Mahatma Gandhi, page 19
‘Gandhi, if you will go to court, I shall be your witness.’
‘Oh, why should I go to court? Poor man, he did not know anything better. I have already forgiven him. Besides, I have decided: for no personal reason shall I ever take any man to court.’
‘A brave statement.’
‘But a true one,’ said Gandhiji and smiled.
Not only Mr. Baker and Mr. Coates but there were others very kind too to Mohandas. For example, F.E.T. Krause, a young lawyer that took Mohandas to his brother, A.E.J. Krause, who was the Attorney General of the Republic. With Coates and the Krauses about what ugly event could ever happen again? Even so it was in the very Krause household that the coolie barrister could not be served at the table. The coloured servants refused to serve a coolie. However, when Gandhi was explained to be a Native Chief all went well and the problem was solved once and for all.
Such the problems of a pioneer civilisation. The elder Krause gave Mohandas Gandhi a pass so that the coolie barrister could walk the sidewalks without being stopped or kicked by the police, ever again.
Meanwhile, however, the light of Christianity pursued Mohandas too. He read book after book of the Christian doctrine presenting different aspects of this great tradition. Much as he admired Jesus Christ, when it came to His being the only incarnation of God, the logic in Gandhiji asserted itself: How could God have only one son, one incarnation? Why this partiality of history? Did not each epoch present a different aspect of mankind, and just as the Gita said, did not God present himself to mankind at each epoch in terms of itself? How could a God, as seen by a certain people, at a certain time, be thus the only God? Yet there was something so utterly beautiful about Jesus, he, Gandhi, would not give it all up so easily. So he went to study circles, to church, and to conventions. In the case of one convention he had to travel with a special permit for he and his companion to travel together, and again for he and his white companion to stay in the same room in a special home. But once in the convention everybody he found was praying for his soul: May the young Hindu amidst us be saved. May Jesus show him the Way.
What was indeed so unique about Christianity that other religions did not possess and, sometimes, even in a more exalted form? And, again, why are we here and what are we about, and in the words of Sankara: Koham Kutham? Young Gandhi did not know these words, but it was the same question, it came from the same background. If there is a world, who made it? And why am I here?
And what then of Islam? Here was perhaps the most monotheistic of all religions, he felt, which not only preached brotherhood but practised it—Arab or non-Arab, white or black, it never thought in terms of a race, of a community. There was but only one God of Gods, and Mohammed the Prophet, the Elder as it were of humanity. If Christianity preached love did not Islam also preach the same love? Did not Dada Abdulla and his community show more warmth than any Christian community towards its fellow-man—in fact, did not the Muslim show more love than the Hindu? The Hindu, sunk in his philosophical pride, seemed as narrow as any, and yet with less love. Where was he to turn now?
* * *
By this time he had met every Indian in Pretoria. He had gone personally to see them, one by one, and he often called meetings to discuss social and political matters. Sometimes they met once a week, and they all spoke of their woes.
‘Do you think this will continue?’
‘It only continues because we are indifferent to it.’
‘We do not know how to read and write, Mohan Brother. If you will help us we will follow you.’
It was a big responsibility. But he was not unwilling to bear it.
God, or whatever that force was which guided man, would show him the path. First, every Indian has to live hygienically—that is, his house and the surroundings must be kept clean. Look at the way the Boer and the Englishman live. Do you suppose any Boer or Englishman—however low he might be—will tolerate the muck that we amass at our doors? And the careless way we dress? To be clean is to respect oneself. Yes, I know the story of how the Hindu, the Indian, bathes every day, etc., etc. Then why not also wear clean clothes? Besides, clean garments help you to think cleanly.
Secondly, all of you must learn the language of the rulers; the English language. To speak Tamil or Gujarati is of no use in a land where the English language prevails. How many among you would like to learn it? he asked. Three offered to learn the English language. Two Muslims and a Hindu. One, a barber, another, a merchant, a third, a freed coolie. Gandhiji went day after day to their houses to teach them English. Sometimes his pupils were busy with their trade. He would wait for them to finish their jobs. Why not, I ask you? Everybody at his job must be respected. If one man changed for the better in this universe, all men are participants in this hypostatis. No man is alone but is brother to another, in job and in worship.
