Editing Mahatma Gandhi (section)

== Civil rights activist in South Africa (1893–1914) ==
[[File:Natal Indian Congress.jpg|thumb|Gandhi and the founders of the Natal Indian Congress, 1895]]
In April 1893, Gandhi, aged 23, set sail for South Africa to be the lawyer for Abdullah's cousin.{{sfnp|Herman|2008|pp=82–83}}<ref name="NHOA-193">{{cite book |last1=Giliomee |first1=Hermann |author1-link=Hermann Giliomee |last2=Mbenga |first2=Bernard |author2-link=Bernard Mbenga |title=New History of South Africa |publisher=Tafelberg |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-624-04359-1 |editor-last=Roxanne Reid |edition=1st |page=193 |chapter=3 |name-list-style=amp}}</ref> Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa where he developed his political views, ethics, and politics.<ref name="Gandhi">{{cite journal |last=Power, Paul F. |year=1969 |title=Gandhi in South Africa |journal=[[The Journal of Modern African Studies]] |volume=7 |issue=3 |pages=441–55 |doi=10.1017/S0022278X00018590 |issn=0022-278X |jstor=159062 |s2cid=154872727 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="Keshavjee 2015 p.">{{cite book |last=Keshavjee |first=M.M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_2KmmwEACAAJ |title=Into that Heaven of Freedom: The Impact of Apartheid on an Indian Family's Diasporic History |publisher=Mawenzi House Publishers Limited |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-927494-27-1 |access-date=17 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230317164705/https://books.google.com/books?id=_2KmmwEACAAJ |archive-date=17 March 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref> During this time Gandhi briefly returned to India&nbsp;in 1902 to mobilise support for the welfare of Indians in South Africa.<ref>{{Cite web |title=High Commission of India, Pretoria, South Africa : Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa |url=https://www.hcipretoria.gov.in/eoi.php?id=Africa |access-date=17 September 2024 |website=www.hcipretoria.gov.in |archive-date=9 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240909090657/https://www.hcipretoria.gov.in/eoi.php?id=Africa |url-status=live }}</ref>

Immediately upon arriving in South Africa, Gandhi faced discrimination due to his skin colour and heritage.<ref name="Parekh2001" /> Gandhi was not allowed to sit with European passengers in the stagecoach and was told to sit on the floor near the driver, then beaten when he refused; elsewhere, Gandhi was kicked into a gutter for daring to walk near a house, in another instance thrown off a train at [[Pietermaritzburg]] after refusing to leave the first-class.<ref name="Turban" />{{sfnp|Dhiman|2016|pp=25–27}} Gandhi sat in the train station, shivering all night and pondering if he should return to India or protest for his rights.{{sfnp|Dhiman|2016|pp=25–27}} Gandhi chose to protest and was allowed to board the train the next day.{{sfnp|Gandhi|2002|p={{page needed|date=July 2024}}}} In another incident, the magistrate of a [[Durban]] court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do.<ref name="Turban" /> Indians were not allowed to walk on public footpaths in South Africa. Gandhi was kicked by a police officer out of the footpath onto the street without warning.<ref name="Turban" />

When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, according to Arthur Herman, he thought of himself as "a Briton first, and an Indian second."{{sfnp|Herman|2008|pp=87–88}} However, the prejudice against Gandhi and his fellow Indians from British people that Gandhi experienced and observed deeply bothered him. Gandhi found it humiliating, struggling to understand how some people can feel honour or superiority or pleasure in such inhumane practices.{{sfnp|Dhiman|2016|pp=25–27}} Gandhi began to question his people's standing in the [[British Empire]].<ref name="Allen2011">{{cite book |last=Allen |first=Jeremiah |year=2011 |title=Sleeping with Strangers: A Vagabond's Journey Tramping the Globe |page=273 |publisher=Other Places Publishing |isbn=978-1-935850-01-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vyl8f54UToQC&pg=PT273 |access-date=29 March 2024 |archive-date=29 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329130651/https://books.google.com/books?id=vyl8f54UToQC&pg=PT273 |url-status=live}}</ref>

