South Africa’s Indians embodied varied
regional, religious, and cultural backgrounds. Worship in temples,
mosques, and churches and the celebration of religious festivals
were essential parts of their identity. As immigrants, Hindus and
Muslims sought to recreate the worlds they had left behind. Hindus,
for example, observed eight major religious festivals, and countless
smaller ones either in their homes or in temples. A few responded to
traveling missionaries seeking to reform traditional Hindus ways;
the greater majority held on to narrow nyati concepts to
identify themselves. Muslims were equally strong in preserving their
religious traditions around five major festivals. Mosques and
madressas were central to the way these traditions were honored
in South Africa and in the ancestral towns and villages from which
Muslims hailed. Our research uncovered little about Christian Indian
cultural and religious traditions, but they were likely as vibrant
as those of Hindus and Muslims who created a myriad of
organizations. This is the point we endeavored to convey in our
detailed discussion of religious and cultural activities in chapters
3 and 4.
Appendix 1 lists close to 140 bodies
organized around culture and religion. Religion was the strongest
base around which the Indian migrants organized their lives. Only
25 of the bodies were secular in their orientation. Here are some
characteristics of migrants during these formative decades:
Links with India:
Gujarati-speaking Hindus and Muslims
made frequent return trips to India. They were given farewell
receptions on their departure, and some gave their impression about
developments and conditions in India on their return. They created
many organizations in an attempt to maintain links with the
villages, towns, or cities from which they came. Our evidence was
particularly strong for Muslims who sent money to maintain mosques
and madressas in India. Committees were set up to coordinate
such activities for Alipor, Bodana, Dhabel, Diwa, Kathor, Karod,
Kholvad, Kosambi, Panoli, and Ranvav, to name a few. Such
organizations published their accounts regularly. Recently, we
discovered a trust deed of Mehafil Eslam Mota-Varachha, a body
created in 1905 by eight traders in Pietermaritzburg, Newcastle, and
Umzimkulu who were also natives of the village in the Surat
district. (See Appendix 3). All Indians, including those who were
indentured, regularly remitted money through the Protector’s office.
Promotion of
Traditional Values:
Many groups emerged to promote
languages such as Gujarati, Tamil, and Hindi through vernacular
schools. V.R.R. Moodaly, as we pointed out in chapter 3, became
inspired about promoting Tamil and educating girls after visiting
India, and indeed sent his own daughter to be educated in India.
Others sought to encourage religious values and held weekly meetings
on discourses with the help of readings from scriptural texts.
Groups met weekly to read from the Bhagavad Gita, and
individuals gave discourses on morality and religion. Caste
organizations endeavored to inculcate cohesion. We referred to the
luwana community’s participation in a Mumbai conference in
1910 about promoting education, helping the poor, and cutting back
on unnecessary social functions. Among Muslims there was often
spirited discussion in mosque and madressa committees about
how best to provide ilm to their children. For example, a
Muslim in Standerton believed religious education should start when
their children were seven or eight years of age, and recommended
this to the Kholvad jamat in India.
Identification with
Movements on the Indian Subcontinent:
Indians closely followed political and
cultural events in India. Indian Opinion and African
Chronicle kept up a steady stream of patriotic fare for their
readers. Since Indians shared broadly Gandhi's
faith in the imperial approach because it connected them to India,
Gandhi tapped into their patriotism. Many Indians in South
Africa spoke of the duty to the motherland. Swadeshi movement
(1905-8) in India emerged in response to the British decision to
partition Bengal, with nationalists like Surendranath Banerji
(1848-1925) leading the opposition. The call for resistance extended
to British rule itself. The methods used included passive
resistance, boycott of British goods,
and even violence.
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's
hymn to A Mother
(Vande Mataram, I bow to you, Mother), composed in 1875, was
resurrected as part of the nationalist reawakening.1
Many groups in South
Africa identified with this movement. We pointed to the
numerous occasions on which organizations ended meetings with this
patriotic song. Gandhi strongly condemned violent methods that were
being used by some in India and publicized the virtues of passive
resistance in the columns of Indian Opinion. Passive
resisters were lionized for their “patriotism” in South Africa, thus
blurring lines of loyalty between ancestral and adopted homes.
