Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

In September 1912 Gandhi executed a deed transferring ownership of Phoenix Farm to five trustees, these being the Durban merchant Omar Hajee Amod Johari, Parsee Rustomjee, Kallenbach, Ritch and Pranjivan Mehta – a Muslim, a Parsi, two Jews and a Hindu respectively. The document transferred to these five others Gandhi’s right, title and interest in the land and machinery of Phoenix, and listed eight aims by which the farm would be run: namely, to earn a livelihood as far as possible by one’s own labour; to promote better relations between Indians and Europeans; to ‘follow and promote the ideas’ set forth by Tolstoy and Ruskin; to promote ‘purity of private life in individuals by living pure lives themselves’; to start a school to educate children mainly in their own vernaculars; to establish a sanitation and hygiene institute; to ‘train themselves generally for the service of humanity’; and to publish Indian Opinion for the advancement of these ideals.