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Before we move on with this episode of the scene in the unseen do check out another awesome podcast from IVM podcast
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Cyrus says hosted by my old buddy Cyrus Brocha
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When we look back at history it often seems to proceed in a straight linear progression
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First a happens and B follows a then C and D and E and F and so on one event after another
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Almost as if everything is inevitable, but that's the hindsight bias in action
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Everything does seem inevitable after it has already happened when I look back at Indian history though
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I am puzzled by one man
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Mohandas Gandhi all of Indian history in hindsight makes sense to me and follows a coherent progression
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But Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is like a black swan event
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There's no leader like him before or after and if he didn't exist history would have been very different
#
For example, he comes from a very different background from all our other freedom fighters and his intellectual influences are different
#
He doesn't share first principles with any of our other leaders. His trajectory is completely different to theirs
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He has bizarre views on modern medicine on technology on economics
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And he could justifiably be called at least at certain times in his life racist misogynist autocratic
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And yet he had a greater impact on modern India than arguably any other human being
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Before he returned to India from South Africa at the age of 45. The Indian freedom struggle was a movement of the elites
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Mohandas Gandhi at about the time he became Aadma Gandhi made it a mass movement in which most of the
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300 million people of India could feel they were stakeholders
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He grounded that movement in principles of non-violence and worked tirelessly at bringing different religions and cast together
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He led by example living a Spartan life
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Eventually sacrificing his life for the nation and his impact survived much longer than the man or this nation his ideals of
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non-violence and passive resistance
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Inspired generations across the world long after his time from Nelson Mandela to Martin Luther King
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And yet the more I read about Gandhi
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It seems to me that he didn't plan much of what happened things happened to him as much as he made them happen and much of
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What today seems like a feature could also have turned out to be a bug
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Reading about Gandhi I couldn't place my finger on quite the man
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He wasn't this is not surprising because he lived 78 years during which he was many people at a time his collected
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Writings extend to over a hundred volumes and he changed his mind often as he grew as a person and a leader
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No one narrative explains him and like India
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Gandhi contained multitudes
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Welcome to the scene and the unseen our weekly podcast on economics politics and behavioral science
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Welcome to the scene and the unseen my guest today is a historian Ramachandra Guha
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Whose magisterial book Gandhi the years that change the world is on the stands because of my fascination with Gandhi
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I wanted to get Ram on the show for a while not just to talk about his latest book but about Gandhi in general
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I wanted to get Ram on the show for a while not just to talk about his latest book but about Gandhi in general
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I wanted to get Ram on the show for a while not just to talk about his latest book but about Gandhi in general
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While his latest book covers Gandhi's years after he came back to India from South Africa
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His previous book Gandhi before India covers the years from his birth to his return to India at age 45
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I wanted to chat about both periods of Gandhi's life and Ram was kind enough to sit with me in two sessions
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On two separate days in Bangalore in what turned out to be a two-part episode of which this is the first part
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This episode covers Mohandas Gandhi from birth to age 45
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In that time Gandhi grows up in Porbandar and Rajkot
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Goes to London to study law comes back to India fails to establish a practice
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Follows an opportunity to go to South Africa happens to become a leader of the Indian elite sir
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Comes back to India fails to establish his practice again goes back to South Africa again
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Where he now becomes a leader not just of the well-to-do traders in his social circle
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But of the indentured laborers there as well turning an elite movement into a mass movement
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Not for the last time he organizes his first satyagrahas there
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And turns his instincts about non-violence into a coherent philosophy of politics
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And then he comes back to India it's a fascinating period of his life
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But before I take you to my first session with Ram a quick commercial break
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Ram welcome to the scene in the unseen
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Ram one thing that I've always wondered about is that you know when we look back at history
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Lay people like me who are not historians
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We do that with the benefit of hindsight
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It seems as if you know we already know everything that has happened
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And events seem sort of inevitable
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But as a historian when you delve into history
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And you're looking at contemporary events around a particular period of time and so on
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How do you manage to sort of thrust that hindsight aside and look at it almost with new eyes
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And not let the knowledge of what actually happened color your perception
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So I think there are two or three rather elementary maxims one tries to follow
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When reconstructing the past
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Especially when reconstructing the story of a person as well known as talked about
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As famous as controversial as Gandhi
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The first maxim comes from a great Cambridge historian called F.W. Midland
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Who said that which is now in the past was once in the future
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Now this applies to societies but it also applies to individuals that
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When Gandhi was growing up in Borbandhan and Rajkot
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His law career was in the future
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To now it's in the past
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Us now it's in the past
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So you must not anticipate what happens
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You must let it try and portray yourself in the shoes of that person at that point of time
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Even a person whose future is so well known and so closely mapped out
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The other maxim is that which is a little more difficult to follow in the case of Gandhi
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Is that when you're looking at an event at a particular point of time 1905 or 1910 or 1920
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Try and base your account as much as possible on the contemporary documents and sources
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Rather than basing it on later retrospective accounts
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So someone in 1940 says this is what happened in 1910
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When you have an alternative source that actually describes what happened
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Written on the same day in 1910 you'd rather trust that
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Now why this is particularly challenging and important in the case of Gandhi
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Is that Gandhi has left his autobiography
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And I've always believed that an autobiography is a preemptive strike against a future biographer
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It's like this is my story and you know I've told it before anyone else can
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And if you tell it as compellingly as Gandhi you know right
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Then it's a further challenge for the biographer
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But you must be very cautious in interpreting accounts written much later of an event that took place
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Particularly if those accounts are emanating from the subject himself
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And you know this problem of leaving aside hindsight especially as a reader
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Strikes me as especially acute when we talk about the fight for India's independence
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Because this is something which we ascribe like a 100 year span to
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If you say it started in the mid 19th century
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And yet at that time there wasn't really any coherent idea of India per se
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And a lot of the people we look at as say early freedom fighters like the Narogis
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And all the moderates you know Ranade onwards Gokhale onwards all the way to the early 20th century
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Largely saw themselves as subjects of the British Empire just trying to
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As British liberals really just trying to sort of get a better status for the Indians within the empire
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Can you kind of lay out a landscape of what politics was like in India
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Around the time Gandhi was born like he was born in 1869 so that
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So I'd say the Indian National Congress starts in 1885
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When Gandhi is 16 and he's a school student he's not yet gone to London
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And at the moment it is as you say a forum really account asking for greater rights
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So for Indians to be made professors judges editors educated Indians
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Little later on when Gandhi moves to South Africa
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There's the rise of a more militant tendency through the bomb-throwing anarchists
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And revolutionaries of Bengal and Maharashtra and later the Punjab
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Now they are influenced actually by ideas of nationalism in that 19th century Europe
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Sees a lot of radical violent political activity on behalf of example subjects of
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The Sars Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Empire or even closer home the Irish who are subjected like
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Indians to British colonial rule so there is some so you have the liberals who are
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And the people you mentioned Ranade Naroji Kokhale wanting greater rights within the British Empire
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But there is also a small stream of revolutionary radicals who want to really terrorize the country
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Terrorize the British out of India through armed struggle and Gandhi does not know later on he
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Comes to know both of them I mean he's earlier of course he goes to South Africa and then on his
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First visit back in 1896 he meets Kokhale and in England he meets Naroji so he's his main influence
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Or his main sort of mentors come from the liberal's team and it's only much later that he gets to know
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About the revolutionary nationalists whom of course he later disagrees with
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And before we sort of go on to Gandhi per se and his own life just one kind of broader question
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What do you think of the great man theory of history like was everything that happened
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Inevitable anyway because of the grand currents of history?