The Abdullah case that had brought him to South Africa concluded in May 1894, and the Indian community organised a farewell party for Gandhi as he prepared to return to India.{{sfnp|Herman|2008|pp=88–89}} The farewell party was turned into a working committee to plan the resistance to a new Natal government discriminatory proposal. This led to Gandhi extending his original period of stay in South Africa. Gandhi planned to assist Indians in opposing a bill to [[Disfranchisement|deny them the right to vote]], a right then proposed to be an exclusive European right. He asked [[Joseph Chamberlain]], the British Colonial Secretary, to reconsider his position on this bill.<ref name="Gandhi" /> Though unable to halt the bill's passage, Gandhi's campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa. He helped found the [[Natal Indian Congress]] in 1894,<ref name="Tendulkar1951" />{{sfnp|Gandhi|2002|p={{page needed|date=July 2024}}}} and through this organisation, Gandhi moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January 1897, when Gandhi landed in Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him,<ref>{{cite wikisource |title=The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi |chapter=March 1897 Memorial |wslink=The_Collected_Works_of_Mahatma_Gandhi/Volume_II}}: correspondence and newspaper accounts of the incident.</ref> and Gandhi escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the police superintendent.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}} However, Gandhi refused to press charges against any member of the mob.<ref name="Tendulkar1951" />

[[File:Gandhi Boer War.jpg|thumb|Gandhi (middle, third from right) with the stretcher-bearers of the [[Indian Ambulance Corps]] during the [[Boer War]]]]

During the [[Second Boer War|Boer War]], Gandhi volunteered in 1900 to form a group of stretcher-bearers as the [[Natal Indian Ambulance Corps]]. According to Arthur Herman, Gandhi wanted to disprove the British colonial stereotype that Hindus were not fit for "manly" activities involving danger and exertion, unlike the Muslim "[[martial race]]s."{{sfnp|Herman|2008|p=125}} Gandhi raised 1,100 Indian volunteers to support British combat troops against the Boers. They were trained and medically certified to serve on the front lines. They were auxiliaries at the [[Battle of Colenso]] to a White volunteer ambulance corps. At the [[Battle of Spion Kop]], Gandhi and his bearers moved to the front line and had to carry wounded soldiers for miles to a field hospital since the terrain was too rough for the ambulances. Gandhi and 37 other Indians received the [[Queen's South Africa Medal]].{{sfnp|Herman|2008|loc=chapter 6}}<ref name="medals_south_african">{{cite web |date=5 March 1949 |title=South African Medals that Mahatma Returned Put on View at Gandhi Mandap Exhibition |website=Press Information Bureau of India – Archive |url=http://pibarchive.nic.in/archive/ArchiveSecondPhase/DEFENCE/1949-JAN-DEC-DEFENCE/PDF/DEF-1949-02-24_076.pdf |access-date=18 July 2020 |archive-date=28 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200928203725/http://pibarchive.nic.in/archive/ArchiveSecondPhase/DEFENCE/1949-JAN-DEC-DEFENCE/PDF/DEF-1949-02-24_076.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Gandhi and Kasturbhai 1902.jpg|thumb|Gandhi and his wife [[Kasturba Gandhi|Kasturba]] (1902)]]

In 1906, the [[Transvaal Colony|Transvaal]] government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian and Chinese populations. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of ''[[Satyagraha]]'' (devotion to the truth), or nonviolent protest, for the first time.<ref name="Rai2000">{{cite book |last=Rai |first=Ajay Shanker |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z9ZSLa6cy-8C&pg=PA35 |title=Gandhian Satyagraha: An Analytical And Critical Approach |publisher=Concept Publishing Company |year=2000 |isbn=978-81-7022-799-1 |page=35 |access-date=3 June 2020 |archive-date=7 October 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241007224938/https://books.google.com/books?id=Z9ZSLa6cy-8C&pg=PA35#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref> According to Anthony Parel, Gandhi was also influenced by the [[Tamil language|Tamil]] moral text ''[[Tirukkuṛaḷ]]'' after [[Leo Tolstoy]] mentioned it in their correspondence that began with "[[A Letter to a Hindu]]".<ref name="LetterToAHindu">{{Cite web |last=Tolstoy |first=Leo |date=14 December 1908 |title=A Letter to A Hindu: The Subjection of India-Its Cause and Cure |url=http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2733/ |access-date=12 February 2012 |website=The Literature Network |quote=The Hindu Kural |archive-date=10 November 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061110204732/http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2733/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="gandhi">{{cite book |last=Parel |first=Anthony J. |title=Meditations on Gandhi : a Ravindra Varma festschrift |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kcpDOVk5Gp8C&pg=PA96 |pages=96–112 |year=2002 |editor-last=M. P. Mathai |access-date=8 September 2012 |contribution=Gandhi and Tolstoy |place=New Delhi |publisher=Concept |isbn=978-81-7022-961-2 |author-link=Anthony Parel |editor2-last=M. S. John |editor3-last=Siby K. Joseph}}</ref> Gandhi urged Indians to defy the new law and to suffer the punishments for doing so. His ideas of protests, persuasion skills, and public relations had emerged. Gandhi took these back to India in 1915.{{sfnp|Guha|2013a|loc=Ch. 22}}<ref>{{Cite book |first=Charles R. |last=DiSalvo |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9XGtAAAAQBAJ&pg=PR14 |title=M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law: The Man before the Mahatma |publisher=Univ of California Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-520-95662-9 |pages=14–15 |access-date=15 November 2015 |archive-date=7 October 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241007225044/https://books.google.com/books?id=9XGtAAAAQBAJ&pg=PR14#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref>

