Gandhi- Deep within by Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari

source: http://www.indianresurgence.com/hindutva18.htm

by Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari

In 1891, Gandhi returned from England as a barrister and in the next year he sailed to South Africa to fight a case for an Indian business firm Dada Abdulla & Co., against an immigrant Indian Muslim Tyabji Haji Khan Muhammad. During his brief stay in India, he wrote a few essays and sent them to Sri Gopal Krishna Gokhale and according to Sri Gokhale, those were hopelessly rubbish. It should be mentioned here that Gandhi somehow managed to pass the Matriculation Examination in 1887 in the third division, scoring 247 out of 625.

                In that time the black population of South Africa, including the immigrant Indians, were denied some vital civic rights by the discriminatory and racist government led by the British colonialists. In some occasions, Gandhi himself fell victim of the said racist discriminations. Here in South Africa, he applied his version of nonviolence as a political strategy and started a movement to earn some special privileges for the Indian community and later on this peaceful civil disobedience was named Satyagraha. Due to this movement the government of South Africa ultimately passed the Indian Relief Act-1914, granting some privileges to the Indians. The followers of Gandhian nonviolence usually highlight this fact as a great victory of Gandhi and his creed.

                But it ia really amazing that, though apartheid had been abolished from the rest of the world quite a long ago, it continued in South Africa till May 1994, where had fought it nearly hundred years ago. Furthermore, it is early astonishing that up to the last hour the white rulers of South Africa used to advise the its non-white population and their leaders to adopt Gandhian type nonviolent movement. However, one thing Gandhi could conclusively prove through his struggle and other activities in South Africa that his loyalty to the British Crown was firm and unwavering, and he and his creed would never pose a threat to the British empire. And hence the British imperialists had little difficulty to gauge his profound respect for the British race, extraordinarily high esteem for the British culture and extreme loyalty towards the throne of England.

                While commenting on this aspect, historian Dr. A. C. Roy writes, “Gandhi had enough respect for the British cultural heritage. He strongly believed that the intercourse between India and Britain would be beneficial for the Indians”.

(1) He further writes, “In the early part of his life, he (Gandhi) was not anti-British. … It is true that, he was against the strong nationalist movement that swept India in the wake of partition of Bengal in 1905. It is also true that nationalist views of leaders like Sri Aurobinda Ghosh, Lala Lajpat Rai etc. could hardly influence Gandhi”.

(2)  And in fact, Gandhi supported the British decision of partitioning of Bengal.

(3)  During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi, to express his loyalty to the British Crown, used to sing the British National Anthem at public functions. Later on, he could discover violence in the lines of the  British Anthem:

  

                           “Scatter her enemies, and make them fall;

                            Confound their politics; frustrate their knavish tricks”

“Despite this, his loyalty to the British Empire was unsullied”, says Sri D. Keer, the most renowned biographer of Gandhi.(4) In fact, while in South Africa Gandhi never missed a single opportunity  to project himself as a loyal subject of the British empire. Queen Victoria died in 1901, and Gandhi, to express his loyalty to the British Crown, sent condolence message to England, placed a wreath at Queen’s statue in Durban and distributed souvenirs containing Queen’s pictures among the school children.(5)  On the occasion of coronation of the British King George-V, Gandhi expressed his loyalty to the throne of England and said, “The Indian residents of this country (i.e. South Africa) sent congratulatory cablegrams on the occasion, thus declaring their loyalty.(6)

                In 1899, a war between the Dutch settlers, called Boers, and the British in South Africa broke out. Gandhi then organized, of his own accord, an ambulance corps of immigrant Indians, 1100 strong, for the Red Cross and they served the British soldiers whi were wounded in the war. The British government of South Africa, in recognition of his sincere service to the British Empire, awarded a medal and a certificate of excellence to Gandhi. Even in his declining years of his life, Gandhi used to proudly recall how his loyalty had served the British during the Boer War, and in some occasions risked his life as he strongly believed that the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world.(7) 

                Again during the Zulu Rebellion in 1906, against the British government in South Africa, Gandhi sided with the British and served the British army as a stretcher-bearer. The Zulus, or the natives of Africa, were victims of barbaric torture and inhuman exploitation by the British occupiers. They, as a result, were seething discontent and ultimately rose in revolt. Gandhi, being a similar victim, should have been sympathetic to the Zulus and sided with them. But it is a shame that he served the colonialist British government of South Africa and to justify his action he, in his autobiography, wrote, “But I then believed that the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world. A genuine sense of loyalty prevented me from even wishing ill to the Empire”.(8)  This time as well, the British Government of South Africa recognized his service by presenting him a gold medal and the title of Kaiser-i-Hind. 