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Not at all not at all not at all I think great men and great women do play a role in shaping history
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And it's really a question of the balance that you are able to you know forge in your account
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Between the person and his times between what he or she does and what the impact could be
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But clearly I'm not a Marxist who believes Marxists believe it's only classes and technologies
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And impersonal social forces that determine history I think great human beings both for good and for bad
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I mean if there'd be no Hitler there may be no Nazism for example right now
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If there'd been no Stalin Russian communism may not have taken such a brutal and barbaric shape
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If there'd been no Jawaharlal Nehru India may not have adopted a democratic template to the same extent
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So there's no question that influential people who assume power do shape history in certain ways
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Do shape the direction of the societies take in certain ways and those outcomes would not have happened
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If those individuals had not been born or not been in positions of power
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You know we don't know for example to take something much closer at hand
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If Narsimha Rao had not become prime minister in 1991
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If Sharat Pawar had become prime minister for example would we have had liberalization we can't say
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Right in Gandhi's case you know while rereading your Gandhi before India
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The role of contingency also struck me that at various times it seemed that this was not a man
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Who was propelled towards greatness by anything other than the winds of chance that at various
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Points in his life it just so happened that he you know because of sheer luck he kind of took the
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Next step that he did for example had his father not died he might not have gone to London as you
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Point out no one who was you know born in his sort of circumstances or his caste had really left their
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Town or village and here he was going to London to study law which his father would never have allowed
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And even further down the road you know as we go through his early life that when he came back from
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London he wasn't doing well in Bombay he wasn't doing well in Rajkot so when he got an opportunity
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He went to South Africa which is the only and all of these it's almost like these random events sort
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Of put him in this direction so as a historian when you look at that and I mean one thing like
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You mentioned is you put hindsight aside but does it also strike you how much contingency
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Plays a part absolutely chance and contingency plays a very important role in history in the
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Lives of individuals in Gandhi's case I mean just a simple counterfactual if he had succeeded
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As a lawyer in Bombay where he tried for two years and failed and he describes it quite movingly
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In his autobiography how he would sleep in the chambers and so on he would not have gone to South
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Africa because South Africa rescued him from professional oblivion but also his own own later
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Understanding of India would have been seriously impoverished if Gandhi had succeeded at the bar
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In Bombay and carried on through the 1890s and 1900s almost all his clients would have been
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Gujarati speakers middle class a large proportion would have been Baniyas it is by going to South
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Africa that he encounters the linguistic and religious and class diversity of India and what
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Also kind of happened is that because his caste his fellow Baniyas did not want him to go overseas
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Because there was such a taint on it that they kind of ostracized him for a while which pushed
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Him in dual directions one to look for friends outside his narrow circle as he might otherwise
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Have done and be that probably played a part in his failure in Bombay and Rajkot which is why South
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Africa I think the first is absolutely true that you know though it appears from what little we
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Can understand and here one must alive at least unfortunately in part on Gandhi's autobiography
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Because that's the most vivid recollection of these days that from early on he was making friends
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With Muslims I mean Sheikh Mehtab is the most famous stroke notorious one which is rare for
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Someone in his background he goes to London and he shares a home with Josiah Oldfield who's an
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Englishman which is an incredibly radical act for its time so part of it was push that the
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Mood Baniyas pushed him out he looked elsewhere part of it was an inner seeking an inner desire
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To befriend people outside your linguistic or religious universe now however when it comes to
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His failure in the Bombay bar my sense I mean having sat in various Indian courts not in the
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Bombay High Court but I've sat quite a lot in the Supreme Court just observing proceedings
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Is that he failed because he was an absolutely lousy speaker and on it right I mean he probably
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Was meticulous prepared his briefs knew the law he was incredibly hardworking but everyone who
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Knows goes to a Indian court knows that eloquence world play and even decibel levels play a role in
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Impressing clients and judges I mean it's right very clear and whatever clips we have of Gandhi
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Tell you he was a lousy speaker even the accounts of South Africa where he succeeded partly because
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He was in a monopoly of one he was the only Indian lawyer who could represent expected Indians in the
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Colonial courts right so he had that monopoly but their accounts I quote in my book of you know his
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That stutter his stammer what an indifferent speaker he was when he came to Bombay you mentioned
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How he was hesitant to read out his own his speech that's right that's right in 1896 yeah yeah right
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So going back to kind of London I mean that's the first big journey that he takes where despite
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The wishes of his community he goes to London his brothers raise money for him and so on and he's
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Reached London and you describe London in 1888 as an imperial city an industrial city and probably
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Most importantly an international city it's a truly cosmopolitan city and yet Gandhi's influences
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Within the city are kind of limited in the sense that he's not interested in the liberal versus
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Story politics he's not interested in going to the theater or in sports or whatever he just sort of
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He finds these sort of niches where he's comfortable like the vegetarian society and he discovers
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Henry salt and all of that and and he immerses himself in those which I found very interesting
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That you know young man goes to a city like that yeah yeah I mean it is curious I mean he
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As he and I don't quote it in my book in Gandhi before India but EMS Nambudlipad in a book he
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Wrote in the 1950s called the Mahatma and the ism makes great play with what Gandhi does and what he
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Does not do in London and you know he's sort of very superior that this was Karl Marx had just died
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Engels was still living the Fabian society had been formed George Bernard Shaw was you know
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Promoting and writing radical plays the feminists were active on the streets and what does the
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Mahatma do he joins a vegetarian society you know it's quite interesting we read EMS account written
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In the 1950s which is a he did a the book his book Mahatma and ism is a collection of the eight
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Reviews he wrote of the eight volumes of Tendulkar's biography which he published in I think new age
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Which was the communist weekly so he's like scornful like look at this guy you know all the
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Progressive currents of this time and some cloud cuckoo vegetarian society what he joints now
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Of course in the 21st century you know there's ethical case of vegetarianism which is perhaps
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As strong as that for socialism right but beyond that I think the vegetarian society did two things
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For Gandhi he stumbled upon them he read one of Saul's pamphlets he heard about you know their
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Meetings and he started going for them the two things it did one of course it gave him his first
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English friends his the ability to you know relate to people of different backgrounds and the second
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At most in more important thing he did which I think had got insufficient attention perhaps before
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Gandhi before India is that it gave him a platform I mean you and I are you know make a living through
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Writing right now just imagine how lucky Gandhi was that his debut in print was a series of six
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Articles you know when I was uh this is uh 1888 89 I mean even 20 2021 and you and I were 2021 you
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Know getting a letter published in the Hindu letter to the editor was a kind of pinnacle of our
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Achievement even if we got it got it got that far so I think it his writing skills his ability to
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Reflect argue on matters of important moral and political uh significance right now that is what
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The vegetarian society gave him and a circle of friends so in retrospect we must be grateful I
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Mean so those articles the six articles are the beginning of 90 volumes of his corrected works
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Uh but it is interesting though he uh he is clearly uh not totally immune to politics he does meet
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Dadabhai Naroji briefly uh who is then about to become the first uh member Indian member of
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Parliament Asian member of Parliament with an Asian background he does go to the funeral of the great
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Atheist Bradlaugh who was the influence on Ali Besant and also an anti one of the few significant
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Anti-imperialist voices in the British Parliament but the vegetarian society is really his his home
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I mean it gives him a certain uh yeah and it's kind of amusing the way you describe it comfort
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The rest of the people at that time look at the vegetarian society much as people look at vegans
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Today yeah that oh these sanctimonious people always preaching to us right you know with their
