<div>A lbert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists ever, once said about Gandhi that the future generations ‘will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth!’ However, Gandhi was not a child prodigy, and the qualities he became identified with were not evident either in his childhood or youth. It was a very long and hard process through which he attained his stature: it was baptism by fire. <br /><br />Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, in the present-day state of Gujarat. His father, Karamchand Gandhi, was the chief administrator and a member of the court, and his mother, Putlibai, a homemaker. His family was vaishnavite, and he grew up in a syncretic religious environment which, though predominantly Hindu, was influenced by Jain and Islamic ideas, too. <br /><br />As a student in Porbandar and Rajkot (a small princely state in Gujarat), Gandhi was not outstanding, but not dull either. However, one thing remarkable in him during his school years was his commitment to truth. <br /><br />The image of Gandhi that we have from his childhood and adolescence was that of a shy person fearful of ghosts, and reluctant to do physical exercises. At the same time, he was persevering and patient, and strongly religious not in the sense of rituals or temple-visits, but with focus on an abstract faith in god along with moral principles and the desire for self-exploration. <br /><br />Gandhi was married at the age of 13 to Kasturba, also 13. In 1888, Gandhi left for England to obtain the prestigious degree of bar-at-law. His apprehensive mother agreed to his departure only after he took a vow to keep away from meat, wine and women. In England, in order to shed the tag of being backward owing to his vows, he decided to dress like an English gentleman with suit, hat, a double watch-chain of gold, tie, etc. He also started taking lessons in violin playing and dancing. Soon, however, he realised that all such pursuits were taking much of his time and money, and turned his attention to studies. Throughout his stay in England, he was unable to overcome his persistent shyness and hence avoided public speaking.<br /><br />After his studies in England, at 22, Gandhi could not be distinguished from any average educated Indian there. He came back home in 1891, only to learn that his mother had died and the news was withheld so as not to disturb his studies. He tried to start his practice in Mumbai and Rajkot, but failed at both places. His shyness would not let him wax eloquent in the courtroom, and his honesty would not let him pay commission to the middlemen to arrange clients for him. He also had an unpleasant encounter with a British official, after which his work as a lawyer faced the end of the road. <br /><br />It was then that he received an offer to work as a lawyer and a correspondence clerk for a Gujarati Muslim merchant firm in South Africa. In 1893, he went to South Africa for one year, but owing to circumstances, he ended up spending 21 years there to fight for the Indian community against racial discrimination. It was in South Africa that Gandhi’s personality underwent a sea change and he was transformed from a meek and shy person to a bold, courageous and capable leader. In Gandhi’s words, it was in ‘that god-forsaken country where I found my god’.<br /><br />Until his arrival in South Africa, Gandhi had not really faced aggressive discrimination. In the native states of Porbandar and Rajkot, he belonged to the higher caste. In England, too, he faced no racial discrimination and even stayed with many White families. But, in South Africa, the realisation struck him that it was an aggressively White racist government and society. The South African experiences of intense racial discrimination constantly reminded him of the experiences of the untouchables in India. The removal of untouchability became a lifelong quest with him.<br /><br />Turning point<br /><br />His first experience of racism was in the Durban court when the magistrate ordered him to remove his turban, which Gandhi refused. He then had to leave the court. Far more humiliating experiences were in store. When he was travelling from Durban to Pretoria, he was asked to move to the third class in the train despite having a first class ticket. When he refused, he was thrown out on the Maritzburg Station on a freezing cold night. After this shocking incident, Gandhi had the choice to come back home, but he took a considered decision to stay there to fight for the civil rights of Indians. This was one of the most important turning points in his life. <br /><br />He was again and again humiliated on this fateful journey, but he insisted on travelling first class, defying the racial bar. Soon after reaching Pretoria, he requested for a meeting of all