BARNEY MTHOMBOTHI| Why an Indian woman thanked me for Mahatma Gandhi

The woman stared quizzically at my name tag. Unable to figure it out for herself, she finally enquired in that lilting Indian accent, “Where are you from?”, exclaiming, “Ah! South Africa,” on hearing my response.

“Thank you for Mahatma Gandhi,” she said, clasping her hands in respectful salutation, a comment that left me a bit puzzled. I could guess what she was trying to say, but I wasn’t too sure. “We gave you Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and you gave us Mahatma Gandhi,” she elaborated.

It may appear like a throwaway line, but it is pregnant with meaning — these simple words not only tie two countries more than 8,000km apart together like conjoined twins, there is also hidden in them a history of pain, resolute struggles, reawakening and finally triumphant achievement. South Africa was the crucible that gave birth to an idea that was a vehicle for the liberation of India but also became an inspiration for other oppressed peoples around the world.

It was Gandhi’s birthday last week (born October 2 1869) and Gandhi Jayanti, as it’s called, is a national holiday in India to honour the life of a man who played a pivotal role in the country’s struggle against British colonial rule. By his words and actions, he became a guiding light to many around the world facing similar torments. Be the change you seek, he’d say.

It was in South Africa that the seeds of Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance, were planted, and his name changed to Mahatma, which means “Great Soul” in Sanskrit. There were, however, missteps and miscalculations along the way.

Trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London and called to the bar at 22, but unable to find appropriate employment when he returned to India, Gandhi came to South Africa in 1893 at the age of 24, where he spent 21 years of his life, during which he was not only involved in transforming the politics of the country but also underwent some sort of Damascene conversion.

He was only in the country for a few months when he got that typical South African welcome. He was thrown off a train in Pietermaritzburg for being the “wrong” colour, an incident that was to have a profound impact not only on his political outlook but also on the course of his own country’s history.

He realised then that neutrality was not an option in South Africa. Within a year after that epiphany, he founded the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) — a name that harks back to the Indian National Congress formed in 1885 in his home country — as a vehicle to fight for the rights of Indian South Africans, most of whom had come to the country as indentured labourers with the intention they’d return home at the expiry of their five-year contracts.

He was to learn to his chagrin that the British could not be trusted; that freedom was never given on a platter.

Regarded as mere sojourners, Indians, like other black races, therefore had no rights in the country. These were the people whose lot Gandhi set his sights on improving. At the time, he didn’t see any need or obligation to form any solidarity between the Indians and the entire black struggle. He believed that by showing unstinting loyalty to the British Empire, the colonial rulers would eventually look kindly on the Indian community and accord them the desired social and political rights. He was to be disappointed. He was to learn to his chagrin that the British could not be trusted; that freedom was never given on a platter.

As a demonstration of that loyalty to the British Empire, Gandhi organised the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps to support the British war effort during the Second Anglo-Boer war (1899 – 1902), hoping the Brits would eventually do right by them. They didn’t.

His hopes undimmed, Gandhi urged the Indian community to line up behind the British Empire and organised a small group of Indian stretcher bearers to support the British during the 1906 Bambatha Rebellion. But, as fate would have it, his team ended up treating wounded Zulu warriors because the white nurses refused to care for them.

He later noted the rebellion was not an honourable war but a massacre perpetrated by the British on a people armed only with traditional weapons. The wounds and cruelty inflicted on the Zulu warriors had appalled him. That and his disillusionment with the British Empire are often cited as the main catalysts for his adoption of his philosophy of passive or nonviolent resistance.

Gandhi uttered the word “satyagraha” for the first time on September 11 1906 at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, at a meeting to protest against the Asiatic Registration Act, which forced Indians in the Transvaal to carry a pass and to be compulsorily fingerprinted, and against the dreaded pass laws for African men. Finally, Gandhi had come to the realisation that the Indians’ fight for equal rights could not be separated from the emancipatory struggles of other oppressed communities.

But the co-operation was not formalised until the signing of the Joint Declaration of Co-operation — the so-called Three Doctors’ Pact — in March 1947 by the ANC’s Dr AB Xuma, Dr Yusuf Dadoo of the Transvaal Indian Congress and the NIC’s Dr GM Naicker. That agreement had a cascading effect, leading to history-defining events: the 1952 Defiance Campaign against unjust apartheid laws; the adoption of the Freedom Charter in June 1955; and the beginning of the marathon Treason Trial in 1956.

By that time, Gandhi had, of course, returned to India, where he immersed himself in the freedom struggle that led to independence on August 15 1947. But it was a bittersweet moment for him. Freedom came at a huge cost. More than a million people are estimated to have died in communal violence after the partition of India and Pakistan.

Five months later, Gandhi, a vehement opponent of partition — he called it “an act of madness” — was shot dead by a Hindu nationalist. And thus ended a great life.