TRANSLATED BY CATHERINE D. GROTH

***

In connection with the present essay I wish to tender my affectionate thanks to my faithful collaborator, my sister, and to my friend, Kalidas Nag, whose deep knowledge and indefatigable kindness have guided my steps through the forest of Indian thought.

I also wish to thank the publisher, S. Ganesan of Madras, for having placed, spontaneously, his publications at my disposal.

The literal translation of Mahatma, the name which the people of India gave to Gandhi, is "the great Soul," maha, great; atma, soul. The word goes back to the Upanishads, where it is used in speaking of the Supreme Being, and, through communion of Knowledge and Love, of those who become One with Him:

"He is the One Luminous, Creator of All,
Mahatma,
Always in the hearts of the people enshrined.
Revealed through Love, Intuition, and Thought,
Whoever knows Him, Immortal becomes...."

Tagore, on a visit to Ashram, Gandhi's favorite retreat, quoted this stanza, referring to the Apostle.

***

Dark, tranquil eyes. A small frail man, a thin face with large protruding ears. His head covered with a little white cap, his body clothed in coarse white cloth, barefooted. He lives on rice and fruit and drinks only water. He sleeps on the floor—sleeps very little, and works incessantly. His body does not seem to count at all. There is nothing striking about him, at first, except his expression of "great patience and great love." W. W. Pearson, who met him in South Africa in 1918, instinctively thought of St. Francis of Assisi. There is an almost childlike simplicity about him.[1] His manner is gentle and courteous even when dealing with adversaries,[2] and he is of immaculate sincerity.[3] He is modest and unassuming, to the point of sometimes seeming almost timid, hesitant, in making an assertion. Yet you feel his indomitable spirit. He makes no compromises and never tries to hide a mistake. Nor is he afraid to admit having been in the wrong. Diplomacy is unknown to him; he shuns oratorical effect or, rather, never thinks about it; and he shrinks unconsciously from the great popular demonstrations organized in his honor. Literally "ill with the multitude that adores him,"[4] he distrusts majorities and fears "mobocracy" and the unbridled passions of the populace. He feels at ease only in a minority, and is happiest when, in meditative solitude, he can listen to the "still small voice" within.[5]

This is the man who has stirred three hundred million people to revolt, who has shaken the foundations of the British Empire, and who has introduced into human politics the strongest religious impetus of the last two thousand years.

His real name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was born in a little semi-independent state in the northwestern part of India, at Porbandar, the "White City" on the sea of Oman, October 2, 1868. He comes of an ardent and active race, which to this day has been split by civil strife; a practical race, commercially keen, which established trade relations all the way from Aden to Zanzibar. Gandhi's father and grandfather were both leaders of the people and met with persecution because of their independent spirit. Both were forced to flee for safety, their lives in peril. Gandhi's family was well-to-do and belonged to a cultivated class of society, but it was not of superior caste. His parents were followers of the Jaïn school of Hinduism, which regards ahimsa,[6] the doctrine of non-injury to any form of life, as one of its basic principles. This was the doctrine which Gandhi was to proclaim victoriously throughout the world. The Jaïnists believe that the principle of love, not intelligence, is the road which leads to God. The Mahatma's father cared little for wealth and material values, and left scarcely any to his family, having given almost everything away to charity. Gandhi's mother was a very devout woman, a sort of Hindu St. Elisabeth, fasting, giving alms to the poor, and nursing the sick. In Gandhi's family the Ramayana was read regularly. His first teacher was a Brahman who taught him to memorize the texts of Vishnu.[7] In later years Gandhi expressed regret at not being a better Sanskrit scholar, and one of his grievances against English education in India is that it makes the natives lose the treasures of their own language. Gandhi became, however, a profound student of Hindu scriptures, although he read the Vedas and the Upanishads in translation only.[8]

While still a boy he passed through a severe religious crisis. Shocked at the idolatrous form sometimes assumed by Hinduism, he became, or imagined he became, an atheist, and to prove that religion meant nothing to him he and some friends went so far as to eat meat, a frightful sacrilege for a Hindu. And Gandhi nearly perished with disgust and mortification.[9] He was engaged at the age of eight and married at the age of twelve.[10] At nineteen he was sent to England to complete his studies at the University of London and at the law school. Before his leaving India, his mother made him take the three vows of Jaïn, which prescribe abstention from wine, meat, and sexual intercourse.

