Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas K Gandhi (1869 – 1948) was an Indian politician and social reformer who led campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience in both South Africa and India. In later life he was known by the title of Mahatma (great soul).
Early life
He was born on 2 October 1869, in Porbandar, a princely state in Gujarat, where his father was diwan (chief minister). He was the youngest child in the family. At the age of 12 he married the uneducated Kastur (Kasturba) Makanji Kapadia. His father died when he was 16, Mohandas having spent much time in nursing him. In 1888 he went to London to study law, supported by his elder brother. He qualified as a barrister at the Inner Temple.[1]
South Africa
On return from England, he failed to get clients in Bombay, but derived a small income from drafting memorials and applications. In 1893 he was offered a job in South Africa, in relation to a case where his employer, who knew no English, was employing British lawyers. He persuaded his employer, who was in Natal, and his opponent, who was in the Transvaal, to settle the case through arbitration, and afterwards became involved in a campaign to try to stop a bill in the Natal Assembly to deny the vote to Indians. The Indian community in Natal guaranteed him an income as a barrister to get him to stay on as secretary of the Natal Indian Congress.[2] In addition to his law work he acted as propagandist for the Indian community, presenting it as the natural partner to the Europeans, as coming from an ancient civilisation.[3] Having gone to India in 1896 to collect his wife and family, he was nearly lynched on his return by some of the white people furious at the publicity he had given to Indians' problems in South Africa. In 1899 he raised a short-lived ambulance corps of Indian volunteers to help the British side in the Boer War.[4]
In 1901 he returned to India. After attending a session of the Indian National National Congress, he tried to practise as a barrister, but returned to South Africa in order to help confront the new difficulties facing Indians in the Transvaal, where he set up as a barrister in Johannesburg. In 1903 he backed the founding of a weekly Indian newspaper, Indian Opinion and began to play a major part in its running. He also set up an elaborate “simple” lifestyle, in accordance with the ideas of John Ruskin.[5] Gandhi responded to the Zulu rebellion by lobbying for the creation of an Indian stretcher bearer corps and also a Volunteer Corps to serve against the "Kafirs", as he called them. The stretcher bearer corps was created led by him with the rank of Sergeant Major. This served for just under a month.[6] In 1907 the Transvaal passed a law imposing condition and restrictions on the Indian community, and the Satyagraha (usually translated truth-force) movement started in opposition to this, the majority of the Indian population refusing to comply. The campaign of civil disobedience on its own did not succeed. Following the formation of the Union of South Africa, some laws were changed or repealed and new ones imposed. A new campaign targeted the tax on former indentured labourers. The savage repression of this non-violent campaign produced a reaction in India and Britain, and the South African government was forced to make major concessions. Gandhi left South Africa in 1914.[7]