Hindus in South Africa identified with reform bodies such as the
Arya Samaj founded by Dayanand Sarasvati (1824-1883) in India
with the purpose of reforming Hinduism. A body calling itself
Arya Pratinidhi Sabha took its name from one founded by Mahadeo
Govind Ranade (1842-1901) in India. In chapter 3, we referred to the
activities of Professor Permanand and Swami Shankeranand who
successfully won over reform-minded Hindus to their
cause.2
It is less clear how strongly South
Africa's
Muslims identified with nationalist movements in India. A few had
some contact with two movements in India, namely Aligarh, founded in
1886, and Deoband in the 1860s. The first sought to re-position
Muslims favorably in relation to the Raj after the Revolt of
1857, and the second aimed at cleansing Islam of practices that were
considered alien. Some Muslims sent their sons to study at Aligarh
Muslim University and were likely aware of the Muslim League
(founded 1906) which was to play a significant role in the creation
of Pakistan four decades later. Muslims in South Africa embraced the
Islamic ummah in its wider transnational context. Hence, when
the Ottoman Empire was threatened, they rallied in the same way that
Muslims in India did. They called the drive for funds “Hamdard”
during the Tripolitan and Balkan wars, 1911-12, a name they took
directly from the Urdu newspaper edited by Mahomed Ali (1878-1931)
and Shaukat Ali (1873-1938) in India.
The Ali brothers
were prime movers in the Khilafat Movement (1919-22) that sought to
preserve the caliph in the dismembered empire as the spiritual head
of all Muslims. Muslims in South Africa and India accepted the
caliph as their symbolic spiritual head, Mecca as the central place
of pilgrimage, and the Koran as the source of the Islamic faith.3
We have little information about the
religious and cultural lives of the small numbers of Christian
Indians who were among the earliest to come to Natal as products of
evangelical missions already active in India. There were Roman
Catholics, Wesleyan-Methodists, and Anglicans who came to constitute
well-established communities by the 1890s and 1900s. Well known
family names included Gabriel, Godfrey, Joseph, Paul, Peters,
Lawrence, Lazarus, Nundoo, and Sigamoney. They recognized the value
of Indianness even if their point of reference
was Western rather than Indian. Like Hindus and Muslims,
their primary source of identification was likely with the church
denomination around which so much of their personal and social life
revolved. Organizations such as the Catholic Young Men's Society
were active in progressive causes under the leadership of people
like Vincent Lawrence and M.B. Lazarus, to whom Gandhi was closely
connected. Christian Indians became prominent in
government civil service positions, promoted public education, and
engaged in politics. Indeed, Christian Indians made up a substantial
part of political bodies with a colonial-born orientation. As second
generation residents who felt strong ties to the country of their
birth, they often spoke out for their rights as South Africans. We
referred to several such individuals in our study, namely, Albert
Christopher, Bernard Gabriel, George Godfrey, James Godfrey, Leo R.
Gopaul, J.M. Lazarus, Joseph Royeppen, and others.4
Even though there were only isolated
archival references to the religious and cultural activities of
indentured Indians, we know from other sources that their
participation was substantial in such popular forms of worship as
Kavady and Mohurram. The early traditional Hindu temples
were meant for the Hindus among them. Since indentured Indians did
not feature prominently in our two main newspaper sources except as
victims of the system, we are less clear about their cultural and
religious activities. There is sufficient evidence in official
sources to suggest that they were not simply victims of the system,
but acted in protecting their interests when the need arose, as we
saw in chapter 6. We referred, for example, to
the "chitti" system through which they pooled their wages to share
in their meagrely monthly incomes. They did not hesitate to
take concerted action in the workplace when their
interests were threatened. If such action did not reflect a highly
developed sense of class-consciousness, it nevertheless suggested
collective concern for the welfare of the group. For example, in
1895 indentured Indians attacked railway police who tried to stop
them from collecting firewood. They resisted arrest, and all
seventy-one were eventually arrested after reinforcements were
called. At their trial, Magistrate Dillon was sympathetic to the
Indians and did not punish them. He said that they had no means to
light fire to cook their food for seventeen days, and likened their
plight to that of the ancient Jews who were forced to make bricks
without straw.5 There was another instance when 250
indentured Indians went on strike against poor rations, and marched
to the Protector=s
office to complain even though they were aware that they were
violating the law by taking leave without permission. They also
approached Gandhi to appear for them.6 Indentured Indians
on some occasion preferred jail rather than work for an employer
whom they did not like.7 As we underscored in chapter 6,
individuals labeled as “ringleaders” during the 1913 strike
showed imagination in their leadership roles. A closer and more
detailed examination of their roles would yield greater insights
into the communities of the contract laborers.
