History · Ch 11 — Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement — Civil Disobedience and Beyond
A Leader Announces Himself
A Leader Announces Himself
In January 1915, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India after twenty-two years abroad, most of them spent in South Africa. He had gone there as a young lawyer, but over time became the leader of the Indian community in that territory. The historian Chandran Devanesan observed that South Africa was “the making of the Mahatma”. It was there that Gandhi first forged the distinctive techniques of non-violent protest that came to be known as satyagraha, first promoted harmony between different religions, and first alerted upper-caste Indians to their own discriminatory treatment of low castes and women.
The India Gandhi returned to in 1915 was far more politically active than the one he had left in 1893. Though still a British colony, the Indian National Congress now had branches in most major cities and towns. The Swadeshi movement of 1905–07 had broadened the Congress’s appeal among the middle classes and thrown up towering leaders: Bal Gangadhar Tilak of Maharashtra, Bipin Chandra Pal of Bengal, and Lala Lajpat Rai of Punjab. Known collectively as “Lal, Bal and Pal”, the alliteration of their names conveyed the all-India character of their struggle — their native provinces were very distant from one another.
These leaders advocated militant opposition to colonial rule. In contrast, a group of “Moderates” preferred a more gradual and persuasive approach. Among the Moderates were Gandhi’s acknowledged political mentor, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and Mohammad Ali Jinnah — who, like Gandhi, was a lawyer of Gujarati extraction trained in London.
On Gokhale’s advice, Gandhi spent a year travelling around British India, getting to know the land and its peoples. His first major public appearance was at the opening of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in February 1916. Among the invitees were the princes and philanthropists whose donations had funded the university, as well as important Congress leaders such as Annie Besant. Compared to these dignitaries, Gandhi was relatively unknown. He had been invited on account of his work in South Africa, not his status within India.
When his turn came to speak, Gandhi charged the Indian elite with a lack of concern for the labouring poor. The opening of the BHU, he said, was “certainly a most gorgeous show”. But he worried about the contrast between the “richly bedecked noblemen” present and the “millions of the poor” Indians who were absent. He told the privileged invitees: “There is no salvation for India unless you strip yourself of this jewellery and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India.” He went on: “There can be no spirit of self-government about us, if we take away or allow others to take away from the peasants almost the whole of the results of their labour. Our salvation can only come through the farmer. Neither the lawyers, nor the doctors, nor the rich landlords are going to secure it.”
The opening of BHU was an occasion for celebration — a nationalist university sustained by Indian money and Indian initiative. But rather than adopt a tone of self-congratulation, Gandhi chose to remind those present of the peasants and workers who constituted a majority of the Indian population yet were unrepresented in the audience.
At one level, Gandhi’s speech at Banaras was merely a statement of fact: Indian nationalism was an elite phenomenon, a creation of lawyers, doctors, and landlords. At another level, it was a statement of intent — the first public announcement of his desire to make Indian nationalism more properly representative of the Indian people as a whole.
In the last month of that year, Gandhi was presented with an opportunity to put his precepts into practice. At the annual Congress session held in Lucknow in December 1916, he was approached by a peasant from Champaran in Bihar, who told him about the harsh treatment of peasants by British indigo planters.
The photograph shows a vast crowd of people gathered on the sandy banks of the Sabarmati River. The river itself is visible in the foreground, with the opposite bank lined with trees and the low skyline of Ahmedabad in the distance. The crowd is densely packed, standing and sitting in a semicircular formation around a small, open space. At the centre of this space, a single figure — Mahatma Gandhi — stands facing the crowd. He is dressed in his characteristic simple white dhoti and shawl, and appears to be speaking, his arm raised in a gesture. The people around him are a mix of men, women, and children, many in white khadi, some holding umbrellas against the sun. There are no banners, flags, or elaborate stages — the setting is deliberately plain, emphasising the direct, unmediated connection between the leader and the people.
This image is the opening visual of the chapter, and it captures the precise moment just before Gandhi set out on the Salt March in March 1930. The location — the Sabarmati riverbank — is significant: it was the site of Gandhi's ashram, his base of operations, and the place from which he launched the march that would challenge the British salt monopoly. The sheer size of the crowd, spilling across the riverbed, testifies to the mass appeal Gandhi had built by 1930. Unlike the elite gatherings of the early Congress, this is a gathering of ordinary Indians — peasants, workers, townspeople — who have walked miles to hear him speak.
What the photograph teaches us is the nature of Gandhian nationalism itself. It was not a movement of lawyers and landlords meeting in halls, but a public, open-air phenomenon that drew its strength from the participation of common people. The absence of any visible platform or hierarchy in the image reinforces Gandhi's message of humility and equality. The riverbank, a neutral, public space, becomes a symbol of the inclusive, non-elite character of the struggle. This single frame, taken on the eve of the Salt March, visually summarises the transformation Gandhi had wrought: from a leader speaking to a handful of dignitaries at Banaras Hindu University in 1916, to one addressing a sea of ordinary Indians on the Sabarmati in 1930.
This is a studio photograph, not a location shot. It shows Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi seated, dressed in a three-piece Western suit with a tie, his hair neatly combed. The background is a painted studio backdrop — a common feature of early 20th-century photography — rather than any real street or building in Johannesburg. The date, February 1908, is inscribed on the print or its mount, and the caption identifies the city as Johannesburg, South Africa.
The photograph is a formal portrait, not a candid or news image. Gandhi looks directly at the camera, his expression calm and composed. There are no other people, no objects like books or papers, and no labels or arrows on the image itself. The only text is the caption provided in the textbook.
What makes this image significant for the chapter is the timing. February 1908 falls squarely within Gandhi’s South African years, which the historian Chandran Devanesan called “the making of the Mahatma.” In that very year, Gandhi was leading the Indian community’s resistance against the Asiatic Registration Act (the “Black Act”), which required Indians to carry passes and be fingerprinted. He had already launched the first satyagraha campaign in September 1906, and by early 1908 he was negotiating with General Jan Smuts while also facing arrest and imprisonment.
The photograph thus captures Gandhi at a formative moment — a lawyer in Western dress, still experimenting with the techniques of non-violent protest that would later define his leadership in India. It visually anchors the textbook’s claim that South Africa, not India, was where Gandhi first forged satyagraha, promoted inter-religious harmony, and challenged caste discrimination. The contrast between this suited figure and the later image of Gandhi in a loincloth (Figure 11.3, Karachi 1916) is deliberate: it shows the transformation from a colonial lawyer to a leader who would strip himself of jewellery and speak for the peasant.
The photograph in Figure 11.3 shows Mahatma Gandhi in Karachi in March 1916. He is dressed in the formal Western attire he still wore at that time — a suit, tie, and overcoat — before his later adoption of the simple khadi dhoti. The image captures him just a month after his first major public appearance in India at the opening of the Banaras Hindu University in February 1916.
This photograph is significant because it places Gandhi in Karachi, a major port city in Sindh (now in Pakistan), during the year he was systematically travelling across British India on Gokhale's advice. The caption tells us the year is 1916 — the same year he made that pointed speech at BHU, where he criticised the Indian elite for ignoring the labouring poor. The image thus documents a moment when Gandhi was still relatively unknown nationally, yet already moving across the subcontinent to understand its peoples and conditions.
The Karachi photograph serves as a visual counterpart to the BHU speech. While the speech announced his intent to broaden Indian nationalism beyond lawyers and landlords, this image shows him physically doing the groundwork — travelling to distant parts of India, meeting people, and preparing for the peasant-based movements that would soon follow, beginning with Champaran later that year.