The twin trials
November 14, 2023
After being arrested three times in four days in November 1913, Gandhi was put on trial twice in four days. (I haven’t been able to figure out what happened to the third charge; perhaps it was dropped after the two convictions.)
The first trial took place on November 11, the day after his third arrest. He was charged with three counts of helping indentured Indians leave the province of Natal, and as was his habit, pleaded guilty to all charges. Engaging in civil disobedience against the £3 tax was a matter of honor, and Gandhi asked the magistrate to “impose the highest sentence… if he felt the circumstances in the case justified it.”
The Magistrate accepted the guilty plea, and sentenced him to a £20 fine, or three months imprisonment with hard labor on each of the three counts, such sentences to be served consecutively. Gandhi stood tall, as he had before, and announced “I elect to go to jail.” There was a crowd waiting outside the court for him, but the police took him out another way. Gandhi did get a message to them through his legal counsel: “No cessation of the strike without the repeal of the £3 tax.”
That afternoon, Gandhi sent a jubilant letter to his nephew, Maganlal Gandhi. “I have got nine months and if I get six months each at the other two places, that will make 21 months; I shall be most lucky in that case. … Today, for the first time after the commencement of the strike, I have some leisure. … Going to jail has become holidaying for us.” Like many other civil rights leaders, a jail sentence created the opportunity to get away from the day-to-day management of the struggle. Gandhi also committed to having just one meal a day until the £3 tax was repealed.
On November 14, Gandhi was put on trial again. This Magistrate was more of a stickler for the rules; he insisted actual evidence (not just a guilty plea) be produced in order to convict Gandhi. Cheerfully, Gandhi found a witness to testify against him, an indentured miner named Poldat. Poldat identified Gandhi as the leader responsible for his illegal border crossing, which he said had been done “as a protest against the £3 tax,” and that he would return to the mines when the Government agreed to repeal it. After 15 minutes of deliberation, the Magistrate sentenced Gandhi to an additional three months in jail.
Rather then let him serve his sentence among other members of the Indian community, Gandhi was transferred to Bloemfontein Jail in the capital of the Orange Free State, a province even further inside Africa, where all the other prisoners were either Europeans or natives. There, Gandhi prepared to enjoy his holiday in jail.
Have you ever enjoyed something that you weren’t intended to?