Finally, and this is the most important factor, one must ever be truthful—truthful in business, truthful in human relationships, truthful to your God. For where truth is, there’s neither colour nor religious difference. All men are equal before truth. And every Indian that does not live by truth is thereby betraying his religion (be he a Muslim, Hindu or Parsi or Christian) and his country. For every Indian in Africa represents the whole of India . . . represents our beloved country. Let us know our responsibilities. Let us beware of what we say, what we do.
Sobering words, but so simple, they went into the heart of his audiences. Nobody had so far spoken to them in this manner. In fact, he had never himself spoken so clearly nor understood his own responsibility. He spoke to them as he would speak to himself. There was no pride in his education, in his being the son of a prime minister, nor in his already acquired position among the whites. He spoke naturally as one of the Indians here for he could easily be one of them. There was something happening to the Indian community.
The ideas caught fire. The first issue taken up was the question of railway travel—could the Indian travel in all the classes or could he not? Mohandas Gandhi studied all the regulations. Nowhere was it specifically stated the first class was reserved for the whiteman. He therefore wrote to the directors of the railways. An assurance came that indeed as there was no such law regarding first and second class travel by Indians, any Indian who was ‘properly dressed’ could travel any class he liked. It was a first but a symptomatic victory. It gave zest and purpose to the Indian community. They were not going to be there just to fight for money—they were going to fight for their rights as well. From Pretoria the news travelled to Durban. There was strength and victory in the air. An Indian merchant, Tyeb Mohammed, was ejected from a second class compartment between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. He appealed to the courts for redress. The white man had threatened the Indian, he wrote, to ‘knock the hell out’ of ‘the stinking coolie’. The witness, a railway official, denied having heard any such thing. But the magistrate differed. He condemned the Natal Government Railway authorities for such bad behaviour of one of their own officials. It was a decisive event. It broke the white magic circle. Indians could still be free.
‘The verdict,’ wrote the Natal Mercury, a white paper, ‘may not be a popular one—but we cannot but admit that it is a fair verdict. Our merchants do business with the Arabs and mingle with them at public sales and there ought not to be any reasonable objection to travel with them provided they conform to the regulations. Very many of the lower classes who travel on the Home Railways are infinitely more objectionable from the mere point of cleanliness to the better class Indian merchants of Natal.’ There was a touch of truth in this. Facts rubbed against facts, and the community was suddenly on the verge of discovery. The world could and would still be different.
* * *
Food is Brahman, food is the Absolute, our ancestors have declared. The essence of food is vitality, the essence of vitality life, and the essence of life is Consciousness—so indeed essence flows back into essence, through essence—and therefore is Brahman itself. Thus he who knows food knows Brahman. So said the commentators. Let us then cultivate the right foods. For from right foods you get right thoughts, and also from no food you get into the state of naught-thought where the Absolute shines in its own splendour, for the self-mirroring mind is it. Hence fast, hence be perceptive in foods. The onion or the cucumber may give you passion or flatulence according to your temperament, so be of care. The essential foods, the foods of the wise, are fruits and light vegetables, fine cooked rice or wheat, and sometimes milk. A wise man can live on these for a hundred years.
Gandhiji knew all this from his mother. But he came to it from another end. He came to it through the London Vegetarian Society. Mr. Hills of the London Vegetarian Society had worked out a perfect system of dietetics—he called it the vital foods. It was to consist of wheat (or grains) and pulses uncooked because it kept the sun’s rays intact. And also nuts and fruits and sultanas. Gandhiji was charmed by the idea—for it meant neither cooking nor washing dishes nor being unsure whether the landlady’s kitchen be clean or somebody might have, by mistake, put some meat sauce into your soup. This does happen, you know, and not always pleasant for the vegetarian when he discovers it. Whereas with the vital foods no such problem arises—and also you can dispense with your servant. Besides, these foods are so refreshing. Hence let me try vital foods. Gandhiji had decided on this already in Bombay and had tried hard to teach his servant this new science of pure foods—but that brahmin servant was a dunce and was, moreover, very unclean. He understood nothing of the pure foods or of a clean kitchen, and so Gandhiji had given up his scheme of dietetic regeneration.
