Rise of Gandhi and Early Activism

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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s transformation from a briefless young barrister into the “Mahatma” of the Indian national movement was not an overnight phenomenon in India — it was forged over two decades in South Africa. His South African sojourn (1893–1914) gave him his first direct experience of racial injustice, his first taste of mass political mobilisation, and the method that would come to define the entire freedom struggle: Satyagraha. When he returned to India in 1915, he carried with him not just an international reputation but a field-tested political technique — one he refined further through the local Satyagrahas of Champaran, Ahmedabad, and Kheda, before it culminated in the nationwide Rowlatt Satyagraha and the tragic watershed of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. This article traces Gandhi’s rise from an ordinary lawyer to a mass leader, examining each phase of his early activism and the evolution of Gandhian politics within the modern Indian national movement.

Gandhi in South Africa

The young barrister who landed at Durban in 1893 on a one-year contract to resolve the legal problems of Dada Abdullah, a Gujarati merchant, appeared to be an ordinary young man trying to make a living. In reality, he was the first Indian barrister and the first highly-educated Indian to arrive in South Africa.
Indian immigration to South Africa had occurred in three phases:
- White settlers first recruited indentured Indian labour, mainly from South India, to work on the sugar plantations.
- In their wake came Indian merchants, mostly Meman Muslims.
- Ex-indentured labourers who settled in South Africa after their contracts expired, along with their South Africa-born children, formed the third group of Indians.
None of these groups had much access to education. They had come to accept the racial discrimination they faced daily as a way of life, and even where they resented it, they had little idea how to challenge it.
Young Mohandas Gandhi, however, was not used to swallowing racial insults to make a living. He had spent three years in London studying for the Bar, and had encountered no overt racism either in India or England before this — it confronted him within days of his arrival in South Africa.
Intellectual influences during his South Africa stay: Gandhi’s ethical thinking was shaped heavily by a handful of books:
- Plato’s Apology and John Ruskin’s Unto This Last (1862) — both of which he translated into his native Gujarati.
- William Salter’s Ethical Religion (1889).
- Henry David Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849).
- Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894).
- Ruskin’s influence, in particular, inspired his decision to live an austere communal life — first at the Phoenix Farm in Natal, and later at the Tolstoy Farm just outside Johannesburg.

Racial Discrimination Faced by Gandhi

Gandhi’s journey from Durban to Pretoria, undertaken within a week of his arrival, was marked by a series of racial humiliations:
- He was famously bundled out of a first-class train compartment by a white man and left to spend the night shivering in the waiting room.
- He was later made to travel in the driver’s box of a coach despite holding a first-class ticket; when he refused the coach leader’s order to vacate even that seat for the foot-board, he was soundly thrashed.
- On reaching Johannesburg, every hotel he approached was suddenly “full” the moment he asked for a room.
- He managed to secure a first-class train ticket from Johannesburg to Pretoria only after quoting railway regulations at length, yet was almost pushed out of his compartment again — saved only by the intervention of a fellow European passenger.

Gandhi’s Activism in South Africa

On reaching Pretoria, where he was to work on the civil suit that had brought him to South Africa, Gandhi immediately convened a meeting of local Indians. He offered to teach English to anyone willing to learn and urged them to organise and protest against oppression.
He also voiced his protest through the press, writing an indignant letter to the Natal Advertiser. Although he had no plans to stay in South Africa at this stage, he worked hard to awaken the Indians of Pretoria to a sense of their own dignity and to resist racial disabilities.
As a British-educated barrister, he demanded things as a matter of right — such as first-class train tickets and hotel rooms — that other Indians before him had rarely had the courage to ask for.
Having settled the lawsuit that brought him to South Africa, Gandhi prepared to return to India. But on the eve of his departure from Durban, he raised the issue of a bill to disenfranchise Indians then before the Natal legislature.
The local Indian community, unable to organise the protest themselves for want of English, begged him to stay on for a month. Gandhi agreed to stay a month and stayed for twenty years — he was then only twenty-five years old.

