Читать книгу M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law - Charles R. DiSalvo - Страница 11

TWO

The Barrister Who Couldn’t Speak

No client would be fool enough to engage me.

GANDHI

FOR SOMEONE WHO CLAIMED TO be in love with London, Gandhi’s behavior might easily be counted as strange. He received his call to the bar on June 10, was sworn in before the High Court on June 11, and on June 12 he was on a boat for India. Perhaps this was Gandhi the responsible son, one who knew that every extra day in London was an added burden on the family finances. Indeed, this might have been a Gandhi who knew that such expenses were doubly problematic: not only was he exhausting his family’s capital, but he had no prospects of replenishing the family coffers any time soon.

UNPREPARED TO PRACTICE

Gandhi’s family had sent its most promising son to England to obtain the elevated status of barrister and the lifestyle that accompanied it. Those who had sacrificed to put Gandhi through his legal training in England expected to be rewarded for their sacrifices upon Gandhi’s return to India.¹ His faithful brother, Lakshmidas, in anticipation of Gandhi’s arrival home as the wealthy barrister, embarked upon a course of upgrading his family’s living style even before Gandhi’s return,² a pretense Gandhi himself endorsed and furthered when he introduced European clothing and food to his family in Rajkot upon his arrival there. Surely, under these circumstances, Lakshmidas cannot be blamed for thinking that Gandhi would establish for himself and his family the comfortable life of a prestigious barrister. Gandhi, however, came back after three long and expensive years in England wholly unprepared to make a return to his family. He carried with him the title of barrister—and precious little else.

To begin with, he had no knowledge of Indian law. Despite a prolonged British effort at codification, the operation of a significant part of the legal system continued to be governed by a body of traditional Hindu and Muslim law that applied to succession, inheritance, marriage, adoption, guardianship, family relations, wills, gifts, and partition. Many practitioners would consider these basic aspects of practice, yet Gandhi had no knowledge of them.

Not only was he unacquainted with important aspects of the doctrinal side of the law, but Gandhi also had equally little knowledge of its practical side, having forgone the opportunity to apprentice. One cannot overstate the paucity of his practical knowledge. One example might suffice. The most basic written instrument in the practice of law is the complaint, the document a plaintiff files against a defendant to begin an ordinary civil suit. While Gandhi’s family expected him to start up a “swinging practice” forthwith, the fact was, as he confessed to himself, “he had not even learnt how to draft a plaint.”³

SETTING UP SHOP IN BOMBAY

Gandhi was brutally honest about his position in 1891 when he later wrote in his autobiography: “To start practice in Rajkot would have meant sure ridicule. I had hardly the knowledge of a qualified vakil⁴ and yet I expected to be paid ten times his fee! No client would be fool enough to engage me. And even if such a one was to be found, should I add arrogance and fraud to my ignorance, and increase the burden of debt I owed to the world?”⁵ Faced with these rather serious disabilities, and seeing nothing for an inexperienced barrister in Rajkot, Gandhi decided to shift operations to Bombay, where he hoped to accomplish three goals: to remedy his deficiency in Indian law, to obtain some knowledge of the workings of the Bombay High Court, and to pick up a few cases.

Gandhi’s study of Indian law proved to be the easiest of these tasks. He set about studying Mayne’s Indian Law, which he read with “deep interest.”⁶ He had no similar luck plowing through the Civil Procedure Code, a failure readily forgiven by anyone who has attempted to study civil procedure—the driest of subjects—as an abstract matter, as opposed to learning it in the context of simulated or actual cases. The Evidence Act, by contrast, held more of Gandhi’s interest, perhaps because he knew that one of the giants of the Indian bar, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, had memorized the act by heart.