But now here in South Africa there was plenty of everything—of time, of pure vegetables, and a new and maturer temper for experiments.
‘August 23rd: Feeling hungry, had some peas last evening,’ so he wrote in his diary. ‘Owing to that I did not sleep well, and woke up with a bad taste in the mouth in the morning. Had the same breakfast and dinner as yesterday. Though the day was very dull and it rained a little, I had no headache or cold. Had tea with Baker. This did not agree at all. Felt pains in the stomach.
‘August 24th: In the morning woke up uneasy with a heavy stomach. Had the same breakfast except that one spoonful of peas was reduced to half. The usual dinner. Did not feel well. Had feeling of indigestion the whole day.
‘August 25th: Had no appetite for dinner . . . There were undercooked peas for dinner yesterday . . . Got headache in the latter part of the day. Took some quinine after dinner.
‘August 26th: The mouth did not taste well throughout the day . . . Had the usual dinner. At 7 p.m. had a cup of cocoa. I feel hungry (8 a.m.) and yet no desire to eat. The vital food does not seem to agree well.
‘August 29th: Woke up well in the morning. For breakfast had one and half teaspoonfuls of wheat, two of sultanas, one orange, and twenty nuts. For dinner had three tablespoons of wheat, two of currants, and twenty nuts and two oranges. In the evening had rice, vermicelli and potatoes at Tyeb’s. Felt weak towards evening.
‘August 31st: Felt extremely weak throughout the day. I can take the walks with much difficulty. The teeth, too, are getting weaker, the mouth too sweet.
‘September 1st: Feel very weak. Teeth are aching. The experiment must be left off. Had tea with Baker as it was his birthday. Felt better after tea.
‘September 2nd: Woke up fresh in the morning (the effect of last evening’s tea). Had the old food (porridge, bread, butter, jam and cocoa). Felt ever so much better.’
Then he came to the conclusion. ‘Vital food may have its great possibilities in store, but it will surely not make our perishable bodies immortal . . . the vital food will not, cannot, as such minister to the wants of the soul. And if the highest aim, indeed the only aim, of this life be to know the soul, then, it is humbly submitted, anything that takes away from our opportunities of knowing the soul, and therefore also playing with vital food and other such experiments, is playing away to that extent, the only desirable aim in life . . . What a sacrifice of time and trouble . . . which falls short of the highest. Life seems too short for these things.’
His spiritual dilemma was exhausting. Christianity was of course beautiful, touching, and all-embracing, but it could not be his. Hinduism with all its extravagances, corruptions, and intellectualisations, had in it a kernel of something shining, something so exalting, and yet it could not be for all. And there was Islam too—and most of the Indian merchants in South Africa were Muslims—which with its creed of universal brotherhood, charity, and frugality, was an upright and a clear statement of God. What then was the solution? How could he, a Hindu by instinct, join with all in the worship of the One? Here a book came to him which was to have perhaps a permanent effect on his passion for religious syncretism. The book was called The Perfect Way, written in an impassioned and dramatic style by a ‘mystic’ who’d had the revelation of the unity of all religions, especially of the Indian and Christian, the Islamic thrown in with imaginative precision. For, said the author, Mrs. Anna Kingsford, there’s no doubt Truth or Knowledge was given as a ‘revelation’ once and once for all. In the West it was called Gnosis, which for reasons of politics the Church had put aside and had forgotten. All religions contained the Truth and in differing degrees, but Buddhism and Christianity were, so to say, supreme in the divine scheme of things. The Buddha, and with him goes Pythagoras (the two were, remember, contemporaries), were none else than what the Bible calls Abraham and Elias. The Buddha was the forerunner of the Christ, he the true John, the Baptist. Buddhism and Christianity are so interrelated that one could boldly say where one is philosophy and the other is religion, where one is circumference the other is within, and where one represents man, the other woman. ‘But for Buddha,’ declared Anna Kingsford, ‘Jesus would not have been . . . wherefore no man can be properly a Christian who is not also and first a Buddhist.’ Hence the future of the world and its redemption depends on ‘the relation between the two peoples through whom on the physical plane this union must be effected. Viewed from this aspect, the connection subsisting between England and India rises from the political to the spiritual. And thus the marriage of dark and fair, Man and Woman, of Humanity’ which in due time will constitute one Man made in the image of God . . . And so shall the ‘lightning from the East’ after ‘illuminating the West’ be reflected back purified and enhanced ‘a light to lighten all nations and to be the glory of spiritual Israel’. 7
Therefore if you said Brahma instead of Abraham (‘for they are one and the same word, and denote one and the same doctrine’), the prophesy of Genesis XV.16 will be fulfilled. ‘Many shall come from the East and the West and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.’