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Moral superiority or whatever which is kind of funny that you would have expected things to change
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More and it also kind of struck me was that you know one of his writings from that period was his
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Guide to London where you know a little later but he wrote this Guide to London about what people
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Should do there and uh where he said that one must visit the theater every month to familiarize
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oneself with the culture and it struck me that he kind of therefore saw going to the theater as
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Having a functional aspect yeah that you don't do these things for the pleasure of it like going to
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The theater watching sports any of that and it's it's very functional and again is it sort of
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Contingency that London is so expensive and he doesn't have so much money that forces himself
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Into an ascetic kind of lifestyle that too I think we don't know enough about he clearly didn't have
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Very much money his father had died he had taken a loan to go there uh and he was very he talks
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About what he ate which was very little you know essentially one one and a half meals a day
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But I think having said that I think there Gandhi there is unlike Nehru and Tagore who was just
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Arguably the two his two closest Indian friends uh Gandhi does not have an aesthetic side so later
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In life he appreciates the art of Nanla's most because it contributes to a successful congress
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Session yeah he appreciates the music of M.S. Subbalakshmi because he's saying syncretic devotional
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Songs but he does not really have an aesthetic side I think you mentioned that even in South
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Africa when he starts living with the Polaks and uh Milly Polak wants to do up the you know have
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Rugs yeah he says what's the point of these lovely curtains you know go look at the sunshine that's
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Beautiful why do you want beauty in your house you look at the sunshine you're pronouncing that
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Right Polak yeah Polak yeah Polak yeah yeah and and so I was also struck by this interesting
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Description of Gandhi from that period where someone mentioned coming across him in the
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Streets of London and even in a normal location when he wasn't actually going somewhere he was
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Described as having quote a high silk top hat brushed burnished bright a stiff and starched
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Collar a fine striped silk shirt and dark trousers with a coat to match and patent leather boots
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Where uh you know and and it's almost poignant because you see a young man who is displaced
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From his home trying hard to fit in trying for validation and is that quest for validation
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Sort of a theme that keeps occurring through Gandhi's journey over the years
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Do I think certainly London I mean he is diffident uh you know he's uh in the family is diffident he's
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Known as a timid child he has elder brothers whom he has to defer to his father dies you know he's
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Not a particularly good speaker he tries to adopt British ways but doesn't do so very successfully
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And maybe this dressing up overdressing in a sense in a British sense is a way is a compensation
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For that but late any in South Africa the early years also is like that but over the years of
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Course he acquires a much greater degree of self-confidence and self-worth yeah I mean by the end
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Of his first days into vegetarianism he's living a much simpler more spartan lifestyle he's walking
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Everywhere to save money and you know settles into that kind of groove what I was also sort of
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Wondering about is you know Naipaul once described Gandhi as the least Indian of the Indian leaders
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And just looking at his intellectual influences it seems to me that they're very different from
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Either the moderates or the extremists for anyone else in their influence struggle in the sense
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That the people he then admired like Gokhale in India and Aurogy in London were inspired by Mill
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And Bentham and you know their intellectual journey was very British liberal and Gandhi seems not even
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To have read these people his first big influence perhaps was Henry Salt yeah then in his early
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South African years it was Tolstoy yeah back to Tolstoy the moralist not the novelist absolutely
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And then later on Henry David Thoreau and Ruskin yeah unto this last and he gets a concatenation
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Of ideas from these guys which are almost sort of new agey which don't seem to be you know
#
Philosophically very coherent and and very different from all the other thinkers yeah yeah and
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In a sense it's his distillation of them that makes sense it appears a very motley crowd that
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Influences him you know and for example if you take a book that written much later Hind Swaraj 1909
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Now Hind Swaraj is a book that I believe is overrated for multiple reasons it has some
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Powerful and important passages but if you it's it is acclaimed indeed glorified by Gandhians
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As a testament of Swadeshi Swaraj self-rule civilizational pride you know you know a critic
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Of colonial knowledge and all that kind of stuff if you look at the reading list to Hind Swaraj
#
I think there are two Indians and 23 Goras you know okay and the Goras are interesting because
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There's not Mill there's not Morley there is the people you mentioned you know Ruskin Tolstoy and
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So on but there's also Edward Carpenter who's a very important influence on him Edward Carpenter
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The two three books by Carpenter that are cited there now Carpenter is a very very interesting
#
Man Carpenter was a guild socialist who opposed centralized factory production wanted to organize
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Workers cooperatives was a Cambridge mathematics don who left Cambridge to live in Sheffield outside
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Sheffield and create a kind of rural community he wrote a famous book with Gandhi light called
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Civilization is cause and cure so you know there was a problem with industrial civilization
#
And Gandhi was greatly influenced by him now though this is a bit of an aside and
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Gandhi would not have known that but there are two things about Carpenter apart of all he was a great
#
Pioneering environmentalist he founded the first anti-pollution smoke abatement society in England
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In the 1880s and you know so people in Delhi should read about Carpenter because in the 1880s
#
He was talking about industrial pollution air pollution and what it does to your lungs was pretty
#
Bad in London at that time yeah yeah yeah so he was also this is deviating slightly but I think
#
It's relevant in the 21st century in the 21st century Carpenter was a great early proponent of
#
Gay rights and a profound influence on E.M. Foster you know of course then homosexuality was banned
#
And so on but he was an authentic radical he was a dissenting radical who was quite different from
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The British establishment whether Tory or liberal you know Gladstone, Disraeli, Molly they all
#
Regarded him in contempt because a cabinet mathematics don who had left it his privileged
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Fellow squatters to live in the boondocks in Sheffield where he lived with his gay partner
#
Man actually a working-class man so I think Gandhi's influences were very heterodox
#
They were western but from Indian side of course there was Raichand Bhai his Jain teacher
#
And there was his mother's influence the Pranami sect which is syncretic
#
Thinking from Hinduism and Islam so it was kind of a very curious mismatch I mean he was someone
#
Who was not well read in the conventional sense he was not well educated in the conventional sense
#
He had read eclectically broadly haphazardly but from his readings and his experiences he
#
Synthesized a profoundly original moral and political philosophy so I'd actually save my
#
Questions about Hind Swaraj for the end because that is towards the end of his time in South
#
Africa it's in 1910 yeah but I'll just ask him now since you know we've raised the subject
#
So he was in his 40s when he wrote this book he was traveling from London back to South Africa
#
And it has some very interesting views so I'm going to quote you a little bit from the book
#
At the end these are Gandhi's words quote railways lawyers and doctors have
#
Empowered the country so much that if we do not wake up in time we shall be ruined
#
Stop quote then elaborating on this it may be a debatable matter whether railways spread
#
Famines but it is beyond dispute that they propagate evil stop quote then quote
#
Lawyers have enslaved India stop quote then about doctors quote doctors have almost unhinged us
#
Sometimes I think that quacks are better than qualified doctors stop quote and Gandhi himself
#
At one point believed that fasts were a cure for cancer for example so it's it's so then quote
#
Hospitals are institutions for propagating sin and separately to study European medicine
#
Is to deepen our slavery and then in what your you know in what echoes with what you mention of
#
Carpenter's views and what Ruskin also would have agreed with quote it is machinery that has
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Empowered India stop quote and all of this is very interesting to me because as you point out like
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You know when he was in London I you know one of my questions was whether in his writing he was
#
Winging it a lot because at one point he has this essay on the shepherd about he idealizes the
#
Shepherd and he says the only bad thing about the shepherd is that Brahmins bathe twice a day
#
Once a day shepherd bathes once a week and as you point out much later in the book that
#
Not until then and perhaps not for the next 30 years that he actually met an
#
Indian shepherd yeah all of these ideas are so removed from reality like at the time of
#
Hinswaraj he hadn't really spent much time in India yeah so Hinswaraj is a very curious
#
Bishmash of a book now let me say some positive things about Hinswaraj I think Hinswaraj is as
#
an anticipation of Gandhi's mature philosophy it's crucial and important in two respects
#
he develops two vital ideas in Hinswaraj that he never goes back on one is non-violence that
#
non-violence is always more morally pure and often a more politically efficacious way of
#
bringing about social change than violence right that's elaborated for the first time
#
in Hinswaraj because Hinswaraj partly is a reaction to the debates he had with Savarkar and others
#
in London just before that the second idea in Hinswaraj which is which is actually incredibly
#
important is also something that stays with him at the end is the idea that Hindu Muslim unity
#
and cooperation is essential for Swaraj that India does not belong to one religious faith alone
#
now so that's one aspect of Hinswaraj where he clearly enunciates moral ideals on religious
#
pluralism and on non-violence that he keeps till his last day then there these views of lawyers
#
and doctors and technology which are written at a time as you say when he has doesn't doesn't know
#
India hasn't traveled through India later on he modifies them quite substantially I mean not
#
explicitly for example if you take his ideas on modern medicine the stuff he says about modern
#
medicine when he comes back to India that on two occasions Gandhi is saved from death by allopathic
#
doctors once in 1919 when he has piles and once in 1924 where he has appendicitis this the first
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occasion he's saved by an Indian doctor called Dalal or the second occasion by a British doctor
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called Maddox so he says hey if you know modern medicine can save lives my life included it can't
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be all bad you know maybe for everyday cause you know a stomach problem or a cold or whatever else
