Mahatma Gandhi and the World VII-A

MODERN DESCRIPTIONS  OF PRETORIA CENTRAL PRISON 

In the previous note, we have described the extremely rough treatment that Gandhiji was subjected to during his incarceration in a solitary cell of Pretoria Central Prison from March 3 to May 25, 1909. The prison was the official site for capital punishment in South Africa. The maximum-security section of the prison where Gandhiji was held is called the C Max today. The Wikipedia page on Pretoria Central Prison describes the C-Max thus: 

 

 “C Max is the maximum security division of the prison. It is run by the South African Department of Correctional Services. The division is specifically designed for violent and disruptive prisoners who have been classified as dangerous in terms of the South African Criminal Procedure Act. Prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours of each day out and specialized equipment, such as electric shields, are used by the prison guards. “

 

The readers may also look at a travellers account of parts of the Pretoria Central Prison which has been turned into a museum here. This includes a surreptitiously clicked picture of C Max, reproduced below. These descriptions should disabuse social-media commentators who claim that jail-going of Gandhiji and other satyagrahis was some silly joke.

Covert shot of the castle-like maximum security building at Kgosi Mampuru. Photo: Ted Botha, https://2summers.net/2017/08/02/gauteng52-week-31-pretorias-prison-museum/

Mahatma Gandhi and the World VII

GANDHIJI’S TAPAS REACHES A CRESCENDO: THE THIRD IMPRISONMENT 

Volksrust and Pretoria, February 25 to May 24, 1909

 

 

 

After release from his second imprisonment in December 1908, Gandhiji raised the Satyagraha to a higher pitch and the government responded with a higher level of oppression. To sustain the Satyagraha in those difficult circumstances, Gandhiji once again courted arrest by crossing the Natal-Transvaal border on February 25, 1909. He was tried the same day and sentenced to three months with hard labour. This third term of Gandhiji in the prisons of South Africa was the most trying, during which he was subjected to unimaginably severe physical suffering and humiliation. 

 

After the sentencing, Gandhiji was taken to Volksrust prison, where his son, Harilal Gandhi and several other Satyagrahis already lodged. Within a week, he was ordered to be removed to Pretoria. Gandhiji was naturally unhappy leaving the company of his fellow prisoners: “Which Satyagrahi would like to leave a place where conditions were so happy and where the largest number of Indians were congregated?”

 

 

The journey to Pretoria in a cold rainy night

 

On the rainy evening of March 2, 1909, Gandhiji was walked to Volksrust station, accompanied by a warder and carrying his kit on his head. Gandhiji describes the nearly 400-kilometres long train journey to Pretoria in a third-class compartment thus: “The warder and I found ourselves huddled up in a compartment. It was cold, and it rained the whole night. I had my overcoat with me, which I was allowed to put on. I felt a little better after that. I had been given bread and cheese to eat on the way. I did not touch them, since I had had my meal before starting. They were consumed by the warder.” 

 

 

Confined in an isolation cell at Pretoria jail

 

On reaching Pretoria on March 3, Gandhiji, after the initial formalities, was removed to a small cell where he was to spend the rest of his term: “It measured, I believe, ten feet long and seven broad. The floor was covered with black pitch. The warders were constantly engaged in keeping it shining. For ventilation, it had a very small glass window, with iron bars. It was provided with an electric light for keeping a watch on the prisoner during the night. The light is not meant for the prisoner’s use, for it is not powerful enough to read by.” 

 

 

Bathing and defecating under watch 

 

The bathing spot was about 125 feet from the cell. Gandhiji was expected to run naked up to there, but the warder kindly granted his request to undress in the bathing area. He was watched over while defecating. Gandhiji describes the process almost cheerfully, seemingly making fun of his sluggish bowel movement: “Even when I went for evacuation, a warder stood by to keep watch. If by chance he did not know me, he would shout: ‘Sam, come out now.’ But Sam had the bad habit of taking a long time for evacuation; how could he get out so soon, and if he did, how would he feel easy in bowels afterwards? Sometimes a [white] warder, and sometimes a Kaffir, would thus stand by, and keep peeping over or shouting to the refrain of ‘Get up’, ‘Get up’.”