When did Gandhi
realize the potential of using indentured issues to further the
larger Indian struggle? The transformation in Gandhi’s thinking is
apparent from about 1911. The time he spent at Tolstoy Farm provided
him with the opportunity to reflect on and renew his faith in
satyagraha as a way of life. If he had doubt about being able to
control the indentured masses, he dispelled them by 1913. His
disillusionment with the authorities’ inability to protect the poor
propelled him “to do something” for them. He demonstrated his
ability to achieve that objective and to transform them through his
own brand of politicization, padayatra
(marches). The year 1913 prepared him for the role he was to play
among the peasants of India. Gandhi turned his back on the West’s
political and economic systems and placed his faith in indigenous
solutions. His change in dress and his insistence on using Indian
languages were part of
his endeavor to re-appropriate Indian
values.
Even as South
Africa's
Indians were adapting to their new environment, they sought to
maintain values rooted in their ancestral traditions. Gandhi
was aware of the discourses taking place among the many different
Indian groups in whose midst he operated. He worked within the
cultural and religious parameters set by these groups, but he sought
to redefine them. Inevitably, he ran into people who disagreed with
him as he worked tirelessly against caste and
sectionalist distinctions. As a social reformer, Gandhi was
creative in blending his message drawn from various religious
traditions and strongly worked for interfaith tolerance. His unique
brand of religious tolerance was the hallmark of his stay in South
Africa, a great contribution in lesson to future generations of
Indians. When he was assaulted by Meer Alam Khan in 1908, he pleaded
with his countrymen to drop khataas (bitterness) for
mittass (sweetness). In 1912, Gandhi declared that a true Muslim
could not harm a Hindu, and a true Hindu could not harm a Muslim. He
insisted that a true follower of God thought of religion ethically
and ecumenically. His insistence that one could remain rooted in
one’s own religious beliefs and still participate within a broader
framework was aimed at the falsity that underpinned the claim by
colonial rulers that Indians were divided by religion, caste, and
ethnicity and could never develop into one nation. In India, Gandhi
would devote his entire life to propagating this idea.8
Indians were silent
for the most part about the oppressive conditions of the Africans.
They learned to live with African exclusion, and incorporated in
their worldviews White supremacists’ racist notions about Africans.
In this respect, Mahmood Mamdani is correct in saying that
"the colonial state tried to naturalize political
differences, not only between the colonizer and the colonized, but
also ... between the two kinds of colonized: those indigenous and
those not."9 Natal’s political
economy played a substantial role in shaping African and Indian
attitudes toward each other, as chapter 2 showed. But we cannot
exclude xenophobic tendencies among Indians which, as Vijay Prashad
argues, were carried into the diaspora, and may have translated into
South African Indians’ thinking of Africans as different and lower
in scale.10 Gandhi occasionally spoke
out against racism and discrimination and even commented on the
abject plight of the African people, but he did not argue for
equality for them. If he did not feel the need to spell out
how Indians should relate to Africans, it was because he remained
firmly focused on an imperial approach that put India at the center
of his thinking. Yet he was keenly aware that oppression against
Africans might blow up in the faces of White rulers if they did not
face up to the legitimate aspirations of Africans.11
How then should we view Gandhi’s role
as leader? From the beginning he understood that he had to take into
account the cultural and religious orientation of the communities he
was working with and for. Some like C.M. Pillay, one-time secretary
of the Pretoria based Indian Congress, did not get far with the kind
of name-calling he engaged in 1898 about
Apolygamous
Muslims," "ignorant coolies," and "Kathiwar Bunnia" who were
agitating for the franchise and equal trading rights."12
There were many non-secular organizations which could and did make
input in determining community matters even on political issues. An
example is a petition submitted to the imperial government in 1909
to protest the indentured system, trade and franchise restrictions,
segregated schools, and municipal vagrancy laws by NIC, NIPU,
Anjuman Islam, Hindh Sudhar Sabha, Catholic Young men's Society, and
Shri Vishnu Temple at Umgeni. Fourteen officials and 1124 others
signed the document.13
Cultural and political lines often
became blurred, as this study has shown. For Gandhi, there were no
