Life in South Africa ( Gandhi)

 Introduction: The best part of my life' is how Gandhi described his days in South Africa twenty-five years after he had left it. It was certainly the most formative period of his career. His personality and politics could have been cast in a unique mould with the trials, challenges and opportunities that he encountered in South Africa. This helped him to become one of the most charismatic and creative leaders of the twentieth century.

Journey to South Africa: Curiously, it was an accident that provided the impulse for Gandhi's visit to South Africa in 1893. After his return from England  qualifed as a barrister, he started his legal career in Bombay. But it was not a successful one and so he decided to settle at Rajkot, Gujarat. It was at this time, that Dada Abdullah, an Indian merchant in Natal, offered to engage him for a civil suit in that country. The contract was for a year; the remuneration was £105, a first class return fare, and actual expenses. So, towards the end of May 1893 he landed at Durban. In a Durban court he was ordered by the European magistrate to take off his turban. He refused and left the courtroom. A week later, when he was on his way to Pretoria, he was unceremoniously thrown out of the first-class carriage at Maritzburg station. In retrospect, this incident seemed to him one of the most creative experiences of his life. He resolved not to accept injustice as part of the natural or unnatural order in South Africa.

Gandhi as a Political Campaigner: While in Pretoria he studied the conditions under which his countrymen lived, and tried to educate them on their rights and duties, but he had no intention of staying on in South Africa. In June 1894, when the year's contract drew to a close, he was back in Durban, ready to sail for India. But he happened to glance through the local newspaper The Natal Mercury and learnt that the Natal Legislative Assembly was considering a bill to deprive Indians of the right to vote. ‘This is the first nail in our coffin’ Gandhi told his hosts. Neither as a student in England nor as a lawyer in India had Gandhi taken much interest in politics. In July 1894, when he was barely twenty-five, he blossomed overnight into a proficient political campaigner.

Gandhi as a Politician: A sound instinct guided young Gandhi in organizing his first political campaign. He drafted petitions to the Natal Legislature and the British government. Though his effort was not a successful one, but he made commotion in Natal, England, and India. So, the Indian community begged him to stay on to continue the fight on their behalf. Gandhi felt that what the Indian urgently needed was a permanent organization to look after their interests. In deference to Dadabhai Naoroji who had presided over the Indian National Congress in 1893, he named the new organization Natal Indian Congress. Without knowing the function of Indian National Congress, Gandhi was able to fashion the Natal Indians with his innovative ideologies. 1. His strategy was twofold. In the first place, a spirit of solidarity had to be infused into the Muslim merchants and their Hindu-Parsi clerks, the semi-slave indentured labourers from Madras and the Natal born Indian Christians. 2. Secondly, the widest publicity was to be given to the Indians' case to quicken the conscience of the peoples and governments of Natal, India and Great Britain.

In these early years of his political apprenticeship, he formulated his own code of conduct for a politician. He did not accept the popular view that in politics one must fight for one's party right or wrong. He avoided exaggeration and discouraged it in his colleagues. He did not spare his own people, he was not only the stoutest champion of Natal Indians, but also their severest critic.

Gandhi’s Political Ideology: In 1896 Gandhi went to India to fetch his wife and children and to canvass support for the cause of Indians overseas. On landing at Durban in January 1897, he was assaulted and nearly lynched by a white mob. Two years later, he raised an Indian ambulance corps during the Boer War.  'What we [Indians] want', Gandhi told the British High Commissioner in South Africa, 'is not political power, but we do wish to live side with other British subjects in peace and amity, and with dignity and self-respect’. This is precisely what the Boers and Britons did not want. Instead of considering the welfare of Africans and Indians, General Smuts later declared that the South African government had made up its mind to make this a white man's country.

Satyagraha: In 1906 the Transvaal government published a particularly humiliating ordinance for the registration of its Indian citizens. The Indians held a mass protest meeting at Johannesburg, and under Gandhi's leadership took a pledge to defy the ordinance. Thus, was born ‘satyagraha’, a new method of redressing wrongs and fighting oppression without hatred and without violence. The principles and the technique of the new movement evolved gradually in the ensuing months and years.

The satyagraha struggle in South Africa lasted eight years. It had its ups and downs, but under Gandhi's leadership the small Indian minority sustained its resistance against heavy odds. Hundreds of Indians chose to sacrifice their livelihood and liberty rather than submit to law. In the last phase of the struggle in 1913, hundreds of Indians including women, went to jail. Many Indians working in mines were shooted. It was a terrible ordeal for the Indians, but it was also a bad advertisement for the rulers of South Africa. Even Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy of India, publicly condemned the measures adopted by the South African government, by calling it uncivilized. Under pressure from world opinion and from the Government of India and the British government, the South African government concluded in 1914 what came to be known as the Gandhi-Smuts agreement. Not all the Indian grievances were redressed, but the first dent had been made in the armour of racial discrimination, and Gandhi was able to return to India. Perhaps he had already sensed that the racial problem in South Africa could not be solved so long as European imperialism-rule over Asian and African peoples by European nations- continued.

Gandhi’s Personality: It was not only Gandhi's politics but his personality that was shaped in South Africa. His interest in moral and religious questions had dated back to his childhood, but it was in South Africa that he had an opportunity of systematically studying them. The study of comparative religion, helped him develop into a man who understands that the real spiritual progress is to translated his beliefs in workday life. The book that became Gandhi's bond with Hinduism was the Bhagavad Gita. It was from it that he imbibed the ideal of aparigraha (non-possession).  

Conclusion: Thus, Gandhiji, an ordinary lawyer, turned into a political leader in South Africa. His ideologies against racial discrimination and injustice put him on the high pedestal of world’s politics. Through his political career, Gandhi had also developed his personality – a simple man with indomitable spirit. The birth of non-cooperation or ‘satyagraha’ is the soul of Gandhi’s political policy which earned equality and freedom not only to the Indians in South Africa but also Indians in India.