131 years of Pietermaritzburg incident

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Context (IE): Gandhiji’s life transformed after the Pietermaritzburg incident.

Pietermaritzburg incident

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived in South Africa on 24 May 1893 to attend to a legal matter of Durban-based merchant Dada Abdullah Jhaveri.
The incident occurred in 1893 when a railway official demanded Gandhiji shift from his “whites-only” first-class compartment to a third-class compartment.
Despite resistance, he was thrown out at the Pietermaritzburg station. Gandhiji resolved to fight this racial discrimination and injustice.
He mentioned the incident as “symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice” in his autobiography.

The NIC (Natal Indian Congress) was the first of the Indian Congresses to be formed.
It was established in 1894 by Mahatma Gandhi to fight discrimination against Indian traders in Natal.
It was formed to resist a bill by the Natal Legislative Assembly to disenfranchise the Indians.
Within a month, a monster petition bearing 10,000 signatures was presented to Lord Ripon, Colonial Secretary, and the agitation compelled the British Government to disallow the Bill.
However, in 1896, the Bill finally became law. The act did not mention the Indians but merely disqualified those who were not of European origin.
First time that the Indian people had not only participated in but organised an agitational campaign.

Gandhi founded an Ambulance Corps in support of the British in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.
He thought that support for the British would translate into better conditions for Indians in Transvaal.
He founded the Transvaal British Indian Association in 1903 in Johannesburg.
The British-Boer understanding after the War led to further restrictions on Indians in Transvaal.

English artist John Ruskin‘s book Unto This Last inspired Gandhi to set up Phoenix Farm near Durban.
Gandhi trained his cadres on non-violent Satyagraha or peaceful restraint here.
Phoenix Farm is considered the birthplace of Satyagraha. However, it was at Tolstoy Farm, Gandhi’s second camp in South Africa, that Satyagraha was moulded into a weapon of protest.

He legally defended Indian traders against discrimination, countering efforts to disenfranchise them.
He wrote a ‘guidebook’ for Indian students, reflecting his commitment to personal & professional growth.
Gandhi both theorised and practised satyagraha in South Africa, including writing letters, articles and petitions to mass mobilisation and seeking imprisonment.
Gandhi was sentenced to four terms imprisonment in South Africa during his Satyagraha campaigns.
These methods influenced other movements, from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Movement in the United States to Nelson Mandela’s struggle against apartheid.

The term ‘Satyagraha’ is derived from ‘satya’ (truth) and ‘agraha’ (insistence or truth-force), and its practitioners are called Satyagrahis.
It was his newspaper weekly ‘Indian Opinion’ through which the word Satyagraha was coined.