In September Gandhi set sail for England, to pursue a degree in law. Gandhi left behind his son Harilal, then a few months old. He spent three years stay in London being a serious student, living a very simple lifestyle.
He became deeply interested in vegetarianism and study of different religions. His stay in England provided opportunities for widening horizons and better understanding of religions and cultures. Through meeting local vegetarians he had also develop an interest in books on philosophy,particularly those by Leo Tolstoy,John Ruskin and Henry David Thoreau. Gandhi successfully completed his degree at the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar on 10 June He enrolled in the High Court of London; but later that year he left for India.
For the next two years, Gandhi attempted to practice law in India, establishing himself in the legal profession in Bombay. Unfortunately, he found that he lacked both knowledge of Indian law and self-confidence at trial.
His practice collapsed and he returned home to Porbandar. It was while he was contemplating his seemingly bleak future that a representative of an Indian business firm situated in the Transvaal now Gauteng , South Africa offered him employment. There, Gandhi was seated in the first-class compartment, as he had purchased a first-class ticket.
A White person who entered the compartment hastened to summon the White railway officials, who ordered Gandhi to remove himself to the van compartment, since 'coolies' a racist term for Indians and non-whites were not permitted in first-class compartments.
Gandhi protested and produced his ticket, but was warned that he would be forcibly removed if he did not make a gracious exit. As Gandhi refused to comply with the order, a White police officer pushed him out of the train, and his luggage was tossed out on to the platform.
The train steamed away, and Gandhi withdrew to the waiting room. My overcoat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered". He says he began to think of his "duty": ought he to stay back and fight for his "rights", or should he return to India? His own "hardship was superficial", "only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice.
The next evening he continued the train journey-this time without a mishap. But a bigger mishap awaited him on the journey from Charlestown to Johannesburg which had to be covered by stagecoach.
He was made to sit with the coachman on the box outside, while the white conductor sat inside with the white passengers. Gandhi pocketed the insult for fear of missing the coach altogether. On the way the conductor who wanted a smoke spread a piece of dirty sack-cloth on the footboard and ordered Gandhi to sit there so that the conductor could have Gandhi's seat and smoke. Gandhi refused. The conductor swore and rained blows on him, trying to throw him down.
Gandhi clung to the brass rails of the coach box, refusing to yield and unwilling to retaliate. 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.
He arrived in September and gave his first speech at the Conference on 15 September. Ally, B. Ambedkar , C. Gokhale, Sir William W. Satyagraha in South Africa Ganesan, Brown, Judith M. Malhotra, S. Mehrotra, S. Parekh, Bhikhu C. Making Britain Discover how South Asians shaped the nation, Search Search. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Other names:. Store Street. See map: Google Maps.
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Contact us now. But it was another incident in South Africa that set Mahatma Gandhi on a new path. While travelling first class on a train, he was ejected from his carriage after a white passenger complained.
The experience would help to solidify some of the ideas he had already started to form around equality for all people. Indian immigrants in South Africa were subject to punitive laws and restrictions on freedoms.
There was even a tax levied on them simply because they were Indian immigrants. This was also the point at which he began dressing in the traditional white Indian dhoti, which became his trademark attire. Preaching a strategy of satyagraha , or nonviolent protest, Gandhi organized a strike and led a march of more than 2, people to call for the tax to be scrapped. He was arrested and sent to prison for nine months. But his actions brought about the end of the tax and catapulted him to international attention.
Back in India, in , Mahatma Gandhi founded an ashram , or spiritual monastery, open to all castes of people. He wore just a simple loincloth and shawl, and dedicated himself to prayer and fasting. In , when the British implemented laws that allowed for the arrest and imprisonment of anyone suspected of sedition, Gandhi rose up calling for a wave of nonviolent disobedience. Tragedy followed. In the city of Amritsar, British Indian Army soldiers were ordered to open fire on a crowd of 20, or so protestors that had begun to grow unruly.
Around people were killed, with more than 1, injured. He soon became a leading figure in the home-rule movement. The movement called for mass boycotts of British goods and institutions.
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