the Indians there. It was mostly attended by Muslim merchants and middle-class Hindus who told Gandhi how Indians were ‘hounded out’ from Boer-dominated states. Gandhi asked Indians to learn English and to form an organisation to represent all the Indians there. <br /><br />In Pretoria, Gandhi achieved another personal milestone. He brought about a compromise between two warring merchants through arbitration. It now became his practice as a lawyer to reconcile opponents outside the courtroom rather than let them fight to the bitter end. From then on, his quest as a lawyer was to reach the truth and to effect compromise rather than win a case. <br /><br />In 1894, after settling the case for which he had been invited, he was about to leave for India, when he happened to read an article in a newspaper about the Indian Franchise Bill which proposed to end the voting rights of Indians in Natal. Gandhi decided to prolong his stay to fight against this discriminatory bill. He founded the Natal Indian Congress to campaign for the rights of the Indians there. Gandhi was just 25 years old, and it was his first experiment in public agitation. It was now that he learnt the ways of organisation — how to form one, collect funds, enlist members, maintain scrupulous accounts, and seek a broader audience through newspaper articles, pamphlets etc. <br /><br />After the bill was passed, Gandhi prepared a petition with 10,000 signatures and sent it to many important leaders and newspapers in India and Britain. The popular opinion in India was against it, and even in England, such discrimination was criticised. The Colonial Office in London vetoed the bill. Although the bill was again passed after removing the colour bar but introducing the education test, it was some sort of victory against racism.<br /><br />Even after this work was accomplished, Gandhi decided to stay back to fight against the discriminatory and racial legislation which imposed annual three-pound tax on ex-indentured workers who had come to South Africa around the 1860s to work on sugar and coffee plantations. These indentured labourers faced the worst forms of exploitation, humiliation and torture. After the expiry of their indenture, they were moving into agriculture and trade. The racially minded Whites had prevailed upon the racist government to devise methods to either send them back to India or make their living difficult in South Africa. <br /><br />The transition<br /><br />Gandhi now went to India to bring his family and to make the grievances of the Indians in South Africa known in India. Very negative reports of Gandhi’s activities in India were circulated in South Africa. So, when he returned to Natal, he was attacked by a White mob which almost lynched him. Gandhi then clarified his position and refused to lodge a complaint against the attackers. Now, for the first time, he rose in the esteem of the Europeans in Natal, and this incident also provided him legitimacy to act as the Indians’ leader.<br /><br />When the war between the British and the Boers broke out in 1899, Gandhi regarded it as his duty to help the British in this war. He also persuaded his other Indian colleagues to do so and they offered their services in the form of Indian Ambulance Corps. The war ended with the victory of the British over the Boers. Gandhi, thinking that under the new political dispensation, his work in South Africa was over, left for India by the end of 1901. But his hope was belied. The new regime was a collaboration between the British and the Boers, and the racist laws remained very much in force. <br /><br />Gandhi was the only person on whom the South African Indians could rely to lead them in such a situation. So, he had to go back in 1902. This was the climactic and most formative phase of his life in South Africa. Gandhi’s ‘Satyagraha’ was born here. It was in this phase that his struggle for the rights of Indians widened into universal ideas about rights and freedom. The religious inclination which had begun during his stay in England acquired depth in this period. The essence of all religions for him was the supreme reality of god and the need for love and ahimsa to realise it. <br /><br />The first important event on the path to his transformation was his reading of John Ruskin’s Unto This Last on a train to Durban in 1904. The three principles he derived from it were — the good of the individual is contained in the good of all; a lawyer’s work has the same value as the barber’s; a life of labour is the life worth living. He decided to act on these principles by persuading his family and colleagues to establish the Phoenix Farm where everybody would live a life of labour and there would be no discrimination between mental and manual work. <br /><br />Another formative experience was during the ‘Zulu rebellion’ in 1906 when ‘a genuine sense of loyalty’ towards the British Empire prompted him to volunteer for the Ambulance Corps. In fact, Gandhi’s team was even welcomed by the wounded Zulus whom the White medical personnel did not nurse. The White soldiers even tried to dissuade Gandhi’s team to attend to the wounded Zulus. But Gandhi did not pay heed to them. His heart was with the Zulus. The brutalities of the racist regime on this African people depressed him and he wished to devote more time to make the world a better place. So, he took a vow to observe brahmacharya to focus his energies on the work he desired to undertake. He remained celibate from 1906 to the end of his life.