At a farewell meeting of the Tamil community in Johannesburg on July 15, 1914, Gandhi said that the Tamils bore the brunt of the satyagraha struggle and that he felt he came to the meeting to meet his “blood-brothers.” He said in an interview to a Tamil correspondent in Rangoon on 12 March 1915: “I consider that I have more in common with the Tamil community than with any other.”
When the Indians in the Transvaal took the vow to defy the Black Act requiring them to carry passes, the merchants, mainly Muslims from Gujarat, were in the lead. But soon most of them dropped out for various reasons or only went briefly to prison once, and it was the poor Tamil minority in the Transvaal, consisting mainly of hawkers, waiters and grocers who sustained the struggle. Gandhi wrote in Indian Opinion on April 16, 1910: “There is hardly a Tamil left in the Transvaal who has not suffered imprisonment in the course of the passive resistance struggle.” Many of them not only suffered in prison but became destitute. But they continued the satyagraha until the provisional agreement of 1911.
Gandhi often praised the Tamils for their sacrifice. He wrote in Indian Opinion (5 June 1909): "No other Indians can equal the performance of the Tamils in this fight.”
The heroism of the Tamils, especially the poor workers and hawkers, had great influence on Gandhi. He said at a farewell meeting in Durban on 9 July 1914: "In the van of the satyagraha battle were Indians born here and among them particularly the poor and the simple people rendered great services. The rich were busy getting richer."
And he declared at a London reception on 8 August 1914:
"There were 20,000 strikers who left their tools and work because there was something in the air... These men and women are the salt of India; on them will be built the Indian nation that is to be. We are poor mortals before these heroes and heroines."
He said at a public reception in Madras on 21 April 1915:
” It was the Madrassees who of all the Indians were singled out by the great Divinity that rules over us for this great work. Do you know that in the great city of Johannesburg, it is found among the Madrassees that any Madrassee is considered dishonoured if he has not passed through the jails once or twice during this terrible crisis that your countrymen in South Africa went through during these eight long years? You have said that I inspired these great men and women, but I cannot accept that proposition. It was they, the simple-minded folk, who worked away in faith, never expecting the slightest reward, who inspired me, who kept me to the proper level, and who compelled me by their great sacrifice, by their great faith, by their great trust in the great God to do the work that I was able to do.”
This statement reflects not only the modesty of Gandhi, but what he learned from his South African experience. For, Gandhi’s greatest contribution on his return to India was to transform the elite Indian National Congress into a mass movement for freedom in which simple peasants and workers played a crucial role.
The heroism and sacrifices of some of the Tamil satyagrahis deserve to be noted as they are little known in India and even in South Africa now.
News source credit: http://www.muthalnaidoo.co.za/indian-south-african-history-enuga-reddy/340-gandhi-tamils-and-the-satyagraha-in-south-africa
Image source credit: Google Images