A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo, page 21
21
Kamala Nimbkar—A Quaker in Bombay
DURING THE PERIOD of Syud Hossain’s editorship of The New Orient, an American lady volunteered to be his honorary secretary for a few years. She was one among several interesting women whose path briefly converged with Syud Hossain’s in his years in the United States. Kamala Nimbkar, who would later accomplish a great deal in her adopted country, was born as Elizabeth Lundy on 5 January 1900, an only child to Joseph Wilmer Lundy and Bessie Lundy, in Mount Holly, New Jersey. The Lundys were Quakers (a Christian sect, also called “Friends”) and Elizabeth imbibed the Quaker ethics of simplicity and hard work. She had an impressive lineage—some of the Quakers were among the first to oppose slavery, and an ancestor on her father’s side, Benjamin Lundy, was one of the earliest activists in the anti-slavery movement. On her mother’s side, a great, great uncle of her mother, Robert Morris, (a Presbyterian) was a friend of George Washington and was active in the American Revolution. He was one of the signatories to the American Declaration of Independence and his statue stands at Independence Square in Philadelphia outside the building that houses the Liberty Bell.
When Elizabeth was six months old, the family moved to Newtown in Pennsylvania where Joseph Lundy established his own business of plumbing, heating and hardware that allowed the family to maintain a middle class lifestyle. When she was old enough, Elizabeth joined George School, a private co-educational Quaker school in Newtown. An unexceptional student, she graduated from school in 1918 and then joined Drexel Institute in Philadelphia for a two-year junior college secretarial course upon completion of which, she joined as a secretary in a Philadelphia-based manufacturer of electric instruments. After moving through a few jobs and realising that the lack of a college degree was an impediment to getting a better salary, she enrolled at Barnard College in New York (a women’s liberal arts college connected to Columbia University) for a B.A. in 1924. After graduating, she took up a job with Millbank Fund, which was pioneering a health centre that was to become a model for all health centres in New York City. This gave her an invaluable experience for her future work.
During her summer term in 1925, Elizabeth stayed at International House (I-house), a graduate student housing facility located perhaps in the most picturesque part of New York near Columbia University facing the Sakura Park with its abundant cherry blossom trees and overlooking the Hudson River. Founded in 1924, I-house offers residential accommodation to international students representing over a hundred countries, who study in the various colleges of New York City. Soon after its founding, many Indian students stayed here, and one of them was Vishnu R. Nimbkar from Bombay, who had come to New York in 1920 to study Mechanical and Mining Engineering. Elizabeth and Vishnu met at I-house and the friendship over the next few years gave way to their betrothal. Vishnu, as a student in Bombay and Poona, had imbibed the spirit of the freedom movement after hearing nationalist leaders like Tilak. Soon after arriving in New York, he joined the Hindustan Association where he met Indian activists such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Dr Hardikar, Raja Mahendra Pratap, and Taraknath Das who were based in New York. It was through Vishnu that Elizabeth met his friends and associates, in particular C.F. Andrews, Sarojini Naidu and Syud Hossain. Elizabeth was associated with Syud for a few years as his honorary secretary when he was editing The New Orient.
As she writes in her autobiography1, “Another outstanding friend of my fiancé was Syed Husain [sic], close friend of the Nehru family. He had been sent by Gandhiji and other leaders to work for the Indian cause. He had a charming personality, and was a very fine speaker and writer. He toured the length and breadth of the United States, speaking on behalf of the cause of Indian independence. I looked after his mail when he was on tour, and met Sarojini Naidu, his close friend and mentor.” Vishnu, on completion of his courses, joined the Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company and went back to India in 1929 as the representative of its British arm. By then, the couple had decided to get married and a gritty Elizabeth volunteered to move to India despite having to get used to a life vastly different from what she had grown up with. However, Vishnu was an equally resolute young man and not one to make things easy for his new bride. He imposed three conditions on her viz. she should contribute to the society of her new country using her education and experience; she should be able to live on ten rupees a month; and she should learn to manage on her own as Vishnu would be traveling on work much of the time. Elizabeth sailed to India in August 1930 and from the time she came ashore, changed her name to Kamala and began to wear only Indian attire. It was a strange sight to see a chubby, white woman in a khadi saree and a tikka on her forehead mingling with the locals.