He arrived in London in September, 1888, and after the first few months of uncertainty and deception, during which, as he says, he "wasted a lot of time and money trying to become an Englishman," he buckled down to hard work and led a strictly regulated life. Some friends gave him a copy of the Bible, but the time to understand it had not yet come. But it was during his stay in London that he realized for the first time the beauty of the Bhagavad Gitâ. He was carried away by it. It was the light the exiled Hindu had been seeking, and it gave him back his faith. He realized that for him salvation could lie only in Hinduism.[11]

He returned to India in 1891, a rather sad home-coming, for his mother had just died, and the news of her death had been withheld from him. Soon afterward he began practicing law at the Supreme Court of Bombay. He abandoned this career a few years later, having come to look upon it as immoral. But even while practicing law he used to make a point of reserving the right to abandon a case if he had reason to believe it unjust.

At this stage of his career he met various people who stirred in him a presentiment as to his future mission in life. He was influenced by two men in particular. One of them was the "Uncrowned King of Bombay," the Parsi Dadabhai, and the other Professor Gokhale. Gokhale was one of the leading statesmen in India and one of the first to introduce educational reforms, while Dadabhai, according to Gandhi, was the real founder of the Indian nationalist movement. Both men combined the highest wisdom and learning with the utmost simplicity and gentleness.[12] It was Dadabhai who, in trying to moderate Gandhi's youthful ardor, gave him, in 1892, his first real lesson in ahimsa by teaching him to apply heroic passivity—if two such words may be linked—to public life by fighting evil, not by evil, but by love. A little later we will discuss this magic word of ahimsa, the sublime message of India to the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Gandhi returned to India he had the prestige of a leader.

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

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

At this time Gandhi felt no antagonism for England. On the contrary, when the war broke out in 1914, he went to London to organize an Indian ambulance corps. As he explained in a letter written in 1921, he honestly believed himself a citizen of the empire. He refers to his attitude again and again, as in his letter addressed to "Every Englishman in India," published in 1920. No Englishman, he says, served the Government more faithfully than he during twenty-nine years of public life. He risked his life four times for England, and until 1919 he sincerely believed in cooperating with the Government. But now he can do so no longer.

Gandhi was not the only one to experience this change of feeling. In 1914 all India had been carried away by the hypocritical idealism of the so-called "war for justice." In asking for India's support the English Government had held out the most brilliant hopes. The granting of home rule, which the people longed for, was said to depend on India's attitude in the war. In August, 1917, the clever Indian secretary, E. S. Montagu, promised India a government responsible to the people. A consultation took place, and in July, 1918, the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, and Mr. Montagu signed an official report recommending constitutional reform in India. The Allied armies were in a most precarious position in the early days of 1918. On April 2 Lloyd George had sent an appeal to the people of India, while the war conference, sitting at Delhi in the end of the same month, had hinted that the hour of India's independence was near. And India had replied as one man while Gandhi promised England his loyal backing. India contributed 985,000 men and made tremendous sacrifices. And she waited confidently for the promised reward.

The awakening was terrible. Danger was over in the end of 1918, and gone was the memory of services rendered. After the signing of the armistice the Government saw no reason for feigning any longer. Instead of granting the promised liberties, it suspended whatever freedom already existed. The Rowlatt bills, proposed at the Imperial Legislative Council at Delhi, expressed an insulting distrust of the country which had given so many proofs of its loyalty. These bills aimed to establish definitively the provisions of the Defense Act imposed on India dining the war, and made secret police services, censorship, and all the tyrannical annoyances of a real state of siege into a permanent reality. There was one burst of indignation all over India. The revolt began.[21] Gandhi led it.

