A text message calling Mahatma Gandhi being a planted “British agent brought from South Africa” is being shared on social media.
What does the message say?: It starts off by mentioning a letter found in the National archives about Gandhi getting “Rs 100 per month from the British to cover personal expenses in 1930.”
Claiming that the amount is equivalent to nearly three lakh rupees today, it questions whether Gandhi got the money to “the British in their work.”
It reminds people that the non-cooperation movement was “reaching extreme levels” in 1930 before stating that Gandhi was “for sure” a British agent who was "brought from South Africa and cleverly planted in India, working for Britishers along with Nehru".
Is it true?: There is no evidence to support the claim that Gandhi was paid this amount for his personal expenses.
The letter mentioned in the claim actually refers to one related to his detention at Pune’s Yerawada Central Jail, where he was kept as a political prisoner after the Dandi march, also known as the Salt Satyagraha.
During his detention, the Bombay government (now Mumbai) had directed that Rs 100 be sent to the Superintendent of the Yerawada Jail as maintenance for Gandhi.
How did we find out?: A relevant keyword search related to the claim led us to a copy of the letter on the National Archives of India’s website.
This letter was found on page 51 of a document that carried several papers regarding Gandhi’s treatment in jail and the expenditure incurred during his confinement.
In this letter dated 16 June 1930, it is mentioned that the government of Bombay sanctioned an amount of Rs 100 per month for Gandhi’s confinement under “Regulation XXV of 1827,” which added a similar debit charge for “Bengal State prisoner Satish Chandra Pakrashi.”
Page 52 of this document provides further clarification.
It presents an order signed by GFS Collins, the Secretary of the Government of Bombay’s Home Department, allowing the amount of Rs 100 to be sanctioned for his maintenance at the jail in Pune, which “should be remitted to the Superintendent of the Yeravda Central Prison (sic).”
The order added a point which directed the District Magistrate of Poona (now Pune) or his personal assistant to visit Gandhi “at least twice a month” and required them to submit a report about his health and treatment to the Government.
Gandhi’s hesitation: To find more details about Gandhi’s acceptance or rejection of this maintenance amount, we looked for documents or Gandhi’s correspondence from his time in Pune.
On the website of the cultural wing of the Maharashtra government, we found a lengthy document with several excerpts from Gandhi's speeches and letters about his confinement.
Among these letters, we came across one penned by Gandhi to Major EE Doyle, where he referred to the conditions and “privileges” of his imprisonment.
“...I have come to the conclusion that I must avoid, as much as possible, the special privileges offered to me by the Government,” it read, before listing six newspapers that he would prefer receiving, “if permitted.”
Referring to the monthly allowance of 100 rupees suggested by the Government, he hoped that he needed “nothing near it.”
“I know that my food is a costly affair. It grieves me, but it has become a physical necessity with me,” Gandhi wrote.
He then hoped that neither Doyle nor the Government considered him “ungrateful for not accepting all the facilities offered” to him.
Calling it an obsession, Gandhi said that even though the money saved by his economy could “but be an infinitesimal drop in the limitless ocean of waste,” he believed that he must do the “very little” that he could and not live “at the expense of the tolling semi-starved millions” around them.
A copy of this letter was found in the archives of two different publications (links here and here) on Wayback Machine, an internet archiving website.
Was maintenance common for prisoners?: The document mentioned earlier in this story also talks about a charge for the maintenance of Bengal State prisoner Satish Chandra Pakrashi, a freedom revolutionary born in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
When we looked for information about similar amounts for the maintenance of prisoners, we came across a Parliament discussion from 1933, which discussed the “non-grant of an allowance to the family of state prisoner Mr Arun Chandra Guha.”
In this document, one SC Mitra questioned Harry Haig, the then-Governor of Uttar Pradesh why Guha’s family had not been granted an allowance, indicating that it was common practise for prisoners or their families to receive such a sum from the Government.
In a 1996 thesis submitted to London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) titled ‘Political Prisoners in India, 1920 - 1977’, Ujjwal Kumar Singh mentioned that detainees were given privileges and allowances during detention.
“Further, detenus were entitled to allowances on the pattern of the Regulation III of 1818. Government was empowered to provide an individual allowance for the detenu, and family allowance for maintenance of a ‘near relative’ or his ‘dependents’ based on their ‘rank in life’. 38 Allowances given to the individual detenu included the daily dietary allowance, monthly personal allowance and a yearly allowance for clothing, bedding and miscellaneous articles,” it reads.
Conclusion: There is no evidence to back the claim that MK Gandhi received 100 rupees from the British government in 1930 to “cover personal expenses.”
The amount was given to the Superintendent of the prison in Yerawada, Pune, for Gandhi’s maintenance, which he was unwilling to use.
(With inputs from Rujuta Thete.)
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