<br /><br />His greatest battle in South Africa was still to follow. When he returned from his service in Ambulance Corps, he was shocked to find that the Transvaal administration had proposed an ordinance extremely insulting to the Indian community. It would require all Indians above the age of eight to register with the administration that would finger-print them and issue a certificate which they had to carry all the time, failing which they would be imprisoned and deported. The police would also be empowered to accost even women on the street or search Indian houses for certificates. This greatly incensed the Indian community. A large meeting was called where it was decided to take an oath in the name of god to not submit to this humiliating legislation. Almost everyone present there swore by god to continue the struggle. <br /><br />It was from this event that the term ‘Satyagraha’ was born. It was the ‘moral equivalent of war’. The beginning of Satyagraha prompted the government to extend the date of registration and exclude Indian women from the purview of this law. But Indian community refused to register and, by the last date, there were only 511 registrations from among thousands of Indians who resided in Transvaal.<br /><br />Gandhi and 26 of his colleagues were jailed for defying the law. The Satyagraha went on and an increasing number of Indians crowded the jail. A message was sent by General Smuts to Gandhi for a compromise. Gandhi accepted the offer. Smuts promised that the Asiatic Registration Act would be repealed if the Indians registered on their own. Gandhi accepted the offer. Although the Indian community there was not convinced, Gandhi stuck to the compromise formula and went to register. He was severely assaulted by a group of Pathans. Later, Smuts reneged on his promise. Not only was the old Act retained, but a new Act was also introduced in 1908 barring Indian immigration into Transvaal. Gandhi called it ‘foul play’ and asked the Indians to burn their registration certificates. The Satyagraha began again, even more intensely. <br /><br />Acts of defiance<br /><br />A new method for defiance of the law was employed by Gandhi. Many Indians from Natal crossed over the border to Transvaal to be arrested. Many more Indians went to Natal from Transvaal and then re-crossed the border to defy the law. The government took harsher measures. Gandhi and a lot of other Indians were imprisoned. After his release, Gandhi realised that the struggle could not go on at the same pitch as the human and financial resources to sustain a protracted struggle were declining.<br /><br /> To cope with the problem, his follower and colleague Herman Kallenbach bought a large farm near Johannesburg where Gandhi set up the Tolstoy Farm to support the Satyagrahis. The firm position taken by Gandhi and his band of Satyagrahis inspired many more Indians to resist the might of the Transvaal government. The struggle had been going on for four years now, the public opinion in India was agitated, and the British imperial government was getting anxious to assuage the bitter feelings in India. So, it prevailed upon the South African government to remove the racial bar on the entry of Indians. However, soon the Transvaal government announced that the annual tax of three pounds imposed on ex-indentured Indian labourers would not be abolished. This prompted Gandhi to carry on with the struggle.