Gandhi’s experience observing arguments before the High Court was neither productive nor uplifting. With nothing at stake for himself or for a client in the proceedings, there was little to hold his interest. Moreover, Gandhi had insufficient knowledge of the law in general or the argued cases in particular to be able to follow, much less learn from, the line of the arguments. For any neutral party observing appellate arguments, one wit has observed, the experience is about as stimulating as being a lighthouse attendant. Thus, it is not surprising that Gandhi’s main occupation while at the High Court was to sleep, a habit shared by so many other “observers” that Gandhi actually came to think it was “fashionable to doze in the High Court.”⁷

Neither Gandhi’s attempt to learn Indian law nor his study of the High Court’s workings was a demanding enough activity to occupy his complete attention. Reminiscent of his experiments with top hats and French-language lessons, he used his free time to play the wealthy barrister. He hired one Ravishankar to cook for him at his residence. Gandhi quickly learned that Ravishankar knew little about cooking, and so, with the initiative that hallmarked so much of his life, he threw himself into running the kitchen along with his pupil, teaching Ravishankar something about vegetarianism along the way.

A FAILURE OF NERVE

With his days passing in such desultory fashion, it is no wonder that Gandhi leapt at the chance to represent an actual paying client in court when a defendant in a civil case, an individual by the name of Mamibai, asked Gandhi to represent her. Little did Gandhi realize how terribly unprepared he was by nature or experience to advocate a client’s cause in open court.

To be an advocate for a client in court requires a fair amount of confidence in one’s ability to engage without hesitation in the rambunctious and fractious give-and-take of the courtroom. It requires a lawyer to be a public person, one who is not afraid to stand before a judge and argue, one who is not afraid to take on opposing lawyers and parties, one who is not afraid to vigorously defend one’s position or to attack an opponent’s position—all in public. In sum, the lawyer as a public person is one who has no lack of nerve.

In the year 1891 twenty-two-year-old Mohandas K. Gandhi, barrister at law, lacked nerve. As a result, his representation of Mamibai ended in failure and embarrassment. Mamibai’s case was being processed at the lowest level of the judicial system, the equivalent of what is called small claims court in some jurisdictions.⁸ Because Mamibai was the defendant, the first task of Gandhi’s courtroom career was to cross-examine the witnesses for the plaintiff. As Gandhi stood up to conduct his first cross-examination as a barrister, he was gripped with fear. He became dizzy from stage fright and his head began to reel. His heart sank. Even his eyesight failed him. He could not get control of his panic. He was unable to ask a single question. He staggered to his seat and told the client’s agent that he could not go on. Then, unnerved, he stumbled out of the courtroom in disgrace.

A HISTORY OF FEAR

Gandhi’s extreme discomfort in his role as a courtroom advocate was the predictable end point for a person who only rarely was able to find his voice in public. From the time Gandhi was a high school student (and probably before), public speaking had almost always reduced him to a nervous, quivering bowl of mush. Just before Gandhi set sail for London in 1888, his high school classmates in Rajkot held a farewell celebration in his honor. In his autobiography Gandhi recalls that he had difficulty reading his prepared notes, that he was dizzy from nervousness, that he stammered and that “his whole frame shook.”⁹ Such a reaction should have been expected from Gandhi, inasmuch as he was an extremely shy and timid youth, avoiding not only the rigors of childhood sports but even the casual company of other children.

When Gandhi boarded the steamer SS Clyde for London, he found it impossible to speak with other passengers. His shipmate and fellow Indian the lawyer Tryambakrai Mazmudar urged him to deal with his unfamiliarity with English by conversing in English with their fellow travelers. Interestingly, Mazmudar even pointed out to Gandhi that such practice would do him good because “lawyers should have a long tongue.”¹⁰ Mazmudar put Gandhi on notice that he was entering a profession in which speech was considered a tool of the trade. Nothing, however, moved Gandhi; he abstained from social commerce.

