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CHAPTER 1
Early Life: 1869–93
A small insignificant princely state in north-western India seems an unlikely place from where the father of Indian nationalism might emerge. Yet it was precisely such a place that was home to Gandhi's beginnings. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 into a middle-caste family of Modh banias, a trading and money-lending community who had a reputation for being thrifty and wily businessmen. His birthplace was the small town of Porbandar, in a semi-independent princely state - the Rana of Porbandar – on the south-west coast of Gujarat, where his father's family had been diwans (prime ministers/advisers) to the princes and kings. Though clearly comfortable, his background was not aristocratic or upper class. He was not from a staunch nationalist family, like Jawaharlal Nehru, nor was he from the professional urban elite like Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan. Though lacking a patrician background, Gandhi's childhood was firmly middle class and middle caste. Caste is a hereditary form of social class by which Hinduism prescribed the division of labour in India through a hierarchical system that has led to the subjugation of millions of people for centuries. The Hindi term bania broadly translates as merchants and traditionally refers to an occupational community comprising traders, bankers, money-lenders and dealers in grains or spices, and in modern times, numerous commercial enterprises. It has evolved from the vaisyas caste, which is third in hierarchy of the traditional caste structure, where, to use the Hindu lexicon of the varna, the educated priestly brahmins provided religious legitimacy to the warriors and rulers – the kshatriyas at the top - and both groups together with the farmer and merchant vaisyas hold supposed superiority over the mass of toilers including peasants (the shudras).
Gandhi was the youngest of four siblings and the product of his father Karamchand's fourth marriage. Karamchand had lost his first two wives whilst they were very young and each after giving birth to a daughter. Female mortality rates were high in provincial Porbandar and Karamchand would have felt obliged to marry again and produce sons, as was the custom and expectation across India and more globally. Sadly, for him his third marriage was childless and so Karamchand sought permission to take another wife, Putlibai, whom he married in 1857.
The Princely State of Porbandar
Porbandar lies in the peninsula in western India and its coastline borders the Gulf of Kutch to the west, the Arabian Sea to the south and the Gulf of Khambhat to the south-east. The rest of the peninsula, chiefly in the east along the Gulf of Cambay, were districts ruled directly by the British as part of the Bombay Presidency. Instead of direct rule by the British, the Rana of Porbandar, with its capital as the harbour town of Porbandar, became a British Protectorate in 1809 and under the Raj, the princely state covered an area of 1,663 square kilometres comprising 106 villages with a population, in 1921, of over 100,000 people. It was not as opulent as Kashmir or Hyderabad states, but neither was it impoverished. It was one of the few princely states with a coastline, providing vital transportation links to the Arabian Peninsula and East and Southern Africa. Porbandar's strategic geography made it quite central as a site of transnational migrations as historically, the sea provided great routes for trade, pilgrimage and diplomatic missions.
Porbandar was one of some two hundred small princely states. This backwater contained tiny kingdoms, the size of many contemporary Gulf States, which were ruled by local potentates who acknowledged British suzerainty in return for local sovereignty. As British Protectorates, they ceded responsibilities for defence, external affairs and communications, but exercised relative autonomy over civil and court governance. Two-fifths of India was comprised of such princely or 'Native' states. This region was home to a large number of communities, castes and settlements and the agency's headquarters were at Rajkot, the town where the Political Agent used to reside and from where he reported to the Political Department office in Bombay.
As a princely state, Porbandar was ruled by a feudal despotic dynasty of Rajputs called Jethwas who claimed martial and spiritual lineage from a range of deities in the epic Ramayana. These Rajput Hindu states originated in the thirteenth century through a mixture of warfare and domination, but also through incorporation, adaptation and evolving claims of genealogy and kinship ritual. It is precisely because these were evolving social and political formations that they were judiciously incorporated into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mughal administration and military structures and later found accommodation with the British Empire. It is tempting to think that princely states were either mere puppets of British imperial domination or represented some indigenous autonomous entity. In reality, the truth lies somewhere in between. To be sure, they were feudal polities that exercised considerable power and enjoyed autonomy within their domains, able to discipline their ministers on the whim of the royal household. However, they did lose major privileges and the British and nationalist leaders were somewhat ambivalent in their dealings with princely states. British officials saw them as loyal military allies whilst denouncing them as autocrats; praised them as natural leaders of their subjects but also chided them as profligate playboys. Above all, the British envied, admired and took full advantage of their lavish hospitality. Likewise, Indian nationalists, initially pointed to native princely kingdoms as evidence of effective indigenous government. Some were happy to seek their financial backing for political organisations and collaborated with them during constitutional negotiations. However, they were also lambasted as - in the words of Nehru – 'very backward ... and in the feudal age'. What this ambivalence demonstrates is that indigenous polities were conveniently used for whatever purpose suited either the British or Indian nationalists.