Moderate Phase of Gandhi’s Activism (1894–1906)

Gandhi’s political activities between 1894 and 1906 are classified as the “Moderate” phase of the South African Indian struggle.
During this phase, he relied on petitioning and sending memorials to the South African legislatures, the Colonial Secretary in London, and the British Parliament, believing that presenting the facts to the Imperial Government would arouse the British sense of justice and fair play, prompting intervention on behalf of Indians as British subjects.
His broader aim was to unite the different sections of Indians and give their demands wide publicity. Towards this, he:
- Set up the Natal Indian Congress in 1894.
- Started the newspaper Indian Opinion in 1903, published in Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil, and English.
- Established the Phoenix Settlement in Natal in 1904, inspired by a single reading of Ruskin’s Unto This Last.
Gandhi’s abilities as an organiser, fund-raiser, journalist, and propagandist all came to the fore during this period.
Boer War (1899–1902): In 1900, Gandhi volunteered to form a group of ambulance drivers, raising eleven hundred Indian volunteers, trained and medically certified for front-line service — a deliberate attempt to disprove the British notion that Hindus were unfit for “manly” activities involving danger and exertion.
Zulu Rebellion (1906): When the British declared war against the Zulu Kingdom in Natal, Gandhi encouraged the recruitment of Indians, arguing that supporting the war effort would help legitimise their claims to full citizenship. The British accepted his offer of a 20-member Indian stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded soldiers.
By 1906, however, having fully tested the “Moderate” methods of struggle, Gandhi was becoming convinced that they would lead nowhere.

What is the Green Pamphlet? By this point, Gandhi was firmly established as a leader of South African Indians. In 1896, he returned to India via Calcutta to see his family. At Rajkot, he wrote and issued the “Green Pamphlet,” exposing the harsh conditions of Indian indentured labourers and “coolies” in South Africa, and delivered speeches across India on their human rights and living conditions. The British viewed the pamphlet as an anti-government publication. When Gandhi’s ship reached Durban again, it was refused permission to dock for three days; once he finally disembarked, he was beaten by a white mob. Despite this humiliation, he continued his work for the Natal Indian Congress.

Passive Resistance (Satyagraha) Phase of Gandhi’s Activism (1906–1915)