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your allergy you can depend on herbal medicine naturopathy but when it comes to real substantial
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issues modern medicine has a role to play likewise with science I mean if you read his data writings
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on science he says very clearly I mean for example he has close encounters with Jagdish Bose CB Raman
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is on his on his board of the all India religious association he says I respect science modern
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science but it must be oriented towards the benefit of the poor so it must you know have a social
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social function or must be socially available now so the aspects of Hind Swaraj Hindu Muslim
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Muhammadan non-violence that he stays with the aspects that he modifies his extreme skepticism
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of doctors modern science technology and there is a major silence in in Swaraj
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Hind Swaraj has nothing at all to say about caste right there's not a line about untouchability in
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that though he is previously in his previous writings which you've quoted condemned untouchability
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vaguely vaguely but he doesn't see the center that comes much later so here Swaraj is an
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interesting curious book and you know the reason that it's been given such excessive importance
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is that scholars like working with texts you know for Darwin there is origin of the species
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for Karl Marx there is a you know capital for Max Weber there is protestant ethic and so on
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but Gandhi's real mature philosophy emerges only through his writings in newspapers and his own
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journal and his speeches after he comes back to India but having said that on these two issues
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Hindu Muslim harmony and non-violence which are absolutely central to Gandhi's view of the world
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Hind Swaraj is the first systematic elucidation of those so it's valuable for those reasons
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and it strikes me that you know these two aspects that you mentioned are exactly the two aspects
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of which he has lived experience in the sense that before this for a couple of decades and
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all his time in South Africa he's actually discovered passive resistance and non-violence
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and the power of non-violence through actually being in the middle you know through those two
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satyagrahas and actually being in the middle of all of that and equally he's worked closely
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initially with Muslims and then later with Tamils and Liberals and so on people you wouldn't
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otherwise mix with and has already in various other writings preached the whole unity and
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diversity kind of thing for tactical reasons that if we are together we have we have a better chance
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of kind of getting ahead and so it strikes me is that where he is right in Hind Swaraj and
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what is most powerful is stuff that he's gone through in his lived experience absolutely
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absolutely very very much so I mean in you know one of the satyagrahas when the Hindus desert him
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it's a Muslim called Kachalya who rescues rescues the you know when no one is willing to fund it
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is the Parsi called Usthamji comes so he has concrete experience of how movements are sustained
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by you know inter-community solidarity and just slipping back now to the late 1880s he's finished
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his time in London but one of the interesting things you mentioned about in your book about
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um his experiences there was that the English in London were much less prejudiced than the English
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in any of their colonial outposts so they were much likelier to treat Gandhi as an equal or near
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equal than he would find in South Africa or yeah yeah yeah very much so very much so that's something
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you know I think certainly there at the time I mean he and South Africa is a very racist society
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I mean even by the standards of British colonial regimes it's more racist than the others right and
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and again like we discussed contingency comes into he comes back from London but he's not getting you
#
know he can't set up a practice in Bombay he's not successful even in Rajkot and you mentioned
#
that his elder brother has had a falling out with the people at Porbandar so whereas he could earlier
#
have hoped of being the Diwan of Porbandar those doors are now shut to him and then this offer
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comes to be the lawyer of a Gujarati Muslim businessman in South Africa and he kind of
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takes it as he goes to South Africa just lay out for me what is the landscape in South Africa
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in terms of what are the different kinds of Indians there I mean they're not a homogeneous mass per se
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even that is sort of stratified so there are two kinds of Indians broadly speaking they are the
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indentured laborers who are taken forcibly from the 1860s onwards to work the sugar plantations in
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Natal they are largely but not excluded from South India they're Tamil and Telugu speakers mostly
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but there are a few uh UP Bhaiyas and Biharis as well uh there's also a significant Christian
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element in that in the Tamil indentured laborers now once you have lots of Indians who are working
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class then a second wave of Indians follows who are shopkeepers to service them and these are
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called passenger Indians and they're called passenger Indians because they're not indentured
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labor who are taken forcibly but pay their fare or have their passenger fare in the ship and they
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set up small shops all across Natal uh so Natal is the main part of South Africa which is an Indian
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population indentured laborers working on sugar and then coal plantations also in the railways
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later on and these shopkeepers then you have the discovery of gold in Johannesburg and you know
#
economic expansion in Transawal and some Indians move there and there are a few Indians in the
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Cape also which is right in the south there are virtually no Indians in the Orange Free State
#
which is the fourth major province of what is then South Africa uh and when Gandhi goes they
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he goes to settle a dispute between two cousins Gujarati Muslim cousins and he is needed because
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he has both been trained in the English law and can read the Gujarati script and the case is being
#
heard in the colonial courts but a lot of the documents are in Gujarati so Gandhi's more or
#
less the only person who can play that role uh they are no lawyers then I mean and I presume
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that uh those Indians who went to court would have been represented by white lawyers you know
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there were no black lawyers either at that stage and it's a relatively small community it's about
#
150 000 people you know but it's you know Gandhi is in this unique place where he is not only the
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only lawyer he becomes more or less their sole spokesman but later on his leadership is challenged
#
by people but at that stage he's the first person articulating their rights and it was interesting
#
to me how a lot of these traders are sort of like uh Gujaratis and Gujarati Muslims and some
#
Parsis as well and initially you mentioned how they are called Arabs by the people there and
#
they don't mind it because it differentiates them from the indentured laborers correct correct correct
#
there is a clear class hierarchy and for large parts of his life there Gandhi is working mostly
#
with Gujarati merchants right he has a few indentured clients but he is mostly working
#
with the Gujarati merchants it's only towards the end that he immerses himself more thoroughly in
#
the lives of the working class Indians yeah and also you describe a dilemma Gandhi faces when
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his family finally joins him that he has to send one of his kids to school and he can't send him
#
to the European school because they won't admit him there and the only other school is for the
#
indentured laborers and he doesn't want to send him there either though he eventually does because
#
he considers himself absolutely absolutely above them um in the early part of his stay in South
#
Africa that thing happens where he travels on a train and he gets thrown out now as you mentioned
#
this is one of those things that in the narrative of Gandhi is built up partly because you know
#
Fisher wrote the biography of Gandhi and Attenberg's film was based on that and this is shown as
#
something incredibly seminal and important uh reading contemporary accounts was it your sense
#
that it was that well there is no corroborative evidence i mean there's no reason to dispute
#
that this happened to Gandhi so he didn't have made it up but was it so important is like it was
#
i don't think it was that important i mean i argue based on the newspaper accounts that it's the
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attack on him in Durban in January in 1897 where he's almost beaten to death i mean he's goes this
#
is his first trip back to India so he uh reaches South Africa in May 1893 spends three and a half
#
years there his wife and two children are in uh India in Rajkot he goes to claim them he goes for
#
three months and while he's away because he's already been active in organizing Indians in
#
Durban the whites are suspicious of him and while he's away in India the rumor grows
#
that Gandhi has gone to bring thousands of Indians with him to invade and flood our
#
precious beautiful jewel Natal which is meant for whites only and those newspaper reports are
#
vivid you know the craze that's building up and in the white papers now the natal mercury the
#
letters about Gandhi and the demonizing of him and then when his ship comes the massive crowd
#
that is there on port side to you know waiting to lynch him and he essentially escapes uh more or
#
less uh by the skin of his you know teeth he's saved by a lady with a parasol that's it he's
#
saved by Mrs Alexander and this is all in the contemporary account i mean this is the newspaper
#
accounts all talk about this i think this is much more important in defining Gandhi because it is
#
not one firstly it's documented thoroughly and totally documented secondly it's an attack on
#
Gandhi Maya white mob not by one railway inspector laying down the law that this carriage is white
#
people only uh so i think that's it's a very important episode in Gandhi's life and it was
#
very not given the importance it deserved in earlier account and here again i think you know
#
sort of contingency plays a part because thus far of course he's very young but thus far Gandhi has
#
really shown no political inclinations per se and here once he's finished with his lawyering business
#
so to say you know he starts petitioning for you know political causes because he's the only one
#
to draft petitions and so on and he gets drawn into the politics still gradually because they all come
#
to him he's the only one who's can understand the Gujarati and can draft the petitions for them and
#
you point out that how by 25 there is a stream of events and by 25 he's a leader of the Natal Indians
#
right right right yeah yeah which is pretty and would you say that it's just that you know
#
things are going well so he's just kind of going with the flow when i think that happens you know
#
you failed in your homeland you made it here your wife and children join you your your career
#
progresses further you get more clients you take on more public causes for the rights of Indians of
#
course you also struggle and sacrifice and you go to jail several times and I treat quite harshly
#
but that makes you even more of a hero among your Indians among your community and he stays on and
#
then but then that time comes when he feels he has to go back and and you talk at this point about
#
two books that sort of were a big influence on him one is a perfect way by Anna Kingsford and Edward
#
Maitland and and the other is just Tolstoy's work but not his novels like Anna Karenina and so on
