. When the plague broke out in Johannesburg in 1904, Gandhi organized a hospital. In 1908 the natives in Natal revolted. Gandhi organized and served at the head of a corps of brancardiers, and the Government of Natal tendered him public thanks.

But these disinterested services did not disarm the hatred of the whites. Gandhi was frequently arrested and imprisoned,[14] and shortly after official thanks had been proffered for his services during the war he was sentenced to imprisonment and hard labor, after being beaten by the mob and left behind as dead.[15] But no abuse, no persecution, could make Gandhi renounce his ideal. On the contrary, his faith in it grew stronger for his trials. His only reply to the violence meted out to him in South Africa was the famous little book, "Hind Swaraj,"[16] published in 1908. This pamphlet on Indian home rule is the gospel of heroic love.

For twenty years the struggle lasted, reaching its bitterest phase from 1907 to 1914. Although the most intelligent and broad-minded Englishmen in Africa were opposed to it, in 1906 the South-African Government hastily passed a new Asiatic law. This led Gandhi to organize non-resistance on a large scale.

In September, 1906, a huge demonstration took place at Johannesburg, and the assembled Indians solemnly took the oath of passive resistance. The Chinese in Africa joined the Hindus; and Asiatics of all races, religions, and castes, rich and poor alike, brought the same enthusiasm and abnegation to the cause. The Asiatics were thrown into prison by the thousand, and as the jails were not large enough, they were hurled into the mine-pits. But it was as if the prisons fascinated these people whom General Smuts, their persecutor, called "conscientious objectors." Three times Gandhi was thrown into jail,[17] while others died as martyrs. The movement grew. In 1918 it spread from the Transvaal to Natal. Huge strikes and monster meetings, masses of Hindus marching across Transvaal, alarmed and excited public opinion in Africa and Asia. All India was stirred to indignation, and the viceroy, Lord Hardinge, driven by public opinion, finally lodged a protest against the Government of South Africa.

The indomitable tenacity and the magic of the "Great Soul" operated and won out: force had to bow down before heroic gentleness.[18] The man most bitterly opposed to the Indians, General Smuts, who in 1909 had said he would never erase from the statutes a measure prejudicial to the Indians, confessed, five years later, in 1914, that he was glad to do away with it.[19] An imperial commission backed Gandhi up on almost every point. In 1914 an act abolished the three-pound poll-tax, while Natal was opened to all Indians desirous of settling there as free workers. After twenty years of sacrifice non-resistance was triumphant.

Since the beginning of the century the movement for Indian independence had been steadily gaining ground, Thirty years before, a few broadminded Englishmen, among whom were A. O. Hume and Sir William Wedderburn, had organized a National Indian Congress. Victorian Liberals, they had given the Congress a loyalist stamp and had tried to consolidate India's claims with the demands of England's sovereignty. In the meantime, however, Japan's victory over Russia had awakened the pride of Asiatic peoples, and Indian patriots resented Lord Curzon's provocative attitude. An extremist party was formed in the heart of the Congress, and its more aggressive nationalism corresponded to a general sentiment throughout the country. Until the war of 1914, however, the old constitutional part remained under the leadership of G. K. Gokhale, who was a great Indian patriot, although he believed in loyalty to England.

Although the Indian Congress, reflecting general sentiment, was in favor of home rule, or Swaraj, the various members disagreed as to the form this home rule should take. Some members believed in cooperation with England; others wanted to drive the English out of India. Some advocated the dominion system, as in Canada, while others asserted that India should aspire to become an independent nation like Japan. Gandhi proposed a solution. It was religious rather than political, but at bottom it was more radical than any of the others. The principles are to be found in his "Hind Swaraj." But as this solution was based on conditions in South Africa, Gandhi realized it would have to be modified to suit conditions in India. He also realized that while his stay in South Africa had made him unfamiliar with conditions in India, it had proved what an irresistible weapon ahimsa, non-violence, could be. And he determined, therefore, to study conditions in India in order to adapt the weapon of ahimsa to them.[20]