Hitherto Gandhi had been interested in social reforms only, devoting himself particularly to the conditions of agricultural workers. At Kaira, in the Gujarat, and at Champaran, in Behar, he had almost unnoticeably and with success tried out the formidable weapon which he was soon to use in national struggles. This weapon was the will of active passionate non-resistance. We will study it later under the name of Satyagraha, which Gandhi has given it.

Until 1919, however, Gandhi did not participate actively in the Indian nationalist movement. Having been united in 1916 by Mrs. Annie Besant, the most advanced elements soon outdistanced her and rallied under the leadership of the great Hindu, Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a man of extraordinary energy, uniting, as in a triple sheaf of iron, a great mind, a strong will, and a high character. His intelligence was perhaps even keener than Gandhi's, or, rather, it was more solidly nourished on old Asiatic culture. He was an erudite, a mathematician, who had sacrificed all personal ambitions to serve his country. Like Gandhi, he sought no personal recognition and longed only for the triumph of his ideal in order to be able to retire from the political field and go back to his scientific work. As long as he lived he was the undisputed leader of India. Who can say what would have happened if he had not met with an untimely death in 1920? If Tilak had lived, Gandhi, who revered Tilak's genius, while differing radically from him in regard to methods and policies, would no doubt have remained religious leader of the movement. How magnificently the people of India could have marched on under such a double leadership! They would have been irresistible, for Tilak was a master of action, just as Gandhi is a master of spiritual power. But fate decided otherwise. It is, perhaps, to be regretted, not only for Tilak's sake, but for India's and even for Gandhi's. The rôle of minority leader, of leader of the moral élite, would have been more in accordance with Gandhi's inmost desires and nature. He would have been happy to let Tilak rule the majority, for Gandhi never had any faith in majorities. But Tilak had. Tilak, a born mathematician and master of action, believed in numbers. He was democratic instinctively. He was resolutely a politician, who left religious considerations aside. He claimed that politics were not for sadhus (saints, pious men). This austere scientist would have sacrificed truth to patriotism. And this scrupulously honest and upright man, whose personal life was one of spotless purity, did not hesitate to say that in politics everything is justified. It might be said that Tilak's conception of politics and that of the dictators of Moscow have something in common. Not so with Gandhi's ideal.[22] Tilak's and Gandhi's discussions brought out their different points of view. Between men as sincere as they there is bound to be irreconcilable opposition, since their methods are based on their convictions, which are in fundamental opposition. Each man respected and revered the other. But Gandhi felt that if it came to the point he would always set truth first before liberty and even before his country, whereas Tilak set his country above everything. Gandhi feels that no matter how great his love for his country may be, his faith in his ideal, in religion as expressed in Truth, is greater still.

As he says on August 11,1920:

I am wedded to India because I believe absolutely that she has a mission for the world ... My religion has no geographical limits. I have a living faith in it which will transcend even my love for India herself.[23]
These noble words give the key to the struggle which we now will describe. They prove that the Apostle of India is the Apostle of the World, and that he is one of us. The battle the Mahatma began fighting four years ago is our battle.[24]

