Rise of Gandhi and Early Activism (1869–1919): South Africa to Rowlatt – Notes for OAS

Rise of Gandhi and Early Activism notes for OPSC OAS and UPSC cover the making of the Mahatma, from his birth in 1869 and two decades in South Africa to his first Indian Satyagrahas at Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda, and the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919. This page explains each phase, the Gandhian method, and a detailed Odisha focus on his eight visits between 1921 and 1946.

Birth and Early Background of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar in Kathiawar, in a family of Modh Banias. His father, Karamchand Gandhi, was a diwan (chief minister) in the princely states of Porbandar, Rajkot and Wankaner; his mother, Putlibai, was a deeply religious Vaishnava who observed fasts rigorously. He was married to Kasturba in 1883 and sailed for England in 1888 to study law at the Inner Temple, returning as a barrister in 1891.

His early legal practice in Bombay and Rajkot failed to take off. In 1893 he accepted a one-year contract from Dada Abdullah, a Gujarati merchant, to settle a legal dispute in South Africa. That voyage became the turning point of his life.

Gandhi in South Africa (1893–1914): The Making of the Mahatma

Gandhi arrived at Durban in 1893 and was the first Indian barrister and the first highly educated Indian to settle in South Africa. The Indian community there consisted of three groups: indentured labourers on sugar plantations, Meman Muslim merchants, and ex-indentured labourers with their South Africa-born children. None had much education, and all had come to accept racial discrimination as a way of life.

Racial Humiliations and Intellectual Influences

• He was thrown out of a first-class compartment at Pietermaritzburg and spent the night shivering in the waiting room.
• He was made to travel in the driver's box of a coach and thrashed when he refused to sit on the footboard; hotels in Johannesburg were suddenly 'full'; a first-class ticket from Johannesburg to Pretoria was almost torn from him.
• His ethical thinking was shaped by Plato's Apology, Ruskin's Unto This Last, Salter's Ethical Religion, Thoreau's On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, and Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You.

Moderate Phase (1894–1906)

• He set up the Natal Indian Congress (1894), started the newspaper Indian Opinion (1903) in Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil and English, and founded the Phoenix Settlement (1904).
• He relied on petitioning and memorials to South African legislatures, the Colonial Secretary, and the British Parliament, believing in British fair play.
• He raised 1,100 Indian volunteers as ambulance drivers in the Boer War (1899–1902) and a 20-member stretcher-bearer corps in the Zulu Rebellion (1906), to disprove the British notion that Indians were unfit for 'manly' activity.
• In 1896 he issued the Green Pamphlet exposing the condition of Indian indentured labourers, and was beaten by a white mob on landing at Durban.

Satyagraha Phase (1906–1915)

• Satyagraha was first used against the fingerprint registration law of 1906; the Passive Resistance Association was formed after the Empire Theatre meeting of 11 September 1906.
• Resisters pleaded guilty and went to jail, nicknamed 'King Edward's Hotel'; when Smuts reneged, Indians publicly burnt their registration certificates.
• He established Tolstoy Farm (1910–13), financed by Hermann Kallenbach, to sustain Satyagrahi families.
• The movement widened in 1913 against the £3 poll tax, drawing indentured and ex-indentured workers; a Supreme Court ruling invalidating non-Christian marriages brought many women into the struggle.
• Gandhi led the great march of over two thousand men, women and children from New Castle across the Transvaal border; repression drew condemnation from Viceroy Lord Hardinge.
• The final settlement conceded the major demands on the poll tax, registration certificates and recognition of Indian marriages.

Return to India (1915) and the Year of Silence

Gandhi returned to India in January 1915 at Gokhale's request. On Gokhale's advice he kept away from public political stands for a year, touring the country and studying conditions firsthand. He founded the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad (1917), his earlier base being the Satyagraha Ashram at the Kocharab Bungalow of Jivanlal Desai.

He deliberately kept distance from the Home Rule Movement, believing neither in the Moderates' eroded methods nor in the Home Rulers' view that wartime difficulty for the British was the best moment to agitate. He declared he would join only a movement built around non-violent Satyagraha.

Early Indian Satyagrahas (1917–1918)

Rowlatt Satyagraha (1919): First Mass Strike

The Rowlatt Act, passed by the Imperial Legislative Council on 10 March 1919, extended wartime emergency measures indefinitely: detention without trial for two years, juryless in-camera trials, and restrictions on the press and on political, educational and religious activity. Gandhi called it the 'black act' and launched a nationwide hartal on 6 April 1919 with fasting, prayer and civil disobedience.

Even before 6 April, violent anti-British demonstrations broke out in Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi and Ahmedabad; Punjab was especially volatile after the arrest of Dr Saifuddin Kitchlu and Dr Satyapal. On 13 April 1919, Baisakhi day, a large unarmed crowd gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar; on the orders of General Dyer, troops blocked the only exit and fired, killing around 1,000 people. Martial law followed, and Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood. Gandhi withdrew the movement on 18 April 1919. The Rowlatt Act, the Press Act and twenty-two other laws were repealed in March 1922.

Why Gandhi Rose to National Leadership

• His South African experience showcased organising capacity, mass mobilisation and Satyagraha.
• He belonged to neither the Moderate nor the Extremist camp, carrying no baggage, and so could make a fresh start with an all-India welcome.
• He had a clear vision of a pluralistic but united India, and left 'Swaraj' deliberately undefined so all could interpret it.
• His use of the vernacular, simple half-clad attire, and discarding of the sacred thread made him a symbol of India's poor.
• He used religious idiom to mobilise the masses without resorting to revivalism, invoking religious morality rather than history.
• World War I's economic fallout — high taxes, near-famine conditions, influenza — and the Kisan movements created a receptive ground.