Soon after her arrival in India, Kamala fulfilled the second condition of her husband by going to live for three months at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram where the charges were eight rupees a month. Gandhi, who was imprisoned in Yerawada prison at that time, wrote to Mirabehn (Madeleine Slade)* on 5 October 1930 enquiring after her health and advising her that, “…You must not breakdown at the Ashram. You will have met Kamalabehn Lundy. Of course you will befriend her. She appears to be a very good woman.”2 After a dispiriting stay at the ashram which she found utterly artificial, Kamala spent a few days at Anand Bhawan as Motilal Nehru’s guest before going to Jodhpur where she and Vishnu were married on 2 December 1930. A few months later, in July 1931, she gave birth to a boy and named him Bonbehari (Bon for short). In 1934–35, she went to England where she obtained the Froebal Teaching Certificate that would qualify her to teach from kindergarten to middle school. She felt that this would enable her to fill the gap in the lack of adequate primary and pre-primary education in India. By this time, Vishnu had moved to Bombay from Jodhpur and they settled down in the western suburb of Khar, building for themselves a spacious bungalow named Amerind (America-India). The house, now demolished and being re-built as an apartment complex, is located opposite the Khar Gymkhana Club. In 1941, Kamala established a school called The New Khar School. It began with a small set of twenty-five children but gradually expanded to four hundred and fifty students in a year. In 1942, it was renamed as B.P.M. High School, and it continues to this day with a student strength exceeding three thousand. With her involvement in the running of the school gradually lessening, Kamala joined the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), whose President in 1941 was Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.
The war years saw an increasing number of soldiers being wounded and in need of rehabilitation. This got her interested in the field of Occupational Therapy which is defined as “a medically-directed treatment of the physically and/or mentally disabled by means of constructive activities to promote the restoration of useful functions”. Her mother’s death in 1945 took her back to the United States when she enrolled at the Philadelphia School of Occupational Therapy. After completing her course, she came back to Bombay and established India’s first Centre for Occupational Therapy (OT) at the King Edward Memorial Hospital (K.E.M.) in Bombay in 1950. Kamala Nimbkar is recognised in the fraternity as the pioneer in this field in India. She, thereafter, founded a second OT school in Nagpur. Though she retired in 1959, she was active in an advisory capacity for a number of years after. She died on 29 August 1979 and Vishnu a year later on 25 June.
Kamala’s son, Bon Nimbkar, also studied at George School in Newtown for a few years when Kamala had enrolled for her OT course in Philadelphia. Bon married Jai Nimbkar, a well-known feminist author, and they lived in Phaltan near Pune with their three married daughters who manage the various organisations set up by the family such as an agricultural research institute, a goat farm, and a school. Bon, formally called B.V. Nimbkar, is well known for his contributions to agricultural research. Now eighty-seven years old but with an incisive brain and an impish sense of humour, he recalled many stories of his mother, and one of them relating to Syud was intriguing, and perhaps a tad embellished.3 According to Bon, Syud Hossain, during his years at New York, used to stay in a hotel and was a late riser. Elizabeth Lundy (Kamala) used to go to the hotel at about midday to help answer his correspondence and perform other secretarial work. She used to find him with a new woman almost every day, something that would irk her Quaker sense of morality. But she learnt to ignore it, convincing herself that mavericks such as Hossain were allowed some latitude in their moral compass. There is nothing to indicate that Syud kept in touch with her after her move to India.
