VII. SOME
EXPERIENCES
The port of Natal is Durban also known as Port Natal.
Abdulla Sheth was there to receive me. As the ship
arrived at the quay and I watched the people coming on
board to meet their friends, I observed that the Indians
were not held in much respect. I could not fail to notice
a sort of snobbishness about the manner in which those
who knew Abdulla Sheth behaved towards him, and it stung
me. Abdulla Sheth had not got used to it. Those who
looked at me did so with a certain amount of curiosity.
My dress marked me out from other Indians. I had a frock-
coat and a turban, an imitation of the Bengal pugree.
I was taken to the firm's quarters and shown into the
room set apart for me, next to Abdulla Sheth's. He did
not understand me. I could not understand him. He read
the papers his brother had sent through me, and felt more
puzzled. He thought his brother had sent him a white
elephant. My style of dress and living struck him as
being expensive like that of the Europeans. There was no
particular work then which could be given me. Their case
was going on in the Transvaal. There was no meaning in
sending me there immediately. And how far could he trust
my ability and honesty? He would not be in Pretoria to
watch me. The defendants were in Pretoria, and for aught
he knew they might bring undue influence to bear on me.
And if work in connection with the case in question was
not to be entrusted to me, what work could I be given to
do, as all other work could be done much better by his
clerks? The clerks could be brought to book, if they did
wrong. Could I be, if I also happened to err? So if no
work in connection with the case could be given me, I
should have to be kept for nothing.
Abdulla Sheth was practically unlettered, but he had a
rich fund of experience. He had an acute intellect and
was conscious of it. By practice he had picked up just
sufficient English for conversational purposes, but that
served him for carrying on all his business, whether it
was dealing with Bank Managers and European merchants or
explaining his case to his counsel. The Indians held him
in very high esteem. His firm was then the biggest, or at
any rate one of the biggest, of the Indian firms. With
all these advantages he had one disadvantage he was by
nature suspicious.
He was proud of Islam and loved to discourse on
Islamic philosophy. Though he did not know Arabic, his
acquaintance with the Holy Koran and Islamic literature
in general was fairly good. Illustrations he had in
plenty, always ready at hand. Contact with him gave me a
fair amount of practical knowledge of Islam. When we came
closer to each other, we had long discussions on
religious topics.
On the second or third day of my arrival, he took me
to see the Durban court. There he introduced me to
several people and seated me next to his attorney. The
Magistrate kept staring at me and finally asked me to
take off my turban. This I refused to do and left the
court.
So here too there was fighting in store for me.
Abdulla Sheth explained to me why some Indians were
required to take off their turbans. Those wearing the
Musalman costume might, he said, keep their turbans on,
but the other Indians on entering a court had to take
theirs off as a rule.
I must enter into some details to make this nice
distinction intelligible. In the course of these two or
three days I could see that the Indians were divided into
different groups. One was that of Musalman merchants, who
would call themselves 'Arabs.' Another was that of Hindu,
and yet another of Parsi, clerks. The Hindu clerks were
neither here nor there, unless they cast in their lot
with the 'Arab.' The Parsi clerks would call themselves
Persians. These three classes had some social relations
with one another. But by far the largest class was that
composed of Tamil, Telugu and North Indian indentured and
freed labourers. The indentured labourers were those who
went to natal on an agreement to serve for five years,
and came to be known there as girmitiyas from
girmit, which was the corrupt form of the English word
'agreement'. The other three classes had none but
business relations with this class. Englishmen called
them' coolies' and as the majority of Indians belonged to
the labouring class, all Indians were called 'coolies,'
or 'samis'. 'sami' is a Tamil suffix
occurring after many Tamil names, and it is nothing else
than the Samskrit Swami, meaning a master.
Whenever, therefore, an Indian resented being addressed
as a 'sami' and had enough wit in him, he would
try to return the compliment in this wise: 'You may call
me sami, but you forget that sami means
a master. I am not your master!' Some Englishmen would
wince at this, while others would get angry, swear at the
Indian and, if there was a chance, would even belabour
him; for sami to him was nothing better than a
term of contempt. To interpret it to mean a master
amounted to an insult!
I was hence known as a 'coolie barrister.' The
merchants were known as 'coolie merchants.' The original
meaning of the word 'coolie' was thus forgotten, and it
became a common appellation for all Indians. The Musalman
merchant would resent this and say: 'I am not a coolie, I
am an Arab,' or 'I am a merchant,' and the Englishman, if
courteous, would apologize to him.
The question of wearing the turban had a great
importance in this state of things, Being obliged to take
off one's Indian turban would be pocketing an insult. So
I thought I had better bid good-bye to the Indian turban
and begin wearing an English hat, which would save me
from the insult and the unpleasant controversy.
But Abdulla Sheth disapproved of the idea. He said,
'If you do anything of the kind, it will have a very bad
effect. You will compromise those insisting on wearing
Indian turbans. And an Indian turban sits well on your
head. If you wear an English hat, you will pass for a
waiter.'
There was practical wisdom, patriotism and a little
bit of narrowness in this advice. The wisdom was
apparent, and he would not have insisted on the Indian
turban except out of patriotism; the slighting reference
to the waiter betrayed a kind of narrowness. Amongst the
indentured Indians there were three classes Hindus,
Musalmans and Christians. The last were the children of
indentured Indians who became converts to Christanity.
Even in 1893 their number was large. They wore the
English costume., and the majority of them earned their
living by service as waiters in hotels. Abdulla Sheth's
criticism of the English hat was with reference to this
class. It was considered degrading to serve as a waiter
in a hotel. The belief persists even today among many.
On the whole I liked Abdulla Sheth's advice. I wrote
to the press about the incident and defended the wearing
of my turban in the court. The question was very much
discussed in the papers, which described me as an
'unwelcome visitor.' Thus the incident gave me an
unexpected advertisement in South Africa within a few
days of my arrival there. Some supported me while others
severely criticized my temerity.
My turban stayed with me practically until the end of
my stay in South Africa. When and why I left off wearing
any head-dress at all in South Africa, we shall see
later.
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