The second phase of the South African struggle, beginning in 1906, was marked by the method of passive resistance or civil disobedience, which Gandhi named Satyagraha.
It was first employed against a 1906 law making it compulsory for Indians to carry fingerprinted certificates of registration at all times.
At a mass meeting held on 11 September 1906 at the Empire Theatre, Johannesburg, Indians resolved to refuse compliance and face the consequences. Gandhi formed the Passive Resistance Association to run the campaign.
Once the registration deadline passed, the government initiated proceedings against Gandhi. Resisters pleaded guilty, were ordered to leave the country, and on refusing, were jailed — a pattern others soon followed. The fear of prison vanished so thoroughly that jail was popularly nicknamed “King Edward’s Hotel.”
General Smuts called Gandhi for talks and promised to withdraw the law if Indians registered voluntarily. Gandhi agreed and was the first to register — but Smuts reneged, ordering that the voluntary registrations be ratified under the very law they opposed. In response, Indians under Gandhi’s leadership publicly burned their registration certificates.
The government then introduced fresh legislation restricting Indian immigration into Transvaal. The campaign widened in response: in August 1908, prominent Natal Indians crossed into Transvaal to defy the immigration law and were arrested.
Gandhi himself was jailed in October 1908 and sentenced to hard labour along with other Satyagrahis; the government also resorted to deporting poorer Indians.
With the government unwilling to relent, Gandhi’s 1909 visit to London achieved little, and funds to support Satyagrahi families and run Indian Opinion were running out.
To address this, Gandhi established Tolstoy Farm (1910–1913) near Johannesburg, made possible through the generosity of his German architect friend, Hermann Kallenbach, to house and sustain Satyagrahi families. It became the precursor to the later Gandhian ashrams that would play so significant a role in the Indian national movement. Funds also arrived from India, contributed by Sir Ratan Tata, the Congress, the Muslim League, and the Nizam of Hyderabad.
Gokhale’s visit and resumption of Satyagraha (1913): Gokhale toured South Africa as a guest of the government and secured a promise that all discriminatory laws would be removed. The promise was never honoured, and Satyagraha resumed in 1913.
The movement now widened to include resistance to the £3 poll tax (originally £25, later reduced to £3) imposed on all ex-indentured Indians to discourage immigration. Because this tax fell heavily on poor labourers, its inclusion drew both indentured and ex-indentured workers into the struggle, giving Satyagraha a truly mass character.
Further fuel was added by a Supreme Court judgment invalidating all marriages not solemnised according to Christian rites and registered by the Registrar of Marriages. Indians saw this as an insult to the honour of their women, and many women joined the movement in response.
The final struggle: Gandhi launched the decisive phase by having a group of sixteen Satyagrahis, including his wife Kasturba, illegally cross the border from the Phoenix Settlement in Natal into Transvaal — they were arrested immediately.
- A group of eleven women then marched from Tolstoy Farm in Transvaal into Natal without a permit, reaching the mining town of New Castle, where they persuaded the largely Tamil Indian mineworkers to strike before being arrested themselves.
- Gandhi reached New Castle to take charge, then led a march of over two thousand men, women, and children across the border, intending for them to be jailed in Transvaal. Gandhi himself was arrested and imprisoned, but the marchers’ morale remained high until they were put on trains and sent back to a Natal jail.
The government’s repression inflamed the entire Indian community — plantation and mine workers launched a lightning strike. Gokhale toured India to rally public opinion, and even Viceroy Lord Hardinge condemned the repression as something “no civilised country would tolerate,” calling for an impartial enquiry into the atrocities.

Final Settlement

Through negotiations involving Gandhi, Viceroy Lord Hardinge, C.F. Andrews, and General Smuts, an agreement was finally reached: the South African government conceded the major Indian demands on the poll tax, the registration certificates, and the recognition of marriages solemnised under Indian rites, and promised to treat Indian immigration sympathetically going forward.

Significance of Gandhi’s South African Activism

Non-violent civil disobedience had succeeded in forcing opponents to the negotiating table and conceding the substance of the movement’s demands. The blueprint for the “Gandhian” method of struggle had now been evolved, ready to be tried on a far larger scale in India.
The South African experiment prepared Gandhi for national leadership in several ways:
- It gave him invaluable experience of leading poor Indian labourers, and of witnessing their capacity for sacrifice, endurance of hardship, and morale under repression — building his faith in the Indian masses’ capacity to sacrifice for a cause that moved them.
- It gave him the opportunity to unite Indians across religion (Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis), region (mainly Gujaratis and Tamils), class (rich merchants alongside poor indentured labourers), and gender (with women joining men in the struggle).
- It taught him, the hard way, that leadership means facing the anger not only of one’s opponents but sometimes of one’s own followers. He survived two serious threats to his life in South Africa: a white mob that chased and surrounded him in Durban in 1896, and an assault by an angry Pathan on the street, provoked by an agreement Gandhi had struck with the government. From these, he learned that leaders must sometimes take hard decisions unpopular with their own enthusiastic followers.
South Africa gave Gandhi the space to evolve his own style of politics and leadership, and to test new techniques of struggle on a limited scale, free from the pull of contending political currents. By the time he left, he had already moved the South African movement from its “Moderate” phase into its “Gandhian” phase, and was convinced this was the best method available — it now remained for him to introduce it to India.

