What Mahatma Gandhi taught the Indian business community in Sri Lanka

In November 1927, when Mahatma Gandhi visited the prestigious Dharmaraja College in the old Lankan hill capital of Kandy, he was pleased to see the Buddhist institution had a Parsi principal. “The presence of Parsis always makes Gandhiji feel completely at home, and when once he starts talking to them he finds it difficult to stop,” Gandhi’s personal secretary Mahadev Desai wrote in his book With Gandhiji in Ceylon.

The Mahatma was on a three-week trip to Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, to collect money for the khadi fund, which helped entrepreneurs and others buy charkas, or spinning wheels, to make khadi clothes. Accompanying him on the trip were his wife Kasturba, Desai, his other secretary Pyarelal Nayyar, Congress leader C Rajagopalachari and Rajagopalachari’s daughter Lakshmi.

During his visit, Gandhi gave talks in schools and colleges, municipality offices, religious institutions and public places. Everywhere, he made it a point to have interactions with members of Indian business communities, such as the Parsis, Reddiars and Chettiars.

To most of them, his message was similar: assimilate, be just and be charitable.

Although irked that many Sinhalese Buddhists ate meat and fish and considered it “civilised” to drink alcohol, Gandhi developed a great deal of affection for the community.

In return Ceylon showed him affection too. People from all sections of society welcomed him warmly. Even the colonial authorities treated him and his companions like honoured guests.

Bonding with Parsis

Colombo had a small but active Parsi community right from the late 18th century. Travellers would mention it in their accounts of Ceylon in the 19th and 20th century, the golden age of ocean liners.

The Parsis in Colombo were among the most enthusiastic in collecting money for Gandhi’s khadi fund. Gandhi, who saw the Parsis as a model community, would narrate to Indians in Ceylon the story of the arrival of Parsis in Sanjan in modern-day Gujarat in the 8th century.

As the story goes, Parsis sought the permission of the local king, Jadhav Rana, to live in his kingdom but, in response, the king sent a glass of milk filled to the brim, connoting his land was full. The community priests added sugar to the glass and returned it, implying they would make the land more prosperous with their values, knowledge and hard work. Jadhav Rana was impressed and accepted them.

“Since you are earning your bread in this beautiful island, I would ask you to live as sugar lives in milk,” Gandhi said in an address to the Reddiar Sangam in Colombo. “Even a cup of milk which is full up to the brim does not overflow when sugar is gently added to it, the sugar accommodating itself in the milk and enriches its taste. In the same way, I would like you to live in this island so as not to become interlopers, so as to enrich the life of the people in whose midst you may be living.”

When the Mahatma addressed a gathering of Colombo’s Parsis, he spoke in detail of his long-established ties with the community. “A strange relationship binds me to the Parsis,” he said. “The affection they have showered on me, a Hindu, wherever I have come in contact with them, is something inexplicable and impregnable.”

He added: “Wherever I have gone, Parsis have not failed to find me out. When scarcely anyone knew me, when the burden of Mahatmaship had not been imposed on me, a Parsi befriended me and made me his own. I refer to the late Parsee Rustomjee of South African fame.”

Gandhi recounted how Rustomjee saved him from a White South African mob in Durban in 1897 and gave refuge to him and his family. “The mob threatened to burn his house, but nothing kept daunted Rustomjee, who [who] gave us shelter under his roof,” Gandhi said. “Ever since, throughout his lifelong friendship with me, he helped me and my movements and in 1921 his was the biggest donation to the Tilak Swaraj Fund from an Indian abroad.”

Gandhi mentioned other Parsi friends and well-wishers, including industrialist Ratan Jamshedji Tata, who contributed Rs 25,000 to the Satyagraha in South Africa. He also spoke of the great scholar and political leader Dadabhai Naoroji: “How can I describe my debt to him?” Gandhi said. “He took me to his bosom when I was an unknown and unbefriended youth in England, and today his granddaughters are a tower of strength to me in my khadi work.”

He called on Colombo’s Parsis to continue the tradition of their forefathers. “I ask you not to forget their simplicity and their frugal ways by aping the West. Your community has been known throughout the world for its charity, and luxury loving ease and extravagance go ill with charity.”

