Gokhale arrived in South Africa while we were still living on the Farm. His tour must be described in another chapter, but I will place here on record a half sweet, half bitter reminiscence. The reader has now some idea of the sort of life we were leading. There was no cot on the Farm, but we borrowed one for Gokhale. There was no room where he could enjoy full privacy. For sitting accommodation we had nothing beyond the benches in our school. Even so, how could we resist the temptation of bringing Gokhale in spite of his delicate health to the Farm? And how could he help seeing it, either? I was foolish enough to imagine that Gokhale would be able to put up with a night’s dis¬ comfort and to walk about a mile and a half from the sta¬ tion to the Farm. I had asked him beforehand, and he had agreed to everything without bestowing any thought upon it, thanks to his simplicity and overwhelming confidence TOLSTOY FARM - III in me. It rained that day, as fate would have it, and I was not in a position sunddenly to make any special arrange¬ ment. I have never forgotten the trouble to which I put Gokhale that day in my ignorant affection. The hardship was too much for him to bear and he caught a chill. We could not take him to the kitchen and dining-hall. He had been put up in Mr Kallenbach’s room. His dinner would get cold while we brought it from the kitchen to his room. I prepared special soup, and Kotval special bread for him, but these could not be taken to him hot. We managed as best we could. Gokhale uttered not a syllable, but I under¬ stood from his face what a folly I had committed. When Gokhale came to know that all of us slept on the floor, he removed the cot which had been brought for him and had his own bed too spread on the floor. This whole night was a night of repentance for me. Gokhale had a rule in life which seemed to me a bad rule. He would not permit any one except a servant to wait upon him. He had no servant with him during this tour. Mr Kallenbach and I entreated him to let us massage his feet. But he would not let us even touch him, and half jocularly, half angrily said: ‘You all seem to think that you have been born to suffer hardships and discomforts, and people like myself have been born to be pampered by you. You must suffer today the punishment for this extremism of yours. I will not let you even touch me. Do you think that you will go out to attend to nature’s needs and at the same time keep a commode for me? I will bear any amount of hardship but I will humble your pride.’ These words were to us like a thunderbolt, and deeply grieved Mr Kallenbach and me. The only consolation was, that Gokhale wore a smile on his face all the while. Krishna no doubts was often deeply offended by Arjuna, ‘unknowing of His majesty and careless in the fondness of his love,’ but he soon forgot such incidents. Gokhale remembered only our will to serve, though he did not accord us the high privilege of serving him. The deeply affectionate letter he wrote me from Mombasa is still imprinted upon my heart. Gokhale bore everything cheerfully, but till the last never accepted the service which it was in our power to render. He had to SATYAGRAHA IN SOUTH AFRICA take the food etc., from our hands, but that he could not help.
The next morning he allowed no rest either to himself or to us. He corrected all his speeches which we proposed to publish in book form. When he had to write anything, he was in the habit of walking to and fro and thinking it out. He had to write a small letter and I thought that he would soon have done with it. But no. As I twitted him upon it, he read me a little homily: ‘You do not know my ways of life. I will not do even the least little thing in a hurry. I will think about it and consider the central idea. I will next deliberate as to the language suited to the sub¬ ject and then set to write. If every one did as I do, what a huge saving of time would there be? And the nation would be saved from the avalanche of half-baked ideas which now threatens to overwhelm her.5 As the reminiscences of Tolstoy Farm would be in¬ complete without an account of Gokhale’s visit thereto, so would they be if I omitted to say something about the character and conduct of Mr Kallenbach. It was really a wonder how he lived on Tolstoy Farm among our people as if he were one of us. Gokhale was not the man to be attracted by ordinary things. But even he felt strongly drawn to the revolutionary change in Kallenbach’s life. Kallenbach had been brought up in the lap of luxury and had never known what privation was. In fact, indulgence had been his religion. He had had his fill of all the plea¬ sures of life, and he had never hesitated to secure for his comfort everything that money could buy.