                         It should be mentioned here that Gandhi used to maintain the view that India would be benefited by its British connection and it would be a calamity to break the connection between the British people and the people of India.(9)  And there is no doubt that due to this unwavering loyalty to the British Crown, he was chosen by the British to bring him back to India to lead the freedom movement, or to sabotage the freedom movement.(10)  


Apart from his unwavering loyalty to the British Empire, Gandhi was chosen by the British as the new leader of freedom struggle due his newly invented doctrine of nonviolence. It was not difficult for the British to understand that his harmless and nonviolent Satyagraha would pose no threat to the British Empire. It has been ponted out earlier that British in India, at that time, were terribly afraid of violent freedom struggle launched by the patriots of Bengal, Maharastra and Punjab. But Gandhi, through his speeches and writings, could have managed to expose that he was against any sort of violence in Indian freedom movement.

                When Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw bombs on Englishmen at Muzaffarpur in Bihar on April 30, 1908, Gandhi immediately condemned the incident and said, “They had no reason to rejoice at the introduction of Russian methods.

They could neither achieve real Swaraj by following the path of evil, i.e. by killing British, nor by establishing factories”.(11)    

It should be mentioned here that, to explain Satyagraha, he used to say, “A Satyagrahi should expect to get killed by an aggressor and not to kill him”.(12)  


One should recall here that instruction of Hindu scriptures is to kill an aggressor without giving a second thought.(13)    

                    

                On that occasion, Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote 3 articles in the Kesari, supporting the action of Khudiram, and was sentenced by the British for 6 years in prison. On the contrary, Gandhi condemned Tilak and in his Indian Opinion, wrote,

“He (Tilak) aimed at inciting Indians against British rule. The rulers are justified, from their point of view, in taking action against him. … We submit that Mr. Tilak’s view should be rejected”.(14)  There is no doubt that Tilak was the first among the Indian leaders who boldly stood up to terminate British rule in India, while “Gandhi devoted years of his life to reform British imperialism”.(14)  


It should be mentioned here that Gandhi used to write that his strategy of passive resistance (Satyagraha) was always infinitely superior to physical power (perhaps due to the simple reason that it was harmless for the British rulers.)

                Madan Lal Dhingra was a student at an engineering college in London. He was a revolutionary, a follower of Veer Savarkar and killed Dr. Curzon Wyllies, a tyrant, on July 1, 1909. He also shot and killed Dr. Cawas Lalcaca while he tried to save Wyllie. Gandhi deplored Dhingra for this violence and condemned Savarkar for supporting Dhingra. Moreover, Gandhi Asked people like  Dhingra to abandon violence and adopt nonviolent Satyagraha as the means to fight British power and earn freedom. 


There is no doubt that all such actions and utterances of Gandhi encouraged British to bring Gandhi to India and put him at the helm of the freedom movement, so that nonviolent Satyagraha could be the only mode of Indian Freedom struggle. So they were in search of a dependable stooge who could be taken into confidence to tell their plan and used as a messenger to communicate the plan to Gandhi.

                At that historic hour, people of this country saw Sri Gopal Krishna Gokhale to sail to London and visit South Africa on his return journey. He landed at Cape Town on October 22, 1912, and pressed Gandhi to return to India. While in London, Gokhale pleaded to the Prime Minister Mr. Gladstone to repeal the so called Black Act of South Africa, an unjust tax of £3 per Indian, for which Gandhi was then fighting. Mr. Gladstone agreed just to glorify Gandhi. After reaching South Africa, Gokhale, whom Gandhi revered as his political guru, communicated this piece of news to Gandhi and said that he (Gandhi) would have to return to India within a year (according to the plan of their British master).