 

 

Shining of floors and mending of blankets

 

From the day after his arrival in Pretoria jail, Gandhiji was given the task of polishing the floors and doors of his cell and the corridor. The floors were covered with black pitch; the doors were made of varnished iron. After ten days of the polishing of floors and doors, Gandhiji was given the task of mending worn-out blankets.  “This was rather intricate work. It required me to bend down the whole day towards the floor, and that, too, while sitting in the cell. This used to give me back-ache by evening, and my eyes also began to feel the strain. “Gandhiji asked to be allowed to do this work in the open air. The request was denied. He asked for a small bench to sit on while working; that request was also denied with a flat ‘No’. Later, when his health began to deteriorate, he was allowed the luxury of doing the mending in open air outside his cell.  

 

 

Forbidden communication with Kasturba

 

Kasturba, who had fallen gravely ill during Gandhiji’s second imprisonment, remained on the sickbed. She was operated upon on January 10, 1909, seven weeks before his third imprisonment. On the first day of his arrival at Pretoria jail, he asked the Deputy- Governor for permission to write to his wife. The permission was granted; but because he wrote the letter in Gujarati, it was returned to him with the remark that he must write in English. Gandhiiji refused to communicate with his wife in English. Instead, he wrote to his colleague West, saying that: “The authorities will not grant permission for me to write to Mrs. Gandhi in Gujarati. …I do not know whether wife would like me to write in English. …Please tell Mrs. G[andhi] that I am all right. …” 

 

 

Surviving on one meal a day

 

Since Gandhiji was in solitary confinement, he was expected to eat his meals “in the cell standing, with the doors shut “. Describing the diet offered to him, Gandhiji says, “The food was in keeping with the conditions described above. Mealie pap in the morning, mealie pap with potatoes and carrots thrice a week for the midday meal, beans on other three days and rice without ghee for the evening meal. “On a couple of days some ghee was allowed with the midday meal. Gandhiji refused to eat rice without ghee, and most of the other items were uneatable. Gandhiji had to survive practically on one meal a day: “Sometimes I would take four or five spoonfuls of mealie pap in the morning. But on the whole, I spent one and a half months on one meal of beans only at midday.” 

 

 

Further brutality: handcuffed in public 

 

There was another brutality that was inflicted upon Gandhiji during his third imprisonment. On the fourth day after his arrival at Pretoria, he was summoned as a witness in the case of a Satyagrahi woman. For this appearance, he was made to walk to the court through the streets of Pretoria in handcuffs. Describing this new brutality, Gandhiji says: “I was handcuffed on the occasion. Moreover, the warder locked up the handcuffs rather tight. I think he did this unintentionally. The Chief Warder saw this. I had obtained his permission to carry a book with me to read [on the way]. Thinking probably that I felt ashamed of the handcuffs, he asked me to hold the book with both hands, so that the handcuffs might not be seen. I was rather amused at this. To me the handcuffs were a matter of honour.” Gandhiji was handcuffed also on the way back, but then he was transported in a truck. 

 

Gandhiji was taken to court in handcuffs on another occasion also, but was spared walking through the streets on foot. The indignity and brutality involved in making Gandhiji walk through the streets of Pretoria in handcuffs caused much resentment. The Rev. J. J. Doke, who was to become the first biographer of Gandhiji, wrote about the incident in The Rand Daily Mail. Several other comments appeared in the press. Questions were asked about it in the House of Commons to which Colonel Seeley gave the stock reply that: “There has been no suggestion that Mr. Gandhi has been subjected to any special disability. Mr. Gandhi has been treated in every respect as any other prisoner would have been treated… “The Secretary of State for the Colonies addressed a routine enquiry to the Colonial Government on this subject, to which the Prime Minister, Louis Botha, replied that “the statement that M. K. Gandhi was marched handcuffed from the Pretoria Gaol to the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court is correct. It is the universal rule to handcuff prisoners when so marched and they are so marched when the prison van is not available…”

 

 

Why the brutality?

 

The intensity of the brutality and indignity that Gandhiji was subjected to during his third period of incarceration raises the question as to why and at whose orders was it perpetrated. Who ordered the solitary confinement, close observation, starvation diet, denial of access to fresh air, handcuffing and so on? 

 

Gandhiji felt that it was the doing of General Smuts. When Mr. Lichtenstein, a sympathetic white lawyer from Pretoria, came to see him with special permission, Gandhiji told him, “Without going into details, I shall only say that I am being subjected to brutal treatment. General Smuts wants to bend me, but I am not likely to succumb. I am prepared to suffer everything. My mind is at peace… He repeated this when the director of prisons visited him a few days later.  