It was no commonplace for such a man to live, move and have his being on Tolstoy Farm, and to become one with the Indian settlers. This was an agreeable surprise for the Indians. Some Europeans classed Kallenbach either as a fool or a lunatic, while others honoured him for his spirit of renunciation. Kallenbach never felt his renun¬ ciation to be painful. In fact he enjoyed it even more than he had enjoyed the pleasures of life before. He would be transported with rapture while describing the bliss of a simple life, and for a moment his hearers would be tempted to go in for it. He mixed so lovingly with the young as well TOLSTOY FARM - III as the old, that separation from him even for a short time left a clearly felt void in their lives. Mr Kallenbach was very fond of fruit trees and therefore he reserved garden¬ ing as his own portfolio. Every morning he would engage children as well as grown up people in tending the fruit trees. He would make them work hard, but he had such a cheerful temper and smiling face, that every one loved to work with him. Whenever a party of tourists left the Farm for Johannesburg at 2 a.m., Mr Kallenbach would always be one of them.
Mr Kallenbach and I had frequent talks on religion, which usually centred on fundamentals like non-violence or love, truth and the like. When I said that it was a sin to kill snakes and such other animals, Mr Kallenbach was shocked to hear it as well as my numerous other European friends. But in the end he admitted the truth of that prin¬ ciple in the abstract. At the very beginning of my inter¬ course with him, Mr Kallenbach had seen the propriety and the duty of carrying out in practice every principle of which he was convinced intellectually, and therefore he had been able to effect momentous changes in his life without a moment’s hesitation. Now if it was improper to kill serpents and the like, we must cultivate their friend¬ ship, thought Mr Kallenbach. He therefore first collected books on snakes in order to identify different species of reptiles. He there read that not all snakes are poisonous and some of them actually serve as protectors of field-crops. He taught us all to recognize different kinds of snakes and at last tamed a huge cobra which was found on the Farm. Mr Kallenbach fed it every day with his own hands. I gently argued with him: ‘Although you do all this in a friendly spirit, your friendliness may not be quite clear to the cobra, especially as your kindness is not unalloyed with fear. Neither you nor I have the courage to play with it if it was free, and what we should really cultivate is courage of that stamp. Therefore though there is friendliness, there is not love in this act of taming the cobra. Our behaviour should be such that the cobra can see through it. We see every day that all animals grasp at once whether the other party loves or fears them. Again you do not think the cobra to SATYAGRAHA IN SOUTH AFRICA be venomous, and have imprisoned it in order to study its ways and habits. This is a kind of self-indulgence for which there should be no room in the case of real friendship.’
My argument appealed to Mr Kallenbach, but he could not bring himself all at once to release the cobra. I did not exercise any pressure upon him. I too was taking interest in the life of the cobra, and the children, of course, enjoyed it immensely. No one was allowed to harass the cobra, which however was casting about for some means of escape. Whether the door of the cage was inadvertently left open, or whether the cobra managed to open it, in a couple of days Mr Kallenbach found the cage empty as he one morning proceeded to call upon his friend. Mr Kallenbach was glad of it and so was I. But thanks to this taming experiment, snakes became a frequent subject of our talk. Mr Kallenbach brought to the Farm a poor and disabled German named Albrecht who was so hump¬ backed that he could not walk without supporting himself on a stick. Albrecht had boundless courage, and being an educated man, took deep interest in recondite problems. He too had become one with the Indian settlers and mixed freely with all. He began fearlessly to play with snakes. He would bring young snakes in his hand and let them play on his palm. If our stay on Tolstoy Farm had been further prolonged, goodness knows what would have been the upshot of Albrecht’s adventures.
As a result of these experiments we did not fear snakes as much as we otherwise might have, but it must not be supposed that no one on the Farm feared serpents or that there was a total prohibition against killing them. To have a conviction that there is violence or sin in a cer¬ tain course of conduct is one thing; to have the power of acting up to that conviction is quite another. A person who fears snakes and who is not ready to resign his own life cannot avoid killing snakes in case of emergency. I remem¬ ber one such incident, which occurred on the Farm. The reader must already have seen that the Farm was pretty well infested with snakes. There was no human population on the Farm when we occupied it, and it had been in this deserted condition for some time. One day a snake TOLSTOY FARM — III TOLSTOY FARM — III was found in Mr Kallenbach’s own room at such a place that it seemed impossible to drive it away or to catch it. One of the students saw it, and calling me there, asked me what was to be done. He wanted my permission to kill it. He could have killed it without such permission, but the settlers, whether students or others, would not generally take such a step without consulting me. I saw that it was my duty to permit the student to kill the snake, and I permitted him. Even as I am writing this, I do not feel that I did anything wrong in granting the permission. I had not the courage to seize the serpent with the hand or otherwise to remove the danger to the settlers, and I have not cultivated such courage to this day.
