Some of the White passengers protested at this cowardly assault and the conductor was obliged to stop beating Gandhi who kept his seat. The position of Indians in the Transvaal was worse than in Natal. One day Gandhi, who had received from the State Attorney a letter authorizing him to be out of doors all hours, was having his usual walk. As he passed near President Kruger's house, the policeman on duty, suddenly and without any warning, pushed him off the pavement and kicked him into the street.
Coates, an English Quaker, who knew Gandhi, happened to pass by and saw the incident. He advised Gandhi to proceed against the man and offered himself as witness. But Gandhi declined the offer saying that he had made it a rule not to go to court in respect of a personal grievance.
During his stay in Pretoria, Gandhi read about 80 books on religion. He came under the influence of Christianity but refused to embrace it. During this period, Gandhi attended Bible classes. Within a week of his arrival there, Gandhi made his first public speech making truthfulness in business his theme. The meeting was called to awaken the Indian residents to a sense of the oppression they were suffering under. He took up the issue of Indians in regard to first class travel in railways.
As a result, an assurance was given that first and second-class tickets would be issued to Indians "who were properly dressed". This was a partial victory. These incidents lead Gandhi to develop the concept of Satyagraha. He united the Indians from different communities, languages and religions, who had settled in South Africa. By the time Gandhi arrived in South Africa the growing national- perpetuated by the White ruling authorities and the majority of the White citizenry - anti-Indian attitude had spread to Natal now kwaZulu-Natal.
The first discriminatory legislation directed at Indians, Law 3 of , was passed in the South African Republic, or the Transvaal. The right to self-government had been granted to Natal in and politicians were increasing pressure to pass legislation aimed at containing the 'merchant [Indian] menace'.
Two bills were passed in the following two years restricting the freedom of Indians severely. The Immigration Law Amendment Bill stated that any Indian had to return to India at the end of a five-year indenture period or had to be re-indentured for a further two years. The bill came into law in A Franchise Amendment Bill was introduced in It was designed to limit the franchise to Indians who had the vote.
Although there were only of them, in comparison to 10 white voters, the Bill caused outrage among Indian leadership. They decided to contest the measure by any means available to them. Having completed his work in Pretoria, Gandhi returned to Durban and prepared to sail home.
At a farewell dinner, in April , given in his honour someone showed him a news item in the Natal Mercury that the Natal Government proposed to introduce a bill to disfranchise Indians. Gandhi immediately understood the ominous implications of this bill which, as he said, "is the first nail into our coffin" and advised his compatriots to resist it by concerned action. But they pleaded their helplessness without him and begged him to stay on for another month.
He agreed little realizing that this one month would grow into twenty years. Gandhi immediately turned the farewell dinner into a meeting and an action committee was formed.
This committee then drafted a petition to the Natal Legislative Assembly. Volunteers came forward to make copies of the petition and to collect signatures - all during the night.
The petition received much favourable publicity in the press the following morning. The bill was however passed. Within a month the mammoth petition with ten thousand signatures was sent to Lord Ripon and a thousand copies printed for distribution. Even The Times admitted the justice of the Indian claim and for the first time the people in India came to know of the oppressive lot of their compatriots in South Africa.
He therefore enrolled as an advocate of the Supreme Court of Natal. On 25 June , at the residence of Sheth Abdulla, with Sheth Haji Muhammad, the foremost Indian leader of Natal in the chair, a meeting of Indians was held and it was resolved to offer opposition to the Franchise Bill.
Here Gandhi outlined his plan of action to oppose this bill. Gandhi played a prominent role in the planned campaign. As a talented letter-writer and meticulous planner, he was assigned the task of compiling all petitions, arranging meetings with politicians and addressing letters to newspapers.
He was instrumental in the formation of the Natal Indian Congress NIC on 22 August , which marked the birth of the first permanent political organisation to strive to maintain and protect the rights of Indians in South Africa.
By Gandhi had established himself as a political leader in South Africa. In this year, he undertook a journey to India to launch a protest campaign on behalf of Indians in South Africa. It took the form of letters written to newspapers, interviews with leading nationalist leaders and a number of public meetings.
His mission caused great uproar in India and consternation among British authorities in England and Natal. Gandhi embarrassed the British Government enough to cause it to block the Franchise Bill in an unprecedented move, which resulted in anti-Indian feelings in Natal reaching dangerous new levels. While in India, an urgent telegram from the Indian community in Natal obliged him to cut short his stay.
He set sail for Durban with his wife and children on 30 November Gandhi did not realize that while he had been away from South Africa, his pamphlet of Indian grievances, known as the Green Pamphlet, had been exaggerated and distorted.
When the ship reached Durban harbour, it was for held for 23 days in quarantine. News of this cowardly assault received wide publicity and Joseph Chamberlain, the British Secretary of States for the Colonies, cabled an order to Natal to prosecute all those who were responsible for the attempted lynching.
However, Gandhi refused to identify and prosecute his assailants, saying that they were misled and that he was sure that when they came to know the truth they would be sorry for what they had done. Previously he was anxious to maintain the standard of an English barrister. Now he began, to methodically reduce his wants and his expenses.
He began to do his own laundry and clean out his own chamber-pots but often his guests as well. Not satisfied with self-help, he volunteered, despite his busy practice as a lawyer and demand of public work, his free service for two hours a day at a charitable hospital. He also undertook the education at home of his two sons and a nephew.
