Satyagraha
Satyagraha
In 1893 a little known lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, arrived in South Africa. Little did he know that he was about to spend 21 years of his life fighting oppression and becoming internationally known. Gandhi’s time in South Africa had such a huge impact on his life that he would often assert that he was both an Indian and a South African, and it was in South Africa that he developed and practiced his concepts of non-violence and satyagraha. The satyagraha movement he started in South Africa spread across the world, from South Africa to India where Gandhi implemented the practice, and to the United States in the form of the American civil rights movements, halfway around the world. Often times satyagraha is very loosely defined because Gandhi refused to write down a definition. This paper looks in depth at how satyagraha was formed, and at the man who formed it, in an attempt to come to an understanding of what satyagraha is. Satyagraha is a deep principle that affects more than just the past but the present and the future as well. To understand satyagraha it is important to look at the man who discovered it, Mohandas Gandhi. When Gandhi first arrived in South Africa he was fresh from England and hot blooded. He was the born in India, the youngest of 6 siblings, and was sent off to England to study law. When describing his own appearance and attitude upon arrival in Durban, Gandhi said he was a “barrister, well-dressed” with a “due sense of his own importance”. This is not the description of a man who would come to lead a nonviolent resistance movement, but within just a few days the seed that would become satyagraha was born. The first few days of Gandhi's South African experience are some of the most well known. His first experience of South African injustice was in a courtroom in Durban. Upon entering the courtroom Gandhi was instructed by the magistrate to remove his turban, which Gandhi refused to do and resulted in him being thrown out of the
In 1893 a little known lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, arrived in South Africa. Little did he know that he was about to spend 21 years of his life fighting oppression and becoming internationally known. Gandhi’s time in South Africa had such a huge impact on his life that he would often assert that he was both an Indian and a South African, and it was in South Africa that he developed and practiced his concepts of non-violence and satyagraha. The satyagraha movement he started in South Africa spread across the world, from South Africa to India where Gandhi implemented the practice, and to the United States in the form of the American civil rights movements, halfway around the world. Often times satyagraha is very loosely defined because Gandhi refused to write down a definition. This paper looks in depth at how satyagraha was formed, and at the man who formed it, in an attempt to come to an understanding of what satyagraha is. Satyagraha is a deep principle that affects more than just the past but the present and the future as well. To understand satyagraha it is important to look at the man who discovered it, Mohandas Gandhi. When Gandhi first arrived in South Africa he was fresh from England and hot blooded. He was the born in India, the youngest of 6 siblings, and was sent off to England to study law. When describing his own appearance and attitude upon arrival in Durban, Gandhi said he was a “barrister, well-dressed” with a “due sense of his own importance”. This is not the description of a man who would come to lead a nonviolent resistance movement, but within just a few days the seed that would become satyagraha was born. The first few days of Gandhi's South African experience are some of the most well known. His first experience of South African injustice was in a courtroom in Durban. Upon entering the courtroom Gandhi was instructed by the magistrate to remove his turban, which Gandhi refused to do and resulted in him being thrown out of the