<br />This time Gandhi involved women and the Indian mine workers in the struggle. <br /><br />Thousands of miners abandoned their work, crossed over to Natal, and then re-crossed the border to Transvaal. Gandhi was arrested again, but the striking miners continued with their march. Although the government did not arrest them, it transported them to the mines where they were shackled and forced to work. More indentured workers in other South African states struck work in support of Transvaal miners. At one point, around 50,000 indentured workers were on strike inviting severe state repression which killed and injured many. When the news of such brutalities reached India, the resentment against the British regime ran high. Contributions from India poured in. <br /><br />The British authorities in India were alarmed and issued statements condemning the South African government. The imperial office in London also wrote to the South African government. On the other hand, Gandhi proposed to widen his struggle to include other South African states to regain the lost civic rights of the Indians there. Pressure from all sides forced the South African government to pass the Indian Relief Bill which became a law in July 1914, which regarded Indian marriages as valid, abolished the three-pound tax on ex-indentured workers who wished to live there, and declared that a domicile certificate with the holder’s thumb-imprint would be enough. <br /><br />Although it was not an outright victory, it promised some sort of racial equality and gave some relief to the embattled Indian community in South Africa. At a higher level, it was a victory for the idea of Satyagraha which brought together people of all creeds and colours into the struggle against racism and emphasised the idea of moral force. It was also the making of a modern Mahatma who did not shun politics but turned politics into a moral undertaking.<br /><br />Following Gandhi in South Africa...<br /><br />24 May 1893<br />Gandhi arrives in Durban aboard the<br />SS Safari.<br /><br />7 June 1893<br />Gandhi is ejected from a train at Pietermaritzburg, despite having a first-class ticket.<br /><br />22 August 1894<br />Natal Indian Congress founded.<br /><br />13 January 1897<br />Gandhi is almost lynched by a racist White mob, upon arriving by ship at Natal.<br /><br />23 & 24 January 1900<br />Battle of Spion Kop. Gandhi and Indian<br />volunteers from the Indian Ambulance Corps nurse British soldiers.<br /><br />1904<br />Phoenix settlement established near Durban.<br /><br />11 September 1906<br />Seeds of Satyagraha sown. 3,000 Indians meet at <br />Johannesburg to protest against the law requiring Indians to be finger-printed, and to carry a certificate.<br /><br />1906 <br />Zulu Rebellion; Gandhi & others volunteer to serve.<br /> <br />1910<br />Tolstoy Farm established in Transvaal.<br /><br />6 November 1913<br />Second major satyagraha campaign to protest against a £3 tax that was being imposed on ex-indentured<br />Indian labourers and because the state refused to recognise Indian marriages.<br /></div>
<div>A lbert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists ever, once said about Gandhi that the future generations ‘will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth!’ However, Gandhi was not a child prodigy, and the qualities he became identified with were not evident either in his childhood or youth. It was a very long and hard process through which he attained his stature: it was baptism by fire. <br /><br />Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, in the present-day state of Gujarat. His father, Karamchand Gandhi, was the chief administrator and a member of the court, and his mother, Putlibai, a homemaker. His family was vaishnavite, and he grew up in a syncretic religious environment which, though predominantly Hindu, was influenced by Jain and Islamic ideas, too. <br /><br />As a student in Porbandar and Rajkot (a small princely state in Gujarat), Gandhi was not outstanding, but not dull either. However, one thing remarkable in him during his school years was his commitment to truth. <br /><br />The image of Gandhi that we have from his childhood and adolescence was that of a shy person fearful of ghosts, and reluctant to do physical exercises. At the same time, he was persevering and patient, and strongly religious not in the sense of rituals or temple-visits, but with focus on an abstract faith in god along with moral principles and the desire for self-exploration. <br /><br />Gandhi was married at the age of 13 to Kasturba, also 13. In 1888, Gandhi left for England to obtain the prestigious degree of bar-at-law. His apprehensive mother agreed to his departure only after he took a vow to keep away from meat, wine and women. In England, in order to shed the tag of being backward owing to his vows, he decided to dress like an English gentleman with suit, hat, a double watch-chain of gold, tie, etc. He also started taking lessons in violin playing and dancing. Soon, however, he realised that all such pursuits were taking much of his time and money, and turned his attention to studies. Throughout his stay in England, he was unable to overcome his persistent shyness and hence avoided public speaking.