Mohandas found it difficult to contemplate another parting with Kasturbai. He loved her dearly. The thought of leaving her once again to seek an uncertain future in an unfamiliar country gave him pause, and he said so. But, by way of consolation to them both, he added, “We are bound to meet again in a year.”
To Mohandas’ surprise, Kasturbai (more attuned to his aspirations and disappointments than he knew) was quickly convinced he should go, especially after he explained about his fee. With all his own expenses paid, the entire sum could go to Lakshimidas — £105, more than enough to cover all household expenses for her and their sons while he was away.
Kasturbai found comfort and reassurance in the thought of such financial security — even for just one year. It pained her that her husband, the most qualified of the Gandhi brothers, the one on whom the whole family had pinned its faith, had not yet made good in life, and she had lately begun to wonder if he ever would. Proud and self-reliant by nature, she had lived for too many years with a daily awareness of her dependence on her brothers-in-law, ever conscious of the hard times the family was facing, and of the fact that the debt Lakshimidas had incurred to send Mohandas to London was still unpaid. But Kasturbai was also optimistic by nature. She told herself that, given this new chance in this new and faraway place, Mohandas would at last succeed.
Kasturbai, with her two small sons, saw Mohandas off on the train to Bombay in mid-April of 1893, to set forth once again on the “black waters”. This time he sailed southward, across the Indian Ocean to Natal. All her hopes went with him.
She kept her fears to herself.
When his ship arrived at the quay in Durban after a month at sea, Mohandas was on deck, standing at the rail. He inhaled the brisk autumn air, basked in the bright sunshine, and admired the city’s wide, clean beaches, and its tree-lined boulevards. This was his first close-up view of the land where he would spend, all told, some 22 years. But his indelible first impression of South Africa on that day in May in 1893 had nothing to do with the fine climate and splendid scenery. What gripped Mohandas’ attention, what brought him up short, was his instant awareness of the country’s pervasive colour prejudice — a prejudice so blatantly visible that he could discern it from the deck of his ship before he even disembarked.
As he stood watching a crowd of Durban townspeople hurry up the gangway to greet arriving friends, Mohandas could not help but observe what he later described with admirable restraint as the “snobbishness” of white Europeans toward the darker-skinned people among them. Nothing Mohandas had experienced in India or in England had prepared him for the kind of gratuitous insults he was seeing and hearing.
At that moment, a tall, distinguished-looking Muslim stepped forward. It was Dada Abdullah himself, the firm’s principal partner and most influential trader, come to welcome his new employee. But even as they exchanged greetings, Mohandas was stung to realise that Abdullah was one of the very Indians who had just been treated with such obvious contempt by the white South Africans. Never one to put up with indignities, however meek and docile he might appear, Mohandas fully expected his new employer to take offence, demand apologies then and there. Dada Abdullah hadn’t even noticed the scorn or the taunts. He was obviously used to them. That disturbed Mohandas most of all.
In the weeks that followed, Mohandas learned more about the peculiarities of South Africa. His European-style attire set him apart from other Indians. An educated Indian barrister was regarded with curiosity by whites and non-whites alike. The lawsuit Mohandas was hired to work on would be conducted some 400 miles away in Pretoria, the capital of Transvaal.
Shortly after Mohandas’ arrival in Durban, the firm’s lawyer in Pretoria sent word that he needed Dada Abdullah’s help in preparing the long-delayed lawsuit. Abdullah, busy with other affairs, dispatched his newly-hired barrister to represent him.
Mohandas boarded the train in Durban just before it left for the overnight trip to the Transvaal border where, since the South African railway system was still under construction, he would have to transfer to a stagecoach for the rest of the journey. A first-class ticket had been booked for him, and he was shown to his compartment. He settled into his seat, shuttered the windows, and brought out a book to read. It was cold and the night would be long.
When the train made its first stop at Pietermaritzburg, only some 50 miles from Durban, a white South African entered the compartment. At the sight of Mohandas he recoiled.
“You!” he barked. “What are you doing in here?”
Perplexed, Mohandas stuttered a reply, “Travelling to Pretoria.”
“Don’t you know you are not allowed in here? You must go to the van compartment reserved for blacks.”
“But I have a first-class ticket,” Mohandas said, pulling it out of his pocket to prove the point.
This seemed to enrage the white passenger. He stormed out of the coach, hut returned shortly with a railway official who also ordered Mohandas to move to the third-class van compartment.
Mohandas argued that he had been permitted aboard the first-class compartment in Durban, and he had every right to be there.
“I refuse to get out voluntarily.”
Infuriated at such impertinence from a presumptuous “coolie”, the two men summoned a constable, and together they pushed Mohandas out onto the train platform. They threw his luggage out after him, and the train steamed away into the night.
It was 9.00pm; no other trains were due until morning. There was nothing for Mohandas to do but follow along as his luggage was carted into Pietermartizburg’s dark, unheated railway station.
During the long hours that followed, sitting huddled in that cold, unlit waiting room thousands of miles from home, too humiliated to confront the stationmaster and reclaim his luggage (which contained his overcoat), and more miserable than he had ever been before, Mohandas asked himself some fateful questions.
Should he abandon his mission, take the earliest train back to Durban and the next ship back to India? No. He could not give up — not again. A panoramic view of his past life became starkly visible — all the times he had failed, times he had disappointed his family. He thought of Kasturbai, bearing the brunt of those disappointments, but never turning her ire on him, always encouraging him when a new opportunity arose. He must now seize this opportunity — he was, after all, a man of action. He must stay in South Africa and fight prejudice.
It took Mohandas three more days to reach Pretoria. Along the way, his new resolve was tested time and again — and not found wanting. The iron had entered his soul.
In Pretoria, the firm’s English lawyer, Mr. A. W. Baker, received Mohandas cordially and helped him find living quarters. Then he put him to work reviewing the complexities of Dada Abdullah’s lawsuit and translating the correspondence, much of which was in Gujarati. Besides being an attorney, Mr. Baker was a devout Christian and lay preacher. In the succeeding months, he would spend many hours trying to convert Mohandas to Christianity. Although glad to meet and talk with others interested in religion, Mohandas would reach the same conclusion he had in England: he should not think of embracing another religion before he more fully understood his own.
Soon after arriving in Pretoria, Mohandas invited the city’s entire Indian population to come together to discuss their problems. A large crowd showed up. Overcoming the shyness that had always left him tongue-tied, Mohandas gave what he later described as his first public speech.
His goal was to inform Indians of their rights, and inspire them to give voice to their grievances. He urged them to be honest and truthful in the business dealings; to be clean in their habits and sanitary in their living conditions; to forget their differences of religion, caste, class, and region; and to learn to speak English. Only after delivering this little homily on responsibilities did he turn to the question of rights. He suggested that they form a permanent association to document discrimination