clear lines of demarcation between politics and religion since
action had to have a moral foundation. Gandhi’s insistence on truth
and transparency was based on religious morality. It is not
surprising, therefore, that he was able to work with individuals
whose primary interest could best be defined in religious and
cultural terms. If he disagreed with individuals, it was not because
of their specific affiliation to a cultural or religious body, but
rather because of their interpretation on broad issues. Among
Hindus, people like Bhavani Dayal, Pragji K. Desai, Odhav Kanjee and
Bhana Parshotam, C.P Luchiram, V.R.R. Moodaly, C. Nulliah,
Latchman Panday, Babu Talwantsingh, Ambaram Maharaj, and many others
were prominent in religious and/or cultural organizations. Among
Muslims, people like Imam Abdul Kader Bawazeer, Dawad Mahomed, and
Sheik Mehtab acted similarly. Parsee Rustomjee was one of Gandhi’s
strongest supporters. We focus on a select few to show their strong
cultural and religious affiliations even as they supported Gandhi.
Bavani Dayal was an active member of
the Germiston Hindu Yuvak Mandal. He established the Indian Prachini
Sabha with the purpose of conducting adult education classes. He
became a strong supporter of passive resistance and played an
important role in encouraging indentured Indians to strike in
October 1913.14 Pragji K. Desai supported Gandhi
strongly. He started out as an influential member of the Tongaat
Hindu Dharma Sabha actively promoting the building of a temple and
school to preserve Hindu values and traditions. In 1908, he
expressed support for swadeshi; and in endorsing
satyagraha in 1910, he outdid Gandhi in his call for sacrifice.
His passion for patriotic values was reflected in an imaginary
dialogue he wrote in December 1910 between Britain Devi and
Hind Devi. He was one of the six educated individuals
selected by Gandhi in 1911 to test Transvaal’s immigration law, and
he courted arrest in 1913 by engaging in illegal hawking. When the
Searle judgment was announced in 1913, Desai asked Indians to
protect their
religion with their lives if necessary. He was a
frequent contributor to Indian Opinion.15
Odhav Kanjee, one of the founders of
SHA, had a hand in the creation of the Durban Indian Fruiterers
Association, which supported the NIC in 1908 and the strikers in
1913. Kanjee actively raised money and foodstuff for the strikers.16
Bhana Parshotam who was also a member of SHA and was
affiliated to, among others, organizations such as Indian Chamber of
Commerce, Hindu Samshaan Fund, and Sanathan Dharma Sabha in Durban.
In 1912, he launched a fund to raise money for the Nadiad Hindu
Anathashram in India. Like Kanjee, he raised money and foodstuff to
support strikers in 1913. Parshotam was also a member of the
Tavdikar Bhajan Mandal, which honored in 1914 Rev Charles F. Andrews
(1871-1940) who had been sent by Gokhale to support Gandhi.17
C.P. Luchiram established the United
Hindu Association in Cape Town and created a body with a similar
name when he moved to Johannesburg. He used this organization to
support the passive resistance campaign during Hindu religious
festivals like Diwali.18 V.R.R. Moodaly was a founding
member of HYMA in Pietermaritzburg who devoted his energies to
promoting the Tamil language. While we are not sure how he related
to Gandhi’s political movement, his wife was an active member of the
Durban Indian Women’s Association which identified with it. Charlie
Nulliah, who came as an indentured Indian, was a member of HYMA and
the Sanatan Ved Dharma in Pietermaritzburg. As a rich landowner,
Nulliah supported NIPU and was active in promoting civic rights and
privileges for Indians living in the city.19 Lutchman
Panday, who served with Gandhi in the Indian Ambulance Corp in 1899
during the South African War (1899-1902), was a member of the Vishnu
Temple in Durban. Later, he joined NIPU and CBIA. He and C.R. Naidu
were the first South Africans to present the Indian case before the
INC meeting in Lahore in 1909. In 1911, Panday became a member of
the Durban Institute for Higher Education.20 Babu
Talwantsingh was closely associated with the Gopala Mandir in
Verulam and participated in a panch in 1910 to resolve a
dispute between a husband and wife. He supported satyagraha
in 1910 and encouraged indentured Indians not to re-enlist for work
under contact.21
Ambaram Mangalji Thaker, more
popularly known as Ambaram Maharaj, presents a unique study of a
religious leader responding to Gandhi’s political movement in his
own way. He held weekly meetings of the Durban Sanathan Dharma Sabha,
of which he was president, at which he engaged in religious
discourses based upon the Bhagavad Gita. Occasionally he
invited guests that included the Theosophists. The sabha considered
establishing a dharmasala for Hindus and consulted Gandhi
about it. He was also the vice president of the Natal Brahman Mandal.
