Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. )

Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. ): 67. THE BLACK PLAGUE - I : The Indians were not removed from the location as soon as the Municipality secured its ownership. It was necessary to find the re...

The Indians were not removed from the location as soon as the Municipality secured its ownership. It was necessary to find the residents suitable new quarters before dislodging them, but as the Municipality could not easily do this, the Indians were suffered to stay in the same 'dirty' location, with this difference that their condition became worse than before. Having ceased to be proprietors they became tenants of the Municipality, with the result that their surroundings became more insanitary than ever. When they were proprietors, they had to maintain some sort of cleanliness, if only for fear of the law. The Municipality had no such fear! The number of tenants increased, and with them the squalor and the disorder. While the Indians were fretting over this state of things, there was a sudden outbreak of the black plague, also called the pneumonic plague, more terrible and fatal than the bubonic. Fortunately it was not the location but one of the gold mines i...

Some of the classes which render us the greatest social service, but which we Hindus have chosen to regard as 'untouchables,' are relegated to remote quarters of a town or a village, called in Gujarati dhedvado, and the name has acquired a bad odour. Even so in Christian Europe the Jews were once 'untouchables' and the quarters that were assigned to them had the offensive name of 'ghettoes.' In a similar way today we have become the untouchables of South Africa. It remains to be seen how far the sacrifice of Andrews and the magic wand of Sastri succeed in rehabilitating us. The ancient Jews regarded themselves as the chosen people of God, to the exclusion of all others, with the result that their descendants were visited with a strange and even unjust retribution. Almost in a similar way the Hindus have considered themselves Aryas or civilized, and a section of their own kith and kin as Anaryas or untouchables, with the result that a strange, if unjus...

Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. ): 65. 'INDIAN OPINION' : : Before I proceed with the other intimate European contacts, I must note two or three items of importance. One of the contacts, howeve...

Before I proceed with the other intimate European contacts, I must note two or three items of importance. One of the contacts, however, should be mentioned at once. The appointment of Miss Dick was not enough for my purpose. I needed more assistance. I have in the earlier chapters referred to Mr. Ritch. I knew him well. He was manager in a commercial firm. He approved my suggestion of leaving the firm and getting articled under me, and he considerably lightened my burden. About this time Sjt. Madanjit approached me with a proposal to start Indian Opinion and sought my advice. He had already been conducting a press, and I approved of his proposal. The journal was launched in 1904, and Sjt. Mansukhlal Naazar became the first editor. But I had to bear the brunt of the work, having for most of the time to be practically in charge of the journal. Not that Sjt. Mansukhlal could not carry it on. He had been doing a fair amount of journalism whilst in India, but he would never ventur...

Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. ): 64. EUROPEAN CONTACTS (Contd.) : In Johannesburg I had at one time as many as four Indian clerks, who were perhaps more like my sons than clerks. But even these were n...

Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. ): 64. EUROPEAN CONTACTS (Contd.) : In Johannesburg I had at one time as many as four Indian clerks, who were perhaps more like my sons than clerks. But even these were n...

In Johannesburg I had at one time as many as four Indian clerks, who were perhaps more like my sons than clerks. But even these were not enough for my work. It was impossible to do without typewriting, which, among us, if at all, only I knew. I taught it to two of the clerks, but they never came up to the mark because of their poor English. And then one of these I wanted to train as an accountant. I could not get out anyone from Natal, for nobody could enter the Transvaal without a permit, and for my own personal convenience I was not prepared to ask a favour of the Permit Officer. I was at my wits' end. Arrears were fast mounting up, so much so that it seemed impossible for me, however much I might try, to cope with professional and public work. I was quite willing to engage a European clerk, but I was not sure to get a white man or woman to serve a coloured man like myself. However I decided to try. I approached a typewriter's agent whom I knew, and asked him to get me...

Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. ): 63. INTIMATE EUROPEAN CONTACTS : : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY : The story of my experiments with truth M. K. Gandhi This chapter has brought me to a stage where it becomes ...

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY : The story of my experiments with truth M. K. Gandhi This chapter has brought me to a stage where it becomes necessary for me to explain to the reader how this story is written from week to week. When I began writing it, I had no definite plan before me. I have no diary or documents on which to base the story of my experiments. I write just as the Spirit moves me at the time of writing. I do not claim to know definitely that all conscious thought and action on my part is directted by the Spirit. But on an examination of the greatest steps that I have taken in my life, as also of those that may be regarded as the least, I think it will not be improper to say that all of them were directed by the Spirit. I have not seen Him, neither have I known Him. I have made the world's faith in God my own, and as my faith is ineffaceable , I regard that faith as amounting to experience. However, as it may be said that to describe faith as experience is to tam...

Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. ): 62. A SACRED RECOLLECTION AND PENANCE : : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY : The story of my experiments with truth M. K. Gandhi A variety of incidents in my life have conspired to br...

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY : The story of my experiments with truth M. K. Gandhi A variety of incidents in my life have conspired to bring me in close contact with people of many creeds and many communities, and my experience with all of them warrants the statement that I have known no distinction between relatives and strangers, countrymen and foreigners, white and coloured, Hindus and Indians of other faiths, whether Musalmans, Parsis, Christians or Jews. I may say that my heart has been incapable of making any such distinctions. I cannot claim this as a special virtue, as it is in my very nature. rather than a result of any effort on my part, whereas in the case of ahimsa (non- violence), brahmacharya (celibacy), aparigraha (non-possession) and other cardinal virtues, I am fully conscious of a continuous striving for their cultivation. When I was practising in Durban, my office clerks often stayed with me, and there were among them Hindus and Christians, or to describe them ...

Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. ): Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012... : Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. ): 60. A WARNING : : I am afraid I must continue the digression until the next chapter. ...

To turn now to the Asiatic Department. Johannesburg was the stronghold of the Asiatic officers. I had been observing that, far from protecting the Indians, Chinese and others, these officers were grinding them down. Every day I had complaints like this: 'The rightful ones are not admitted, whilst those who have no right are smuggled in on payment of 100. If you will not remedy this state of things, who will?' I shared the feeling. If I did not succeed in stamping out this evil, I should be living in the Transvaal in vain. So I began to collect evidence, and as soon as I had gathered a fair Amount, I approached the Police Commissioner. He appeared to be a just man. Far from giving me the cold shoulder, he listened to me patiently and asked me to show him all the evidence in my possession. He examined the witnesses himself and was satisfied, but he knew as well as I that it was difficult in South Africa to get a white jury to convict a white offender against coloured ...