***

[1]As C. F. Andrews says, "He laughs like a child and adores children."
[2]"Few can resist the charm of his personality. His bitterest enemies become courteous when confronted with his beautiful courtesy." (Joseph J. Doke.)
[3]"Every departure from truth, no matter how trifling, is intolerable to him." (C. F. Andrews.)
[4]"He is not a passionate orator; his manner is calm and serene and he appeals particularly to the intelligence. But his serenity places the subject he discusses in the clearest light. The inflexions of his voice are not varied but they are intensely sincere. He never makes any gestures with his arms, in fact he rarely even moves a finger. But his luminous words, expressed in terse, concise sentences, carry conviction. He never abandons a subject before he feels that he has made it perfectly clear." (Joseph J. Doke.)
[5]"Young India," March 2, 1922. The dates cited in the motes of this volume refer to the date of publication of Gandhi’s articles in "Young India."
[6]A, privative, himsa, to do evil. Hence, ahimsa, principle of not harming any form of life, nonviolence. It is one of Hinduism's most ancient precepts, proclaimed by Mahavira, the founder of Jaïnism, by Buddha, as well as by the disciples of Vishnu.
[7]He attended the elementary school of Porbandar till the age of seven and then the public school of Rajkot till ten. After that he went to the high school of Katyavar until, at the age of seventeen, he entered the University of Ahmedabad.
[8]He described his childhood in a speech at the Pariah Conference, April 13, 1921.
[9]Long afterward he told Joseph Doke of the anguish he had suffered after eating meat. He was unable to sleep; he felt like a murderer.
[10]He is not in favor of child marriages, however, and made a campaign against them, on the ground that they weaken the race. In exceptional cases, however, he says that such unions, sealed before the individual's character is molded, may build up between husband and wife an exceptionally beautiful relationship of sympathy and harmony. Gandhi's own wife is an admirable example of this. Mrs. Gandhi shared all her husband's trials and adversities with unfailing steadfastness of purpose and indomitable courage.
[11]Speech of April 13, 1921.
[12]These two men, precursors, have suffered from the ingratitude and forgetfulness of younger generations. Their political ideal having been surpassed, their efforts in paving the way have been deprecated. Gandhi, however, always realized their contribution to the cause and remained true to them, particularly to Gokhale, for whom he felt a deep and almost religious affection. He frequently speaks of Gokhale and Dadabhai as men whom Young India should venerate. (See "Hind Swaraj, Letter to the Parsecs, Young India," March 23, 1921, and the Confession of Faith, July 13, 1921.)
[13]A long letter from Tolstoi to Gandhi is published in the "Golden Number" of "Indian Opinion." It was written September 7, 1910, shortly before Tolstoi's death. Tolstoi had read "Indian Opinion," and he was gratified to hear of the Indian non-resisters. He praised their campaign and says that non-resistance is the law of love, an aspiration to form part of the communion of human souls. It is the law of Christ and of all the spiritual leaders of the world.

My friend Paul Biroukoff found several other letters from Tolstoi to Gandhi in the Tolstoi archives at Moscow. He is planning to publish them in a volume entitled "Tolstoi and the Orient," adding them to several other letters written by Tolstoi to various great men of the East.
[14]Gandhi himself tells in his quiet humorous way of his experiences in prison in a curious article printed in the volume, "Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi," Natesan, Madras, pp. 152-178.
[15]In 1907 Gandhi was the victim of the violence of his own compatriots, for his moderation was eyed with suspicion by certain Indians, while, the Government, on the other hand, did all in its power to compromise him. Gandhi, therefore, suffered from the violence of the oppressed as well as of the oppressors.
[16]I will dwell on "Hind Swaraj" a little more at length, later on.
[17]Joseph J. Doke, interesting because of his interviews with Gandhi, tells in the last chapter of his book how, in 1908, Gandhi was led to the fort of Johannesburg in prison garb and thrown into a cell with Chinese common-law criminals of the worst sort.
[18]Two high-minded Englishmen, C. F. Andrews and W. W. Pearson, seconded Gandhi's efforts by all means within their power.
[19]Gandhi refers to this in an article dated May 12, 1920.
[20]Shortly before he died, Gokhale, Gandhi's beloved master, had suggested that Gandhi make a trip through India and study conditions at first hand, before going into politics. And Gandhi had promised not to take an active part in the political life of India for a year.
[21]The Satyagraha movement may be said to have begun February 28, 1919.
[22]Gandhi explained his attitude toward Bolshevism on November 24, 1921.
[23]August 11, 1920: Gandhi protests against the doctrine of the sword.
[24]"Humanity is one. There are different races, but the higher a race the greater its duties." ("Ethical Religion")