Phase of Passive Resistance or Satyagraha (1906-1914)

The second phase, which began in 1906, was characterised by the use of the method of passive resistance or civil disobedience, which Gandhi named satyagraha.

Satyagraha against Registration Certificates (1906) A new legislation in South Africa made it compulsory for Indians there to carry at all times certificates of registration with their fingerprints. The Indians under Gandhi’s leadership decided not to submit to this discriminatory measure. Gandhi formed the Passive Resistance Association to conduct the campaign of defying the law and suffering all the penalties resulting from such a defiance. Thus was born satyagraha or devotion to truth, the technique of resisting adversaries without violence. The government jailed Gandhi and others who refused to register themselves. Later, the authorities used deceit to make these defiant Indians register themselves. The Indians under the leadership of Gandhi retaliated by publicly burning their registration certificates. All this showed up the South African government in a bad light. In the end, there was a compromise settlement.

Campaign against Restrictions on Indian Migration The earlier campaign was widened to include protest against a new legislation imposing restrictions on Indian migration. The Indians defied this law by crossing over from one province to another and by refusing to produce licences. Many of these Indians were jailed.

Campaign against Poll Tax and Invalidation of Indian Marriages A poll tax of three pounds was imposed on all ex-indentured Indians. The demand for the abolition of poll tax (which was too much for the poor ex-indentured Indians who earned less than ten shillings a month) widened the base of the campaign. Then a Supreme Court order which invalidated all marriages not conducted according to Christian rites and registered by the registrar of marriages drew the anger of the Indians and others who were not Christians. By implication, Hindu, Muslim and Parsi marriages were illegal and children born out of such marriages, illegitimate. The Indians treated this judgement as an insult to the honour of

Tolstoy Farm

As it became rather difficult to sustain the high pitch of the struggle, Gandhi decided to devote all his attention to the struggle.

The Tolstoy Farm was founded in 1910 and named as such by Gandhi’s associate, Herman Kallenbach, after the Russian writer and moralist, whom Gandhi admired and corresponded with. Besides being an experiment in education, it was to house the families of the satyagrahis and to give them a way to sustain themselves. The Tolstoy Farm was the second of its kind established by Gandhi. He had set up the Phoenix Farm in 1904 in Natal, inspired by a reading of John Ruskin’s Unto This Last, a critique of capitalism, and a work that extolled the virtues of the simple life of love, labour, and the dignity of human beings. As at the Phoenix settlement, at Tolstoy Farm too, manual work went hand-in-hand with instruction. Vocational training was introduced to give “all-round development to the boys and girls”. Co-educational classes were held, and boys and girls were encouraged to work together. The activities included general labour, cooking, scavenging, sandal- making, simple carpentry and messenger work. Manual work such as sweeping, scavenging and fetching water was perceived to be invaluable to the psychological, social and moral well-being of an integrated community. Gandhi’s objective in this context was to inculcate the ideals of social service and citizenship besides a healthy respect for manual work from the early formative years itself.

The farm worked till 1913.

women and many women were drawn into the movement because of this indignity.

Protest against Transvaal Immigration Act The Indians protested the Transvaal Immigration Act, by illegally migrating from Natal into Transvaal. The government held these Indians in jails. Miners and plantation workers went on a lightning strike. In India, Gokhale toured the whole country mobilising public opinion in support of the Indians in South

View

“... a man who cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise, or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy, because his body which you can always conquer gives you so little purchase upon his soul.”

—Gilbert Murray on Gandhi in the Hibbert Journal

Africa. Even the viceroy, Lord Hardinge, condemned the repression and called for an impartial enquiry.

Compromise Solution Eventually, through a series of negotiations involving Gandhi, Lord Hardinge, C.F. Andrews and General Smuts, an agreement was reached by which the Government of South Africa conceded the major Indian demands relating to the poll tax, the registration certificates and marriages solemnised according to Indian rites, and promised to treat the issue of Indian immigration in a sympathetic manner.