Little changed on his arrival in England. When Gandhi secured a room with a family in West Kensington, he found that the portions of food his landlady served him were too small. But the same mouth that craved to eat could not convince itself to speak. Gandhi found himself “as shy as ever and dared not ask for more than was put before [him].”¹¹

Gandhi’s involvement in the vegetarian movement brought him face-to-face with several opportunities for public speaking. He seems to have failed miserably at almost all of them. Indeed, Gandhi set a pattern: he would write out his remarks, practice them, arrive at the meeting, lose his nerve, and ask someone else to read his speech. For example, in a dispute within the leadership of the LVS, on whose Executive Committee he served, Gandhi was forced to take sides between its president, Arnold F. Hills, and Dr. Thomas R. Allinson, another member of the Executive Committee. Allinson had taken up the cause of birth control, leading to a motion by Hills to strip Allinson of membership in the society. Gandhi was opposed to birth control, but believed there should be no morals test for those who wanted to join; support of vegetarianism was enough. Gandhi decided to advocate for Allinson. He wrote out his speech but “had not the courage to speak.”¹² Hills was gracious enough to find someone to read a speech attacking his own position.

On another occasion, Gandhi and Mazmudar attended a vegetarian conference in Ventnor. While there, Gandhi met the author of a famous vegetarian tract who offered Gandhi the opportunity to speak at the conference, an invitation he accepted without hesitation. Once again Gandhi wrote out his remarks, and once again he appeared to deliver them. In terms reminiscent of his description of his cross-examination effort in the Mamibai case, Gandhi states what happened next: “I stood up to read it, but could not. My vision became blurred and I trembled, though the speech hardly covered a sheet of foolscap.” Once again, Gandhi was forced to find someone to read for him. While the audience received the talk well, Gandhi “was ashamed of [him]self and sad at heart for [his] incapacity.”¹³

Demonstrating either his courage or his naïveté, Gandhi’s two earlier failures at public speech making did not deter him from a third attempt. The occasion this time was a farewell vegetarian dinner hosted by Gandhi for a group of friends on the eve of his departure from London. The scene was the Holborn, a conventional restaurant Gandhi had convinced to host a vegetarian banquet. Again Gandhi had prepared his remarks with care. When he stood, he found that he “could not proceed beyond the first sentence.”¹⁴ Gandhi had intended to begin with a bit of humor but, as he stalled after his first sentence, found that the only thing humorous was his attempt to speak in public. He gathered up just enough composure to blurt out his thanks to his guests for coming. He then sat down, defeated, once again, by himself.

Was Gandhi’s difficulty that he obsessed over his prepared remarks, to the point of paralysis? Perhaps, but he also confesses that he had no aptitude for ex tempore speaking either. He was inept at both. The inability to deliver prepared remarks and the inability to speak extemporaneously must be counted as significant disabilities for one who intended to earn his living by speaking. Yet, years later, when writing his autobiography, Gandhi claimed that several advantages flowed from what he called his “constitutional shyness.” While he was in England, he says, he found that his shyness made it easier for him to keep his pledge to his mother to abstain from commerce with women. In the rest of his life, he found that shyness brought him the benefits of speaking little, namely that a studied silence permitted him to avoid thoughtless chatter, exaggeration, and untruths.

VAKILS ON THE RISE

It is one thing to muse about being tongue-tied in one’s memoirs. It is something altogether different to be tongue-tied in fact while trying to make a living as a barrister in the highly competitive atmosphere of nineteenth-century Bombay. Gandhi’s inability to speak in public must be understood as a limitation that rendered it virtually impossible for him to overcome a number of background factors that made his practice of law in India a chancy proposition at best.

When Gandhi attempted to enter practice in India in 1891, he did so at a time when the Indian legal system was in the midst of a maelstrom of changes in terms of both the organization of the judiciary and the regulation of the practice of law. The High Court at Bombay had only recently been established, along with High Courts at the other two presidency towns of Madras and Calcutta, by the Indian High Courts Act of 1861.¹⁵ This act was part of a protracted process whereby the British government eventually took over virtually the entire judicial system in India.

