Gandhi’s Prisoner?

Title: Gandhi’s Prisoner? The Life of Gandhi’s Son Manilal

Author: Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie

Publisher: Permanent Black, 2005 (First published 2004)

ISBN: 9788178241166

Pages: 419

Gandhi and Nehru are the leaders who led India’s freedom struggle to victory. Their lives and actions fired up the imagination of the country’s masses that elevated them to larger than life personages. However, the dissimilarities are as yawning as the gap between their ideals. Gandhi always stood for the principles he believed in, whether you liked it or not. Nehru, on the other hand, was a man of convenience and found no harm in bending the rules to suit his quest for absolute and hegemonic power. Gandhi totally neglected his family in his political life, while Nehru sponsored his own kin into powerful and lucrative positions within the new government he headed. He unabashedly made his daughter Indira his political heir, making the Congress party his personal fief. In fact, the dominance of the Nehru family in the Congress party is still absolute, that some of the worst corruption scandals in the country’s history are attributed to the family’s stranglehold on the higher echelons of power. One would be amazed at the comparison of Nehru’s children with Gandhi’s. This book is about Manilal Gandhi, the Mahatma’s second son who lived all his life in South Africa, upholding his father’s philosophy and giving a practical application to Gandhi’s favourite weapon – passive resistance. Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie is the granddaughter of Manilal Gandhi and is professor of history at the University of Western Cape in Cape Town. The book is consequently a biography as well as family history.

Living as the Mahatma’s son was no mean task. Manilal could never forget whose son he was. Such was the pressure from family and peers to conform to the path set out by his father. Gandhi never inflicted physical punishment on his sons such as beating the child for a misdeed. Instead, he imposed hardships on himself such as avoiding food for a considerable period of time in full view of the child who would be filled with remorse. Such emotional blackmail was so effective that Gandhi soon extended it to his political life as well when he moved his sphere of activity to India in 1914. Gandhi steadfastly clung to his ideals however foolhardy there were felt to be by others. Once, ten-year old Manilal fell ill with typhoid and pneumonia, which was fairly common in those pre-vaccination days. The doctor advised eggs and chicken soup to be served to the patient to strengthen him. But Gandhi refused it on account of the strict vegetarianism he practiced. According to him, nature cure was the best way of healing and resorted to a combination of fasting and hip baths for the young boy. It took forty days for him to recover from the ordeal. Then again, Gandhi wanted character building of an individual which he believed was not possible in a formal educational institution. So he denied his sons education in the conventional sense. They were not sent to schools and were taught by Gandhi himself and his friends. Manilal often complained to Gandhi about his lack of education, which denied him a career outside the Gandhi orbit. This also forced Manilal to forever be under financial dependence to his father, but he soon seemed to have grown out of the handicap and was a true disciple of his illustrious father. He was by no means a prisoner of Gandhi.

Coming from the granddaughter of Manilal, the book is quite frank about the lapses on his part and how it was handled by Gandhi. Manilal stayed for some time at Gandhi’s ashram in Ahmedabad, but he was banished from there hardly a year after as he had sent his elder brother Harilal some money from the ashram’s funds. Harilal had fallen on bad ways and days and had requested the money to support his family. He was sent to Madras to make up the financial loss to the ashram by working as a hand-weaver. Gandhi treated all religions as equal and everyone had free and unfettered access in his household. However, he was a devout Hindu at heart and subjugated private emotion to public duty. When Manilal fell in love with a Muslim girl in South Africa, who was also a longtime friend, Gandhi opposed their marriage. This was in spite of the full support of the girl’s family for their match and who were themselves following enlightened ideals on the religious front. But Gandhi compared it to ‘putting two swords in one sheath’. He was in fact worried more at the powerful impact it might have had on the delicate issue of Hindu – Muslim relations he was handling in India. Finally, Manilal backed out, much to disdain of the girl’s family and married another girl through the formal arranged-marriage route common in India even now.