#
but his later moralizing work where he's talking about how to live the virtuous life and so on
#
and what part did that play in the development of his political philosophy because it's like
#
a simultaneous thing happening here he's developing his own view of how he relates to the world and
#
how a virtuous life should be lived and at the same time there is all his political activity
#
so I think there's a very interesting parallels between Tolstoy and Gandhi I don't know that
#
Gandhi saw it that way I don't know how much he knew of Gandhi's biography but
#
the of Tolstoy's biography but the historian can see the parallels first here was a man who was
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widely sexually uh charged and you know basically his wife was uh you know someone who was an object
#
of his lust and his passions uh then he gives it up he has an epiphany and just gives it all up
#
right and turns his back on sex the second parallel is here is a man who was very successful in one
#
profession in Tolstoy's case fiction writing and gives it up for something else which is
#
moralizing Gandhi's case here was a man who was very successful as a lawyer commercial lawyer
#
who gives it up to become a social activist now I think one of Tolstoy's books that clearly
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influenced Gandhi a great deal was a book called the kingdom of god is within you which essentially
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is kind of a you could of course there are parallels with Hindu philosophy that you know
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god is within you you don't need a shrine uh uh to uh make a public and visible display of your
#
faith but I think that's a book that matters a great deal to him then also the other parallel
#
between Tolstoy and Gandhi is that also is an aristocrat so he's not supposed to work with
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his hands it's the serfs who work with their hands Gandhi is a baniya a member of the twice
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born so he's also not supposed to work with his hands it's the shudras and dalits who have to
#
work with their hands but here are Tolstoy and Gandhi trying to you know kind of bridge this gap
#
between those people who only think and those people who only work and although they are by
#
birth and status in the category of people who think and don't work do manual labor they insist
#
on transgressing that divide and going the other side so Tolstoy is a great exemplar and you know
#
it's just a sign of uh how much Tolstoy meant to him that he sent this letter you know to Tolstoy
#
from South Africa in 1909 and Tolstoy must have been flattered I mean anyone you know uh would
#
be flattered to get a fan mail from so far away from a country he hardly knew about it he replies
#
and then later shortly after of course Tolstoy dies so the correspondence doesn't continue
#
but Tolstoy is I think uh if you're looking at a kind of an exemplary figure who influences Gandhi
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I think the most important more important than Gokhale more important than his Jain guru Rai
#
Chandbhai or at least at the same level these would be the three and I would rank Tolstoy
#
number one Rai Chandbhai of course died young and that was as I say somewhere in the book I mean
#
what's interesting about these three is that Rai Chandbhai is a Gujarati Gokhale is an Indian
#
but not a Gujarati and Tolstoy is a global figure so and he's moving from a local hero to a national
#
hero to a global hero so you know even it is the way he perceives it you know yeah you know it's
#
it's kind of a progression and his need for validation from each of them is also striking
#
like you reproduce a letter that he wrote to Tolstoy and it struck me that that is like and
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at the end he's asking Tolstoy to use the platform of his eminence to talk about what Gandhi called
#
the greatest yeah yeah yeah yeah and it struck me that it's almost like analogous to someone
#
asking a celebrity today for a retweet yeah yeah yeah exactly but telling the celebrity this is
#
the most important thing anyone has ever done yeah since you are interested in you know civil
#
disobedience this is the most this is I have done this let this movement civil disobedience transform
#
the world and I need your certificate or your retweet or your validation one thing about Tolstoy
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I should add this goes back to what we discussed earlier I mean that the unesthetic side of Gandhi
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I mean he there is no evidence he died Tolstoy's novels I mean one would you know it in most cases
#
when you discover a writer or you discover a musician and you like that person's work or
#
songs you look for other songs and writings by that person you binge you binge you binge exactly
#
you binge you binge and Gandhi did just was resolutely uninterested in anything that Tolstoy
#
had written in the realm of fiction I mean he only wanted his moral philosophy in fact you mentioned
#
when he was in jail in the 1900s and you talk about the books he had with him and I was going
#
like wait a minute all of these he had read a decade ago according to the account so why is he
#
reading them again so it almost seems as if he has his limited palette of influences and he keeps
#
referring to them and absolutely not kind of going beyond talking now about his politics you know the
#
second big influence you mentioned from whom he crave validation as well was of course Gokhale
#
yeah you know when he came back to India in 1896 in fact the first time he met Gokhale they walked
#
together in the grounds of my alma mater Ferguson college in Pune yeah like Gokhale used to teach
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yeah Gokhale used to teach Ranade and Agarkar and that was known as an atheist place because you
#
know those guys were quite a bunch of guys and while he didn't pick up Gokhale's you know wider
#
sort of liberal influences he picked up the same kind of methods early on which was a moderate
#
methods where you see yourself not as someone fighting against the empire but you see yourself
#
as someone fighting to be accepted as a citizen of the empire and not a subject you're quite
#
content to be a part of the empire there's no talk at this point that India should be anything
#
separate but you just want the right that a citizen should have and you know even in the
#
methods for example at a much later point in time in the late 1900s when he's talking about the
#
moderates and the extremists and he says that you know he doesn't believe in petitions because
#
they are useless but at this point he does believe in petitions in the mid 1890s where he's writing
#
to Naroji and Naroji also comes under the spell of fair bit and is petitioning the empire for
#
a lot of stuff so at this point in time he's quite a moderate isn't he very much so very much so I
#
think he is someone who believes in the benign intentions of the British empire who takes at
#
face value Queen Victoria's proclamation of 1858 that you know this is the empire's been run for
#
the benefit of its all its subjects regardless of community and caste and religion and in that
#
sense he's like Gokhale I mean he's not like Tilak who says Swaraj he wants dominion status
#
now Gokhale it's a fact I mean there is no clear trade of evidence as to other ways in which
#
Gokhale influenced him Gokhale was absolutely committed to Hindu Muslim harmony unlike Tilak
#
who was a bit of with due respect a bit of a Hindu militant even at times the Hindu chauvinists right
#
now Gokhale was also a precocious critic of the inequalities of caste system I mean they
#
as early as 1903 he was writing about the rights of what we now call Dalits which he of course gets
#
from his mentor Ranade and it's possible that he alerted Gandhi about this so there is no clear
#
chain of influence where Gandhi departs from Gokhale is that Gandhi is willing to go to jail
#
rather than in pursuit of his political goals whereas Gokhale articulates his political goals
#
through speech through petition through reasoned argument and there's a wonderful moment where
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Gandhi writes to Gokhale in about 1912 or so where he says please come and go to jail with us I think
#
this will ennoble you further you know this is one thing you've not done no it'll make you more of
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a pettit if you actually go to jail and so that's it Gokhale is someone whom debate argument petition
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he's far more comfortable with that whereas Gandhi feels that you know he should also experience
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what true satyagraha is quick digression which probably shouldn't digress now leave it for the
#
next episode but quick digression since we mentioned Gokhale if Gokhale had not died young I mean he
#
was just three years older than I think yeah I think Gandhi's life would have been very different
#
because he would have had that burden of the mentor over him always checking on him controlling
#
him chastising him he may have broken free completely from Gokhale it's possible but I
#
think Gokhale's death certainly freed Gandhi right and Gokhale died a month after Gandhi comes back
#
to India yeah exactly and I think Gokhale had kind of made him promise that for a year you won't do
#
anything you'll just go around and see the country and all that we'll come to that in the next
#
episode let's take a quick commercial break and we'll come back and talk more about Gandhi's
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journey in South Africa hello everybody welcome to another awesome week on the IVM podcast network
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of what kind of things people are listening to leave us a comment too just don't tag us last week
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we launched two new shows we launched our first Marathi podcast it's called Golgappa hosted by a
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regular on our network Tripti Khamkar actress Shivani Tangsale is the first guest of the show
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and she talks about baking her Everest climbing experience and her love for theater and we also
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launched the filter coffee podcast hosted by Karthik Nagarajan on the first episode Karthik
#
talks to film editor Nishant Ratakrishnan about focus group screenings OTT platforms and the
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future of the Indian film industry on Cyrus says Cyrus is joined by writer Devang Pathak he talks
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about what drove him to start his own blog what's that funny and why critiquing the Indian comedy
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scene is important on their 100th episode the football total guys answered questions from
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listeners while twaddling about David De Haya's amazing performance on the Kanada podcast Thalle
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Harate the hosts discuss how AI and machine learning is influencing our lives today and
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its potential for the future on advertising is dead Anshulika Dubey co-founder of Wishberry talks
#
to Varun about running a crowdfunding platform for creative projects in India and with that
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let's continue on with your shows welcome back to the scene in the unseen i'm talking with Ramchandra
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Guha about Gandhi before he became Mahatma you know we were talking about how he sort of saw
#
himself as a citizen of the empire and didn't have anything against the empire to start with and the
#
most striking reflection of this is when the British started their war against the Boers at
#
the turn of the century you know the whole Natal Transvaal thing and at that time he described
#
himself as an empire loyalist and he sort of volunteered his services to lead an ambulance
#
corps in the British service and how much of that was out of genuine loyalty and how much of that
#
was sort of tactical as in that if we now show the British our support they'll be more open to
#
I think both I think both and of course he supports the British in the war against the Boers which is
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a war of one group of whites against another group of whites and he also supports the British in the
#
war against the Zulus in 1906 which is whites against African side it is partly tactical I
#
think it's partly a belief in British justice but a partly a sense that the British brought us here
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they gave us opportunities we must stand by them and if we support them they will grant us freedom
#
more freedom and liberties and the kind of rights you're asking for but it is also the case that he
#
does not take up arms I mean it's essentially an ambulance corps and in the case of the war
#
against the Zulus I quote evidence to show that they minister to Zulus too I mean it was only not
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just to the Europeans but there was clearly instrumental strategic aspect to that support.
#
And in the matter of the Zulus since you mentioned it I mean the Bambatha rebellion there's a quote
#
from Gandhi I think this was an Indian opinion quote it is not for me to say whether the revolt
#
of the kafirs is justified or not we are in Natal by virtue of British power our very existence
#
depends upon it it is therefore our duty to render whatever help we can stop quote and this sort of
#
brings me to the larger question which often you know people raise to talk about his alleged racism
#
and whatever and there's no doubt that at the early years in South Africa he certainly was
#
that while he himself was petitioning for the Indians to be treated as citizens of the empire
#
he was quite happy for the black Africans to be treated as subjects of the empire he would rather
#
see himself as part of the ruling class how did his ideas kind of evolve over time?