                So after one year and nine months he had met Gokhale, Gandhi, after staying 21 years in South Africa, came to India, via London. He left Cape Town by S.S. Kinfauns Castle on July 18, 1914, accompanied by his wife Smt. Kasturva and his German friend Mr. Kalenbuch, and reached London on August 6. He again sailed from London on December 19, 1914, for India and landed Bombay on January  9, 1915. Thus he stayed nearly 5 months in England on his way back to India.

                While in London, he wrote in Satyagraha, “I sailed for England to meet Gokhale on my way back to India, with mixed feelings of pleasure and regret – pleasure because I was returning home after many years and eagerly looked forward to serving the country under Gokhale’s guidance, regret because it was a great wrench for me to leave South Africa, where I have passed 21 years of my life sharing to the full in sweets and bitters of human experience, and where I have realized my vocation in life”.(15)  Two days after Gandhi reached London, World War – I broke out. At that time Gokhale was also proceeding towards London, bu got stranded in Paris. 

On August 13, Gandhi issued a circular affirming his resolve to tender his unconditional service to the British Empire and sent it around to collect signatures. As a follow up of the said circular, Gandhi offered to raise an Indian Volunteer Corps for ambulance work. He also set up an Indian Volunteer Committee with himself in the chair and Sri V.V. Giri and Jivraj Mehta and others as members. But Sri Giri ultimately resigned from the committee as he thought it to be sinful to help to British at the hour of its crisis. 

While Gandhi, on the contrary, went a step further and attended classes to learn nursing and hence to nurse the wounded British soldiers. Gandhi, in many  other ways, tried to project his terrible loyalty to the British, during his brief stay in London and to comment on it his biographer Sri D. Keer Writes, “Gandhi could not bear the idea that the British master’s difficulty was India’s opportunity. A loyal subject should unselfishly cooperate with the master in the hour of need. Non-violently violent towards the Indian revolutionaries, he was violently loyal to the British Master”.(16)  Gandhi met Gokhale in London on September 18, 1914. 

                There arise a few questions from the above narrations. 

Firstly, why Sri Gokhale visited South Africa, met Gandhi there and requested him to return to India, in October 1912? 

Secondly, How could Gokhale predict that Gandhi was going to be the supreme leader of India’s freedom movement? 

And thirdly, why Gandhi went to London on his way back to India? 

It is well known that the Indian National Congress was founded by the British in 1885, with some eminent and pro-British loyal Indians like Feroze Shah Mehta, Surendra Nath Banerji, Dadabhai Naoraji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and others as its leaders. 

These people were generally known as moderates. Later on, another group, consisting of leaders  Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bepin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and others, known as radicals or extremists, came to prominence. Up to 1906, the moderates were the majority in the Congress by a good margin, but the radicals could command more support from the common people and the younger generation. 

And this development made the moderate leaders scary of losing their grip over the Congress. When the trend matured, British took Gokhale into confidence and disclosed to him their plan to bring Gandhi to India, make him the supreme leader of Indian freedom movement and establish his nonviolent Satyagraha as the sole doctrine of Indian freedom struggle. 

Naturally, Gokhale at once saw a ray of hope in the conspiracy and accepted the same to retain their hegemony in the Congress. Gokhale was confident that Gandhi would respond positively to this proposal as he regarded Gokhale as his political guru.

                So Gokhale went to England in 1912, to receive the final instructions from his British master and then arrived South Africa in October to communicate the same to Gandhi and asked him to return to India within a year. And that was the reason that enabled gokhale to predict, well in advance, that Gandhi was going to be the supreme leader of Indian freedom struggle.

                 Gandhi also, according to the instructions of his British master, went to England first to receive the final instructions or the letter of appointment from his employer, undoubtedly through the British stooge and his political guru Sri Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who also sailed to England to meet Gandhi on the plea of recovering health. Thus proceeded the plan to sabotage India’s freedom movement according to the design of the British aggressors.