<br /><br />After his studies in England, at 22, Gandhi could not be distinguished from any average educated Indian there. He came back home in 1891, only to learn that his mother had died and the news was withheld so as not to disturb his studies. He tried to start his practice in Mumbai and Rajkot, but failed at both places. His shyness would not let him wax eloquent in the courtroom, and his honesty would not let him pay commission to the middlemen to arrange clients for him. He also had an unpleasant encounter with a British official, after which his work as a lawyer faced the end of the road. <br /><br />It was then that he received an offer to work as a lawyer and a correspondence clerk for a Gujarati Muslim merchant firm in South Africa. In 1893, he went to South Africa for one year, but owing to circumstances, he ended up spending 21 years there to fight for the Indian community against racial discrimination. It was in South Africa that Gandhi’s personality underwent a sea change and he was transformed from a meek and shy person to a bold, courageous and capable leader. In Gandhi’s words, it was in ‘that god-forsaken country where I found my god’.<br /><br />Until his arrival in South Africa, Gandhi had not really faced aggressive discrimination. In the native states of Porbandar and Rajkot, he belonged to the higher caste. In England, too, he faced no racial discrimination and even stayed with many White families. But, in South Africa, the realisation struck him that it was an aggressively White racist government and society. The South African experiences of intense racial discrimination constantly reminded him of the experiences of the untouchables in India. The removal of untouchability became a lifelong quest with him.<br /><br />Turning point<br /><br />His first experience of racism was in the Durban court when the magistrate ordered him to remove his turban, which Gandhi refused. He then had to leave the court. Far more humiliating experiences were in store. When he was travelling from Durban to Pretoria, he was asked to move to the third class in the train despite having a first class ticket. When he refused, he was thrown out on the Maritzburg Station on a freezing cold night. After this shocking incident, Gandhi had the choice to come back home, but he took a considered decision to stay there to fight for the civil rights of Indians. This was one of the most important turning points in his life. <br /><br />He was again and again humiliated on this fateful journey, but he insisted on travelling first class, defying the racial bar. Soon after reaching Pretoria, he requested for a meeting of all the Indians there. It was mostly attended by Muslim merchants and middle-class Hindus who told Gandhi how Indians were ‘hounded out’ from Boer-dominated states. Gandhi asked Indians to learn English and to form an organisation to represent all the Indians there. <br /><br />In Pretoria, Gandhi achieved another personal milestone. He brought about a compromise between two warring merchants through arbitration. It now became his practice as a lawyer to reconcile opponents outside the courtroom rather than let them fight to the bitter end. From then on, his quest as a lawyer was to reach the truth and to effect compromise rather than win a case. <br /><br />In 1894, after settling the case for which he had been invited, he was about to leave for India, when he happened to read an article in a newspaper about the Indian Franchise Bill which proposed to end the voting rights of Indians in Natal. Gandhi decided to prolong his stay to fight against this discriminatory bill. He founded the Natal Indian Congress to campaign for the rights of the Indians there. Gandhi was just 25 years old, and it was his first experiment in public agitation. It was now that he learnt the ways of organisation — how to form one, collect funds, enlist members, maintain scrupulous accounts, and seek a broader audience through newspaper articles, pamphlets etc. <br /><br />After the bill was passed, Gandhi prepared a petition with 10,000 signatures and sent it to many important leaders and newspapers in India and Britain. The popular opinion in India was against it, and even in England, such discrimination was criticised. The Colonial Office in London vetoed the bill. Although the bill was again passed after removing the colour bar but introducing the education test, it was some sort of victory against racism.<br /><br />Even after this work was accomplished, Gandhi decided to stay back to fight against the discriminatory and racial legislation which imposed annual three-pound tax on ex-indentured workers who had come to South Africa around the 1860s to work on sugar and coffee plantations. These indentured labourers faced the worst forms of exploitation, humiliation and torture. After the expiry of their indenture, they were moving into agriculture and trade. The racially minded Whites had prevailed upon the racist government to devise methods to either send them back to India or make their living difficult in South Africa. <br /><br />The transition<br /><br />Gandhi now went to India to bring his family and to make the grievances of the Indians in South Africa known in India. Very negative reports of Gandhi’s activities in India were circulated in South Africa. So, when he returned to Natal, he was attacked by a White mob which almost lynched him. Gandhi then clarified his position and refused to lodge a complaint against the attackers. Now, for the first time, he rose in the esteem of the Europeans in Natal, and this incident also provided him legitimacy to act as the Indians’ leader.