Work Of Mahatma Gandhi In South Africa

In March 1919, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was already in his fiftieth year, called for a nationwide Satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act, his first attempt at leading an all-India struggle. To understand the man who was about to take over the reins of the Indian national movement and lead it through its most climactic years, one must go back at least twenty-five years, to 1893, when he began the struggle of Indians against racial discrimination in South Africa as a twenty-four year old barrister. 

 

The young barrister who arrived in Durban in 1893 on a one-year contract to help Gujarati merchant Dada Abdullah with his legal problems appeared to be an ordinary young man trying to make a living. He was, however, the first Indian barrister and the first Indian with a university education to come to South Africa.

 

•    Indentured Indian labour, primarily from South India, was recruited by White settlers to work on the sugar plantations in South Africa beginning in 1890. Indian merchants, mostly Merman Muslims, had followed in their footsteps. The third group of Indians in South Africa prior to Gandhi’s arrival was indentured labourers who had settled down in South Africa after their contract had expired, as well as their children, many of whom were born in South Africa.

 

•    None of these groups of Indians had much access to education, especially in English; even wealthy merchants often only knew a smattering of the language required to conduct their business. Even if they despised the racial discrimination they faced on a daily basis, they had come to accept it as a way of life, and even if they did, they had no idea how to challenge it.

 

•    Gandhi was the son of an Indian state's Dewan (Minister), whose family, despite their financial difficulties, was well-liked in his hometown of Kathiawad. He'd also spent three years studying for the Bar in London. He had never encountered the overt racism that greeted him within days of his arrival in South Africa, neither in India nor in England. 

 

•    Gandhiji experience to racial discrimination: Journey from Durban to Pretoria, which he completed in less than a week after arriving on the continent, was riddled with racial humiliations. Apart from the famous incident in which a White man bundled him out of a first-class compartment and left him shivering in the waiting room, he was forced to travel in the driver's box in a coach for which he had purchased a first-class ticket, and when he disobeyed the coach leader's order to vacate even that seat and sit on the foot-board, he was thrashed soundly. When he arrived in Johannesburg, he discovered that all of the hotels were fully booked the moment he inquired about a room for the night. He was almost pushed out of his railway compartment after securing a first-class train ticket from Johannesburg to Pretoria and was only saved from this humiliation by the intervention of a European passenger.

 

•    He immediately convened a meeting of the Indians in Pretoria, where he was to work on the civil suit that had brought him to South Africa. He offered to teach English to anyone who wanted to learn it and encouraged them to band together and protest oppression. He also used the press to express his displeasure. 

 

•    Gandhi ji was getting ready to leave for India after settling the law suit for which he had come. However, on the eve of his departure from Durban, he brought up the issue of the disenfranchisement bill that was about to be passed by the Natal legislature.

 

•    The Indians in South Africa begged Gandhiji to stay for a month and organise their protest because they couldn't do it on their own because they didn't know enough English to draught petitions or anything like that. 

 

•    He was only 25 at the time, and he was 45 when he left. In one way, Gandhi’s time in South Africa was unique. He demanded many things as a matter of right because he was a British-educated barrister, such as first-class train tickets and hotel rooms, which other Indians had probably never had the courage to ask for. Maybe they thought they were being discriminated against because they weren't "civilised," or "westernised."

 

•    Gandhi’s first visit to South Africa as a westernised Indian demonstrated to him and others that the real cause lay elsewhere, in the White rulers' assumption of racial superiority. Because he was the only Indian with a western education, he was also tasked with leading the Indians' fight against rising racial discrimination. 

 

•    Wealthy Indian merchants appointed him as their leader because he was the only one who could speak to the rulers in their own language, the only one who understood the intricacies of their laws and system of government, the only one who could draught their petitions, form their organisations, and represent them before the rulers.

 

•    From 1894 to 1906, Gandhi’s political activities can be classified as the "Moderate" phase of the South African Indians' struggle. He focused on petitioning and sending memorials to the South African legislatures, the Colonial Secretary in London, and the British Parliament during this time. 