Odisha Angle: Gandhi's Eight Visits (1921–1946)

Gandhi visited Odisha eight times over twenty-five years, between 1921 and 1946, covering the east, south, north and west of the state. His four major concerns in Odisha were Khadi, removal of untouchability, mass mobilisation and the nationalist cause. He had deep respect for Gopabandhu Das and Madhusudan Das.

First Visit (1921): Famine, Gopabandhu and the Tilak Swaraj Fund

• Arrived at Cuttack on 23 March 1921, on Dolapurnima, with Kasturba; 72 Kirtan Mandals joined the procession. Addressed a mass meeting on the sands of the Kathajodi river before about fifty thousand people.
• On 24 March he addressed Muslims at Qadam-e-Rasool, women at Binod Bihari, and students and lawyers, appealing for Hindu-Muslim unity, Khilafat support, boycott of foreign cloth, and donations of ornaments.
• On 25 March he toured Bhadrak on foot and addressed three meetings; on 26 March visited Gopabandhu's Satyabadi Bana Vidyalaya and admired its teaching and discipline.
• On 27 March he visited the famine-affected areas of Puri district and addressed a women's and public meeting at Saradha Bali, appealing for three lakh rupees and one lakh Congress members for the Tilak Swaraj Fund; he was shocked at imported finery on the deities and advocated Khadi in the temple.
• On 29 March he left for Berhampur with Gopabandhu Das; his visit drew V.V. Giri, Kasi Patra and Purna Behera into the freedom movement. The four objectives were: to see the Puri famine of 1920, to meet Gopabandhu, to raise Tilak funds, and to mobilise Odias for the freedom struggle.

Second Visit (1925): Madhusudan Das and the Utkal Tannery

• Arrived at Cuttack on 19 August 1925 at the invitation of Madhusudan Das; visited the Utkal Tannery and praised it as a Swadeshi industry; visited the Leper Asylum and addressed a Town Hall meeting.
• He declared that 'Odisha is the poorest province in India' and that this could be removed if everyone used the Charakha.

Third Visit (1927): Khadi Propaganda

• The tour began on 5 December 1927 from Berhampur, the headquarters of the Utkal Branch of the All India Spinner's Association; it covered Ganjam (Chhatrapur, Purusottampur, Boirani, Polasara, Kodala, Khallikote, Rambha), then Puri (Banapur, Bolagarh, Khurda, Sakhigopal, Puri), then Balasore, Bhadrak (Charbatia) and Cuttack.
• At Berhampur he made a settlement with the trustees of the Raghunath temple and entered it with the untouchables; at Sakhigopal he declined to visit the deity because Harijans were not allowed.
• At Bhadrak, Harekrushna Mahatab requested him to revive salt manufacture in Odisha. Overwork broke his health at Bolagarh, where he wrote of the 'skeletons of Odisha' haunting his dreams.

Fourth Visit (1928): One Day at Sambalpur

• On 22 December 1928, while travelling from Bombay to Calcutta, he broke journey at Jharsuguda to visit Sambalpur as the guest of Chandra Sekhar Behera.
• He addressed a public meeting on the bank of the Mahanadi and a separate women's meeting; the son and daughters of Chandra Sekhar Behera donated three gold rings for Khadi.

Fifth and Sixth Visits (1934): The Harijan Padayatra

• The Harijan Padayatra began from the Lion Gate of the Jagannath temple at Puri on 9 May 1934 and ended on 8 June 1934; he covered about 156 miles on foot in coastal Odisha.
• From Puri he passed through Harekrishnapur, Chandanpur, Sakhigopal, Kadua Ashram, Birapurusottampur, Dandamukundpur, Pipili, Seola, Balakati, Satyabhamapur, Balianta, Telengapentha, Kajipatna, Cuttack and then Patna; after the AICC at Patna he resumed from Byree on 21 May 1934 through Champapur, Bheda, Lekhanpur, Bahukud, Patpur, Nischintakoili, Kendrapara, Jajpur, Manjuri and Bhadrak.
• On 15 May 1934 he opened the Kunjabehari temple at Balianta to all Hindus including Harijans.
• At Angul (6 May 1934) he declared that untouchability had no place in the Shastras and identified liquor, indolence and bigotry as the causes of Odisha's poverty.
• He defined his pilgrimage as religious in conception and execution, walking as the ancient rishis did, so the message would travel 'faster on foot than by rail or motor'.

Seventh Visit (1938): Gandhi Seva Sangha at Delang

• He attended the fourth annual session of the Gandhi Seva Sangha at Berboi (Delang) from 25 to 31 March 1938, and inaugurated an exhibition of Khadi and Odia village industries — bee-keeping, wood-work, horn work, shell work, bamboo and coconut leaf work, brass and bell-metal work, pottery and pith work.
• He said Odisha suffered from 'opium, indolence and bigotry' but the exhibition gave him hope that it could once again be a land of happiness and plenty.
• When Kasturba visited the Puri temple without his knowledge during the Delang session, Gandhi was furious, since he held that all temples should be open to all castes.

Last Visit (1946): Passing Through Odisha

• In January 1946, while travelling from Calcutta to Madras, he stopped at Balasore, Bhadrak, Cuttack and Berhampur; Nabakrushna Choudhury and Bankabihari Das accompanied him to Berhampur.
• At Cuttack he was deeply disturbed by the unruly crowd on the platform and poured out his anguish, asking whether this was their non-violence.
• At Berhampur he said: 'Through unruliness we cannot achieve Swaraj. You should take to Khadi work and removal of untouchability earnestly. I hope Orissa will show the lead in these matters.'

Practice Questions on Gandhi's Rise and Odisha Visits