Gandhi Principal

India in major universities of the world. It is indeed an honour to be here at this esteemed centre of learning situated amidst such breathtaking beauty. I stand before you in a spirit of humility to speak about one of the greatest figures of history, whose experiments with truth began in your country. For me as an Indian, a visit to South Africa is a pilgrimage. The world knows greatness in many forms. There are the great, who won celebrated military victories. There are the great, who have deepened our knowledge of the physical universe. There are the great who have helped us understand the workings of the human mind. There are the great who by their inventions have transformed the way we live. Mahatma Gandhi stands in a category of his own. He too was an inventor but of a different kind—an inventor of a unique way of protest, of struggle, of emancipation and of empowerment. His generalship lay not in making war but in waging peace. His weaponry was not arms and ammunition but "truth force", "satyagraha" as he called it. The moral universe was his field of action. He explored a whole new dimension of the human psyche—its capacity to willingly accept suffering, even unto death, not to attain the kingdom of heaven, but a better world here and now, by bringing about social and political change. II On June 7, 1893, a young Indian barrister, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was evicted from a train at Pietermaritzburg station for being a non-white. “I have never understood”, he later remarked, “how any man can derive pleasure from the humiliation of another”. A spark was lit which was to change the course of world history. On September 11, 1906, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi launched the first satyagraha campaign from the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg . He issued a clarion call for nonviolent resistance against racial discrimination, oppression and injustice. He described satyagraha as “a force born of truth and the love of nonviolence”, a moral equivalent of war. After 21 years in South Africa where his views took shape and were tested and refined, he carried the torch of satyagraha to India. The world saw with amazement how this unique technique energized millions of men and women to bring a mighty empire to its knees. III Mahatma Gandhi, the person was a many-sided personality to an unusual degree.