Investor's Business Daily, August 16th, 2007
A train ride in South Africa in 1893 changed Mohandas Gandhi's life.
Gandhi, born to a wealthy Indian family, had studied law in London and considered himself a proper Englishman. So he had the shock of his young life when he was tossed out of a train car -- despite his first-class ticket -- because of his dark skin.
When he refused to ride in the packed, dirty compartment where "colored" laborers were relegated, conductors threw him off the train to spend the night in a train station. He debated his future: "Should I fight for my rights or go back to India, or should I go on to Pretoria without minding the insults?"
His decision changed history.
Gandhi refused to accept the status quo to which others had resigned themselves, becoming the leader of the civil rights struggle for Indians in South Africa. He believed that he could change the minds of those who opposed him with words and deeds, not violence.
Following his victories in South Africa, he returned to India to lead its long struggle for independence. He became known as Mahatma, an honorific meaning "great soul," and served as the inspiration for activists the world over. Time magazine placed him among the 20th century's 100 greatest people.
Gandhi's relentless persistence wore down his opponents.
The parliament in the Natal province of South Africa proposed a bill in 1894 denying voting rights to Indians and imposed a tax on Indian laborers who stayed in the country after their contracts expired.
Gandhi, who had planned on moving back to India that year, quickly argued the tax down from 25 pounds to 3 pounds. He didn't leave until two decades later, when the tax was finally abandoned.
Gandhi "carefully laid his plans for a long and arduous struggle," wrote Stanley Wolpert in "Gandhi's Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi." "To mobilize his community more effectively, Gandhi knew that a standing political association was required."
Gandhi was ready to do anything to achieve his goals. He imposed strict self-discipline, eschewing meat, praying daily and meditating in silence one day a week. His commitment to nonviolence and force of will inspired his followers to stand up to intimidation.
"Sacrifice is the law of life," he said. "We can do nothing or get nothing without paying a price for it."
In 1906, Gandhi prepared to lead a campaign of nonviolent resistance to a new bill in South Africa that required all Indians to be fingerprinted and to carry identification cards.
He organized a meeting to drum up opposition. He urged everyone to take an oath vowing his or her commitment to the cause.
This was the first of many campaigns in which Gandhi would apply his satyagraha method: Hold fast to the truth. If enough Indians, first in South Africa and later in India, took such an oath, he believed, they could not be defeated.
Recognizing that example can be a strong inspiration, Gandhi didn't set himself apart from those he sought to lead. After Indians were shot during a 1913 protest march in South Africa, Gandhi said he felt those bullets had gone through his own heart, Wolpert wrote.
At this point Gandhi decided to renounce his remaining trappings of privilege and social status.
"Gandhi abandoned the barrister's clothing he had worn for the past 20 years and adopted instead the scant simplicity of an indentured laborer's garb, shaving his head and never again reverting to Western dress," Wolpert wrote.
He walked with followers to protests, rather than accept rides. He refused to use spices in his foods because so many of his poorer followers couldn't afford them. He often slept outdoors, just as many followers who had no homes did.
Despite the hardship, Gandhi was confident. "Adversity only cheered his passionate nature and intensified his resolve," Wolpert wrote.
Gandhi understood the importance of symbolism in India. Remembering how American colonists protested the British tea monopoly and taxes by tossing tea into Boston Harbor, Gandhi thought up a similar gambit.
He took aim at the British tax on salt. "Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life," Gandhi wrote. Only a tax on salt "can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The tax constitutes therefore the most inhuman poll tax that ingenuity of man can devise."
Gandhi, then 61, set off in 1930 with a band of 78 followers and reporters in tow on a 240-mile march to the sea. Upon reaching his destination, joined now by thousands, he dipped into the sea and picked up a lump of sea salt in violation of the British salt law.
"A symbolic act -- the making of salt illegally, of all things -- the significance of which only Gandhi at first had understood and which had been derided by so many, had fired the imagination of the Indian masses and set them on a course he was confident would lead to independence before he died," William Shirer wrote in "Gandhi: A Memoir."
Independence came on Aug. 15, 1947, but the victory was more bitter than sweet for Gandhi, as Britain partitioned India into two independent states, India and Pakistan.
A fellow Hindu, who blamed Gandhi for not hating Muslims, assassinated the leader five months later.
This story originally ran April 22, 2004, on Leaders & Success.
