Bhubaneswar: Before Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi became a Mahatma, he led an ordinary life. A lawyer, who if hadn’t faced insult in a foreign land would have never realised the purpose of his life.
The Mahatama Gandhi we know of today was not always the fatherly figure we are proud of.
Gandhi was once travelling to Pretoria by train. Despite having a first-class ticket, he was thrown out of the train for being a person of colour. It was a case of racial discrimination. The year was 1893, Pietermaritzburg railway station in South Africa.
Gandhi was confused and sacred. Probably for the first time, he feared for his own life. It was then that he had to decide either to stay and suffer or return home to safety. Gandhi chose the latter.
For nearly 21 years, Gandhiji lived in South Africa, practised law, and lay the foundation of Satyagraha in Johannesburg. He fought the autocracies of colonisers in the name of apartheid.
Satyagrah was first launched there and two years after returning to India, he set up a school for Satyagrahis, Sabarmati Ashram, on the banks of the Sabarmati river in 1917
It was on the banks of the Sabarmati river in Gujarat that Gandhi set up a school for Satyagrahis, Sabarmati Ashram, in 1917.
And it was from here that Gandhi had begun Dandi March against the British Salt Law in 1930.
Unfortunately, he could never return to this home of his.
While leaving for the march, Gandhi had vowed to return to the ashram only after India attained independence. He, however, was assassinated just months after the country got independence.
