his repute, and associated himself with these wretched coolies, and undertook single-handed the great task of their legal and social emancipation. It was in this endeavor that he worked out his program of non-violent non-cooperation, which means on the one hand, negatively speaking, non-cooperation with evil and evil doers, and on the other hand, positively speaking, willingness to suffer but never to wreak suffering upon other men, and to love without stint and without discrimination enemies as well as friends.
I have no time this morning to tell the story of that twenty years’ struggle in South Africa, which ended, of course, in victory, for non-violence is irresistible, unconquerable, when it is implemented by a soul that really believes it and is not afraid to practise it. This chapter of Gandhi’s life is really important not in itself, but in its relation to the later tale of what happened in India. Its place is that of an overture in relation to an opera. It was the beginning of his task and the announcement of the themes which were going to dominate his soul throughout the remainder of his days. South Africa was a kind of laboratory where Gandhi tested the practicability of his non-violent principles and proved that they would work. South Africa was a school wherein he disciplined his own life to the patience, the courage and the long suffering that fitted him to live as the practitioner of non-violence. South Africa was a training ground where he learned how to organize thousands of his fellowmen to strict obedience to the principles which he would lay upon their souls. Gandhi in these twenty years suffered everything. He met humiliation and insult; of course he went to prison, more times than at this moment I can seem to remember; and it was here that for the first time he was felled to the ground by a would-be assassin. For a wild man in South Africa, like a wild man in New Delhi yesterday, sought to take his life, and Gandhi was left in the gutter by the side of the road as one who was dead. Fortunately he was picked up in time and taken to the hospital, and the first thing he did when he awakened to consciousness, was to ask that the young assassin be brought to him. And when the frightened young man, now brought to his senses, was led to Gandhi’s bedside, the dear man opened wide his arms, as though to clasp him to his bosom, and he said, “Oh my dear young man, my son, what have I done that you were moved to do this thing?” And the young man fell in penitence and tears upon the ground before the Mahatma, and for years lived as one of the most devoted of his followers. I remember, in the light of this divinely beautiful story, that when Gandhi was shot last Friday at his prayer meeting, in that brief interval of time when he was conscious, knew what had happened, and realized that his last moment had come, even before he crumpled helplessly to the ground, he was able to lift his hand to his brow in the Hindu salute of forgiveness, and therewith to die with the blessing of his heart upon the wild assassin. These things Gandhi learned in South Africa. The story of those twenty years is one of the immortal epics of human history, likely perhaps to be forgotten, so small it seems as brought into comparison with the stupendous drama of India itself, but never really to be forgotten, since it was those years and their discipline and their ultimate triumph that made Gandhi to be the man that he was in his greatest days.
The second period of Gandhi’s life is the period from 1914 to 1947, the years when Gandhi was the leader of the Indian people in the stupendous struggle for national independence. It is interesting and rather ironical to recall that
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