Gandhi

Gandhi Moves to South Africa

Gandhi in South Africa (1895)

It began in a big storm. The ship was sailing from Bombay in India to Durban, at the south end of the Union of South Africa. Mohandas Gandhi, his wife and his children were on board. The great decision had finally been made: to live in the midst of his mission. Winds blew mercilessly upon the ship’s hull. The passengers included Hindus, Muslims, Parsis and Christians, and all were praying hard for their safety, some crying, some singing psalms. The next day, when the waters were calm and the sun shining overhead, Gandhi noticed that the name and thought of God had disappeared from view. Drinking and dancing and all the gaiety usual on deck had taken the place of prayer.

The voyage took seventeen days. About to get down from the ship at Durban, Gandhi and his family faced a new and worse danger. A furious mob on shore was ready to attack him. Why? Because in his earlier visits to this country he had roused up the spirit of equality and independence in the nation’s Indians and Blacks. The mob were descendants of Europeans, the ruling class of South Africa. Now Gandhi understood that the politicians and business people had turned on the Indians in general. Friends advised Gandhiji not to land until the crowd had left, but he did not listen, and fearlessly came down the gangplank. As soon as he was recognized, he was pushed, kicked, punched, and might have been beaten to death. But suddenly a lady appeared at the front of the crowd and with a large umbrella she shielded him. Now her husband arrived. Aha! He was the Police Superintendent. Cleverly he turned the mood of the mob, and managed to rush the victim off to a friendly home where his injuries were treated.

This attack-cloud had a “silver lining.” The newspapers made much of it, blaming the mob; they said Gandhi had done nothing to deserve this.

The experience left him with a deep conviction that the scripture was true: satyam eva jayate, truth will always triumph. Gandhiji refused to have the mobsters brought to judgment. By rising above resentment, anger and hatred, he helped the whole Indian community to be raised in the eyes of the majority. And by rising above his attackers, Gandhi proved himself victorious in many ways. In this event we see one of his early successes in putting into practice ahimsa, non-violence. As his amazing life unfolded, Mahatma Gandhi had many more opportunities to experiment with his non-violent principles.

Some day you will want to read about it in his autobiography, My Experiment with Truth.

From Gandhi’s Pilgrimage of Faith
by Uma Majmudar, SUNY Press, 2005