NOT YET THE MAHATMA: GANDHI IN SOUTH AFRICA

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By Nick Gier

 

Read chapters from Gier's The Virtue of Non-Violence: From Gautama to Gandhi

 

Is this Christian-like; is this fair play; is this justice; is this civilization?

--Gandhi on the South African "color bar"

 

It made everyone deny who they really were, in order

to fit into a scheme dreamed up and imposed by whites.

 

--Arthur Herman, Gandhi and Churchill, on the South African "color bar"

 

We are the first race in the world, and the more of

the world we rule, the better it is for the human race.

 

--Cecil John Rhodes

 

          Even those who know Gandhi's work well sometimes forget that Gandhi spent 22 years in South Africa.  On the occasion of his 140th birthday on October 2 and my recent visit to South Africa, I would like to offer a few reflections on those critical years in Gandhi's development as a nonviolent political activist.

 

          After three years in London studying law, Gandhi returned to India and passed the bar exam.  His first court appearance was a disaster, as he explains in his autobiography: "I stood up, but my heart sank into my boots.  My head was reeling and I felt as though the whole court was doing likewise." He made a meager living doing legal work that did not require that he go to court.

 

           Gandhi's legal career was saved by an invitation from Indian Muslim merchants (image above, Gandhi far left top) in Durban, South Africa.  Just as was finishing up his one-year contract with them, he learned that the Indians in Natal province were just about to lose their right to vote.  Gandhi decided to stay on to take up the Indian cause by forming the Natal Indian Congress.

 

    Gandhi was shocked that, as citizens of the British Empire, Indians in South Africa did not have the same rights as whites. He frequently quoted a phrase from Queen Victoria's 1858 Proclamation that declared that all British subjects "shall enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law."  Meetings of the Natal Indian Congress always ended with singing "God Save the Queen."

     

     Drawing on the great linguistic discoveries of the day, Gandhi was able to argue that Indians and Europeans were Aryans, sharing the same ethnic stock and speaking closely related Indo-European languages. Gandhi once said that "racial purity" is the "one thing that the Indian cherishes more than any other."

 

    Also convinced by the new scholarship, Sir Lepel Griffin, Chief Secretary of the Punjab, was of the opinion that the Indians are "people of our own stock and blood," and "the most orderly, honorable, industrious, temperate race in the world." Most British and the Afrikaners, Dutch speaking settlers, mocked these claims.  White racists could easily have said that the Indo-Aryans made an immoral and fatal decision by marrying the darker non-Aryan peoples of the Indian Sub-Continent. Except for the Nepalese Gurkhas and the Afghan Pasthuns, the British considered Indians effeminate and weak. 

 

The Boer War offered an opportunity for Gandhi to prove that the Indians were just as tough and courageous as any European. Barred from combat because they were a "non-fighting race," Gandhi organized 300 free Indians and 800 indentured Indian servants as the Indian Ambulance Corps (image above).  Even then the British were initially afraid of using the Indians because it might have inflamed the racial hatred that the Afrikaners and led to them being targeted.

 

At the battle of Spion Kop, at which young journalist Winston Churchill praised the great effort of the "strong races" (Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis), Gandhi's men carried hundreds of wounded soldiers 25 miles over rough terrain.  Gandhi and a colleague had the privilege of carrying General Edward Woodgate to safety, but he later died of his wounds.

 

Gandhi's litter bearers were the only hope that wounded black Africans had in the battles (14,000 were killed), and many years later under apartheid it was illegal for white ambulance drivers to transport blacks.  Nevertheless, Gandhi's campaign for civil rights never included the blacks or the coloreds, those of mixed ethnic background.

 

Gandhi was very insistent that the Indians stood on the Aryan side of the color line and coloreds and blacks belonged on the other. Gandhi's speeches contain language that can only be characterized as racist. As Gandhi complained: "A general belief seems to prevail that Indians are little better than the savages of Africa, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw kaffir."  "Kaffir" has the same connotation as our "N" word.

 

Gandhi argued that the British Empire thrives on commerce and that the Indian trader was just as good a businessman as any Englishman.  In stark contrast, Gandhi thought that black Africans led lives of "sloth, indolence, and superstition," unless they came under the instruction of Christian missionaries.

 

In 1906 Gandhi again offered the services of the Indian Ambulance Corps during the Zulu Rebellion, instigated by a native chief who refused to pay a new poll tax.  Gandhi criticized the British response as "no war but a man-hunt," in which soldiers attacked villages indiscriminately. Although British soldiers criticized the Indians for doing so, they concentrated their efforts on wounded blacks whom no one else would care for.

 

It was Gandhi's hope that his loyal service to the British Crown would convince the government that the Indians deserved equal rights. The British, however, did not budge on the Indian electoral franchise and discriminatory registration, but Gandhi did convince the government to repeal an ill advised bill that would have nullified Hindu and Muslim marriages.

 

To his despair Gandhi found that Indian merchants, although initially fired up about being registered and fingerprinted, did not prove to reliable political allies.  Their commercial interests always won out over their willingness to march and to strike. Although sympathetic to their plight, Gandhi did not turn to the Indian indentured workers until late in his South African career. Working for pennies a day, these people did not have anything to lose.  Gandhi was able to organize strikes in the mines and an impressive worker march on Pretoria.  At the height of the struggle, 50,000 were on strike and 7,000 were in jail. The government finally relented and appealed a very onerous poll tax on the laborers. 

 

In 1894, while Gandhi was traveling to Pretoria for his first legal assignment, he was called a kaffir as he was unceremoniously removed from a first class coach.  The South African Nationalist Party, 54 years later, was able to win an election with racist slogans such as "the kaffir in his place" and "the coolie [Indian] out of the country."

 

Nelson Mandela was not a racist, but early in his career he was convinced that the African National Congress should not admit whites (especially Communist), Indians, or the colored.  White rulers in South Africa and India had always been successful in pitting one group against another. Gandhi and Mandela finally realized that national liberation can be achieved only by uniting all the people. 

 

Mahatma translates as "great soul" and such persons would include all humanity in their vision of world peace and harmony. Mahatma Gandhi never accepted the title, but when he returned to India in 1915, with lessons well learned from South Africa, he was able to unite Indians at all levels of society as he led them to national independence.