Wilson, who was accompanied by the deputy Commissioner, Khan Bahadur Pettigara, and four other officers. As soon as the police was sighted there was a flutter, and everybody tried to secure access to Gandhi's tent, but they were promptly prevented. Gandhi was immediately awakened, and as he was observing his usual silence when he saw the Police Commissioner he simply smiled at him. The Police Commissioner immediately handed over the warrant for his arrest to Gandhi, who, after quickly reading it through, handed it back again.
The warrant for Gandhi's arrest merely says that he is being arrested "for good and sufficient reasons. The Commissioner allowed Mr. Gandhi half an hour in which to exchange parting greetings with his followers. Quick telephone calls were put through to as many places as possible to warn Congressmen who proposed to visit Manibhuwan to confer with their leader before his arrest.
For Gandhi, it was part of his suffering, part of the struggle against inhumanity. There is great similarity in the conditions of imprisonment during our days and Gandhi's. Prison conditions changed dramatically only in the s, despite the pressures exerted at the beginning of the century by Gandhi and his colleagues, and in the latter decades by my colleagues and myself. Access to newspapers, radio and television were allowed, in stages, only in the last decade as, too, were beds.
In a sense, I was eased into the prison routine. I was held for a few days in a police cell before being released on bail.
Gandhi's first imprisonment was without hard labour, in January , and though sentenced to two months, he was released within 19 days. General Smuts, fearful of the momentum the passive resistance struggle was gathering, had him brought by train, from Johannesburg, to his offices in Pretoria to work out a settlement. I too, was called out with a view to a settlement by the then head of state, Mr. They drove me to Groote Schuur, but that was in my twenty-sixth year of imprisonment - when the Nationalist Government saw that they could no longer govern the country on their own.
Gandhi spent his first term of imprisonment in the Fort in Johannesburg, so did I - in the hospital section as an awaiting trial prisoner in Gandhi describes his apprehension on being first convicted: " Was I to be specially treated as a political prisoner? Was I to be separated from my fellow prisoners? He was facing imprisonment in a British Colony in , and he still, at the time, harboured a residue of belief in British justice.
My colleagues and I faced imprisonment in the cells of apartheid;we had no expectations that we would be given privileges because we were political prisoners.
We expected the reverse - greater brutality because we were political prisoners. My first conviction was for five years in , following my incognito African "tour". I began serving in Pretoria. Like Gandhi, we experienced the insides of the major Transvaal prisons. Gandhi, however, was never on Robben Island in the Cape, and we were never in Volksrust in the Transvaal. Gandhi's approach was to accommodate to the prison conditions since, as a satyagrahi, suffering in the path of freedom and justice was part of his creed: We were never satyagrahis in that sense.
We did not accept suffering, we reacted against it. I was as unco-operative on my first day of prison as I possibly could be. I refused to wear the prison shorts and I refused to eat the prison food. They gave me long trousers, and food that was somewhat more palatable, but at a heavy price. I was placed in solitary confinement where I discovered that human company was infinitely more valuable than any material advantage. There was practically no difference in the issue of clothing given to us in and that given to Gandhi in He records, that " After being stripped, we were given prison uniforms.
We were supplied, each with a pair of short breeches, a shirt of coarse cloth, a jumper, a cap, a towel and a pair of socks and sandals.
Neither was there any difference in the diet, basically porridge, save that we were given a teaspoon of sugar;Gandhi's porridge had no sugar. At lunch, we were served mealies, sometimes mixed with beans. He spent one and a half months on a one-meal-a-day diet of beans. A complaint must have only one object - to secure relief for other prisoners. How would it mend matters if I were occasionally to complain to the warder about the small quantity of potatoes and so get him to serve me a little more?
I once observed him giving me an additional helping from a portion meant for another, and thereafter I gave up complaining altogether. He declined any favours offered to him exclusively but accepted improvements when these were shared with his fellow political prisoners. On Robben Island, we observed the same principle. We took up issues on behalf of all the prisoners, political and non-political, never on behalf of an individual, except when an individual was personally discriminated against.
In prison, one's material needs are so straitened that they are reduced to almost nothing, and if in that condition one can still think of one's fellowmen, one's humanity excels and passes all tests for fellow feeling. Gandhi passed that test superbly.
I am grateful that I maintained my humanity throughout my internment as did too my immediate colleagues. The cells in were comparable to those during the early s. Gandhi describes his cell in Volksrust:. There was no electric light. The cell contained a dim lamp, a bucket of water and a tin tumbler. For natural convenience, a bucket in a tray with disinfectant fluid in it, was placed in a corner.
Our bedding consisted of two planks, fixed to three inch legs, two blankets, an apology for a pillow, and matting. We were similarly locked up with a bucket for a commode and drinking water in a plastic bottle.
Though we had electricity, the lights, controlled from outside, remained on throughout the night. We had no raised planks for sleeping. We slept on a mat, on the floor. Communal cells, in Gandhi's time and ours, usually accommodated prisoners, but that varied. The worst Gandhi experienced was sharing a cell, with accommodation for 50, with prisoners.
Indian Opinion , The ablution facilities in Gandhi's time were worse than in ours, two large stone basins and two spouts that served as a shower, two buckets for defecation and two for urine - all in the open, since prison regulations did not allow privacy.
The one grilling routine that some of his compatriots suffered was absent from ours. Ahmed Cachalia, for instance, was left in a cold bath with other prisoners for hours and developed pneumonia as a consequence.
Our prison routine and Gandhi's were remarkably similar, but then why wouldn't they be? In prison everything stands still. There is one way to treat prisoners, and that way doesn't change.
During my first decade of imprisonment, we were up at 5. Once counted, we filed for our breakfast, and then filed to be counted again before being sent to work. Work stopped at 4. A bell is rung at half-past five in the morning to wake up the prisoners. Everyone must then get up, roll up his bedding and wash. The door of the cell is opened at six when each prisoner must stand up with his arms crossed and his bedding rolled up beside him.
A sentry then calls the roll. By a similar rule, every prisoner is required to stand beside his bed, while he is being locked up [at night]. When the officials come to inspect the prisoners, they must take off their caps and salute him. All the prisoners wore caps, and it was not difficult to take them off, for there was a rule that they must be taken off, and this was only proper.
The order to line up was given by shouting the command fall in whenever an official came. The words fall in therefore became our daily diet.
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