I must confess that I was surprised when I heard that a meeting at this festival would be devoted to the topic: "Are Gandhi`s ideas relevant in a New South Africa?"
Gandhiji never wanted to leave a cult and he disliked any talk of "Gandhism" as an ideology. He practised truth as he saw it from time to time, and evolved with the times, and his whole life, with all its inconsistencies, is what he left behind. He represents an approach and that approach - the concept of non-violent defiance of injustice, for instance - has had a great impact on the thinking and events in the world. Gandhiji does not represent mere non-violence. Non-violence without a determination to defy injustice, whatever the sacrifice, is an empty shell. It can be mere cowardice.
Gandhiji could have become a hermit if he believed only in non-violence or vegetarianism. Instead, he recognised the duty to become a "political sannyasi" so long as colonial and racist oppression continued.
Gandhiji`s concept and technique of non-violent defiance originated in South Africa, on a hill in Johannesburg where he decided in 1906 to defy the Asiatic Ordinance, whatever the consequences. They have been developed and enriched - not only by him in the freedom movement in India - but by others in the struggles in many lands, particularly in the United States in the civil rights movement and the resistance to the Vietnam War, and, of course, in South Africa since the 1940s.
Non-violent defiance has been a major world phenomenon in recent years and it is no more possible for oppressive regimes to resort to massacres of the people when they rise up in non-violent revolt.
The regime of the Shah of Iran, which had armed itself to the teeth, was defeated by an essentially non-violent resistance. The regime of General Marcos in the Philippines was overthrown by non-violent rebellion.
When people in the West were able to see police violence in South Africa on their TV screens in 1984-85, there was rapid progress in non-violent international action against apartheid so that the Pretoria regime had to change its course.
The regimes in Eastern Europe, especially in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, were overthrown by non-violent defiance. And lately, even the coup in the Soviet Union was defeated by non-violent resistance.
There has, therefore, been a revival of interest in Gandhiji`s ideas around the world, not only among people interested in political affairs, but also among those concerned with environment, liberation theology, etc.
Why, then, should there be any question of relevance, here in South Africa, the land where satyagraha was born?
I have heard it said by South Africans that Gandhiji and non-violence had become irrelevant in South Africa after the Sharpeville massacre and that armed struggle was the ONLY possible means for liberation.
I do not question the role of armed struggle in South Africa but I believe it was never the ONLY way, perhaps not even the predominant means of struggle. The struggle has to be seen in its totality - taking into account the resistance within the country by all possible means, utilising every possibility for legal and peaceful action; the steadfastness of those tortured in detention or sentenced to long terms in prison; the political action by the leadership obliged to go into exile; the armed actions by liberation forces; and the powerful international solidarity movement which was developed and sustained over several decades.
The leaders of the ANC have never said that armed struggle was the ONLY way. Nelson Mandela, in his speech from the dock in April 1964, pointed out that he and his colleagues had decided to undertake organised underground and armed resistance in order to avert uncontrolled violence. The ANC abandoned its strict adherence to non-violence, or its commitment to peaceful struggle alone, but it did not give up means of struggle other than armed struggle, for armed struggle cannot develop without political struggle. It took great care to avoid loss of innocent lives. The international campaign for sanctions was also intended to avoid undue violence and suffering in the process of the liberation struggle.
That is why all the leading pacifists of the world have continued to support the South African struggle, even after ANC resorted to sabotage and armed actions in 1961.
In South Africa, you have had an extraordinary situation of an armed struggle for over a quarter of a century in which only a few hundred people were killed by the guerrillas - even many of those perhaps because of accidents or errors - and a few thousand were killed by the police and security forces.(2)
Compare that with Algeria, where there were only a million white settlers, and the casualties amounted to nearly two million dead.
Even in the small Central American countries like Guatemala and El Salvador, many more people have been killed than in South Africa. Some 75,000 people have been killed so far in El Salvador and more in Guatemala.