Anna Kingford was not only mystical, she believed herself scientific. She had studied medicine in Paris and she did not want to listen to outworn and superstitious concepts. She wanted the mighty aid of reason and of science to fulfil her mission. And so she used not only mystical and philosophical language but also the scientific. The soul, for example, ‘may be likened to the nucleus of a cell. The protoplasmic medium which is found within the capsular envelope and in which the nucleus floats may be likened to the astral fluid, whether interplanetary or intercellular . . . All the elements of the cell, however—the nucleus included—are material, whereas Matter itself is a mode of Substance of which the nature is spiritual.’
And Substance is God.
But for those who’d proclaim the difference between the Hindu and the Christian traditions, she would give every satisfaction by quoting from the scriptures and from the tradition itself. Take the example of the transmigration of souls. This is supposed to divide the Hindu and the Christian religions. Actually it should not, for both thought alike—metapsychosis was also believed true by the early Christians. The early Christians also spoke of the evolution of man from tree to animal and from animal to man. The plan of God could be viewed as a triangle. God came down to earth to manifest Himself (one side of the triangle) and became Matter (the base of the triangle). And now Matter is going upwards to be united in God (the third side of the triangle). This is the pure Hermetic tradition, and known through the Mysteries of Egypt and of Greece. Thus also the feminine and the masculine aspect of the divine. ‘As living Substance God is one. As Life and Substance God is Twain. He is the Life and She is the Substance.’ She appears as daughter, Mother or Spouse. And she will make him, in the highest sense, Man. Thus the Immaculate Conception is the ‘foundation of all Mysteries, so the Assumption is the crown’. This explains the statement of Jesus to Nicodemus that he, Jesus, was the Son of Man. The Buddha completed the regeneration of the Mind and prepared ‘for the grace which comes by Jesus’. And therefore the hope of humanity is the spiritual union between the two.
And it must have gladdened Gandhi’s heart that Islam too was a part of this dream, according to Anna Kingsford. ‘Between the two hemispheres stand the domain and faith of Islam, not to divide but as umbilical card to unite them.’
Anna Kingsford died in the year 1888.
Dr. Maitland continued the work of Anna Kingsford—he now made magnanimous marriage between vital foods, Christianity, and eternity. After all, God was like the Sun, he argued—the Sun radiated his heat and warmth through air and mist to the awaiting earth, giving pulses and fruits and nuts and sugar cane the vitality that’s his own. The sun that wheels round the earth—or rather the earth that circles around the sun—is God’s work and we must eat the sun’s food, solarised food; the meat of God for our soul. Spirit and matter have not to be separated. Transcended the spirit must rise to the eternal. Therefore the Christians who declare Christianity is the only way know neither the history of the great religion nor its mystery. For Christ is the Truth. Every religion has the Truth in it. Maybe, and who could gainsay it, Christianity might possibly be the most recent and the most pure manifestation of the Divine Principle. But the pagans and the Orientals too had their great religions. We have no quarrel with them—after all, we cannot quarrel with God and his manifestations. There’s a mystical marriage that takes place in the soul, it’s that the centre and the end of spiritual life. The eternal man and woman are united in oneself.