At the same time the court system was evolving, the legal profession was undergoing change. The profession, which got its start when the East India Company first established itself in India, had a history of being poorly organized and regulated,¹⁶ with a wide and confusing range of different types of practitioners, all competing for business.¹⁷ Well before Gandhi’s time, however, one clear distinction emerged—that between barristers and native practitioners. On the one hand, barristers, at first almost exclusively English, commanded enormous prestige—and enormous fees.¹⁸ Their status and their earning power were the result of two factors: the monopoly on practice barristers held for a considerable period of time and the small number of barristers available for hire. For a good part of the nineteenth century barristers alone were allowed to appear in the highest courts, leaving native practitioners to scratch out their livings in inferior tribunals. For some time barristers capitalized on their legal monopoly by keeping their own numbers low. In Bombay, for example, there were only two barristers in 1807, with the number rising to only thirteen by 1861. As one historian has noted, “Even a new practitioner could begin earning large sums almost immediately.”¹⁹ It was with this image of the profession in mind that Gandhi’s family had pooled its resources to give young Mohan a barrister’s education.

In contrast, there existed a broadly defined class of practitioners trained in India, generally known as vakils, who were held in lower esteem, who commanded lesser fees, and whose practice was restricted to certain courts. These practitioners began with very limited roles in the legal system but transformed themselves over time into lawyers some of whose training was arguably better than that received by barristers in the Inn system. While the extent of his training and the precise nature of his practice are unknown, it is known that Gandhi’s brother, Lakshmidas, was such a practitioner.

It was Gandhi’s misfortune to enter practice at a time when the power of vakils was on the ascendancy, while that of barristers was on the decline. From the mid-1800s on, the vakils campaigned with good effect for the right to practice in all courts and for the abolition of the distinctions among and between barristers (known as “advocates”), solicitors (known as “attorneys”), and vakils. Indeed, even before Gandhi took up practice in Bombay, vakils had been permitted to appear before the High Court there, shattering the monopoly barristers once had and greatly influencing the economics of law practice. To make matters worse, it became well known by 1890 that the practice of law could be a most lucrative profession. Accordingly, the profession attracted great numbers to its ranks at just the time Gandhi arrived in Bombay—only to see so many enter the profession that the supply of lawyers exceeded the public’s demand for them. With the laws of economics in play, many a young novice went without work.²⁰

NO CONNECTIONS, NO TOUTS, NO INCOME

Gandhi’s own background provided him with no assets with which to succeed at the practice of law in this changing environment. Much of the Indian economy in the 1890s was tied to the land.²¹ When Gandhi entered practice, Indian capitalism was just starting to develop alongside the traditional agrarian economy. As the nineteenth century was coming to a close, these two forces, previously in balance, would interact, threatening society and the law with a tumultuous transformation that the Raj was not prepared to accept.²² Thrust into this period of swirling change, Gandhi could have exploited it had he had ties to either the rising capitalist elements or to the traditional agrarian economy. Gandhi, however, had no ties to the landed elite that would help him obtain work representing landowning clients in litigation. With respect to business litigation, Gandhi was already at a disadvantage simply by virtue of being an Indian-born rather than a British-born barrister. Historian Samuel Schmitthener reports that from the time of the founding of the High Courts in 1862 through the end of the nineteenth century, Indian lawyers could not easily find financial success:

The first Indian barristers . . . were disappointed to find that they could not make a success of practicing [in courts], where the lucrative commercial cases were. Work [in such courts] could only come to a barrister through a solicitor. The solicitors’ firms were all British, and they did all the work for the Government departments and the . . . firms. They did not want to patronize an untried Indian barrister. Nor did the few Indian solicitors who were struggling to expand their practice wish to risk the blame that would come upon them if some inexperienced Indian barrister mishandled a case. . . . Not only British firms, but also Indians preferred to be represented by British . . . advocates—perhaps because it was believed they would have more influence with the English judges.²³

Gandhi might have overcome the predisposition of potential clients to favor English barristers had he had some ties to the commercial, industrial, and mercantile classes. Because he had none, however, he derived no work from the business community.