The casualties in combat - I am not referring to the casualties from racial discrimination - were relatively so low in South Africa because of the humanism of the liberation movement and the international support it gained.
I have, in mind, for instance, that Nelson Mandela expressed concern even from inside prison about deaths of innocent people, and that Oliver Tambo showed courage in calling for an end to necklacing, even in the face of brutal murders by security forces in Matola and Maseru, and the killings in prisons and in townships.
The sacrifices made by the frontline States, India and other countries in non-violent action in support of the South African struggle - in the form of international sanctions against apartheid - also saved numerous lives.
Let us not forget the thousands of people who went to prison in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, who were assaulted by police or who risked their careers because of their solidarity with the South African struggle.
I may ask: Were the students in Soweto and the other African townships, whose defiance was essentially non-violent, irrelevant? Was Nana Sita, who defied unjust laws until the end of his life, irrelevant? Were the bishops and archbishops who marched in defiance of the law irrelevant? And was the mass defiance campaign of the Mass Democratic Movement launched in August 1989, which was followed within a few months by the virtual scrapping of many laws and even the unbanning of the ANC, irrelevant?
I will leave the question of armed struggle because I doubt if any sane person wants violence and conflict in a new South Africa.
The question of relevance of Gandhiji`s ideas perhaps also comes up because of the books and articles critical of Gandhiji which have appeared in recent years.
There is certainly a need for an objective and critical study of Gandhiji, instead of mere adulation. He himself welcomed criticism and changed his views many times.
But I am afraid that some of the criticism in "scholarly" studies results from preconceived notions based on ideologies, or looking back at 1906 or 1907 by hindsight or not studying all that Gandhiji has said or written or done.
There are "Marxist" studies which dismiss Gandhiji as a representative of the Gujarati merchant class. Communists in India and the Soviet Union changed their attitudes towards Gandhiji in the 1950s but their colleagues in South Africa seem to be taking a longer time to reassess Gandhiji.
The fact is that when Gandhiji moved from "petition politics" to defiance in 1907, the merchant class - except for a few heroes like A.M. Cachalia, Ebrahim Asvat and Parsee Rustomjee - could not follow him. Some gave sympathy and funds; others opposed him. The satyagrahis in the Transvaal from 1907 and the 60,000 people in the Natal who went on strike in 1913 were mostly working people from South India and Hindustanis.
In his first speech in London after leaving South Africa in 1914, Gandhiji said:
"These men and women are the salt of India; on them will be built the Indian nation that is to be. We are poor mortals before these heroes and heroines."
The greatest achievement of Gandhiji, after his return to India, is that he mobilised the poor and illiterate masses of India in the struggle for independence.
There are also critical studies by "armchair revolutionaries" who have not participated in the liberation struggle. They too sound radical, though not Marxist, speaking of the "underclass" rather than the "working class".
Maureen (Tayal) Swan is an excellent researcher and writer. I have read her writings with great interest and have learned from them.
Without in any way criticising her scholarship, I must confess that after I read her book, Gandhi: the South African Experience, more than once, I asked myself: Did Gandhiji ever go to jail in South Africa or lead the people in resistance? Who were the tens of thousands of people who joined him in the struggle? Were most of them not from the "underclass"? Were they totally ignorant of their own interests that scholars had to tell them generations later that they were misled?
She writes extensively about the many groups among the Indian South Africans who were always critical of him, their speeches and their articles - but there is little on what mass resistance they organised or what sacrifices they made.
The most serious criticism of Gandhiji is that he was opposed to the unity of Indians with Africans.
I saw an article recently on "Gandhi in South Africa: the Ambiguities of Satyagraha" by Les Switzer of the University of Houston in a recent issue of the Journal of Ethnic Studies.
It is apparently based on very little study of Gandhiji and has many errors of fact.