 

Gandhiji, of course, could not be sure about the involvement of Smuts. He publicly withdrew the aspersion in a Letter to the Press he issued two days after his release from the prison: “The opinion I expressed to Mr. Lichtenstein about General Smuts underwent a change upon further observation, and I felt that he had directly nothing to do with the treatment described above…”

 

 

The great suffering, bordering on torture, that Gandhiji was put through during his third imprisonment was meant to bend and break him. Instead, he came out stronger. His anchorage in dharma became deeper. His great spiritual strength began to shine through. 

 

It is after this passage through fire that he began to be seen as a Mahatma, a high spiritual personage, and his fame began to spread through the world. We narrate that story in subsequent notes. Here let us only notice that that Gandhiji and his Satyagraha were already known enough for his treatment in prison to be discussed in the House of Commons and for Prime Minister Botha being constrained to formally respond to the criticism. This was more than seven decades before the film of 1982 which is now being credited for his fame.

 

Based on our book “Making of a Hindu Patriot”.

MAHATMA GANDHI AND THE WORLD VI

GANDHIJI’S TAPAS INTESIFIES: THE SECOND IMPRISONMENT 

October 14 to December 12, 1908, Volksrust and Johannesburg

 

The provisional settlement that Gandhiji and General Smuts had arrived at the end of his first imprisonment on January 30, 1908 did not last, because the latter reneged on his word. The Satyagraha was resumed from early July. In August, Gandhiji decided to intensify the stir by calling for a mass meeting to publicly burn the registration certificates and trading licenses that the Indians had obtained by complying with the terms of the provisional settlement. On August 16, nearly two thousand certificates and licenses were burnt. More certificates were burnt in another mass meeting held a week later on August 23. These ceremonial public burnings of the official passes drew much attention and set the stage for excessively coercive actions by the government. Many leaders of the Satyagraha movement were arrested on August 26. Gandhiji was arrested a few weeks later, on October 7. He was held in custody at Volksrust for a week and, on October 14, was sentenced to two months imprisonment with hard labour. He was taken to the notorious Johannesburg Central Prison, where more than five decades later, Nelson Mandela was also imprisoned.

 

 

Hard labour: breaking stones at the public square

 

Physical suffering of Gandhiji intensified during this second imprisonment. On the day after he was sentenced, he was sent with a convict gang comprising both Indian and native African prisoners to dig up and remove stones from an agricultural showground in the Market Square of Volksrust. It was backbreaking work, and it was exacted in the most humiliating and stringent manner that the rules allowed. Describing his first day of hard labour, Gandhiji writes: 

 

“…On the first day, we had to dig up the soil in a field near the main road… We were taken there along with the Kaffirs. The soil was very hard… the labour involved was strenuous. The day was very hot. The place of work must have been at a distance of about one and a half miles from the gaol. All the Indians set to work with great energy. But only a few of them were used to hard work… As the day advanced, we found the task quite hard. The warder was rather sharp of temper. He shouted at the prisoners all the time to keep on working. The more he shouted, the more nervous the Indians became. I even saw some of them in tears. One, I noticed, had a swollen foot. …I too got exhausted. There were large blisters on the palms, the lymph oozing out of them. It was difficult to bend down, and the spade seemed to weigh a maund. For myself, I was praying to God all the time to save my honour, so that I might not break down, … Placing my trust in Him, I went on with the work. The warder started rebuking me. …”

 

The work was indeed so hard that one of the Indians, Jhinabhai Desai, had fainted by noon and all of them were in bad shape by the end of the day.

 

 

Carrying urine buckets and cleaning the lavatories

 

Besides performing nine hours of hard labour every day, the prisoners were also expected to carry and empty the urine buckets placed in the night in the wards; and, occasionally, they were ordered to clean the lavatories of warders and other officers. Gandhiji’s fellow Indians in the prison found this work humiliating. He, while cheerfully carrying out the task, also tried to convince them that no work is degrading or humiliating.

 

 

Sent to Johannesburg in prisoner’s garb

 

As Gandhiji was settling down to the routine at Volksrust and had begun to find the prison work bearable, he was ordered to be transferred to Johannesburg for a few days to give evidence in some court cases there. This became an occasion to subject him to further indignities. He was made to walk, in prison uniform carrying his kit on his head, from the prison to the railway station at Volksrust. He was similarly made to walk from the Johannesburg railway station to the prison there. 