=== Europeans, Indians and Africans ===
Gandhi focused his attention on Indians and Africans while he was in South Africa. Initially, Gandhi was not interested in politics, but this changed after he was discriminated against and bullied, such as by being thrown out of a train coach due to his skin colour by a white train official. After several such incidents with [[White South African|Whites in South Africa]], Gandhi's thinking and focus changed, and he felt he must resist this and fight for rights. Gandhi entered politics by forming the Natal Indian Congress.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Constance |last2=Ryan |first2=James |title=Encyclopedia of Hinduism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OgMmceadQ3gC&pg=PA158 |publisher=Facts On File |location=New York |year=2007 |pages=158–159 |isbn=978-0-8160-5458-9 |access-date=5 July 2024 |archive-date=7 October 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241007224940/https://books.google.com/books?id=OgMmceadQ3gC&pg=PA158#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref> According to Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, Gandhi's views on racism are contentious in some cases. He suffered persecution from the beginning in South Africa. Like with other coloured people, white officials denied Gandhi his rights, and the press and those in the streets bullied and called Gandhi a "parasite", "semi-barbarous", "canker", "squalid coolie", "yellow man", and other epithets. People would even spit on him as an expression of racial hate.<ref name="Desai2015p26"/>

[[File:Indian_opinion_advertisement_in_1910.jpg|left|thumb|upright|Advertisement of the ''[[Indian Opinion]]'', a newspaper founded by Gandhi]]

While in South Africa, Gandhi focused on the racial persecution of Indians before he started to focus on racism against Africans. In some cases, state Desai and Vahed, Gandhi's behaviour was one of being a willing part of racial stereotyping and African exploitation.<ref name="Desai2015p26"/> During a speech in September 1896, Gandhi complained that the whites in the British colony of South Africa were "degrading the Indian to the level of a raw [[Kaffir (racial term)|Kaffir]]."<ref>{{cite book |last=DiSalvo |first=Charles R. |title=M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law: The Man Before the Mahatma |publisher=University of California Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-520-28015-1 |page=153 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=plYlDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA153 |access-date=17 March 2023 |archive-date=17 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230317164248/https://books.google.com/books?id=plYlDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA153 |url-status=live}}</ref> Scholars cite it as an example of evidence that Gandhi at that time thought of Indians and black South Africans differently.<ref name="Desai2015p26"/> As another example given by Herman, Gandhi, at the age of 24, prepared a legal brief for the Natal Assembly in 1895, seeking voting rights for Indians. Gandhi cited race history and European Orientalists' opinions that "Anglo-Saxons and Indians are sprung from the same Aryan stock or rather the Indo-European peoples" and argued that Indians should not be grouped with the Africans.{{sfnp|Herman|2008|pp=88–89}}

Years later, Gandhi and his colleagues served and helped Africans as nurses and by opposing racism. The Nobel Peace Prize winner [[Nelson Mandela]] is among admirers of Gandhi's efforts to fight against racism in Africa.<ref>{{cite web |last=Reddy |first=E.S. |date=18 October 2016 |title=Some of Gandhi's Early Views on Africans Were Racist. But That Was Before He Became Mahatma |url=https://thewire.in/history/gandhi-and-africans |website=The Wire |access-date=11 January 2023 |archive-date=25 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221225184538/https://thewire.in/history/gandhi-and-africans |url-status=live }}</ref> The general image of Gandhi, state Desai and Vahed, has been reinvented since his assassination as though Gandhi was always a saint, when in reality, his life was more complex, contained inconvenient truths, and was one that changed over time.<ref name="Desai2015p26"/> Scholars have also pointed the evidence to a rich history of co-operation and efforts by Gandhi and Indian people with nonwhite South Africans against persecution of Africans and the [[Apartheid]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ramsamy |first1=Edward |last2=Mbanaso |first2=Michael |last3=Korieh |first3=Chima |year=2010 |title=Minorities and the State in Africa |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-J-EZLTRVRwC |publisher=[[Cambria Press]] |pages=71–73 |isbn=978-1-62196-874-0}}</ref>