Ambaram Maharaj had a flair for writing poetry, and won a
competition organized by Indian Opinion. The learned priest
sang kirtans, which he had composed at public meetings and
started a library at the Durban Hindu crematorium. Ambaram Maharaj
spoke in support of satyagraha. He sang a song composed by
himself at a meeting organized by KAM to honour those who had been
jailed or deported. In 1910, he said that it was the right, honor,
and duty of Indians to fight oppression. Ambaram Maharaj wrote a
twenty-four-line poem on unity; the returning deportees were greeted
with stirring poetry, "Chalo lewa Point..." (Let's Go to the Point
to receive them); and, he recited poetry praising Polak at a KAM
meeting. He also composed a poem on satyagraha and lionized
Mrs. Sodha who had been arrested when she tried to join her husband
in the Transvaal. Many of the poems and songs he wrote were
reproduced in Indian Opinion. They reflected heavily his deep
grasp of Hindu philosophy and teaching.
Arre
Musafir Chetje
(Beware Traveler) is an eighty-five line poem, sung in Rag
Dhirana, about following a spiritual path.22
Imam Abdul Kader Bawazeer enjoyed an
honored position as a leading member of HIS and identified himself
strongly with the passive resistance movement right from the
beginning. As imam, he led the prayers at the Jumma masjid in
Johannesburg. In July 1908, he courted arrest for hawking without a
license. Over the next fifteen months, he was arrested and jailed
three more times. Bawazeer was not entirely happy with the
Compromise of 1908 and was among the first to question the decision
in Indian Opinion. His letter in Indian Opinion
pointedly raised the question: Did Indians fight for sixteen months
only to say to the government, "Please open the offices, we want to
register"?23 Still, he put aside his reservations and
worked to prevent greater division among Indians on sectional lines,
becoming in the process one of Gandhi’s strongest supporters.
Bawazeer chaired the Johannesburg committee of thirty-six that
welcomed Gokhale in 1912, and on January 25, 1914, he chaired the
NIA mass meeting in Durban at which 3000 supporters endorsed
Gandhi’s leadership. As we pointed out earlier, he shared Gandhi’s
broad approach on spiritual matters and moved with his family to the
Phoenix settlement where he used to read from the Koran as well as
participate in singing bhajans. The imam joined Gandhi at the
Sabarmati ashram in
India.24
Dawad Mahomed was NIC president from
1906 to 1913. Throughout these years, he strongly supported Gandhi
and the passive resistance movement. Together with three other
individuals, he crossed into the Transvaal in 1908 to test his
domicile rights and suffered yearlong imprisonment. While elements
within the NIC opposed Gandhi’s broadening of the campaign to
include the £3 tax, he remained firm in his support. When,
therefore, a split occurred in October 1913, he broke away with
Gandhi and others to form the NIA of which he became president. As a
Muslim, he was active in Durban’s Anjuman Islam and went to Mecca
for haj. Gandhi’s farewell remarks reflected his assessment
of Mahomed as a broadly tolerant and charitable person.25
Mahomed was present at the home of Bhana Parshotam who had a
reception for Swami Shankeranand in 1910 at his Tollgate home. He
allowed his son, Hoosen, to study with Gandhi at the Phoenix
Settlement and to proceed to London for his law studies.26
While Dawad Mahomed played a crucial
supporting role, given his position and stature in the Muslim
community, a Muslim like Sheik Mehtab used his talents in a
different but nevertheless important way. Gandhi and Mehtab were
friends from childhood, which suggests that there was nothing
unusual for Hindus and Muslims in India to relate closely to each
other. In South Africa, they renewed their friendship, but it was an
uneasy one.27 Still, Mehtab gave a ringing endorsement of
the movement and its leaders through his poetry and ghazals.
