Daughter Of Midnight - The Child Bride of Gandhi. Arun Gandhi
Mehta smiled at the sight of the white flannels, but he frowned when a curious Mohan reached out to stroke the smooth glossy fur of the top hat he was wearing. The good doctor proceeded to outline some of the strange rules of European etiquette that every self-respecting young Indian in London had to learn.
“Do not touch other people’s things,” Dr. Mehta said. “Do not ask questions as we do in India on first acquaintance. Do not talk loudly. Never address people as ‘Sir’ while speaking to them, as we do in India; only servants and subordinates address their masters that way.”
Once settled in suitable lodgings in West Kensington, and enrolled for his law studies at the Inner Temple — of the four Inns of Court it was the one favoured by most Indian students — the ever-inquiring Mohan was keen to learn more about the social graces. He undertook what he later described as “the all-too-impossible task of becoming an English gentleman.” At considerable expense, he bought new clothes, including a top hat, an evening suit made in Bond Street, a morning coat, a double-breasted waistcoat and dark striped trousers, silk shirts and ties, patent leather shoes with spats, leather gloves, and a silver-mounted walking stick. He spent hours before a mirror, combing and parting his unruly hair, and teaching himself to tie a cravat. He even wrote home and asked his “good and noble-hearted brother” to send him a double gold watch-chain. Lakshimidas obliged.
Then came private instruction in ballroom dancing, violin lessons and tutoring in elocution to fit into English society.
Within a few months, however, came the sobering realisation that he was rapidly depleting funds earmarked for his legal (not his social) education. Remembering his family responsibilities, Mohan asked himself (as in the case of the Eiffel Tower) just what purpose was being served. What use would these accomplishments be back home in India? Retrenchment began. He cancelled the lessons and sold the violin he had bought; but he was too practical-minded to discard his new clothes.
He left the boarding house and moved into less costly rented rooms where he prepared his own economical meals which featured large quantities of oatmeal porridge and hot cocoa. To save money, he began walking about London. Thus began my grandfather’s enthusiasm for walking very fast — a habit which would persist for a lifetime. I still recall 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.
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