Dr. Mazhar Kibriya in Gandhi Wins South Africa has succeeded to relate the complexity of theory and practice of Mahatma Gandhi into a simple and highly readable book. What emerges is not a life that was written in the stars but the growth and development of an ordinary man who in confronting the dehumanization of colonialism and apartheid in India and South Africa became extraordinary himself.
Trying to remember how a famous man was before he became famous can be an irritating exercise. This is so because their image as paragons of human perfection precedes them. To see them apart from that acquired image seem almost sacrilegious. For one thing it is seen as reflecting badly on the contemporaries of the great man. You want to kick yourself for having been unable to observe the qualities that subsequently became obvious to the whole world. We read in Luke 4:24 of the New Testament that “No Prophet is acceptable in his own country”. So it was with Gandhi.
Gandhi’s transmogrification was not a Damascus moment. Dr. Mazhar Kibriya helps to walk us through this extraordinary but immensely human journey. We are able to see this London trained but tongue-tied barrister who could not utter a single sentence to defend his client in his first court case in the then Bombay. Of course, with hindsight we can say he was in good company. God sent Moses to reveal His purpose in spite of his being inarticulate.
As Dr. Mazhar Kibriya puts it “He had no skill to conduct a case as he was not well conversant with Indian Law, Indian History and above all Human Nature. After this incident he left legal practice until he went to South Africa”.
Gandhi arrived in Durban in May 1893. A few weeks after his arrival he boarded a train to Johannesburg at the service of Dada Abdullah and Company to settle a law suit in Pretoria. He had a first class ticket provided by the Company and befitting of his middle class status and a professional barrister-at-law. On reaching Pietermaritzburg he was told by a railway official to move to a Third-Class compartment after an objection by a fellow white passenger. When he objected, he was pushed out of the train.
It was one of the coldest winter nights, “He had encountered the dreaded disease of colour prejudice. He had to make a choice – abandon his task in South Africa and go back to India or embark on a struggle against colour discrimination”.
“My active Non-Violence began from that date” (Dr. Mazhar Kibriya, p. (10).
Gandhi held a strong belief that “if we take care of the facts of a case, the law will take care of itself” (ibid., p. 14). He, therefore, imposed on himself the lifelong habit of studying the facts of each situation and speak and act on the basis of a complete mastery of the facts. This belief strengthened his faith in persuasion, appeal, arbitration and a reciprocal compromise on the grounds of facts and truth…” (ibid, p.15).
Some six years after Gandhi’s sojourn in South Africa, the Anglo-Boer war broke out between 1899 and 1902. Three personalities who were to become world statesmen of the 20th century participated in different capacities in this war.
These were: General Smuts as a war general, Winston Churchill as a journalist and Prisoner of War, and Mahatma Gandhi as a Stretch Bearer and Humanitarian.
In an ironic twist of fate, the Gandhi statue in London stands alongside that of Winston Churchill who once referred to Gandhi as a half-naked fakir and that of General Jan Smuts who imprisoned Gandhi several times in South Africa. It was while in prison in South Africa that Gandhi learnt to make sandals. He presented a pair of these sandals to General Smuts the then South African Prime Minister. Smuts wore these sandals at his farm in Irene,
eastern Transvaal. As Gandhi acquired fame later, General Smuts returned the sandals saying he was not worthy to wear the sandals crafted by the hands of a great man like Gandhi.
As a stretch bearer who also tended to the wounded as a volunteer, Gandhi was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal in 1915. However, on the 4th of August 1920, Gandhi returned the Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal granted to him for his humanitarian work in South Africa, the Zulu war medal granted for services in charge of Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps in 1906 and as Assistant Superintendent of the Indian Volunteer Stretcher-bearer corps between 1899 and 1900. But why participate in the war at all?
Firstly, the best chance for freedom from discrimination for Indians in South Africa was seen to be located within what was referred to as British sense of fair play. The service of Indians in the war was a practical sign of their loyalty in the British Empire. “But just after the end of the war their services were forgotten altogether. Britain was tending Boer wounds and did not intend to wound Boer susceptibilities by redressing Indian grievances”. (Dr. Mazhar Kibriya, p.45).
Choices were being made which would shape the political development of South Africa and India for the next century and beyond.
About three thousand (3000) Indian people led by Gandhi gathered at a mass meeting at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg to protest against the Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance that was to be introduced in the Transvaal Legislative Council which was effectively forcing Pass Laws on Indians. This meeting took place on the 11 September 1906. A solemn oath was individually taken by all those in attendance not to submit to this tyrannical law even at the cost of imprisonment or even death. At first, Gandhi referred to this movement as the Passive Resistance, “one kind of mass-yet individual opposition to government unfairness” with a solemn vow in the name of God.
Gandhi, however, had misgivings about a God based struggle to be articulated only in English. He, therefore, called for proposals for a more fitting name from the people for this Resistance Movement. Maganlal Gandhi, a second cousin to Gandhi proposed a name “Sadagraha” which was amended by Gandhi to “Satyagraha”.
“The word Satyagraha was coined with the help of two Gujrati words –
Satya and Agraha. According to Gandhi Satya meaning Truth implies love
and Agraha meaning Firmness implies force. Thus, Satyagraha implies Force which is born of Truth, and Love or Non-Violence. Thus, Satyagraha means “Firmness in Truth or Firmness in Love”. In other words, it may be said as Truth-Force or Love-Force or Soul-Force. A person practicing this method was to be called Satyagrahi. In this way, the term Satyagraha came into existence and the Indian movement of non-compliance began to be known as the Satyagraha Movement or simply Satyagraha.
Gandhi left South Africa for India in 1915. Already his reputation had preceded him. He was to lead the freedom movement perfecting Satyagraha as a preeminent method of struggle until India attained its freedom in 1947. Gandhi is deservedly known as the Father of Freedom of India.
Satyagraha was mutatis mutandis implemented in the Civil Rights struggle in the USA and in the anticolonial struggle in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.
Dr. Mazhar Kibriya in Gandhi Wins South Africa has presented all those fighting against all forms of oppression with a highly readable source material.