A sentence completed
December 22, 2023
I’ve written numerous posts about Gandhi’s bouts of imprisonment, but on December 22, 1913, he waited at the gates of Maritzburg prison in Natal, South Africa, for someone else to be released after completing their sentence—his wife, Kasturba.
Earlier that year, South African courts had invalidated all of the Indian marriages of Hindus, Muslims, and Zoroastrians, because their religions permitted polyamorous marriages. There were cascading legal ramifications for non-Christian marriages; wives were not permitted to immigrate to join their husbands, inheritances were thrown into disarray, and spouses could now be forced to testify against each other.
Gandhi published an account of his conversation with Kasturba on the matter:
When Mrs. Gandhi understood the marriage difficulty, she was incensed and said… “Then I am not your wife according to the laws of this country.” Mr. Gandhi replied that that was so and added that their children were not their heirs. … “Could I not, then,” [she said,] “join the struggle and be imprisoned myself?”
This was revolutionary. The Gandhis were becoming a jail-going family; her husband and two older sons were seasoned veterans, having served a dozen sentences between them. On September 15, 1913, Kasturba Gandhi set out with their third son, 15-year-old Ramdas, and 14 other men and women to illegally cross the border between the provinces of Natal and Transvaal. They succeeded in being the first women satyagrahis arrested.
Gandhi worried that his wife and teenage son would be given special treatment, so the entire group refused to identify themselves until their guilty pleas were accepted. On September 23, they were sentenced to three months imprisonment at hard labor. The women were housed with the native Africans and given sewing to do, and also forced to wash laundry in the courtyard of the prison. Young Ramdas was sent to work in the orchard.
Like her husband, Kasturba lived on a frutarian diet. Gandhi sent food for her to their friend, Hermann Kallenbach, with instructions that after she was arrested, he get permission to provide it to her. That permission was denied. The jail food the women received, “especially that served to vegetarians, was often rancid or spoiled.”1 When one women offered to pay for fresh food to be sent in, she was refused, and reminded that this was no hotel they were visiting. They could only suffer through it.
The community turned out to celebrate the satyagrahis on December 22, but incarceration had taken a toll. When Mrs. Gandhi was presented to the crowd, some mistook the woman for Gandhi’s mother. Starving and worn down, they had aged dramatically. A few months later, Kasturba would fall terribly ill.
Kasturba Gandhi would eventually be incarcerated four more times in India, but not for another twenty years. It is understandable if it was not an experience she was anxious to repeat.
Does your family have any traditions that you participate in?
Kasturba: A Life (Arun Gandhi, 2000) p. 181