Remembering Gandhi's first act of disobedience June 07,1893

 

On this day in 1893, the twentieth century’s most famous non-violent revolutionary, Mohandas Gandhi, committed his first act of civil disobedience when the then 24-year-old Indian lawyer was forcibly ejected from a train at South Africa’s Pietermaritzburg Railway Station. Refusing to move to a third-class carriage while holding a valid ticket for the whites-only first-class compartment, the great future leader was pushed off the train in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, his luggage hastily thrown after him. The incident would change the course of his life – and that of millions of others. Gandhi later recalled:

I was afraid for my very life. I entered the dark waiting-room. There was a white man in the room. I was afraid of him. What was my duty? I asked myself. Should I go back to India, or should I go forward with God as my helper, and face whatever was in store for me? I decided to stay and suffer. My active non-violence began from that date.

It was in South Africa that Gandhi’s world-famous spiritual principles of satyagraha (“holding on to truth”, or “soul force”) and ahimsa (non-violence) were formed. Arriving in early 1893 to practice law under a one-year contract, Gandhi settled in the province of Natal, where Indian Muslims – mainly descendents of indentured servents – outnumbered the white European community, triggering racist legislation denying Indians the right to vote. Following his ejection from the train, Gandhi resolved to remain in South Africa to take up the struggle against these new laws. He formed the Natal Indian Congress, drawing international attention to the plight of South Africa’s Indian population. In 1906, he organised his first satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience, when the Transvaal government sought to further restrict the rights of Indians. After seven years of protest, he negotiated a compromise agreement.
For twenty-one years, Gandhi served his revolutionary apprenticeship in South Africa – one of the world’s most notoriously discriminatory and racist hot spots. When he returned to India in 1914, he was ready to fulfil his destiny as leader of his country’s independence movement.