Organizer: Stephen Hay, University of California, Santa Barbara
Chair: Dennis Dalton, Columbia University
Discussant: Robert Lester, University of Colorado
Stephen Hay, University of California, Santa Barbara
In his autobiography, Gandhi gives us five reasons why he decided to accept the offer of a job in South Africa in 1893. One was his disgust at what he considered the dishonest intrigues for power and wealth that prevailed in his native Kathiawar peninsula. Second was his desire to see to a new country, and third the opportunity to earn money for the support of his and his brother Kalidas's joint family in Rajkot.
A fourth, unstated motive, was probably the desire to escape from the humiliating status he and his fellow Indians in Rajkot occupied as inferiors to the European sahebs and memsahebs-in sharp contrast to the social equality he had experienced as a student in London, especially as a member of the Vegetarian Society. A fifth reason, related to the first, was his poor prospect of gaining a high political or judicial office like those his grandfather and father had held in Kathiawar.
A particularly painful event intensified this last incentive. He quarreled with the British political agent in charge of superintending the many small kingdoms, principalities, and fiefdoms of the Kathiawar peninsula, and felt incensed by the indignity to which he was subjected when Colonel Ollivant would not listen to his pleas on behalf of his brother Kalidas and instead had him forcibly removed from his office. His threat to sue the political agent only worsened Gandhi's own future chances for appointment to a dewanship or judgeship, since the British now controlled such appointments.
Apparently Gandhi did not realize how serious the charges against his brother were. Two are mentioned in the records of local British and Indian administrators. One was eight or nine month absence from his post as minister (karbhari, literally "work bearer") to the Thakor Saheb of Shapur. As his father had done, Kalidas was instead keeping company with the heir apparent to the throne of the Porbandar kingdom, a good way to ensure his future appointment as dewan. The other charge stemmed from this young prince's theft of the royal family's jewels. According to the prince's account, he then summoned Kalidas, who advised him to keep the jewels because they belonged to him. Being under a cloud of suspicion for his complicity in the theft, Kalidas asked his brother to persuade the political agent to end what he described as "prejudice" against him.
The Porbandar jewel theft took place while that kingdom was under direct British administration. A wholesale purge of its officials, involving dozens of Gandhi's male relatives, had followed the 1886 removal of the Rana (king) from the throne for failure to carry out reforms ordered by the British. So it was not just Gandhi's brother, but Gandhi men in general who were under suspicion in 1893. Gandhi was perhaps not fully aware of this unsavory family reputation, nor of the extent of his brother's misdeeds. Both were probably factors underlying the political agent's impatience. He was therefore unprepared for the agent's order for his forcible expulsion, of which he later wrote, "This shock changed the course of my life."
Gandhi accepted a temporary job in South Africa as a way out of his dilemma, and was soon able to perform duties analogous to those his father had intended for him to assume in his native Kathiawar.
A. J. Parel, University of Calgary
Hind Swaraj is universally recognized as Gandhi's seminal work. Though its translation from Gujarati was first published in book form in 1910, it is now available, in English only in the revised new edition (RNE) of 1939 (Only three copies of the 1910 edition are known to exist today). There is strong reason to believe that the revision was done under the supervision of Mahadev Desai, Gandhi's secretary, not by Gandhi himself. The RNE does not contain the 1910 Foreword and Preface; instead it has a Preface by Desai and two statements made by Gandhi in 1921 and 1938. Anyone reading the RNE would have no idea of the reasons for writing the book.
These reasons were partially expressed in the 1910 Foreword and Preface. They were later supplemented by Gandhi in a series of statements stretching over a period of nearly four decades. An analysis of all the pertinent data will be presented in the proposed paper. The fruits of the analysis will be grouped under the following four headings:
The paper draws on the sources used by the author in preparing the 1910 edition of Hind Swaraj which Cambridge University Press is scheduled to publish in 1995.
James D. Hunt, Shaw University
The formation in 1910 of Tolstoy Farm, Gandhi's second community, was justified as an economical refuge for families of jailed "passive resisters" in a healthy rural setting, but its ideological basis was derived from his anti modernist manifesto Hind Swaraj, written six months before. A personal relationship with his bachelor housemate not only yielded access to the farm, but also provided disingenuous economic reasons for continuing the farm when the original purpose faded. The farm then became a training school for his political and cultural agenda.
Renouncing Macaulay's curriculum, he taught in the vernacular, stressed physical labor, and privileged character over intellect. The concepts of Hind Swaraj, including self mastery, brahmacharya, satyagraha, Hindu Muslim unity, and repudiation of "modern civilization," informed the curriculum. Much of this ran counter to the desires of the South African Indian middle class, including his own sons.
At the farm he for the first time was a resident community leader, and there he created a counter model to his still-existing settlement at Phoenix. The farm became a lever to overcome the perceived failings of the first community. The industrial village economy was replaced by a family model, with himself as the father. This entailed revisioning land use, the family, and the economic structure. The power to achieve this experiment in poverty derived from his skill in raising substantial funds from businessmen in India.
His experiments extended to relations between the sexes, in which unusual freedom was given to the young women, but his Tolstoyan misogyny surfaced in his discipline and in his denigration of marriage.
Though the farm was created initially to maintain the South African satyagraha campaign, this goal was usurped by Gandhi's intention to return to India. This strategic shift bypassed the interests of the majority of South African Indians. However the experiment produced a cadre of satyagrahis who provided a dramatic tactical victory, enabling him to leave in 1914 for India bearing an aura of success.
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