ESSAY WRITING COMPETITION BY LEGAL EDUCATION AWARENESS

FOUNDATION (LEAF)

NAME OF THE PARTICIPANT:

LOVELY TOKAS (AUTHOR)

SONIA TOKAS (CO- AUTHOR)

NAME OF THE UNIVERSITY/ COLLEGE:

K R MANGALAM UNIVERSITY GURUGRAM

MOTILAL NEHRU COLLEGE EVENING (DELHI UNIVERSITY)

TITLE OF THE ESSAY

MAHATMA – THE LAWYER

CONTACT NUMBER

8800779776

EMAIL ID

tokas.lovely1093@gmail.com
 MAHATMA – THE LAWYER

“I realised the true function of lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder”

-Mahatma Gandhi

INTRODUCTION:

We all know about the Mahatma Gandhi who plays a major role in the independence of our
country but are we aware of the lawyer behind the Mahatma. He was a first Indian lawyer in
the South Africa. Between 1893 and 1914, Gandhi practiced law in South Africa, honed his
political skills by agitating against a racist government, and developed his philosophy and
practice of civil disobedience.

Gandhi, like all law students of the time, was required to attend a certain number of dinners
that his Inn sponsored each term. Gandhi and his fellow students would eat with senior
members of the Bar but there was no legal instruction. “It was just a formal, sort of social thing
that everyone was required to participate in. This was because the stress was on turning people
into mannered gentlemen rather than giving them practical skills they can use as barristers and
solicitors.” Three years spent in this manner was the extent of Gandhi’s legal education.

WHERE DID GANDHI JI STUDIED LAW?

Gandhi studied law at the University of Bombay for one year, then at the University College
London, from which he graduated in 1891, and was admitted to the bar of England. His reading
of "Civil Disobedience" by David Thoreau inspired his devotion to the principle of non-violence.
He returned to Bombay and practiced law there for a year, then went to South Africa to work
for an Indian firm in Natal. There Gandhi experienced racism: he was thrown off a train while
holding a valid first class ticket and pushed to third class. Later he was beaten by a stagecoach
driver for refusing to travel on the foot-board to make room for a European passenger. He was
barred from many hotels because of his race. In 1894, Gandhi founded the Natal Indian
Congress. They focused on the Indian cause and British discrimination in South Africa.
In 1897, Gandhi brought his wife and children to South Africa. He was attacked by a mob of
racists, who tried to lynch him. He refused to press charges on any member of the mob. Gandhi
became the first non-white lawyer to be admitted to the bar in South Africa
LIFE OF MAHATMA GANDHI:

1869: Gandhi born on 2 October

1893: Gandhi arrives in South Africa to provide legal support to Abdulla and sons in Durban

1894: The Natal Indian Congress is founded

1896: Gandhi is attacked by a mob after his ship, the SS Courtland, docks in Durban when he
returns to South Africa with his family after a home visit

1899: Gandhi organizes the Indian Ambulance Corps to serve the British in the South African
War

1900: The Indian Ambulance Corps assists at the Battle of Spioenkop

1903: Gandhi founds the weekly Indian Opinion

1904: The Phoenix Settlement is established

1906: A meeting at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg sows the seeds for
the Satyagraha movement

1908: Gandhi is imprisoned at the Old Fort in Johannesburg for the first time

1908: A crowd led by Gandhi, burn their passes in a cauldron outside the Hamidia Mosque in
Fords burg

1909: Gandhi publishes the book Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule)

1910: Tolstoy Farm is established outside Johannesburg

1913: Gandhi leads a march of 2 000 Indian coal miners and sugar-plantation workers across
the border to the Transvaal

1914: Gandhi and Jan Smuts reach an agreement to relax certain restrictions on Indians in
return for ending the Satyagraha campaign. Gandhi and Kasturba leave South Africa for good

