The unwilling petitioner
June 23, 2024
Summer is here, and next week brings us July’s 30-day challenge. Besides the regular challenges, there’s an optional 3, 5, or 7 day fast to commemorate Gandhi’s first extended fast, and one that I’m actually looking forward to to beat the heat: cold showers. Use the link below to see the details and sign up!
As I’ve filled in more and more of the calendar with these little posts, I have more opportunities to connect the dots between them. Today brought a pleasant surprise; I discovered I’d written a piece about Gandhi’s 1909 visit to London last November; now I get to introduce the journey.
In 1909, Gandhi’s satyagraha campaign to protest the racist Asiatic Registration Act in South Africa was well underway. He finished a three month jail sentence at hard labor in May, and he was satisfied with the moral authority the Indian community was gaining through their voluntary suffering. Surely the authorities would be impressed and repeal the law!
However, not all the Indians agreed. Rather than trying to clog the jails as an appeal to conscience, they suggested appealing to a higher authority—Parliament. Gandhi graciously agreed to the proposal. Biographer James Hunt observes this concession was aimed at those “who believed he was relying too much on passive resistance.”1 Gandhi and three other men were selected for a delegation to London, although two were arrested and unable to go.
In an article published before he left, Gandhi explained to the readers of Indian Opinion that the effort was not “consistent with the principles of satyagraha. Satyagrahis must only suffer. They should depend on God alone.”2 He also expressed his hope that by the time they reached London, “quite the number” of satyagrahis would be imprisoned in jail.
On June 23, 1909, Gandhi arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, and boarded the steamer alongside Hajee Habib, a Muslim merchant. Much to his chagrin, their tickets were first-class—he would have preferred third. “First-class passengers are looked after by servants as though they were so many babies,” he complained. “I have neither the peace or freedom I enjoyed in [jail].” After 17 days, they arrived in London, where they would spend four months.
When have you made a concession to someone?
Gandhi in London (James D. Hunt, 2012) p. 102 [The fourth chapter gave me the title for this post.)
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (“Deputation”, June 19, 1906) p. 4293