To make matters worse, neither did Gandhi have any close relatives or friends in the legal profession in Bombay. This was a significant drawback because barristers in Gandhi’s day obtained clients not directly through contact with them but through referrals from other members of the profession. Indeed, it was often a family matter: many barristers derived their success from having family members in positions from which they could refer cases to their favorite member of the bar. With no one looking out for young Gandhi’s interests among the corps of Bombay attorneys, there was no one to send cases to this “briefless barrister.”²⁴

Finally, there was the matter of professional ethics. At the time Gandhi was attempting to practice in Bombay, some in the profession relied upon touts—mercenaries who would hunt down litigation and bring it to a barrister for a fee. While this practice was considered unethical, it was nonetheless employed by some of the most successful members of the Bombay bar. Gandhi, however, refused to pay touts, even if the practice was winked at and even if it meant he would earn far less than he might otherwise. Indeed, when those advising him in Bombay pointed out that one highly successful criminal lawyer paid touts, Gandhi scoffed at the idea that financial success should rank higher than professional ethics. This was a watershed moment for Gandhi as a person and as an attorney. Faced with the choice of failing with honor or succeeding with dishonor, he chose the more difficult path. This is the first indication Gandhi gives as a lawyer that the world’s way was not his way. In the future he would stake out a definition of his professional life that rested upon the belief that one could find true happiness as an attorney without adhering to the profession’s definition of success. It is not a belief to which he would always be faithful, as we shall see, but it provides us with the first real glimmer of the attorney he was to become. Interestingly, he was hired in Mamibai’s case despite his refusal to pay the tout.

Gandhi would confound his critics from the beginning.

BACKWATERS: A RETURN TO RAJKOT

With all these factors against him, it is not surprising, then, that Gandhi’s Bombay practice collapsed shortly after the Mamibai incident. The most he could manage thereafter was a case in which he drafted a memorial for free for an impecunious client. While his colleagues approved of the quality of his work in the case, Gandhi realized that he could not support himself if his practice consisted of nothing but pro bono work.

At about this time Gandhi started thinking of seeking employment overseas, but because Lakshmidas opposed such a move, Gandhi deferred consideration of it. Moreover, there was a promise of some work in Bombay in the fall of 1892. This new work, however, never materialized.²⁵

New measures were required. Gandhi applied for a part-time position teaching English at a well-known Bombay high school for 75 rupees a month. At the interview, when it became apparent that the high school sought a university graduate, the school lost interest. He pleaded that his passage of the London examination should qualify him to teach, but the school would not budge.

With this door closed, there was nothing more Gandhi could do to sustain himself in Bombay. He had failed. After six months in Bombay, Gandhi closed what he called his “little establishment” and retreated to his Rajkot home.²⁶ There he would work with his brother, Lakshmidas, a petty pleader, in doing the low-level legal work of native attorneys that he had disdained earlier. Gandhi would be an overeducated paralegal in his older brother’s shop, drafting common applications and memorials.

A BREACH OF ETHICS

Given the experiences Gandhi had had before being called to the bar, it was predictable that he would have difficulty assuming the role of public person that the job of courtroom barrister required.²⁷ From the time of his childhood Gandhi had been a timid person. His attempts at public speaking in high school and later in London regularly placed unmanageable amounts of stress on him—and these prior attempts at public speaking were almost always before receptive audiences of friends or colleagues. When Gandhi was forced into the courtroom, he found himself in a new setting in which all speech and all behavior are adversarial. Adversarial speech places enormous demands on the speaker to manage his emotions, his intellect, and even his body so that he can tell the most compelling story on opening statement, ask the most captivating questions on direct examination, wrestle the most hostile witnesses to the ground on cross-examination, and make the most persuasive case in closing argument, all at the same time he is parrying the thrusts of his opponent, responding to the inquiries of the judge, and following the rules of evidence and procedure. Even for those experienced in courtroom speaking, such speaking is challenging. For the young lawyer—even one trained throughout law school and apprenticeship—the prospect of such speaking is threatening. How much more challenging and threatening was it for Gandhi, wholly unprepared as he was by personality, training, and experience?