22
U.S.C. and a Visit to India
(1934–42)
THE ECONOMIC PROSPERITY of the Roaring Twenties in the United States. saw a boom in construction, an expansion in consumer goods manufacturing, a surge in retail spending, the development of new ideas and genres in the fields of science, architecture, music, art and cinema, changing sexual mores, an outburst of liberal thought and an untrammelled optimism amongst the American people. The 1920s was financially a good time for Syud Hossain too, save the aberrations of a few years. His income from his lecture tours as well as from donations by the Californian Indian community was substantial. As a rather condescending letter of August 1927 from Gerald Campbell, British Consulate-General in San Francisco, to H.G. Chilton at the British Embassy makes clear, “Syed Hussain [sic]… always comes out here at this time of year because he picks the pockets of the fruit pickers, and it is just about this time that his compatriots receive their wages for picking fruit. He generally gets a good deal of publicity by speaking to some of the most important Clubs, and he uses this publicity to show the Indian labourers what a wonderful man he is, and how generously all of them ought to contribute to his support. One Indian tells me that Hussain has collected One hundred thousand dollars in this way since he first came to the United States six or seven years ago, but he is having a harder sledding now because the Hindus refuse to pay a Moslem, and his fellow Moslems have begun to complain because he lives in the best hotels in New York and Washington, while they slave on ranches here.”1
The good times, however, came to a dramatic halt on 24 October 1929 with the crash of the stock market. This would symbolise the beginning of The Great Depression that continued well into the mid 1930s in the country and up to the beginning of WWII in other countries. With banks failing, industries shutting down, agricultural prices falling, and the ranks of the unemployed swelling, the mood of the American citizen became decidedly sombre.
Syud, who had by now covered almost all the states of the country, decided to go to Canada on a lecture tour in January 1930 and was issued a new passport on the 14th to enable his travel. A letter of 17 January 1930 from the Consul General at New York to the Foreign Office at London says, “I have…received an application for a passport for Mr. Syud Hossain or Syed Hussain, whose name appears on the list of Indians suspected of revolutionary activities. Mr. Hossain had surrendered his previous passport No. 131615 issued at the Foreign Office on the 19th of October 1916. Mr. Hossain requested a passport for identification purposes, as he intends to travel to Canada on a lecture tour arranged by Messrs. William B. Feaking, Inc. Times Building, New York. He is proceeding to Montreal on the 18th instant, and will speak there under the auspices of the People’s Forum on January 19th. He will remain about ten days in the Dominion. The lecture tour will continue for some weeks throughout the United States. I have, therefore, issued a passport to Mr. Hossain valid for the United States and Canada, and endorsed not valid for other countries without further endorsement by a British Consular Officer. Mr. Hossain states that on completion of his lecture tour, he intends to proceed to England, and will then proceed through Europe to India. He stated that he would apply at this office in March or April, in order to have his passport made valid for England. This will enable him to take up the matter of further travel with the India Office direct. I have, therefore, the honour to enquire whether when he applies again his passport may be valid for travelling to the United Kingdom.”2
The above letter resulted in a to-and-fro correspondence between the India Office, IPI, and the New York consulate, which gives an insightful commentary on Syud’s life. A letter of 8 February, presumably from the India Office to Mr Peel [R.T. Peel of the India Office], notes that, “Syud Hossain’s anti-British oratory in the United States has lost a good deal of its fire since the days of the Hindu-Moslem entente and his lecture tours in the recent years have degenerated into a purely business proposition. These no longer yield him the lucrative income that he once enjoyed and the rich harvests that he annually levied on the supporters of the Ghadr Party have also ceased. The fact of the matter is that Syud Hussain has lost practically all his influence with the extremist elements in the U.S.A., who object to his extravagant mode of living; some of them even going as far as calling him a British agent. We have moreover to thank him for having withdrawn the Moslem support from the Ghadr Party. Syud Hussain’s decreasing popularity with his own compatriots and his rapidly diminishing revenue returns are no doubt responsible for his decision to return to India. There is no objection to his return there and I should say that it was not necessary to consult the Government of India in advance. He might, as you suggest, be given facilities to visit this country and as soon as we learn his future movements we can then decide whether to accord him further facilities for Europe. My own view is that it would be politic to interfere with his movements as little as possible as we do not want to drive him back into the arms of Hindu extremists, for whom at the moment he has a whole-hearted dislike. As regards his lecture tour in Canada, which has presumably now terminated as he was expected to spend only ten days in the Dominion, it might have been better for the Consular authorities to have consulted us first. At the same time for the reasons given above I think we could not have raised any objection.”3