At a KAM meeting in July, Sheik Mehtab read "Satyragrahioni Tarif
while his many poems appeared regularly in Indian Opinion.28
He wrote a ninety-two-line ghazal paying tribute to over
twenty individuals who were directly or indirectly involved in
satyagraha ending with gratitude to
Amohandas.29
Mehtab was a natural entertainer who sought to please his audience.
Two-thirds into the ghazal, he introduced three lines, which,
while they must have caused amusement, also showed familiarity with
Fanagalo:
Ookala chelile zonke
mulungu
Ayifuna
Manje chela funa Indian-ku
Parsis made up a small handful of
South Africa’s Indians but thought of themselves as part of India’s
bailiwick as much as Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi’s Diwali message in
1910 touched upon that theme. Instead of taking to Western ways, he
said, Indians should honour Muslim, Parsi, and Hindu new years. "We
are of course a single nation of brothers as among ourselves. We
should regain that consciousness... This will betoken our fraternal
relations and prove that we have become one nation."30
Parsis came to have great influence on Gandhi. This was largely
through the activities of one man, Parsee Rustomjee, with whom
Gandhi developed a deep and personal relationship from the first
year that he arrived in South Africa. As a businessman of some
means, Rustomjee supported many charitable causes without regard to
religious affiliation. There were numerous occasions when his home
became a center of one event or another. In the early years, he
strongly supported Gandhi through the NIC, of which he was a
founding member, and later the NIA when it was created at his
residence in October 1913. Parsee Rustomjee was among the sixteen
individuals who launched the last phase of passive resistance by
crossing into the Transvaal in 1913, and he served in jail for
this.
While Gandhi knew and understood the
cultural and religious world of his compatriots, he was not well
acquainted with the Jewish religious background of two of his
closest confidantes, Kallenbach and Polak. His relationship was one
of mutual trust and admiration, and this is reflected in his
correspondence with them. Gandhi was so close to Polak that Mrs.
Gandhi used to say that he was like her husband’s first-born. Gandhi
called Polak “Chhota Bhai.” Gandhi considered Albert H. West as the
“hope of Phoenix”, a “silent doer.” As we argued in chapter 6, some
Indians saw them merely as “Whites” in whom Gandhi’s faith was
misplaced. This issue created tension and seriously undermined
Gandhi’s leadership in 1913 and was one of the causes for the split.
Gandhi stood by them illustrating his insistence that personal
qualities were superior to religious, ethnic, and racial
considerations when judging individuals.31
In South Africa, Gandhi’s
experimentation in communal living at the Phoenix Settlement and
Tolstoy Farm became the basis of ashram life in India. At the
ashrams Gandhi insisted on truth, nonviolence, chastity,
palate control, non-stealing, non-possession, physical labor,
swadeshi, and the removal of untouchability. His concern for the
masses in 1913 would develop into programs for India’s villagers in
which he attempted to combine ethical universalism with particular
nationalism.32 It was in South Africa that Gandhi
developed these views. The ethnic, caste, religious, and cultural
make-up of the Indian communities in South Africa offered Gandhi a
laboratory in which to experiment, work out, and develop his ideas.
Indeed, as Sushila Nayar has said in her assessment of Gandhi, there
was “not a single new idea that he was inspired with after leaving
South Africa. He developed his ideas and his techniques further in
India but he had
formulated them all in South Africa.”33
References
-
Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal,
Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy, New
York/London: Routledge, 1998.
-
Shiv Kumar Gupta, Arya Samaj
and the Raj, 1875-1920, New Delhi: Gitanjali Publishing
House, 1991.
-
Gail Minault, The Khilafat
Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in
India New York: Columbia University Press, 1982; Mushirul
Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1916-1928,
Columbia, MO, South Asia Books, 1979; Rajmohan Gandhi examines
in his Eight Lives: A Study of Hindu-Muslim Encounter,
New York: State University of New York, 1986.