Gandhi’s new work would keep him far from the courtroom. He set up an office in Rajkot where he was able to earn enough on which to live (about 300 rupees a month) by drafting applications and petitions. This work, at the lower echelons of practice, was made possible through Lakshmidas, who at the time was a member of a two-man vakil firm. Lakshmidas’ partner (apparently the dominant of the two) gave Gandhi his overflow applications and petitions. The significant cases the partner kept; to Gandhi he gave the work of assisting his poorest clients. Even this work, however, proved problematic for Gandhi, for he was expected to pay commissions for these cases. He had rebelled at this practice in Bombay because it smelled of corruption.²⁸ Now, however, he relented so as not to give offense to his brother’s partner, who apparently was gracious in agreeing to help Gandhi. Gandhi also undoubtedly wanted to help provide Lakshmidas with income inasmuch as Lakshmidas and Gandhi shared any income Gandhi generated through the partner’s referrals. In this instance, then, Gandhi’s feelings of loyalty to his brother and his appreciation for his brother’s partner worked together to create a lapse in Gandhi’s ethical standards. He was off the path.

So in 1893, Gandhi, a London-educated barrister, found himself stuck in the backwaters of Rajkot, performing low-level legal work and doing so in a fashion he considered morally repugnant. Indeed, he soon learned that petty politics, corruption, and backroom deals were the order of the day there and throughout the region. Gandhi’s introduction to the political facts of life in Kathiawad was made possible by Lakshmidas, an individual who appears to have been possessed of a conscience less demanding than that of his younger brother. Lakshmidas had been the secretary to, and the advisor of, a powerful figure in neighboring Porbandar. During the course of this employment, Lakshmidas ran afoul of the authorities. Gandhi, in his memoirs, is not precise in his description of this trouble, but he is quite clear on the point that Lakshmidas expected his brother to bail him out of it. The political agent in charge of the area at that time was an officer whose acquaintance Gandhi had made in London. It was Lakshmidas’ idea that Gandhi ought to go to him and, playing on the friendship, seek to put the matter to rest.²⁹

Gandhi was opposed to this plan. It offended his sense of procedure and right order. But his reluctance was overcome by the importuning of his brother, who argued that decisions in Kathiawad were made only on the basis of influence and that Gandhi owed him a fraternal duty to intercede. Reluctantly, Gandhi agreed to see the agent, knowing in advance that he “was compromising [his] self-respect.”³⁰

His worst fears materialized. On seeing the agent, Gandhi sensed immediately that the agent knew Gandhi was there to improperly influence him and that he was offended by this. Before Gandhi could even finish stating his case, the agent exploded: “Your brother is an intriguer. I want to hear nothing more from you. I have no time. If your brother has anything to say, let him apply through the proper channel.”³¹ With that, the agent had the protesting Gandhi physically removed from his office. Gandhi, who knew he was wrong to be there in the first instance, immediately, and perhaps unconsciously, converted his embarrassment at having done something improper into righteous indignation at a perceived personal insult. Perhaps this was Gandhi’s way of pulling a curtain over his embarrassment. Gandhi was so caught up in his anger at the way he was treated that he sent a note to the agent, threatening to sue him for assault—the quintessential act of a juvenile barrister too big for his britches. The agent’s reply was wholly unapologetic, telling Gandhi to sue if he wished. Nonplussed, Gandhi sought the advice of Mehta, who happened to be in the area on a case. Mehta’s reply was just what one would expect from a wiser and older hand. Transmitting his advice to Gandhi through a third party, Mehta wrote: “Such things are the common experience of many vakils and barristers. He is still fresh from England, and hot-blooded. He does not know British officers. If he would earn something and have an easy time here, let him . . . pocket the insult. He will gain nothing by proceeding against the sahib, and on the contrary will very likely ruin himself. Tell him he has yet to know life.”³² Gandhi took Mehta’s advice, despite its being “bitter as poison” to him.³³ “Never again shall I place myself in such a false position, never again shall I exploit friendship in this way,” Gandhi pledged to himself.³⁴ It was a pledge he was to honor for a lifetime.

