It took months of negotiations and reams of correspondence to convince both Dada Abdullah and Tyeb Sheth to go to arbitration. When they did, the decision favoured Abdullah — he was awarded £37,000, almost the full amount of his claim. But Mohandas took the process one step further. He saved Tyeb Sheth from bankruptcy (and certain ignominy in the Muslim community) by persuading Abdullah to accept payment in installments rather than the usual lump sum. This happy outcome restored goodwill between the relatives, and convinced Mohandas that a lawyer’s true function was “to unite parties driven asunder.”
With the lawsuit settled and his contract fulfilled, Mohandas returned to Durban in May of 1894, full of self-confidence and eager to book passage on the next ship home to India. Of late, he had been thinking of Kasturbai constantly. His vow of lifelong fidelity remained unbroken. He was longing to see her and his sons. But, again, fate took a hand.
On the day before he was to sail, Dada Abdullah honoured him with a large farewell party. Leading members of Natal’s Indian community came to meet the young barrister who had done such good work in Pretoria. While waiting for lunch to be served, Mohandas picked up that morning’s edition of the Natal Mercury, and his eye fell on a small news item buried at the bottom of an inside page under the caption “Indian Franchise”. A bill had been introduced into the Natal Legislative Assembly to deprive Indians of their right to vote. What had happened in the Boer republics was now happening in Natal.
“Hello, what is this? Have you seen this news item?” he asked the friends who had gathered. He read the paragraph aloud.
Dada Abdullah, speaking for the group, said it made little sense to them. “We are businessmen,” he explained. “We have little education. We buy the newspapers only to read the market rates.” As for politics, “Our European attorneys are our eyes and ears.”
But for several moments, he said nothing further. Tomorrow, he would be leaving. He was going home to India to make a living; to get ahead in his profession. He was going home to Kasturbai, to his sons, to his family. If he uttered a single word, he feared he would find himself more deeply involved than he wished to be in problems that were not his concern. Then he remembered the humiliations he had suffered simply because of his colour. He knew the Indian franchise matter was his concern. He could not remain silent.
“If this bill passes, it will be the first nail in our coffin,” he said. “We will not be able to live here with self-respect.”
“Well, then; what is your advice?” Dada Abdullah asked.
Before Mohandas could reply, someone from the back of the crowd shouted: “Cancel your departure and stay here, and we promise to fight under your direction.” Another voice suggested that if he did, the community should pay his fees. Mohandas was moved.
“There can be no fees for public work,” he protested, saying that if he was to stay, he would earn his living as a lawyer and help them without fee. But they would need considerable money, he said, and a great deal of manpower if they wanted to fight the government.
“The money and the manpower will be available,” said Dada Abdullah. “Just lead us on.”
With that, Mohandas’ farewell party turned into a working committee to plan the first petition in the Indian franchise campaign.
For weeks, Kasturbai had been telling her sons that their father would soon be home. But when Mohandas’ letter arrived announcing he would stay in South Africa for a while to help the Indian community oppose the unjust laws, she felt a mixture of relief and apprehension. Relief that, at last, her husband had found something he would do well. She did not fully comprehend what all the trouble was about in South Africa, but she was glad the Indians in that strange land held Mohandas in high regard and looked to him for guidance — and that he would still be able to send money home. Apprehension because their separation would continue for — how long?
Kasturbai was more troubled by his absence than she cared to admit. Her misgivings were not for herself; she had long since grown accustomed to their constant partings and reunions. Though they had been married for some 11 years now, they had lived together a total of only about four years of that time. She could accept this ongoing separation from her husband, like all the others, as a way to help him prosper. But what of her sons? How were Harilal and Manilal being affected by Mohandas’ frequent and lengthy disappearances from their lives? Were they to grow up thinking of him as a visitor to the Gandhi household?
Harilal remembered the games, the walks, and the songs this stranger had shared with him. But Harilal had spent less than two of his now six years of life with Mohandas. By emotional attachment no less than physical proximity, he was much closer to his ever-present uncles, particularly his Uncle Lakshimidas, than to his own father. And little Manilal, just six months old when Mohandas left, had no memory at all of his real father. Manilal was now in his second year; walking, talking, learning so fast, changing so much each day that Mohandas would not even recognise his son. Not now, nor on whatever future day he came back home.
Could time lost ever be found again; could missed opportunities ever be reclaimed? Would there still be a place in her sons’ lives for Mohandas when he returned?
These were questions Kasturbai asked herself as she went about her timeless tasks on each unchanging day, dreaming of a time when she might be with Mohandas again. Perhaps they would have their own house; a home of her own. And she was too tired some nights to remember to say a silent prayer for her husband’s safe return from a distant place called South Africa.
For two more years Kasturbai waited. For two more years she lived apart from her husband, virtually incommunicado, her only knowledge of him coming from the businesslike letters he sent to his brothers, again only trickles of information filtered down to her through their wives. She was told that Mohandas had opened a law office in Durban. Soon after that she learned that he was regularly sending money to Lakshimidas, sums ample enough to pay off the debts incurred. She also gathered that he had made no mention of any plans to return to India, issued no call for his wife and sons to join him in South Africa.
The months passed, the children took up more and more of Kasturbai’s time, but it was Mohandas who occupied her thoughts. He was so unpredictable, so impetuous, so open and trusting — too trusting, sometimes. Though she had complete faith in him and in God, she worried about how he was living, who his companions were, who was caring for him, who was protecting him from further disappointments in that distant land. Then she heard (not without a pang) that in order to live in a style considered suitable for a successful barrister, Mohandas had moved out of his cramped bachelor quarters and taken a large, well-furnished house in one of the more elegant sections of the city of Durban. Since there was no one but himself to live in it, Mohandas wrote, he had hired a cook and invited several of the clerks who worked for him in his office to move in with him. Knowing his penchant for noble deeds, Kasturbai was not surprised at this, but she reflected, somewhat ruefully, that while she was the one who secretly longed to have a house of her own, it was Mohandas who kept setting up homes for himself — first in Bhavangar, then in London, next in Bombay, and now in South Africa. He seemed always to be creating his own life, and she was beginning to wonder if she would ever become a permanent part of it.
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