The book tells the story of a totally obedient and devoted son, whose real life began only after the death of his celebrity father. When Gandhi set up Phoenix Settlement near Durban, everyone had to work in the fields. With the money thus saved, he founded ‘Indian Opinion’, a weekly newspaper Manilal would serve for the rest of his life. After some time, Gandhi decided to stay back in the city to find time for his other work, leaving his family to manage the farm and the paper. He founded the Tolstoy Farm a short while later to practice the fabled idea of community living. Life was hard here, with prison-like amenities and a managed diet having no trace of salt or sugar. Gandhi believed that elimination of these staples purified one’s own blood. He gave up milk also, in the belief that it had an effect on sexual urges. Inhabitants of the farm walked to the city even though a convenient railway station was situated nearby. They started at 2 am in the night, reached the city six or seven hours later and returned in the same evening after attending to the matter at hand.

Manilal was an eager participant in the Satyagraha movement in South Africa protesting against the racial segregation regime of the whites. He cheerfully served prison sentences that came in the way. He participated with equal vigour in the agitations in India whenever he visited the country. He took part in the Salt Satyagraha and Dandi March, for which he was jailed for a year. Even after Gandhi and his other sons had relocated to India, Manilal continued his career in South Africa as the editor of ‘Indian Opinion’. His life was dedicated for the uplift of the Indian community in that country. He breathed his last there at the age of 64. However, the author affirms that his life was not a negative one and the jails and police of the South African state held no terror for him, neither did the prospect of death in defense of a just cause. He absorbed some of the finest ideas of Gandhism and one of the consequences of his upbringing was that he knew absolutely no fear when faced with injustice.

A lucid reflection of the political life of Indians in South Africa is offered in this book. Two distinct phases can be discerned in the struggle. While Britain ruled both India and South Africa, Indians asked for civil rights both in their natural and adopted homes. South Africa gained independence in 1931 and the racist regimes which ruled it thereafter abolished all civil rights of the black and coloured people. Gandhi cut his Satyagraha teeth in 1906 when the Transvaal government proposed a new law that required Indians and Chinese over the age of eight to apply for a registration certificate. These would bear a person’s photo and finger- and thumb-prints. They were required to carry it always on their person and needed to show it to inspecting authorities. Satyagraha was first employed in this issue but protests petered out after some time as usual. The Indian community continued to use passive resistance methods even after Gandhi’s return to India. A deal, which can be termed somewhat decent in the circumstances, was reached in 1927 and was known as Cape Town Agreement. This book also displays the fissures that developed among the community in response to the demand for Pakistan. The people who fought united till that time was quickly bifurcated into two separate channels. A newspaper titled ‘Indian Views’ was set up to raise voice for Pakistan and to counter the arguments of ‘Indian Opinion’ which treaded a nationalistic line. Natal Muslim Youth League was formed to find political expression for the new state of Pakistan. After the Second World War, formal apartheid was imposed on the non-European population against which non-violent protests didn’t go well. Manilal himself was arrested and jailed for a total of ten times, but nothing could be shown as an achievement out of it. This indicates the futility of Satyagraha against a barbarian government which was fuelled by theories of white racial supremacy instead of liberal thought.

The book is neatly structured and opens up all aspects of the protagonist’s life. A remarkable feature of the narrative is its candidness. No one would expect a granddaughter to discuss about certain aspects of her grandfather’s youth which most families would quietly sweep under the carpet. Of course, there is nothing to be ashamed of, as every man is bound to succumb to the temptations of his age at some point in their lives. Still, the open and bold description adds brilliance to the image of the man it portrays. Moreover, the author seeks ‘primarily to understand rather than judge’. A good number of photographs are inserted, which are organized at the end of each chapter and covering the events mentioned in it. This is an excellent way of structuring a collection of very old images. The book is also gifted with a large number of Notes, an impressive bibliography and a commendable index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star