-
We are grateful to Professor Herby
S. Govinden for providing valuable insights on
Christian Indians. See Prinisha Badassy,
A Turban
and Top Hats: Indian Interpreters in the Colony of Natal,
1880-1910,
Honors Thesis, University of Natal, 2002; J. B. Brain’s
"Religion, Missionaries and Indentured Indians," in Essays
on Indentured Indians in Natal, edited by Surendra Bhana,
Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1991,219-23 and her book, Christian
Indians in Natal, 1860-1911: An Historical and Statistical Study,
Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1983; Herby S. Govinden,
“The Anglican Church among Indians in KwaZulu-Natal,” M.A.
Thesis, University of Durban-Westville, December 2002; Fatima
Meer, Portraits of Indian South Africans, Durban,
1969, pp. 213-15; Gerald J. Pillay,
A Community
Service and Conversion: Christianity among Indian South
Africans,
pp. 286-96, in Christianity in South Africa: A Political,
Social, and Cultural History, edited by Richard Elphick and
Rodney Davenport, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997; and Maureen Swan's
Gandhi: The South African Experience, Johannesburg: Ravan
Press, 1985.
-
SN 343,
Newspaper Cuttings, May 20, 1895, Sabarmati, Ahmedabad.
-
SN 382,
Newspaper Cuttings, June 26,1895, Sabarmati, Ahmedabad.
-
SN 367, 369,
Newspaper Cuttings, 17 June 1895, Sabarmati, Ahmedabad.
-
A relevant quote is, “Gandhi’s
peripatetic youth, and the impact it had on creating,
sustaining, and popularizing a national consciousness, would
seem to suggest that being a displaced subject of imperial rule
was consequential to political action—that there was something
about being in temporary or permanent exile that nurtured
resistance by changing the terms, the very grounds, upon which
the violence of colonialism was enacted” in Antoinett Burton,
At the Heart of Empire: Indians and the Colonial Rule
Encounter in Late Victorian Britain, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1998, p. 73.
-
When Victims Become Killers:
Colonialism, Nativism, and Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 27.
-
Everybody was Kung fu fighting:
Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity,
Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.
-
Joseph J. Doke, Gandhi: A
Patriot in South Africa, New Delhi: Government of India
edition, 1992.
-
SN 2797, Newspaper Clippings,
August 20, 1898, Sabarmati, Ahmedabad; see also Burnett Britton,
Gandhi Arrives in South Africa, Canton, Maine: Greenleaf
Books, 1999, pp. 80, 75, 77, 121, 124, 127, 296-300.
-
Their names are for NIC, Abdoola
Hajee Adam, and Dada Osman; for NIPU P. S. Aiyar, Anthony Pillay,
V. Lawrence, L. Gabriel, and J. M. Francis; for Anjuman Islam
Ismail Gora and N. M. Kadir; for Hindh Sudhar Sabha S.
Goorrosamy Chetty, and S. K. Pather; for Catholic Young Men's
Society V. Lawrence, and M. B. Lazarus; and for Shri Vishnu
Temple, Lutchman Panday. Indian Opinion 24/7/1909.
-
14 Ibid., 7/26/1913,
10/29/1913.
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Pragji K. Desai wrote in fluent
Gujarati a series of articles an imaginary conversation between
a lawyer and a farmer on the patriotic responsibilities of
people who felt a strong love for "Bharat" Indian Opinion,
4/15/1914, 4/22/1914, 4/29/1914, 5/6/1914, 5/13/1914.
5/20/1914, 6/3/1914.
-
Ibid., 10/5/1907,
10/26/1908, 1/2/1909, 11/20/1909, 10/29/1913, 11/5/1913,
11/12/1913.
-
Ibid., 12/5/1908, 3/5/1910,
7/5/1911, 7/6/1912, 8/31/1912, 10/29/1913, 2/18/1914
-
Ibid., 9/3/1910, 7/2/1910,
11/12/1910.
-
Ibid., 10/27/1908,
1/8/1908, 9/12/1908, 4/3/1909, 4/10/1909, 4/24/1909, 7/31/1909,
7/9/1910.
-
Ibid.,3/21/1908, 7/24/1909,
6/4/1910, 1/1/1910, 2/12/1910, 3/5/1910, 10/29/1910, 12/16/1911,
12/16/1911, 9/2/1912, 4/20/1912, 5/11/1912.