He claims that Gandhiji had no contact with Black leaders in South Africa like John Dube, John Tengo Jabavu, Walter Rubusana and Abdul(sic!) Abdurahman, and that, unlike them, he had little influence on the history of resistance in South Africa during the early part of this century. And he comes to this conclusion:
"The history of resistance to apartheid continues to demonstrate the ambiguity of the relationship between South Africa's Indian and African communities."
He is wrong on facts. John Dube had his "Zulu Christian Industrial School" at Ohlange, very near the Phoenix Settlement of Gandhiji. They were good friends and Gandhiji, like Dube, admired Booker T. Washington.
Gandhiji wrote an article in Indian Opinion congratulating Walter Rubusana when he was elected to the Cape Provincial Council. He had close contact with Dr. Abdulla Abdurahman and they respected each other.
Gandhiji had met many African leaders and had many discussions with them: they had mutual friends in the white community. But these facts apart, I would like to deal with the main criticism about Gandhiji`s attitude to the African people of South Africa.
Attitude toward unity with the African people
Gandhiji`s political activity in South Africa was in connection with specific grievances of the small Indian community - about breaches of undertakings or violations of acquired rights.
The Africans were little concerned with them. Even some white liberals who were sympathetic to Africans were hostile to Indians.
African political organisations were at a nascent stage and there was little to unite.
Dr. Abdurahman certainly talked about unity of the oppressed people, but did little. The APO remained a Coloured organisation.
More important, we need to take two factors into account.
The series of discriminatory measures against Indians came soon after thousands of Chinese workers were summarily deported from the Transvaal. There was reason to believe that the intention of the authorities was to make the life of the Indians so miserable as to force all Indians, except the indentured labourers, to leave. The Indians were vulnerable.
If they tried to join with the Africans, and seemed to incite Africans, there was every danger of a hysteria among the whites and summary deportations of Indians.
Secondly, Gandhiji was not only concerned with the grievances of the Indians but with the honour of India. The spirit of nationalism, which was rising in India had an impact in South Africa. The satyagraha was a part of the struggle of India for its dignity, and a moral crusade, though waged on the South African soil. Many young Indians who were not directly affected by the discriminatory laws, went to jail in the satyagraha.
Indians and Chinese could cooperate in the struggle against the Asiatic Ordinance in the Transvaal. But that was not of direct concern to the Africans and the Coloured people.
But already Gandhiji foresaw, according to his first biographer, the Reverend J. J. Doke, the coming confrontation between the African people and the whites, and said:
"When the moment of collision comes, if, instead of the old ways of massacre, assegai and fire, the Natives adopt the policy of Passive Resistance, it will be a grand change for the Colony ..."
After his return to India in 1914, Gandhiji devoted much of his time to mobilise Indian public opinion in support of the Indians in South Africa. But he repeatedly stressed that the Indians should maintain friendly relations with the Africans and that if Indian rights conflicted with the interests of the African majority, they should not be pressed.
Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, a close colleague of Gandhiji, stressed during her visit to South Africa in 1924, that the struggles of the Indian and African people were for a common objective. She was applauded by Dr. Abdulla Abdurahman and Clemens Kadalie, the trade union leader.
The same message was carried by the Reverend C. F. Andrews, who made several visits to South Africa at the request of Gandhiji and Poet Rabindranath Tagore.
In 1928, after the Cape Town agreement between South Africa and India, Mr. Habib Motan, the honorary secretary of the Government Indian School Committee in the Transvaal, protested against arrangements to send Indian students to the Fort Hare Native College as humiliating and a degradation. He was supported by P. S. Aiyar, the publicist who always tried to be more "radical" than Gandhiji.
The Reverend C. F. Andrews replied in The Modern Review of Calcutta in March 1928:
"The poet, Rabindranath Tagore, gave me a definite message to the Indians in South Africa. He stated that if the Indian community could not win the respect and affection of the Africans (who had the true right to be in South Africa, as the children of the soil) then they had no place there. They were imperialist intruders. Mr. Habib Motan`s statement ... must shock every Indian nationalist who reads it."
