The train incident was a moment of truth to him. Something important happened to him, he would not again accept injustice, but defend his dignity as an Indian and as a man. He was becoming conscious, reflecting, acting and forming his philosophy and politics. He stayed on in South Africa.
In 1914 he left for India. South Africa would evolve into Apartheid, and Gandhi’s effect on South Africa was less than South Africa’s effect on him. But he had woke up politically, matured and was ready for the gigantic struggle to free India from its colonial masters. In this he would succeed.
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| South Africa, 1903: Gandhi (centre) with staff. |
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| Gandhi and the other founders of the Natal Indian Congress 1894. |
Background
Gandhi
was born in 1869 in India, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. He
went to study law in London in 1888 adapted several European habits and showed
little interest in politics. After graduating he had difficulties in finding
work in India and accepted a post in Natal where thousands of Indians were
working. After his first year had come to an end, Gandhi was ready to sail to
India to his family. At a farewell party he learned that the Natal Legislative
Assembly was discussing a law that would deprive the Indian’s right to vote.
His hosts begged him to stay and fight for them. He stayed. He wrote petitions and got hundreds of
signatures but didn’t succeed in stopping the bill. But he blossomed and got
attention. He founded the Natal Indian Congress. With this a spirit of
solidarity came to them and by a flow of stories he showed to them, the
government and the outside world the discrimination that was practiced. He
fetches his wife Kasturba and their children in India in 1896. He also meet Indian
political leaders mobilizing support for the struggle overseas. On the return
to Durban a white mob almost lynches him, he refuses to prosecute them.
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| Gandhi with the Indian Ambulance Corps during the Boer War. |
Inventing nonviolent resistance
But
he bore no grudge to the British. When the Boer war started he raised an
ambulance corps of 1.100 volunteers. But the British victory gave them little
relief. The Boers and British co-operated very well, the Indians and Black
continued to be discriminated. In 1906 the Transvaal government made into law
humiliating ordinance of re-registration and obligating the Indian population to
carry passes. Gandhi saw it as a way to hound Indians out of the country. He called
it a crime against humanity and asked for full civil liberties for Indians. Leading
protests he was heard and invited to England where he spoke to leading
politicians and media. But the bill was introduced next year limiting Indian
immigration and their rights to trade. Gandhi organized the Indians and only 511
of 13.000 Indians registered. He invented satyagraha, a technique to resist
without rancour and fight without violence. They were willing to take great
suffering but not make the adversary suffer. On 10 January 1908 he was tried in
the court and sentenced to 2 months in jail. This was his first time in jail,
he would be imprisoned several times later. Protests continued in South Africa
and also in India where among other Jinnah, the Muslim leader that founded
Pakistan mobilized. The British retreated and a compromise was made where the
Indians would registrate voluntarily. Gandhi was released from prison.
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| Durban around 1900. |
Racial segregation continues
Boer
generals Botha and Smuts became Prime ministers in the Union of South Africa,
where four British colonies merged. Racial segregation developed, and in this
system Indians were treated better than the Black population. The Blacks were
prohibited to buy land outside the reserves (except for the Blacks in the Cape
Province). Gandhi’s struggle continued, in 1913 hundreds of Indians went to
jail, thousand of workers in the mines were on strike facing imprisonment, flogging
and shooting. General Smuts was pressured by the British government to make
another compromise with Gandhi. In July 1914 Gandhi left for India. “The saint has left our shores” Smuts wrote, “I hope for ever”. But he
respected Gandhi and later wrote it had been his ”fate to be the antagonist of
a man for whom even then I had the highest respect”. Gandhi had made him a pair
of sandals in jail.
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Map of Southern Africa with Natal
on the right side with pink boundaries.
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Sources and more information
I am open to your comments and
proposals.
Regards
Bjarte Bjørsvik
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