M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law. Charles R. DiSalvo
His faithful brother, Lakshmidas, in anticipation of Gandhi’s arrival home as the wealthy barrister, embarked upon a course of upgrading his family’s living style even before Gandhi’s return,2 a pretense Gandhi himself endorsed and furthered when he introduced European clothing and food to his family in Rajkot upon his arrival there. Surely, under these circumstances, Lakshmidas cannot be blamed for thinking that Gandhi would establish for himself and his family the comfortable life of a prestigious barrister. Gandhi, however, came back after three long and expensive years in England wholly unprepared to make a return to his family. He carried with him the title of barrister—and precious little else.
To begin with, he had no knowledge of Indian law. Despite a prolonged British effort at codification, the operation of a significant part of the legal system continued to be governed by a body of traditional Hindu and Muslim law that applied to succession, inheritance, marriage, adoption, guardianship, family relations, wills, gifts, and partition. Many practitioners would consider these basic aspects of practice, yet Gandhi had no knowledge of them.
Not only was he unacquainted with important aspects of the doctrinal side of the law, but Gandhi also had equally little knowledge of its practical side, having forgone the opportunity to apprentice. One cannot overstate the paucity of his practical knowledge. One example might suffice. The most basic written instrument in the practice of law is the complaint, the document a plaintiff files against a defendant to begin an ordinary civil suit. While Gandhi’s family expected him to start up a “swinging practice” forthwith, the fact was, as he confessed to himself, “he had not even learnt how to draft a plaint.”3
SETTING UP SHOP IN BOMBAY
Gandhi was brutally honest about his position in 1891 when he later wrote in his autobiography: “To start practice in Rajkot would have meant sure ridicule. I had hardly the knowledge of a qualified vakil4 and yet I expected to be paid ten times his fee! No client would be fool enough to engage me. And even if such a one was to be found, should I add arrogance and fraud to my ignorance, and increase the burden of debt I owed to the world?”5 Faced with these rather serious disabilities, and seeing nothing for an inexperienced barrister in Rajkot, Gandhi decided to shift operations to Bombay, where he hoped to accomplish three goals: to remedy his deficiency in Indian law, to obtain some knowledge of the workings of the Bombay High Court, and to pick up a few cases.
Gandhi’s study of Indian law proved to be the easiest of these tasks. He set about studying Mayne’s Indian Law, which he read with “deep interest.”6 He had no similar luck plowing through the Civil Procedure Code, a failure readily forgiven by anyone who has attempted to study civil procedure—the driest of subjects—as an abstract matter, as opposed to learning it in the context of simulated or actual cases. The Evidence Act, by contrast, held more of Gandhi’s interest, perhaps because he knew that one of the giants of the Indian bar, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, had memorized the act by heart.
Gandhi’s experience observing arguments before the High Court was neither productive nor uplifting. With nothing at stake for himself or for a client in the proceedings, there was little to hold his interest. Moreover, Gandhi had insufficient knowledge of the law in general or the argued cases in particular to be able to follow, much less learn from, the line of the arguments. For any neutral party observing appellate arguments, one wit has observed, the experience is about as stimulating as being a lighthouse attendant. Thus, it is not surprising that Gandhi’s main occupation while at the High Court was to sleep, a habit shared by so many other “observers” that Gandhi actually came to think it was “fashionable to doze in the High Court.”7
Neither Gandhi’s attempt to learn Indian law nor his study of the High Court’s workings was a demanding enough activity to occupy his complete attention. Reminiscent of his experiments with top hats and French-language lessons, he used his free time to play the wealthy barrister. He hired one Ravishankar to cook for him at his residence. Gandhi quickly learned that Ravishankar knew little about cooking, and so, with the initiative that hallmarked so much of his life, he threw himself into running the kitchen along with his pupil, teaching Ravishankar something about vegetarianism along the way.
A FAILURE OF NERVE
With his days passing in such desultory fashion, it is no wonder that Gandhi leapt at the chance to represent an actual paying client in court when a defendant in a civil case, an individual by the name of Mamibai, asked Gandhi to represent her. Little did Gandhi realize how terribly unprepared he was by nature or experience to advocate a client’s cause in open court.
To be an advocate for a client in court requires a fair amount of confidence in one’s ability to engage without hesitation in the rambunctious and fractious give-and-take of the courtroom. It requires a lawyer to be a public person, one who is not afraid to stand before a judge and argue, one who is not afraid to take on opposing lawyers and parties, one who is not afraid to vigorously defend one’s position or to attack an opponent’s position—all in public. In sum, the lawyer as a public person is one who has no lack of nerve.
In the year 1891 twenty-two-year-old Mohandas K. Gandhi, barrister at law, lacked nerve. As a result, his representation of Mamibai ended in failure and embarrassment. Mamibai’s case was being processed at the lowest level of the judicial system, the equivalent of what is called small claims court in some jurisdictions.8 Because Mamibai was the defendant, the first task of Gandhi’s courtroom career was to cross-examine the witnesses for the plaintiff. As Gandhi stood up to conduct his first cross-examination as a barrister, he was gripped with fear. He became dizzy from stage fright and his head began to reel. His heart sank. Even his eyesight failed him. He could not get control of his panic. He was unable to ask a single question. He staggered to his seat and told the client’s agent that he could not go on. Then, unnerved, he stumbled out of the courtroom in disgrace.
A HISTORY OF FEAR
Gandhi’s extreme discomfort in his role as a courtroom advocate was the predictable end point for a person who only rarely was able to find his voice in public. From the time Gandhi was a high school student (and probably before), public speaking had almost always reduced him to a nervous, quivering bowl of mush. Just before Gandhi set sail for London in 1888, his high school classmates in Rajkot held a farewell celebration in his honor. In his autobiography Gandhi recalls that he had difficulty reading his prepared notes, that he was dizzy from nervousness, that he stammered and that “his whole frame shook.”9 Such a reaction should have been expected from Gandhi, inasmuch as he was an extremely shy and timid youth, avoiding not only the rigors of childhood sports but even the casual company of other children.
When Gandhi boarded the steamer SS Clyde for London, he found it impossible to speak with other passengers. His shipmate and fellow Indian the lawyer Tryambakrai Mazmudar urged him to deal with his unfamiliarity with English by conversing in English with their fellow travelers. Interestingly, Mazmudar even pointed out to Gandhi that such practice would do him good because “lawyers should have a long tongue.”10 Mazmudar put Gandhi on notice that he was entering a profession in which speech was considered a tool of the trade. Nothing, however, moved Gandhi; he abstained from social commerce.
Little changed on his arrival in England. When Gandhi secured a room with a family in West Kensington, he found that the portions of food his landlady served him were too small. But the same mouth that craved to eat could not convince itself to speak. Gandhi found himself “as shy as ever and dared not ask for more than was put before [him].”11
Gandhi’s involvement in the vegetarian movement brought him face-to-face with several opportunities for public speaking. He seems to have failed miserably at almost all of them. Indeed, Gandhi set a pattern: he would write out his remarks, practice them, arrive at the meeting, lose his nerve, and ask someone else to read his speech. For example, in a dispute within the leadership of the LVS, on whose Executive Committee he served, Gandhi was forced to take sides between its president, Arnold F. Hills, and Dr. Thomas R. Allinson, another member of the Executive Committee. Allinson had taken up the cause of birth control, leading to a motion by Hills to strip Allinson of membership in the society. Gandhi was