In 1903, Gandhi started the ''Indian Opinion'', a journal that carried news of Indians in South Africa, Indians in India with articles on all subjects -social, moral and intellectual. Each issue was multi-lingual and carried material in English, Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil. It carried ads, depended heavily on Gandhi's contributions (often printed without a byline) and was an 'advocate' for the Indian cause.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Guha |first=Ramachandra |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=arDvngEACAAJ |title=Gandhi Before India |date=2014 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-385-53229-7 |language=en |access-date=7 September 2024 |archive-date=7 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240907114829/https://books.google.hu/books/about/Gandhi_Before_India.html?id=arDvngEACAAJ&redir_esc=y |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1906, when the [[Bambatha Rebellion]] broke out in the [[colony of Natal]], the then 36-year-old Gandhi, despite sympathising with the Zulu rebels, encouraged Indian South Africans to form a volunteer stretcher-bearer unit.{{sfnp|Herman|2008|pp=136–137}} Writing in the ''[[Indian Opinion]]'', Gandhi argued that military service would be beneficial to the Indian community and claimed it would give them "health and happiness."{{sfnp|Herman|2008|pp=154–157, 280–281}} Gandhi eventually led a volunteer mixed unit of Indian and African stretcher-bearers to treat wounded combatants during the suppression of the rebellion.{{sfnp|Herman|2008|pp=136–137}}

[[File:Gandhi suit.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.85|Gandhi photographed in South Africa (1909)]]

The medical unit commanded by Gandhi operated for less than two months before being disbanded.{{sfnp|Herman|2008|pp=136–137}} After the suppression of the rebellion, the colonial establishment showed no interest in extending to the Indian community the civil rights granted to [[white South Africans]].

By 1910, Gandhi's newspaper, ''Indian Opinion'', was covering reports on discrimination against Africans by the colonial regime. Gandhi remarked that the Africans "alone are the original inhabitants of the land. … The whites, on the other hand, have occupied the land forcibly and appropriated it for themselves."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Guha |first=Ramachandra |date=23 December 2018 |title=Setting the Record Straight on Gandhi and Race |url=https://thewire.in/history/setting-the-record-straight-on-gandhi-and-race |access-date=25 December 2022 |website=The Wire |archive-date=25 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221225175747/https://thewire.in/history/setting-the-record-straight-on-gandhi-and-race |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1910, Gandhi established, with the help of his friend [[Hermann Kallenbach]], an idealistic community they named [[Tolstoy Farm]] near Johannesburg.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Vashi |first=Ashish |date=31 March 2011 |title=For Gandhi, Kallenbach was a friend and guide |work=The Times of India |url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/For-Gandhi-Kallenbach-was-a-friend-and-guide/articleshow/7829668.cms?referral=PM |access-date=20 February 2023 |issn=0971-8257 |archive-date=15 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415150305/https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/For-Gandhi-Kallenbach-was-a-friend-and-guide/articleshow/7829668.cms?referral=PM |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Bartley |first=Grant |year=2014 |title=Satuagraha § A Medium for Truth |url=http://philosophynow.org/issues/101/Satyagraha |magazine=Philosophy Now |issue=101 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140324184714/http://philosophynow.org/issues/101/Satyagraha |archive-date=24 March 2014}}</ref> There, Gandhi nurtured his policy of peaceful resistance.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Corder, Catherine |last2=Plaut, Martin |year=2014 |title=Gandhi's Decisive South African 1913 Campaign: A Personal Perspective from the Letters of Betty Molteno |journal=[[South African Historical Journal]] |volume=66 |issue=1 |pages=22–54 |doi=10.1080/02582473.2013.862565 |s2cid=162635102}}</ref>

In the years after black South Africans gained the right to vote in South Africa (1994), Gandhi was proclaimed a national hero with numerous monuments.<ref name="Mbeki2006" />