Daughter Of Midnight - The Child Bride of Gandhi. Arun Gandhi

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СКАЧАТЬ how I had to scurry to keep up with him when I visited India as a boy. As a self-imposed curb against any further splurging, he kept scrupulous accounts. He took time each night to list every farthing spent during the day, even minuscule expenditures for postage stamps, shoelaces, and the like. Meticulous bookkeeping also became habitual. In later years my grandfather handled public funds with such accuracy and economy that accounts of the movements he led often showed a surplus balance. Finally, he turned his full attention to serious education.

      In Mohan’s case, such education continued to include a good deal more than what he was learning in his law studies at the Inner Temple. To improve his English, he spent an hour each day reading the Times and the Daily Telegraph. Still mindful of his dismissal by Mr. Lely, the British resident in Porbandar, for lack of a college diploma, Mohan enrolled in private tutorial classes where he learned French and Latin and gained enough knowledge of the sciences to earn his bachelor’s degree by passing the difficult London Matriculation Examination (on his second try) in June of 1890. All the while, he was keeping up with the regular curriculum of study at the Inner Temple, where he used his newly-acquired skills in languages to read the entire book on Roman Law in Latin. Few students were so conscientious. Most relied entirely on “cramming” notes to prepare for final examinations, a practice Mohan considered fraudulent. Besides, he had invested good money in the textbook.

      As if all this were not enough, Mohandas was also getting what may have been, for him, the most consequential kind of education England then had to offer. It was an education both religious and political in nature, one that allowed him to measure values of his own ancient Eastern culture against the most socially-advanced Western thought.

      It began serendipitously four or five months after he arrived in England, when he was struggling hard to keep his sworn vow to avoid meat. One day, while walking along Farringdon Street not far from the Inner Temple, a somewhat homesick and very hungry Mohandas stumbled upon one of the few vegetarian restaurants then in existence in central London, and certainly the first he had seen. There he enjoyed his first satisfying meal since leaving India. And there he made his first contact with members of the Vegetarian Society, a small band of English freethinkers bent on re-evaluating all the settled norms of Victorian society — like the Jains or Vaishnavas of India, these men and women were opposed to the killing of animals for food. As opposed, indeed, as Putliba or Kasturbai.

      That restaurant, The Central, soon became Mohandas’ regular eating place — his club, his bookstore. The people he met there were a part of the worldwide group of reformers who extolled the economic as well as the health benefits of vegetarianism, and declared it to be the only humane and morally defensible diet for all of humankind. He became a true convert; or, as he later described it, a “vegetarian by choice.” He attended their conferences, wrote for their publications (an article about India appearing in The Vegetarian was his first published writing), and was elected to their executive committee, even though he still became nervous and tongue-tied whenever he rose to speak in meetings.

The Theosophists* in their assessment of the world’s religions, were especially drawn to Hinduism. Two theosophist vegetarians, surprised at Mohandas’ admission that he had never read the Bhagavad Gita either in the original Sanskrit or in a Gujarati translation, asked him to join them in studying The Song Celestial, an English translation of the classic Hindu epic by Sir Edwin Arnold who was already known to Mohandas as a distinguished fellow member of the Vegetarian Society. This introduction to one of the great sacred scriptures of his own religion moved Mohandas deeply.

      His religious curiosity aroused, Mohandas read further. He learned about the life of the Prophet Mohammed, spiritual hero to millions of his Muslim countrymen. What impressed Mohandas, even more than the stories of the Prophet’s bravery, were the accounts of his simplicity, his austerity — how Prophet Mohammed fasted, mended his own shoes, patched his own cloak. During this same period, at the urging of a Christian vegetarian, Mohandas was reading the Bible for the first time. He plodded through the Old Testament, disliking especially the Book of Numbers. But the New Testament made a lasting impression on him — especially the “Sermon on the Mount” in which he heard an echo of the Hindu teaching on the virtues of renunciation. Its message of turning the other cheek, not resisting evil, also called to mind some familiar lines of Gujarati poetry he had memorised as a child, an oft-quoted poem which concluded:

      …the truly noble know all men as one,

      And return with gladness good for evil done.

      Mohandas Gandhi, a young man in pursuit of his destiny, seemed to be rediscovering India in England.

      India, of course, and those who were waiting for him there, had never been far from his thoughts. Awareness of his family was a constant burden. Mohandas wondered if he would be able to fulfill all their expectations when he returned home.

* A group founded in 1875, derived from the beliefs of Brahmanism and Buddhism, but which denied the existence of personal gods.

       6

      Earlier that year, in Rajkot, the Gandhi family had faced a tragedy and made a decision.

      Suddenly, unexpectedly, in the spring of 1891, Putliba Gandhi became ill. Within days, she was dead. The question arose: should Mohandas be told? Mohandas was devoted to Putliba, closer to her than any of her other children. Would any good be served by notifying him of her death while he was in the midst of preparing for his final law examinations? It seemed best to wait. Time enough to give Mohandas the painful news after he returned to India.

      Kasturbai agreed with the decision made by the family. She had been longing for the moment she would see her husband again, dreaming of the day little Harilal could be with the father he had never had a chance to know. But now, remembering how stricken Mohandas had been at the time of his father’s death, she worried about his reaction to his mother’s death and to receiving the news so abruptly at the moment of his homecoming.

      Kasturbai herself knew how irreplaceable Putliba’s love and guidance was. Under her mother-in-law’s wing she had felt secure and protected, confident and capable. Without Putliba she was bereft, overwhelmed by sorrow and uncertainty. Wouldn’t Mohandas feel the same? Everyone was expecting so much of him. But would he be able, after so sad a homecoming, to take hold and take charge of a family that was rapidly crumbling?

      All Kasturbai could do was to wait patiently for his return. Wait and hope, and prepare to welcome him back into the household in Rajkot.

      The family was aware that highly educated young men returning from England with Western mannerisms and dress usually wanted to make changes in the ancient Indian atmosphere of their own households. Anticipating this, Lakshimidas had instructed his wife Nandkunwarben to prepare for Mohandas’ return by purchasing English crockery and fine chinaware to replace the brass thalis (plates) and vadkas (bowls), on which the family meals were customarily served. He also bought chairs so they could all eat at a table, instead of sitting on floors, Indian fashion.

      When the S.S. Assam steamed into Bombay’s magnificent deepwater harbour in mid-August, Lakshimidas was waiting on the dock at Ballard Pier. He had travelled alone from Rajkot to meet Mohandas, but as he watched the disembarking passengers, he almost failed to recognise his young, westernised brother in his English outfit. His joy at seeing Mohandas, his pride in his brother’s newly acquired prestige as a barrister was tinged with a slight apprehension.

      “Will he ever be able to fit into our eastern way of life?” Lakshimidas asked himself as he moved forward to greet Mohandas.

      “How СКАЧАТЬ