 

•    He believed that if all of the facts of the case were presented to the Imperial Government, the British sense of justice and fairness would be aroused, and the Imperial Government would intervene on behalf of the Indians, who were, after all, British subjects. His goal was to bring together various Indian groups and make their demands widely known.

 

•    This he attempted to do by founding the Natal Indian Congress and publishing the Indian Opinion newspaper. During this time, Gandhi’s abilities as an organiser, fund-raiser, journalist, and propagandist all came to the fore. 

 

•    By 1906, however, Gandhiji had thoroughly tested the so-called "Moderate" methods of struggle and was convinced that they would fail.

 

•    The use of passive resistance or civil disobedience, which Gandhiji named Satyagraha, characterised the second phase of the struggle in South Africa, which began in 1906. 

 

•    It was first used when the government passed legislation requiring Indians to obtain registration certificates that included their fingerprints. It was critical to keep these with you at all times. 

 

•    Indians resolved to refuse to submit to the law and face the consequences at a large public meeting held on September 11, 1906, in Johannesburg's Empire Theatre. 

 

•    To carry out the campaign, Gandhiji established the Passive Resistance Association. The government began proceedings against Gandhiji and twenty-six others after the registration deadline passed. 

 

•    The passive resisters pleaded guilty, were ordered to leave the country, and were sentenced to prison when they refused. Others joined them, bringing the total number of people to 155. The fear of going to jail had vanished, and it became known as King Edward's Hotel.

 

•    General Smuts summoned Gandhiji for a meeting, promising to drop the legislation if Indians agreed to register voluntarily. Gandhiji accepted the invitation and was the first to sign up. Smuts, on the other hand, had pulled a fast one: he ordered the voluntary registrations to be ratified under the law. The Indians, led by Gandhiji, retaliated by burning their registration certificates in public.

 

•    Meanwhile, the government has introduced new legislation, this time aimed at limiting Indian immigration. To counter this, the campaign widened its horizons. A group of prominent Indians from Natal crossed the border into Transvaal in August 1908 to defy the new immigration laws and were apprehended. 

 

•    Other Transvaal Indians defied the laws by selling without a licence, and traders who did have licences refused to produce them. They were all imprisoned. In October 1908, Gandhiji was arrested and sentenced to a prison term involving hard physical labour and deplorable living conditions, along with the other Indians. However, imprisonment failed to quell the resistance's spirit, and the government resorted to deportation to India, particularly of the poorer Indians. Threats to merchants' economic interests put them under pressure.

 

•    The movement had come to a halt at this point. The more devout Satyagrahis were still going in and out of jail, but the majority were showing signs of exhaustion. The fight was clearly going to be long, and the government had no intention of giving up. 

 

•    In 1909, Gandhiji travelled to London to meet with the authorities, but his visit was fruitless. The funds for supporting the Satyagrahis' families and running Indian Opinion were rapidly depleting. 

 

•    Since 1906, when he began devoting all of his attention to the struggle, Gandhiji's own legal practise had virtually ceased. At this point, Gandhiji established Tolstoy Farm, made possible by the generosity of his German architect friend Kallenbach, to house the Satyagrahis' families and provide them with a means of subsistence. 

 

•    Tolstoy Farm served as a forerunner to the Gandhian ashrams that would later play such a pivotal role in the Indian national movement. India contributed as well, with Sir Ratan Tata sending Rs. 25,000 and contributions from the Congress, the Muslim League, and the Nizam of Hyderabad.

 

•    An agreement was reached between the government and the Indians in 1911 to coincide with King George V's coronation, but it only lasted until the end of 1912. Meanwhile, Gokhale visited South Africa, where he was treated like a VIP and promised that all discriminatory laws against Indians would be repealed. 

 

•    Satyagraha was resumed in 1913 after the promise was never kept. This time, the movement was expanded to include opposition to the three-pound poll tax levied on all ex-indentured Indians. The inclusion of a demand for the repeal of this tax, which was imposed disproportionately harshly on poor labourers whose monthly wages barely exceeded ten shillings, immediately drew indentured and ex-indentured labourers into the struggle, and Satyagraha could now take on a truly mass character.