#
I think so uh to begin with he was a racist so let's say from 1894 till for about a decade
#
he came he was absolutely shaped by the prejudices of his class and his own race I mean Indians are
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a very racist people not only in how they treat people within India I mean marriage ads are of
#
course the most famous or notorious example of that but also the sense that Indians are heir to
#
a great civilization you know a great Sanskrit civilization they've fallen on bad days now but
#
they will recover their past glories that Indians have built you know great glorious structures
#
famous ancient cities they have elaborated the most profound and original philosophical theories
#
they were once leaders in science and mathematics and astronomy so they are a great civilization
#
in the same way as the West is a great civilization now there's some interesting parallels here though
#
it's a bit of a digression but uh it's relevant the interesting parallels here between how Hindus
#
in late 19th and early 20th century saw themselves and how Muslims saw themselves because Muslims
#
also thought they had to great civilizations I mean Baghdad is the flowering of everything you
#
know for literature philosophy music science I mean it's lamenting the loss of those great days
#
and the West has come and the West has conquered us partly through our might partly to Artifice
#
and cunning but one day we will recover our glories and Baghdad will come back and uh you know uh the
#
Gupta empire will come back you know so there's a very interesting parallel in the ways in which
#
Muslims and Hindus thought of themselves as in theory equal to the Europeans in the greatness of
#
their civilizational achievement but in practice politically subordinated so not able to achieve
#
or recover their true glory that should be their destiny now in this context the Africans are ranked
#
both by the Muslims and Muslims are the great pioneers of the slave trade too you know in Africa
#
and by the Hindus as the bottom Africans are seen as someone who never had a civilization
#
and what is unpardonable will never can never have a civilization so Gandhi is captive to that
#
form of thinking from the 1890s onwards now by about 1906 1907 he started organizing Indians
#
for collective action at this stage he is more skeptical of British proclamations he feels that
#
the British have betrayed their promises they're treating Indians harshly he wants to protest
#
against them but his is still a movement of Indians alone the Indian struggle is kept completely away
#
from the question of rights for Africans you can so there is a period in which Gandhi is a racist
#
which runs from what you know the time he lands for about a decade or a little more then there's a
#
period in which Gandhi starts viewing Africans a little more sympathetically I mean if you read
#
the accounts in Indian opinion he's talking about discrimination against them I mean how they're excluded
#
from certain professions how they're not allowed to enter the Pretoria town hall so Indian opinion
#
is not he's not fighting for African rights but he is noticing for the first time that Africans
#
are discriminated against too by the colonial regime there's this unjustly neglected speech he
#
makes in Johannesburg in 1908 where he says every race can achieve full greatness so that the path
#
to civilizational or national or cultural greatness is available to Africans he's arguing that by 1908
#
now Indian opinion is covering aspects of African discrimination against Africans move a little
#
further on 1910-11 he's interacting with the first president of the African National Congress
#
Dube there's another great leader of the African National Congress Pixley Semay who visits
#
Gandhi in Tolstoy farm African newspapers are covering his non-violent resistance and saying
#
we should also organize in the same way but he still keeps his uh how do I put it his uh his
#
movement separate from that from the Africans but there is a shift in his position you know uh you
#
know as we were discussing before that arguably there are four stages in Gandhi's attitude to race
#
there is the first stage where he's an unapologetic racist there's a second stage where you could call
#
him a recovering racist because he is nuancing and rethinking his views there's a third stage
#
where he's a kind of a lapsed racist because he no longer thinks in racial terms and there's a fourth
#
state which is from about the 19 late 1920s on mid or late 1920s onwards where he's a principled
#
anti-racist so you have to look at his career in the round I mean we'll talk about this is the
#
maybe the second episode but through the 20s and 30s and 40s Gandhi is consistently talking about
#
discrimination against Africans he's telling Indians in South Africa that they are treated
#
much worse than you he's saying we must build a solidarity of all colored races he is taking a
#
greater and greater interest in the African-American uh situation in the United States so you know he is
#
growing out of his racism and I think that while acknowledging absolutely that he was a racist
#
like many other Hindus were at that stage and many other you know Arab Muslims were too at that
#
state you know the Hindus of South Asia and the Muslims of Central and West Asia in the late 19th
#
and early 20th century had a similar framework by which to analyze civilizations that Arabs and
#
Indians are fully equal to Christian civilization uh but Africans are somehow you know not can never
#
join that exclusive club so Gandhi has that worldview but he outgrows it slowly you can
#
say he's too slow in outgrowing it but certainly for the last two and a half decades of his career
#
he's comprehensively outgrown and he's a principled anti-racist so I think that whole arc has to be
#
seen you know it's it's even someone like Gandhi who writes so much and you live such a long life
#
it's very easy to quote him out of context but as he himself says take what I said last also likewise
#
with regard to science and medicine you know he's knocking doctors and allopathic medicine
#
in Hind Swaraj in 1910 but in the 1920s he's praising how surgery can save lives so I think
#
that's that's the way you must look at his evolution. I mean people contain multitudes
#
and this also sort of brings us back to the question of hindsight and history where
#
looking back it's very easy to judge people for being racist or say that hey Jefferson had slaves
#
absolutely Gandhi was racist or and uh or Gandhi was misogynist you know in that sense I don't know
#
if he was ever not a misogynist because especially parts of how he treated Kasturba during his years
#
in South Africa where you know she was a means to an end for him always initially it was a means to
#
satisfy his lust yeah most famously when his father was you know dying and so on and and when
#
he takes a 180 degrees turn away from that um she's satisfying other aspects of him you know
#
she'll do his housework when he's you know tired of her in uh Johannesburg he sends her to the
#
farm in Phoenix a stall so I informed that he'd set up that he described to do work there it seems
#
that he never really relates to her as a human being it's like he's got this vision in his head
#
and everybody has a certain slot and they fit into that even the way he treats his kids for example
#
absolutely yeah simply horrendous but that is by modern standards how do we look back and uh think
#
of these figures so I think he was a typical Hindu patriarch I think uh most Hindu men believe that
#
they can absolutely determine the life choices of their wives and it is their children and it
#
extends well beyond Gandhi it's probably true of most maybe many if not most Indian Hindu families
#
today I mean my own grandfather uh who's educated in Germany and so on stopped speaking to me because
#
I didn't do science because he felt that boys do science and boys don't do humanities so you know
#
this kind of uh absolutely censorious harsh attitude no one would be trolling you today
#
on twitter if you'd done science I know that he was right by very few people that's that's
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what I know I know that that's true that's true but he writes very frankly about his ill treatment
#
of Kasturba not about his children I think about his children I know he was cruel to Harilal there
#
is no Harilal suffered greatly and was broken by his father's lack of understanding and lack of
#
empathy but about his ill-treatable Kasturba he does speak quite fluently cry quite frankly himself
#
like there's one point where you talk about how Harilal wants to go to London to study to be a
#
barrister just as his father did yeah and his father says that look you don't need to go there
#
because you any names people like Shivaji and Rana Pratap and the Anand Saraswati and says that
#
they didn't need to an English education completely gratuitous that kind of totally
#
very smartly comes back at him and perhaps should have gone and studied and been a barrister comes
#
back at his father and says that but what about Gokhale Ranade and so on and they are Gandhi's
#
heroes yes yeah that's that's kind of pretty poignant and and now you know so you talk about
#
the Boer war is over and all that and in the very early years of the century Gandhi comes back to
#
India and he again contingency strikes he can't make a career in Bombay because all his contemporary
#
lawyers starting out at the same time as him have sort of 10 years experience and so that and no
#
no one really knows him in Bombay so he can't make anything happen in Bombay and Rajkot and
#
eventually he goes back to South Africa how has South Africa changed in the meantime well
#
well of course the British had one a union was being forged in which all the four provinces
#
would come and join together he is now based in Johannesburg and that's where he is because
#
the Indians there need him more than the Indians in Natal and his family is with him now all the
#
children four children are there and this is when he makes a home with the the Pollacks who are
#
a Jewish couple which is a very interesting aspect of his personal life there this is the
#
international household in Johannesburg and and also Kellenberg and and yeah yeah I mean you
#
talked a little earlier in our conversation about his religious ecumenism and we talked about the
#
Indian Muslims and Parsis who he works closely with but he also of course brave be friends
#
European Jews and European Christians I mean there's the Dogue family and Gandhi has four sons he
#
doesn't have a daughter and his Christian peace daughter who becomes a kind of olive dog who
#
becomes a kind of adopted daughter to him and one of the joys of my research in South Africa was
#
discovering the correspondence between Gandhi and his adopted daughter which is in an archive in
#
Pretoria and that kind of relationship humanizes him having said that I will return to earlier
#
discussions I say very late in the book that Gandhi does not have a single African friend
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although his views on race evolve and he slowly sheds the crude racism of his youth
#
he has a few African acquaintances but he cannot yet have an African friend which is I think is
#
something worth noticing and his friendship with Kellenberg is also very interesting and
#
similar in a sense it struck me to his earlier friendship with Mehtab who's also similarly
#
Sheikh Mehtab who's also similarly athletic and so on and what did you think of the aspect of
#
their friendship with Joseph Lallywell writes about in his book great so it's not serious I
#
have a long footnote on it it's it's it's wild speculation that they could have been a gay
#
relationship he well it's a simple misunderstanding or misrepresentation right Gandhi is in London
#
he's missing his friend Kellenberg Kellenberg is also a Tolstoyian so like Gandhi and Tolstoy
#
he's a successful professional architect who gives up his wealth and prosperity to live simply
#
and Gandhi is in London negotiating on behalf of the Indians and Gandhi and Kellenberg used
