A controversial new book by two South
African university professors reveals
shocking details about Gandhi’s life in
South Africa between 1893 and 1914,
before he returned to India.
During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi
routinely expressed “disdain for Africans,”
says S. Anand, founder of Navayana, the
publisher of the book titled “The South
African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of
Empire.”
According to the book, Gandhi described
black Africans as “savage,” “raw” and living
a life of “indolence and unclothedness,” and he
campaigned relentlessly to prove to the
British rulers that the Indian community in
South Africa was superior to native black
Africans.
The book combs through Gandhi’s own
writings during the period and government
archives and paints a portrait that is at
variance with how the world regards him
today.
Much of the halo that surrounds Gandhi
today is a result of clever repackaging, write
the authors, Ashwin Desai and Goolam
Vahed, professors at the University of
Johannesburg and the University of
KwaZulu Natal.
“As we examined Gandhi’s actions and
contemporary writings during his South
African stay, and compared these with
what he wrote in his autobiography and
‘Satyagraha in South Africa,’ it was
apparent that he indulged in some ‘tidying
up.’ He was effectively rewriting his own
history.” Prize-winning Indian author
Arundhati Roy says.
One of the first battles Gandhi fought after
coming to South Africa was over the
separate entrances for whites and blacks at
the Durban post office. Gandhi objected
that Indians were “classed with the natives
of South Africa,” who he called the kaffirs,
and demanded a separate entrance for
Indians. “We felt the indignity too much
and petitioned the authorities to do away
with the invidious distinction, and they have
now provided three separate entrances for
natives, Asiatics and Europeans.”
In a petition letter in 1895, Gandhi also
expressed concern that a lower legal
standing for Indians would result in
degenerating “so much so that from their
civilised habits, they would be degraded to
the habits of the aboriginal Natives, and a
generation hence, between the progeny of
the Indians and the Natives, there will be
very little difference in habits, and customs
and thought.”
In an open letter to the Natal Parliament in
1893, Gandhi wrote: “I venture to point out
that both the English and the Indians spring
from a common stock, called the Indo-
Aryan. A general belief seems to prevail in
the Colony that the Indians are little better,
if at all, than savages or the Natives of
Africa. Even the children are taught to
believe in that manner, with the result that
the Indian is being dragged down to the
position of a raw Kaffir.”
At a speech in Mumbai in 1896, Gandhi
said that the Europeans in Natal wished “to
degrade us to the level of the raw kaffir
whose occupation is hunting, and whose
sole ambition is to collect a certain number
of cattle to buy a wife with, and then, pass
his life in indolence and unclothedness.”
Protesting the decision of Johannesburg
municipal authorities to allow Africans to
live alongside Indians, Gandhi wrote in
1904 that the council “must withdraw the
Kaffirs from the location. About this mixing
of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must
confess I feel most strongly. I think it is
very unfair to the Indian population and it
is an undue tax on even the proverbial
patience of my countrymen.”
In response to the White League’s agitation
against Indian immigration and the
proposed importation of Chinese labour,
Gandhi wrote in 1903: “We believe also that
the white race in South Africa should be
the predominating race.”
Gandhi wrote in 1908 about his prison
experience: “We were marched off to a
prison intended for Kaffirs. There, our
garments were stamped with the letter “N”,
which meant that we were being classed
with the Natives. We were all prepared for
hardships, but not quite for this
experience. We could understand not being
classed with the whites, but to be placed
on the same level with the Natives seemed
too much to put up with.”
In 1939, Gandhi justified his counsel to the
Indian community in South Africa against
forming a non-European front: “I have no
doubt about the soundness of my advice.
However much one may sympathise with
the Bantus, Indians cannot make common
cause with them.”
This is the other side of Gandhi!!