Gandhi’s Return to India (1915)

Gandhi returned to India in January 1915 at Gokhale’s request, conveyed through C.F. Andrews, bringing with him an international reputation as a nationalist, theorist, and organiser — his South African efforts were well known among both the educated and the masses.
On Gokhale’s advice, and in keeping with his own style of never intervening without first studying a situation carefully, Gandhi decided not to take any public political stand for a full year. He spent this period touring the country and observing the condition of the masses firsthand.
During this time, he organised the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad (1917) — his earlier base, the Satyagraha Ashram, had been at the Kocharab Bungalow of barrister Jivanlal Desai since 1915 — where he and his devoted followers from South Africa took up community life.
Through the following year as well, Gandhi maintained his distance from active politics, including the Home Rule Movement. His political understanding aligned with neither the eroded “Moderate” methods nor the Home Rulers’ view that wartime difficulty for the British was the best moment to agitate.
He explained his reluctance to join existing organisations in his own words: at his stage in life, with firm views on several matters, he could only join an organisation to influence its policy, not be influenced by it — in effect, he would join only a movement built around non-violent Satyagraha.

Reasons for Gandhi’s Rise and Wide Popular Appeal

His South African experience contributed to his rise in several ways — it showcased his organising capacity and his commitment to the larger public interest, and gave him hands-on experience of mass mobilisation and Satyagraha.
Among India’s existing political currents, he was convinced of the limitations of Moderate politics and opposed the Home Rule agitation, believing wartime was not the right moment to press for it. He was equally convinced that only non-violent Satyagraha could achieve nationalist aims, and would join no political organisation that did not accept this creed.
His personal traits — organising ability, concern for the masses, a novel political ideology and method, and a broad political-social outlook — combined to produce a powerful, lasting impact, culminating in his emergence as the national leader and the establishment of his ideological hegemony over the entire freedom movement. He held a clear vision of India’s pluralistic society while remaining committed to the idea of a united India.
For a younger generation frustrated by the endless squabbles between Moderates and Extremists, Gandhi offered something genuinely new. Since he belonged to neither camp and carried no baggage from existing political groups, he could make a fresh start and receive an all-India welcome.
His faith in non-violence attracted support across classes — including women, and capitalists who feared both the business losses caused by violence and the spread of communist ideology.
By 1915–17, both Moderates and Extremists had reached an impasse, leaving them little room to manoeuvre by the time Gandhi arrived on the scene.
World War I’s economic fallout also shaped the ground for his rise: a phenomenal rise in defence expenditure led to a huge national debt, rising taxes, and steep price increases, producing near-famine conditions in many areas — miseries further compounded by the outbreak of influenza. As prices of industrial and imported goods rose while raw material exports remained cheap, ordinary people were hit hard, fuelling numerous Kisan movements.
Gandhi’s ideology appealed wholly to a few and partially to many, since everyone could find something in it to identify with. Given religion’s strong hold on the popular mind, he successfully used religious idiom to mobilise the masses — though this was not revivalism, since he invoked religious morality rather than history.
He spoke of Swaraj as his political goal but deliberately left it undefined, allowing everyone to interpret it in their own way — this helped him unite diverse communities under a broad, umbrella-style leadership. He was also more willing than his predecessors to shift political initiative from Western-educated elites to the masses.
His deep identification with ordinary Indians — his use of the vernacular, his simple half-clad attire, and his discarding of the sacred thread as a protest against discrimination against Shudras — brought him closer to the people, making him a symbol of India’s poverty and the hardships of the common man.
The sheer novelty of his methods — Satyagraha, marches, civil disobedience — captured the imagination of masses and leaders alike, their efficacy already proven both in South Africa and in his early activism in India.
His concern for Hindu-Muslim unity, the upliftment of Harijans, and the end of exploitation of depressed classes further reflected his broad political outlook.
Between 1917 and 1918, before launching the Rowlatt Satyagraha, Gandhi led three major struggles — at Champaran, Ahmedabad, and Kheda. Of these, the Champaran Satyagraha (1917) was the first to begin, though the term “Satyagraha” itself was first formally used during the later Anti-Rowlatt agitation.