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21.Ibid., 4/2/1910,
4/30/1910, 6/25/1910, 9/10/1910, 11/19/1910, 4/30/1910/6/7/1912.
-
The poem shows Ambaram Maharaj’s
depth of knowledge about the language and about Hinduism. He
wrote at least seven poems between April 1910 and September 1912
in Indian Opinion. There were almost weekly reports on
his activities in Indian Opinion from 1907 to 1913. Some
of the more relevant references are: Indian Opinion
10/19/1907, 5/29/1909, 9/3/1910, 10/15/1910, 5/11/1912,
8/31/1912, 12/10/1912, 5/3/1913, 5/17/1913.
-
Indian Opinion, 1/25/1908.
-
For "Vaishnava Jana" Bawazeer used
to say "Muslim Jana" for the sake of communal harmony between
Hindus and Muslims. Raojibhai M. Patel, The Making of the
Mahatma, Ahmedabad, 1990, pp. 147-49; Sushila Nayar,
Mahatma Gandhi: Satyagraha At Work, Vol. 4, Ahmedabad:
Navajivan Publishing House, 1989, p. 682.
-
Here we are thinking of what
Gandhi said at an Ottoman Cricket Club function on June 29, 1912
to honor Mahomed and three others who were going to Mecca "As a
Hindu I am glad of their decision to go on pilgrimage. A true
Muslim cannot do Hindus harm. A true Hindu cannot do harm to
Muslims. Those who are capable of harming their own Indian
brethren are neither true Muslims nor true Hindus. I consider
any selfless work done in the service of the community as a
religious and not a worldly act.... Ostensibly religious act
is not godly if not done with a pure heart." Indian Opinion,
7/13/1912, CWMG, vol. 11, pp. 273-74.
-
Indian Opinion, 3/5/1910,
10/1/1913.
-
Mehtab followed Gandhi to South
Africa, and stayed with him at the Beach Grove home in Durban.
Gandhi threw him out, however, after he was found dallying with
a prostitute, and for stealing money from the cash box. They
made up, but Gandhi was never quite sure about him. When Mehtab
published a book of poems in Urdu in 1905, Gandhi refused
to give it notice in Indian Opinion.
Burnett Britton, Gandhi Arrives in South Africa, Canton,
Maine: Greenleaf Books, 1999, p. 393.
-
There were at least eight poems
from 6/10/1910 to 9/14/1912.
-
The language he used seemed
predominantly Urdu, but there were words and phrases that Urdu
speakers could not understand.
-
Indian Opinion 10/29/1910,
CWMG, vol. 10, pp. 341-42.
-
Chatterjee says that Gandhi missed
the message of the prophets, literature outside of the Hebrew
Bible, the significance of Seder meal, and forgiveness and
reconciliation in Yom Kippur services. Still, Gandhi’s Jewish
friends were able to work closely with the Indians because they
felt displaced. Herman Kallenbach felt so close to Gandhi he
said would like to die near him. Henry S. Polak identified with
Gandhi's inner struggles even though did not always agree with
him on some issues. See Chatterjee Margaret, Gandhi and His
Jewish Friends, London: Macmillan, 1992, pp. 168-69. See
also CWMG, vol. 96, Supplemantary vol. 6, pp.32, 34-35,
67; Isa Sarid and Christian Bartolf, Hermann Kallenbach:
Mahatma Gandhi's Friend in South Africa, A Concise
Biography, Selbstverlag, Germany: Gandhi-Information-Zentrum,
1997; H.S.L. Polak's article on pp. 230-47 in Incidents in
Gandhiji's Life by Fifty-four Contributors edited by
Chandrashanker Shukla, Bombay: Vora & Co., 1949; H.S.L. Polak
and Millie Graham Polak, "Gandhi, the Man," Indian Review,
October 1929; H.S.L. Polak, "South African Reminiscence,"
Indian Review Feb., March, May, 1925, Oct. 1926; Gandhi
Letters: From Upper House to Lower House, 1906-1914, edited
by Gillian Berning, Durban: Local History Museum Education,
Number 14, 1994.
-
Chatterjee Margaret, Gandhi and
His Jewish Friends, London: Macmillan, 1992, p. 165.
-
Sushila Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi:
Satyagraha at Work, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House,
1989, p. 752.
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