Needless to say, there was on the Farm an ebb and flow of Satyagrahis, some of whom would be expecting to go to prison while others had been released from it. Once it so happened that there arrived at the Farm two Satyagrahis who had been released by the Magistrate on personal recognizance and who had to attend the court the next day to receive the sentence. They were engrossed in talk, while time was up for the last train they must catch, and it was a question whether they would succeed in taking that train. They were both young men and good athlets. They ran for all that they were worth along with some of us who wanted to see them off. While still on the way, I heard the whistle of the train as it steamed into the station. When there was a second whistle indicating its departure, we had reached the precincts of the station. The young men increased their speed every moment, and I lagged behind them. The train started. Fortunately the station master saw them running up and stopped the moving train, thus enabling them to take it after all. I tendered my thanks to the station master when 1 reached the station. Two points emerge out of this incident; first, the eagerness of the Satyagrahis in seeking jail and in fulfilling their pro¬ mises, and secondly, the sweet relations cultivated by the Satyagrahis with the local officers. If the young men had missed that train, they could not have attended the court the next day. No surety had been required of them, nor had they been asked to deposit any money with the court.
SATYAGRAHA IN SOUTH AFRICA They had been released only on the word of gentlemen. The Satyagrahis had acquired such prestige that magistr¬ ates did not think it necessary to ask them for bail as they were courting jail. The young Satyagrahis therefore were deeply pained at the prospect of missing the train, and ran as swiftly as the wind. At the commencement of the struggle Satyagrahis were somewhat harassed by officials, and the jail authorities in some places were unduly severe. But as the movement advanced, we found that the bitter¬ ness of the officials was softned and in some cases even changed to sweetness. And where there was long continued intercourse with them, they even began to assist us like the station master I have referred to. The reader must not imagine that Satyagrahis bribed these officials in any shape or form in order to secure amenities from them. The Satyagrahis never thought of purchasing such irregu¬ lar facilities. But where facilities were offered through court¬ esy, they were freely accepted, and the Satyagrahis had been enjoying such facilities in many places. If a station master is ill-disposed, he can harass passengers in a vari¬ ety of ways, keeping himself all the while within the four corners of the rules and regulations. No complaint can be preferred against such harassment. On the other hand if the official is well disposed, he can grant many facilities without violating the rules. All such facilities we had been able to secure from the station master, Lawley, and that because of the courtesy, the patience and the capacity for self-suffering of the Satyagrahis.
It will not perhaps be amiss here to take note of an irrelevant incident. I have been fond for about the last thirty-five years of making experiments in dietetics from the religious, economic and hygienic standpoints. This predilection for food reform still persists. People around me would naturally be influenced by my experiments. Side by side with dietetics, I made experiments in treating diseases with natural curative agents only such as earth and water and without recourse to drugs. When I practised as a barrister, cordial relations were established with my clients so that we looked upon one another almost as mem¬ bers of the same family. The clients therefore made me TOLSTOY FARM — -III a partner in their joys and sorrows. Some of them sought my advice being familiar with my experiments in nature cure. Stray patients of this class would sometimes arrive at Tolstoy Farm. One of these was Lutavan, and aged client who first came from North India as an indentured labourer. He was over seventy years old and suffered from chronic asthma and cough. He had given long trials to vaidyas ’ powders and doctors’ mixtures. In those days I had boundless faith in the efficacy of my methods of curing disease, and therefore I agreed not indeed to treat him but to try my experiments upon him if he lived on the Farm and observed all my conditions. Lutavan complied with my conditions. One of these was that he should give up tobacco to which he was strongly addicted. I made him fast for 24 hours. At noon every day I commenced giving him a Kuhne bath in the sun, as the weather then was not extra warm. For food he had a little rice, some olive oil, honey, and along with honey, porridge and sweet oranges some times and at other times grapes and wheaten coffee. Salt and all condiments whatever were avoided. Lutavan slept in the same building as myself but in the inner apart¬ ment. For bed every one was given two blankets, one for spreading and the other for covering purposes, and a wooden pillow. A week passed. There was an accession of energy in Lutavan’ s body. His asthma and cough gave less trouble, but he had more fits at night than by day. I suspected he was smoking secretly, and I asked him if he did. Lutavan said he did not. A couple of days passed and as still there was no improvement, I determined to watch Lutavan secretly. Every one slept on the floor, and the place was full of snakes. Mr Kallenbach had therefore given me an electric torch and kept one himself. I always slept with this torch by my side. One night I resolved to lie in the bed awake. My bed was spread on the verandah just near the door, and Lutavan slept inside but also near the door. Lutavan coughed at midnight, lighted a cigarette and began to smoke. I slowly went up to his bed and switched on the torch. Lutavan understood everything and became nervous. He ceased smoking, stood up and touched my feet. ‘I have done a great wrong,’ he said. T will never smoke SATYAGRAHA IN SOUTH AFRICA again henceforth. I have deceived you. Please excuse me.’ So saying he almost began to sob. I consoled him and said that it was in his interest not to smoke. His cough should have been cured according to my calculations, and when I found that he was still suffering from it, I had suspected that he was smoking secretly. Lutavan gave up smoking. His asthma and cough grew less severe in two or three days, and in a month he was perfectly cured. He was now full of vigour and took his leave of us.