<br /><br />When the war between the British and the Boers broke out in 1899, Gandhi regarded it as his duty to help the British in this war. He also persuaded his other Indian colleagues to do so and they offered their services in the form of Indian Ambulance Corps. The war ended with the victory of the British over the Boers. Gandhi, thinking that under the new political dispensation, his work in South Africa was over, left for India by the end of 1901. But his hope was belied. The new regime was a collaboration between the British and the Boers, and the racist laws remained very much in force. <br /><br />Gandhi was the only person on whom the South African Indians could rely to lead them in such a situation. So, he had to go back in 1902. This was the climactic and most formative phase of his life in South Africa. Gandhi’s ‘Satyagraha’ was born here. It was in this phase that his struggle for the rights of Indians widened into universal ideas about rights and freedom. The religious inclination which had begun during his stay in England acquired depth in this period. The essence of all religions for him was the supreme reality of god and the need for love and ahimsa to realise it. <br /><br />The first important event on the path to his transformation was his reading of John Ruskin’s Unto This Last on a train to Durban in 1904. The three principles he derived from it were — the good of the individual is contained in the good of all; a lawyer’s work has the same value as the barber’s; a life of labour is the life worth living. He decided to act on these principles by persuading his family and colleagues to establish the Phoenix Farm where everybody would live a life of labour and there would be no discrimination between mental and manual work. <br /><br />Another formative experience was during the ‘Zulu rebellion’ in 1906 when ‘a genuine sense of loyalty’ towards the British Empire prompted him to volunteer for the Ambulance Corps. In fact, Gandhi’s team was even welcomed by the wounded Zulus whom the White medical personnel did not nurse. The White soldiers even tried to dissuade Gandhi’s team to attend to the wounded Zulus. But Gandhi did not pay heed to them. His heart was with the Zulus. The brutalities of the racist regime on this African people depressed him and he wished to devote more time to make the world a better place. So, he took a vow to observe brahmacharya to focus his energies on the work he desired to undertake. He remained celibate from 1906 to the end of his life.<br /><br />His greatest battle in South Africa was still to follow. When he returned from his service in Ambulance Corps, he was shocked to find that the Transvaal administration had proposed an ordinance extremely insulting to the Indian community. It would require all Indians above the age of eight to register with the administration that would finger-print them and issue a certificate which they had to carry all the time, failing which they would be imprisoned and deported. The police would also be empowered to accost even women on the street or search Indian houses for certificates. This greatly incensed the Indian community. A large meeting was called where it was decided to take an oath in the name of god to not submit to this humiliating legislation. Almost everyone present there swore by god to continue the struggle. <br /><br />It was from this event that the term ‘Satyagraha’ was born. It was the ‘moral equivalent of war’. The beginning of Satyagraha prompted the government to extend the date of registration and exclude Indian women from the purview of this law. But Indian community refused to register and, by the last date, there were only 511 registrations from among thousands of Indians who resided in Transvaal.