Free Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha

From matters of the mind the letter then turned to matters of the body. ‘My diet yesterday,’ wrote Gandhi to his fellow food faddist, ‘was 4 bananas, 3 oranges, 1 lemon, ½ lb tomatoes, dates, 2 ½ oz. p[ea]nuts, 12 almonds and a paw paw. Two motions in the day. Retired last night after 11, woke up at 4 & left the bed at 5. Eyes have begun to cause a little trouble.’ 26
    The Gandhis of Porbandar had stayed away from meat and fish for generations. But this particular Gandhi was now moving towards an extreme elaboration of a vegetarian diet. One of his favourite authors, the anti-vivisectionist doctor Anna Kingsford, claimed that a fruit-baseddiet was man’s genetic inheritance. It also helped cultivate kindness towards others. Her Indian disciple seems to have been taking her theories very seriously indeed.
    In 1905, for a coloured couple and a white couple to live together would have been unusual in an English city like London, or in an Indian city like Bombay. In the context of South Africa it was revolutionary. The prejudice against the mixing of the races was perhaps greater there than anywhere else in the world. For Gandhi to befriend Polak, Kallenbach, West and company was an act of bravery; for them to befriend Gandhi was an act of defiance.
    How very singular this mixed-race household was is revealed by the diary of Chhaganlal Gandhi. In January 1906, Chhagan travelled to Johannesburg to brief his uncle about Phoenix and
Indian Opinion
. This is how he saw the next few days:
January 4, 1906: Arrived at Johannesburg station. Rama [Ramdas], Deva [Devadas], Bhai [Gandhi] and Mrs. Polak were there to receive me. Reached home at 7 o’clock with them. After a wash went to the table for dinner. Found the westernized style very odd. I began to wonder, but could not decide whether our ways were better or theirs … Before the meal Bhai recited a few verses from the Gita and explained their meaning in Gujarati …
    January 5, 1906: Getting up at 5 a.m. was ready by 6.30 … Everyone went out to work without any breakfast. I walked with Bhai to his office, about two miles [
sic
] away. Talked about the
Indian Opinion
on the way. Bhai started work in his office exactly at 9.30 a.m. Seeing a girl working in the office made me wonder. In the afternoon Bhai and others had a meagre meal of bananas and groundnuts. The accounts of the press were then carefully gone through. Returned home with Bhai at 5.30 p.m. I began to wonder again when I found the English friends, the Polaks, mixing freely with everyone.
    January 6, 1906: A few people were invited to dinner at Bhai’s house in connection with Mr Polak’s marriage. Among the guests were English people, Muslims and Hindus. I felt that they had crossed the limits in their jokes at dinner.
    January 11, 1906: Smith, Polak and Mrs. Polak, who are staying at Bhai’s house, behave very freely, which makes me think. 27
    Chhagan was puzzled and confused by what he saw – the white lady secretary in his uncle’s office, the jokes and the banter and the displays of physical affection (between Henry and Millie) in his uncle’s home, the eating at the same table of Hindus, Muslims and Europeans. To his conventional Bania eyes, the household was eccentric. To the conventional white Christian in Johannesburg, the household was positively heretical.
    In his first years in Johannesburg, Gandhi deepened his interest in other religions, while befriending several European men (and at least one European woman). Meanwhile, his horizons were being further extended by encounters with mixed-race Africans. Gandhi occasionally visited Cape Town, where there was a small but active Indian community, and where the British administrators he dealt with maintained residences. On these visits he came to know a Coloured politician named Dr Abdullah Abdurahman. A Cape Malay, like Gandhi Abdurahman had been professionally trained in the United Kingdom (he studied medicine in Glasgow). Back home in