Place · railway city · South Africa
Pietermaritzburg
The South African railway city in KwaZulu-Natal where Mohandas Gandhi had the 7 June 1893 railway-station incident that transformed him from colonial-trained barrister to political activist — he was ejected from the first-class train carriage at Pietermaritzburg station for refusing to move to the third-class compartment despite holding a first-class ticket, because of his race. The night spent in the station's waiting room, Gandhi later wrote in his autobiography, was 'the most creative experience of my life' — he resolved to resist the discrimination rather than return to India. The Pietermaritzburg Satyagraha Memorial (2003) in the waiting room commemorates the night. Nelson Mandela visited and gave a speech here in 1997. The incident is central to the Gandhian origin narrative.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- -29.601, 30.379
Connections (2)
- Historical routePretoria
Gandhi was thrown off the train at Pietermaritzburg in June 1893 and completed the journey to Pretoria by stagecoach, being beaten on the way for refusing to sit outside with the driver. Within weeks of arriving he had called the first political meeting of Indians in South Africa. The two towns are the beginning of the twenty-one years, and the connection is a schematic one rather than a claim about a single continuous journey.
- Life routeMohandās Karamchand Gandhi
Gandhi was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg in 1893 for sitting in a first-class carriage with a valid ticket, and spent the night on the platform. He dated his political life from it. Satyāgraha was developed over twenty-one South African years before it was ever tried in India. He had gone to Natal on a one-year legal contract and stayed twenty-one, developing the tactics through the Transvaal registration campaign and the 1913 miners' strike before returning in 1915.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Pietermaritzburg”. M.K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa; The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Publications Division).
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