Theme 13Part C · The Gandhian era
Gandhi in South Africa
1893 to 1915 · the making of a method
Before Gandhi led India he led Indians in South Africa: merchants, indentured labourers and miners facing racial laws. This short theme follows him on two maps, his voyages and the places in Natal and the Transvaal where satyagraha was born.
Event 11893 to 1914
Twenty one years in South Africa
Gandhi went to South Africa in 1893, aged 23, on a one year contract to help a Gujarati firm with a lawsuit. He stayed until 1914, and there turned from a shy lawyer into the leader of a mass movement with a method of his own: satyagraha.
Swipe the map sideways to see all of it.
Gandhi, called to the bar in London (1891), sails from Bombay in April 1893 and reaches Durban in Natal in May for the firm of Dada Abdulla.
He leaves Cape Town in July 1914, spends some months in London as the First World War begins, and lands at Bombay on 9 January 1915, the day now marked as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.
Swipe the map sideways to see all of it.
Travelling from Durban to Pretoria on a first class ticket, Gandhi is thrown off the train at Pietermaritzburg when a white passenger objects. He later called the cold night on the platform the turning point of his life.
He founds the Natal Indian Congress (1894) to fight a bill to take away Indians' vote, starts the paper Indian Opinion (1903), and, inspired by Ruskin's Unto This Last, sets up the Phoenix Settlement near Durban (1904).
The Asiatic Registration Act, the "Black Act", requires every Indian to register and give fingerprints. At the Empire Theatre, Johannesburg, on 11 September 1906, Indians pledge to resist. They court arrest, and in 1908 burn their registration certificates at the Hamidia Mosque. Gandhi starts Tolstoy Farm (1910) for the families of satyagrahis.
Against the £3 tax on freed indentured labourers and a court ruling that invalidated Hindu and Muslim marriages, Indian miners at Newcastle strike. On 6 November 1913 Gandhi leads about 2,000 men, women and children across the border at Volksrust into the Transvaal. The Indian Relief Act (1914) concedes the main demands.
Event 2the ideas
What satyagraha meant
Satyagraha means holding firmly to truth. Gandhi coined the word in South Africa because "passive resistance" sounded like the weapon of the weak.
- Truththe satyagrahi stands for what he believes to be right
- Non violenceno hatred, no harm to the opponent
- Sufferinghe accepts punishment willingly, to change the opponent's heart
- No surrenderhe never bows to what he holds to be wrong
Where the ideas came from
- The Gita and Jain and Vaishnava traditions of non violence from his Gujarat childhood.
- Tolstoy: The Kingdom of God Is Within You; they corresponded, and Tolstoy Farm is named for him.
- Ruskin: Unto This Last, the dignity of labour; Gandhi translated it as Sarvodaya.
- Thoreau: Civil Disobedience.
Hind Swaraj, 1909
- Written in Gujarati on the ship Kildonan Castle, returning from London to South Africa.
- Rejects modern industrial civilisation, railways, lawyers and doctors as the real chains of India.
- Swaraj as self rule over oneself, not just English rule without Englishmen.
- Banned in India by the British.
Who's who7 people
People
M. K. Gandhi
lawyer and leader
In South Africa 1893 to 1914.
Kasturba Gandhi
satyagrahi
Jailed in 1913 for joining the march.
Thambi Naidoo
Johannesburg
Tamil leader of the satyagraha.
Hermann Kallenbach
architect
Gave the land for Tolstoy Farm.
Jan Smuts
Transvaal minister
Negotiated the 1914 settlement with Gandhi.
G. K. Gokhale
Moderate leader
Visited South Africa in 1912; Gandhi's political guru.
Valliamma
satyagrahi
Died aged 16 after imprisonment in 1914.
Key terms7
Terms
- Satyagraha
- Holding firmly to truth; Gandhi's method of non violent resistance.
- Black Act
- The Asiatic Registration Act of the Transvaal (1906 to 1907).
- Indian Opinion
- Gandhi's weekly, from 1903.
- Phoenix Settlement
- Gandhi's first community farm near Durban (1904).
- Tolstoy Farm
- Satyagrahis' settlement near Johannesburg (1910).
- Hind Swaraj
- Gandhi's 1909 critique of modern civilisation.
- Indentured labour
- Contract labour taken from India to plantations abroad.