The station master’s son, a child of two years, had an attack of typhoid. This gentleman too knew about my curative methods, and sought my advice. On the first day I gave the child no food at all, and from the second day onwards only half a banana well mashed with a spoonful of olive oil and a few drops of sweet orange juice. At night I applied a cold mud poultice to the child’s abdomen, and in this case too my treatment was successful. It is possible that the doctor’s diagnosis was wrong and it was not a case of typhoid.
I made many such experiments on the Farm, and I do not remember to have failed in even a single case. But today I would not venture to employ the same treatment. I would now shudder to have to give banana and olive oil in a case of typhoid. In 1918 I had an attack of dysentery myself and I failed to cure it. And I cannot say to this very day, whether it is due to my want of self-confidence or to the difference in climate that the same treatment which was effective in South Africa is not equally successful in India. But this I know that the home treatment of diseases and the simplicity of our life on Tolstoy Farm were responsible for a saving of at least two to three lakhs of public money. The settlers learned to look upon one another as members of the same family, the Satyagrahis secured a pure place of refuge, little scope was left for dishonesty or hypocrisy and the wheat was separated from the tares. The dietetic experi¬ ments thus far detailed were made from a hygienic stand¬ point, but I conducted a most important experiment upon myself which was purely spiritual in its nature.
I had pondered deeply and read widely over the ques¬ tion whether as vegetarians we had any right to take milk.
TOLSTOY FARM - III But when I was living on the Farm, some book or news¬ paper fell into my hands, in which I read about the in¬ human treatment accorded to cows in Calcutta in order to extract the last drop of milk from them, and came across a description of the cruel and terrible process of phuka. I was once discussing with Mr Kallenbach the necessity for taking milk, and in course of the discussion, I told him about this horrible practice, pointed out several other spiritual advantages flowing from the rejection of milk, and observed that it was desirable to give up milk if it was possible. Mr Kallenbach with his usual spirit of a knight- errant was ready at once to launch upon the experiment of doing without milk, as he highly approved of my obser¬ vations. The same day both he and I gave up milk, and in the end we came to restrict ourselves to a diet of fresh and dried fruit, having eschewed all cooked food as well. I may not here go into the later- history of this experiment or tell how it ended, but I may say this, that during five years of a purely fruitarian life I never felt weak, nor did I suffer from any disease. Again during the same period I possessed the fullest capacity for bodily labour, so much so that one day I walked 55 miles on foot, and 40 miles was an ordinary day’s journey for me. I am firmly of opinion that this experiment yielded excellent spiritual results. It has always been a matter of regret for me that I was compelled somewhat to modify my fruitarian diet, and if I were free from my political preoccupations, even at this age of my life and at a risk to my body I would revert to it today further to explore its spiritual possibilities. The lack of spiritual insight in doctors and vaidyas has also been an obstacle in my path.