Champaran Satyagraha (1917) — First Civil Disobedience

Gandhi was invited by Rajkumar Shukla to investigate the grievances of indigo cultivators in Champaran, Bihar.
Under the Tinkathia system, European planters forced peasants to grow indigo on 3/20th of their total landholding. When German synthetic dyes displaced natural indigo in the late nineteenth century, planters responded by demanding high rents and illegal dues to maximise profits before peasants could shift to other crops, while also forcing them to sell their produce at prices the planters themselves fixed.
When Gandhi — joined by Rajendra Prasad, Mazharul Haq, Mahadeo Desai, Narhari Parekh, and J.B. Kripalani — reached Champaran to investigate, the authorities ordered him to leave immediately. Gandhi defied the order and chose to face punishment instead, a novel form of passive resistance for its time.
The authorities eventually backed down and permitted an enquiry, appointing a government committee that included Gandhi as a member.
Gandhi persuaded the authorities to abolish the Tinkathia system and compensate peasants for the illegal dues extracted from them; as a compromise with the planters, only 25 percent of the money taken was ordered to be refunded.
Landlords, guided by the British government, signed an agreement granting peasants greater compensation and control over their farming, and cancelling revenue hikes and collection until the famine conditions eased. It was during this agitation that the people first addressed Gandhi as “Bapu” (Father) and “Mahatma” (Great Soul).
When critics questioned why he had not demanded a full refund, Gandhi explained that even the 25 percent settlement had sufficiently damaged the planters’ prestige and standing. His assessment proved accurate — within a decade, the planters left the district altogether.

Other Work During the Champaran Stay

Gandhi established an ashram in Champaran, mobilising both veteran supporters and fresh local volunteers to conduct a detailed survey of the villages, documenting the atrocities and the general state of degraded living conditions.
Building on the trust he earned from villagers, he led efforts toward village clean-up, the building of schools and hospitals, and encouraged local leadership to abandon purdah, untouchability, and the suppression of women.
He was joined in this work by several young nationalists from across India, including Brajkishore Prasad, Rajendra Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, and Ram Navami Prasad.

Ahmedabad Cotton Mill Strike (1918) — First Hunger Strike

Gandhi intervened in a dispute between Ahmedabad’s mill owners and their workers over the discontinuation of the plague bonus: mill owners wanted the bonus withdrawn, while workers demanded a 50 percent wage hike.
Gandhi asked the workers to strike and demand a 35 percent increase, while the employers were willing to concede only 20 percent.
He advised the workers to remain non-violent throughout the strike. As the days wore on, however, attendance at daily meetings began to fall and attitudes toward strikebreakers (“blacklegs”) hardened.
To rally the flagging workers and strengthen their resolve, Gandhi went on a fast unto death. The fast also placed pressure on the mill owners, who eventually agreed to the 35 percent wage increase.

Kheda Satyagraha (1918) — First Non-Cooperation

A severe drought in 1918 caused crop failure across the Kheda district of Gujarat. Under the Revenue Code, farmers whose yield fell below one-fourth of the normal produce were entitled to remission — but the authorities refused to grant it.
Gandhi backed the peasants’ cause and urged them to withhold revenue payments. In response, the government’s collectors and inspectors sent in agents to seize property and cattle, while the police forfeited lands and agrarian property.
The farmers neither resisted arrest nor retaliated with violence; instead, they donated their cash and valuables to the Gujarat Sabha (of which Gandhi was President), which officially organised the protest.
The revolt stood out for its remarkable discipline and unity — even with their property, land, and livelihood seized, a large majority of Kheda’s farmers remained firmly united behind Sardar Patel. Indians who bought up the confiscated lands were socially ostracised.
Unwilling to openly concede the peasants’ demands, the authorities quietly instructed officials that only those who could afford to pay should be made to pay.
The Kheda Satyagraha drew several young nationalists into Gandhi’s fold, including Sardar Patel, Indulal Yagnik, N.M. Joshi, and Shankerlal Pareekh, among others.

Gains from Champaran, Ahmedabad, and Kheda

Gandhi demonstrated to the people the efficacy of Satyagraha as a technique of struggle.

He found his feet among the masses and developed a surer understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.

