Gandhi Ordained in South Africa

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Jagannath Uppal was born in 1920 at Chakmughalani, a small village of Punjab After about ten years of schooling at Nakodar, followed by graduation at Jalandhar, he completed his education from St. Stephen's College of Delhi University in 1943.

Subsequent to his retirement from public service in 1979, he was en- gaged in research and writing. His first book, Bengal Famine of 1943- A Man - made Tragedy, was published in 1984. He had been occasionally contributing articles to The Statesman - Kolkata/New Delhi. After completion of his work connected with Gandhi - Ordained in South Africa, in 1995, he resumed his study of widespread poverty in India. This prolonged in-depth scrutiny of unending poverty and the processes of impoverishment had provided him with certain insights till his demise recently he was working on a policy framework, that he believed could generate massive increments in employment and help eradicate poverty in India.

When the Indians at Durban were engaged in a stormy Satyagraha campaign against the Ghetto Act, Mahatma Gandhi had felt induced to speak on the subject at length at a prayer meeting in New Delhi on June 28, 1946. While doing so, he fondly reminisced about his Natal and the Transvaal days and remarked that he was born in India but was made in South Africa where he had passed twenty years of his life at its meridian. He had, thus, re-confirmed the importance he attached to the period spent by him in the service of his countrymen in that subcontinent. It is a universally accepted fact now that whatever Gandhi had imbibed, practised or enunciated in South Africa holds the key to the entire spectrum of Gandhian thought and the pinnacle of greatness later attained by him as a man of action.

This book aims at a more detailed and revealing treatment of his South Africa years than is available in most of his biographies wherein that part of his life gets overshadowed by the dazzling role played by him in India's fight for independence. The idea is to exclusively portray the South Africa period on a canvas large enough to satisfy the ever-so-curious among the Gandhi enthusiasts, anxious to understand precisely how an obscure young Indian lawyer striving for his livelihood, after reaching South Africa, gave a completely new direction to his life and slowly evolved himself into an eminent political leader and, later, a Mahatma.

For Gandhi, the South Africa experience was not something in the nature of veni, vidi, vici. It was hard struggle all the way. During the first few years in Natal, the demands of a reasonably good living could not be shrugged off. Apart from having to provide for his wife and children, he was fretfully anxious to recompense his eldest brother who had paid for his education in England with much difficulty, even incurring debts. At the same time, deep inside him had grown an irresistible urge to serve the cause of his compatriots in South Africa. This last factor in due course brought him a deep sense of fulfilment, but it was not without its heart-breaking torments. The twinklings of joy were often followed by seizures of anguish. Dealing with individuals like Lord Milner and General Smuts could not have been a simple task.