#
to walk the streets of Johannesburg and when there were corns or blisters under their feet
#
they would use Vaseline so he's in London he writes to Kellenberg saying I have a bottle
#
of Vaseline on my mantelpiece to remind me of our time in Johannesburg together and Lallywell just
#
falls for that and you know in fact it says the later the later he says there's a reference to
#
corns and the Vaseline is about corns it's not about some something else which is what Lallywell
#
interprets it to be now so it was just a wild speculation unfortunately I think it's gone away
#
and died and sensibly died yeah and this is when uh you know his most uh you know his significant
#
battle against the empire sort of starts when the uh the trans wild people want to bring the
#
asiatic ordinance which has a number of sort of draconian measures such as everybody has to
#
register themselves with all 10 fingers and uh so on and while fighting against this he realizes
#
the limitations of petitioning and uh and this is sort of where passive resistance is born where
#
you know and there's sort of you describe that conceptual journey from dharma to hartaal to
#
passive resistance which you know eventually they kind of crowdsource the naming of it and it gets
#
called satyagraha tell me a little bit about how that journey would have been like for him
#
well there's a classic essay by a great scholar of gujarat called howard uh spodek which talks
#
about indigenous forms of protest in the princely states of kathiawar and he says that uh i mean he
#
uses gujarati term and he says there's one form of protest where supposing your crops failed you
#
wrote a petition to the king saying this year like this loan mafi kind of thing right loan waiver
#
loan waiver don't tax us this year because our crops have failed and the king doesn't agree you go
#
on dharma or you go to the collective petition you go thousands of peasants would go in kathiawar
#
to the palace and just sit there till the king granted remission from taxing the crops that year
#
and howard spodek says this was a kind of a non-violent civil disobedience that was
#
indigenously traditionally practiced by the peasants of kathiawar and gandhi belonging
#
to a family of divans in princely kathiawar must have known about this gandhi of course doesn't
#
refer to it himself he says my mother would fast you know against the father you know to shame him
#
right but it's it's very similar so i think it is there in the kind of political vocabulary of
#
pre-modern india fasting collective protest non-violent protest uh is there i mean howard
#
spodek in the article talks about two forms of protest he says one he calls resaman which is this
#
which is petitioning the king and the other is which is going outside the law becoming a bandit
#
and taking to arms you know like robinhood or like sultana daku or whatever against the state
#
and so i think this was part of gandhi's mental furniture he knew that these are ways in which
#
you can shame the ruler so if they don't respond to petitions and appeals and meetings start a
#
dharma and then a satyagraha uh then of course some of it is his own innovation for example
#
the burning of the certificates is something he starts right so and then courting arrest courting
#
it again and again and again so some of it is pure innovation on his part some of it is probably
#
derived from what he learned as a boy in katiawar and it strikes me that in in through passive
#
resistance he somehow he's bridging the gap between the moderates and the extremist in the
#
sense he's going beyond petitioning but unlike the extremist he's not resorting to violence or he's
#
not very much very much that's a very good point i would completely agree i think and that is
#
characteristic of uh uh his approach to many things that uh you know if you look at uh his
#
attitude to caste system you know he's also negotiating a way between the hindu orthodoxy
#
and the dalit radicals you know so he's like finding alternatives to two extreme positions
#
hindu muslim harmony you know the atheist who says all religion is bad and the religious supremacist
#
who says only my religion is the true faith whereas he kind of talks about pluralism as a mediating
#
path so you're absolutely right i mean that uh moderates only write petitions or debate in
#
parliament extremists only use violence and he was finding a way of pressurizing the government
#
through collective action and soul force but without using violence and satyagraha was uh
#
the technique that answered yeah in fact james key and hardy had once said that the moderates are
#
extreme in moderation and the extremists are moderate in the extremism so it's probably
#
there wasn't that much difference to begin with and gandhi interestingly was acclaimed by both
#
he was acclaimed by go play partly because they had that relationship going on he was also acclaimed
#
by shri aurobindo for example right right yeah yeah that's right in his uh in his writings in 1908
#
and so on etc aurobindo talks about the turns of one yeah and then they both independently talked
#
about passive resistance but not raid each other and i think aurobindo right polak i think writing
#
about gandhi and then discovered you know it's a kind of i think people i mean there's also a
#
uh long account in my book about all the writings about uh in the telugu and tamil press about it
#
you know so it's like similar to today we uh it's you know 150 years later 120 years later we talk
#
you know uh the indian newspapers will be puffed up with pride when some indian becomes ceo of
#
microsoft or whatever right now because a barrier that's not supposed to be at least this is a
#
different kind of pride i mean this is someone where this is pride in someone fighting for the
#
elementary rights of indians in south africa i mean that letter that uh rathan tata writes to which
#
i quote you know it's a very moving letter he says you are fighting for all indians all over the
#
world to be recognized as equal right and you also point out how uh where what passive resistance did
#
for gandhi was that it raised his stature within the community earlier he was like a lawyer fighting
#
against a bureaucrat monford chamny and now he's a leader of the entire indian community
#
right transphal fighting against general jansmo absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely very
#
much so yeah yeah i mean it gives him that yeah and and and the interesting thing there happens is
#
that he carries out the satyagraha and he goes to jail and all of that and then finally a compromise
#
is reached and what struck me about the compromise was that although uh the government sort of steps
#
back on some of the things they don't actually uh repeal the act they they just say we will discuss
#
repealing the act and gandhi takes it at face value and it's kind of accepted the agitation
#
is called off and then gandhi you know does this whole voluntary registration thing like just i'm
#
i'm sorry i shouldn't have come to it so suddenly uh really confused my listeners what we're talking
#
about the basically the asiatic ordinance insisted that all of everybody who's come there from india
#
has to register using all eight fingers and the two thumbs and all the indians objected to this
#
because they felt it was demeaning especially those among them who were literate and gandhi at
#
one point poetically said that it's not about the thumb prints it's about the compulsion of it
#
yeah that is demeaning and uh they they refused to register and when the date came the british
#
essentially found that no one was registering and the officers who were supposed to take those
#
thumb prints were jokingly described as gandhi as being on a paid vacation and uh and then
#
eventually a compromise was reached where gandhi said that he would you know ask the indians to
#
voluntary register provided the government stepped down on a number of um the singing but they didn't
#
repeal the act they just said that we will discuss repealing the act and then gandhi steps down and
#
then the next day when he goes to voluntary register he's attacked by a bunch of patans who
#
believe that he's betrayed them yeah yeah and and in in and given that smuts actually didn't repeal
#
the act and never seemed to intend to have repealed the act would you say in some senses gandhi was a
#
bit naive yeah i think i think he always trusted you know this is a aspect of his politics for a
#
very long time until it quit india in 1942 you know i mean whenever he launches a movement and
#
it's called off there's a compromise the british promised to do things for example the salt act
#
was actually never repealed by urban even though that was promised so there is he certainly has
#
this uh you know whether it's a naive or it's a matter of principle that you know if my opponent
#
gives his word i will trust him and what i sort of noticed about all his satyagrahas was that
#
acclaimed as they are all his satyagrahas basically failed in their proximate objective
#
like you know and and nevertheless what they did do is they succeeded in making these issues mass
#
issues and animating millions of people which no other leader had managed to do correct correct
#
what's the magic there no i think it uh i mean first of all a small correction i mean the last
#
satyagraha in south africa did eliminate the profits yeah i did eliminate the indented tax
#
and the marriage customs were you know regularized and so on uh but of course he did never achieved
#
uh substantially the goals that the satyagraha had set for itself i think it's a sense the two
#
three things that gandhi does it is satyagrahas in south africa that uh his uh in retrospect
#
prefigure what he was able to do in india the first is to unite people indians of different
#
religious linguistic and caste backgrounds uh so that you know previously gujaratis would not
#
be on the street with tamils and hindus would not protest together with muslims and so on that's
#
the first thing he does the second thing he does is cultivate an ethic of sacrifice
#
that middle-class people often middle-class people and working-class people are willing
#
to risk their livelihoods in a pursuit of a larger cause which is dignity and self-respect
#
national dignity and self-respect uh so i think that's still this is what uh it does is it creates
#
a sense of uh trans religious and trans community solidarity and it creates an ethic of self-respect
#
and self-reliance even if the as you say the proximate objective is not the same and it's
#
around the time of the passive resistances and maybe the satyagrahas like you said actually
#
played the main part in this is that in the probably more than the first half of his time
#
in south africa he was seen as a representative of the trading class correct correct gujarati
#
muslim traders the parsees the elite so to say but what happened post the satyagrahas
#
and he picked up associates like tambi naidu across the way is that the tamilian indentured
#
laborers especially adopted him as their leader and then he became a leader of this
#
yeah i mean for a long period he was the leader really of the gujarati middle class and it's
#
only the last two or three years of his journey in south africa and essentially only through the
#
1913-14 the tambi naidu had joined him before but it's through that major strike of 1913-14
#
where he becomes a true master yeah and at that point you talk about how you know gokles sent cf
#
andrews to gandhi to tell him to come back to india it's time to come back to india and
#
again his last satyagraha like gandhi's own comments on it were that you know the indians
#
hadn't yet got the right to trade travel or own land anywhere so in that sense they didn't get
#
everything that they asked for and yet he grandiously described it as a quote unquote magna
#
carta for indians uh which he had the term he had also used for queen victoria's uh you know
#
earlier proclamation and a final settlement and a charter for our freedom he was very good at optics
