on one of Durban’s busiest thoroughfares, West Street, had come to the new Indian advocate and asked Gandhi to represent him. It seems that when a native pulled out his leather purse to pay for some fruit, he dropped a 10 shilling piece in amongst the storekeeper’s produce. The costumer claimed that the storekeeper had not only refused to allow him to search for the coin but also threatened to “thrash” him if he did so. The native brought a charge of theft against the Indian, and the case came before the resident magistrate, Captain Gould Lucas, on October 3, in Durban Criminal Court. The native called as a witness his employer, who testified that she had paid the complainant his wages of 10 shillings the day before the incident, and also stated that during the complainant’s three years with her he had exhibited a good character. At best, this evidence offered only mild support for the Crown prosecutor. In turn, Gandhi put his client on the stand. The storekeeper claimed that he had actually allowed the complainant to search for the coin. He testified further that some bystanders also helped the complainant look for the coin. The magistrate was unimpressed and likely believed that the Indian was taking advantage of the situation to gain a windfall. In his first trial appearance in South Africa on behalf of a defendant in a criminal prosecution, Gandhi saw his client promptly convicted and fined £2.
In late October a native police officer came upon three women engaged in a brawl on Pine Street in Durban. The officer claimed that when he attempted to arrest the defendant, a young Indian woman, she hurled insulting and obscene language at him, resulting in a charge of “swearing at a constable.” After the officer’s testimony before Magistrate Dillon, Gandhi produced several witnesses who were one in saying that the girl was unable to speak English. The conclusion of the case was not a good one for Gandhi’s client. The magistrate gave the defendant her choice of a 5 shilling fine or five days in jail.
When Gandhi was studying law in England, he used a letter of introduction to gain an audience with Frederick Pincutt, the Conservative member of Parliament. Gandhi confessed to Pincutt his fear of the practice of law. Never, he believed, would he be able to replicate the skill of the famous Indian barrister Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, who “roared like a lion in the law courts.”49 Pincutt, in an attempt to calm the young man, assured him that to earn success at the bar only “honesty and industry” were required.
Did Gandhi reflect on Pincutt’s advice at this early stage of his career as he sustained these defeats? Did he believe his criminal clients to be innocent? Was his storekeeper trying to take advantage of the native, or had it been the native who engaged in a scam? Did the young Indian woman actually not swear at the constable? Or was her denial of any knowledge of English an evasion of the real issue and a convenient way of seeming to be innocent? Did Gandhi feel comfortable or awkward with the high level of moral ambiguity in these cases?
As if these losses in criminal cases were not enough, in November Gandhi lost his next civil case, small as it was. He represented an Indian creditor against an Indian borrower in an effort to collect £5 in principal and interest. Gandhi lost, and to make the defeat all the more bitter, he lost to someone even less experienced than he, Eugene Renaud, the young Mauritian who had been admitted to practice less than two months before.
BALASUNDARAM TODAY, SCHEURMANN TOMORROW
It was at or near the end of this string of losses that a client appeared in Gandhi’s office with a matter so compelling as to decisively take Gandhi’s mind off his own troubles. Gandhi looked up from his desk to see a poor man, a native of the Tamil-speaking area of India, who clearly had been set upon. The man, whose name was Balasundaram, appeared with an injury to his face that was so severe he was unable to speak. Instead, shaking and crying just from the memory of the incident, he wrote down the account of his story on a piece of paper and handed it to Gandhi’s Tamil-speaking clerk. The clerk explained to Gandhi that the fellow was a servant indentured to a local European. The man had somehow provoked his master’s anger, and a brutal beating had followed. When Balasundaram limped off to the nearby home of the colony’s Protector of Immigrants, he was turned away. The Protector would only see him during his normal office hours. The Indian, however, was undeterred and took his complaint to the magistrate.
The magistrate was taken aback by what he saw. The Indian had been beaten so badly that his front teeth were protruding through his upper lip. The man’s turban, removed from his head and cradled in his hands, was drenched from the profuse flow of blood. The magistrate arranged for Balasundaram to go to the hospital, but kept custody of the turban as evidence. After several days of treatment, he was released—and went straightaway to the office of the new Indian barrister he had heard about.
Balasundaram’s request of Gandhi was that he end his indenture by prosecuting his master. Perhaps thinking that it would be quite difficult to mount a successful attack on a European master on behalf of a lowly Indian servant in a European court, and unfamiliar with the magistrate’s predisposition in cases of this sort, Gandhi instead suggested a more moderate course—that the indenture be transferred to another master. Perhaps on the advice of the more experienced Coakes, Gandhi wisely sent Balasundaram off to see a physician in order to further document the state of Balasundaram’s injuries.
When Balasundaram agreed to Gandhi’s proposal that they try for a transfer, Gandhi proposed the notion to the master, who was at first uncertain, but then agreed. His agreement was short-lived. After talking with his wife and hearing her argue that Balasundaram’s services were too valuable to surrender, the master proceeded to the Protector’s office to withdraw his agreement. With the transfer route foreclosed, the Protector arranged what he promoted as a compromise whereby the servant would withdraw his complaint and the master would take the servant back. Gandhi would later say that the news of the supposed compromise “sent a shock through my body,” for Gandhi sensed what would be in store for this servant who had challenged his master. Gandhi rushed out the door of his office to the Protector’s office, where the Protector placed before Gandhi Balasundaram’s written withdrawal of his complaint, conveniently attested to by the Protector himself. Stating the obvious for the purpose of discouraging Gandhi, the Protector took the position that had Balasundaram wanted any other result than to return to his master, he should not have signed the document.
Gandhi was not about to concede defeat. He had one other card to play. Gandhi threatened to take the matter before the magistrate. The Protector called Gandhi’s hand, saying that the written withdrawal of the complaint would make a trip to the magistrate fruitless.
Upon his return to this office, Gandhi moved on the litigation and negotiation fronts simultaneously. He instituted proceedings before the magistrate while also writing to the master with a renewed suggestion that the servant’s indenture be transferred. When the master persisted in his refusal, Gandhi pressed his case before the magistrate. After Gandhi submitted Balasundaram’s testimony, the direction of the court’s sympathies was clear. It was apparent that the magistrate, having seen the effects of the master’s savage treatment of his servant, would come down heavily on the master. Gandhi took this opportunity, however, not to prosecute his case to its successful conclusion, but to renew in open court his suggestion of a transfer.
The magistrate stepped in to help Gandhi. He indicated to the master that acceptance of the offer was a better result than the “serious consequences” to the master that would result from litigating the case to its conclusion. To drive the point home, the magistrate offered his opinion that Balasundaram had been brutalized. To the master’s response that Balasundaram had provoked him, he retorted, “You had no business to take the law in your own hands and beat the man as if he were a beast.” This said, he adjourned the matter to give the master time to think, a maneuver that had its intended result: the master shortly thereafter agreed to the settlement. But one matter remained to be disposed of—the Protector insisted that the new master be an acceptable European. For this assignment Gandhi recruited his friend Oswald Askew, at once an attorney and a Wesleyan minister, to take on Balasundaram “out of charity.” This done, the case was concluded.
Gandhi had recognized the rapids and falls, steered Balasundaram