In spite of feudal pretensions, princely states were not static. Long before Europeans arrived in India, dynamic processes of state formation and transformation had been under way as in any other part of the world. War, famine, invasion all contributed over several centuries and more to new and different political formations. Similarly, the onset of British rule affected developments within these semi-autonomous entities. As such, they constituted continuing processes of state formation right through to independence, when all were eventually incorporated into the successor states of India and Pakistan. The British had no clear policy, but officers acted pragmatically and/or opportunistically, depending on circumstances. The general pattern, however, was from treaties to subsidiary alliances to indirect rule. Consequently, an intellectual framework of indirect rule was constructed to provide legitimacy for British imperial rule within an indigenous framework. British officials felt keenly the need to produce documents which would explain what they had been doing and what precedents they could follow. As a result, imperial rituals such as the Assemblage of 1877 and the Durbars of 1903 and 1911 played a significant role as British officers attempted both to express and to create the desired political order. They wanted a 'feudal hierarchy' and to set the princes off as 'natural' leaders, who were to support the paramount power and benefit the imperial state economically. Accordingly, the process of compiling documents and forming legal arguments had the advantage of providing the imperial government with an inexpensive means of governing areas of relatively low agricultural productivity and often inaccessible populations.
As British rule deepened, it used a combination of co-option, repression and setting religious and ethnic groups off against each other – tactics varied according to situation and switched sides as to who was favoured at any particular time. British Orientalist constructions rooted in colonial sociology impacted on mapping and census-taking. The latter played a critical role in stimulating ethnic mobilisation in the production of censuses, gazetteers, religious writings and newspapers. But princes also contributed to ethnic mobilisation through patronage of caste histories and religious translations. Caste, religious and linguistic identities became more tightly defined in the princely states. Yet Porbandar, like most princely states, had been unscathed by the great revolt of 1857 – the high point of Indian resistance to British rule in the nineteenth century – and remained loyal to the East India Company and its feudatory elites. It was not until the late 1920s that local popular movements began to emerge with the formation of the All-India States Peoples' Conference (AISPC).
Gandhi's Family Background
Being born into a diwan family provided a certain status for the Gandhi clan and, though not wealthy, they were able to command respect and courtly airs from the local population. Growing up in a princely state resulted in Gandhi having very little contact with or experience of direct British imperial rule. This had the advantage in that it instilled a deep conviction in him that Indians could and should rule themselves. But it also shielded him from the full might of the empire and its oppressive state apparatus. A sense of family loyalty to the principality but also an independent spirit can be gleaned from Joseph Doke's 1909 biographical sketch, as related to him by Gandhi in 1908–09. Gandhi's grandfather, Uttamchand, was dismissed for apparently displeasing the Queen Regent, and obtained sanctuary in neighbouring Junagadh state. The Nawab here was astounded when Uttamchand gave a salute with his left hand, a sign viewed as disrespectful and punishable by death. But when asked to explain himself by the Nawab, the elder Gandhi replied, 'in spite of all that he had suffered, he kept his right hand for Porbandar still.' According to this story, the Nawab of Junagadh was impressed by Gandhi's patriotism and continued to give him protection until the brouhaha blew over and Uttamchand was recalled to the Porbandar court.
A similar story of bravery was recounted by Gandhi about his father, Karamchand. Like the grandfather, the father too had been dismissed by the Porbandar court and moved his family to Rajkot. All princely regents were subordinate to the British agent in Kathiawar agency and this could lead to ministers being dismissed under their orders. Karamchand had apparently heard a rude remark made by the British agent about his prince and took objection to it. The agent demanded an apology that Karamchand refused. His penalty was to be arrested and detained for a few hours. Such an affront to British authority was unthinkable in parochial Gujarat and caused much excitement. After a few hours, the agent relented and the apology waived.
According to Doke's account, both the grandfather and father displayed acts of great courage that were the epitome of what was to become 'passive resistance', and thus left a lasting impression upon the young Gandhi (see Figure 1).
Karamchand, though clearly a loving father, does appear to be quite a remote figure in Gandhi's childhood. But family life also included people from other faith communities. Jain monks, family friends who were Muslim and Parsis, were all regular visitors to the Gandhi home and his father would 'listen to them always with respect, and often with interest'. This Gandhi recalls is how 'I got an early grounding in toleration for all branches of Hinduism and sister religions.'