1948: Gandhi assassinated on 30 January in New Delhi

GANDHI IN SOUTH AFRICA

1. Civil rights movement in south Africa (1893 -1914)

 When he arrived in South Africa he was 24 to work as a legal representative for the
Muslim Indian trader based in the city of Pretoria. He spent 21 years in South Africa
where he developed his political views, ethics and political leadership.
 Indians in South Africa were led by the wealthy Muslims, who employed Gandhi as
lawyer and by impoverished Hindu indentured labourers with very limited rights. Gandhi
considered them all to Indians taking a lifetime view that ‘indianness’ transcended
religion and caste. He believed he could bridge the historic differences especially
regarding religion and he took that belief back to India where he tried to implement it.
The South African experience exposed handicaps to Gandhi that he had not known
about. He realised he was out of contact with the enormous complexities of religious
and cultural life in India and believed he understood India by getting to know and
leading Indians in South Africa.
 Gandhi had faced discrimination directed at all black colored people in South Africa. He
was thrown out of train at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to move from the first class.
He protested and allowed for first class next day. Travelling further on by stagecoach he
was beaten by driver for refusing to move to make room for European passenger. He
suffered other hardship on the journey as well; including being barred from several
hotels. In another incident the magistrate of Durban court ordered Gandhi to remove
his turban which he refused to do so.
 These events were turning point in Gandhi life and shaped his social activism and
awakened him to social injustice. After witnessing racism, prejudice and injustice against
Indians in South Africa. Gandhi began to question his place in society and in his people’s
standing in British Empire.
 Gandhi extended his original period of stay in South Africa to assist Indians in opposing a
bill to deny them the right to vote. He asked Joseph chamberlain, the British colonial
secretary to reconsider his position on the bill. Though unable to halt the bill’s passage
his campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South
Africa. He helped and found natal Indian congress in 1894 and through this organization
he molded the Indian community of South Africa into unified political force.
 In January 1897, when Gandhi landed in Durban a mob of white settlers attacked him
and he escaped only through the efforts of the wife of police superintendent. However
he refused to press charge against any member of the mob, stating it was one of his
principles not to seek redress for a personal wrong in a court of law.
 In 1906, the Transvaal government promulgated a new act compelling registration of
the colony’s Indian population. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11
September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of Satyagraha
(devotion to the truth) or non violent protest for the first time. He urged Indians to defy
the new law and to suffer the punishments for doing so. The community adopted this
plan and during the ensuring seven year struggle thousands of Indians were jailed ,
logged or shot for striking , refusing to register , for burning there registration cards or
engaging in other forms of non violent resistance.
2. Gandhi and the Africans
 Gandhi focused his attention on Indians while in South Africa and opposed the idea that
Indians should be treated at the same level as native Africans while in South Africa.
 In 1906, when the British declared war against the Zulu kingdom in Natal, Gandhi
encouraged the British to recruit Indians, he argued that Indians should support the war
efforts to legitimize their claims to full citizenship. The British accepted Gandhi’s offer to
let a detachment of 20 Indians volunteer as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded
 British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi and operated for less than two
months. The experience taught him it was hopeless to directly challenge the
overwhelming military power of the British army-he decided it could only be resisted in
nonviolent fashion by the pure of heart.
3. Gandhiji in struggle for Indian independence
Gandhi returned to India in 1915 at the request of Gopal Krishna Gokhale conveyed to
him by C.F. Andrews. He brought an international reputation as a leading Indian
nationalist, theorist and organizer. He joined the Indian national congress and was
introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gopal Krishna
Gokhale. Gokhale was a key leader of the congress party best known for his restraint
and moderation and has insistence on working inside the system. Gandhi took Gokhale’s
liberal approach based on British traditions and transformed it to make it look wholly
Indian.
4. Assassination of Mahatma Gandhiji
Gandhi ji was assassinated in the garden of the former Birla house (now Gandhi smriti)
at 5:17 PM on 30 January 1948. Accompanied by his grandnieces Gandhi was on his way
to address a prayer meeting, when his assassin, Nathuram Godse fired three bullets
from a berretta 9 mm pistol into his chest at point blank range. Godse was a Hindu
nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu mahasabha who held Gandhi guilty of