Gandhiji, writing in Young India on April 5, 1928, fully supported Tagore. He said:
"Indians have too much in common with the Africans to think of isolating themselves from them. They cannot exist in South Africa for any length of time without the active sympathy and friendship of the Africans. I am not aware of the general body of the Indians having ever adopted an air of superiority towards their African brethren, and it would be a tragedy if any such movement were to gain ground among the Indian settlers of South Africa."
In 1939, when the Non-European United Front was formed in South Africa and was supported by several Indian leaders, Gandhiji did not receive adequate information from his correspondents in South Africa and came under criticism for expressing reservations about an Indo-African united front. His reasoning deserves attention.
He told the Reverend S. S. Tema, in an interview on January 1, 1938:
"The Indians are a microscopic minority. They can never be a menace to the white population. You, on the other hand, are the sons of the soil who are being robbed of your inheritance. You are bound to resist that. Yours is a far bigger issue. It ought not to be mixed up with that of the Indian. This does not preclude the establishment of the friendliest relations between the two races."
He added, in an article in The Harijan, July 1, 1939, that the Europeans were "undoubtedly usurpers, exploiters or conquerors or all of them rolled into one".
We may or may not agree with these views which were shared by the Africanists of 1944 in South Africa, but do they suggest unconcern for the Africans?
As sentiment for unity grew among the Africans and the Indians, Gandhiji revised his views.
He wrote in The Harijan of May 19, 1946:
"The slogan today is no longer merely 'Asia for the Asiatics` or 'Africa for the Africans` but the unity of all the oppressed races of the earth."
In May 1947, when Dr. Yusuf Dadoo and Dr. G. M. Naicker visited him in India, he gave them a message in which he said:
"Political cooperation among all exploited races in South Africa can only result in mutual good if wisely directed."
I might also recall that in 1946 when white gangsters were brutally attacking Indian passive resisters in Durban, Gandhiji told the All India Congress Committee that he would not shed a single tear if all the Indian satyagrahis were wiped out, for they would thereby point the way to the Africans and vindicate the honour of India.(Harijan, July 21, l946).
The forthcoming centenary
As we approach the centenary of Gandhiji`s arrival in South Africa in 1893, I hope that the people here will honour the true Gandhiji and not the caricature drawn in some supposedly scholarly studies.
Gandhiji repeatedly emphasised until the end of his life that he was an Indian and a South African. He does not belong to Indian South Africans alone but to all South Africans.
The spirit of Gandhiji lives not only in the hearts of Indians struggling against racism and for a non-violent democratic society, but in those of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Reverend Beyers Naude and many, many others.
I hope there will be a study of the South African roots of the ideas of Gandhiji. For, as early as 1862, Indian indentured labourers resorted to passive resistance on the estate of Henry Shire at Umhlanga. (L.M. Thompson in Indian Immigration into Natal, 1860-1872). Oliver Tambo referred to it as the first recorded strike in South Africa.
Professor R.E. van der Ross points out, in The Rise and Decline of Apartheid, that Peter John Daniels organised a passive resistance movement by the Coloured people when they were denied licences to dig for gold and that he discussed passive resistance with Gandhiji before the latter launched the Indian satyagraha.
And in 1913, African women began a passive resistance movement against pass laws in Orange Free State, a few months before Gandhiji encouraged Indian women to join the satyagraha.
More important, I hope that South African scholars will study the freedom movement in this country to see how it has adapted, developed and enriched the ideas of Gandhiji under extremely difficult conditions.
1. Based on a lecture at the Alumni Spring Festival of the University of Witwatersrand on September 15, 1991.
Published in The Leader, Durban, October 4, 1991, and Mainstream, New Delhi, Annual Number, October 26, 1991.
2. Regrettably many more were killed in acts of aggression and destabilisation by the South African regime in frontline States - especially Mozambique and Angola.