Mohandas
Karamchang Gandhi was born in 1869 to Hindu parents in the state of
Gujarat in Western India. He entered an arranged marriage with Kasturbai
Makanji when both were 13 years old. His family later sent him to
London to study law, and in 1891 he was admitted to the Inner Temple,
and called to the bar.
Gandhi spent some, 20 years in South Africa - 11 of which were spent in Kwazulu/Natal. This
was his apprenticeship in becoming a Mahatma or Great Soul. It was at
Pietermaritzburg station, where he was ejected from a first class train
compartment, that Gandhi was alerted to the plight of Indians in Natal. A
striking statue in the Church Street Mall depicts him forever striding
forward in commemoration of this incident. "Nonviolence is the greatest
force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest
weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
"
Mohandas K. Gandhi on nonviolence. It was in Petermaritzburg that
Gandhi began his philosophy of passive resistance, simplicity and
service. He set up an ashram in 1904 at Phoenix outside Durban and
joined the stretcher-bearer Corps in Northern Natal during the South
African War. Before he returned to India with his wife and children in
1915, he had radically changed the lives of Indians living in Southern
Africa. Back in India, it was not long before he was taking the lead in
the long struggle for independence from Britain.
He never
wavered in his unshakable belief in nonviolent protest and religious
tolerance. When Muslim and Hindu compatriots committed acts of violence,
whether against the British who ruled India, or against each other, he
fasted until the fighting ceased. Independence, when it came in 1947,
was not a military victory, but a triumph of human will. To Gandhi's
despair, however, the country was partitioned into Hindu India and
Muslim Pakistan.
The last two months of his life were spent
trying to end the appalling violence which ensued, leading him to fast
to the brink of death, an act which finally quelled the riots. In
January 1948, at the age of 79, he was killed by an assassin as he
walked through a crowed garden in New Delhi to take evening prayers. He
had a profound influence against injustice not only in South Africa and
India, but the whole world.
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