#
also yes that's true that's certainly true i mean these are rather tall claims that were not
#
billed by later events here why the last thing i'd say is that you know uh again this is you know
#
again uh as i said you know that uh although gandhi i said gandhi did not have african friends gandhi
#
was racist to begin with outgrew it but even when he outgrew it he did not have african friends
#
but the african press was watching what he was doing and they were learning from his attempts to
#
they were watching very closely his attempts to build bridges between different sections of the
#
indian community and they were likewise inspired to build bridges between different parts of the
#
african community i mean uh the african national congress is modeled on the natal indian congress
#
and also of course the indian national congress so i think that's an aspect of what i mean if you look
#
at the positive aspects of his contribution it's not just eliminating caste or religious or
#
linguistic prejudice within india indians it's also showing all people in south africa that
#
collective if you build bridges across tribal boundaries you know you can be more effective i
#
mean the african national congress is trying to build bridges across tribal boundaries and the
#
very name shows that they are influenced by what gandhi has been trying to do so they're much
#
larger they are the original inhabitants of the land essentially have a much greater stake in the
#
ending of the racial regime but they are observing those who polemically describe uh dismissed gandhi
#
as an unrepentant racist should also acknowledge the influence on african struggles of what he did
#
i mean this carries on much later gandhi leaves south africa but uh his influence persists i mean
#
uh through the 40s and 50s the first major struggles against apartheid you know for example
#
the defiance campaign of 1952 absolutely uses gandhi and methods of civil disobedience you know
#
uh uh chief albert nothuli who is the anc leader for much of the 40s and 50s is greatly inspired
#
by gandhi not just in non-violence but in building cross-tribal solidarity so that you know uh that
#
the south african liberation struggle is not only of zulus or not only of the hossa or not only of
#
the cape colored or not only of the people of the transki but everyone so i think that is part of
#
gandhi's legacy to south africa which you know uh polemical ideologues who uh pointed out the
#
polemical ideologues who uh point to his early races regimes and totally dismiss that he is
#
someone who finds a way of building bridges between different sections of a society and
#
organizing collective action for uh political emancipation now the anc follows gandhi and
#
methods both in terms of non-violence and in terms of building bridges between different
#
sects and religions and tribes from 1912 right up till the 1960s for 50 years when they decide
#
quite legitimately that against the harsh and brutal apartheid regime non-violence won't get
#
you anywhere so you must have a targeted violence but i'd urge again this question of because this
#
this whole issue has come back again about gandhi and this that uh it is true that gandhi was
#
a racist when he was young i mean of course but this larger aspect of his legacy in africa itself
#
you know that why did the african national congress observe gandhi what gandhi was doing so closely
#
because they could take it forward in their own uh politics and sort of go back to the great man
#
theory of history this begs a counterfactual question that what if the gentleman who hired
#
gandhi as a lawyer to represent him in uh south africa in the early 1890s picked some other
#
lawyer who was less ambitious and didn't do any of this and how you know how different history
#
would have been absolutely absolutely very much so yeah so i've taken a lot of your time i sort of want to
#
end with asking you to elaborate on kind of six things which are what you said with reference to
#
gandhi in 1906 are the six different aspects of gandhi in which he was developing during that
#
period of time uh one really doesn't need much elaboration which is as a lawyer where as you
#
point out it became sort of just a way of him to earn his bread and you know we don't need to talk
#
about him as a lawyer much uh the second is as a political campaigner and uh would you say that
#
the roots of everything that happened subsequently india's independence struggle and so on really
#
happened in that second spell in south africa when he discovered passive resistance in johannesburg
#
as a political campaigner yes not as a social reformer which is a separate question we can take
#
up later maybe in the second episode but yes i mean the idea that your first approach must be a
#
recent argument and petition appeal to the better angels of uh our nature of the ruler's nature of
#
the ruler's nature you know that if that fails then you conduct a satyagraha and but then you
#
have to be prepared to call it off and negotiate and deliberate uh you of course will be willing
#
to go to jail under the harshest conditions so sure i mean that is something that is first tried
#
in south africa for example that long march is a clear anticipation of the salt march though few
#
people recognize this yeah yeah yeah so many of the tactics and uh approaches to political action
#
are developed in south africa right the third aspect as a propagandist he started the magazine
#
indian opinion wrote frequently sometimes under his byline sometimes not um what do you think
#
gandhi learned about propaganda during these years for example no i think that you have your own
#
vehicle you must have your own newspaper i mean of course tillak had kesari so he may have been
#
inspired by that and what is striking about indian opinion is that is originally printed in four
#
languages or scripts i mean there's hindi there's tamil there's gujarati and there's english after
#
sometime money runs out so it's only english and gujarati later on money comes back so tamil is
#
restored uh so you have of course your own vehicle for propagating your views but printed in as many
#
languages as possible so that you reach you know as wide a spectrum of uh your likely audience as
#
possible uh you also have i mean he was a great editor and journalist you have reports you have
#
analysis you have forthcoming events and you have opinions the fourth aspect was as someone who
#
unites different parts of society which is something that wasn't rhetorical which he actually
#
lived out because he had friends who were muslims and friends who were you know by the end of it
#
of the tamil indian liberals as well was he like that when he got to south africa or was it a
#
journey that he realized that tactically he has to already become like that i mean i mean if you
#
look at his uh experiences in england i mean of course he's dealing with english people uh
#
but i think he was already on the way to becoming that and uh he'd already incurred the wrath of his
#
bo mod bania so he'd be willing to you know break cast taboos but south africa takes it much further
#
it takes it much further and also the diaspora you know uh these distinctions matter less and
#
less i mean you're all in the same boat your indians thrust together by force of circumstance
#
and fishing the same axum restrictions on your trade and your livelihood and your movements
#
and you don't really think that much about who's a parsi who's a gujarati who's a tamil who's a
#
telugu and could it be the case that a circumstantially enforced sense of unity also then impacts the way
#
he looks at the world when he comes back to india where the divisions are actually harsher
#
very much very much very much i think he learns about the diversity of india and the need to
#
build bridges across these in south africa in south africa uh the fifth aspect as a family man
#
and let me let me let me uh stay a while with the fourth you know uh we talked about the second
#
aspect which is the theory of non-violence i think the fourth aspect is more important in the second
#
though conventional wisdom tells you that south africa is important to gandhi as a laboratory for
#
satyagraha which is then applied on a larger scale in india i believe the fourth aspect is
#
more important south africa is more crucial to gandhi because it's in south africa that he
#
understands that india does not belong to one religion or one language alone i mean if gandhi
#
had not lived or not gone to south africa india would still have found its way to political freedom
#
without satyagraha either through the gogale method or through the aurobindo ghosh bhagat singh
#
method it would have found independence but it would it was because of south africa and
#
what gandhi learned about the vital importance of religious and linguistic pluralism
#
that india at independence was constituted on a model or a template very different from
#
that of european nations which privilege a single language and a single religion i mean
#
pakistan is a european nation in that sense israel is the european nation but india is not
#
because of what gandhi learned in south africa so i think the fourth aspect is in some ways
#
the most crucial point that it's the religious and linguistic pluralism that he cultivates
#
further understands appreciates in south africa that informs the later creation of the indian
#
nation state on a model or a template very different from nationalism that's a profound
#
point the fifth of course family we've kind of touched on earlier in this episode anything to
#
sort of add to that do his views ever modify themselves like we talk about gandhi's journey
#
as a racist where he started off a racist and then was a principled anti-racist by the end of it
#
uh but was he always a misogynist did he kind of get well i think we come to that the second
#
episode certainly he softens in his attitude towards his third and fourth child i think with
#
kasturva he reaches such accommodations he recognized the importance of his his beliefs
#
and his commitments and you know partakes of them but i think he softens later on and ramdas and
#
devdas are treated much more kindly than harilal and madhira but we'll come to that in a second
#
yeah and the final aspect is a self-discovery aspect where he's kind of been on the journey
#
of self-discovery all the while you know it was henry salt in london then uh tolstoy and ruskin
#
and thurow uh all through this uh period but it seems clear that at the time that he's landed
#
to india he's come back to india mohendas gandhi is not yet mahatma or would you say that he is
#
in a sense that all those qualities are already there no i think uh i mean india is a much larger
#
canvas so he has to understand that uh uh you know get to grips with it he has to get involved
#
in the congress party learn to operate within it find their way of assuming leadership roles within
#
it uh before he can really claim the kind of uh uh you know leadership role that he wants so in
#
south africa essentially he is a community leader i mean he is not more than that right and we'll
#
we'll take the journey forward in the next episode thanks so much ram thanks a great pleasure
#
if you enjoyed listening to this show head on over to amazon or your nearest neighborhood
#
bookstore perhaps even bookworm on church street in bangalore which is ram's favorite bookstore
#
and pick up the two books by ram guha gandhi before india and gandhi the years that changed
#
the world you can follow him on twitter at ram underscore guha you can follow me on twitter
#
at amit varma a-m-i-t-v-a-r-m-a you can browse past episodes of the scene in the unseen at scene
#
unseen dot i-n and thinkpragati.com thank you for listening
#
india's a massive subcontinent home to truly stunning diversity behind the veils of smoke
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that obscure our thriving cities our history is still alive glimmering like sequins waiting
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#
this podcast is for you i'm aniruddh kanisetti a history and geopolitics researcher and i host
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