 

 

Subjected to the fear of sodomy in the Johannesburg jail

 

Gandhiji reached Johannesburg in the evening of October 25. For that night, he was put in a cell that housed mostly native African prisoners. This was a night from hell for him. The situation was so bad that even Gandhiji, who had prepared himself to suffer the worst ignominies, turned fearful and nervous. The reason for the fear was that his cellmates seemed to be intent on immoral conduct; they came near, looked closely at him and then ‘exchanged obscene jokes, uncovering each other’s genitals’. Such, gang-intimidation is known to be a facet of prison-life in South Africa even today.

 

 

Physically lifted from the pot and thrown out of the lavatory

 

There was a further indignity heaped upon him; in this instance, however, he was able to maintain his equanimity and composure. Use of the lavatories was always an issue in the prisons. Gandhiji had a particularly horrifying experience in the Johannesburg jail. He had entered one of the lavatories in a ward and barely sat down to relieve himself, when a native African prisoner asked him to get out, abused him, lifted him in his arms and threw him out.

 

Gandhiiji was able to retain his mental composure in the face of such grave abuse and humiliation offered to his person. As he says, he was not the least frightened and walked away with a smile. But the experience was physically traumatic: he had no bowel movement for the next four days! 

 

Gandhiji was taken back to Volksrust on November 4, where he completed the rest of his term in relatively less painful and humiliating conditions.

 

 

Reactions to Gandhiji’s Treatment

 

Gandhiji by that time was already a public figure. The news of his working with a convict gang in a public square at Volksrust was carried by the Reuter’s. His walk to and from the station in prisoner’s garb with his kit on his head at Volksrust and Johannesburg was also noticed. The liberal MP from Brentford, Dr. Vickerman Rutherford, who was particularly sensitive to Indian interests, raised the issue of Gandhiji’s treatment in the House of Commons. The question was referred to the government at Transvaal, who replied that Gandhiji and other “Indian prisoners were treated with every consideration consistent with the Goal Regulations…”

 

Gandhiji endured much worse treatment during his third imprisonment which we describe in a subsequent note.

Based on our book, Making of a Hindu Patriot.

For a description of life in Number 4 Prison of Johannesburg, where Gandhiji was held during part of his second imprisonment, see,

https://www.constitutionhill.org.za/sites/site-number-four

MAHATMA GANDHI AND THE WORLD V

GANDHIJI’S TAPAS: THE FIRST IMPRISONMENT 

January 10-30, 1908 Johannesburg

 

Gandhiji suffered imprisonment thrice during 1908-1909 in the course of the Satyagraha that the Indian community had resolved to launch on 11 September 1906. Many members of the Indian community went to jail in the course of the Satyagraha. His son Harilal Gandhi was in and out of jail during this period. He was sentenced to hard labour six times between 1908-1911. Kasturba underwent rigorous imprisonment in 1913, during the later and larger Satyagraha movement of 1913-1914. 

 

This last Satyagraha led by Gandhiji in South Africa attracted the participation of a large number of indentured labourers, whom Gandhiji led on a Great March from New Castle in Natal to the Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg in the Transvaal. The marchers, whom Gandhiji referred to as the pilgrims, were arrested before they could reach their destination. In the course of this, his last Satyagraha in South Africa, Gandhiji decided to permit women to offer Satyagraha and Kasturba led the first group of women Satyagrahis. He was imprisoned a fourth time in the course of this movement.

 

Gandhiji was imprisoned for the first time on January 10, 1908. This first experience of being taken into custody was traumatic, even for him, who had been preparing himself for the eventuality for long. In his Satyagraha in South Africa, he describes the experience poignantly:

 

In the Court there were hundreds of Indians as well as brother members of the Bar in front of me. On the sentence being pronounced I was at once removed in custody and was then quite alone. The policeman asked me to sit on a bench kept there for prisoners, shut the door on me and went away. I was somewhat agitated and fell into deep thought. Home, the courts where I practised, the public meeting, —all these passed away like a dream, and I was now a prisoner. What would happen in two months? Would I have to serve the full term? If the people courted imprisonment in large numbers, as they had promised, there would be no question of serving the full sentence. But if they failed to fill the prisons, two months would be as tedious as an age. These thoughts passed through my mind in less than one hundredth of the time that it has taken me to dictate them. And they filled me with shame. How vain I was! I, who had asked the people to consider the prisons as His Majesty’s hotels, the suffering consequent upon disobeying the Black Act as perfect bliss, and the sacrifice of one’s all and of life itself in resisting it as supreme enjoyment! Where had all this knowledge vanished today? 