Honest dealings

The message of charity was also conveyed to the prosperous Nagarathar or Nattukotai Chettiar community, which had collected a large sum of money for the khadi fund and showered the Mahatma with gifts.

Addressing the community, Gandhi said he felt like he was in Chettinad. “The very pleasant recollections that I have of my recent visit to Chettinad have become vivid and fresh before me this afternoon. Their generosity and kindness, I shall never forget, and you are here in Colombo, repeating what I witnessed in Chettinad.”

He spoke of “Daridra Narayana”, Swami Vivekananda’s axiom which says that service to the poor is as important as service to God. “The only consolation that I have in receiving all these gifts and kindness from you is that it is all being done for the sake of Daridra Narayana,” the Mahatma said, “and seeing that I regard myself as but a humble trustee for the millions of paupers of India, I not only not feel any shame or humiliation in receiving these gifts, I feel impelled by your generosity and kindness to ask for more.”

Gandhi said he could think of no better investment for wealthy Indians, whether at home or abroad, than to help reduce poverty in their country. He reminded the Nattukotai Chettiars that Indians would be judged by the people of Ceylon by their actions. “You are in what might be considered a strange land,” he said. “Geographically, and officially speaking, Ceylon is not considered part of India. You, as merchants living in this hospitable land, are expected to behave towards the indigenous population in an exemplary and honest manner.”

He hoped the community’s dealings with the locals were “absolutely just” and irreproachable. “Let your scales be absolutely correct, your accounts accurate, and I hope that you regard every woman as your sister, daughter, or your mother, as the case may be.” He cautioned that wealth carried with it a “great sense of responsibility”: its possession should not render people “giddy”. He called on the Nattukotai Chettiars to wear khadi.

Fighting untouchability

Gandhi was disturbed to learn that some sections of the Sinhalese Buddhist society practised untouchability as well. “One of the things to which I would like to draw your attention is the existence of untouchability in the most liberal religion in the world – Buddhism,” he said in a public address in Matale. “I wish you would take immediate steps to declare every man to be absolutely equal. You are denying Buddhism, you are denying humanity, so long as you regard a single man as an untouchable.”

In his address to the Reddiar community, he referenced the practice of untouchability among Indians in Ceylon.

“Take care that none of the vices we have in India are brought with you in this land in order to poison the life,” he said. “Let us not bring with us to these shores the curse of untouchability.” In God’s kingdom there could be no superiority or inferiority, he said, adding, “let us make this world therefore the Kingdom of God, instead of making it the Kingdom of the Devil, as sometimes it appears to become.”

In his book, Mahadev Desai repeatedly spoke of the warm welcome received by Gandhi from Sinhalese people in the southern parts of Ceylon and Colombo.

“In giving Gandhiji this tremendous reception, the people of Ceylon claimed him as their own, and assured him that his visit was likely to bind Ceylon into more an indissoluble union, if possible, with ‘Mother India,’ an expression used in the labour address which touched Gandhiji to the depths,” Desai wrote.

However, neither Gandhi nor the Sinhalese wanted Ceylon’s accession to India.

“Though I consider that Ceylon is not a foreign land and though it has given me great pleasure to hear it owned by the Sinhalese that India is their motherland, it is much better to regard ourselves as foreigners when we wish to regulate our relations with them,” Gandhi said. “The safest rule of conduct is to claim kinship when we want to do service, and not to insist on kinship when we want to assert a right. Indeed I have applied this rule of life, which I call the golden rule of conduct, even for inter-provincial relations in India.”

In his farewell speech to the people of Ceylon, Gandhi expressed gratitude for their hospitality and generous donations to the khadi fund. “I am carrying away with me very pleasant recollections of your extraordinarily beautiful climate and equally pleasant recollections of the people of Ceylon.”

He expressed hope of returning to the island. “I assure you that it would not require much pressure to bring me out again to Ceylon and as you have put it, for a leisurely stay if God spares that time for me and spares me for the purpose,” he said. This, however, was not meant to be.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.