<br /><br />Gandhi and 26 of his colleagues were jailed for defying the law. The Satyagraha went on and an increasing number of Indians crowded the jail. A message was sent by General Smuts to Gandhi for a compromise. Gandhi accepted the offer. Smuts promised that the Asiatic Registration Act would be repealed if the Indians registered on their own. Gandhi accepted the offer. Although the Indian community there was not convinced, Gandhi stuck to the compromise formula and went to register. He was severely assaulted by a group of Pathans. Later, Smuts reneged on his promise. Not only was the old Act retained, but a new Act was also introduced in 1908 barring Indian immigration into Transvaal. Gandhi called it ‘foul play’ and asked the Indians to burn their registration certificates. The Satyagraha began again, even more intensely. <br /><br />Acts of defiance<br /><br />A new method for defiance of the law was employed by Gandhi. Many Indians from Natal crossed over the border to Transvaal to be arrested. Many more Indians went to Natal from Transvaal and then re-crossed the border to defy the law. The government took harsher measures. Gandhi and a lot of other Indians were imprisoned. After his release, Gandhi realised that the struggle could not go on at the same pitch as the human and financial resources to sustain a protracted struggle were declining.<br /><br /> To cope with the problem, his follower and colleague Herman Kallenbach bought a large farm near Johannesburg where Gandhi set up the Tolstoy Farm to support the Satyagrahis. The firm position taken by Gandhi and his band of Satyagrahis inspired many more Indians to resist the might of the Transvaal government. The struggle had been going on for four years now, the public opinion in India was agitated, and the British imperial government was getting anxious to assuage the bitter feelings in India. So, it prevailed upon the South African government to remove the racial bar on the entry of Indians. However, soon the Transvaal government announced that the annual tax of three pounds imposed on ex-indentured Indian labourers would not be abolished. This prompted Gandhi to carry on with the struggle.<br />This time Gandhi involved women and the Indian mine workers in the struggle. <br /><br />Thousands of miners abandoned their work, crossed over to Natal, and then re-crossed the border to Transvaal. Gandhi was arrested again, but the striking miners continued with their march. Although the government did not arrest them, it transported them to the mines where they were shackled and forced to work. More indentured workers in other South African states struck work in support of Transvaal miners. At one point, around 50,000 indentured workers were on strike inviting severe state repression which killed and injured many. When the news of such brutalities reached India, the resentment against the British regime ran high. Contributions from India poured in. <br /><br />The British authorities in India were alarmed and issued statements condemning the South African government. The imperial office in London also wrote to the South African government. On the other hand, Gandhi proposed to widen his struggle to include other South African states to regain the lost civic rights of the Indians there. Pressure from all sides forced the South African government to pass the Indian Relief Bill which became a law in July 1914, which regarded Indian marriages as valid, abolished the three-pound tax on ex-indentured workers who wished to live there, and declared that a domicile certificate with the holder’s thumb-imprint would be enough. <br /><br />Although it was not an outright victory, it promised some sort of racial equality and gave some relief to the embattled Indian community in South Africa. At a higher level, it was a victory for the idea of Satyagraha which brought together people of all creeds and colours into the struggle against racism and emphasised the idea of moral force. It was also the making of a modern Mahatma who did not shun politics but turned politics into a moral undertaking.<br /><br />Following Gandhi in South Africa...<br /><br />24 May 1893<br />Gandhi arrives in Durban aboard the<br />SS Safari.<br /><br />7 June 1893<br />Gandhi is ejected from a train at Pietermaritzburg, despite having a first-class ticket.<br /><br />22 August 1894<br />Natal Indian Congress founded.<br /><br />13 January 1897<br />Gandhi is almost lynched by a racist White mob, upon arriving by ship at Natal.<br /><br />23 & 24 January 1900<br />Battle of Spion Kop. Gandhi and Indian<br />volunteers from the Indian Ambulance Corps nurse British soldiers.<br /><br />1904<br />Phoenix settlement established near Durban.<br /><br />11 September 1906<br />Seeds of Satyagraha sown. 3,000 Indians meet at <br />Johannesburg to protest against the law requiring Indians to be finger-printed, and to carry a certificate.<br /><br />1906 <br />Zulu Rebellion; Gandhi & others volunteer to serve.<br /> <br />1910<br />Tolstoy Farm established in Transvaal.<br /><br />6 November 1913<br />Second major satyagraha campaign to protest against a £3 tax that was being imposed on ex-indentured<br />Indian labourers and because the state refused to recognise Indian marriages.<br /></div>
