Prepare a write up about Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi on their struggle against racial discrimination.
Answers
Explanation:
The depth of oppression in South Africa created Nelson Mandela, a revolutionary par excellence, and many others like him: Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Albert Lutuli, Yusuf Dadoo and Robert Sobukwe — all men of extraordinary courage, wisdom, and generosity. In India, too, thousands went to jail or kissed the gallows, in their crusade for freedom from the enslavement that was British rule. In The Gods are Athirst, Anatole France, the French novelist, seems to say to all: “Behold out of these petty personalities, out of these trivial commonplaces, arise, when the hour is ripe, the most titanic events and the most monumental gestures of history.”
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi spent his years in prison in line with the Biblical verse, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” Nelson Mandela was shut off from his countrymen for 27 years, imprisoned, until his release on February 11, 1990. Both walked that long road to freedom. Their unwavering commitment to nationalism was not only rooted in freedom; it also aspired towards freedom. Both discovered that after climbing a great hill, one only finds many more to climb. They had little time to rest and look back on the distance they had travelled. Both Mandela and the Mahatma believed freedom was not pushed from behind by a blind force but that it was actively drawn by a vision. In this respect, as in many other ways, the convergence of the Indian and South African freedom struggles is real and striking.
Racial prejudice characterised British India before independence as it marred colonial rule in South Africa. Gandhi entered the freedom struggle without really comprehending the sheer scale of racial discrimination in India. When he did, however, he did not allow himself to be rushed into reaction. The Mahatma patiently used every opportunity he got to defy colonial power, to highlight its illegitimate rule, and managed to overcome the apparently unassailable might of British rule. Gandhi’s response to the colonial regime is marked not just by his extraordinary charisma, but his method of harnessing “people power.”