A SOUTH AFRICAN OFFER

Gandhi had no hope of reconciling with the agent. As a result, he believed this experience destroyed any chance of establishing a Rajkot practice, for it was in the agent’s court that Gandhi would have made the lion’s share of his appearances. Because Gandhi’s practice depended on fees, he and his brother recognized that Gandhi needed employment that did not rely for its success on being in a courtroom run by a hostile judge. Salaried employment as a government minister or as a judge, for example, would offer Gandhi an opportunity to escape the consequences of his disastrous encounter with the agent, but jobs such as these could not be had simply for the asking. Obtaining such positions required political intrigue, intrigue in which Gandhi now steadfastly refused to engage. His refusal exacted a price. Gandhi speaks in his memoirs of representing some clients in an effort to have their excessive land rent moderated. He failed at this and expresses dissatisfaction that the decision was based simply on the discretion of the authorities—the exercise of which he apparently was unwilling to influence in the usual Kathiawad way—and not upon a rule or regulation.

Gandhi’s practice in Rajkot was earning him a modest living. But this was not the life of the successful barrister he and his family had envisioned. Indeed, everything about this work was wrong. It was routine, he had to pay commissions to get it, it did not come to him by virtue of his own reputation, and it took place in a legal and political world overflowing with rank corruption.

Lakshmidas was not blind to his brother’s difficulties and to the ill effect they were having on his own fortunes. He apparently made it his task to contact his friends and business acquaintances in an effort to find a way out for Mohandas. Not knowing the momentous chain of events its offer would put in motion, a Porbandar business with ties to South Africa answered Lakshmidas’ call. Gandhi recalls Dada Abdulla and Company’s letter to his brother as stating:

We have business in South Africa. Ours is a big firm, and we have a big case there in the Court, our claim being £40,000. It has been going on for a long time. We have engaged the services of the best vakils and barristers. If you sent your brother there, he would be useful to us and also to himself. He would be able to instruct our counsel better than ourselves. And he would have the advantage of seeing a new part of the world, and of making new acquaintances.³⁵

Gandhi had questions about the offer. Was he expected to appear in court or simply to instruct counsel? How long was he expected to be in South Africa? What was the pay? The brothers arranged a meeting between Mohandas and Sheth Abdul Karim Jhaveri, an acquaintance of Lakshmidas and a partner in Dada Abdulla. Gandhi reports that the partner assured him that the job would not be difficult and that he envisioned Gandhi assisting the firm with its English-language correspondence. The company could offer him a fee of £105, first-class round-trip travel, the payment of all expenses while Gandhi was in the company’s employ, and an assurance that the job would take less than a year.

Gandhi realized quite quickly that this was not a job to brag about. He knew that he “was hardly going there as a barrister,” but “as a servant of the firm.”³⁶ The advantages to taking this position in South Africa were numerous, however. In one stroke he could escape the political intrigue of Kathiawad, be done with the drudgery of drafting petitions and applications, avoid any further violation of the ethical proscriptions against paying commissions, send back £105 to his family,³⁷ take up work that appeared to call for no public speaking, and shake from his sandals the dust of the country in which he had failed as a barrister.

Without haggling over the terms of his employment, without ruing his departure except for the “pang of parting” from his wife,³⁸ and without evincing so much as an inkling of understanding how this decision would change his life forever, he agreed to go to South Africa.

Gandhi had had quite enough of India.