A file noting in response to the above letter in IPI’s files note that, “There is no objection to Syud Hossain’s return to India, for the reasons stated in I.P.I.’s note below. As regards the permission given to him to lecture in Canada, this was a pity…I have added a para to the draft to safeguard the future, but I.P.I. is anxious that no action should be taken against Syud Hussain himself for fear of antagonising the Muslims in the U.S.A. who are at present inclined to take a stand against the Sikh extremists.” Another noting on the same page in the IPI file indicates that a senior officer in the IPI hierarchy “has no objection to Mr. Hussain’s return to India nor to the grant to him of a passport valid for the U.K. when he applies at the conclusion of his lecture tour in the U.S.A. Mr. Benn [?] however observes that Mr. Hussain was granted a passport valid for Canada without reference to this office and was thus enabled to pay a visit to that Dominion for the purpose of delivering lectures. As a great deal of harm may be done by lectures of the kind which an anti-British agitator such as Mr. Hussain may be expected to deliver, Mr. Benn would be glad if in future he could be consulted before passport facilities are granted in any other similar cases.”4
While Syud’s stand to not side with the extremists was in line with Gandhi’s philosophy of a non-violent struggle, it had the unintended consequence of alienating him from the Sikh population, and perhaps contributing to the simmering communal divide between the Muslims and others. While the British, no doubt happy with the turn of events, generously permitted his travel to India, his name would continue to figure on the list of extremists for a few more years. Syud did travel to Canada but his plans to travel to Europe and India later in the year did not materialise due to a variety of reasons.
Meanwhile in India, there was a flurry of activity on the political front. The British Government appointed the Simon Commission, headed by Lord John Simon, to explore the further progress of constitutional reforms in India. However, the composition of the commission exclusively of Englishmen angered the Indians. The INC called for a boycott of the commission and also organised mass demonstrations across the country in protest. When the commission visited Lahore on 30 October 1928, Lajpat Rai led a demonstration against it and was seriously injured in a police baton charge. Unable to recover from the crippling injuries, he died a few days later on 17 November. The Indians had high hopes that the Labour Party, which came to power in 1929, would progress the granting of Dominion Status to India as declared by the new British cabinet. The announcement, however, was strongly opposed in the British Press, as well as by the Conservative and Liberal parties, and the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, backtracked on giving any assurance on the grant of Dominion Status when asked by the Indian leaders. Frustrated by the vacillation of the British government, the INC, at the session held at Lahore in December 1929, declared that the party was now committed to full “Swaraj” i.e., complete independence, thus discarding the earlier demand for Dominion Status within the British Empire. (It must be remembered that the Gadar Party, with commendable foresight, had called for complete independence as early as 1913.) In a follow-up move, the INC celebrated 26 January 1930 as “Purna Swaraj” day or “Independence Day”, and the AICC authorised Gandhi to begin the civil disobedience movement.
Gandhi launched the campaign by targeting the inequitable salt laws that gave the government a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, and the levy of an iniquitous tax on its sale. The momentous Salt March from the Sabarmati ashram at Ahmedabad to Dandi on the coast, a distance of three hundred kilometres, began on 12 March and reached the sea at Dandi on 5 April. There, Gandhi broke the law by making salt from sea water. The initial contingent of seventy-nine men (the figure varies between seventy-eight and eighty)] that began the march with Gandhi stretched to a procession two miles long as it wound its way through the hinterland of Gujarat. The Salt Satyagraha was a tremendous success across the country and as historian R.C. Majumdar says, “The plan was a grand conception and it was superbly executed with consummate skill.”5 The government was clearly rattled by the scale and intensity of the movement and came down upon it with brutal violence. Numerous leaders, encompassing almost the entire leadership of the INC such as Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajagopalachari, and Madan Mohan Malaviya as well as Gandhi’s son Devdas, were arrested. Gandhi was detained last on 4 May and held without trial at Yerwada prison in Poona on a charge of being “a menace to public order”.6 More than sixty thousand were arrested during the protests, which, in some places, turned violent. The viciousness of the police on the unarmed protestors made international news and a particularly poignant report was filed by Webb Miller of the United Press on the raid on the salt depot at Dharasana on 21 May 1930 which was led by Sarojini Naidu in view of the Mahatma’s incarceration.7
