Gandhi

Yesterday the family and I took a Gandhi tour around the Durban area. Gandhi came to South Africa as a young lawyer in India  to represent an Indian businessman here in Durban.  After he was unceremoniously evicted  at Pietermartritzburg from a first class compartment of a train bound for Johannesburg on June 7, l893, he decided to stay and remained for the next 21 years championing the rights of the oppressed and disenfranchised, leavingbehind a legacy of struggle for the right based on nonviolence.  In l997 he was posthumously awarded the Freedom Award.  On that day former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela said:  "Today we are righting a century old wrong.  This train station, once the site of a notorious symbol of discrimination, intolerance and oppression, now proclaims a message of dignity restored. 
His grandson spoke:  " Here in Pietermaritzburg today, here in this railway station, the question may well be asked:  who was the man that was flung out, who was it that fell?  The question may be answered thus:  When Gandhi was evicted from the train, an Indian visiting South Africa fell, but when Gandhi rose, an Indian South African rose.  Gandhi fell with a ticket no one honoured, he rose with a testament none could ignore, he fell a passenger, but he rose a patriot, he fell a barrister but rose a revolutionary.  His sense of human decency transformed itself  into a passion for human justice.  In fact Gandhi was not flung here, he was launched.

Gandhi's impact on South Africa, on India, on all who seek  to speak truth and work for justice without resorting to violence such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is beyond significant.  I just stood in awe as we heard the story and visited the sites where he lived and worked.  He learned from Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, and  he gave himself to be an instrument of God's justice and peace. 

With gratitude,

Bishop Ann