It is unfortunate that there should be controversy over Mahatma Gandhi’s role in South Africa. It is based primarily on Gandhi’s earlier, somewhat dismissive and casual remarks that could be considered derogatory towards a section of the local people, regardless of what Gandhi’s intention may have been.
However, such remarks were not made after 1908. There was a definite widening in Gandhi’s outlook and growth in his understanding. It is that widening that is implicitly celebrated when Gandhi is celebrated.
The second aspect of the controversy relates to the criticism that Gandhi did not draw in blacks into his movements in South Africa.
Gandhi decided against doing so not out of a lack of sympathy for the Africans, but precisely because of his concern for them. Indians had another country — India — to fall back on. Africans did not. The consequences of the struggle could be different for Africans and Indians. As the one leading the struggle, he had to consider this. If the former came into the struggle and violence was resorted to, there might be repression of which the Africans might have to bear the brunt. We saw later what happened in South Africa in roughly the second half of the 20th century once the organised African struggle began. That experience appears to have vindicated Gandhi’s early decision.
He told the press on July 8 1939: ”Bantus can only damage and complicate their cause by mixing it up with the Indian.” However, he added in the same article that this ”should not deter the Indians from forming a non-European front if they are sure thereby of winning their freedom”.
He was in touch with Dr Yusuf Dadoo and Dr Monty Naicker, who sought in the 1940s to build a joint struggle of Indians, Africans, coloureds and liberal-minded whites. With the changed situation in South Africa, Gandhi did not oppose a joint struggle. However, he did maintain that it ought to be non-violent.
A deputation from South Africa led by Sorabji Rustomji came to India in 1946. It was protesting against racial legislation in South Africa. A member of the delegation asked Gandhi: ”You have said we should associate with Zulus and Bantus. Does it not mean joining them in a common anti-white front?” Gandhi replied: ”Yes, I have said that we should associate with the Zulus, Bantus, and so on … It will be good if you can fire them with the spirit of non-violence.” Gandhi remarked of the deputationists’ cause: ”The cause is the cause of the honour of India and, through her, of all the exploited coloured races of the Earth, whether they be brown, yellow or black. It is worth all the suffering of which they are capable.”
During his major struggles in South Africa and after his return to India in 1915 Gandhi remained conscious that when he worked for Indian rights or for Indian freedom back in India, it would be of benefit to other oppressed peoples.
He knew that his struggles were based on the principle of racial equality and advanced that cause regardless of who suffered for that cause by participating in them.
In South Africa Gandhi reached out to Africans like John Dube who had an industrial school, the Ohlange Institute, in Inanda near Phoenix. ”There was frequent social contact between the inmates of the Phoenix settlement and the Ohlange Institute,” writes author ES Reddy. John Dube’s paper Ilanga lase Natal, an African weekly in English and Zulu, used to be printed in the Indian opinion press until the Ohlange Institute acquired a press of its own, Reddy adds.
Gandhi left something permanent behind him in South Africa — and what he left behind was for all South Africans. A decade after Gandhi’s return to India in 1915, Sarojini Naidu, who later headed the Indian National Congress, visited South Africa. On February 29 1924 she wrote to Gandhi from Johannesburg: ”I am so deeply moved, so deeply aware all the time that here was the cradle of satyagraha — do you wonder that I have been able to move thousands of men and women in the past two days to tears under the influence and stimulus of your inspiration? … I have seen your legion of old friends and followers — white, brown and black — the whole gamut of the polychromatic scale of humanity in this land — all send you their love…”
Gandhi understood the essential unity of struggles for racial equality.
Anil Nauriya is an advocate of the Supreme Court of India, based in New Delhi