He earned the respect and commitment of a wide following, especially among the youth.

Satyagraha Against the Rowlatt Act — First Mass Strike

Just as nationalists were expecting post-war constitutional concessions, the government instead introduced the repressive Rowlatt Act, which was widely seen as an insult. Gandhi called for a nationwide protest in February 1919.

The Rowlatt Act, 1919 Passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in London on 10 March 1919, the Rowlatt Act indefinitely extended the “emergency measures” of the wartime Defence of India Regulations Act to control public unrest and root out conspiracy in India. It followed the recommendations of the Rowlatt Committee, chaired by British judge Sidney Rowlatt, after whom it was named. Main provisions:

It authorised the government to imprison any person suspected of terrorism for up to two years without trial.

It allowed stricter press control, arrests without warrant, indefinite detention without trial, and juryless in-camera trials for proscribed political acts.

The accused were denied the right to know their accusers or the evidence used against them.

Those convicted had to deposit securities upon release and were barred from any political, educational, or religious activity.

The Act provoked outrage among Indian leaders and the public alike, prompting further repressive measures from the government. Finding constitutional opposition fruitless, Gandhi called for a nationwide hartal on 6 April, accompanied by fasting, prayer, civil disobedience against specific laws, and the courting of arrest — an event that came to be known as the Rowlatt Satyagraha. Gandhi branded the Rowlatt Act the “black act” and drew in younger members of the Home Rule Leagues and the Pan-Islamists to the cause.
This marked a radical change in the nature of the national movement:
1. The masses had found a direction — they could now “act” instead of merely voicing their grievances.
2. From this point on, peasants, artisans, and the urban poor were to play an increasingly important role in the struggle.
3. The movement’s orientation permanently turned toward the masses; Gandhi held that true salvation would come only when the masses were awakened and became politically active.
Even before the planned launch on 6 April 1919, large-scale violent anti-British demonstrations had already broken out in Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, and Ahmedabad, among other places. Punjab was especially volatile, its situation inflamed by wartime repression, forcible recruitment, and disease, forcing the Army to be called in. April 1919 saw the biggest and most violent anti-British upsurge since 1857.
The government responded with repression, particularly in Punjab under Lieutenant-Governor Sir Michael O’Dyer. When two prominent local leaders, Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlu and Dr. Satyapal, were arrested, an unarmed crowd gathered in protest on 13 April 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar.

Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (13 April 1919)

On Baisakhi day, a large crowd — mostly from neighbouring villages and unaware of the prohibitory orders in force in the city — had gathered in this small park to protest the arrest of Kitchlew and Satyapal.
On the orders of General Dyer, the Army surrounded the gathering, blocked the only exit, and opened fire on the unarmed crowd, killing around 1,000 people. Martial law was proclaimed in Punjab in the massacre’s aftermath, followed by further brutal treatment of Amritsar’s inhabitants.
The massacre stunned the entire nation. Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest, while Gandhi, overwhelmed by the prevailing atmosphere of violence, withdrew the movement on 18 April 1919.
The Congress boycotted the official enquiry committee headed by Lord Hunter. Acting on the recommendations of the Repressive Laws Committee, the Government of India repealed the Rowlatt Act, the Press Act, and twenty-two other laws in March 1922.

Conclusion

Gandhi’s journey from a young barrister facing racial humiliation on a South African railway platform to the acknowledged leader of the Indian national movement was neither sudden nor accidental. It was built systematically — through two decades of organisational experiment in South Africa, a deliberate year of silent observation on his return to India, and three closely-watched local Satyagrahas at Champaran, Ahmedabad, and Kheda that proved his methods could work on Indian soil. By the time the Rowlatt Satyagraha and the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre shook the nation in 1919, Gandhi had already demonstrated both the moral force and the mass appeal of non-violent civil disobedience, setting the stage for the far larger movements — Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience, and Quit India — that would follow. This period stands out not merely as a sequence of events but as the laboratory in which the Gandhian method itself was built and tested.