THE GANDHI STORY in his own words Condensed and Compiled by Mahendra Meghani From M. K. Gandhi’s two books An Autobiography and Satyagraha in South Africa LOK'MILAP TRUST TO Charles F. Andrews (1871-1940) The greatest interpreter of Gandhi to the whole Western world, beloved of both Gandhi and Tagore FtiMsfoi by Gopal Meghani Lok'Milap Trust 364001 India P.Q,Box 23 (Sardamagar), Bhavnagar r e-mail: lokmilaptxustZOOC (ft yahoo.com Phone: +9 1 278 2566 402, 2566 566 iMyrnt & Typeset by Apurva Ashar, Ahmcdabad, India Phone: +91 2717 215590 * Email: [email protected] Printed Riddhish Printers, Ahmed abad, India Phone; +91 79 2562 0239 Btjok-bmdmg Kumar Binders, Ahmedabad, India Phone: +91 79 2562 4964 Intemcitforkii edition March 2009; 5,000 copies Pages; 12+220+24 (photographs) = 256 R 50 [postage extra] $10 [including overseas airmail postage] Gandhi and Tagore: two faces of modern India. It was an Englishman who was the link between these two great representatives of modem India: the ascetic and the bard. Few felt their joint impact more sensitively than the saintly Englishman, C. F. Andrews. Let him estimate them whom he loved so well: completely “I have never in my whole life met anyone so under- satisfying the needs of friendship and intellectual standing and spiritual sympathy as Tagore. Side by side poet 1 have had the supreme with the friendship with the , His happiness of a friendship with Mahatma Gandhi. as character, in his own way, is as great and as creative religious that of Tagore. However, it has about it an air of that modem. faith of the Middle Ages rather than of Assissi our own Mahatma Gandhi is the St. Francis of of days.” Krishna Kripalani (Author of two outstanding biographies: Tagore: A Life and Gandhi: A Life) CONTENTS Compiler’s Note [7] From the Temple to the Marketplace .... [9] Childhood 1 My Shame 4 Glimpses of Religion 9 To England 11 In London 14 Shyness My Shield 17 My Helplessness 21 Raychandbhai, My Refuge 23 How I Began Life 24 To South Africa 27 Geography and History 29 Indians in South Africa 33 Some Experiences 36 In Touch with Indians 42 The Case 47 Settled 50 Balasundaram 55 In India 57 Meetings in Cities 61 The Storm 64 The Test 68 Longing for Service 73 A Sacred Recollection 75 Walking on the Sword’s Edge 77 With Gokhale 81 Traveling in India 84 Love’s Labor Lost? 86 Indian Opinion 87 Coolie Locations 88 The Magic Spell of a Book 93 The Zulu ‘Rebellion’ 97 Kasturbai’s Courage 99 Domestic Satyagraha 102 The Advent of Satyagraha 103 Deputation to England 106 Kachhalia and Adajania HO The First Settlement 1 15 Opposition and Assault 115 European Support HO The Guard 125 A Tide and an Ebb 127 A Bonfire 150 The Trial 152 A Second Deputation 156 Tolstoy Farm 158 Gokhale’s Tour 145 Women in Jail 149 A Stream of Laborers 152 The Conference and After 156 The Great March 159 All in Prison 182 The Test 185 The Beginning of the End 166 The Provisional Settlement 169 Reminiscences of the Bar 171 With Gokhale Again 175 Advent of Satyagraha in India 177 Shantiniketan 179 The Ashram 180 The Stain of Indigo 184 Face to Face with Non-violence 187 Methods of Work 191 In Touch with Labor 195 The Fast 196 Satyagraha in Kheda 199 That Wonderful Spectacle! 201 ‘A Himalayan Miscalculation’ 206 Found At Last! 209 Farewell 210 Glossary 212 Index 214 Specimen of abridgement 218 Photographs follow pages 16, 80, 176 COMPILER'S NOTE Remain Rolland (1866-1944), a French man of letters who received the 1915 Nobel Prize for literature, was an apostle of heroic idealism. In 1924 he produced a small volume entitled Mahatma Gandhi . It was one of the earliest biographies of Gandhi, and the first to be widely circulated in the Western world. He and Gandhi first met only in 1931 in Switzerland. Thereafter Rolland described Gandhi thus; “The little man, bespectacled and toothless, so frail in appearance, is tireless, and fatigue is a word which does not exist in his vocabulary. His thought is in constant evolution. The seeker after truth hath a heart tender as the lotus, and hard as granite.” What Romain Rolland did in Europe was accomplished in the New World by John H. Holmes, minister of the Community Church in New York. He was the very first to make the name of Gandhi known and loved in America. Gandhi’s autobiography was first published in America, in serial form, in Unity magazine, edited by Holmes. In 1953 he wrote in the book My Gandhi: “Gandhi was a great and wonderful man. Where was there anybody to match him in our troubled and wicked world? Did he not hold in his heart the secret of man’s deliverance from the evils threatening to destroy him? Must he not be proclaimed the compeer of the greatest men of our own or any other time?” Following Rolland and Holmes many other biographies