He read books on nursing and midwifery and in fact served as midwife when his fourth and last son was born in Natal. He organized and, with the help of a Dr. Booth, trained an Indian Ambulance Corps of 1, volunteers and offered its services to the Government.
In , at the end of the war, Gandhi wanted to return to India. With great difficulty he persuaded his friends to let him go and promised to return should the community need him within a year. He reached India in time to attend the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress and had the satisfaction of seeing his resolution on South Africa pass with acclamation.
He was however disappointed with the congress. He felt that Indian politicians talked too much but did little.
Hardly had he set up in practice in Bombay when a cablegram from the Indian community in Natal recalled him.
He had given them his word that he would return if needed. Leaving his family in India he sailed again. But the Colonial Secretary who had come to receive a gift of thirty-five million pounds from South Africa had no intention to alienate the European community. He therefore decided to stay on in Johannesburg and enrolled as an advocate of the Supreme Court.
Though he stayed on specifically to challenge White arrogance and to resist injustice, he harboured no hatred in his heart and was in fact always ready to help when they were in distress. It was this rare combination of readiness to resist wrong and capacity to love his opponent which baffled his enemies and compelled their admiration. When the Zulu rebellion broke out, he again offered his help to the Government and raised an Indian Ambulance Corps.
In , he was arrested by the British authorities and pleaded guilty to three counts of sedition, which resulted in a six-year prison sentence, although that was commuted after just two years. Official sales of salt were also subject to tax. It was legislation that hit the poorest hardest. And so, in , Mahatma Gandhi took on the Salt Act. The most well-known part of his campaign was the kilometre Salt March to the shores of the Arabian Sea, where he collected salt in symbolic and open defiance of the government monopoly.
But there was little in the way of progress and relations with Britain remained strained. Once again, he was arrested and jailed - this time along with fellow leaders of the Indian National Congress and his wife. A change of government in Britain after the end of the war saw more willingness to discuss independence for India.
But the negotiations that followed led to the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. On August 15, , India gained its independence, Pakistan was born and millions of people were displaced and relocated, leading to waves of violence and killings. The following year, on 30 January, , Mahatma Gandhi was shot three times and killed by a Hindu extremist.
Gandhi's dedication to nonviolent, anti-colonial protest has made him an inspirational figure for millions of people to this day. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum. In this new era, India will prioritize economic expansion and sustainability to sustain its growth and influence on the world stage. Diwali is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. The festival lasts five days and the story behind the festival differs for each of the three religions.
I accept. Mahatma Ghandi is revered by many people all over the world as a symbol of unity and peace. Take action on UpLink. Forum in focus. We set up a taskforce to help. Read more about this project.
Explore context. Under pressure, the South African government accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts that included recognition of Hindu marriages and the abolition of a poll tax for Indians.
In Gandhi founded an ashram in Ahmedabad, India, that was open to all castes. Wearing a simple loincloth and shawl, Gandhi lived an austere life devoted to prayer, fasting and meditation. In , with India still under the firm control of the British, Gandhi had a political reawakening when the newly enacted Rowlatt Act authorized British authorities to imprison people suspected of sedition without trial.
In response, Gandhi called for a Satyagraha campaign of peaceful protests and strikes. Violence broke out instead, which culminated on April 13, , in the Massacre of Amritsar. Troops led by British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer fired machine guns into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators and killed nearly people.
Gandhi became a leading figure in the Indian home-rule movement. Calling for mass boycotts, he urged government officials to stop working for the Crown, students to stop attending government schools, soldiers to leave their posts and citizens to stop paying taxes and purchasing British goods.
Rather than buy British-manufactured clothes, he began to use a portable spinning wheel to produce his own cloth. The spinning wheel soon became a symbol of Indian independence and self-reliance.
Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress and advocated a policy of non-violence and non-cooperation to achieve home rule. After British authorities arrested Gandhi in , he pleaded guilty to three counts of sedition. Although sentenced to a six-year imprisonment, Gandhi was released in February after appendicitis surgery. When violence between the two religious groups flared again, Gandhi began a three-week fast in the autumn of to urge unity.
He remained away from active politics during much of the latter s. Wearing a homespun white shawl and sandals and carrying a walking stick, Gandhi set out from his religious retreat in Sabarmati on March 12, , with a few dozen followers.
By the time he arrived 24 days later in the coastal town of Dandi, the ranks of the marchers swelled, and Gandhi broke the law by making salt from evaporated seawater. The Salt March sparked similar protests, and mass civil disobedience swept across India. Approximately 60, Indians were jailed for breaking the Salt Acts, including Gandhi, who was imprisoned in May Still, the protests against the Salt Acts elevated Gandhi into a transcendent figure around the world.
Gandhi was released from prison in January , and two months later he made an agreement with Lord Irwin to end the Salt Satyagraha in exchange for concessions that included the release of thousands of political prisoners. The agreement, however, largely kept the Salt Acts intact. But it did give those who lived on the coasts the right to harvest salt from the sea. Hoping that the agreement would be a stepping-stone to home rule, Gandhi attended the London Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional reform in August as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress.
The conference, however, proved fruitless. The public outcry forced the British to amend the proposal. Gandhi played an active role in the negotiations, but he could not prevail in his hope for a unified India. Instead, the final plan called for the partition of the subcontinent along religious lines into two independent states—predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan.
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