Gandhi's mother Putlibai was a pious woman who though a caste Hindu, was part of the Pranami sect, a reforming tradition that fused aspects of Hindu mythology with Sufi Islam and aspects of emergent Sikhism. As well as providing a synthesising component, this sect baulked at traditional hierarchical religious dogma and placed great emphasis on charity and peaceful coexistence, as well as chastity and abstinence from meat, alcohol, tobacco and any other intoxicating drugs. She spent much of her time in observing fasts and prayers. Her comparative saintliness is emphasised repeatedly in Gandhi's own account of his mother, as well as by Doke describing her as the 'Holy of Holies'. Putlibai was keen to provide charitable support to the sick and needy and so she opened her house to ensure alms or a cup of whey were provided daily to any person in need. If anyone was ill, she was on hand to administer and look after them. Though these acts of charity appear to be applicable to all the community, and no discrimination was applied in terms of religion, interestingly, Doke's warm and affectionate account only mentions her care applying to 'Brahmin or Sudra'; the 'untouchables' – those landless agricultural labourers whose work was seen as so dirty that they were deemed below even the lowest caste – are conspicuous by their absence. This in no way implies that Putlibai was anti-low caste or untouchable but it does indicate the societal and cultural limits of her reforming sect traditions. Nevertheless, family life emphasised religious tolerance, simplicity and strong moral values. Gandhi had a close relationship with his mother. She was warm, affectionate and very protective. Her liberal attitude impacted upon him. The deep emotional bond Gandhi had for his mother is evident in her final advice to him before leaving for London, and he vowed to abjure from wine, women and meat, thus indicating Gandhi's desire to be a dutiful, obedient and respectful son.
If Porbandar was the Gandhi ancestral family home, Karamchand's nuclear family made their home in Rajkot, some 125 miles away. It took five days to travel between the two by ox-wagon and so return visits were few and far between, and reserved only for special occasions. Both the distance and mode of travel underlines the relative isolation and backwardness of this region. Porbandar was a unitary princely statelet, but Rajkot was divided into the old and new town. The old wing was governed by the Sahib [young prince] of Rajkot and the site of the Gandhi home, whereas the new town was located within the Bombay presidency and so under British rule. If Porbandar had the sea and was quite picturesque if parochial, Rajkot was not blessed with such scenery. It had 'more of the squalor of the Orient about it', but its proximity to the Bombay presidency meant it had better transport links to major cities and the education system was far superior to anything available in Porbandar state. Gandhi was schooled in Rajkot, initially at a vernacular school and then at the Alfred High, an English-medium school where he successfully matriculated at age 17–18.
Gandhi was not a particularly scholarly or intellectual student. He professed to having 'a distaste for any reading beyond my school books' and accordingly did not have any high regard for his own academic ability. He did not excel in the classroom or on the sports field, though Rajmohan Gandhi, his great-grandson, suggests that this view comes from a misreading of his 'self-deprecating' autobiography. Out of 38 students who had passed the high school entrance examination, Gandhi was one of only two students in his year to matriculate. He also occasionally won prizes and scholarships, and following graduation he enrolled at the Samaldas College in Bhavnagar, where he stayed for one term before travelling to London.
His childhood was typical of most children in that he was playful, mischievous and sufficiently curious to try new experiences. Experiments with meat eating were one such example. Gandhi's best friends at high school were Muslims and Parsis, and with them he engaged in furtive meat eating, believing this is what made the English physically strong and able to dominate Indians. As an observant caste Hindu, who was vegetarian, this proved to be a mortifying experience for Gandhi, as the texture and taste were difficult for his palate to take. But he continued to participate in preparing tasty meat snacks that became nightly feasts to be enjoyed in secret, for 'it was [a] feast ... and it was enjoyed.' One of his close friends, Sheikh Mehtab, also took Gandhi to a brothel one day. Again, Gandhi's curiosity got the better of him as on entering the brothel he 'was struck blind and dumb in this den of vice', rebuffing the prostitutes' advances and was promptly ejected from the brothel. One other childhood experience scarred him and that was theft. Aged 15, he had taken a gold bracelet from his brother, Laxmidas or Karsandas, in order to help clear a debt for that sibling. Mortified and guilt-ridden, he decided to come clean and make a full confession to his father. But he could not do this directly and so he wrote of his wrongdoing in a letter to his father. He fully expected to be punished but his embarrassment and humiliation were complete when he saw his father's eyes swell up as he tore the note and realised that there would be no conventional penalty for him as his father accepted the sin. Gandhi's own account states this is when he learnt the lesson and art of ahimsa.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Mohandas Gandhi"
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Copyright © 2019 Talat Ahmed.
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