The modest statue in Gandhi Square captures a serious young man in a flowing gown, clutching a set of books, striding out from his law chambers in Government Square. His wry expression hints at the humour and humanity that was part of his future greatness. My visitors from Bombay are a little startled by this legal yuppie from the early twentieth century. ‘We do not know Gandhi like this,” says Sarah, one of a group of information technology specialists. The tiny bald man, simply clad in cloth, sitting at a spinning wheel seems a far cry from our South African Gandhi.
I recently discovered an extraordinary intersection of the lives of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian poet, feminist and nationalist leader, Sarojini Naidu, known as Bharta Kokila (Nightingale of India). This long association adds a fresh dimension to our understanding of the South African and Indian struggles for independence and freedom. They met at the Criterion Hotel in London in 1914. Gandhi was on his way back to India from South Africa, his law practice superceded by his campaign of satyagraha or passive resistance. In Natal, the Transvaal and in the Old Fort Prison, as his followers were arrested in their hundreds for defying discriminatory laws, Gandhi saw the reality of a movement that was to transform India and inspire South Africans such as Nelson Mandela.
Sarojini Chattopadhyays, a child genius, entered Madras University at the age of 12. Soon afterwards, she was sent to study in England by an enlightened, but concerned parent, who was afraid she would marry a man outside her caste, Doctor Govinddrajulu Naidu. Here she found a sponsor for her poetry and published in a set of collections including The Golden Threshold (1905). In these poems, she expressed both her private passions and her concerns for the Indian independence, particularly the role of women. She also married Doctor Naidu as soon as she returned to India and had four children.
Her marriage and experience outside India inspired her to reject any forms of discrimination. The male-dominated Indian Congress Party, dedicated to ending British rule in India, had to forge an Indian identity out of the simmering tensions of Hindu and Muslim, the caste system and the subordination of women. As an office bearer in the Congress, Naidu’s insistence on an all- embracing Indian citizenship and universal suffrage, including women, gave them the push they needed.
Gandhi supported her whole- heartedly. He led her and thousands of ordinary Indians, in the satyagraha campaigns against British rule, particularly in the Salt March of 1930/1, on the west coast of India, where they collected salt. This huge movement, which cut across the old divisions, exposed the brutality of the Raj, who, in this case forbade the Indians to collect or sell the vital mineral. Both Gandhi and Naidu were arrested and spent time in prison. She nursed him when he began ‘a fast unto death” in late 1932.
A quaint entry into the South African-Indian who’s who of 1946 notes that ‘Madame Sarojini Naidu” visited South Africa in 1924 and 1932. She was President of the South African Indian Congress from 1925 to 1930. Her hobbies were ‘motoring and gardening”. At a reception in Durban in 1924, her South African host mispronounced the phrase ‘Nightingale of India” as ‘the naughty girl of India”. That tickled her, for she shared a keen sense of humour with her ‘father” Gandhi, whom she addressed in correspondence as ‘Mystic Spinner” or ‘Little Man”. He replied, ‘Lovingly yours, Matter-of-Fact [Not Mystic] Spinner”.
In July 1926 she wrote to him on a more sombre note: ‘You sit in your little room and spin: but the long, long thoughts you think as you twist the long, long thread reach out across the world and send their benediction to hungry and grieving hearts. Always on my wandering mission of peace, I feel your spirit journeys with me to the little green villages where peasants die of fevers and apathies, to the towns where the citizens die of wounds and bloodshed — You cannot escape the implications of your own gospel even though you sit apart, inaccessible, and spin! Your affectionate, weary-in-the-flesh, unwearied-in-the-spirit, Sarojini Naidu.”
After India achieved independence she became the governor of the province of Uttar Pradesh. Plagued by heart trouble for most of her adult life, she passed away on March 2 1949.
From urbane lawyer to humble leader
Mahatma Gandhi’s transformation from the urbane lawyer to humble leader, which began in South Africa, was most evident in the clothing he chose. A new permanent exhibition at Number Four Prison, at Constitution Hill (From Dandy to Dhoti), demonstrates this with a simplicity and clarity which would have pleased Bapu himself.
It occupies two rooms of what was previously the visitors’ area of the prison. The dominant colours of the exhibition — cream, ochre and black — pick up the hues of the existing brickwork and peeling plaster, which have been left as they were. The exhibition is a finely balanced conversation between text and artefact. Several portions of text and photographs have been printed on light, filmy fabrics, giving a sense of weightlessness, transparency and spirituality.
The first room provides a brief overview of Gandhi’s life, preparing the visitor to enter the second space for a more in-depth consideration at satyagraha campaigns in South Africa. Gandhi’s experiences in Number Four are the focus of the installations that suggest what the cells were like, the nature of prison work and Gandhi’s favourite books. Small banners explore the principles of satyagraha. Central in the room is the evanescent figure of Ghandi, clad first in a suit and waistcoat, later in simpler kadhi robes and, finally, cross-legged in the famous dhoti at his spinning wheel.
Constitution Hill is open weekdays 9am to 4pm, and weekends 9am to noon Tel: (011) 381 3100, Fax: (011) 381 3108 or visit www.constitutionhill.org