1 twenty-three-year-old law clerk: Gandhi had already qualified as a barrister in India, but saying he came to South Africa as a law clerk accurately describes his role in the case for which he was retained, as he himself later acknowledged: “When I went to South Africa I went only as a law clerk,” he said in 1937. CWMG, vol. 60, p. 101.
2 “Just as it is a mark”: Meer, South African Gandhi, p. 121.
3 “eternal negative”: Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, p. 158.
4 The Gandhi who landed: Tinker, Ordeal of Love, p. 151.
5 “I believe in walking alone”: Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: Last Phase, vol. 1, p. 495.
6 transgressing on the pavement: If this actually happened. T. K. Mahadevan suggests that the Indian who was pushed off the footpath may have been one C. M. Pillay, who wrote a letter to a newspaper describing an incident almost exactly like the one of which Gandhi complained. Mahadevan raises the suspicion that Gandhi read the letter and simply appropriated the experience. See Mahadevan, Year of the Phoenix, p. 25.
7 However, according to the scholar: Hunt, Gandhi and the Nonconformists, p. 40.
8 “I was tremendously attracted”: From an archival interview with Millie Polak broadcast by the BBC on May 7, 2004.
9 It’s a theme Gandhi: Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment, p. 298.
10 “Agent for the Esoteric”: CWMG, vol. 1, p. 141.
11 The word “coolie,” after all: Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (London, reprint, 1985), p. 249. The Oxford English Dictionary accepts this derivation, suggesting the term may have been carried to China from Gujarat in the sixteenth century by Portuguese seamen. Another possible derivation is from the Turkish word quli, which means laborer or porter and may have found its way into Urdu. In South Africa the term had a racial tinge and was used specifically to refer to Asians, usually Indians, as noted in the OED Supplement.
12 “It is clear that Indian”: Meer, South African Gandhi, pp. 113–14.
13 “the Magna Charta”: Ibid., pp. 117–8.
14 In the many thousands: CWMG, vol. 8, p. 242.
15 At first he spoke only: Swan, Gandhi: The South African Experience, p. 51.
16 a fact of huge and obvious relevance: Bhikhu Parekh points out that it may have been easier to unite Hindus and Muslims in South Africa, for many of the traders Gandhi initially served there shared a common language and culture. See Parekh, Gandhi, p. 9.
17 When Johannesburg Muslims: CWMG, vol. 3, p. 366.
18 “We are not and ought not”: Ibid., p. 497, cited by Sanghavi, Agony of Arrival, p. 81.
19 “Here in South Africa”: CWMG, vol. 5, p. 290.
20 “The Hindu-Mahomedan problem”: Ibid., vol. 9, p. 507.
21 By sheer force of personality: Ibid., vol. 35, p. 385.
22 “I saw nothing in it”: M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 99.
23 Calling on the community: CWMG, vol. 5, p. 417.
24 “To give one’s life”: Ibid., vol. 60, p. 38.
25 Speaking for a second time: Ibid., vol. 5, p. 421.
26 close to endorsing that view: Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope, p. 268.
27 “A man who deliberately”: CWMG, vol. 5, p. 420.
28 Years later, upon learning: Ibid., vol. 12, p. 264.
29 “criminal waste of the vital fluid”: Ibid., vol. 62, p. 279.
30 A nephew suggested: M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 109.
31 “I did not suggest”: Paxton, Sonja Schlesin, p. 36.
32 “Our ambition”: Sarid and Bartolf, Hermann Kallenbach, p. 15.
33 It also doesn’t demean Doke: CWMG, vol. 9, p. 415.
34 “as naked as possible”: Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, p. 153.
35 “Mr. Gandhi’s ephemeral fame”: African Chronicle, April 16, 1913.
36 “So far as I can judge”: Nanda, Three Statesmen, p. 426.
37 Reminiscing, many years later: Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment, p. 380; see also Prabhudas Gandhi, My Childhood with Gandhiji, p. 142.
38 The indentured Indians”: Indian Opinion, Oct. 15, 1913.
39 “It was a bold, dangerous”: Indian Opinion, Oct. 22, 1913.
40 Later, back in India: Nirmal Kumar Bose, Selections from Gandhi (Ahmedabad, 1957) 2nd ed., pp. 106–7.
41 “the numberless men”: Pyarelal, Epic Fast, p. 12.
42 “I know that the only thing”: M. K. Gandhi, Young India, March 2, 1922, cited by Paul F. Power, ed., The Meanings of Gandhi (Honolulu, 1971), p. 71.
43 “The poor have no fears”: M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 287.
44 “the Natal underclasses”: Swan, Gandhi: The South African Experience, p. 242. Swan cites a letter from Gandhi to Kallenbach, dated July 13, 1913, that she located in the Sarvodaya Library at the Phoenix Settlement. The library was destroyed in the factional violence described in the author’s note at the beginning of this volume. As far as I have been able to discover, Swan’s quotation from this important letter may be all that survives from it.
45 “I believe implicitly”: Rudrangshu Mukherjee, ed., Penguin Gandhi Reader, p. 207.
46 “A Scavenger”: Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment, p. 254.
47 “The idea did occur to me”: Mahadev Desai, Diary of Mahadev Desai, p. 185.
48 most indentured laborers were low caste: Bhana, Indentured Indian Emigrants to Natal, pp. 71–83.
49 “realized my vocation”: Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 338.
50 “a sorry affair”: Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi, p. 229.
51 Indians lack a tragic sense: Naipaul, Overcrowded Barracoon, p. 75.
52 “The saint has left”: Hancock, Smuts, p. 345.
53 “that they have an instrument”: Ibid., p. 331.