of Gandhi have been written by others in India and abroad, perhaps the most voluminous among them being the 10-part Mahatma Gandhi by his secretary Pyarelal and his sister Sushila Nayar. Among all of them a unique place is occupied by the Autobiog- raphy written by Gandhi himself in 1925 and translated into English by Mahadev Desai. The story in that book terminates in 1920, when Gandhi still had almost three decades of intense activity before him. However, a less-known autobiographical volume written earlier by him and translated by Valji G. Desai, Satyagraha In South Africa provides greater details about , Gandhi’s the first experiments with nonviolent direct action during twenty'One years he was in South Africa. These two books together provide a comprehensive narration of at least nearly five Africa. first decades of his life in India, England and South Story as It is my earnest desire to see that the Gandhi contained in these two books reaches even more people than before, especially young people all over the world. But together they contain about 300,000 words, and it may patience be difficult for most people today to find the time and to wade through them. here I have therefore humbly attempted to condense them in nearly 75,000 words. The first attempt in this manner was made by Bharatan Kumarappa and published as Gandhijis Auto- biography Abridged in 1952 (Navajivan Publishing House). Now that the copyright in Gandhiji’s writings has expired at the end pictures of 2008, I am venturing to make a fresh attempt, adding to the text, in the hope that it may prove of interest to more readers. India. But The first edition of this book is being printed in like to instead of it being exported to many countries we would facilitate this, see it being reprinted locally wherever possible. To the publishers, Lokmilap Trust, will gladly provide a CD of the writings book to publishers in all countries. Now that Gandhi’s have become the property of all mankind, let us endeavor to make them widely available throughout the world. In this condensed compilation I have not altered any word of the original text. To make the meaning clear, words have been added in brackets in some cases. Photographs have been added by courtesy of the Gandhi Memorial Museum, Ahmedabad. Glossary and Index too are additions. The compiler would be grateful to receive comments that may make this modest book readable by more and more people. Meghani January 30, 2009 Mahendra [ 8 ] FROM THE TEMPLE TO THE MARKETPLACE J. Swaminathan [Abridged from the editor’s preface to Vol. 39 of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi which includes The Autobiography .] The bulk of the volume consists of the Autobiography , the most widely read of Gandhiji’s works and a document of central importance in the study of his life-story. The Gujarati original appeared in weekly installments in Navajivan from November 29, 1925 to February 3, 1929. The English translation by Mahadev Desai, and in part by Pyarelal Nayar, Gandhiji’s secretaries, appeared in Young India from December 3, 1925 to February 7, 1929. The task was undertaken at the instance of some coworkers, who had first made the suggestion as far back as 1921 and who renewed their pressure in 1925 when Gandhiji seemed to be relatively free from preoccupations. Well aware of the general experience that hardly any autobiography is free from egotism and the taint of untruth, conscious or unconscious, Gandhiji was reluctant to embark on the venture. He could overcome his reluctance only by giving the story the form of an objective record of his moral experiments in private and public life, narrated with scientific detachment and with the sole purpose of illustrating the application of truth in all spheres of life. Gandhiji deliberately excluded from the narrative events of purely personal significance. He left out the human side of the story which if told could have been of immense psychological interest. The work is thus not a full or satisfying self-portrait. Nor is it a critical commentary on contemporary history. But despite these self-imposed limitations of interest, the Autobiography re- mains of supreme importance to the student of Gandhiji’s inner life-story. Gandhiji returned to India [from South Africa] with the [ 9 ] ambition of taking his “humble share in national regeneration . about He landed in Bombay in January 1915 with his views Gokhale’s national affairs fully formed, though, in deference to Explaining wish, he did not express them publicly for one yean the aims of in the first issue of Navajivan (September 7, 1919) clearly the journal, he said: “Despite these limitations of mine, I no one else has see that I have something to give to India which some in equal measure.