Gandhi's Passion : The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi
von: Stanley Wolpert
Oxford University Press, 2002
ISBN: 9780195156348
Sprache: Englisch
337 Seiten, Download: 20935 KB
Format: PDF, auch als Online-Lesen
7 Satyagraha in South Africa (p. 50-51)
GANDHI RETURNED to Durban on the eve of Joe Chamberlain's visit to South Africa to celebrate Britain's victory over the Boers late in 1902. Dada Abdulla and his friends welcomed their barrister home and immediately put him to work drafting the Indian deputation's memorial to be presented to the colonial secretary the day they met with him. Chamberlain had, however, come primarily to ""get a gift of 35 million pounds"" from British settlers who now had free access to Transvaal gold, Gandhi recalled, ""So he gave a cold shoulder to the Indian deputation.""
Never easily discouraged, Gandhi resolved to press Indian demands for more equitable treatment by following the indifferent crown minister from Natal to Pretoria. Britain's victory in replacing Boer rule with its own did not open the Transvaal to Indian settlers, only to white Englishmen. Indians were required to obtain special permits to enter the Transvaal, and unless they were prepared to bribe officials in the new Asiatic Department to the tune of thousands, permission was denied. Gandhi, however, appealed to his old friend Police Superintendent Alexander and was soon on his way to Pretoria. Transvaal officials, angered at his having managed to procure a permit ""by mistake,"" flexed their petty muscles, preventing his meeting once again with Chamberlain, arguing that the Pretoria deputation should only include ""resident"" Indians. His friends were insulted enough to suggest they cancel the meeting, but Gandhi insisted they go without him, having drafted their strong memorial. ""I smarted under the insult, but as I had pocketed many such in the past I had become inured to them."" No longer the thin-skinned young barrister Ollivant had ordered thrown out of his office, he never again would allow disappointment to defeat him. The arrogance of Pretoria's autocratic Asiatic Department served only to convince Gandhi to settle in the Transvaal rather than return to Durban. ""I could see that the Asiatic Department was ... a frightful engine of oppression for the Indians. ... I saw that I had to begin my work from the very beginning.""
He had gone home the year before with high hopes and every intention of staying on in India, either in Rajkot or Bombay. His plan had been to reestablish residence there and find legal work enough to support his family while serving Gokhale and Congress in the greater national interest. But Mehta's aloof indifference and all the glaring flaws he saw during the Calcutta Congress and his month with Gokhale, not to speak of his failure once more to find work at Bombay's Bar, gave him renewed appreciation of the loving support and trust lavished upon him by Dada Abdulla and his loyal friends in Natal's Indian community. Now that he was back among them, he could ""clearly see that if I returned with the vain fancy of serving on a larger field in India while I was fully aware of the great danger which stared the South African Indians in the face, the spirit of service which I had acquired would be stultified.""
His work was in the Transvaal, not in Bombay or Calcutta, and his admiring, trusting, devoted Gujarati mercantile friends implored him to remain in South Africa. Ten of them were eager enough to contribute funds on an annual retainer basis for his legal services. So he enrolled as a barrister in the Transvaal's Supreme Court in Johannesburg and opened his office in the heart of the frontier capital of Britain's newest gold rush colony. He organized a Transvaal British Indian Association, pressed charges against the ""corrupt"" Asiatic Department officials, and led a deputation to call upon the British governor of the Transvaal, Lord Milner. He also wrote a cogent summary of ""The Indian Question"" in South Africa, copies of which he sent directly to Dadabhai Naoroji and Sir William Wedderburn, who ran London's British Committee of the Indian National Congress. Wedderburn passed his copy on to Whitehall's secretary of state, the latter sending it to Viceroy Lord Curzon in Calcutta."