favoring Pakistan and strongly opposed the doctrine of non violence. Godse and his co
conspirator were tried and executed in 1949. Gandhi’s memorial (or Samadhi) at raj
ghat new Delhi bears the epigraph “he ram” which may be translated as “oh god”,
these are widely believed to be Gandhi’s last words after he was shot , though the
veracity of this statement has been disputed. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
addressed the nation through radio.
“Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness
everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader,
Bapu as we called him the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that
nevertheless we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will
not run to him for advice or seek solace from him , and that is a terrible blow, not only for
me, but for millions and millions in this country.”
-Jawaharlal Nehru’s address to the nation
BASIC PRINICIPLES OF GANDHI JI AS A LAWYER
 Truth and satyagraha
Gandhi dedicated his life to the wider purpose of discovering truth or satya. He tried to achieve
this by learning from his own mistakes and conducting experiments on himself. He called his
autobiography the story of my experiments with truth. Brauce Watson argues that Gandhi
based Satyagraha on the vedantic ideal of self realization and notes it also contains Jain and
Buddhist notions of non violence, vegetarianism, the avoidance of killing and universal
love.gandhi also borrowed Christian Islamic ideas of equality, the brotherhood of man and the
concept of turning the other cheek.
 Gandhiji and non violence
Although Gandhi was not the originator of the principle of non violence he was the first to apply
it in the political field on a large scale. The concept of nonviolence and non resistance has a long
history in Indian religious thought. Gandhi explains his philosophy and way of life in his
autobiography the story of my experiments with truth. Gandhi realised later that this level of
non violence required incredible faith and courage which he believed everyone did not possess.
He therefore advised that everyone did not possess. He therefore advised that everyone need
not keep to nonviolence, especially if it were used as a cover for cowardice saying “where there
is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.
 Gandhiji on vegetarianism and food
Gandhiji looked into numerous religious and intellectual currents during his stay in London. He
especially appreciated how the theosophical movement encouraged a religious eclecticism and
an antipathy to atheism. He says the vegetarian movement had the greatest impact for it was
Gandhi’s point of entry into other reformist agendas of the time. The idea of vegetarianism is
deeply ingrained in Hindu and Jain traditions in India, especially in his native Gujarat. Gandhi
was close to the chairman of London vegetarian society, Dr. Josiah Oldfield and corresponded
with Henry Stephens salt a vegetarian campaigner. Gandhi became a strict vegetarian society’s
publication. Gandhi was somewhat of a food faddist taking his own goat to travels so he could
always have fresh milk.
 Fasting
Gandhiji used fasting as a political device, often threatening suicide unless demand was met.
Congress publicized the fasts as a political action that generated widespread sympathy. In
response the government tried to manipulate news coverage to minimize his challenge to the
Raj. He fasted in 1932 to protest the voting scheme for separate political representation for
dalits Gandhi did not want them segregated. The government stopped the London press from
showing photographs of his emaciated body, because it would elicit sympathy. Gandhi’s 1943
hunger strike took place during a two year prison term for the anticolonial Quit India
movement. The government called on nutritional experts to demystify his action and again no
photos were allowed. However, his final fast in 1948, after India was independent was lauded
by the British press and this time did include full length photos.
 Basic education
Gandhiji educational policies reflected basic education for all, a spiritual principle which states
that knowledge and work are not separate. It was a reaction against the British educational
system and colonialism in general which had the negative effect of making Indian children
alienated and career based it promoted disdain for manual work the development of a new
elite class and the increasing problems of industrialization and urbanization. The three pillars of
Gandhi’s pedagogy were its focus on the lifelong character of education, its social character and
its form as a holistic process. For Gandhiji education is the moral development of the person a
process that is by definition ‘lifelong’.
CONCLUSION

Therefore as described in this way Gandhi ji had spent his life for serving to the nation. He
studied law in South Africa and from there his leadership skills had grown and having difficulties
in South Africa, he finds the solution for those problems with his strong determination to do
anything and by applying his five basic principles as a law student that is truth , fasting , basic
education , through non violence and being vegetarian. But we had lost the ‘father of nation’ on
30th Jan 1948 in assassination by Godse .Though we are not able to seek advice from him but
his actions of that time are the great lessons for us now to learn and grow.