But I must now close this chapter of pleasant and important reminiscences. Such dangerous experiments could have their place only in a struggle of which self¬ purification was the very essence. Tolstoy Farm proved to be a centre of spiritual purification and penance for the final campaign. I have serious doubts as to whether the struggle could have been prosecuted for eight years, whether we could have secured larger funds, and whether the thousands of men who participated in the last phase of the SATYAGRAHA IN SOUTH AFRICA struggle would have borne their share in it, if there had been no Tolstoy Farm. Tolstoy Farm was never placed in the limelight, yet an institution which deserved it attracted public sympathy to itself. The Indians saw that the Tolstoy Farmers were doing what they themselves were not pre¬ pared to do and what they looked upon in the light of hardship. This public confidence was a great asset to the movement when it was organized afresh on a large scale in 1913. One can never tell whether such assets give an account of themselves, and if yes, when. But I do not entertain and would ask the reader not to entertain, a shadow of a doubt that such latent assets do in God’s good time become patent.
CHAPTER XXXVI GOKHALE’S TOUR Thus the Satyagrahis were pursuing the even tenor of their life on Tolstoy Farm, and preparing for whatever the future had in store for them. They did not know, nor did they care, when the struggle would end. They were only under one pledge, namely to refuse submission to the Black Act and to suffer whatever hardships were involved in such disobedience. For a fighter the fight itself is vic¬ tory for he takes delight in it alone. And as it rests with him to prosecute the fight, he believes that victory or defeat, pleasure or pain, depends upon himself. There is no such word in his dictionary as pain or defeat. In the words of the Gita pleasure and pain, victory and defeat are the same to him.
Stray Satyagrahis now and then went to jail. But when there was no occasion for going to jail, any one who observed the external activities of the Farm could hardly believe that Satyagrahis were living there or that they were preparing for a struggle. When a sceptic happened to visit the Farm, if a friend he would pity us, and if a critic he would censure us. ‘These fellows,5 he would re¬ mark, ‘have grown lazy and are therefore eating the bread gokhale’s tour gokhale’s tour of idleness in this secluded spot. They are sick of going to jail and are therefore enjoying themselves in this fruit garden away from the din and roar of cities.’ How could it be explained to this critic that a Satyagrahi cannot go to jail by violating the moral law, that his very peacefulness and self-restraint constitute his preparation for ‘war’, and that the Satyagrahi, bestowing no thought on human help, relies upon God as his sole refuge? Finally there happened, or God brought to pass, events which no one had expected. Help also arrived which was equally unforeseen. The ordeal came all unexpected and in the end there was achieved a tangible victory which he who ran could read.
1 had been requesting Gokhale and other leaders to go to South Africa and to study the condition of the Indian settlers on the spot. But I doubted whether any of them would really come over. Mr Ritch had been trying to have some Indian leader visit the sub-continent. But who would dare to go when the struggle was at a very low ebb? Gokhale was in England in 1911. He was a student of the struggle in South Africa. He had initiated debates in the Legislative Council of India and moved a resolution (February 25, 1910) in favour of prohibiting the recruit¬ ment of indentured labour for Natal, which was carried. I was in communication with him all along. He conferred with the Secretary of State for India and informed him of his intention to proceed to South Africa and acqu¬ aint himself with the facts of the case at first hand. The minister approved of Gokhale’s mission. Gokhale wrote to me asking me to arrange a programme for a six weeks’ tour and indicating the latest date when he must leave South Africa. We were simply overjoyed. No Indian leader had been to South Africa before or for that matter to any other place outside India where Indians had emi¬ grated, with a view to examine their condition. We there¬ fore realized the importance of the visit of a great leader like Gokhale and determined to accord him a reception which even princes might envy and to take him to the principal cities of South Africa. Satyagrahis and other Indians alike cheerfully set about making grand prepara¬ tions of welcome. Europeans were also invited to join and SATYAGRAHA IN SOUTH AFRICA did generally join the reception. We also resolved that public meetings should be held in Town Halls wherever possible and the Mayor of the place should generally occu¬ py the chair if he consented to do so. We undertook to de¬ corate the principal stations on the railway line and suc¬ ceeded in securing the necessay permission in most cases. Such permission is not usually granted. But our grand preparations impressed the authorities, who evinced as much sympathy in the matter as they could. For instance, in Johannesburg alone the decorations at Park Station took us about a fortnight, including, as they did, a large ornamental arch of welcome designed by Mr Kallenbach.