When the train came to a stop in Pietermaritzburg, Gandhi was ordered by the conductor to move from the first-class carriage reserved for white passengers where he was sitting, to the van compartment for lower-class travellers.
When Gandhi refused, showing the conductor his first-class ticket, he was evicted unceremoniously from the train. A plaque on the platform marks the approximate spot where he was pushed from the train carriage with his luggage. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was evicted from a train in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, for riding in a first-class car reserved for white passengers Credit: Kalpana Sunder.
Gandhi had relocated to South Africa from Bombay in after accepting a year-long contract position with an Indian business firm based in Natal in the north-eastern Transvaal region, which had been settled by Boers descendants of 17th-Century Dutch and Huguenots colonists after Britain established the Cape Colony further south.
But even after serving their indenture, Indians were not fully integrated into society: regulations implemented by the white-minority government subjected new Indian citizens to extra taxation. After arriving in South Africa, Gandhi was quickly exposed to racial discrimination: just days before boarding the train to Pretoria, he had excused himself from a Durban courtroom after the judge demanded that Gandhi remove his turban.
But that moment on the Pietermaritzburg train platform marked the turning point, the catalyst, when Gandhi made the momentous decision to fight the racial discrimination he experienced. There, Gandhi and his supporters were to defy British policy by making salt from seawater.
All along the way, Gandhi addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the salt satyagraha. By the time they reached Dandi on April 5, Gandhi was at the head of a crowd of tens of thousands. Gandhi spoke and led prayers and early the next morning walked down to the sea to make salt. He had planned to work the salt flats on the beach, encrusted with crystallized sea salt at every high tide, but the police had forestalled him by crushing the salt deposits into the mud.
Nevertheless, Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud—and British law had been defied. At Dandi, thousands more followed his lead, and in the coastal cities of Bombay and Karachi, Indian nationalists led crowds of citizens in making salt. Civil disobedience broke out all across India, soon involving millions of Indians, and British authorities arrested more than 60, people.
Gandhi himself was arrested on May 5, but the satyagraha continued without him. Several hundred British-led Indian policemen met them and viciously beat the peaceful demonstrators. The incident, recorded by American journalist Webb Miller, prompted an international outcry against British policy in India. In January , Gandhi was released from prison. In August, Gandhi traveled to the conference as the sole representative of the nationalist Indian National Congress.
In , Gandhi sailed to England and studied to become a lawyer. His first job for an Indian company required that he move to South Africa. The ruling white Boers descendants of Dutch settlers discriminated against all people of color. When railroad officials made Gandhi sit in a third-class coach even though he had purchased a first-class ticket, Gandhi refused and police forced him off the train.
This event changed his life. When the Boer legislature passed a law requiring that all Indians register with the police and be fingerprinted, Gandhi, along with many other Indians, refused to obey the law. He was arrested and put in jail, the first of many times he would be imprisoned for disobeying what he believed to be unjust laws. Following his release, he continued to protest the registration law by supporting labor strikes and organizing a massive non-violent march.
Finally, the Boer government agreed to end the most objectionable parts of the registration law. After 20 years in South Africa, Gandhi went home to India in When Gandhi returned, he was already a hero.
Born in India and educated in England, Gandhi traveled to South Africa in early to practice law under a one-year contract. Settling in Natal, he was subjected to racism and South African laws that restricted the rights of Indian laborers.
Gandhi later recalled one such incident, in which he was removed from a first-class railway compartment and thrown off a train, as his moment of truth. From thereon, he decided to fight injustice and defend his rights as an Indian and a man.
When his contract expired, he spontaneously decided to remain in South Africa and launch a campaign against legislation that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. In , the Transvaal government sought to further restrict the rights of Indians, and Gandhi organized his first campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience.
After seven years of protest, he negotiated a compromise agreement with the South African government. In , Gandhi returned to India and lived a life of abstinence and spirituality on the periphery of Indian politics. Hundreds of thousands answered his call to protest, and by he was leader of the Indian movement for independence. Always nonviolent, he asserted the unity of all people under one God and preached Christian and Muslim ethics along with his Hindu teachings.
The British authorities jailed him several times, but his following was so great that he was always released.
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