Recuperating Indian masculinity: Mohandas Gandhi, war and the Indian diaspora in South Africa (1899–1914)

Abstract

This article examines Mohandas Gandhi’s writing on Indian masculinity in early twentieth-century South Africa which was a period of his life that was seminal for his political career. The author explores how, in the context of being removed from many personal and professional constraints that he encountered in India, Gandhi fashioned prescriptions that would transform the emasculated, effete and cowardly Indian man constructed by colonial discourses in nineteenth-century British India. Building on the scholarly literature pertaining to Gandhian bodily ascesis, I argue that Gandhi held the belief that Indian men would be able to face the hazards of anticolonial satyagraha once their masculinity had been restored, for which various practices of military training were indispensable. I suggest that Gandhi attempted to catalyse somatic and moral reform by encouraging South African Indian men to serve in the British army during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) and the Zulu Rebellion (1906). I explain how Gandhi viewed military service as a transformative disciplinary experience that would afford Indian men with the ability to endure physical duress, bodily strength and, lastly, knowledge in the use of arms. I illustrate how military service ultimately generated a masculine Indian subject, according to Gandhi, one who possessed mastery over his bodily senses, moral fortitude and fearlessness.