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(An article in theIndian Expressnewspaper chain in India on
Mandela, Nehru and Gandhi, July
18, 2013)
Two men and an idea
Enuga Reddy:
It was in prison that Mandela began to seriously consider the
need for reconciliation and
appreciate Gandhi's ideas
Nelson Mandela was born in Eastern Cape exactly four years after
M.K. Gandhi left South
Africa from Cape Town July 18, 1918, the date proclaimed by the
United Nations as Nelson
Mandela International Day.
For 44 years of his life, before 28 years of imprisonment, he
showed little interest in the
philosophy of Gandhi. He was known in the African National
Congress as somewhat hot-headed,
and people joked about his middle name, Rolihlahla
("troublemaker" in slang). But soon after hewas released from
prison and began negotiations with the apartheid regime, he was
hailed as a
leader of peace and reconciliation in the 20th century, along
with Gandhi and Martin LutherKing, Jr. How did this transformation
take place?
When he enrolled in the University of Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg to study law, hedeveloped close friendships with
Indian students, especially Ismail Meer and J.N. Singh. He
shared a room for some time with Meer at Kholvad House in Market
Street. They had many
discussions on the situation in South Africa. Mandela was
interested in the Indian nationalmovement. He became an admirer of
Jawaharlal Nehru when he read his book, The Unity of
India. He wrote: "It made an indelible impression on my mind and
ever since then I procured,
read and treasured any one of his works that became
available."
His presidential address to the ANC (Transvaal) Conference in
September 1953 was titled "No
Easy Walk to Freedom", after an article by Nehru. The address
ended with a quotation from thatarticle, slightly revised to adapt
it to Africa: "...there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere,
and
many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of
death again and again before
we reach the mountain tops of our desires. Dangers and
difficulties have not deterred us in thepast, they will not
frighten us now..."
His letter to the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, smuggled
from Robben Island prison when
he learnt of India's decision to bestow on him the 1979
Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International
Understanding, contains several quotes from Nehru and shows a
profound understanding ofNehru and the Indian national movement.
When I met him in 1991, he recited a long passage
from Nehru's autobiography.
He was, of course, aware of Gandhi. In 1946-48, nearly 2,000
Indians went to prison in a passive
resistance movement against the "Ghetto Act", with guidance from
Gandhi. Meer and Singh lefttheir studies to organise the
resistance. Zainab Asvat, daughter of Ebrahim Asvat, Gandhi's
associate, left her medical studies to join the first batch of
resisters from the Transvaal. Yusuf
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Dadoo, president of the Transvaal Indian Congress, and G.M.
Naicker, president of the Natal
Indian Congress, signed an agreement for cooperation with A.B.
Xuma, president of the ANC, in
March 1947. They then proceeded to India and met Gandhi, who
blessed cooperation if it wasbased on non-violence.
Mandela and the ANC Youth League succeeded in 1949 in getting
the ANC national conferenceto approve a programme of action
inspired by Gandhi and the Indian national movement.
However, Mandela remained an African nationalist, opposed to a
united front with Indians until
June 1950, when he became the head of the coordination office
for the national day of protestagainst the so-called Suppression of
Communism Act designed to silence opponents of
apartheid. His study of Nehru and Gandhi helped him to abandon
narrow nationalism.
Dadoo told me, "Nelson used to visit Indian families but he
would not touch the food they
offered. But after 1950, he became fond of curry." He began to
visit the home of Naran Naidoo,
an adopted son of Gandhi, and Ama. Ama told me he liked crab
curry. He was a frequent visitor
to the home of Yusuf Cachalia and Aminathe children of two close
associates of Gandhi.
In 1952, the ANC and the South African Indian Congress jointly
launched a passive resistance
campaign of all South Africans the Campaign of Defiance against
Unjust Laws. The plan ofthe campaign was formulated mainly by Molvi
Ismail Cachalia, brother of Yusuf. Mandela was
appointed volunteer-in-chief, with Ismail Cachalia as his
deputy. Mandela, like Dadoo, was not
converted to Gandhi's philosophy of satyagraha, but embraced
non-violence as the mostappropriate form of struggle for that
time.
In 1961, Mandela decided that strict non-violence was no longer
feasible. He went undergroundand formed the Umkhonto we Sizwe
("Spear of the Nation") for armed resistance. It engaged in
numerous acts of sabotage while taking great care to avoid the
loss of human lives. But it failed
in its primary purpose of persuading the whites to abandon
apartheid, and the West to disengagefrom apartheid South Africa.
Mandela was arrested in August 1962, sentenced to five years
inNovember, and to life imprisonment in June 1964.
It was in prison that Mandela began to give serious attention to
the need for reconciliation so that
all the people of South Africa could live together as equals. He
recognised that the way to reach
the Afrikaners was through their language, to which they were
greatly attached, and learntAfrikaans. From his own experience and
contemplation in prison, he began to appreciate
Gandhi's ideas.
After his release, Mandela repeatedly referred to the need to
allay the fears of the whites andencourage them to join in the
building of a new South Africa. After the first talks between
the
government and the ANC, he said that the ANC went into the
discussions in the spirit that there
should neither be victors nor losers, "...we are all victors.
South Africa is a victor".
When he was presented my article in 1995, titled "Mahatma Gandhi
South Africa's Gift to
India", he exclaimed that was what he intended to say. He wrote
in an article on Gandhi in Timein 2000: "India is Gandhi's country
of birth; South Africa his country of adoption. He was both
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an Indian and a South African citizen." He was echoing what
Gandhi himself had said at his
prayer meeting in New Delhi in June 1946, that he was born in
India, but made in South Africa.