 

Notwithstanding the initial trauma, this first imprisonment of Gandhiji turned out to be the least painful. He, of course, had to suffer the various indignities of jail—being finger-printed; stripped and made to change into the prison garb; having ones garments marked with an ‘N’, indicating Native (because that is how the Indians were classified in the jails of the apartheid regime); being deprived of privacy even while defecating; getting one’s head cropped and moustaches removed (the prison authorities exempted Gandhiji from this, but he insisted on the rule being observed); falling in line whenever an officer of the jail appeared, which happened several times a day; and so on…

 

This was the initial phase of the Satyagrahis being sentenced to jail. The magistrates were somewhat lenient and were not generally sending the Satyagrahis to hard labour. In the jail, the Satyagrahis were allowed to stay together in the same ward. This did lead to considerable overcrowding, —towards the end of January there were more than 150 Indians in a ward meant for 51. But this also led to a certain camaraderie, which made the privations of jail-life more bearable.

 

This first imprisonment also turned out to be all too brief. He and the other Satyagrahis with him were sentenced to 2 months in prison. But on January 30, on the twenty-first day of his imprisonment, he was taken to Pretoria, where a short-lived compromise was arrived at between him and General Smuts.  He was released immediately after that and the other Satyagrahis were released the next day.

 

Soon General Smuts reneged on his part of the compromise and the Satyagraha was resumed in a more intense form in early July. That led to Gandhiji’s further and much more painful imprisonments, which we describe in our later notes.

 

Based on our book, Making of a Hindu Patriot. Picture below from Wikimedia Commons.

MAHATMA GANDHI AND THE WORLD IV

 IT WAS HIS INTENSE TAPAS THAT MADE GANDHIJI KNOWN

In the previous blogs in the context of Gandhiji and the world, we have shown that Gandhiji was known in the world by 1909. His fame has spread partly because of the novelty of the passive resistance Satyagraha campaign, deeply anchored in Dharma, that he was carrying out in South Africa since 1906. It was also because of the intense tapas, stoic acceptance of physical deprivation, that the Satyagrahis, and Gandhiji personally were going through.

 

The tapas involved deprivation of all kinds. Gandhiji adopted aparigraha, non-possession of worldly things, before beginning the Satyagraha, and had dedicated all his belongings and earnings to the community. Many of the Satyagrahis, some of whom held substantial wealth, also lost all their possessions. Their families were turned destitute and had to seek shelter and sustenance in the Phoenix Ashram or in the community. 

 

Most intense part of the tapas that Gandhiji and the Satyagrahis in South Africa went through were the jail-goings. Nowadays, there are many who ignorantly make fun of jail-going of the Satyagrahis as some weird form of relaxation. The imprisonments that Gandhiji, his family and the Satyagrahis went through in a foreign land, among unfamiliar, unknown and unsympathetic people, were anything but easy. The concept of Satyagraha at that stage was new; it was not yet widely known or accepted as a legitimate instrument of political protest. Even later, when Gandhiji’s Satyagraha campaigns in India began to draw worldwide attention, the British hardly granted any legitimacy to it and the ordinary Satyagrahis had to undergo much suffering in the Indian prisons.

 

But the suffering undergone by Indians in the South African prisons was of a different order altogether. The authorities treated those violating the law as common criminals; and after the first few months of the Satyagraha, the protesters were invariably sentenced to hard labour, not merely simple imprisonment. The lot of the Satyagrahis was in fact worse than that of common criminals; because unlike the native African prisoners, with whom they were classified, they were not used to the native diet that the authorities insisted on serving them. Gandhiji and the Indian community in prisons of South Africa had to carry out a long and difficult struggle to get a spoonful of ghee, which Gandhiji insisted was an essential part of the Indian diet, included in the prison diet of the Satyagrahis.

 

We have described Gandhiji’s experiences in the prisons of South Africa in some detail in our book The Making of a Hindu Patriot. In the subsequent notes, we shall give some glimpse of the suffering that he went through his various incarcerations.

 

It was this suffering, this tapas, which he joyfully went through and made thousands of Indians in South Africa accept willingly, that made him known in the world, already in 1909. The films and other media celebrating the man and his achievements came much later.

The image below is of Gandhiji (extreme left) with other members of the Indian community outside a jail in South Africa, probably in Johannesburg, in 1908. Wikimedia Commons.