Founder
Young Age
Visited England
Gandhi was a serious student who tried to brush up on his Latin and English by taking the University of London matriculation exam. But during his three years in England, he was more focused on moral and personal matters than academic objectives. After living in the semi-rural environment of Rajkot, he had a hard time adjusting to London’s urban lifestyle. He struggled to adjust to Western food, attire, and manners and felt uncomfortable as he did so. His vegetarianism turned into a constant source of embarrassment for him, despite the warnings of his friends that it would harm both his studies and his health. He found a restaurant that serves vegetarian food and a book that argues logically in favor of vegetarianism for his benefit. Despite being pitifully shy, the young man’s missionary zeal for vegetarianism helped him to come out of his shell and gave him a new poise.He became a member of the executive committee of the London Vegetarian Society, started going to its conferences, and started contributing to its journal.
Visited South Africa
Soon after, Gandhi learned about the racial prejudice in South Africa. The European magistrate in a courtroom in Durban asked him to take off his turban; he refused and left. A few days later, on his way to Pretoria, he was abruptly removed from a first-class train car and dumped at the Pietermaritzburg rail station, shivering and defeated. While still traveling, a white stagecoach driver assaulted him for refusing to move to the footboard so that a European passenger could board, and eventually he was forbidden from staying in hotels that were designated as being “for Europeans only.
Indian traders and laborers in Natal were forced to endure these humiliations on a daily basis, and they had developed the skills necessary to do so with the same resignation they had used to conceal their meager earnings. Gandhi’s response, not his experience, was novel. He had never been known for being particularly aggressive or conceited in the past. He responded angrily to the insults directed at him, but something happened to him. He later regarded his trip from Durban to Pretoria as one of the most novel experiences of his life and a turning point in his personal growth.
Efficacy and opposition.
Gandhi was not the kind of person to harbor grudges. He argued that the Indians who claimed full citizenship in the British crown colony of Natal were obligated to defend it when the South African (Boer) War broke out in 1899. 300 of the 1,100 volunteers in his volunteer ambulance corps were free Indians, and the remaining were slave laborers. The diverse group included laborers, accountants, craftsmen, and lawyers. Gandhi had a duty to instill in them a spirit of giving back to those they considered to be oppressors. The Pretoria News editor gave a wise portrayal of Gandhi in the area of conflict.
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