 

•    A Supreme Court ruling invalidated all marriages not conducted according to Christian rites and registered by the Registrar of Marriages, adding more fuel to the already raging fire. Marriages between Hindus, Muslims, and Paris’s were therefore illegal, and the children born as a result of these unions were illegitimate. The Indians saw this judgement as an insult to their women's honour, and as a result, many women were drawn into the movement.

 

•    Gandhiji decided that the time had come for the final struggle, and that all of the resisters' resources should be directed toward it. The campaign began with the illegal crossing of the border by a group of sixteen Satyagrahis, including Gandhiji's wife Kasturba, who marched from Phoenix Settlement in Natal to Transvaal and were arrested right away. 

 

Agitation by mine’s worker: A group of eleven women marched from Tolstoy Farm in Transvaal to New Castle, a mining town in Natal, without obtaining a permit. They spoke with Indian mine workers, mostly Tamils, and persuaded them to go on strike before being arrested. Gandhiji arrived in New Castle and assumed command of the agitation. The employers retaliated by cutting off the workers' water and electricity, forcing them to flee their homes. 

 

•    Gandhiji made the decision to march this army of over 2,000 men, women, and children across the border and imprison them in Transvaal jails. During the march, Gandhiji was arrested twice, released, and then arrested a third time and imprisoned. 

 

•    The workers' morale was high, so they continued marching until they were loaded onto trains and transported back to Natal, where they were prosecuted and imprisoned. Starvation, whipping, and being forced to work in the mines by mounted military police were among the punishments meted out to these brave men and women in prison. Gandhiji was forced to sweep the compound and dig stones. 

 

•    He was handcuffed and manacled and taken to court in a dark cell.

 

•    The government's actions enraged the entire Indian community, and workers on plantations and mines went on strike like lightning. 

 

•    Gokhale toured India to arouse public opinion, and even Viceroy Lord Hardinge condemned the repression as "one that would not be tolerated by any country that claims to be civilised" and called for an independent investigation into the allegations of atrocities. The use of lethal force against unarmed and peaceful men and women sparked outrage and condemnation. 

 

•    After a series of negotiations involving Gandhiji, the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, C.F. Andrews, and General Smuts, an agreement was reached in which the South African government conceded the major Indian demands relating to the poll tax, registration certificates, and marriages solemnised according to Indian rites, as well as promising to treat the issue of Indian immigration sympathetically.

 

•    Nonviolent civil disobedience had succeeded in bringing the movement's opponents to the negotiating table and securing the substance of the movement's demands. 

 

•    Gandhiji returned to his homeland after developing the blueprint for the ‘Gandhian' method of struggle. On the Indian subcontinent, the South African "experiment" would now be tested on a much larger scale.

 

•    The South African experiment also prepared Gandhiji for leadership of the Indian national struggle in other ways. He'd gained invaluable experience leading poor Indian labourers, witnessing their willingness to sacrifice and persevere in the face of adversity, as well as their morale in the face of oppression. 

 

•    South Africa strengthened his belief in the Indian masses' ability to participate in and sacrifice for a cause that moved them. 

 

•    In South Africa, Gandhiji had the opportunity to lead Indians of various religions: Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Parsis were all united under his leadership. They came from various parts of the country, primarily Gujaratis and Tamils. They came from various social classes, including wealthy merchants and poor indentured labourers.

 

•    Another aspect of Gandhiji's South African experience served him well. He learned the hard way that leadership entails facing not only the wrath of the enemy, but also the wrath of one's own followers. 

 

South Africa, then, provided Gandhiji with an opportunity to develop his own style of politics and leadership, as well as to experiment with new methods of struggle on a small scale, free of the opposition of competing political currents. He had already transitioned the movement from its ‘Moderate' to its ‘Gandhian' phase in South Africa. He was well-versed in the Gandhian method's advantages and disadvantages, and he was convinced that it was the best method available. It was now up to him to introduce it to the Indian market.